The attitude of Turkey during the Conference at Constantinople left but the slightest hope of peace.

To prepare for war in such a case is not a proof of a desire for war, but only of common prudence.
Certain writers in France and Germany have declared that Bismarck was the real author of the Russo-Turkish War.

The dogmatism of their assertions is in signal contrast with the thinness of their evidence[120].

It rests mainly on the statement that the Three Emperors' League (see Chapter XII.) was still in force; that Bismarck had come to some arrangement for securing gains to Austria in the south-east as a set-off to her losses in 1859 and 1866; that Austrian agents in Dalmatia had stirred up the Herzegovina revolt of 1875; and that Bismarck and Andrassy did nothing to avert the war of 1877.

Possibly he had a hand in these events--he had in most events of the time; and there is a suspicious passage in his Memoirs as to the overtures made to Berlin in the autumn of 1876.