This misstatement showed the intention of the French Ministry to throw down the glove to Prussia--as is also clear from this statement in Gramont's despatch of July 10 to Benedetti: "If the King will not advise the Prince of Hohenzollern to withdraw, well, it is war forthwith, and in a few days we are at the Rhine[25]." [Footnote 25: Benedetti, _Ma Mission en Prusse_, p.34.This work contains the French despatches on the whole affair.] Nevertheless, those who were behind the scenes had just cause for anger against Bismarck.

The revelations of Benedetti, French ambassador at Berlin, as well as the Memoirs of the King of Roumania (brother to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern) leave no doubt that the candidature of the latter was privately and unofficially mooted in 1868, and again in the spring of 1869 through a Prussian diplomatist, Werthern, and that it met with no encouragement whatever from the Prussian monarch or the prince himself.

But early in 1870 it was renewed in an official manner by the provisional Government of Spain, and (as seems certain) at the instigation of Bismarck, who, in May-June, succeeded in overcoming the reluctance of the prince and of King William.

Bismarck even sought to hurry the matter through the Spanish Cortes so as to commit Spain to the plan; but this failed owing to the misinterpretation of a ciphered telegram from Berlin at Madrid[26].
[Footnote 26: In a recent work, _Kaiser Wilhelm und die Begruendung des Reichs, 1866-1871_, Dr.Lorenz tries to absolve Bismarck from complicity in these intrigues, but without success.

See _Reminiscences of the King of Roumania_ (edited by S.Whitman), pp.