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Updated: May 28, 2025
Bismarck must not let it appear that he had any interest in, or knowledge of, the matter; he therefore remained in the seclusion of Pomerania. Benedetti also was absent in the Black Forest. On the 4th of July, therefore, the French Chargé d'Affaires, M. de Sourds, called at the Foreign Office and saw Herr von Thiele.
Both were anxious to avoid war, and the King to the last treated Benedetti with marked graciousness; he had while at Ems invited him to the royal table, and even now, the next morning before leaving Ems, granted him an audience, at the station to take leave.
He was encouraged to this course by the reports which Benedetti had sent of his conversations with Bismarck; it was clear that Bismarck expected some demand; he had almost asked that it should be made. "We wish to avoid any injury to the balance of power," Goltz had said; "we will either moderate our demands or discuss those of France." It appeared absurd not to accept this offer.
According to an account published in the Life of the Prince Consort, and seemingly derived from Sir James Hudson, it would appear that he was still hoping to save Nice, when Count Benedetti arrived from Paris with the announcement that, if the Secret Treaty were not signed in its entirety, the Emperor would withdraw his troops from Lonabardy.
On July 4, 1870, the throne of Spain was offered to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern. The fact created the greatest excitement in France. Threatening speeches were made. On July 18 Prince Leopold declined the offer. On the morrow Benedetti was instructed to demand a guarantee that any future offer of the kind would be refused. The king of Prussia would not listen to the proposition.
Benedetti went on to Vienna; he and Gramont had little difficulty in persuading the Emperor to agree to terms of peace by which the whole loss of the war would fall not upon him, not even upon his only active and faithful ally, the King of Saxony, but on those other States who had refused to join themselves to either party.
The rest of the treaty he and Bismarck discussed together carefully; they took it line by line and clause by clause, Bismarck dealing with the matter in a serious and practical manner. After this had been finished a revised draft was written out by Benedetti, Bismarck dictating to him the alterations which had been made.
The arrogant demand of Napoleon, through his ambassador Benedetti, that the king of Prussia should agree never to permit his relative, Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, to accept the vacant throne of Spain, to which he had been elected by the provisional government of that country, was the occasion of King William's curt reception of the French envoy; for this was an insulting demand, not to be endured.
"It is clear," writes the English Ambassador, "that Count Bismarck and the Prussian Ministry regret the attitude which the King has shewn to Count Benedetti, and feel, in regard to public opinion, the necessity of guarding the honour of the nation." To the Crown Prince, who had come to Berlin, Bismarck was more open; he declared that war was necessary.
The eighth livraison of the Tuileries papers has appeared; it contains two letters from General Ducrot to General Frossard, a despatch from the French Foreign-office to Benedetti, a report on France by Magne, and a letter from a prefect to Pietri.
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