During the Crimean War, therefore, we were in constant danger of war. The war lasted till 1856, when it was at last concluded by the treaty of Paris, and we found, in the Congress of Paris a sort of Canossa prepared for us, for which I should not have assumed the responsibility, and against which I vainly counseled at the time. We were not at all obliged to play the part of a greater power than we were, and to sign the treaties made there. But we were dancing attendance with the view of being permitted to sign the treaty. This will not again happen to us.
That was in 1856, and as early as in 1857 the problem of Neuchâtel was again threatening us with war. This did not become generally known. In the spring of that year I was sent to Paris by the late king to negotiate with Emperor Napoleon concerning the passage of Prussian troops in an attack upon Switzerland. Everyone who hears this from me will know what this would have meant in case of an understanding, and that it could have become a far-reaching danger of war, and might have involved us with France as well as with other powers. Emperor Napoleon was not unwilling to agree. My negotiations in Paris, however, were terminated because his majesty the king in the meanwhile had come to an amicable understanding in the matter 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 very strong to cut, and thus to heal, his difficult position at home by agreeing to a military undertaking on a colossal scale.