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 Prince of Prussia, Frederick William, would command the army now mustering in the Palatinate, largely composed of South Germans, sent a thrill of joy through those States.