It is cheerfully admitted by the German historians who are cited in this volume that the train of incidents which produced so well-timed an explosion was scientifically laid by the Prussian chancellor. But they maintain that he was only countermining the underground combinations of the French, who were known to be organising a triple alliance with Italy and Austria for a combined assault upon Prussia; and that the journey of the Austrian Archduke Albert to Paris in March 1870 convinced Bismarck that he had no time to lose, because war must be provoked before these alliances were consummated. And they cite the example of Frederick the Great, who disconcerted the secret preparations of his enemies by the sudden dash upon Dresden which opened the Seven Years' War. This defence of his own very skilful and not less astute manoeuvres was endorsed by Bismarck in a speech before the Chamber in 1876; nor does it appear to us so untenable as M. Ollivier holds it to be. He argues that the fear of being attacked by France, if it had really influenced Bismarck's conduct in 1870, must have been a wild hallucination, for the chancellor must have been well aware that the emperor's policy at that time was decidedly pacific, and that his own (Ollivier's) views were still more so. He assures us that the project of a triple alliance was intended to be exclusively defensive, that it never passed beyond the 'academic' stage, or reached any practical form. The confidential negotiations of 1869 with Austria and Italy had been left, he says, in the stage of unfinished outline, nor was it even suspected either by the French or by the Italian ministry that they had been carried further. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that in 1869 these negotiations had been carried quite far enough to inspire the Prussian chancellor with serious disquietude, if, as is very probable, he had good information of them. We know, from M. Ollivier's very interesting account of what passed at the first meeting of the Cabinet on July 6, when the ministers resolved to announce to the Chamber their determination to resent and resist the Hohenzollern candidature, that the emperor and M. de Gramont regarded the understanding with Italy and Austria as being much more than academic. It is there stated that when Ollivier hesitated to accept Gramont's assurance that the assistance of these two Powers, in the event of hostilities with Prussia, had been virtually secured, the Emperor Napoleon took from a drawer in his bureau certain letters written in 1869 by the Austrian emperor and the King of Italy, and, after reading them aloud, told the ministers that these writings undoubtedly amounted to promises of help in the circumstances that were then actually under discussion. The Cabinet accepted these proofs that the alliances might be reckoned upon as substantial, so that it is not unreasonable to suppose that Bismarck had drawn the same conclusion from the intimations that had reached