However that may be, the French Government looked on the refusal of its last demand, the publication of Bismarck’s telegram, and the insults of the German Press as a casus belli.  The details of the sitting of the Emperor’s Council at 10 P.M. on July 14, at which it was decided to call out the French reserves, are not yet known.  Ollivier was not present.  There had been a few hours of wavering on this question; but the tone of the Parisian evening papers—­it was the French national day—­the loud cries of the rabble for war, and their smashing the windows of the Prussian embassy, seem to have convinced the Emperor and his advisers that to draw back now would involve the fall of the dynasty.  Report has uniformly pointed to the Empress as pressing these ideas on her consort, and the account which the Duc de Gramont later on gave to Lord Malmesbury of her words at that momentous Council-meeting support popular rumour.  It is as follows:—­

Before the final resolve to declare war the Emperor, Empress, and Ministers went to St. Cloud.  After some discussion Gramont told me that the Empress, a high-spirited and impressionable woman, made a strong and most excited address, declaring that “war was inevitable if the honour of France was to be sustained.”  She was immediately followed by Marshal Leboeuf, who, in the most violent tone, threw down his portfolio and swore that if war was not declared he would give it up and renounce his military rank.  The Emperor gave way, and Gramont went straight to the Chamber to announce the fatal news[31].

[Footnote 31:  This version has, I believe, not been refuted.  Still, I must look on it with suspicion.  No Minister, who had done so much to stir up the war-feeling, ought to have made any such confession—­least of all against a lady, who could not answer it.  M. Seignobos in his Political History of Contemporary Europe, vol. i. chap. vi. p. 184 (Eng edit.) says of Gramont:  “He it was who embroiled France in the war with Prussia.”  In the course of the parliamentary inquiry of 1872 Gramont convicted himself and his Cabinet of folly in 1870 by using these words:  “Je crois pouvoir declarer que si on avait eu un doute, un seule doute, sur notre aptitude a la guerre, on eut immediatement arrete la negociation” (Enquete parlementaire, I. vol. i. p. 108).]

On the morrow (July 15) the Chamber of Deputies appointed a Commission, which hastily examined the diplomatic documents and reported in a sense favourable to the Ollivier Ministry.  The subsequent debate made strongly for a rupture; and it is important to note that Ollivier and Gramont based the demand for warlike preparations on the fact that King William had refused to see the French ambassador, and held that that alone was a sufficient insult.  In vain did Thiers protest against the war as inopportune, and demand to see all the necessary documents.  The Chamber passed the war supplies by 246 votes to 10; and Thiers had