No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2024
A war between Prussia and France would succeed that with Austria in the logic of history.
I did not doubt that a Franco-German war must take place before the creation of a united Germany.
At the root of it (i.e., the war) was a clerical conspiracy.
Prince Bismarck.
If a united Germany and France can fight in a ring fence victory is virtually assured to us.
von Moltke.
Better the Prussians in Paris than the Sardinian troops in Rome.
But this is my war.
Empress Eugenie.
A war provoked by Prussia would be hailed by many as a welcome relief from internal troubles. So far as I can judge, Ollivier is not a man to shrink from it.
Lord Lyons (May 6th).
Peace has never been better assured.
Ollivier to the Chamber (June 30th).
Never has the political sky been so clear of clouds.
Mr. Hammond (Permanent Under-Secretary to Lord Granville) when he succeeded the Earl of Clarendon (July 5th).
If the King will not advise the Prince of Hohenzollern to withdraw, it is war forthwith, and in a few days we are over the Rhine.
de Gramont (July 12th).
This is the most national war in which France has been involved. I can only rule if I lead, and I am borne away on a torrent which I am powerless to stem or control.
Napoleon III (July 15th).
1 Lord Acton, in a letter to Lady Blennerhassett, 1897, records the fact that something induced the Bavarian House on the night of July 19th to vote for war, whereas in the morning the majority had been against the Casus Foederis. Something there was which President Stauffenberg would not commit to paper. Prince Hohenlohe also touches on this (Vol. ii, pp. 12-15).
2 Lord Acton in the same correspondence has no doubt about the attitude of the Empress towards war. Parieu, the President of the Council, denied it publicly, and asserted it in his private correspondence. Acton's sympathies were, of course, anti-ultramontane. A very different person, Lord Shaftesbury, wrote that it was a Popish and unholy war (Bernstorff Papers, in which is much that is of interest for 1870; see also Hohenlohe, Vol. ii).
3 The episode of Marshal Leboeuf declaring that the French Army was prête, archiprête jusqu au dernier bouton des guêtres has contemporary authority. There is obviously no actual proof possible, and it is well to remember that some; of these stories come from extreme anti-Imperialistic sources, and may even have a German origin.
4 This is wholly different, and the fact undeniable. The ex-Minister, in his Empire Libéral, gives it a gloss to the effect that the meant the war was just, I see no reason to suppose that he intended anything but the obvious meaning. He was sure of victory, and therein was no more at fault than the rest of his nation and three-quarters of Europe.
You have
Access