For the first time he hereby officially stated that Germany would not make peace without some accession of territory; that this would be the case, everyone had known since the beginning of the war.  At a council of war directly after Gravelotte it was determined to require Alsace; after Sedan the terms naturally rose.  The demand for at least some territory was indeed inevitable.  The suggestion that from confidence in the peaceful and friendly character of the French nation they should renounce all the advantages gained by their unparalleled victories scarcely deserved serious consideration.  Had the French been successful they would have taken all the left bank of the Rhine; this was actually specified in the draft treaty which General Le Brun had presented to the Emperor of Austria.  What claim had France to be treated with a leniency which she has never shewn to any conquered enemy?  Bismarck had to meet the assumption that France was a privileged and special land; that she had freedom to conquer, pillage, and divide the land of her neighbours, but that every proposal to win back from her what she had taken from others was a crime against humanity.

So long as the Provisional Government adopted the attitude that they would not even consider peace on the basis of some surrender of territory, there was no prospect of any useful negotiations.  The armies must advance, and beneath the walls of Paris the struggle be fought out to its bitter end.  Bismarck meanwhile treated the Government with great reserve.  They had no legal status; as he often pointed out, the Emperor was still the only legal authority in France, and he would be quite prepared to enter into negotiations with him.  When by the medium of the English Ambassador they asked to be allowed to open negotiations for an armistice and discuss the terms of peace, he answered by the question, what guarantee was there that France or the armies in Metz and Strasburg would recognise the arrangements made by the present Government in Paris, or any that might succeed it?  It was a quite fair question; for as events were to shew, the commander of the army in Metz refused to recognise them, and wished to restore the Emperor to the throne; and the Government themselves had declared that they would at once be driven from power if they withdrew from their determination not to accept the principle of a cession of territory.  They would be driven from power by the same authority to which they owed their existence,—­the mob of Paris; it was the mob of Paris which, from the beginning, was really responsible for the war.  What use was there in a negotiation in which the two parties had no common ground?  None the less Bismarck consented to receive M. Jules Favre, who held the portfolio of Foreign Affairs, and who at the advice of Lord Lyons came out from Paris, even at the risk of a rebuff, to see if by a personal interview he might not be able to influence the German Chancellor.  “It is well at least to see what sort of man he is,” was the explanation which Bismarck gave; but as the interview was not strictly official he did not, by granting it, bind himself to recognise Favre’s authority.