t
Sybel's reliability was chiefly due. Once admit the value of these
vouchers (and their corroborative weight none can deny), and it
becomes difficult to overrate the importance of Sybel's still
unconcluded "_Begruendung des Deutschen Reiches_."

The reader who for the first time takes cognizance of the contents of
these formidable volumes, is overwhelmed by the amount of attestations
they present him with, by his own inability to refute them, or by
counter statements substitute a truer appreciation of what did really
occur. The dry narrative of mere fact is thus, but the impression it
should produce as of a fact lived through is wanting.

This history of Professor Sybel's is a Prussian one; for which it is
obvious that such extraordinary materials would not have been
furnished him had it not been tacitly understood that his final
verdict must be completely favorable to the Emperor Wilhelm I. and his
powerful minister.

In the curious and wide-spreading complications, whence eventually
resulted the Franco-German war of 1870, there are two distinct parts:
the part before hostilities broke out, and the part after the victory
of the Germans might be inevitably foreseen: the first period counts
in its _dramatis personae_ all the states and all the statesmen of
Europe. From the Crimean War to the cession of Venetia to Italy
through France, there is not an event that is not a connecting link in
a long serpentine chain. At the moment this may have escaped the eye,
but, once fixed in its one perspective of distance, the chain shows
unbroken and all is far less than has been supposed,--occasioned by
any arts, manoeuvres, or intrigues of the chief actors; the vulgar
notions of Prince Bismarck's incessant wiles, or of Louis Napoleon's
base designs against his neighbors may be discarded as relatively
subordinate. The incidents that marked the gigantic game of chess
played (not in Europe only) from the overthrow of the Orleans dynasty
to the death of Friedrich III. and the fall of Bismarck in the winter
of last year were neither the outcome of individual Machiavelianism
nor entirely attributable to chance; both were all but in equal degree
cause and effect. The actors personally in each case replied to the
suggestions of circumstances they had but indirectly helped to bring
about.

From 1848-50 to 1889-90, observe the rapid succession of so-called
"unexpected" events: The rise to the rule of Democracy in France; the
restoratio