[13] Revue des deux Mondes for April 1, 1878.

The understanding between the three Powers advanced only in regard to military preparations.  The Austrian Archduke Albrecht, the victor of Custoza, burned to avenge the defeat of Koeniggraetz, and with this aim in view visited Paris in February to March 1870.  He then proposed to Napoleon an invasion of North Germany by the armies of France, Austria, and Italy.  The French Emperor developed the plan by more specific overtures which he made in the month of June; but his Ministers were so far in the dark as to these military proposals that they were then suggesting the reduction of the French army by 10,000 men, while Ollivier, the Prime Minister, on June 30 declared to the French Chamber that peace had never been better assured[14].

[14] Seignobos, A Political History of Contemporary Europe, vol. ii. pp. 806-807 (Eng. edit.).  Oncken, Zeitalter des Kaisers Wilhelm (vol. i. pp. 720-740), tries to prove that there was a deep conspiracy against Prussia.  I am not convinced by his evidence.

And yet on that same day General Lebrun, aide-de-camp to the Emperor, was drawing up at Paris a confidential report of the mission with which he had lately been entrusted to the Austrian military authorities.  From that report we take the following particulars.  On arriving at Vienna, he had three private interviews with the Archduke Albrecht, and set before him the desirability of a joint invasion of North Germany in the autumn of that year.  To this the Archduke demurred, on the ground that such a campaign ought to begin in the spring if the full fruits of victory were to be gathered in before the short days came.  Austria and Italy, he said, could not place adequate forces in the field in less than six weeks owing to lack of railways[15].

[15] Souvenirs militaires, by General B.L.J.  Lebrun (Paris 1895), pp. 95-148.

Developing his own views, the Archduke then suggested that it would be desirable for France to undertake the war against North Germany not later than the middle of March 1871, Austria and Italy at the same time beginning their mobilisations, though not declaring war until their armies were ready at the end of six weeks.  Two French armies should in the meantime cross the Rhine in order to sever the South Germans from the Confederation of the North, one of them marching towards Nuremberg, where it would be joined by the western army of Austria and the Italian forces sent through Tyrol.  The other Austrian army would then invade Saxony or Lusatia in order to strike at Berlin.  He estimated the forces of the States hostile to Prussia as follows:—­

+------------------------------------------------------

------------+
|                               |Men.        |Horses.   |Cannon.   |
+-------------------------------+------------+----------+---

-------+
|France                         |309,000     |35,000    |972       |
|Austria (exclusive of reserve) |360,000     |27,000    |1128      |
|Italy                          |68,000      |5000      |180       |
|Denmark                        |260,000 (?) |2000      |72        |
+-------------------------------+------------+----------+----------+

He thus reckoned the forces of the two German Confederations:—­