Casus Belli, an occasion of war, is the reason alleged by one power for going to war with another. It is quite impossible to reduce these causes or reasons to any definite code; enough, that in 1870 King Wilhelm's cold-shoulder to M. Benedetti was a casus belli between France and Germany, and that in 1847 the burning of a Jew's bedstead at Athens was all but one between France and Britain.
Casus Belli
Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Volume 2: Beaugency to Cataract, p. 821
Source scan(s): p. 0838