er with Austria and Switzerland.
But the danger of war, we must agree, was present also during that
year.

While I was on this mission in Paris, the Italian War hung in the air.
It broke out a little more than a year later and came very near
drawing us into a big general war of Europe. We went so far as to
mobilize, and we should undoubtedly have taken the field, if the peace
of Villafranca had not been concluded, somewhat prematurely for
Austria, but just in time for ourselves, for we should have been
obliged to wage this war under unfavorable circumstances. We should
have turned this war, which was an Italian affair, into a
Franco-Prussian war, and its cessation, outcome, and treaty of peace
would no longer have depended on us, but on the friends and enemies
who stood behind us.

Thus we came into the sixties without the clouds of war having cleared
from the horizon for even one single year.

Already in 1863 another war threatened hardly less ominously, of which
the people at large knew little, and which will only be appreciated
when the secret archives of the cabinets will be made public. You may
remember the Polish uprising of 1863, and I shall never forget the
morning calls which I used to receive at that time from Sir Andrew
Buchanan, the English ambassador, and Talleyrand, the French
representative, who tried to frighten me out of my wits by attacking
the Prussian policy for its inexcusable adherence to Russia, and who
used rather a threatening language with me. At noon of the same days I
then used to have the pleasure of listening in the Prussian diet to
somewhat the same arguments and attacks which the foreign ambassadors
had made upon me in the morning. I suffered it quietly, but Emperor
Alexander lost his patience, and wished to draw his sword against the
plotting of the western powers. You will remember that the
French forces were then engaged with American projects and in Mexico,
which prevented France from taking a vigorous stand. The Emperor of
Russia was no longer willing to stand the Polish intrigues of the
other powers, and was ready to face events in our company and to go to
war. You will remember that Prussia was struggling at that time with
difficult interior problems, and that in Germany the leaven had begun
to work in the minds of the people, and the council of the princes in
Frankfort was under contemplation. It may be readily granted,
therefore, that the temptation for my gracious master was