The years that followed were those in which foreign affairs gave Bismarck least anxiety or occupation.  He even began to complain that he was dull; after all these years of conflict and intrigue he found the security which he now enjoyed uninteresting.  Now and again the shadow of war passed over Europe, but it was soon dispelled.  The most serious was in 1875.

It appears that the French reforms of the army and some movements of French troops had caused alarm at Berlin; I say alarm, though it is difficult to believe that any serious concern could have been felt.  There was, however, a party who believed that war must come sooner or later, and it was better, they said, not to wait till France was again powerful and had won allies; surely the wisest thing was while she was still weak and friendless to take some excuse (and how easy would it be to find the excuse!), fall upon her, and crush her—­crush and destroy, so that she could never again raise her head; treat her as she had in old days treated Germany.  How far this plan was deliberately adopted we do not know, but in the spring of this year the signs became so alarming that both the Russian and the English Governments were seriously disturbed, and interfered.  So sober a statesman as Lord Derby believed that the danger was real.  The Czar, who visited Berlin at the beginning of April, dealt with the matter personally; the Queen of England wrote a letter to the German Emperor, in which she said that the information she had could leave no doubt that an aggressive war on France was meditated, and used her personal influence with the sovereign to prevent it.  The Emperor himself had not sympathised with the idea of war, and it is said did not even know of the approaching danger.  It did not require the intervention of other sovereigns to induce him to refuse his assent to a wanton war, but this advice from foreign Powers of course caused great indignation in Bismarck; it was just the kind of thing which always angered him beyond everything.  He maintained that he had had no warlike intentions, that the reports were untrue.  The whole story had its origin, he said, in the intrigues of the Ultramontanes and the vanity of Gortschakoff; the object was to make it appear that France owed her security and preservation to the friendly interference of Russia, and thereby prepare the way for an alliance between the two Powers.  It is almost impossible to believe that Bismarck had seriously intended to bring about a war; he must have known that the other Powers of Europe would not allow a second and unprovoked attack on France; he would not be likely to risk all he had achieved and bring about a European coalition against him.  On the other hand his explanation is probably not the whole truth; even German writers confess that the plan of attacking France was meditated, and it was a plan of a nature to recommend itself to the military party in Prussia.