“Against the new pretensions of Prussia our objections made themselves heard. They have been evaded, and followed by contemptuous proceedings. At this our country has felt a profound irritation; and immediately a warcry resounded from one end of France to the other. Nothing is now left us but to confide our destinies to the fate of arms.”
When, on July 23, the Legislative Body took leave of the Emperor, he answered the President’s address in these words:
“_We have done all we could to avoid war. We can now say that it is the whole nation which, by its irresistible élan, dictated our resolutions._”
Thus, then, in accepting the responsibility which devolved upon him, the Emperor--before, as since, his overthrow--desired to establish before the world the following simple fact: that he did not launch the country into a perilous enterprise on account of contemptible motives, but felt himself encouraged, if not compelled to it, by the determined manifestations of public opinion.
The reader who has followed the above recital of the principal events of the reign of Napoleon III. must be convinced that he who became a prisoner at Wilhelmshöhe employed eighteen years of undisputed power in making France the most flourishing country in Europe, in allaying international hatred, and in protecting the independence of foreign States. When his personal efforts appeared to him unequal to realize all he meditated for the universal welfare, he voluntarily gave up Authority and called on the representatives of the people to take the most active part in the direction of affairs, thus establishing in France the widest and most complete system of liberty.
And now, because fortune has abandoned him, this great man is only considered by some in the light of a tyrant, who, to establish a Dynasty, ruthlessly precipitated his country into all the horrors of a merciless war.
We have recorded facts. Posterity will be the judge.
When the Empress read the telegram announcing that the Hohenzollern candidature was withdrawn, she said, in the presence of General Bourbaki, “It is infamous! The Empire will fall to rags!” (“L’Empire va tomber en quenouille!”)[131]
An extraordinary story, told by M. Welschinger, makes one wonder whether some of those surrounding the Empress in July, 1870, were in their right minds. It was proposed that the King of Prussia should be asked to write a letter to Napoleon III. to satisfy the énergumènes (fanatics, “of whom the Empress was one”), and the Duc de Gramont actually drafted and sent to the King a note of what His Majesty was to say! King William had been very pleased when he thought that all danger of war had vanished by the withdrawal of the Hohenzollern Prince from the Spanish candidature, “and in so uselessly and gratuitously wounding him the French Cabinet alienated the only person who could check Bismarck.”