Excerpt from A Diplomat's Memoir of 1870: Being the Account of a Balloon Escape From the Siege of Paris and a Political Mission to London and Vienna
At a time when Englishmen and Frenchmen are brothers-in-arms, a translation of this curious and little known narrative may be of interest.
It is a record of a somewhat remarkable episode in a stormy and remarkable year. It describes, possibly not without the inevitable bias of one sent on a forlorn hope, the necessary refusals of Gladstone and Lord Granville to intervene in favour of France. But, as the writer quite prophetically declares, the surrender of Alsace-Lorraine and the aggrandisement of Prussia were fated to be the inevitable stumbling-block to peace in Europe, and so "not without moment" to England. This we now know only too well. 1870 was to be the prelude of 1914.
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