In the period between the Crimean and the Franco-Prussian war, Napoleon pursued a policy, or a series of policies, which fitly illustrate the worst features of secret diplomacy. In 1858 Napoleon III obtained from Cavour a promise that Savoy and Nice should be ceded to France. These arrangements, made without the knowledge or the desire of the French people, involved Napoleon in the war of 1859 and led to a fatal weakening of his position. In 1864 Napoleon secretly suggested to Prussia that she might take Schleswig-Holstein, thus greatly encouraging her to undertake the war of 1864. France at this time was under treaty obligations to Denmark which made such action doubly dishonest. When the war between Austria and Prussia broke out in 1866, Napoleon concluded a secret treaty with Austria which contained a bargain that he would assist Austria to recover Silesia in return for a cession of Venetia to Italy, to compensate the latter for Savoy and thus to eradicate the evil effects of the arrangement of 1858. As this treaty became known, it absolutely alienated Prussia from France. At the same time Napoleon had secretly demanded from Prussia the cession of the Rhenish Palatinate which belonged to Bavaria; this would mean of course that Prussia and France together would first have to take it from Bavaria. Bismarck secretly informed Bavaria of this demand and thus turned her decisively against Napoleon; so that he was enabled to make secret treaties of alliance not only with Bavaria but with Wurtemberg and Baden for their military support in case of war. Napoleon had thus managed unwittingly to bring about the coalition of German states which proved disastrous to him in 1870. Had the French government known of these three German treaties, it would probably have avoided war; as it was, France did not know that she would have all Germany against her. In 1866 Napoleon, through Benedetti, submitted to Bismarck a draft treaty according to which, in case the French Emperor should decide to send his troops to enter Belgium, the King of Prussia would grant armed aid to France and support her with all his forces, military and naval, in the face of and against every other power which might in this eventuality declare war. Though this draft treaty, which became known in Great Britain and caused high excitement there, was not adopted in this form, a secret compact was made between France and Prussia in 1867, one article of which stated that Prussia would not object to the annexation of Belgium by France. The fact that both of these powers had signed the treaty of 1839, guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium, aggravates the noxiousness of this conspiracy. Early in 1870 Napoleon was secretly negotiating with Austria with a view to a joint war against North Germany. The negotiations were in progress when the war of 1870 broke out. Probably Bismarck was informed of what was going on and was therefore the more anxious to face at once what