a protest that the prince asked the Spaniards not to think of
him any longer. This was not enough for Napoleon, who now proceeded to
make a fatal mistake. The incident was closed, but he persisted in
reopening it. He sent his ambassador to see King William of Prussia to
ask the latter to assure France that never again should Prince Leopold
be considered for the position of king of Spain. The king answered
that he could not guarantee this, for he was merely the head of the
Hohenzollern family. Prince Leopold, whose lands lay outside of
Prussia, was not even one of his subjects. The interview between the
king and the French ambassador had been a friendly one. The ambassador
had been very courteous to the king, and the king had been very polite
to the ambassador. They had parted on good terms.

[Illustration: An Attack on a Convoy in the Franco-Prussian War.]

In the meanwhile, Bismarck had been hoping that an excuse for war
would come from this incident. He was at dinner with General von
Moltke and Count von Roon when a long telegram came from the king,
telling of his interview with the French ambassador. In the story of
his life written by himself, Bismarck tells how, as he read the
telegram both Roon and Moltke groaned in disappointment. He says that
Moltke seemed to have grown older in a minute. Both had earnestly
hoped that war would come. Bismarck took the dispatch, sat down at a
table, and began striking out the message polite words and the phrases
that showed that the meeting had been a friendly one. He cut down the
original telegram of two hundred words to one of twenty. When he had
finished, the message sounded as if the French ambassador had bullied
and threatened the king of Prussia, while the latter had snubbed and
insulted the Frenchman. Bismarck read the altered telegram to Roon and
Moltke. Instantly, they brightened up and felt better. "How is that?"
he asked. "That will do it," they answered. "War is assured."

The telegram was given to the newspapers, and within twenty-four
hours, the people of Paris and Berlin were shouting for war. Napoleon
III hesitated, but he finally gave in to his generals and his wife who
urged him to "avenge the insult to the French nation."

[Illustration: The Proclamation at Versailles of William I as Emperor
of Germany]

We give this story of the starting of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870
just to show the tricks of European diplomats. What Bismarck did was
no worse than w