condition of his army; he supposed he had four hundred and fifty thousand effective troops, but really possessed a little over three hundred thousand, while Prussia had over one-third more than this, completely equipped and disciplined, and with improved weapons.  He was deceived by the reports of his own generals, to whom he had delegated everything, instead of looking into the actual state of affairs himself, as his uncle would have done, and as Thiers did under Louis Philippe.  More than a third of his regiments were on paper alone, or dwindled in size; the monstrous corruptions of his reign had permeated every part of the country; the necessary arms, ammunition, and material of war in general were deplorably deficient; no official reports could be relied upon, and few of his generals could be implicitly trusted.  If ever infatuation blinded a nation to its fate, it most signally marked France in 1870.

Nothing was now wanting but the spark to kindle the conflagration; and this was supplied by the interference of the French government with the nomination of a German prince to the vacant throne of Spain.  The Prussian king gave way in the matter of Prince Leopold, but refused further concessions.  Leopold was sufficiently magnanimous to withdraw his claims, and here French interference should have ended.  But France demanded guarantees that no future candidate should be proposed without her consent.  Of course the Prussian king,—­seeing with the keen eyes of Bismarck, and armed to the teeth under the supervision of Moltke, the greatest general of the age, who could direct, with the precision of a steam-engine on a track, the movements of the Prussian army, itself a mechanism,—­treated with disdain this imperious demand from a power which he knew to be inferior to his own.  Count Bismarck craftily lured on his prey, who was already goaded forward by his home war-party, with the empress at their head; negotiations ceased, and Napoleon III. made his fatal declaration of hostilities, to the grief of the few statesmen who foresaw the end.

Even then the condition of France was not desperate if the government had shown capacity; but conceit, vanity, and ignorance blinded the nation.  Louis Napoleon should have known, and probably did know, that the contending forces were uneven; that he had no generals equal to Moltke; that his enemies could crush him in the open field; that his only hope was in a well-organized defence.  But his generals rushed madly on to destruction against irresistible forces, incapable of forming a combination, while the armies they led were smaller than anybody supposed.  Napoleon III. hoped that by rapidity of movement he could enter southern Germany before the Prussian armies could be massed against him; but here he dreamed, for his forces were not ready at the time appointed, and the Prussians crossed the Rhine without obstruction.  Then followed the battle of Worth, on the 6th of August, when Marshal McMahon, with only forty-five thousand