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Updated: May 5, 2025
But the statesman who could satisfy this yearning, which slumbers in the heart of our people undisturbed by the clamour of parties and the party Press, would carry all spirits with him. He is no true statesman who does not reckon with these factors of national psychology; Bismarck possessed this art, and used k with a master-hand.
The French ambassador also states in his account of these stirring weeks that Bismarck had mentioned to the Belgian envoy the impossibility of France keeping up armaments, the outcome of which must be war .
If ever there existed a man at the opposite pole from Bismarck, Thiers was certainly that man. I had studied him as a historian, observed him as a statesman, and conversed with him as a social being; and he had always seemed, and still seems, to me the most noxious of all the greater architects of ruin that France produced during the latter half of the nineteenth century and that is saying much.
It is not perhaps generally known that General Lebrun went to Vienna in June, 1870, to discuss an alliance with Austria for an attack on the North German Confederation in the following spring. Bismarck knew this. This was on the 13th of July, 1870; on the 16th the order was given to mobilize the army, on the 31st followed the proclamation of the King to his people: "Zur Errettung des Vaterlandes."
What the sword has won, we shall keep. 'The pike in the European carp-pond, said Bismarck once, 'prevent us from becoming carp. They compel us to exertions which voluntarily we should hardly be willing to make. They compel us to hold together, which is in direct contradiction to our innermost nature.
Returning to Gravelotte, we next visited that part of the battlefield to the northeast of the village, and before long Count Bismarck discovered in a remote place about twenty men dreadfully wounded. These poor fellows had had no attention whatever, having been overlooked by the hospital corps, and their condition was most pitiful.
He had no sooner sat down than a member arose and said that he was instructed by the Prime Minister, Prince Bismarck, to disavow the view taken by the Minister of the Interior. This extraordinary action of the prince was due to the fact that he had suddenly decided upon coquetting with the Liberals, for the sake of obtaining their support upon the subject of another of his little inaugurations.
But while Moltke, Roon, and he were dining together, a telegram reached him from the King at Ems, dated July 13, 3.50 P.M., which gave him leave to inform the ambassadors and the Press of the present state of affairs. Bismarck saw his chance. The telegram could be cut down so as to give a more resolute look to the whole affair.
In April Bismarck denounced the so-called offensive measures which Austria was taking in Bohemia and which, in short, were only precautionary. Yet at the same time he himself was signing with Italy a treaty, concluded for three months, by virtue of which Victor Emmanuel was to declare war against Austria as soon as Prussia itself had done so.
In France, all the evils from which Prussia had been freed by Bismarck were increasing; here there was no single will; the Ministry were divided, there was no authority over them; no one could foresee by whom the decision of the Emperor would be determined; the deliberate results of long and painful negotiations might be overthrown in ten minutes by the interference of the Empress or the advice of Prince Napoleon.
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