Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/232

220 his Memoirs: "I am forced to acknowledge that she was the principal author of the war of 1870, if not the only one." She is reported to have said to Moceni, at Florence: "As to the war they accuse me of having provoked, I can only say that it might have saved, that it ought to have saved, the Empire and the Papacy." When Thureau Dangin, the historian and academician, was here, he told me this: " Lebœuf, the Minister of War, inquired whether the Emperor was in a condition to go through a campaign. Ollivier thereupon demanded to see the report of the physicians. The Empress replied that the Emperor suffered from rheumatism, and might be unable to take the field in winter; but that was all. She did not produce the document." Lord Malmesbury writes: "Gramont told me that the Empress, a high-spirited and impressionable woman, made a strong and most excited address, declaring that war was inevitable if the honour of France was to be sustained. She confessed to the Queen, with tears, that she was responsible for the declaration of war." Grant Duff questioned Émile Ollivier on the subject in 1874, but there is nothing about it in his published Diaries. He sent me the suppressed passage, which says that when he asked whether she had been for war, Ollivier answered, Passionnément. Lord Frederick Cavendish saw her at Chislehurst, and the same day he related to a friend of my own at Brooks's that she had admitted it was her war. As my informant did not know that Lord Richard Cavendish lived at Chislehurst, which explains the visit, I attach weight to his testimony, although Lady Frederick declares that her husband never spoke to the Empress. Lastly, Parieu, the President of the Council of State, who was present at the Council referred to by Lord Malmesbury, says that when they were leaving she asked him what he thought of it. He replied that he wished England would do them the service of finding some way out of it. "M. Parieu," said the Empress, "I am much of the same opinion." This is in a published book. But in a private letter he wrote to a person whom I know that her words were, C'est ma guerre à moi.