[La Marmora.]

[Govone at Berlin, March, 1866.]

[Treaty of April 8, 1856.]

Bismarck from the beginning of his Ministry appears to have looked forward to the combination of Italy and Prussia against the common enemy; but his plans ripened slowly. In the spring of 1865, when affairs seemed to be reaching a crisis in Schleswig-Holstein, the first serious overtures were made by the Prussian ambassador at Florence. La Marmora answered that any definite proposition would receive the careful attention of the Italian Government, but that Italy would not permit itself to be made a mere instrument in Prussia's hands for the intimidation of Austria. Such caution was both natural and necessary on the part of the Italian Minister; and his reserve seemed to be more than justified when, a few months later, the Treaty of Gastein restored Austria and Prussia to relations of friendship. La Marmora might now well consider himself released from all obligations towards the Court of Berlin: and, entering on a new line of policy, he sent an envoy to Vienna to ascertain if the Emperor would amicably cede Venetia to Italy in return for the payment of a very large sum of money and the assumption by Italy of part of the Austrian national debt. Had this transaction been effected, it would probably have changed the course of European history; the Emperor, however, declined to bargain away any part of his dominions, and so threw Italy once more into the camp of his great enemy. In the meantime the disputes about Schleswig-Holstein broke out afresh. Bismarck renewed his efforts at Florence in the spring of 1866, with the result that General Govone was sent to Berlin in order to discuss with the Prussian Minister the political and military conditions of an alliance. But instead of proposing immediate action, Bismarck stated to Govone that the question of Schleswig-Holstein was insufficient to justify a great war in the eyes of Europe, and that a better cause must be put forward, namely, the reform of the Federal system of Germany. Once more the subtle Italians believed that Bismarck's anxiety for a war with Austria was feigned, and that he sought their friendship only as a means of extorting from the Court of Vienna its consent to Prussia's annexation of the Danish Duchies. There was an apparent effort on the part of the Prussian statesman to avoid entering into any engagement which involved immediate action; the truth being that Bismarck was still in conflict with the pacific influences which surrounded the King, and uncertain from day to day whether his master would really follow him in the policy of war. He sought therefore to make the joint resort to arms dependent on some future act, such as the summoning of a German Parliament, from which the King of Prussia could not recede if once he should go so far. But the Italians, apparently not penetrating the real secret of Bismarck's hesitation, would be satisfied with no such indeterminate engagement; they pressed for action within a limited time; and in the end, after Austria had taken steps which went far to overcome the last scruples of King William, Bismarck consented to fix three months as the limit beyond which the obligation of Italy to accompany Prussia into war should not extend. On the 8th of April a Treaty of offensive and defensive alliance was signed. It was agreed that if the King of Prussia should within three months take up arms for the reform of the Federal system of Germany, Italy would immediately after the outbreak of hostilities declare war upon Austria. Both Powers were to to engage in the war with their whole force, and peace was not to be made but by common consent, such consent not to be withheld after Austria should have agreed to cede Venetia to Italy and territory with an equal population to Prussia. [520]

[Bismarck and Austria, Aug., 1865-April, 1866.]

Eight months had now passed since the signature of the Convention of Gastem. The experiment of an understanding with Austria, which King William had deemed necessary, had been made, and it had failed; or rather, as Bismarck expressed himself in a candid moment, it had succeeded, inasmuch as it had cured the King of his scruples and raised him to the proper point of indignation against the Austrian Court. The agents in effecting this happy result had been the Prince of Augustenburg, the population of Holstein, and the Liberal party throughout Germany at large. In Schleswig, which the Convention of Gastein had handed over to Prussia, General Manteuffel, a son of the Minister of 1850, had summarily put a stop to every expression of public opinion, and had threatened to imprison the Prince if he came within his reach; in Holstein the Austrian Government had permitted, if it had not encouraged, the inhabitants to agitate in favour of the Pretender, and had allowed a mass-meeting to be held at Altona on the 23rd of January, where cheers were raised for Augustenburg, and the summoning of the Estates of Schleswig-Holstein was demanded. This was enough to enable Bismarck to denounce the conduct of Austria as an alliance with revolution. He demanded explanations from the Government of Vienna, and the Emperor declined to render an account of his actions. Warlike preparations now began, and on the 16th of March the Austrian Government announced that it should refer the affairs of Schleswig-Holstein to the Federal Diet. This was a clear departure from the terms of the Convention of Gastein, and from the agreement made between Austria and Prussia before entering into the Danish war in 1864 that the Schleswig-Holstein question should be settled by the two Powers independently of the German Federation. King William was deeply moved by such a breach of good faith; tears filled his eyes when he spoke of the conduct of the Austrian Emperor; and though pacific influences were still active around him he now began to fall in more cordially with the warlike policy of his Minister. The question at issue between Prussia and Austria expanded from the mere disposal of the Duchies to the reconstitution of the Federal system of Germany. In a note laid before the Governments of all the Minor States Bismarck declared that the time had come when Germany must receive a new and more effective organisation, and inquired how far Prussia could count on the support of allies if it should be attacked by Austria or forced into war. It was immediately after this re-opening of the whole problem of Federal reform in Germany that the draft of the Treaty with Italy was brought to its final shape by Bismarck and the Italian envoy, and sent to the Ministry at Florence for its approval.

[Austria offers Venice, May 5.]

Bismarck had now to make the best use of the three months' delay that was granted to him. On the day after the acceptance of the Treaty by the Italian Government, the Prussian representative at the Diet of Frankfort handed in a proposal for the summoning of a German Parliament, to be elected by universal suffrage. Coming from the Minister who had made Parliamentary government a mockery in Prussia, this proposal was scarcely considered as serious. Bavaria, as the chief of the secondary States, had already expressed its willingness to enter upon the discussion of Federal reform, but it asked that the two leading Powers should in the meantime undertake not to attack one another. Austria at once acceded to this request, and so forced Bismarck into giving a similar assurance. Promises of disarmament were then exchanged; but as Austria declined to stay the collection of its forces in Venetia against Italy, Bismarck was able to charge his adversary with insincerity in the negotiation, and preparations for war were resumed on both sides. Other difficulties, however, now came into view. The Treaty between Prussia and Italy had been made known to the Court of Vienna by Napoleon, whose advice La Marmora had sought before its conclusion, and the Austrian Emperor had thus become aware of his danger. He now determined to sacrifice Venetia if Italy's neutrality could be so secured. On the 5th of May the Italian ambassador at Paris, Count Nigra, was informed by Napoleon that Austria had offered to cede Venetia to him on behalf of Victor Emmanuel if France and Italy would not prevent Austria from indemnifying itself at Prussia's expense in Silesia. Without a war, at the price of mere inaction, Italy was offered all that it could gain by a struggle which was likely to be a desperate one, and which might end in disaster. La Marmora was in sore perplexity. Though he had formed a juster estimate of the capacity of the Prussian army than any other statesman or soldier in Europe, he was thoroughly suspicious of the intentions of the Prussian Government; and in sanctioning the alliance of the previous month he had done so half expecting that Bismarck would through the prestige of this alliance gain for Prussia its own objects without entering into war, and then leave Italy to reckon with Austria as best it might. He would gladly have abandoned the alliance and have accepted Austria's offer if Italy could have done this without disgrace. But the sense of honour was sufficiently strong to carry him past this temptation. He declined the offer made through Paris, and continued the armaments of Italy, though still with a secret hope that European diplomacy might find the means of realising the purpose of his country without war. [521]

[Proposals for a Congress.]

The neutral Powers were now, with various objects, bestirring themselves in favour of a European Congress. Napoleon believed the time to be come when the Treaties of 1815 might be finally obliterated by the joint act of Europe. He was himself ready to join Prussia with three hundred thousand men if the King would transfer the Rhenish Provinces to France. Demands, direct and indirect, were made on Count Bismarck on behalf of the Tuileries for cessions of territory of greater or less extent. These demands were neither granted nor refused. Bismarck procrastinated; he spoke of the obstinacy of the King his master; he inquired whether parts of Belgium or Switzerland would not better assimilate with France than a German province; he put off the Emperor's representatives by the assurance that he could more conveniently arrange these matters with the Emperor when he should himself visit Paris. On the 28th of May invitations to a Congress were issued by France, England, and Russia jointly, the objects of the Congress being defined as the settlement of the affairs of Schleswig-Holstein, of the differences between Austria and Italy, and of the reform of the Federal Constitution of Germany, in so far as these affected Europe at large. The invitation was accepted by Prussia and by Italy; it was accepted by Austria only under the condition that no arrangement should be discussed which should give an increase of territory or power to one of the States invited to the Congress. This subtly-worded condition would not indeed have excluded the equal aggrandisement of all. It would not have rendered the cession of Venetia to Italy or the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein to Prussia impossible; but it would either have involved the surrender of the former Papal territory by Italy in order that Victor Emmanuel's dominions should receive no increase, or, in the alternative, it would have entitled Austria to claim Silesia as its own equivalent for the augmentation of the Italian Kingdom. Such reservations would have rendered any efforts of the Powers to preserve peace useless, and they were accepted as tantamount to a refusal on the part of Austria to attend the Congress. Simultaneously with its answer to the neutral Powers, Austria called upon the Federal Diet to take the affairs of Schleswig-Holstein into its own hands, and convoked the Holstein Estates. Bismarck thereupon declared the Convention of Gastein to be at an end, and ordered General Manteuffel to lead his troops into Holstein. The Austrian commander, protesting that he yielded only to superior force, withdrew through Altona into Hanover. Austria at once demanded and obtained from the Diet of Frankfort the mobilisation of the whole of the Federal armies. The representative of Prussia, declaring that this act of the Diet had made an end of the existing Federal union, handed in the plan of his Government for the reorganisation of Germany, and quitted Frankfort. Diplomatic relations between Austria and Prussia were broken off on the 12th of June, and on the 15th Count Bismarck demanded of the sovereigns of Hanover, Saxony, and Hesse-Cassel, that they should on that very day put a stop to their military preparations and accept the Prussian scheme of Federal reform. Negative answers being given, Prussian troops immediately marched into these territories, and war began. Weimar, Mecklenburg, and other petty States in the north took part with Prussia: all the rest of Germany joined Austria. [522]

[German Opinion.]

The goal of Bismarck's desire, the end which he had steadily set before himself since entering upon his Ministry, was attained; and, if his calculations as to the strength of the Prussian army were not at fault, Austria was at length to be expelled from the German Federation by force of arms. But the process by which Bismarck had worked up to this result had ranged against him the almost unanimous opinion of Germany outside the military circles of Prussia itself. His final demand for the summoning of a German Parliament was taken as mere comedy. The guiding star of his policy had hitherto been the dynastic interest of the House of Hohenzollern; and now, when the Germans were to be plunged into war with one another, it seemed as if the real object of the struggle was no more than the annexation of the Danish Duchies and some other coveted territory to the Prussian Kingdom. The voice of protest and condemnation rose loud from every organ of public opinion. Even in Prussia itself the instances were few where any spontaneous support was tendered to the Government. The Parliament of Berlin, struggling up to the end against the all-powerful Minister, had seen its members prosecuted for speeches made within its own walls, and had at last been prorogued in order that its insubordination might not hamper the Crown in the moment of danger. But the mere disappearance of Parliament could not conceal the intensity of ill-will which the Minister and his policy had excited. The author of a fratricidal war of Germans against Germans was in the eyes of many the greatest of all criminals; and on the 7th of May an attempt was made by a young fanatic to take Bismarck's life in the streets of Berlin. The Minister owed the preservation of his life to the feebleness of his assailant's weapon and to his own vigorous arm. But the imminence of the danger affected King William far more than Bismarck himself. It spoke to his simple mind of supernatural protection and aid; it stilled his doubts; and confirmed him in the belief that Prussia was in this crisis the instrument for working out the Almighty's will.

[Napoleon III.]

A few days before the outbreak of hostilities the Emperor Napoleon gave publicity to his own view of the European situation. He attributed the coming war to three causes: to the faulty geographical limits of the Prussian State, to the desire for a better Federal system in Germany, and to the necessity felt by the Italian nation for securing its independence. These needs would, he conceived, be met by a territorial rearrangement in the north of Germany consolidating and augmenting the Prussian Kingdom; by the creation of a more effective Federal union between the secondary German States; and finally, by the incorporation of Venetia with Italy, Austria's position in Germany remaining unimpaired. Only in the event of the map of Europe being altered to the exclusive advantage of one Great Power would France require an extension of frontier. Its interests lay in the preservation of the equilibrium of Europe, and in the maintenance of the Italian Kingdom. These had already been secured by arrangements which would not require France to draw the sword; a watchful but unselfish neutrality was the policy which its Government had determined to pursue. Napoleon had in fact lost all control over events, and all chance of gaining the Rhenish Provinces, from the time when he permitted Italy to enter into the Prussian alliance without any stipulation that France should at its option be admitted as a third member of the coalition. He could not ally himself with Austria against his own creation, the Italian Kingdom; on the other hand, he had no means of extorting cessions from Prussia when once Prussia was sure of an ally who could bring two hundred thousand men into the field. His diplomacy had been successful in so far as it had assured Venetia to Italy whether Prussia should be victorious or overthrown, but as regarded France it had landed him in absolute powerlessness. He was unable to act on one side; he was not wanted on the other. Neutrality had become a matter not of choice but of necessity; and until the course of military events should have produced some new situation in Europe, France might well be watchful, but it could scarcely gain much credit for its disinterested part. [523]

[Hanover and Hesse-Cassel conquered.]

[The Bohemian Campaign, June 26-July 3.]

[Battle of Koeniggraetz, July 3.]

Assured against an attack from the side of the Rhine, Bismarck was able to throw the mass of the Prussian forces southwards against Austria, leaving in the north only the modest contingent which was necessary to overcome the resistance of Hanover and Hesse-Cassel. Through the precipitancy of a Prussian general, who struck without waiting for his colleagues, the Hanoverians gained a victory at Langensalza on the 27th of June; but other Prussian regiments arrived on the field a few hours later, and the Hanoverian army was forced to capitulate on the next day. The King made his escape to Austria; the Elector of Hesse-Cassel, less fortunate, was made a prisoner of war. Northern Germany was thus speedily reduced to submission, and any danger of a diversion in favour of Austria in this quarter disappeared. In Saxony no attempt was made to bar the way to the advancing Prussians. Dresden was occupied without resistance, but the Saxon army marched southwards in good time, and joined the Austrians in Bohemia. The Prussian forces, about two hundred and fifty thousand strong, now gathered on the Saxon and Silesian frontier, covering the line from Pirna to Landshut. They were composed of three armies: the first, or central, army under Prince Frederick Charles, a nephew of the King; the second, or Silesian, army under the Crown Prince; the westernmost, known as the army of the Elbe, under General Herwarth von Bittenfeld. Against these were ranged about an equal number of Austrians, led by Benedek, a general who had gained great distinction in the Hungarian and the Italian campaigns. It had at first been thought probable that Benedek, whose forces lay about Olmuetz, would invade Southern Silesia, and the Prussian line had therefore been extended far to the east. Soon, however, it appeared that the Austrians were unable to take up the offensive, and Benedek moved westwards into Bohemia. The Prussian line was now shortened, and orders were given to the three armies to cross the Bohemian frontier and converge in the direction of the town of Gitschin. General Moltke, the chief of the staff, directed their operations from Berlin by telegraph. The combined advance of the three armies was executed with extraordinary precision; and in a series of hard-fought combats extending from the 26th to the 29th of June the Austrians were driven back upon their centre, and effective communication was established between the three invading bodies. On the 30th the King of Prussia, with General Moltke and Count Bismarck, left Berlin; on the 2nd of July they were at headquarters at Gitschin. It had been Benedek's design to leave a small force to hold the Silesian army in check, and to throw the mass of his army westwards upon Prince Frederick Charles and overwhelm him before he could receive help from his colleagues. This design had been baffled by the energy of the Crown Prince's attack, and by the superiority of the Prussians in generalship, in the discipline of their troops, and in the weapon they carried; for though the Austrians had witnessed in the Danish campaign the effects of the Prussian breech-loading rifle, they had not thought it necessary to adopt a similar arm. Benedek, though no great battle had yet been fought, saw that the campaign was lost, and wrote to the Emperor on the 1st of July recommending him to make peace, for otherwise a catastrophe was inevitable. He then concentrated his army on high ground a few miles west of Koeniggraetz, and prepared for a defensive battle on the grandest scale. In spite of the losses of the past week he could still bring about two hundred thousand men into action. The three Prussian armies were now near enough to one another to combine in their attack, and on the night of July 2nd the King sent orders to the three commanders to move against Benedek before daybreak. Prince Frederick Charles, advancing through the village of Sadowa, was the first in the field. For hours his divisions sustained an unequal struggle against the assembled strength of the Austrians. Midday passed; the defenders now pressed down upon their assailants; and preparations for a retreat had been begun, when the long-expected message arrived that the Crown Prince was close at hand. The onslaught of the army of Silesia on Benedek's right, which was accompanied by the arrival of Herwarth at the other end of the field of battle, at once decided the day. It was with difficulty that the Austrian commander prevented the enemy from seizing the positions which would have cut off his retreat. He retired eastwards across the Elbe with a loss of eighteen thousand killed and wounded and twenty-four thousand prisoners. His army was ruined; and ten days after the Prussians had crossed the frontier the war was practically at an end. [524]

[Battle of Custozza, June 24.]

[Napoleon's mediation, July 5.]

[Preliminaries of Nicolsburg, July 26.]

[Treaty of Prague, Aug. 23.]

The disaster of Koeniggraetz was too great to be neutralised by the success of the Austrian forces in Italy. La Marmora, who had given up his place at the head of the Government in order to take command of the army, crossed the Mincio at the head of a hundred and twenty thousand men, but was defeated by inferior numbers on the fatal ground of Custozza, and compelled to fall back on the Oglio. This gleam of success, which was followed by a naval victory at Lissa off the Istrian coast, made it easier for the Austrian Emperor to face the sacrifices that were now inevitable. Immediately after the battle of Koeniggraetz he invoked the mediation of Napoleon III., and ceded Venetia to him on behalf of Italy. Napoleon at once tendered his good offices to the belligerents, and proposed an armistice. His mediation was accepted in principle by the King or Prussia, who expressed his willingness also to grant an armistice as soon as preliminaries of peace were recognised by the Austrian Court. In the meantime, while negotiations passed between all four Governments, the Prussians pushed forward until their outposts came within sight of Vienna. If in pursuance of General Moltke's plan the Italian generals had thrown a corps north-eastwards from the head of the Adriatic, and so struck at the very heart of the Austrian monarchy, it is possible that the victors of Koeniggraetz might have imposed their own terms without regard to Napoleon's mediation, and, while adding the Italian Tyrol to Victor Emmanuel's dominions, have completed the union of Germany under the House of Hohenzollern at one stroke. But with Hungary still intact, and the Italian army paralysed by the dissensions of its commanders, prudence bade the great statesman of Berlin content himself with the advantages which he could reap without prolongation of the war, and without the risk of throwing Napoleon into the enemy's camp. He had at first required, as conditions of peace, that Prussia should be left free to annex Saxony, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and other North German territory; that Austria should wholly withdraw from German affairs; and that all Germany, less the Austrian Provinces, should be united in a Federation under Prussian leadership. To gain the assent of Napoleon to these terms, Bismarck hinted that France might by accord with Prussia annex Belgium. Napoleon, however, refused to agree to the extension of Prussia's ascendency over all Germany, and presented a counter-project which was in its turn rejected by Bismarck. It was finally settled that Prussia should not be prevented from annexing Hanover, Nassau, and Hesse-Cassel, as conquered territory that lay between its own Rhenish Provinces and the rest of the kingdom; that Austria should completely withdraw from German affairs; that Germany north of the Main, together with Saxony, should be included in a Federation under Prussian leadership; and that for the States south of the Main there should be reserved the right of entering into some kind of national bond with the Northern League. Austria escaped without loss of any of its non-Italian territory; it also succeeded in preserving the existence of Saxony, which, as in 1815, the Prussian Government had been most anxious to annex. Napoleon, in confining the Prussian Federation to the north of the Main, and in securing by a formal stipulation in the Treaty the independence of the Southern States, imagined himself to have broken Germany into halves, and to have laid the foundation of a South German League which should look to France as its protector. On the other hand, Bismarck by his annexation of Hanover and neighbouring districts had added a population of four millions to the Prussian Kingdom, and given it a continuous territory; he had forced Austria out of the German system; he had gained its sanction to the Federal union of all Germany north of the Main, and had at least kept the way open for the later extension of this union to the Southern States. Preliminaries of peace embodying these conditions and recognising Prussia's sovereignty in Schleswig-Holstein were signed at Nicolsburg on the 26th of July, and formed the basis of the definitive Treaty of Peace which was concluded at Prague on the 23rd of August. An illusory clause, added at the instance of Napoleon, provided that if the population of the northern districts of Schleswig should by a free vote express the wish to be united with Denmark, these districts should be ceded to the Danish Kingdom. [525]

[The South German States.]

[Secret Treaties of the Southern States with Prussia.]

Bavaria and the south-western allies of Austria, though their military action was of an ineffective character, continued in arms for some weeks after the battle of Koeniggraetz and the suspension of hostilities arranged at Nicolsburg did not come into operation on their behalf till the 2nd of August. Before that date their forces were dispersed and their power of resistance broken by the Prussian generals Falckenstein and Manteuffel in a series of unimportant engagements and intricate manoeuvres. The City of Frankfort, against which Bismarck seems to have borne some personal hatred, was treated for a while by the conquerors with extraordinary and most impolitic harshness; in other respects the action of the Prussian Government towards these conquered States was not such as to render future union and friendship difficult. All the South German Governments, with the single exception of Baden, appealed to the Emperor Napoleon for assistance in the negotiations which they had opened at Berlin. But at the very moment when this request was made and granted Napoleon was himself demanding from Bismarck the cession of the Bavarian Palatinate and of the Hessian districts west of the Rhine. Bismarck had only to acquaint the King of Bavaria and the South German Ministers with the designs of their French protector in order to reconcile them to his own chastening, but not unfriendly, hand. The grandeur of a united Fatherland flashed upon minds hitherto impenetrable by any national ideal when it became known that Napoleon was bargaining for Oppenheim and Kaiserslautern. Not only were the insignificant questions as to the war-indemnities to be paid to Prussia and the frontier villages to be exchanged promptly settled, but by a series of secret Treaties all the South German States entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with the Prussian King, and engaged in case of war to place their entire forces at his disposal and under his command. The diplomacy of Napoleon III. had in the end effected for Bismarck almost more than his earlier intervention had frustrated, for it had made the South German Courts the allies of Prussia not through conquest or mere compulsion but out of regard for their own interests. [526] It was said by the opponents of the Imperial Government in France, and scarcely with exaggeration, that every error which it was possible to commit had, in the course of the year 1866, been committed by Napoleon III. One crime, one act of madness, remained open to the Emperor's critics, to lash him and France into a conflict with the Power whose union he had not been able to prevent.

[Projects of compensation for France.]

Prior to the battle of Koeniggraetz, it would seem that all the suggestions of the French Emperor relating to the acquisition of Belgium were made to the Prussian Government through secret agents, and that they were actually unknown, or known by mere hearsay, to Benedetti, the French Ambassador at Berlin. According to Prince Bismarck, these overtures had begun as early as 1862, when he was himself Ambassador at Paris, and were then made verbally and in private notes to himself; they were the secret of Napoleon's neutrality during the Danish war; and were renewed through relatives and confidential agents of the Emperor when the struggle with Austria was seen to be approaching. The ignorance in which Count Benedetti was kept of his master's private diplomacy may to some extent explain the extraordinary contradictions between the accounts given by this Minister and by Prince Bismarck of the negotiations that passed between them in the period following the campaign of 1866, after Benedetti had himself been charged to present the demands of the French Government. In June, while the Ambassador was still, as it would seem, in ignorance of what was passing behind his back, he had informed the French Ministry that Bismarck, anxious for the preservation of French neutrality, had hinted at the compensations that might be made to France if Prussia should meet with great success in the coming war. According to the report of the Ambassador, made at the time, Count Bismarck stated that he would rather withdraw from public life than cede the Rhenish Provinces with Cologne and Bonn, but that he believed it would be possible to gain the King's ultimate consent to the cession of the Prussian district of Treves on the Upper Moselle, which district, together with Luxemburg or parts of Belgium and Switzerland, would give France an adequate improvement of its frontier. The Ambassador added in his report, by way of comment, that Count Bismarck was the only man in the kingdom who was disposed to make any cession of Prussian territory whatever, and that a unanimous and violent revulsion against France would be excited by the slightest indication of any intention on the part of the French Government to extend its frontiers towards the Rhine. He concluded his report with the statement that, after hearing Count Bismarck's suggestions, he had brought the discussion to a summary close, not wishing to leave the Prussian Minister under the impression that any scheme involving the seizure of Belgian or Swiss territory had the slightest chance of being seriously considered at Paris. (June 4-8.)

[Demand for Rhenish territory, July 25-Aug. 7, 1866.]

[The Belgian project, Aug. 16-30.]

Benedetti probably wrote these last words in full sincerity. Seven weeks later, after the settlement of the Preliminaries at Nicolsburg, he was ordered to demand the cession of the Bavarian Palatinate, of the portion of Hesse-Darmstadt west of the Rhine, including Mainz, and of the strip of Prussian territory on the Saar which had been left to France in 1814 but taken from it in 1815. According to the statement of Prince Bismarck, which would seem to be exaggerated, this demand was made by Benedetti as an ultimatum and with direct threats of war, which were answered by Bismarck in language of equal violence. In any case the demand was unconditionally refused, and Benedetti travelled to Paris in order to describe what had passed at the Prussian headquarters. His report made such an impression on the Emperor that the demand for cessions on the Rhine was at once abandoned, and the Foreign Minister, Drouyn de Lhuys, who had been disposed to enforce this by arms, was compelled to quit office. Benedetti returned to Berlin, and now there took place that negotiation relating to Belgium on which not only the narratives of the persons immediately concerned, but the documents written at the time, leave so much that is strange and unexplained. According to Benedetti, Count Bismarck was keenly anxious to extend the German Federation to the South of the Main, and desired with this object an intimate union with at least one Great Power. He sought in the first instance the support of France, and offered in return to facilitate the seizure of Belgium. The negotiation, according to Benedetti, failed because the Emperor Napoleon required that the fortresses in Southern Germany should be held by the troops of the respective States to which they belonged, while at the same time General Manteuffel, who had been sent from Berlin on a special mission to St. Petersburg, succeeded in effecting so intimate a union with Russia that alliance with France became unnecessary. According to the counter-statement of Prince Bismarck, the plan now proposed originated entirely with the French Ambassador, and was merely a repetition of proposals which had been made by Napoleon during the preceding four years, and which were subsequently renewed at intervals by secret agents almost down to the outbreak of the war of 1870. Prince Bismarck has stated that he dallied with these proposals only because a direct refusal might at any moment have caused the outbreak of war between France and Prussia, a catastrophe which up to the end he sought to avert. In any case the negotiation with Benedetti led to no conclusion, and was broken off by the departure of both statesmen from Berlin in the beginning of autumn. [527]

[Prussia and North Germany after the war.]

The war of 1866 had been brought to an end with extraordinary rapidity; its results were solid and imposing. Venice, perplexed no longer by its Republican traditions or by doubts of the patriotism of the House of Savoy, prepared to welcome King Victor Emmanuel; Bismarck, returning from the battle-field of Koeniggraetz, found his earlier unpopularity forgotten in the flood of national enthusiasm which his achievements and those of the army had evoked. A new epoch had begun; the antagonisms of the past were out of date; nobler work now stood before the Prussian people and its rulers than the perpetuation of a barren struggle between Crown and Parliament. By none was the severance from the past more openly expressed than by Bismarck himself; by none was it more bitterly felt than by the old Conservative party in Prussia, who had hitherto regarded the Minister as their own representative. In drawing up the Constitution of the North German Federation, Bismarck remained true to the principle which he had laid down at Frankfort before the war, that the German people must be represented by a Parliament elected directly by the people themselves. In the incorporation of Hanover, Hesse-Cassel and the Danish Duchies with Prussia, he saw that it would be impossible to win the new populations to a loyal union with Prussia if the King's Government continued to recognise no friends but the landed aristocracy and the army. He frankly declared that the action of the Cabinet in raising taxes without the consent of Parliament had been illegal, and asked for an Act of Indemnity. The Parliament of Berlin understood and welcomed the message of reconciliation. It heartily forgave the past, and on its own initiative added the name of Bismarck to those for whose services to the State the King asked a recompense. The Progressist party, which had constituted the majority in the last Parliament, gave place to a new combination known as the National Liberal party, which, while adhering to the Progressist creed in domestic affairs, gave its allegiance to the Foreign and the German policy of the Minister. Within this party many able men who in Hanover and the other annexed territories had been the leaders of opposition to their own Governments now found a larger scope and a greater political career. More than one of the colleagues of Bismarck who had been appointed to their offices in the years of conflict were allowed to pass into retirement, and their places were filled by men in sympathy with the National Liberals. With the expansion of Prussia and the establishment of its leadership in a German Federal union, the ruler of Prussia seemed himself to expand from the instrument of a military monarchy to the representative of a great nation.

[Hungary and Austria, 1865.]

To Austria the battle of Koeniggraetz brought a settlement of the conflict between the Crown and Hungary. The Constitution of February, 1861, hopefully as it had worked during its first years, had in the end fallen before the steady refusal of the Magyars to recognise the authority of a single Parliament for the whole Monarchy. Within the Reichsrath itself the example of Hungary told as a disintegrating force; the Poles, the Czechs seceded from the Assembly; the Minister, Schmerling, lost his authority, and was forced to resign in the summer of 1865. Soon afterwards an edict of the Emperor suspended the Constitution. Count Belcredi, who took office in Schmerling's place, attempted to arrive at an understanding with the Magyar leaders. The Hungarian Diet was convoked, and was opened by the King in person before the end of the year. Francis Joseph announced his abandonment of the principle that Hungary had forfeited its ancient rights by rebellion, and asked in return that the Diet should not insist upon regarding the laws of 1848 as still in force. Whatever might be the formal validity of those laws, it was, he urged, impossible that they should be brought into operation unaltered. For the common affairs of the two halves of the Monarchy there must be some common authority. It rested with the Diet to arrive at the necessary understanding with the Sovereign on this point, and to place on a satisfactory footing the relations of Hungary to Transylvania and Croatia. As soon as an accord should have been reached on these subjects, Francis Joseph stated that he would complete his reconciliation with the Magyars by being crowned King of Hungary.

[Deak.]

In the Assembly to which these words were addressed the majority was composed of men of moderate opinions, under the leadership of Francis Deak. Deak had drawn up the programme of the Hungarian Liberals in the election of 1847. He had at that time appeared to be marked out by his rare political capacity and the simple manliness of his character for a great, if not the greatest, part in the work that then lay before his country. But the violence of revolutionary methods was alien to his temperament. After serving in Batthyany's Ministry, he withdrew from public life on the outbreak of war with Austria, and remained in retirement during the dictatorship of Kossuth and the struggle of 1849. As a loyal friend to the Hapsburg dynasty, and a clear-sighted judge of the possibilities of the time, he stood apart while Kossuth dethroned the Sovereign and proclaimed Hungarian independence. Of the patriotism and the disinterestedness of Deak there was never the shadow of a doubt; a distinct political faith severed him from the leaders whose enterprise ended in the catastrophe which he had foreseen, and preserved for Hungary one statesman who could, without renouncing his own past and without inflicting humiliation on the Sovereign, stand as the mediator between Hungary and Austria when the time for reconciliation should arrive. Deak was little disposed to abate anything of what he considered the just demands of his country. It was under his leadership that the Diet had in 1861 refused to accept the Constitution which established a single Parliament for the whole Monarchy. The legislative independence of Hungary he was determined at all costs to preserve intact; rather than surrender this he had been willing in 1861 to see negotiations broken off and military rule restored. But when Francis Joseph, wearied of the sixteen years' struggle, appealed once more to Hungary for union and friendship, there was no man more earnestly desirous to reconcile the Sovereign with the nation, and to smooth down the opposition to the King's proposals which arose within the Diet itself, than Deak.

[Scheme of Hungarian Committee, June 25, 1866.]

Under his influence a committee was appointed to frame the necessary basis of negotiation. On the 25th of June, 1866, the Committee gave in its report. It declared against any Parliamentary union with the Cis-Leithan half of the Monarchy, but consented to the establishment of common Ministries for War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs, and recommended that the Budget necessary for these joint Ministries should be settled by Delegations from the Hungarian Diet and from the western Reichsrath. [528] The Delegations, it was proposed, should meet separately, and communicate their views to one another by writing. Only when agreement should not have been thus attained were the Delegations to unite in a single body, in which case the decision was to rest with an absolute majority of votes.

[Negotiations with Hungary after Koeniggraetz.]

[Federalism or Dualism.]

[Settlement by Beust.]

[Francis Joseph's Coronation, June 8, 1867.]

The debates of the Diet on the proposals of King Francis Joseph had been long and anxious; it was not until the moment when the war with Prussia was breaking out that the Committee presented its report. The Diet was now prorogued, but immediately after the battle of Koeniggraetz the Hungarian leaders were called to Vienna, and negotiations were pushed forward on the lines laid down by the Committee. It was a matter of no small moment to the Court of Vienna that while bodies of Hungarian exiles had been preparing to attack the Empire both from the side of Silesia and of Venice, Deak and his friends had loyally abstained from any communication with the foreign enemies of the House of Hapsburg. That Hungary would now gain almost complete independence was certain; the question was not so much whether there should be an independent Parliament and Ministry at Pesth as whether there should not be a similarly independent Parliament and Ministry in each of the territories of the Crown, the Austrian Sovereign becoming the head of a Federation instead of the chief of a single or a dual State. Count Belcredi, the Minister at Vienna, was disposed towards such a Federal system; he was, however, now confronted within the Cabinet by a rival who represented a different policy. After making peace with Prussia, the Emperor called to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Count Beust, who had hitherto been at the head of the Saxon Government, and who had been the representative of the German Federation at the London Conference of 1864. Beust, while ready to grant the Hungarians their independence, advocated the retention of the existing Reichsrath and of a single Ministry for all the Cis-Leithan parts of the Monarchy. His plan, which pointed to the maintenance of German ascendency in the western provinces, and which deeply offended the Czechs and the Slavic populations, was accepted by the Emperor: Belcredi withdrew from office, and Beust was charged, as President of the Cabinet, with the completion of the settlement with Hungary (Feb. 7, 1867). Deak had hitherto left the chief ostensible part in the negotiations to Count Andrassy, one of the younger patriots of 1848, who had been condemned to be hanged, and had lived a refugee during the next ten years. He now came to Vienna himself, and in the course of a few days removed the last remaining difficulties. The King gratefully charged him with the formation of the Hungarian Ministry under the restored Constitution, but Deak declined alike all office, honours, and rewards, and Andrassy, who had actually been hanged in effigy, was placed at the head of the Government. The Diet, which had reassembled shortly before the end of 1866, greeted the national Ministry with enthusiasm. Alterations in the laws of 1848 proposed in accordance with the agreement made at Vienna, and establishing the three common Ministries with the system of Delegations for common affairs, were carried by large majorities. [529] The abdication of Ferdinand, which throughout the struggle of 1849 Hungary had declined to recognise, was now acknowledged as valid, and on the 8th of June, 1867, Francis Joseph was crowned King of Hungary amid the acclamations of Pesth. The gift of money which is made to each Hungarian monarch on his coronation Francis Joseph by a happy impulse distributed among the families of those who had fallen in fighting against him in 1849. A universal amnesty was proclaimed, no condition being imposed on the return of the exiles but that they should acknowledge the existing Constitution. Kossuth alone refused to return to his country so long as a Hapsburg should be its King, and proudly clung to ideas which were already those of the past.

[Hungary since 1867.]

The victory of the Magyars was indeed but too complete. Not only were Beust and the representatives of the western half of the Monarchy so overmatched by the Hungarian negotiators that in the distribution of the financial burdens of the Empire Hungary escaped with far too small a share, but in the more important problem of the relation of the Slavic and Roumanian populations of the Hungarian Kingdom to the dominant race no adequate steps were taken for the protection of these subject nationalities. That Croatia and Transylvania should be reunited with Hungary if the Emperor and the Magyars were ever to be reconciled was inevitable; and in the case of Croatia certain conditions were no doubt imposed, and certain local rights guaranteed. But on the whole the non-Magyar peoples in Hungary were handed over to the discretion of the ruling race. The demand of Bismarck that the centre of gravity of the Austrian States should be transferred from Vienna to Pesth had indeed been brought to pass. While in the western half of the Monarchy the central authority, still represented by a single Parliament, seemed in the succeeding years to be altogether losing its cohesive power, and the political life of Austria became a series of distracting complications, in Hungary the Magyar Government resolutely set itself to the task of moulding into one the nationalities over which it ruled. Uniting the characteristic faults with the great qualities of a race marked out by Nature and ancient habit for domination over more numerous but less aggressive neighbours, the Magyars have steadily sought to the best of their power to obliterate the distinctions which make Hungary in reality not one but several nations. They have held the Slavic and the Roumanian population within their borders with an iron grasp, but they have not gained their affection. The memory of the Russian intervention in 1849 and of the part then played by Serbs, by Croats and Roumanians in crushing Magyar independence has blinded the victors to the just claims of these races both within and without the Hungarian kingdom, and attached their sympathy to the hateful and outworn empire of the Turk. But the individuality of peoples is not to be blotted out in a day; nor, with all its striking advance in wealth, in civilisation, and in military power, has the Magyar State been able to free itself from the insecurity arising from the presence of independent communities on its immediate frontiers belonging to the same race as those whose language and nationality it seeks to repress.



CHAPTER XXIV.

Napoleon III.—The Mexican Expedition—Withdrawal of the French and death of Maximilian—The Luxemburg Question—Exasperation in France against Prussia—Austria—Italy—Mentana—Germany after 1866—The Spanish candidature of Leopold of Hohenzollern—French declaration—Benedetti and King William—Withdrawal of Leopold and demand for guarantees—The telegram from Ems—War—Expected Alliances of France—Austria—Italy— Prussian plans—The French army—Causes of French inferiority— Weissenburg—Woerth—Spicheren—Borny—Mars-la-Tour—Gravelotte—Sedan— The Republic proclaimed at Paris—Favre and Bismarck—Siege of Paris—Gambetta at Tours—The Army of the Loire—Fall of Metz—Fighting at Orleans—Sortie of Champigny—The Armies of the North, of the Loire, of the East—Bourbaki's ruin—Capitulation of Paris and Armistice— Preliminaries of Peace—Germany—Establishment of the German Empire—The Commune of Paris—Second siege—Effects of the war as to Russia and Italy—Rome.

[Napoleon III.]

The reputation of Napoleon III. was perhaps at its height at the end of the first ten years of his reign. His victories over Russia and Austria had flattered the military pride of France; the flowing tide of commercial prosperity bore witness, as it seemed, to the blessings of a government at once firm and enlightened; the reconstruction of Paris dazzled a generation accustomed to the mean and dingy aspect of London and other capitals before 1850, and scarcely conscious of the presence or absence of real beauty and dignity where it saw spaciousness and brilliance. The political faults of Napoleon, the shiftiness and incoherence of his designs, his want of grasp on reality, his absolute personal nullity as an administrator, were known to some few, but they had not been displayed to the world at large. He had done some great things, he had conspicuously failed in nothing. Had his reign ended before 1863, he would probably have left behind him in popular memory the name of a great ruler. But from this time his fortune paled. The repulse of his intervention on behalf of Poland in 1863 by the Russian Court, his petulant or miscalculating inaction during the Danish War of the following year, showed those to be mistaken who had imagined that the Emperor must always exercise a controlling power in Europe. During the events which formed the first stage in the consolidation of Germany his policy was a succession of errors. Simultaneously with the miscarriage of his European schemes, an enterprise which he had undertaken beyond the Atlantic, and which seriously weakened his resources at a time when concentrated strength alone could tell on European affairs, ended in tragedy and disgrace.

[The Mexican Project.]

There were in Napoleon III., as a man of State, two personalities, two mental existences, which blended but ill with one another. There was the contemplator of great human forces, the intelligent, if not deeply penetrative, reader of the signs of the times, the brooder through long years of imprisonment and exile, the child of Europe, to whom Germany, Italy, and England had all in turn been nearer than his own country; and there was the crowned adventurer, bound by his name and position to gain for France something that it did not possess, and to regard the greatness of every other nation as an impediment to the ascendency of his own. Napoleon correctly judged the principle of nationality to be the dominant force in the immediate future of Europe. He saw in Italy and in Germany races whose internal divisions alone had prevented them from being the formidable rivals of France, and yet he assisted the one nation to effect its union, and was not indisposed, within certain limits, to promote the consolidation of the other. That the acquisition of Nice and Savoy, and even of the Rhenish Provinces, could not in itself make up to France for the establishment of two great nations on its immediate frontiers Napoleon must have well understood: he sought to carry the principle of agglomeration a stage farther in the interests of France itself, and to form some moral, if not political, union of the Latin nations, which should embrace under his own ascendency communities beyond the Atlantic as well as those of the Old World. It was with this design that in the year 1862 he made the financial misdemeanours of Mexico the pretext for an expedition to that country, the object of which was to subvert the native Republican Government, and to place the Hapsburg Maximilian, as a vassal prince, on its throne. England and Spain had at first agreed to unite with France in enforcing the claims of the European creditors of Mexico; but as soon as Napoleon had made public his real intentions these Powers withdrew their forces, and the Emperor was left free to carry out his plans alone.

[The Mexican Expedition, 1862-1865.]

[Napoleon compelled to withdraw, 1866-7.]

[Fall and Death of Maximillian.]

The design of Napoleon to establish French influence in Mexico was connected with his attempt to break up the United States by establishing the independence of the Southern Confederacy, then in rebellion, through the mediation of the Great Powers of Europe. So long as the Civil War in the United States lasted, it seemed likely that Napoleon's enterprise in Mexico would be successful. Maximilian was placed upon the throne, and the Republican leader, Juarez, was driven into the extreme north of the country. But with the overthrow of the Southern Confederacy and the restoration of peace in the United States in 1865 the prospect totally changed. The Government of Washington refused to acknowledge any authority in Mexico but that of Juarez, and informed Napoleon in courteous terms that his troops must be withdrawn. Napoleon had bound himself by Treaty to keep twenty-five thousand men in Mexico for the protection of Maximilian. He was, however, unable to defy the order of the United States. Early in 1866 he acquainted Maximilian with the necessities of the situation, and with the approaching removal of the force which alone had placed him and could sustain him on the throne. The unfortunate prince sent his consort, the daughter of the King of the Belgians, to Europe to plead against this act of desertion; but her efforts were vain, and her reason sank under the just presentiment of her husband's ruin. The utmost on which Napoleon could venture was the postponement of the recall of his troops till the spring of 1867. He urged Maximilian to abdicate before it was too late; but the prince refused to dissociate himself from his counsellors who still implored him to remain. Meanwhile the Juarists pressed back towards the capital from north and south. As the French detachments were withdrawn towards the coast the entire country fell into their hands. The last French soldiers quitted Mexico at the beginning of March, 1867, and on the 15th of May, Maximilian, still lingering at Queretaro, was made prisoner by the Republicans. He had himself while in power ordered that the partisans of Juarez should be treated not as soldiers but as brigands, and that when captured they should be tried by court-martial and executed within twenty-four hours. The same severity was applied to himself. He was sentenced to death and shot at Queretaro on the 19th of June.

[Decline of Napoleon's reputation.]

Thus ended the attempt of Napoleon III. to establish the influence of France and of his dynasty beyond the seas. The doom of Maximilian excited the compassion of Europe; a deep, irreparable wound was inflicted on the reputation of the man who had tempted him to his treacherous throne, who had guaranteed him protection, and at the bidding of a superior power had abandoned him to his ruin. From this time, though the outward splendour of the Empire was undiminished, there remained scarcely anything of the personal prestige which Napoleon had once enjoyed in so rich a measure. He was no longer in the eyes of Europe or of his own country the profound, self-contained statesman in whose brain lay the secret of coming events; he was rather the gambler whom fortune was preparing to desert, the usurper trembling for the future of his dynasty and his crown. Premature old age and a harassing bodily ailment began to incapacitate him for personal exertion. He sought to loosen the reins in which his despotism held France, and to make a compromise with public opinion which was now declaring against him. And although his own cooler judgment set little store by any addition of frontier strips of alien territory to France, and he would probably have been best pleased to pass the remainder of his reign in undisturbed inaction, he deemed it necessary, after failure in Mexico had become inevitable, to seek some satisfaction in Europe for the injured pride of his country. He entered into negotiations with the King of Holland for the cession of Luxemburg, and had gained his assent, when rumours of the transaction reached the North German Press, and the project passed from out the control of diplomatists and became an affair of rival nations.

[The Luxemburg question, Feb.-May, 1867.]

Luxemburg, which was an independent Duchy ruled by the King of Holland, had until 1866 formed a part of the German Federation; and although Bismarck had not attempted to include it in his own North German Union, Prussia retained by the Treaties of 1815 a right to garrison the fortress of Luxemburg, and its troops were actually there in possession. The proposed transfer of the Duchy to France excited an outburst of patriotic resentment in the Federal Parliament at Berlin. The population of Luxemburg was indeed not wholly German, and it had shown the strongest disinclination to enter the North German league; but the connection of the Duchy with Germany in the past was close enough to explain the indignation roused by Napoleon's project among politicians who little suspected that during the previous year Bismarck himself had cordially recommended this annexation, and that up to the last moment he had been privy to the Emperor's plan. The Prussian Minister, though he did not affect to share the emotion of his countrymen, stated that his policy in regard to Luxemburg must be influenced by the opinion of the Federal Parliament, and he shortly afterwards caused it to be understood at Paris that the annexation of the Duchy to France was impossible. As a warning to France he had already published the Treaties of alliance between Prussia and the South German States, which had been made at the close of the war of 1866, but had hitherto been kept secret. [530] Other powers now began to tender their good offices. Count Beust, on behalf of Austria, suggested that Luxemburg should be united to Belgium, which in its turn should cede a small district to France. This arrangement, which would have been accepted at Berlin, and which, by soothing the irritation produced in France by Prussia's successes, would possibly have averted the war of 1870, was frustrated by the refusal of the King of Belgium to part with any of his territory—Napoleon, disclaiming all desire for territorial extension, now asked only for the withdrawal of the Prussian garrison from Luxemburg; but it was known that he was determined to enforce this demand by arms. The Russian Government proposed that the question should be settled by a Conference of the Powers at London. This proposal was accepted under certain conditions by France and Prussia, and the Conference assembled on the 7th of May. Its deliberations were completed in four days, and the results were summed up in the Treaty of London signed on the 11th. By this Treaty the Duchy of Luxemburg was declared neutral territory under the collective guarantee of the Powers. Prussia withdrew its garrison, and the King of Holland, who continued to be sovereign of the Duchy, undertook to demolish the fortifications of Luxemburg, and to maintain it in the future as an open town. [531]

[Exasperation in France against Prussia.]

Of the politicians of France, those who even affected to regard the aggrandisement of Prussia and the union of Northern Germany with indifference or satisfaction were a small minority. Among these was the Emperor, who, after his attempts to gain a Rhenish Province had been baffled, sought to prove in an elaborate State-paper that France had won more than it had lost by the extinction of the German Federation as established in 1815, and by the dissolution of the tie that had bound Austria and Prussia together as members of this body. The events of 1866 had, he contended, broken up a system devised in evil days for the purpose of uniting Central Europe against France, and had restored to the Continent the freedom of alliances; in other words, they had made it possible for the South German States to connect themselves with France. If this illusion was really entertained by the Emperor, it was rudely dispelled by the discovery of the Treaties between Prussia and the Southern States and by their publication in the spring of 1867. But this revelation was not necessary to determine the attitude of the great majority of those who passed for the representatives of independent political opinion in France. The Ministers indeed were still compelled to imitate the Emperor's optimism, and a few enlightened men among the Opposition understood that France must be content to see the Germans effect their national unity; but the great body of unofficial politicians, to whatever party they belonged, joined in the bitter outcry raised at once against the aggressive Government of Prussia and the feeble administration at Paris, which had not found the means to prevent, or had actually facilitated, Prussia's successes. Thiers, who more than any one man had by his writings popularised the Napoleonic legend and accustomed the French to consider themselves entitled to a monopoly of national greatness on the Rhine, was the severest critic of the Emperor, the most zealous denouncer of the work which Bismarck had effected. It was only with too much reason that the Prussian Government looked forward to an attack by France at some earlier or later time as almost certain, and pressed forward the military organisation which was to give to Germany an army of unheard-of efficiency and strength.

[France and Prussia after 1867.]

There appears to be no evidence that Napoleon III. himself desired to attack Prussia so long as that Power should strictly observe the stipulations of the Treaty of Prague which provided for the independence of the South German States. But the current of events irresistibly impelled Germany to unity. The very Treaty which made the river Main the limit of the North German Confederacy reserved for the Southern States the right of attaching themselves to those of the North by some kind of national tie. Unless the French Emperor was resolved to acquiesce in the gradual development of this federal unity until, as regarded the foreigner, the North and the South of Germany should be a single body, he could have no confident hope of lasting peace. To have thus anticipated and accepted the future, to have removed once and for all the sleepless fears of Prussia by the frank recognition of its right to give all Germany effective Union, would have been an act too great and too wise in reality, too weak and self-renouncing in appearance, for any chief of a rival nation. Napoleon did not take this course; on the other hand, not desiring to attack Prussia while it remained within the limits of the Treaty of Prague, he refrained from seeking alliances with the object of immediate and aggressive action. The diplomacy of the Emperor during the period from 1866 to 1870 is indeed still but imperfectly known; but it would appear that his efforts were directed only to the formation of alliances with the view of eventual action when Prussia should have passed the limits which the Emperor himself or public opinion in Paris should, as interpreter of the Treaty of Prague, impose upon this Power in its dealings with the South German States.

[Negotiations with Austria, 1868-69.]

The Governments to which Napoleon could look for some degree of support were those of Austria and Italy. Count Beust, now Chancellor of the Austrian Monarchy, was a bitter enemy to Prussia, and a rash and adventurous politician, to whom the very circumstance of his sudden elevation from the petty sphere of Saxon politics gave a certain levity and unconstraint in the handling of great affairs. He cherished the idea of recovering Austria's ascendency in Germany, and was disposed to repel the extension of Russian influence westwards by boldly encouraging the Poles to seek for the satisfaction of their national hopes in Galicia under the Hapsburg Crown. To Count Beust France was the most natural of all allies. On the other hand, the very system which Beust had helped to establish in Hungary raised serious obstacles against the adoption of his own policy. Andrassy, the Hungarian Minister, while sharing Beust's hostility to Russia, declared that his countrymen had no interest in restoring Austria's German connection, and were in fact better without it. In these circumstances the negotiations of the French and the Austrian Emperor were conducted by a private correspondence. The interchange of letters continued during the years 1868 and 1869, and resulted in a promise made by Napoleon to support Austria if it should be attacked by Prussia, while the Emperor Francis Joseph promised to assist France if it should be attacked by Prussia and Russia together. No Treaty was made, but a general assurance was exchanged between the two Emperors that they would pursue a common policy and treat one another's interests as their own. With the view of forming a closer understanding the Archduke Albrecht visited Paris in February, 1870, and a French general was sent to Vienna to arrange the plan of campaign in case of war with Prussia. In such a war, if undertaken by the two Powers, it was hoped that Italy would join. [532]

[Italy after 1866.]

[Mentana, Nov. 3, 1867.]

The alliance of 1866 between Prussia and Italy had left behind it in each of these States more of rancour than of good-will. La Marmora had from the beginning to the end been unfortunate in his relations with Berlin. He had entered into the alliance with suspicion; he would gladly have seen Venetia given to Italy by a European Congress without war; and when hostilities broke out, he had disregarded and resented what he considered an attempt of the Prussian Government to dictate to him the military measures to be pursued. On the other hand, the Prussians charged the Italian Government with having deliberately held back its troops after the battle of Custozza in pursuance of arrangements made between Napoleon and the Austrian Emperor on the voluntary cession of Venice, and with having endangered or minimised Prussia's success by enabling the Austrians to throw a great part of their Italian forces northwards. There was nothing of that comradeship between the Italian and the Prussian armies which is acquired on the field of battle. The personal sympathies of Victor Emmanuel were strongly on the side of the French Emperor; and when, at the close of the year 1866, the French garrison was withdrawn from Rome in pursuance of the convention made in September, 1864, it seemed probable that France and Italy might soon unite in a close alliance. But in the following year the attempts of the Garibaldians to overthrow the Papal Government, now left without its foreign defenders, embroiled Napoleon and the Italian people. Napoleon was unable to defy the clerical party in France; he adopted the language of menace in his communications with the Italian Cabinet; and when, in the autumn of 1867, the Garibaldians actually invaded the Roman States, he despatched a body of French troops under General Failly to act in support of those of the Pope. An encounter took place at Mentana on November 3rd, in which the Garibaldians, after defeating the Papal forces, were put to the rout by General Failly. The occupation of Civita Vecchia was renewed, and in the course of the debates raised at Paris on the Italian policy of the Government, the Prime Minister, M. Rouher, stated, with the most passionate emphasis that, come what might, Italy should never possess itself of Rome. "Never," he cried, "will France tolerate such an outrage on its honour and its dignity." [533]

[Napoleon and Italy after Mentana.]

[Italy and Austria.]

The affair of Mentana, the insolent and heartless language in which General Failly announced his success, the reoccupation of Roman territory by French troops, and the declaration made by M. Rouher in the French Assembly, created wide and deep anger in Italy, and made an end for the time of all possibility of a French alliance. Napoleon was indeed, as regarded Italy, in an evil case. By abandoning Rome he would have turned against himself and his dynasty the whole clerical interest in France, whose confidence he had already to some extent forfeited by his policy in 1860; on the other hand, it was vain for him to hope for the friendship of Italy whilst he continued to bar the way to the fulfilment of the universal national desire. With the view of arriving at some compromise he proposed a European Conference on the Roman question; but this was resisted above all by Count Bismarck, whose interest it was to keep the sore open; and neither England nor Russia showed any anxiety to help the Pope's protector out of his difficulties. Napoleon sought by a correspondence with Victor Emmanuel during 1868 and 1869 to pave the way for a defensive alliance; but Victor Emmanuel was in reality as well as in name a constitutional king, and probably could not, even if he had desired, have committed Italy to engagements disapproved by the Ministry and Parliament. It was made clear to Napoleon that the evacuation of the Papal States must precede any treaty of alliance between France and Italy. Whether the Italian Government would have been content with a return to the conditions of the September Convention, or whether it made the actual possession of Rome the price of a treaty-engagement, is uncertain; but inasmuch as Napoleon was not at present prepared to evacuate Civita Vecchia, he could aim at nothing more than some eventual concert when the existing difficulties should have been removed. The Court of Vienna now became the intermediary between the two Powers who had united against it in 1859. Count Beust was free from the associations which had made any approach to friendship with the kingdom of Victor Emmanuel impossible for his predecessors. He entered into negotiations at Florence, which resulted in the conclusion of an agreement between the Austrian and the Italian Governments that they would act together and guarantee one another's territories in the event of a war between France and Prussia. This agreement was made with the assent of the Emperor Napoleon, and was understood to be preparatory to an accord with France itself; but it was limited to a defensive character, and it implied that any eventual concert with France must be arranged by the two Powers in combination with one another. [534]

[Isolation of France.]

At the beginning of 1870 the Emperor Napoleon was therefore without any more definite assurance of support in a war with Prussia than the promise of the Austrian Sovereign that he would assist France if attacked by Prussia and Russia together, and that he would treat the interests of France as his own. By withdrawing his protection from Rome Napoleon had undoubtedly a fair chance of building up this shadowy and remote engagement into a defensive alliance with both Austria and Italy. But perfect clearness and resolution of purpose, as well as the steady avoidance of all quarrels on mere incidents, were absolutely indispensable to the creation and the employment of such a league against the Power which alone it could have in view; and Prussia had now little reason to fear any such exercise of statesmanship on the part of Napoleon. The solution of the Roman question, in other words the withdrawal of the French garrison from Roman territory, could proceed only from some stronger stimulus than the declining force of Napoleon's own intelligence and will could now supply. This fatal problem baffled his attempts to gain alliances; and yet the isolation of France was but half acknowledged, but half understood; and a host of rash, vainglorious spirits impatiently awaited the hour that should call them to their revenge on Prussia for the triumphs in which it had not permitted France to share.

[Germany, 1867-1870.]

Meanwhile on the other side Count Bismarck advanced with what was most essential in his relations with the States of Southern Germany—the completion of the Treaties of Alliance by conventions assimilating the military systems of these States to that of Prussia. A Customs-Parliament was established for the whole of Germany, which, it was hoped, would be the precursor of a National Assembly uniting the North and the South of the Main. But in spite of this military and commercial approximation, the progress towards union was neither so rapid nor so smooth as the patriots of the North could desire. There was much in the harshness and self-assertion of the Prussian character that repelled the less disciplined communities of the South. Ultramontanism was strong in Bavaria; and throughout the minor States the most advanced of the Liberals were opposed to a closer union with Berlin, from dislike of its absolutist traditions and the heavy hand of its Government. Thus the tendency known as Particularism was supported in Bavaria and Wuertemberg by classes of the population who in most respects were in antagonism to one another; nor could the memories of the campaign of 1866 and the old regard for Austria be obliterated in a day. Bismarck did not unduly press on the work of consolidation. He marked and estimated the force of the obstacles which too rapid a development of his national policy would encounter. It is possible that he may even have seen indications that religious and other influences might imperil the military union which he had already established, and that he may not have been unwilling to call to his aid, as the surest of all preparatives for national union, the event which he had long believed to be inevitable at some time or other in the future, a war with France.

[The Spanish candidature of Leopold of Hohenzollern.]

[Leopold accepts the Spanish Crown, July 3, 1870.]

Since the autumn of 1868 the throne of Spain had been vacant in consequence of a revolution in which General Prim had been the leading actor. It was not easy to discover a successor for the Bourbon Isabella; and after other candidatures had been vainly projected it occurred to Prim and his friends early in 1869 that a suitable candidate might be found in Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, whose elder brother had been made Prince of Roumania, and whose father, Prince Antony, had been Prime Minister of Prussia in 1859. The House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was so distantly related to the reigning family of Prussia that the name alone preserved the memory of the connection; and in actual blood-relationship Prince Leopold was much more nearly allied to the French Houses of Murat and Beauharnais. But the Sigmaringen family was distinctly Prussian by interest and association, and its chief, Antony, had not only been at the head of the Prussian Administration himself, but had, it is said, been the first to suggest the appointment of Bismarck to the same office. The candidature of a Hohenzollern might reasonably be viewed in France as an attempt to connect Prussia politically with Spain; and with so much reserve was this candidature at the first handled at Berlin that, in answer to inquiries made by Benedetti in the spring of 1869, the Secretary of State who represented Count Bismarck stated on his word of honour that the candidature had never been suggested. The affair was from first to last ostensibly treated at Berlin as one with which the Prussian Government was wholly unconcerned, and in which King William was interested only as head of the family to which Prince Leopold belonged. For twelve months after Benedetti's inquiries it appeared as if the project had been entirely abandoned; it was, however, revived in the spring of 1870, and on the 3rd of July the announcement was made at Paris that Prince Leopold had consented to accept the Crown of Spain if the Cortes should confirm his election.

[French Declaration, July 6.]

At once there broke out in the French Press a storm of indignation against Prussia. The organs of the Government took the lead in exciting public opinion. On the 6th of July the Duke of Gramont, Foreign Minister, declared to the Legislative Body that the attempt of a Foreign Power to place one of its Princes on the throne of Charles V. imperilled the interests and the honour of France, and that, if such a contingency were realised, the Government would fulfil its duty without hesitation and without weakness. The violent and unsparing language of this declaration, which had been drawn up at a Council of Ministers under the Emperor's presidency, proved that the Cabinet had determined either to humiliate Prussia or to take vengeance by arms. It was at once seen by foreign diplomatists, who during the preceding days had been disposed to assist in removing a reasonable subject of complaint, how little was the chance of any peaceable settlement after such a public challenge had been issued to Prussia in the Emperor's name. One means of averting war alone seemed possible, the voluntary renunciation by Prince Leopold of the offered Crown. To obtain this renunciation became the task of those who, unlike the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, were anxious to preserve peace.

[Ollivier's Ministry.]

The parts that were played at this crisis by the individuals who most influenced the Emperor Napoleon are still but imperfectly known; but there is no doubt that from the beginning to the end the Duke of Gramont, with short intermissions, pressed with insane ardour for war. The Ministry now in office had been called to their places in January, 1870, after the Emperor had made certain changes in the constitution in a Liberal direction, and had professed to transfer the responsibility of power from himself to a body of advisers possessing the confidence of the Chamber. Ollivier, formerly one of the leaders of the Opposition, had accepted the Presidency of the Cabinet. His colleagues were for the most part men new to official life, and little able to hold their own against such representatives of unreformed Imperialism as the Duke of Gramont and the War-Minister Leboeuf who sat beside them. Ollivier himself was one of the few politicians in France who understood that his countrymen must be content to see German unity established whether they liked it or not. He was entirely averse from war with Prussia on the question which had now arisen; but the fear that public opinion would sweep away a Liberal Ministry which hesitated to go all lengths in patriotic extravagance led him to sacrifice his own better judgment, and to accept the responsibility for a policy which in his heart he disapproved. Gramont's rash hand was given free play. Instructions were sent to Benedetti to seek the King of Prussia at Ems, where he was taking the waters, and to demand from him, as the only means of averting war, that he should order the Hohenzollern Prince to revoke his acceptance of the Crown. "We are in great haste," Gramont added, "for we must gain the start in case of an unsatisfactory reply, and commence the movement of troops by Saturday in order to enter upon the campaign in a fortnight. Be on your guard against an answer merely leaving the Prince of Hohenzollern to his fate, and disclaiming on the part of the King any interest in his future." [535]

[Benedetti and King William at Ems, July 9-14.]

Benedetti's first interview with the King was on the 9th of July. He informed the King of the emotion that had been caused in France by the candidature of the Hohenzollern Prince; he dwelt on the value to both countries of the friendly relation between France and Prussia; and, while studiously avoiding language that might wound or irritate the King, he explained to him the requirements of the Government at Paris. The King had learnt beforehand what would be the substance of Benedetti's communication. He had probably been surprised and grieved at the serious consequences which Prince Leopold's action had produced in France; and although he had determined not to submit to dictation from Paris or to order Leopold to abandon his candidature, he had already, as it seems, taken steps likely to render the preservation of peace more probable. At the end of a conversation with the Ambassador, in which he asserted his complete independence as head of the family of Hohenzollern, he informed Benedetti that he had entered into communication with Leopold and his father, and that he expected shortly to receive a despatch from Sigmaringen. Benedetti rightly judged that the King, while positively refusing to meet Gramont's demands, was yet desirous of finding some peaceable way out of the difficulty; and the report of this interview which he sent to Paris was really a plea in favour of good sense and moderation. But Gramont was little disposed to accept such counsels. "I tell you plainly," he wrote to Benedetti on the next day, "public opinion is on fire, and will leave us behind it. We must begin; we wait only for your despatch to call up the three hundred thousand men who are waiting the summons. Write, telegraph, something definite. If the King will not counsel the Prince of Hohenzollern to resign, well, it is immediate war, and in a few days we are on the Rhine."

[Leopold withdraws, July 12.]

[Guarantee against renewal demanded.]

[Benedetti and the King, July 13.]

Nevertheless Benedetti's advice was not without its influence on the Emperor and his Ministers. Napoleon, himself wavering from hour to hour, now inclined to the peace-party, and during the 11th there was a pause in the military preparations that had been begun. On the 12th the efforts of disinterested Governments, probably also the suggestions of the King of Prussia himself, produced their effects. A telegram was received at Madrid from Prince Antony stating that his son's candidature was withdrawn. A few hours later Ollivier announced the news in the Legislative Chamber at Paris, and exchanged congratulations with the friends of peace, who considered that the matter was now at an end. But this pacific conclusion little suited either the war-party or the Bonapartists of the old type, who grudged to a Constitutional Ministry so substantial a diplomatic success. They at once declared that the retirement of Prince Leopold was a secondary matter, and that the real question was what guarantees had been received from Prussia against a renewal of the candidature. Gramont himself, in an interview with the Prussian Ambassador, Baron Werther, sketched a letter which he proposed that King William should send to the Emperor, stating that in sanctioning the candidature of Prince Leopold he had not intended to offend the French, and that in associating himself with the Prince's withdrawal he desired that all misunderstandings should be at an end between the two Governments. The despatch of Baron Werther conveying this proposition appears to have deeply offended King William, whom it reached about midday on the 13th. Benedetti had that morning met the King on the promenade at Ems, and had received from him the promise that as soon as the letter which was still on its way from Sigmaringen should arrive he would send for the Ambassador in order that he might communicate its contents at Paris, The letter arrived; but Baron Werther's despatch from Paris had arrived before it; and instead of summoning Benedetti as he had promised, the King sent one of his aides-de-camp to him with a message that a written communication had been received from Prince Leopold confirming his withdrawal, and that the matter was now at an end. Benedetti desired the aide-de-camp to inform the King that he was compelled by his instructions to ask for a guarantee against a renewal of the candidature. The aide-de-camp did as he was requested, and brought back a message that the King gave his entire approbation to the withdrawal of the Prince of Hohenzollern, but that he could do no more. Benedetti begged for an audience with His Majesty. The King replied that he was compelled to decline entering into further negotiation, and that he had said his last word. Though the King thus refused any further discussion, perfect courtesy was observed on both sides; and on the following morning the King and the Ambassador, who were both leaving Ems, took leave of one another at the railway station with the usual marks of respect.

[Publication of the telegram from Ems, July 13.]

[War decided at Paris, July 14.]

That the guarantee which the French Government had resolved to demand would not be given was now perfectly certain; yet, with the candidature of Prince Leopold fairly extinguished, it was still possible that the cooler heads at Paris might carry the day, and that the Government would stop short of declaring war on a point on which the unanimous judgment of the other Powers declared it to be in the wrong. But Count Bismarck was determined not to let the French escape lightly from the quarrel. He had to do with an enemy who by his own folly had come to the brink of an aggressive war, and, far from facilitating his retreat, it was Bismarck's policy to lure him over the precipice. Not many hours after the last message had passed between King William and Benedetti, a telegram was officially published at Berlin, stating, in terms so brief as to convey the impression of an actual insult, that the King had refused to see the French Ambassador, and had informed him by an aide-de-camp that he had nothing more to communicate to him. This telegram was sent to the representatives of Prussia at most of the European Courts, and to its agents in every German capital. Narratives instantly gained currency, and were not contradicted by the Prussian Government, that Benedetti had forced himself upon the King on the promenade at Ems, and that in the presence of a large company the King had turned his back upon the Ambassador. The publication of the alleged telegram from Ems became known in Paris on the 14th. On that day the Council of Ministers met three times. At the first meeting the advocates of peace were still in the majority; in the afternoon, as the news from Berlin and the fictions describing the insult offered to the French Ambassador spread abroad, the agitation in Paris deepened, and the Council decided upon calling up the Reserves; yet the Emperor himself seemed still disposed for peace. It was in the interval between the second and the third meeting of the Council, between the hours of six and ten in the evening, that Napoleon finally gave way before the threats and importunities of the war-party. The Empress, fanatically anxious for the overthrow of a great Protestant Power, passionately eager for the military glory which alone could insure the Crown to her son, won the triumph which she was so bitterly to rue. At the third meeting of the Council, held shortly before midnight, the vote was given for war.

In Germany this decision had been expected; yet it made a deep impression not only on the German people but on Europe at large that, when the declaration of war was submitted to the French Legislative Body in the form of a demand for supplies, no single voice was raised to condemn the war for its criminality and injustice: the arguments which were urged against it by M. Thiers and others were that the Government had fixed upon a bad cause, and that the occasion was inopportune. Whether the majority of the Assembly really desired war is even now matter of doubt. But the clamour of a hundred madmen within its walls, the ravings of journalists and incendiaries, who at such a time are to the true expression of public opinion what the Spanish Inquisition was to the Christian religion, paralysed the will and the understanding of less infatuated men. Ten votes alone were given in the Assembly against the grant demanded for war; to Europe at large it went out that the crime and the madness was that of France as a nation. Yet Ollivier and many of his colleagues up to the last moment disapproved of the war, and consented to it only because they believed that the nation would otherwise rush into hostilities under a reactionary Ministry who would serve France worse than themselves. They found when it was too late that the supposed national impulse, which they had thought irresistible, was but the outcry of a noisy minority. The reports of their own officers informed them that in sixteen alone out of the eighty-seven Departments of France was the war popular. In the other seventy-one it was accepted either with hesitation or regret. [536]

[Initial forces of either side.]

[Expected Alliances of France.]

[Austria preparing.]

How vast were the forces which the North German Confederation could bring into the field was well known to Napoleon's Government. Benedetti had kept his employers thoroughly informed of the progress of the North German military organisation; he had warned them that the South German States would most certainly act with the North against a foreign assailant; he had described with great accuracy and great penetration the nature of the tie that existed between Berlin and St. Petersburg, a tie which was close enough to secure for Prussia the goodwill, and in certain contingencies the armed support, of Russia, while it was loose enough not to involve Prussia in any Muscovite enterprise that would bring upon it the hostility of England and Austria. The utmost force which the French military administration reckoned on placing in the field at the beginning of the campaign was two hundred and fifty thousand men, to be raised at the end of three weeks by about fifty thousand more. The Prussians, even without reckoning on any assistance from Southern Germany, and after allowing for three army-corps that might be needed to watch Austria and Denmark, could begin the campaign with three hundred and thirty thousand. Army to army, the French thus stood according to the reckoning of their own War Office outnumbered at the outset; but Leboeuf, the War-Minister, imagined that the Foreign Office had made sure of alliances, and that a great part of the Prussian Army would not be free to act on the western frontier. Napoleon had in fact pushed forward his negotiations with Austria and Italy from the time that war became imminent. Count Beust, while clearly laying it down that Austria was not bound to follow France into a war made at its own pleasure, nevertheless felt some anxiety lest France and Prussia should settle their differences at Austria's expense; moreover from the victory of Napoleon, assisted in any degree by himself, he could fairly hope for the restoration of Austria's ascendency in Germany and the undoing of the work of 1866. It was determined at a Council held at Vienna on the 18th of July that Austria should for the present be neutral if Russia should not enter the war on the side of Prussia; but this neutrality was nothing more than a stage towards alliance with France if at the end of a certain brief period the army of Napoleon should have penetrated into Southern Germany. In a private despatch to the Austrian Ambassador at Paris Count Beust pointed out that the immediate participation of Austria in the war would bring Russia into the field on King William's side. "To keep Russia neutral," he wrote, "till the season is sufficiently advanced to prevent the concentration of its troops must be at present our object; but this neutrality is nothing more than a means for arriving at the real end of our policy, the only means for completing our preparations without exposing ourselves to premature attack by Prussia or Russia." He added that Austria had already entered into a negotiation with Italy with a view to the armed mediation of the two Powers, and strongly recommended the Emperor to place the Italians in possession of Rome. [537]

[France, Austria, and Italy.]

Negotiations were now pressed forward between Paris, Florence, and Vienna, for the conclusion of a triple alliance. Of the course taken by these negotiations contradictory accounts are given by the persons concerned in them. According to Prince Napoleon, Victor Emmanual demanded possession of Rome and this was refused to him by the French Emperor, in consequence of which the project of alliance failed. According to the Duke of Gramont, no more was demanded by Italy than the return to the conditions of the September Convention; this was agreed to by the Emperor, and it was in pursuance of this agreement that the Papal States were evacuated by their French garrison on the 2nd of August. Throughout the last fortnight of July, after war had actually been declared, there was, if the statement of Gramont is to be trusted, a continuous interchange of notes, projects, and telegrams between the three Governments. The difficulties raised by Italy and Austria were speedily removed, and though some weeks were needed by these Powers for their military preparations, Napoleon was definitely assured of their armed support in case of his preliminary success. It was agreed that Austria and Italy, assuming at the first the position of armed neutrality, should jointly present an ultimatum to Prussia in September demanding the exact performance of the Treaty of Prague, and, failing its compliance with this summons in the sense understood by its enemies, that the two Powers would immediately declare war, their armies taking the field at latest on the 15th of September. That Russia would in that case assist Prussia was well known; but it would seem that Count Beust feared little from his northern enemy in an autumn campaign. The draft of the Treaty between Italy and Austria had actually, according to Gramont's statement, been accepted by the two latter Powers, and received its last amendments in a negotiation between the Emperor Napoleon and an Italian envoy, Count Vimercati, at Metz. Vimercati reached Florence with the amended draft on the 4th of August, and it was expected that the Treaty would be signed on the following day. When that day came it saw the forces of the French Empire dashed to pieces. [538]

[Prussian Plans.]

Preparations for a war with France had long occupied the general staff at Berlin. Before the winter of 1868 a memoir had been drawn up by General Moltke, containing plans for the concentration of the whole of the German forces, for the formation of each of the armies to be employed, and the positions to be occupied at the outset by each corps. On the basis of this memoir the arrangements for the transport of each corps from its depot to the frontier had subsequently been worked out in such minute detail that when, on the 16th of July, King William gave the order for mobilisation, nothing remained but to insert in the railway time-tables and marching-orders the day on which the movement was to commence. This minuteness of detail extended, however, only to that part of Moltke's plan which related to the assembling and first placing of the troops. The events of the campaign could not thus be arranged and tabulated beforehand; only the general object and design could be laid down. That the French would throw themselves with great rapidity upon Southern Germany was considered probable. The armies of Baden, Wuertemberg, and Bavaria were too weak, the military centres of the North were too far distant, for effective resistance to be made in this quarter to the first blows of the invader. Moltke therefore recommended that the Southern troops should withdraw from their own States and move northwards to join those of Prussia in the Palatinate or on the Middle Rhine, so that the entire forces of Germany should be thrown upon the flank or rear of the invader; while, in the event of the French not thus taking the offensive, France itself was to be invaded by the collective strength of Germany along the line from Saarbruecken to Landau, and its armies were to be cut off from their communications with Paris by vigorous movements of the invader in a northerly direction. [539]