VIII
THE WAR OF 1870[1]
Opus adgredior opimum casibus, atrox proeliis, discors seditionibus, ipsa etiam pace saevum. — Tacitus, Hist. i. 2.
To exhibit a coherent chain of causes in the revolution of the last nine months, which has shifted the landmarks of European politics, and has given new leaders to the world, is still an impossible task. Many links remain concealed ; and the very questions which most excite curiosity are those which cannot yet be solved. The communications that passed through private or official channels between Marshal Prim and the Governments of France and Prussia ; the nature of the understanding between the Russian Emperor and King William ; the consultations in which Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern spent six days before refusing to be the cause of war ; the motives that paralysed the splendid army of Bazaine ; the real object of the Germans in bombarding Paris, and the immediate reason of its capitulation, — these are the things on which it is not safe to pronounce with certainty, and I must be content to leave them unexplained. Whenever these gaps are filled up, and the secrets of recent history come to be declared, it is probable that the events I am going to relate will appeal in a different connection and an altered light.
The storm that burst last summer had hung for four years over Europe. The war of 1866, which destroyed
- ↑ A lecture delivered at the Bridgnorth Literary and Scientific Institution on the 25th of April 1871.
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