[Footnote 21:  Bismarck, Reminiscences, vol. ii. pp. 41, 57 (Eng. edit.).]

[Footnote 22:  Ib. p. 58.]

Early in July 1870, the news leaked out that Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern was the officially accepted candidate for the throne of Spain, left vacant since the revolution which drove Queen Isabella into exile in 1868[23].  At once a thrill of rage shot through France; and the Duc de Gramont, Foreign Minister of the new Ollivier Ministry, gave expression to the prevailing feeling in his answer to a question on the subject in the Chamber of Deputies (July 6):—­

[Footnote 23:  The ex-queen Isabella died in Paris in April 1904.]

We do not think that respect for the rights of a neighbouring people [Spain] obliges us to allow an alien Power [Prussia], by placing one of its princes on the throne of Charles V., to succeed in upsetting to our disadvantage the present equilibrium of forces in Europe, and imperil the interests and honour of France.  We have the firm hope that this eventuality will not be realised.  To hinder it, we count both on the wisdom of the German people and on the friendship of the Spanish people.  If that should not be so, strong in your support and in that of the nation, we shall know how to fulfil our duty without hesitation and without weakness[24].

[Footnote 24:  Sorel, Hist. diplomatique de la Guerre Franco-Allemande, vol. i. p. 77.]

The opening phrases were inaccurate.  The prince in question was Prince Leopold of the Swabian and Roman Catholic branch of the Hohenzollern family, who, as the Duc de Gramont knew, could by no possibility recall the days when Charles V. reigned as Emperor in Germany and monarch in Spain.  This misstatement showed the intention of the French Ministry to throw down the glove to Prussia—­as is also clear from this statement in Gramont’s despatch of July 10 to Benedetti:  “If the King will not advise the Prince of Hohenzollern to withdraw, well, it is war forthwith, and in a few days we are at the Rhine[25].”

[Footnote 25:  Benedetti, Ma Mission en Prusse, p.34.  This work contains the French despatches on the whole affair.]

Nevertheless, those who were behind the scenes had just cause for anger against Bismarck.  The revelations of Benedetti, French ambassador at Berlin, as well as the Memoirs of the King of Roumania (brother to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern) leave no doubt that the candidature of the latter was privately and unofficially mooted in 1868, and again in the spring of 1869 through a Prussian diplomatist, Werthern, and that it met with no encouragement whatever from the Prussian monarch or the prince himself.  But early in 1870 it was renewed in an official manner by the provisional Government of Spain, and (as seems certain) at the instigation of Bismarck, who, in May-June, succeeded in overcoming the reluctance of the prince and of King William.  Bismarck even sought to hurry the matter through the Spanish Cortes so as to commit Spain to the plan; but this failed owing to the misinterpretation of a ciphered telegram from Berlin at Madrid[26].