f dictating a letter to the Prussian Ambassador for him to transmit to
the King, to be in turn sent back as his reply. King William was
offended by this high-handed procedure. He had already told comte
Benedetti at Ems that a satisfactory letter was on its way from Prince
Antony and had promised him another interview upon its arrival. After
receiving the dispatch from his ambassador at Paris communicating
Gramont's formulas, he sent word to Benedetti that Prince Leopold was no
longer a candidate and that the incident was closed. Nor was the King
willing to grant Benedetti's urgent requests for an interview (July
13).

The King and the French Ambassador had remained perfectly courteous, and
the next day, at the railway station, they took leave of each other with
marks of respect. Things were not yet hopeless, until Bismarck, by a
trick of which he afterwards bragged, caused a dispatch to be published
implying that Benedetti had been so persistent in pushing his demands
that King William had been obliged to snub him. The French were led to
believe that their representative had been insulted, and neutrals sided
with Prussia as the aggrieved party. After deliberation the French
Ministry decided on war and the decision was blindly ratified by the
Corps legislatif on July 15. At this meeting Emile Ollivier made his
famous remark that the Ministry accepted responsibility for the war with
a "clear conscience." His actual words, "le coeur leger," seemed,
however, to imply "with a light heart", and thereafter weighed heavily
against him in the minds of Frenchmen.

CHAPTER II

THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR--THE GOVERNMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE

September, 1870, to February, 1871

On July 19 the French Embassy at Berlin declared a state of war. Paris
was wild with enthusiasm and eager for an advance on Berlin. The
provinces were for the most part cool, but accepted the war calmly
because they were assured of an easy victory. The leaders of the two
nations had for each other equal contempt. "Ce n'est pas un homme
serieux," Napoleon had once said of Bismarck, and Bismarck thought
Napoleon "stupid and sentimental." Meanwhile each nation had eyes on the
territory of the other: France was ready to claim the Rhine frontier;
Prussia wanted all it could get, and certainly Alsace and Lorraine. The
idea, so often repeated by the Germans since the war, that these
provinces were annexed because they had once been German, was not in
Bisma