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From A J P Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848–1918:

The prelude to crisis sounded in February 1875 when Radowitz, one of Bismarck's confidential agents, went on special mission to St. Petersburg. He seems only to have been concerned to sort out some Balkan disputes; but the French got it into their heads that he had offered German backing in the Near East, if Russia would tolerate a new war against France. Thus the French were primed for a German ultimatum. In March Bismarck forbade the export of horses from Germany--always a routine signal of alarm. In April he inspired a press-campaign with the slogan, 'Is war in sight?' In all probability, he wanted to score off France in order to conceal his own mounting failure in the Kulturkampf. He may even have intended to follow up these threats by the offer of an entente with France, just as he had been reconciled with Austria-Hungary five years after the war of 1866; like other Germans, Bismarck regarded bullying as the best preliminary to friendship. The French did not: they wished to heighten the alarm in order to stir up the other Powers. Their first appeals met with no response from London or St. Petersburg. Alexander II said only: 'If, which I do not think, you were one day in danger, you will soon learn of it ... you will learn of it from me.' On 21 April the French had a stroke of luck. Radowitz, always inclined to be indiscreet after dinner, was carried away in conversation with Gontaut, the French ambassador, and defended the doctrine of a preventive war. Decazes sent Gontaut's account round the courts of Europe and revealed it to The Times as well--a trick as effective as Bismarck's revelation of Benedetti's draft-treaty over Belgium in 1870.
The British and Russians both took alarm. They expostulated with Bismarck--Derby, the foreign secretary, by normal diplomatic methods; Gorchakov by word of mouth, when he visited Berlin on 10 May. Moreover, they co-ordinated their action. Gorchakov sent formal assurance to London that the Russian expansion in central Asia, which was offending the British, would be arrested; and Odo Russell in Berlin was instructed to support the Russian pressure. Derby also tried to draw in Austria-Hungary and Italy, but without effect. Andrassy was delighted at the prospect of an estrangement between Russia and Germany. He made three hand-stands on the table that had once been Metternich's (a practice of his), and exclaimed: 'Bismarck will never forgive it.' The crisis blew over as suddenly as it had started. Bismarck insisted that it was a false alarm, and everyone professed himself satisfied.

Though this was a victory for France, it was a victory of a limited kind. The Anglo-Russian action humiliated Bismarck; but it humiliated him only by asserting the settlement of 1871, which was his work. Neither Russia nor Great Britain had the slightest interest in restoring France to the position which she held before 1870 or even in helping her to recover the lost provinces. Indeed they preferred things as they were.

Essentially the French move, however adroit, was a blunder; Decazes had learnt nothing from either the success or the failure of Napoleon III. The diplomatic history of the Second Empire ought to have taught him that France could get freedom of action on the Rhine only when the Near East was ablaze. The Crimean war had been the origin of all Napoleon's success; and he ran into failure when he refused to support Russia's schemes of revision in the Near East. If Decazes had been more patient, events would have done his work for him. The Near East exploded in July 1875, onty two months after the war-in-sight crisis. In May Russia and Great Britain had dropped their Asiatic rivalries in order to protect France. The crisis had convinced them that France was secure; and they could fling themselves into the Eastern question without giving France any chance of revising the settlement of 1871.

WI the Herzegovinian Rebellion had broken up 2 months earlier, at the time of the war in sight?
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