Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/216

 VII THE CAUSES OF THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR

Bismarck revelations are studiously calculated to confuse the central problem of his career, the responsibility for the war of 1870. All the voluminous literature regarding Moltke and Roon ignores the question ; and the significant suppression of the memoirs of Bernhardi, Bismarck's agent in Spain, shows that there is a secret still to be concealed.

Let me illustrate by a curious instance the difficulties that beset the path of a historian. Bismarck relates that Count H———, the Bavarian Master of the Horse, was sent from Versailles to negotiate with the King of Bavaria for the proclamation of the German Empire, and that the emissary travelled to Munich and back without loss of time. The story which these bald words are meant to hide is as follows: After the fall of Bismarck his successor found a deficit of a couple of hundred thousand pounds in the sequestrated Guelphic Fund, which the Chancellor administers beyond the control of Parliament, and he found that the money had gone to Munich. He requested the Bavarian Minister at Berlin to go home at once and find out what it meant. It meant that the King of Bavaria had agreed to propose the erection of the German Empire in return for £15,000 a year, to be paid to him secretly out of the Guelphic Fund, and that his Master of the Horse was handsomely rewarded out of the same 204