on the soil of France.  No one who reads Bismarck’s arguments on this point can fail to notice how they are all nearly conclusive as to Strasburg, but that he scarcely takes the trouble to make it even appear as though they applied to Metz.  Even in the speech before the Reichstag in which he explains and justifies the terms of peace, he speaks again and again of Strasburg but hardly a word of Metz.  He told how fourteen years before, the old King of Wuertemberg had said to him, at the time of the Crimean troubles, that Prussia might count on his voice in the Diet as against the Western Powers, but only till war broke out.

“Then the matter takes another form.  I am determined as well as any other to maintain the engagements I have entered into.  But do not judge me unjustly; give us Strasburg and we shall be ready for all eventualities, but so long as Strasburg is a sally-port for a Power which is always armed, I must fear that my country will be overrun by foreign troops before my confederates can come to my help.”

The King was right; Germany would never be secure so long as Strasburg was French; but can France ever be secure so long as Metz is German?

The demand for Metz was based purely on military considerations; it was supported on the theory, which we have already learnt, that Germany could never take the offensive in a war with France, and that the possession of Metz would make it impossible, as indeed is the case, for France to attack Germany.  It was not, however, Bismarck’s practice to subordinate political considerations to military.  It may be said that France would never acquiesce in the loss of either province, but while we can imagine a generation of Frenchmen arising who would learn to recognise the watershed of the Vosges as a permanent boundary between the two nations, it is difficult to believe that the time will ever come when a single Frenchman will regard with contentment the presence of the Germans on the Upper Moselle.

Even after the preliminaries of peace were settled fresh difficulties arose; the outbreak of the Commune in Paris made it impossible for the French to fulfil all the arrangements; Bismarck, who did not trust the French, treated them with much severity, and more than once he threatened again to begin hostilities.  At last Favre asked for a fresh interview; the two statesmen met at Frankfort, and then the final treaty of peace was signed.

CHAPTER XV.

THE NEW EMPIRE.

1871-1878.

WITH the peace of Frankfort, Bismarck’s work was completed.  Not nine years had passed since he had become Minister; in that short time he completed the work which so many statesmen before him had in vain attempted.  Nine years ago he had found the King ready to retire from the throne; now he had made him the most powerful ruler in Europe.  Prussia, which then had been divided in itself and without influence in the councils of Europe, was the undisputed leader in a United Germany.