There may be--most
probably there are--facts yet unknown to the public, knowledge of which
would partially justify the conduct of the victor toward the vanquished,
in 1859; but, if we judge from what we know, which is all that any
monarch can demand of the formers of opinion, Napoleon III. was guilty
of a monstrous political and military blunder when he forced a truce
upon Francis Joseph.
There is no evidence that any European power was about to interfere in
behalf of Austria. Prussia, it is true, had taken a stern attitude, and
showed a disposition to place herself at the head of those German States
which were for beginning a march upon Paris at once, though M. le
Marechal Duc de Malakoff was ready with two hundred thousand men to
receive them, and Paris itself was not the feeble place it had been in
1814 and 1815. It is altogether likely that Prussia was, as is usual
with her at every European crisis, shamming. She had no interest in the
maintenance of Austria's territorial integrity, and it was rather late
in the day to assume that Berlin was affected by the mortifications of
Vienna.
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