A public declaration of hostilities was sent to Berlin, though M. Ollivier tells us that his ministry regarded it as a superfluous formality which they would have preferred leaving to Prussia.
'La déclaration fut libellée d'une manière assez maladroite par les commis des Affaires étrangères, et elle ne fut pas même lue au Conseil. Elle fut communiquée uniquement par la forme et sans discussion aux Assemblées, et envoyée à la Prusse le 19 juillet.'
This perfunctory method of composition is characteristic of the prevailing official atmosphere.
The document was delivered by the French chargé d'affaires to Bismarck, and in the dialogue that followed between the two diplomatists, which M. Ollivier relates in full, we have an excellent sample of the Prussian Chancellor's sardonic and incisive manner. Bismarck asserted that if he had been present at the interviews with Benedetti he might have prevented the war, whereas the king's conciliatory tone at Ems had misled the French ministers into the blunder of using threats and making intolerable demands, until at last they found themselves confronted by a strong Government, backed by the Prussian nation in the firm resolution to defend itself. In reporting this conversation to the Foreign Office the chargé d'affaires said that Bismarck appeared to be sincerely afflicted with regret for the rupture between the two countries, that he evidently saw, too late, his error in having secretly encouraged the Hohenzollern candidature, and that the result of all these unhappy complications had left the well-meaning chancellor inconsolable. Such a candid confession of remorse and regret moved the Frenchman's compassion to a degree that profoundly irritates M. Ollivier:
'Un tel excès de crédulité finit par exaspérer. Et la plupart des diplomates de ce temps-là étaient de cette force. Bien piètre serait l'histoire qui se modélerait sur leurs appréciations.'
We may agree that the sympathy of the chargé d'affaires with Bismarck's ingenuous contrition was ill-bestowed. But the tendency to fix upon French diplomacy a responsibility for national calamities that is much more justly chargeable to the account of the Imperial Government, is somewhat unduly prominent in certain parts of M. Ollivier's otherwise fair and conscientious narrative of the transactions that culminated in the war.