Germany for a recent enemy justified Italy in redressing the balance in favour of an old ally. Count Bismarck thought the danger so serious that he offered a great price for the neutrality of the Italians. He was ready to pledge himself, if Italy abstained from war, to sign no peace that did not make her mistress of Nice, Savoy, and Rome. The Italians declined to enter into an ungrateful conspiracy against France. In August, Prince Napoleon came to Florence. The King was eager for the fray. The sword of Savoy, he said, used not to rust in its sheath when there was fighting to be done. But the Ministers, supported by the leading statesmen of the country, restrained him.
War had been declared a week when Count Bismarck isolated France more completely by publishing the draft of a treaty which he had extracted from Count Benedetti in 1867, in which France was to have the aid of Prussia for the conquest of Belgium. The immediate effect of the publication was to show that Europe had much to dread from a French victory, and to make the Emperor Napoleon a sort of international outlaw. England invited Germany and France to enter into new engagements for the independence of Belgium. As the proposal was suggestive of the suspicion of perfidy which the secret treaty had aroused, the French signed it with a bad grace. This startling revelation did not increase the sympathy for Prussia as much as it damaged France. If the draft had been communicated to England early in the Hohenzollern controversy, the language of this country might have been more cogent in striving to restrain the impetuosity of France. Lord Lyons had assured the Duke de Gramont that his course of action in forcing on the war was not of a kind that could diminish the friendly feeling of England. The tone of his remonstrances might have been less comforting if we had had proof of the plot against Belgium. By keeping back the document until war had broken out, Count Bismarck had been suppressing one of the chances of peace.
Having made himself safe against the armed inter-
