control of the cast-iron bureaucrats of Berlin. The same was even more
true of Saxony, where hostility to Prussia was a deep-rooted tradition;
some of the Saxon troops on leaving their towns even shouted _Napoleon
soll leben_[37]. It is therefore quite possible that, had France struck
quickly at the valleys of the Neckar and Main, she might have reduced
the South German States to neutrality. Alliance perhaps was out of the
question save under overwhelming compulsion; for France had alienated
the Bavarian and Hessian Governments by her claims in 1866, and the
South German people by her recent offensive treatment of the
Hohenzollern candidature. It is, however, safe to assert that if
Napoleon I. had ordered French affairs he would have swept the South
Germans into his net a month after the outbreak of war, as he had done
in 1805. But Nature had not bestowed warlike gifts on the nephew, who
took command of the French army at Metz at the close of July 1870. His
feeble health, alternating with periods of severe pain, took from him
all that buoyancy which lends life to an army and vigour to the
headquarters; and his Chief of Staff, Leboeuf, did not make good the
lack of these qualities in the nominal chief.

[Footnote 37: _I.e._ "Long live Napoleon." The author had this from an
Englishman who was then living in Saxony.]

All the initiative and vigour were on the east of the Rhine. The spread
of the national principle to Central and South Germany had recently met
with several checks; but the diplomatic blunders of the French
Government, the threats of their Press that the Napoleonic troops would
repeat the wonders of 1805; above all, admiration of the dignified
conduct of King William under what were thought to be gratuitous insults
from France, began to kindle the flame of German patriotism even in the
particularists of the South. The news that the deservedly popular Crown