As to the great generals, they were wise men, and men of the world. They were expected to study mathematics, as it specially teaches order and harmony; history, which proves that violence and force have never established anything; and many other sciences, which one would have imagined capable of directing their thoughts from their impious career, and rendering them pacific and humane. Toward 1866 a great invention agitated the world. You are ready to believe it was some means of aerial locomotion, or some process for utilizing central heat, or placing our planet in communication with the neighboring ones of Mars and Venus. Alas! no. Such discoveries were not yet ripe; and besides, men of this age had other preoccupations. A small province of the north of Germany, with an erudite and philosophical people, had the honor of giving to the world the celebrated _needle-gun_. Tired of thinking, they relinquished their ideal, to move heavily and noisily under the sun of reality, and set about acting; but instead of inventing a philosophy, they considered a new engine of destruction more creditable, and having tried it with the most magnificent results, they offered to the public the instrument which was entirely to change the map of Europe, break the equilibrium of power, and annihilate all international right. After having laid low several millions of men on the field of battle, this comparatively insignificant people on the borders of the Spree, who until then had won more academical laurels than cannons, and more truths than promises, began to comprehend that they could play a splendid _rôle_, and exercise a preponderating influence in Europe. Formerly they had invented an absolute philosophy; now they invented and practised an absolute policy. And this was the union of the German people, the triumph of Prussian institutions, the decay of the Latin and rise of the Germanic races, and many other changes which only absolute power can effect. These little people on the borders of the Spree awoke to a new life, and determined to take all and absorb all; they threatened Holland; coveted Alsace; were disposed to swallow up Bavaria, the grand-duchy of Baden, and Würtemberg. Other nations were troubled, and justly; for the power of the Germans seemed to them very much like absolutism. So each of them, in great haste, began to perfect their own instruments of death with the faint hope, too, that they might very soon make use of them. Old France, tired of conquests and interior struggles, wished only to rest. Having disturbed the tranquillity of Europe so often, she had come to that age when repose is the chief good; so she feigned ignorance of the insolent aspect and gestures of defiance of her young rival; but unhappily a few judicious men, and many more of an intriguing nature, fools and ambitious ones, were at the head of affairs. These loved war as a golden egg, and birds of prey, we know, derive their sustenance from a field of battle.