When the unfortunate declaration of war was hurled into the midst of a peaceable Europe sleeping in profound security, it provoked universal stupefaction and disgust. Every state had reduced its contingents, every parliament had terminated its labours, after casting a smiling and satisfied glance at the complete tranquillity of the universe. Every sovereign was making holiday, or reposing with gently closed eyes in the most retired part of his princely residence. Every people was intent on its affairs and preparing, in absolute security, for the peaceful labours of the harvest. The entire universe was tasting the sweets of a general peace and resting in a quietude threatened by no discord. The explosion of the “année terrible” crashed through all these countries, awoke every parliament, stupified every sovereign, and irritated every people. The world was disgusted by the nation which had fired off the sacrilegious cannon and let loose the scourge of war into the midst of a situation which was regarded as the Golden Age of universal peace. It was France that had troubled this beneficent peace. It was France that, without appreciable cause, had provoked the frightful struggle. So much the worse for her if she succumbed to what she had herself unchained without a thought for the general interests of Europe. Such was the opinion, the “state of soul,” as they say nowadays, of Europe at the beginning of the war. France was completely isolated, in the most distressing sense of the word; that is to say, she not only had not a single ally, but not a single sympathiser. All her neighbours, States, sovereigns, and people, even her oldest friends, had turned from her as from a criminal who had destroyed public happiness. But when, after disasters without name and precedent in the glorious history of France, the brave population sprang up again under defeat like a steel blade, when after the war of regular armies there commenced a new war of a people which would not surrender, but insisted on remaining erect and fighting with the broken sword picked up on the battlefield of its conquered armies, which insisted on battling for the honour of life and the integrity of its sacred soil, then her most obstinate enemies admired and saluted a resistance unexampled in history, and contemplated with ever-growing interest the struggle of a scarcely-armed people against the best trained, best led, and most formidable armies which had ever invaded an enemy’s country. France, which had yesterday been found guilty of commencing the war, became in defeat the object of admiration and a living image of the civic virtues; Europe recovered from her irritation and began with an anxious eye to follow and to desire the end of an unequal duel.