“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.”[190]
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 as it existed there, and reëstablish personal government, where all depended upon himself,—thus making triumph over Germany the means of another triumph over the French people.
In other times there have been wars as criminal in origin, where trifle, straw, or egg-shell played its part; but they contrasted less with the surrounding civilization. To this list belong the frequent Dynastic Wars, prompted by the interest, the passion, or the whim of some one in the Family of Kings. Others have begun in recklessness kindred to that we now witness,—as when England entered into war with Holland, and for reason did not hesitate to allege “abusive pictures.”[191] The England of Charles the Second was hardly less sensitive than the France of Louis Napoleon, while in each was similar indifference to consequences. But France has precedents of her own. From the remarkable correspondence of the Princess Palatine, Duchess of Orléans, we learn that the first war with Holland under Louis the Fourteenth was brought on by the Minister, De Lionne, to injure a petty German prince who had made him jealous of his wife.[192] The communicative and exuberant Saint-Simon tells us twice over how Louvois, another Minister of Louis the Fourteenth, being overruled by his master with regard to the dimensions of a window at Versailles, was filled with the idea that “on account of a few inches in a window,” as he expressed it, all his services would be forgotten, and therefore, to save his place, excited a foreign war that would make him necessary to the King. The flames in the Palatinate, devouring the works of man, attested his continuing power. The war became general, but, according to the chronicler, it ruined France at home, and did not extend her domain abroad.[193] The French Emperor confidently expected to occupy the same historic region so often burnt and ravaged by French armies, with that castle of Heidelberg which repeats the tale of blood,—and, let me say, expected it for no better reason than that of his royal predecessor, stimulated by an unprincipled Minister anxious for personal position. The parallel is continued in the curse which the Imperial arms have brought on France.
PROGRESS OF THE WAR.
How this war proceeded I need not recount. You have all read the record day by day, sorrowing for Humanity,—how, after briefest interval of preparation or hesitation, the two combatants first crossed swords at Saarbrücken, within the German frontier, and the young Prince Imperial performed his part in picking up a bullet from the field, which the Emperor promptly reported by telegraph to the Empress,—how this little military success is all that was vouchsafed to the man who began the war,—how soon thereafter victory followed, first on the hill-sides of Wissembourg and then of Woerth, shattering the army of MacMahon, to which the Empire was looking so confidently,—how another large army under Bazaine was driven within the strong fortress of Metz,—how all the fortresses, bristling with guns and frowning upon Germany, were invested,—how battle followed battle on various fields, where Death was the great conqueror,—how, with help of modern art, war showed itself to be murder by machinery,—how MacMahon, gathering together his scattered men and strengthening them with reinforcements, attempted to relieve Bazaine,—how at last, after long marches, his large army found itself shut up at Sedan with a tempest of fire beating upon its huddled ranks, so that its only safety was capitulation,—how with the capitulation of the army was the submission of the Emperor himself, who gave his sword to the King of Prussia and became prisoner of war,—and how, on the reception of this news at Paris, Louis Napoleon and his dynasty were divested of their powers and the Empire was lost in the Republic. These things you know. I need not dwell on them. Not to battles and their fearful vicissitudes, where all is incarnadined with blood, must we look, but to the ideas which prevail,—as for the measure of time we look, not to the pendulum in its oscillations, but to the clock in the tower, whose striking tells the hours. A great hour for Humanity sounded when the Republic was proclaimed. And this I say, even should it fail again; for every attempt contributes to the final triumph.
A WAR OF SURPRISES.
The war, from the pretext at its beginning to the capitulation at Sedan, has been a succession of surprises, where the author of the pretext was a constant sufferer. Nor is this strange. Falstaff says, with humorous point, “See now how wit may be made a Jack-a-lent, when ’tis upon ill employment!”[194]—and another character, in a play of Beaumont and Fletcher, reveals the same evil destiny in stronger terms, when he says,—
“Hell gives us art to reach the depth of sin,