We forget the vacillations of the Emperor, we forget his moral lapses, we forget the coup d’état, we can even forget the hideous Mexican blunder, when we remember his noble hesitancy to plunge the country into a war which he knew could have but one ending—disaster. He knew it from Stoffel and he knew it from Niel. As Baron de Mackau has most truly said, Napoleon III. “submitted to the war.” There is the whole matter crystallized into four words. The Emperor sanctioned the war because he had no alternative. He had to submit to pressure from within and pressure from without. If ever a Sovereign was driven into making war it was that most unfortunate of men the Emperor Napoleon III.
Baron de Mackau was one of the Emperor’s most intimate friends, and after the battle of Solferino he was entrusted with the duty of presenting Niel with his Marshal’s epaulettes. The Baron says:
The Emperor did not wish for war. It is only just to him to say that he submitted to it. It would be equitable to seek for the reasons of the defeat of France in the refusal of Parliament to contribute, during the years preceding the war, to the work of national defence proposed by Marshal Niel. In 1867, after the Italian war, Niel, as Minister of War, demanded the modification of the military law and the creation of reservists. He was not allowed to finish his speech. The Magnins, the Favres, the Simons, and all those who formed the Opposition at that date, prevented the vote. They said to the Marshal: “You want to make France a vast entrenched camp.” I heard the Marshal reply, with a gravity well calculated to move those who were present: “May you, gentlemen, not make it a huge cemetery.”
On the day following the declaration of war, when the Delegates of the Corps Législatif took leave of Napoleon III., His Majesty said to them: “Ah, gentlemen, we are undertaking a heavy task!” As he left the Emperor’s study at St. Cloud, Baron de Mackau said to his colleagues: “We are done for!”
The Baron continues:
The eagerness with which, a few days previously, people had heard of the possibility of avoiding war; then the order given suddenly by Marshal Lebœuf, the Emperor’s friend and confidant, to stop all preparations; the Marshal’s resignation when, at the last night council, war was decided upon—these things have been always, to me, proofs that the Emperor only submitted to the war. The truth is that public opinion in France, grievously over-excited, urged on the war; and that the Left, represented by those whose names are noted above, and always taking heed of outside rumours, followed the current of public opinion, as did, later, Marshal Bazaine. The Right, as a whole, advanced hesitatingly and defiantly, animated by the desire to weaken the Emperor’s Government abroad, and only made up its mind when our colleague, Talhouët, a member of the delegation to whom the secret documents had been communicated, declared at the Chamber that, as a matter of honour, war was inevitable.
While the Emperor was in his “prison” at Wilhelmshöhe (September, 1870, to March, 1871) he spent the greater part of his time at his desk.[121] In this former palace of his uncle, Jérôme, King of Westphalia, Napoleon III. wrote, from memory, aided by extracts from State papers which someone copied for him, an elaborate statement of his policy during his eighteen years’ reign, so far as it regarded Germany. This very frank apologia (De Persigny having refused to figure as its “author”) was fathered by his old friend, the Marquis de Gricourt, who had been his companion in London when he was awaiting the call which came to him in 1848. That the statement was written by the Emperor himself is guaranteed, in his Memoirs, by General Count von Monts, to whose custody at Wilhelmshöhe the august captive was confided by King William.[122]
General von Monts writes:
“The Press had obtained excessive liberty; the Republican party, the Empress, and the clergy had too much power for the welfare of the Dynasty; and the Emperor damaged himself by obeying the suggestions of several French Ambassadors abroad. That Napoleon himself was also culpable for the war against us [Germany] is a fact which cannot be disputed, inasmuch as we know his letter of July 12, 1870, addressed to Gramont, in which he formulated his exigencies in respect of Prussia, and begged Gramont to explain them to Benedetti. Napoleon never, in my presence, alluded to this letter, but he recognized his culpability by writing, in his brochure, ‘Les Relations de France et Germany sous Napoléon III.’:
‘Toutefois, nous le disons franchement, le devoir de l’Empereur était d’être plus sage que la nation, et d’empêcher la guerre, même au prix de sa couronne.’