Well! Take her.
Conduct her administration, collect her revenues, and you will have to govern her in the face of Europe--if Europe permits[60]." [Footnote 60: G.Hanotaux, _Contemporary France_, vol i.p.124 (Eng.
edit.).

This work is the most detailed and authoritative that has yet appeared on these topics.

See, too, M.Samuel Denis' work, _Histoire Contemporaine_.] Probably this defiance had less weight with the Iron Chancellor than his conviction, noticed above, that to bring two entirely French towns within the German Empire would prove a source of weakness; beside which his own motto, _Beati possidentes_, told with effect in the case of Belfort.

That stronghold was accordingly saved for France.

Thiers also obtained a reduction of a milliard from the impossible sum of six milliards first named for the war indemnity due to Germany; in this matter Jules Favre states that British mediation had been of some avail.
If so, it partly accounts for the hatred of England which Bismarck displayed in his later years.