its inhabitants, who have strenuously resisted any attempt at absorption
into Germany. France naturally continued to cast envious eyes upon the
small state with the powerful citadel, but no opportunity presented
itself for reopening the question until 1866.

In that year Napoleon III had anticipated that the war between Prussia
and Italy on one side and Austria and the small German states on the
other would be long and exhausting, and would end in France imposing
peace on the weary combatants with considerable territorial advantage to
herself. His anticipation was entirely falsified; the war lasted only
seven weeks and Prussia emerged victorious and immensely strengthened by
the absorption of several German states and by the formation of the
North German Confederation under her leadership. This, the first
shattering blow which the French Emperor's diplomatic schemes had
received, led him to demand compensation for the growth of Prussian
power, and one of his proposals was the cession of Luxemburg to France.

This suggestion had some legal plausibility quite apart from the
question of the balance of power. For the Prussian garrison held
Luxemburg in the name of the German Confederation, which had been
destroyed by the war of 1866; and, the authority to which the garrison
owed its existence being gone, it was only logical that the garrison
should go too. After much demur Count Bismarck acknowledged the justice
of the argument (April, 1867), but it did not by any means follow that
the French should therefore take the place vacated by the Prussians. At
the same time the fortress could not be left in the hands of a weak
Power as a temptation for powerful and unscrupulous neighbours. The
question of Luxemburg was therefore the subject discussed at a Congress
held in London in the following May.