[30] J. Morley, Life of Gladstone, vol. ii. p. 328.
[31] This version has, I believe, not been refuted. Still, I must look on it with suspicion. No Minister, who had done so much to stir up the war-feeling, ought to have made any such confession--least of all against a lady, who could not answer it. M. Seignobos in his Political History of Contemporary Europe, vol. i. chap. vi. p. 184 (Eng edit.) says of Gramont: "He it was who embroiled France in the war with Prussia." In the course of the parliamentary inquiry of 1872 Gramont convicted himself and his Cabinet of folly in 1870 by using these words: "Je crois pouvoir déclarer que si on avait eu un doute, un seule doute, sur notre aptitude à la guerre, on eût immédiatement arrêté la négociation" (Enquête parlementaire, I. vol. i. p. 108).
[32] Quoted by Sorel, op. cit. vol. i. p. 196.
[33] Benedetti, Ma Mission en Prusse, p. 411.
[34] Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern died at Berlin on June 8, 1905. He was born in 1835, and in 1861 married the Infanta of Portugal.
CHAPTER II
FROM WÖRTH TO GRAVELOTTE
"The Chief of the General Staff had his eye fixed from the first upon the capture of the enemy's capital, the possession of which is of more importance in France than in other countries. . . . It is a delusion to believe that a plan of war may be laid for a prolonged period and carried out in every point."--VON MOLTKE, The Franco-German War.