ench despatches on the whole affair.]

Nevertheless, those who were behind the scenes had just cause for anger
against Bismarck. The revelations of Benedetti, French ambassador at
Berlin, as well as the Memoirs of the King of Roumania (brother to
Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern) leave no doubt that the candidature of
the latter was privately and unofficially mooted in 1868, and again in
the spring of 1869 through a Prussian diplomatist, Werthern, and that it
met with no encouragement whatever from the Prussian monarch or the
prince himself. But early in 1870 it was renewed in an official manner
by the provisional Government of Spain, and (as seems certain) at the
instigation of Bismarck, who, in May-June, succeeded in overcoming the
reluctance of the prince and of King William. Bismarck even sought to
hurry the matter through the Spanish Cortes so as to commit Spain to the
plan; but this failed owing to the misinterpretation of a ciphered
telegram from Berlin at Madrid[26].

[Footnote 26: In a recent work, _Kaiser Wilhelm und die Begruendung des
Reichs, 1866-1871_, Dr. Lorenz tries to absolve Bismarck from complicity
in these intrigues, but without success. See _Reminiscences of the King
of Roumania_ (edited by S. Whitman), pp. 70, 86-87, 92-95; also
Headlam's _Bismarck_, p. 327.]

Such was the state of the case when the affair became known to the
Ollivier Ministry. Though not aware, seemingly, of all these details,
Napoleon's advisers were justified in treating the matter, not as a
private affair between the Hohenzollerns and Spain (as Germans then
maintained it was) but as an attempt of the Prussian Government to place
on the Spanish throne a prince who could not but be friendly to the
North German Power. In fact, the French saw in it a challenge to war;
and putting together all the facts as now known, we must pronounce that
they were almost certainly right. Bismarck undoubtedly wanted war; and
it is impossible to think that he did not intend to use this candidature
as a means of exasperating the French. The man who afterwards declared
that, at the beginning of the Danish disputes in 1863, he made up his
mind to have Schleswig-Holstein for Prussia[27], certainly saw in the
Hohenzollern candidature a step towards a Prusso-Spanish alliance or a
war with France that might cement German unity.

[Footnote 27: Busch, _Our Chancellor_, vol. i. p. 367.]

In any case, that was the outcome of events. The French papers at onc