purse. When this was detected it was kept quiet, but H———, who had done the work, was superseded on the plea of ill-health. This transaction, splendidly illustrating the devious dexterity of the Chancellor, is still shrouded in utter darkness.
In investigating the true cause of the war, we are confronted by the interesting fact that Sybel, writing with the sanction and support of Bismarck, exonerates the Emperor, and also the Empress, while Thiers vehemently denied the guilt of the Prussian Chancellor. The explanation of this generosity on the part of Thiers is that he desired at that moment to conciliate Bismarck. He was negotiating with Germany to prepare for the election of the next Pope, and he wished to propitiate him in favour of his own candidate, who was Cardinal Ginoulhiac, Archbishop of Lyons, a dull man, but reputed the most learned prelate in France. It was in the midst of these communications with Arnim that the wrath of the royalists overtook him.
The evidence I have collected makes it difficult to approve these verdicts of absolution. The question goes back to 1865. In that year the Emperor's illness became known, and men began to doubt whether he would live to consolidate the dynasty and to secure the succession for his son. In that year also the surrender of Lee altered the conditions of European politics. The victorious Americans, combining the forces of North and South, resolved to expel the French from Mexico, where they had set up an offending European monarch under cover of the Civil War. They appointed a general to command the army of Mexico, which was to be recruited largely among the Confederates, and to relieve the Union of a disturbing element, and they sent him to Paris to show his patent to the Emperor. Napoleon saw and understood. Without a struggle, without a protest, he recalled his army and left Maximilian to his fate.
The moment when he underwent this terrible humiliation was the moment when Prussia was preparing to fall upon Austria. It was necessary for his existence on the
