In France, however, a casus belli was being sought against Prussia which should be as free as possible from German national coloring; and it was thought one had been discovered in the dynastic sphere by the accession to the Spanish throne of a candidate bearing the name of Hohenzollern.  In this the overrating of the military superiority of France and the underrating of the national feeling in Germany was clearly the chief reason why the tenability of this pretext was not examined either with honesty or judgment.  The German national outburst which followed the French declaration, and resembled a stream bursting its sluices, was a surprise to French politicians.  They lived, calculated, and acted on recollections of the Confederation of the Rhine, supported by the attitude of certain West German ministers; also by Ultramontane influences, in the hope that the conquests of France, “gesta Dei per Francos,” would make it easier in Germany to draw further consequences from the Vatican council, with the support of an alliance with Catholic Austria.  The Ultramontane tendencies of French policy were favorable to it in Germany and disadvantageous in Italy; the alliance with the latter being finally wrecked by the refusal of France to evacuate Rome.  In the belief that the French army was superior the pretext for war was lugged out, as one may say, by the hair; and, instead of making Spain responsible for its reputed anti-French election of a king, they attacked the German Prince who had not refused to relieve the need of the Spaniards, in the way they themselves wished, by the appointment of a useful king, and one who would presumably be regarded as persona grata in Paris; and the King of Prussia, whom nothing beyond his family name and his position as a German fellow-countryman had brought into connection with this Spanish affair.  In the very fact that the French cabinet ventured to call Prussian policy to account respecting the acceptance of the election, and to do so in a form which, in the interpretation put upon it by the French papers, became a public threat, lay a piece of international impudence which, in my opinion, rendered it impossible for us to draw back one single inch.  The insulting character of the French demand was enhanced, not only by the threatening challenges of the French press, but also by the discussions in parliament and the attitude taken by the ministry of Gramont and Ollivier upon these manifestations.  The utterance of Gramont in the session of the “Corps Legislatif” of July 6: 

“We do not believe that respect for the rights of a neighboring people binds us to suffer a foreign Power to set one of its Princes on the throne of Charles V. * * * This event will not come to pass, of that we are quite certain. * * * Should it prove otherwise we shall know how to fulfil our duty without shrinking and without weakness”—­this utterance was itself an official international threat, with the hand on the sword hilt.  The phrase, La Prusse cane (Prussia climbs down), served in the press to illustrate the range of the parliamentary proceedings of July 6 and 7; which, in my feeling, rendered all compliance incompatible with our sense of national honor.