The Franco-German War broke upon Europe in July, 1870. Later, it became one of the chief interests of Sir Charles's mind to track out the workings of those few men who prepared what seemed a sudden outburst; here it is important only to outline his attitude towards the combatants. In that period of European history every politician was of necessity attracted or repelled by the personality of the Emperor of the French. In Sir Charles's case there was no wavering between like and dislike: he carried on his grandfather's detestation of the lesser Napoleon. The chapter in _Greater Britain_ which is devoted to Egypt shows this feeling; and when news of Sadowa reached him during his American journey in the autumn of 1866, he wrote home to say that he rejoiced in Prussia's triumph, and hoped "Louis Napoleon would quarrel with the Germans over it, and get well thrashed, with the result that German unity might be brought about." 'This' (he notes in the Memoir) 'is somewhat curious at a time when everybody believed (except myself and Moltke and Bismarck, not including, I think, the King of Prussia) that the French Army was superior to the armies of all Germany.' In coming down the Mexican coast he touched at Acapulco, which was under Mexican fire, as the French still held the bay and city; and he had then, later in 1866, 'begun to hope for the fall of Louis Napoleon, who was piling up debt for France at the average rate of ten millions sterling every year, and whose prestige was vanishing fast in the glare of the publicity given to the actions of Bazaine.' Before Sir Charles returned to Europe in 1867, Maximilian, the Austrian Archduke sent by Napoleon III to be 'Emperor of Mexico,' had fallen, an unlucky victim of French intrigue. But Paris was still the centre of Europe; and the traveller on his way home from Egypt--where he had seen French enterprise opening the Suez Canal, French language and influence dominant--saw Louis Napoleon preside at a pageant, already darkened by the rising storm-cloud: 'Reaching Paris' (in June, 1867), 'I attended the review held (during the Exhibition of 1867) by the Emperors of Russia and of the French, and the King of Prussia, at which I saw Gortschakof, Schouvalof, Bismarck, and Moltke, on the day on which the Pole Berezowski shot at Alexander II. Sixty thousand men marched past the three Sovereigns at the very spot at which, three years later, one of them was, to review a larger German force. The crash was near; Maximilian had been shot. It is, however, not pleasant to contrast the horror with which the news of the execution of the puppet Emperor was received in Europe, with the indifference with which all but a handful of Radicals had regarded the Paris executions of December, 1851.'