The Duel Between France and Germany | Page 9

worst dynastic spirit which looks
to princes rather than the people. Plainly France was unjustifiable.
When I say it was none of her business, I give it the mildest
condemnation. This was the first step in her monstrous
_blunder-crime_.
Its character as a pretext becomes painfully manifest, when we learn
more of the famous Prince Leopold, thus invited by Spain and opposed
by France. It is true that his family name is in part the same as that of
the Prussian king. Each is Hohenzollern; but he adds Sigmaringen to
the name. The two are different branches of the same family; but you
must ascend to the twelfth century, counting more than twenty degrees,
before you come to a common ancestor. [Footnote:
Conversations-Lexikon, (Leipzig, 1866,) 8 Band, art.
HOHENZOLLERN. Carlyle's History of Friedrich II., (London, 1858,)
Book III. Cli. 1, Vol. I. p. 200.] And yet on this most distant and
infinitesimal relationship the French pretension is founded. But
audacity changes to the ridiculous, when it is known that the Prince is
nearer in relationship to the French Emperor than to the Prussian King,
and this by three different intermarriages, which do not go hack to the
twelfth century. Here is the case. His grandfather had for wife a niece
of Joachim Murat,[Footnote: Antoinette, daughter of Etienne Murat,
third brother of Joachim.--- Biographic Genemle, (Didot,) Tom.
XXXVI. col. 984, art. MURAT, note.] King of Naples, and
brother-in-law of the first Napoleon; and his father had for wife a
daughter of Stephanie de Beauharnais, an adopted daughter of the first
Napoleon; so that Prince Leopold is by his father great-grand- nephew
of Murat, and by his mother he is grandson of Stephanie de
Beauharnais, who was cousin and by adoption sister of Horteuse de
Beauharnais, mother of the present Emperor; and to this may be added
still another connection, by the marriage of his father's sister with
Joachim Napoleon, Marquis of Pepoli, grandson of Joachim

Murat.[Footnote: Almanach de Gotha, 1870, pp. 85-87, art.
HOHENZOLLERN-SIGMARINGEN.] It was natural that a person
thus connected with the Imperial Family should be a welcome visitor at
the Tuileries; and it is easy to believe that Marshal Prim, who offered
him the throne, was encouraged to believe that the Emperor's kinsman
and guest would be favorably regarded by France. And yet, in the face
of these things, and the three several family ties, fresh and modern,
binding him to France and the French Emperor, the pretension was set
up that his occupation of the Spanish throne would put in peril the
interests and the honor of France.

BECAUSE FRANCE WAS READY.
In sending defiance to Prussia on this question, the French Cabinet
selected their own ground. Evidently a war had been meditated, and the
candidature of Prince Leopold from beginning to end supplied a pretext.
In this conclusion, which is too obvious, we are hardly left to inference.
The secret was disclosed by Rouher, President of the Senate, lately the
eloquent and unscrupulous Minister, when, in an official address to the
Emperor, immediately after the War Manifesto read by the Prime-
Minister, he declared that France quivered with indignation at the
flights of an ambition over-excited by the one day's good-fortune at
Sadowa, and then proceeded:---
"Animated by that calm perseverance which is true force, your Majesty
has known how to wait; but in the last four years you have carried to its
highest perfection the arming of our soldiers, and raised to its full
power the organization of our military forces. _Thanks to your care,
Sire, France is ready,_" [Footnote: Address at the Palais de Saint-Cloud,
July 50, 1870: Journal Officiel du Soir, 18 Juillet 1870.]
Thus, according to the President of the Senate, France, after waiting,
commenced war because she was ready,--- while, according to the
Cabinet, it was on the point of honor. Both were right. The war was
declared because the Emperor thought himself ready, and a pretext was
found in the affair of the telegram.
Considering the age, and the present demands of civilization, such a
war stands forth terrific in wrong, making the soul rise indignant
against it. One reason avowed is brutal; the other is frivolous; both are
criminal. If we look into the text of the Manifesto and the speeches of

the Cabinet, it is a war founded on a trifle, on a straw, on an egg-shell.
Obviously these were pretexts only. Therefore it is a war of pretexts,
the real object being the humiliation and dismemberment of Germany,
in the vain hope of exalting the French Empire and perpetuating a
bawble crown on the head of a boy. By military success and a peace
dictated at Berlin, the Emperor trusted to find himself in such condition,
that, on return to Paris, he could overthrow parliamentary government
so far