The discovery that the army was not to be depended on, and needed a war of glory to put it in good humor with itself and with its emperor, decided Napoleon III. to enter precipitately into the Franco-Prussian war while he still had health enough to share in it.  Besides this, a struggle with Germany was inevitable, and he dared not leave it to his successor.  Then, too, if successful,—­and he never doubted of success,—­all opposition at home would be crushed, and the prestige of his dynasty would be doubled, especially if he could, by a brilliant campaign, give France the frontier of the Rhine, at least to the borders of Belgium.  This would indeed be a glorious crowning of his reign.

He believed in himself, he believed in his star, he believed in his own generalship, he believed that his army was ready (though his army and navy never had been ready for any previous campaign), and he believed, truly enough, that the prospect of glory, aggrandizement, and success would be popular in France.

Spain was at that time in want of a king.  Several princes were proposed, and the most acceptable one would have been the Duc de Montpensier; but Napoleon III., who dreaded the rivalry of the Orleans family, gave the Spaniards to understand that he would never consent to see a prince of that family upon the Spanish throne.  Then the Spaniards took the matter into their own hands, and possibly stimulated by a wish to make a choice disagreeable to the French emperor, selected a prince of the Prussian royal family, Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern.  The Emperor Napoleon objected at once.  To have Prussia on the eastern frontier of France, and Prussian influence beyond the Pyrenees, was worse in his eyes than the selection of Montpensier; and it was certainly a matter for diplomatic consideration.  M. Benedetti, the French minister at Berlin, was instructed to take a very haughty tone with the king of Prussia, and to say that if he permitted Prince Leopold to accept the Spanish crown, it would be a cause of war between France and Prussia.  The king of Prussia replied substantially that he would not be threatened, and would leave Prince Leopold to do as he pleased.  Prompted, however, no doubt, by his sovereign, Prince Leopold declined the Spanish throne.  This was intimated to M. Benedetti, and here the matter might have come to an end.  But the Emperor Napoleon, anxious for a casus belli, chose to think that the king of Prussia, in making his announcement to his ambassador, had not been sufficiently civil.

A cabinet council was held at the Tuileries.  The empress was now admitted to cabinet councils, that she might be prepared for a regency that before long might arrive.  She and Marshal Le Boeuf were vehement for war.  The populace, proud of their fine army, shouted with one voice, “A Berlin!” and on July 15, 1870, war was declared.

Let us relieve the sad closing of this chapter, which began so auspiciously with the emperor and empress in the height of their prosperity, by telling of an expedition in which the glory of the empress as a royal lady culminated.