UNJUST PRETENSION OF FRANCE TO INTERFERE WITH THE CANDIDATURE OF HOHENZOLLERN.
If the utter triviality of the pretext were left doubtful in the debate, if its towering absurdity were not plainly apparent, if its simple wickedness did not already stand before us, we should find all these characteristics glaringly manifest in that unjust pretension which preceded the objection of form, on which France finally acted. A few words will make this plain.
In a happy moment Spain rose against Queen Isabella, and, amidst cries of "Down with the Bourbons!" drove her from the throne which she dishonored. This was in September, 1868. Instead of constituting a Republic at once, in harmony with those popular rights which had been proclaimed, the half-hearted leaders proceeded to look about for a King; and from that time till now they have been in this quest, as if it were the Holy Grail, or happiness on earth. The royal family of Spain was declared incompetent. Therefore a king must be found outside,——and so the quest was continued in other lands. One day the throne is offered to a prince of Portugal, then to a prince of Italy, but declined by each,——how wisely the future will show. At last, after a protracted pursuit of nearly two years, the venturesome soldier who is Captain-General and Prime-Minister, Marshal Prim, conceives the idea of offering it to a prince of Germany. His luckless victim is Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a Catholic, thirty-five years of age, and colonel of the first regiment of the Prussian foot-guards, whose father, a mediatized German prince, resides at Duesseldorf. The Prince had not the good sense to decline. How his acceptance excited the French Cabinet, and became the beginning of the French pretext, I have already exposed; and now I come to the pretension itself.
By what title did France undertake to interfere with the choice of Spain? If the latter was so foolish as to seek a foreigner for king, making a German first among Spaniards, by what title did any other power attempt to control its will? To state the question is to answer it. Beginning with an outrage on Spanish independence, which the Spain of an earlier day would have resented, the next outrage was on Germany, in assuming that an insignificant prince of that country could not be permitted to accept the invitation,—— all of which, besides being of insufferable insolence, was in that 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.