d Austria decided not to seek revenge for Koeniggraetz unless
the French triumph proved to be overwhelming. As for Italy, her alliance
with France alone was very improbable for the reasons previously stated.

Another will o' the wisp which flitted before the ardent Bonapartists
who pushed on the Emperor to war, was that the South German States would
forsake the North and range their troops under the French eagles, as
they had done in the years 1805-12. The first plan of campaign drawn up
at Paris aimed at driving a solid wedge of French troops between the two
Confederations and inducing or compelling the South to join France; it
was hoped that Saxony would follow. As a matter of fact, very many of
the South Germans and Saxons disliked Prussian supremacy; Catholic
Bavaria looked askance at the growing power of Protestant Prussia.
Wuertemberg was Protestant, but far too democratic to wish for the
control of the cast-iron bureaucrats of Berlin. The same was even more
true of Saxony, where hostility to Prussia was a deep-rooted tradition;
some of the Saxon troops on leaving their towns even shouted _Napoleon
soll leben_[37]. It is therefore quite possible that, had France struck
quickly at the valleys of the Neckar and Main, she might have reduced
the South German States to neutrality. Alliance perhaps was out of the
question save under overwhelming compulsion; for France had alienated
the Bavarian and Hessian Governments by her claims in 1866, and the
South German people by her recent offensive treatment of the
Hohenzollern candidature. It is, however, safe to assert that if
Napoleon I. had ordered French affairs he would have swept the South
Germans into his net a month after the outbreak of war, as he had done
in 1805. But Nature had not bestowed warlike gifts on the nephew, who
took command of the French army at Metz at the close of July 1870. His
feeble health, alternating with periods of severe pain, took from him
all that buoyancy which lends life to an army and vigour to the
headquarters; and his Chief of Staff, Leboeuf, did not make good the
lack of these qualities in the nominal chief.

[Footnote 37: _I.e._ "Long live Napoleon." The author had this from an
Englishman who was then living in Saxony.]

All the initiative and vigour were on the east of the Rhine. The spread
of the national principle to Central and South Germany had recently met
with several checks; but the diplomatic blunders of the French
Governmen