Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck has contrived…

Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck has contrived to use the issue of the Spanish succession, in which a Hohenzollern prince is a candidate, to provoke France into a belligerent act that will frighten the holdout south German states into joining the Prussian alliance.

The Prussian king had composed a July 13 message to Napoleon III reporting a relatively uneventful meeting with the French ambassador, but Bismarck has edited this so-called Ems telegram to suggest that the meeting had essentially been an exchange of insults.

The French government must therefore either accept a perceived diplomatic defeat or declare war.

Adolphe Thiers, who had been arrested during the December 1851 coup d'état and sent to Mazas Prison, before being escorted out of France, had been allowed to return in the following summer.

His history for the next decade is almost a blank, his time being occupied for the most part on The Consulate and the Empire.

It was only in 1863 that he had reentered political life, being elected by a Parisian constituency.

For the ensuing seven years, he has been the chief speaker among the small group of anti-Imperialists in the French chamber of deputies and is regarded generally as the most formidable enemy of the Empire.

He has made repeated attempts to warn Napoleon III of the Prussian threat, and continues his thus-far fruitless efforts to conclude mutual-defense agreements with other European countries.

While protesting against its foreign enterprises, he has also harped on French loss of prestige, and so helps contribute to stir up the fatal spirit which brings on the war of 1870.