In the Senate an outraged Jules Malou proclaimed:  ‘Let us suppose that a Prussian company negotiates or considers a treaty with the ‘Grand Central’ to take over the Aachen to Antwerp line? Would we find a single man in Belgium, of no matter what opinion, who believed it politic, acceptable and useful to allow such a handover? In accepting such an offer, if it was one day done, Belgium, in my opinion, would completely violate its neutrality and essentially harm its material interests.’

Belgium – which proved obliging several years earlier as regards French railway covetousness – would at a stroke no longer be so. It had come to realise the strategic aspect of the affair. Bismarck for his part fiercely denied any German involvement in the planning of the Belgian Act. Dreaming of an Anglo-Prussian alliance against France, he moreover thought of making of this incident an instrument of his own policy. The English government – as was its habit – did not abandon its ‘splendid isolation’, settling for advocating a negotiated settlement. Finally, the French-Belgian talks brought an end to the polemic and economic compensation was granted by Brussels.

Christophe Bechet analyses this Franco-Belgian crisis in depth ‘because historical studies have often neglected its strategic aspects up until now.’ It clearly brings to light the value of controlling the Belgo-Luxemburg rail network in the case of war. And we rarely insist on the fact that the French Eastern Company, after having endured the Belgian refusal, after all obtained important concessions in the Grand Duchy. ‘It is not impossible,’ concludes the historian, ‘that Frère-Orban had allayed a little Berlin’s fears in this affair, in declaring to the Prussian representative to Brussels that he did not know the extent of the negotiations under way concerning the Sterpenich-Wasserbillig line.’ It is true that the liberal minister estimated that French patience had reached its limits in opposing the sale of lines on Belgian territory.

It is also piquant to reveal that one of the reasons for the crushing defeat of Napolean III at Sedan, two years later, in the French-Prussian war, is to be found in the poor use of the railways by the French troops. On the other hand the well oiled machine of the railways across the Rhine contributed to a large extent to the German victory.