The authors of most of the works inspired by the war of 1870 have too willingly yielded to the temptation of looking for the guilty, and fixing them with the blame for all our reverses. In turn they have chosen for scapegoats the Emperor Napoleon III., that dreamer, straying into the field of politics, that idéologue, punished in excess of his faults by the pitiless decrees of destiny; Marshal Lebœuf, so fatally lacking in foresight; the Corps Législatif, so badly inspired in its contests with Marshal Niel; the Generals who succeeded each other in the command of our troops, from MacMahon to Bourbaki; and, finally, the Government of National Defence, especially its Delegates. How few have recognized the fact that the French army and our rulers in 1870-71 were purely and simply, with their qualities and their defects, the representation, the faithful image, of the nation![5]
It was a Frenchman, again, who wrote: “The German schoolmaster was the real conqueror of France in 1870, for he it was who had for years developed in the hearts of the children the idea of Teutonic greatness.”[6]
I recall, without in any way endorsing, a quaint reason seriously advanced for the French defeats: “Don’t blame your late Emperor because the Germans thrashed you; the cause lies far deeper: it is due to the sneakishness of your male population.”[7]
Quite recently I read in the Press that only two or three days before the outbreak of war Count Bismarck declared that he had no idea there would be a conflict. If he really said so (I do not credit it), he spoke in a very different strain in January, 1868, to a prominent German socialist. “War,” he is alleged to have said, “is inevitable.” And he continued:
It will be forced upon us by the French Emperor. I say that clearly. He is an adventurer, and will be forced into it. We have to be ready. _We are ready._ We shall win, and the result will be just the contrary to what Napoleon aims at--the total unification of Germany outside Austria, and probably Napoleon’s downfall.[8]
That prediction--assuming it to have been made--was fulfilled to the letter. Germany was ready--France was not. It is to be noted that M. Émile Ollivier’s new volume--the fifteenth!--is devoted to this question of preparedness or unpreparedness, for the work is entitled “Were we Ready?”[9] The veteran Prime Minister (the last) of Napoleon III. deals with three points--the military preparations, the diplomatic preparations, and the first war operations, down to the morning of August 6 (before the Battles of Wörth and Spicheren):