Chapter III

God alone could contemplate his finished work, and say "that it was good;" our poor humanity rarely tastes such a pure enjoyment, and the _party of action_ in the councils of the second empire scarcely experienced it in consequence of the events of 1866, which it had so powerfully contributed to create. The ambassador of France at the court of Berlin was among the number of the disabused; the achievement of Italian unity only consoled him, very imperfectly in truth, for the profound blow which the calamity of Sadowa had given his own country. His disenchantment was great; but there is nothing like a great and grievous deception to sharpen and refine a mind naturally sagacious; and if Pascal has spoken of a second ignorance, that which comes after knowledge, there is also for certain diplomats a second knowledge, and like a second sight after a passing blindness. One cannot praise too highly the eminent qualities of observation and of judgment which M. Benedetti showed during the last four years of his embassy at Berlin, and, for this epoch of 1867 to 1870, history will fully confirm the testimony which he once thought proper to testify of himself, while protesting before his chief,[118] that during his mission in Prussia he had been "an active, correct, and far-seeing agent."

From 1867, in fact, the ambassador worked with patriotic zeal to enlighten his government on the state of affairs in Europe, and to advise it to make a strong resolution, either to resign itself frankly to the inevitable, or to prepare in good time for a conflict very imminent and full of great perils. He represented Prussia as working without cessation to unite all Germany, at the risk of provoking a conflict with France, inclining only too often to consider such a conflict as the surest and most direct means of arriving at its ends. In such a case, he guarded against giving them the least hope from the _particularists_ of the South. "At the beginning of a national war," he said, "the most obstinate among them will only be extinguished by the masses who will regard the struggle, whatever may be the circumstances in the midst of which it will break out, as a war of aggression of France against their country; and if the fortune of arms were favorable to them, their demands would know no limits." He also noticed "the most active propaganda" which M. de Bismarck maintained in the countries the other side of the Main: "With the exception of some journals in the pay of the governments (of Munich and Stuttgart), or belonging to the ultra-radical party, the press seconds him in all the Southern States." He also sent word to Paris that the minister of William I. continued his negotiations with the revolutionary party in Italy; that he received agents of Garibaldi, unknown to the regular government of King Victor Emmanuel, the personal friend of the Emperor Napoleon III., who, at the time of the complications of Mentana, had only sounded Prussia in order to know "in what measure it could lend it its aid."[119] He was also the first to give warning concerning the shadowy practices with Prim and the Spanish candidature of the Hohenzollern. Lastly, one has already seen that he had recognized from the beginning the alarming character and true bearing of the mission of General Manteuffel to Russia.

"However difficult it may be for a great country like France to trace in advance its line of conduct in the actual state of things," said M. Benedetti to his government at the beginning of the year 1868, "and however great may be the part which it expects to take in unforeseen contingencies, the union of Germany under a military government strongly organized, and which in certain respects has of parliamentary _regime_ only external forms, constitutes, however, a fact which touches too closely our national security to allow us to dispense with preparations, and to solve, without longer delay, the following question: Would such an event endanger the independence or the position of France in Europe, and would not this danger be conjured up only by war? If the government of the emperor thinks that France has nothing to fear from such a radical alteration in the relations of the states situated in the centre of the Continent, it will be desirable, in my opinion, in the interest of the maintenance of peace and public prosperity, to shape entirely and without reserve our attitude according to this conviction. If the contrary opinion is entertained, let us prepare for war without cessation, and let us be well assured in advance of what aid Austria can be to us; let us shape our conduct so as to solve one after the other the questions of the Orient and that of Italy; all our united forces will not be too great to render us victorious on the Rhine."

Especially in his manner of judging of the accord established between the two courts of Berlin and St. Petersburg, M. Benedetti showed a justness and superiority of judgment truly remarkable. He had the merit of foreseeing the understanding from the first moment, and of positively believing in it until the last. In the month of September, 1869, the Emperor of the French had thought of appointing as ambassador to the czar one of his most intimate friends, one of his most devoted cooperators of the 2d December, a general renowned for his bravery and intelligence, a grand equerry. It was sufficient to indicate that they wished to enter into relations as intimate and direct as possible, and in spite of the exchange of telegrams at the festival of St. George, they were already, at the beginning of the year 1870, full of hope; they believed that _the affair was progressing of itself_.[120] The French general, an able man, however, was very quickly taken to the bear hunts, to journeys on sledges, and shown many other marks of august kindness, which he had the modesty to credit to the policy of his master, in place of attributing them with much more reason to his very real and in truth very fascinating personal charms. The conviction of the grand equerry was shared by those surrounding him, especially by his aides-de-camp, who did not delay to praise in their confidential letters addressed to Paris, "the great results obtained" by their chief, and to speak of "his growing favor with the Emperor of all the Russias," in terms very strong and much more military than diplomatic.[121] Without being imposed upon by all these recitals, full of cheerfulness, M. Benedetti did not the less persist in his well founded conviction; even on the 30th June, 1870, on the very eve of the war, he expressed it in a lucid dispatch, from which we will have more than one instructive passage to quote. Speaking of the recent interview (1st-4th June) of the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia at Ems, the ambassador supposes that M. de Bismarck had shown himself then, as generally, on one side favorable to the policy of the cabinet of St. Petersburg in the Orient, and that on the other he endeavored to excite the susceptibility of the czar in the questions which agitate the national sentiment in Russia as regards Austria, Galicia, etc. "While the minister will have undertaken to reassure the emperor on the first of these two points and to alarm him on the other, the king will have displayed that good grace of which he has always known how to make such a marvelous use to capture the sympathies of his august nephew, and I do not doubt, for my part, that they have left impressions in conformity with his desire. But whatever may have been the means which they employed, their object must have been to strengthen the emperor in the sentiments which they have been able to inspire in him, and they have attained it more or less."

M. Benedetti was, however, far from admitting an official arrangement drawn up in due form between the two courts, and above all far from believing that the minister of Prussia had in all sincerity and candor made the cession and abandonment of the Oriental heritage to the hands of his former colleague of Frankfort, and it is precisely in such estimates that the uncommon perspicacity of the French diplomat shows itself. M. de Bismarck could for the necessities of the moment, simulate indifference regarding the affairs of the Levant, affirm that he "never read the correspondence of Constantinople," and even consider the pretensions of Russia "to introduce a certain unity in the intellectual development of the Sclavians, legitimate;"[122] but the extreme care which he used at the same time to maintain the most intimate relations with the Hungarians, his allies of 1866, should have already enlightened the zealots of Moscow concerning the inanity of their dream of a division of the world between the sons of Teut and those of Rourik. "The Hungarians regard us, us Prussians, as their mediate protectors against Vienna in the future," wrote, in a confidential dispatch, Baron de Werther in the month of June, 1867, on his return from the coronation of Buda, to reassure the cabinet of Berlin on the recent enthusiasm of the Magyars reconciled with their "king;" it is not only against Vienna, it is still much more against Moscow and St. Petersburg, against any Sclavic preponderance on the banks of the Danube, that the children of Arpad will in the future have aid from the Hohenzollern. "Prussia has no rightful interests in the Orient," M. de Bismarck was pleased to say in the years 1867-1870, and the organ of M. de Katkof did not cease to repeat this remark so often commented on; but from the day when Prussia identified itself with Germany, or rather incorporated itself in it, it remained charged, under pain of forfeiture, with the Germanic interests and influences in the countries of the Danube and of the Balkan, and the interest then became greater, much greater, than that of France and England.

All this was very well understood by the ambassador of France to the court of Berlin, and from time to time keenly exposed in the dispatches which he addressed to his government during the last years of his mission in Prussia. Writing, in his report of the 5th January, 1868, of the complaisance with which the chancellor of the confederation of the North always lent himself to the views of Prince Gortchakof, M. Benedetti added, however: "He (M. de Bismarck) persuades himself without doubt that other Powers have an interest of the first order in preserving the Ottoman empire from the covetousness of Russia, and he abandons the care of it to them; he knows, moreover, that _nothing can be definitely accomplished there without the aid or the adhesion of Germany, if Germany is united and strong_; he believes, then, that he can, for the present, and without peril, himself sharpen the ambition of the cabinet of St. Petersburg, provided that he obtains in return for this condescension a kind withdrawal from everything which he undertakes in Germany."

"In the Orient," wrote the ambassador some time after (4th February, 1868), "M. de Bismarck is careful to preserve a position which does not bind him in any way, and permits him, according to the necessities of his own designs, to give the hand to Russia, or to ally himself with Occidental Powers; but he can only preserve this position by abstaining from any proceeding which would compromise him with the friends or the adversaries of Turkey." This reasoning was not long in being fully justified by the attitude of Prussia, during the conference of Paris, on the subject of Greece (January, 1869). The cabinet of Berlin did not share in the ardor of Alexander Mikhailovitch; it did not defend, as he did, persecuted innocence in the person of "the young Roumania," and of the Servian _Omladina_, and above all was careful to denounce the great conspiracy of England, France, and Austria against the peace of the Levant. In reality the minister of Prussia did not wish the death of the just Osmanli, still less the collapse of Hungary, the advance guard of the Germanic "mission" in the East;[123] and his sympathies for a "certain ideal unity" of the Sclavians grew cold in proportion as the hour of the real unity of Germany approached. "Any conflict in the Orient will put it under the influence of Russia," wrote the French diplomat the 27th January, 1870, "and he will seek to excite it; he tried it last year at the beginning of the Graeco-Turkish trouble. _Russia is a card in his game_ for the eventualities which may arise on the Rhine, _and he is particularly careful not to change the roles_, not to become himself a card in the game of the cabinet of St. Petersburg."

Some months after, on the very eve of the war with France (30th June, 1870), M. Benedetti, while thinking that the ties between Russia and Prussia could only have been drawn closer in the recent interview of Ems, concluded by the following observations: "It must not be supposed, however, that M. de Bismarck thinks it opportune to connect his policy closely with that of the Russian cabinet. In my opinion, he has not contracted and is not disposed to make any engagement which might, while compromising Prussia in the complications of which Turkey will become the scene, draw France and England closer together, and create difficulties for him or weaken him on the Rhine. The kind feelings of the chancellor of the confederation of the North for Russia will never be of a nature to limit his liberty of action; _he promises in fact more than he means to do_, or, in other words, he seeks the alliance with the cabinet of St. Petersburg to gain for himself the benefit of it in case of a conflict in the Occident, but with the well-fixed resolution never to engage the resources or the forces of Germany in the Orient. I have also always been persuaded that no official arrangement has been concluded between the two courts, and we can certainly believe that they did not consider that at Ems."

Everything, in fact, leads us to believe that neither a treaty was signed there, nor conditions discussed; the commonalty of views and the harmony of hearts dispensed with a fatiguing discussion of details. Moreover, it would have been very difficult, in all the useless cases, to make stipulations _en regle_ for the eventualities, the time of whose appearance is not known, of which it is impossible to calculate the distant consequences, or even the immediate effects. They contented themselves with the conviction that they had no opposite interests; that, on the contrary, they were congenial and sympathetic, and that it was understood that at the propitious moment each one would be for himself and God for all. It must also be acknowledged that the Russians, in their views concerning the Orient, are not exempt from certain _mirages_. Europe credits them with much more method than they have in reality: the sentiment is profound and tenacious, but the plans are as wavering as they are different and vague. One might say that this great people suffer in this regard rather from a fascination and almost a fatality which prevents them from pursuing a systematic conquest; it advances on the phantom which possesses it only to make it recoil. It is a matter worthy of notice that Russia is never so far removed from the goal as when it undertakes to force the _denoument_. In 1829, a few halting places only separated its armies from Constantinople, and they turned back. It lost, in 1854, all the fruit of its campaign in Hungary, and of its ascendency in consequence of the catastrophe of February, while its prospects were never as brilliant as on the day when the treaty of Paris expected to close the Black Sea to it. It lost Sebastopol, but it gained the Caucasus and a whole world on the banks of the Amour and the Syr-Daria. The temptation became then very natural in presence of the formidable conflict which since 1867 was preparing in the centre of Europe, rather to await events than to wish to regulate them and to prescribe their course. In a war between the two strongest Powers of the Continent, which promised to be as long as desperate, and which in the end might well equally exhaust the two adversaries and draw several other states into the lists, Russia--thus they surely thought on the banks of the Neva--would always find the opportunity and the means of saying its word and securing its booty. Such a line of conduct seemed entirely marked out for a chancellor to whom so much good fortune had already come while "meditating;" it recommended itself to a policy which only measured the infinity of its aspirations by the uncertainty of possible events. The infinity of desires accommodates itself in case one can do nothing better with the indefinite in the designs, and nothing at times gives such a false impression of depth as emptiness.

It was cruelly ironic of the founder of German unity to choose in each of his successive enterprises an accomplice who was to become his victim in the following undertaking; but he showed, also, his great superiority in having had each time a very clear aim, a well-defined object marked out, and, so to speak, tangible, while his partners allowed themselves to be drawn in, one after the other, in the perilous game, under the impulse of abstract principles, vague desires, and cloudy combinations. At the time of the invasion of the Duchies and his first attempt against the equilibrium of Europe, M. de Bismarck was certainly not at a loss to show his aim: the prey was in reach of his hands, and the roadstead of Kiel spread itself in all its splendor before whoever had eyes to see; but M. de Rechberg is still seeking for it to-day, and to make the motives of his cooperation in this work of iniquity acceptable. "He tried to master the demagogic passions, to gain the ascendency over the revolution,"--these are the pompous and sonorous phrases taken from the "doctrine" with which later the former Austrian minister was to seek to cover up before the Austro-Hungarian delegations his fatal and pitiful policy of 1863. At Biarritz, the president of the Prussian council demanded in very clear terms the line of the Main for his country, while the dreamer of Ham recommended "the great war for the German nationality," and let his undecided glance fall first on the right bank of the Rhine and Mayence, then on the limits of 1814, and only fixed it on the winged lion of St. Mark. From 1867 to 1870, the chancellor of the Northern Confederation resolutely made preparations for the unification of Germany and the conquest of Alsace and Lorraine, leaving to his former colleague of Frankfort perfect leisure "to awaken the echoes of the Orient," and to demand of them the key to the approaching destinies of Russia. In each of these fatidical circumstances, the same great _realist_ is always leading the ideologists to different degrees and to different titles: it is always the same Fortinbras of Shakspere,--the _fort en bras_ of Germany,--proclaiming his dominion where the doctrinary, melancholy, or word-making Hamlets have only lost their way in chimerical and puerile machinations, and, before a "murder which cries out to heaven," find no other words than,--the time is out of joint!

"Russia cannot feel any alarm at the power of Prussia,"[124] said Prince Gortchakof, in reply to the representations which were made him from the beginning of the Hohenzollern affair on "the danger which would result to Russia from the aggrandizement of Prussia, and from the extension of its influence in Europe." As to the Spanish candidature of the Prussian prince, the chancellor recalled that "when Prince Charles of Hohenzollern became (in 1866) sovereign of Roumania, with the support of France and in spite of Russia, this latter had limited itself to remonstrances, and had then accepted the fact, he did not see why to-day Prussia could be more responsible for the election of another member of the royal family to the throne of Spain." Thus spoke the minister of the czar at the very beginning of the conflict, the 8th July, 1870, before the renunciation of Prince Anthony, before any exhibition of anger on the part of the cabinet of the Tuileries, and at the moment when Europe still thought well of the legitimate susceptibilities of France. However, when the hour of blindness and giddiness came, and when the government of Napoleon III. lost all the profit of a great diplomatic success by its provoking language before the legislative body, by its demands of Ems, and its fatal declaration of war (15th July), illusions could no longer be cherished concerning the true sentiments of the cabinet of St. Petersburg. "With all due deference to General Fleury," wrote with humor M. de Beust to Prince de Metternich, the 20th July, "Russia perseveres in its alliance with Prussia so far, that in certain eventualities the intervention of the Muscovite arms must be looked upon not as probable, but as _certain_." Soon after the declarations of war of the 15th July, the Russian government had addressed to Vienna the very clear and categorical notice that it would not allow Austria to make common cause with France. General Fleury was even soon to think himself lucky with having at least made sure that this invalidating clause touching the empire of the Hapsburg was not explicitly mentioned in the declaration of neutrality which the Emperor Alexander II. published the 23d July.[125]

"Russia has done us much harm," said the Duke de Gramont, in regard to this interdicting command to Austria.[126] It weighed equally on the court of Copenhagen and forced it to neutrality, in spite of all the enthusiasm of the unfortunate Scandinavian people for an alliance with which was connected a French plan of a landing in the North, an enterprise of the greatest strategical interest, General Trochu said, who was to have taken part in it. "Russia," thought with an official journal of the country, the ambassador of the United States at St. Petersburg, "has contributed more to the neutrality than any other nation; by its menaces it has forced Austria not to move, and it has succeeded, by the influence of the emperor and the hereditary prince, in hindering Denmark from taking part with France."[127] England, it is just to add, powerfully seconded in all this the Russian chancellor. It was more prejudiced than ever against France, thanks to the recent and terrible revelations of M. de Bismarck concerning the _dilatory negotiations_ in August, 1866, on the subject of Belgium. It was evident that for the pleasure of Prince Gortchakof the conflagration came much too soon. The military preparations of Russia were not made; even the perfectly "moral" action on the Sclavic world had undergone a rest since the conference on the subject of Greece. M. de Bismarck had not exactly consulted the convenience of his colleague on the Neva. As M. Benedetti had predicted, he had taken care not to invert the _roles_ and thought only of his own convenience and opportunities; but Alexander Mikhailovitch did not the less apply himself to play his _role_ according to his strength. A sagacious observer, the ambassador of the United States, already mentioned, wrote about this time from St. Petersburg to his government: "The general opinion here seems to be that, if Russia were ready, it would declare war and try to gain certain advantages from it.... The government is making great efforts to prepare for future events. The cartridge factories work night and day. An order for a hundred Gattling cannon has just been sent to America." They armed, they deterred or intimidated the probable allies of France, thinking thus to equalize for the moment the chances between the two belligerents,[128] and they still hoped to find more than one favorable opportunity in the midst of the numerous events of a war which Napoleon III. himself proclaimed must be "long and difficult."

The terrible disasters of France in the beginning of the campaign suddenly arrested the imaginations in their flight and dissipated the sublime vision of a "new Graeco-Sclavic world," which since 1867 had haunted the minds of those on the banks of the Moscova and the Neva. With the marvelous political and _realistic_ aptitude which distinguishes it, the Russian nation soon understood that for the moment any crusade in the Orient was impossible, that the destiny of the world was being decided at the foot of the Vosges, and that it must attend to the most urgent and reasonable claims. A curious phenomenon, the peninsula of the Balkan was never as relatively quiet, as little tormented by the "great idea" as during these years 1870-1871, during this "intestine dissension in Europe" which Fuad-Pacha when dying had so feared for the empire of the Osmanlis. Towards the end of the month of August, still before the catastrophe of Sedan, public opinion in Russia cared only for the displeasing article of the treaty of Paris on the subject of the Euxine. "Russia," said an influential journal of St. Petersburg,[129] "has not hindered the forced unification of Germany, and, in its turn, _it does not dream of the forced unification of the Sclavians_; but it has the right to demand that its position on the Black Sea and the banks of the Danube be ameliorated. We hope that its legitimate demands will be taken into consideration in the European congress which will probably follow the present war." A European congress! that was in truth the only logical issue, however unreassuring in such grave events, disturbers of the equilibrium of the world; and it must render this justice to the greater part of the Russias, that they have the true appreciation of the situation, and aspire to a _role_ as legitimate as honorable. They wish to attain a satisfaction of _amour-propre_; but they did not wish to sacrifice France and the general interests of the Continent to it; the little question was in their eyes only the corollary of the great. At Constantinople one did not augur otherwise from the line of conduct which the cabinet of St. Petersburg undoubtedly pursued, although dreading it. On the 2d September, Mr. Joy Morris, minister of the United States to the Porte, wrote to his government that the general conviction on the Bosphorus was that Russia would profit by the crisis to bring about the revision of the treaty of 1856. "It would be strange if it did not succeed in it," added the "Yankee" diplomat, "seeking, as it will, to obtain honorable conditions of peace for France, and exercising a dominating influence on the regulations of the terms of peace." Unfortunately, and for the first time in his long and popular reign at the chancellor's palace, the "national minister" divorced himself on this occasion from the sentiment of the nation, and in place of acting as "a good European," according to the favorite expression of M. de Talleyrand, he sought above all to show himself the good friend of his former colleague of Frankfort. He took care to renounce the question of the Black Sea,--he owed his country this little consolation after such great mistakes,--but he resolved to separate two causes which public opinion in Russia demanded to have united; and it demanded it with an idea much more politic than generous, in an instinct much more sensible for the vital interests of the future than for the satisfaction more or less lively of the present moment. He thought that he could not better serve the Russian cause on the Euxine, than in injuring as much as possible the cause of Europe in Alsace and Lorraine, and he endeavored above all to let France and Prussia fight out their quarrel in single combat. Immediately after the first French disasters, he seized with _empressement_ the ingeniously perfidious idea of the _league of neutrals_, originally an Italian idea, naturalized in England by Earl Granville, and soon became in the hands of the Russian chancellor, as was very acutely remarked, the most efficacious means to "organize impotence in Europe." M. de Beust had vainly essayed, _while adopting the principle_ of the English proposition (19th August) to change the character of it, to make it the point of departure of a concerted intervention; he demanded "efforts not separated, but common in view of a mediation," in place of a ridiculous conception which only "leagued" the states to prevent any collective proceeding. "The combination which the minister of Austria then suggested," wrote on this subject a judicious historian, "was repeated again and again by him during the whole duration of the war. If it had been adopted, it would have changed the course of things. One can say that it is for this reason that Europe did not adopt it."[130]

It is for this reason that Prince Gortchakof especially opposed it from the first day to the last. There was a moment when England itself felt some qualms of conscience and showed a wish for mediation. That was at the beginning of the month of October, after a circular of M. de Bismarck had announced to Europe the conditions of peace of Germany, which were Alsace and Lorraine. "The ambassador of Prussia communicated this circular to the Russian government, and Prince Gortchakof abstained from making his impressions known. Sir A. Buchanan said to him then, that at London they were disposed to be governed in a certain measure by what was done at St. Petersburg. The chancellor replied simply that Prussia, not having asked of him his opinion, he had not given it.[131] Earl Granville had the, for him, extraordinary courage to return again to the charge, and Sir A. Buchanan read to the Russian chancellor a memorandum timidly asking "if it would not be possible for England and Russia to arrive at an agreement concerning the conditions under which peace could be concluded, and then to make, with the other neutral Powers, an appeal to the humanity of the King of Prussia, also recommending moderation to the French government." Prince Gortchakof gave to those overtures a dry and disdainful reception. Prussia, said he, has indicated its conditions of peace; a victory alone can modify them, and this victory is not probable. Confidential conversations between England and Russia will be then without object; common representations would always have a more or less menacing character. Isolated action of each of the neutral Powers before the King of Prussia is preferable.[132] Isolated action! Alexander Mikhailovitch was not moved, and for Russia this action was summed up in several personal letters addressed by the august nephew to his royal uncle, very charming letters, which recommended peace, justice, humanity, and moderation, and to which the conqueror of Sedan always replied affectionately, with a moved heart and with tears in his eyes, pleading his duties to his allies, his armies, his people, and his frontiers.[133] It was this "policy of euphemism," as the historian has so well called it, which they did not cease to practice, during the entire war, on the banks of the Neva, towards General Fleury as well as towards M. Thiers and M. de Gabriac, and the last word as well as the first thought of "action" of Prince Gortchakof was to leave France alone with its conqueror, alone till exhaustion, _usque ad finem_. It is known in what terms this end was announced at St. Petersburg. "It is with inexpressible feeling and returning thanks to God," the Emperor of Germany telegraphed from Versailles to the Emperor of Russia, on the 26th February, 1871, "that I announce to you that the preliminaries of peace have just been signed. Prussia will never forget that it owes to you that the war has not taken extreme dimensions. May God bless you for it. Your grateful friend for life."

"Long and disastrous" was this war, alas! as the unhappy Caesar had well predicted, long enough at least to let Europe measure all the depth of its abasement, and "to give it all the time to blush at nothing," according to the strong expression of the poet. Still more humiliating, perhaps, than this abasement, is the thought of the perfect similarity of the two terrible catastrophes which succeeded one another in the interval of scarcely four years; in producing its second tragedy so soon after the first, destiny was sufficiently disdainful to our generation not to even change the procedure or bestow any care on the imagination. The work of 1870 was only the exact copy of that of 1866. You will take the Orient, M. de Bismarck said at St. Petersburg, through General Manteuffel, as on the shore of Biarritz he had told the Emperor Napoleon III. to take Belgium, always making the same gift of the property which did not belong to him, the same gracious gift of the fruit defended by the dragon. The dreamers of Moscow believed in a _new era_, in a new "Graeco-Sclavic-Roumanian world," as Napoleon III. had thought of a Europe remodeled after the principle of nationalities. "Russia will not feel any alarm at the power of Prussia," Prince Gortchakof declared at the beginning of the Hohenzollern affair, exactly as the zealots of the _new right_ had affirmed of France on the eve of the campaign of Bohemia. In both of the terrible years they had counted on the events and opportunities of a war, slow and of divers fortunes; they had even made it a study to derisively equalize the chances of the belligerents, and the surprise and the fright were not less great at St. Petersburg after Reichshoffen and Sedan than it had been at Paris after Nahod and Sadowa. The military preparations were wanting in Russia in 1870, as in France in 1866, and after the one as after the other of the calamities which desolated and overturned the world, they had only egotistical and petty thoughts; they prevented designedly any collective intervention, they aided Prussia in _freeing itself from all European control_; in a word they sacrificed the policy of justice, preservation, and equilibrium to a calculation as false as sordid, and which the great humorist of Varzin had one day called the _politique de pour-boire_.

The Russian chancellor, it is just to acknowledge, was happier after Sedan than Napoleon III. had been after Sadowa: he had his Luxemburg, he could proclaim the abrogation of Article II. of the treaty of Paris, "the abrogation of a theoretical principle without immediate application," as he himself said in an official document.[134] One knows the judgment which at that time the cabinets gave on this "conquest" purely nominal in reality, and extremely small in any case in proportion to all those which Alexander Mikhailovitch had allowed to his former colleague of Frankfort. He succeeded, but not by legitimate means, by that action of _eclat_ and equity which one had hoped for in Russia, dreaded at Constantinople; he did not provoke the revision of the treaty of 1856, in "seeking to obtain honorable conditions of peace for France and in exercising a dominating influence on the regulation of the terms of peace."[135] He chose precisely "the psychological moment" of the defeats of France, of the disorder of Europe and of the gloomy shock to public right, to give it in his turn a humiliating blow, a _telum imbelle_, but not _sine ictu_. He freed himself and his own chief from an engagement contracted with the Powers, as he had freed his friend of Berlin from any control of Europe. "The procedure of Russia," said Earl Granville, in his remarkable dispatch of the 10th November to Sir A. Buchanan, "breaks all the treaties: the object of a treaty is to bind the contracting parties one to the other; according to the Russian doctrine, each party submits all to his own authority, and holds himself bound only to himself."

At the beginning of the year 1868, an eminent man whom the disasters of his country were soon to restore to the political life which the second empire closed to him, rose even here[136] with passionate eloquence against "the growing mistrust of this elementary right which honor and good public sense have called the faith of treaties." "We see," said he, "creating itself every day under our eyes, a fruitful jurisprudence whose rapid development does not astonish those who know what force false principles borrow from and lend in turn to the passions which they favor. Only a few years ago they imposed on this unilateral resilition of reciprocal treaties some conditions which made the usage of them more legitimate, or at least more rare and less perilous. They still wished greatly to admit that, in case one state should want to repudiate a treaty signed by representatives regularly accredited, it should be necessary that in its interior one of those great overturnings of institutions, persons, and things should be effected which is called a revolution. A revolution was a sheriff's summons by which a nation made known to whom it should concern its intention to put itself into bankruptcy and to no longer pay its debts. This was, it seems to me, a sufficiently great facility, but the last form of new right does not find it sufficient to its taste. The formality of a revolution is embarrassing and costly to carry out. A change of ministry, or, better still, a vote of parliament causes less inconvenience. Nothing more will be necessary henceforward in order that a convention in which God, honor, and conscience have been taken to witness the past year be trampled under foot the following year."

Well! we have lived through enough, since the time when an honest conscience uttered this cry of alarm, to see foreign jurisprudence arise without even the formality of a revolution, of a change of ministry or a vote of parliament, to hear it proclaimed by the minister of a regular absolute monarchy, by a Russian chancellor. It is true that the Italians also then hastened to profit by the misfortunes of France, to break in their turn a solemn engagement made with it in a public document, that in 1870 they had even anticipated Prince Gortchakof in a proceeding well known to them; but it was not from a government born yesterday that the successor of Count Nesselrode should have borrowed the procedures. There was a day when Alexander Mikhailovitch reproached this very government with _moving with the revolution to reap the heritage of it_.[137] Since then he has also moved with the revolution,--with one of the most audacious, most violent revolutions which has ever overturned thrones and kingdoms; he has reaped no heritage from it, it is true (it is only too often so in life, as one knows), he only accepted from it a gracious legacy, a legitimate donation, a modest gift in fact, and out of proportion to services rendered, but which was not the less sullied with undue influences, and which injured the right of the third parties, the right of nations.

How otherwise great and glorious might have been the "conquests" of Alexander Mikhailovitch, if, inspiring himself, in the month of October, 1870, with the legitimate ambition of the Russian people, the "national minister" had brought about a concerted action of Europe in order to produce peace between France and Germany, and to regulate the troubled affairs of the Continent! "We have always been of the opinion," wrote M. de Beust, on the 10th September, to St. Petersburg, "that it is for Russia to take the initiative." Its great influence abroad, its security in the interior, its good relations with the conqueror, assigned to it in truth such an initiative, and certainly neither Austria, Italy, nor England would have hesitated to range themselves under its banner. There was no necessity for a menacing intervention, nor even for that armed neutrality which M. Disraeli recommended:[138] the wish firmly expressed by all the Powers of the Continent would have fully sufficed. They could have thus limited the losses of France, given to Germany a less formidable organization, more in harmony with the aspirations and liberal occupations of our century,--the great vassals of the new emperor would not have failed to lend their aid to it,--a general disarmament would have given to a generation cruelly tried, and which now cannot even rest in its sterility, a reparative and a fruitful work. And who would dare to doubt that after such services Russia would not have obtained of Europe the grateful abrogation of that onerous article of the treaty of 1856? France would certainly not have thought of opposing it; Austria would not have maintained a clause which it had combated from the beginning, and which, four years before, it had solemnly declared to be "only a question of _amour-propre_," whose gravest interests demanded the sacrifice; as to England, it is well known that in course of time it accommodates itself to everything. How much such a benefit procured for humanity by a monarchical government, absolute indeed, would have given force to the cause of order and preservation, of rejuvenation of monarchical principles! with what prestige it would have surrounded the Russian people; what imperishable splendor it would have attached to the name of Alexander II! The call of destiny was very manifest; the _role_ as plain as easy: the successor of Count Nesselrode shrunk from it. It was only a sin of omission, if you will, but of that sort which the sublime lover of justice Alighieri did not pardon when they were committed against his ideal of _justitia et pax_. On such a sin he inflicted the name of _il gran rifiuto_.

FOOTNOTES:

[100] Dispatch of Count de Muelinen to Baron de Beust, 30th December, 1866.

[101] Dispatch of M. de Beust to Baron de Prokesch at Constantinople, January 22, 1867.

[102] "What alarms me the most, is the considerable change which the pacification of the provinces of the Caucasus has given to the situation of Russia. I have no doubt that in future possibilities the most serious attacks of the Russians will be directed against our provinces of Asia Minor." Thus Fuad-Pacha expresses himself at the beginning of 1869 in his political testament addressed to the sultan.

[103] Remarks of the Emperor Nicholas to Sir Hamilton Seymour. For the rumors concerning Thessaly and Epirus, see especially the dispatch of Fuad-Pacha to the ambassadors at Paris and London, 27th February, 1867.

[104] Benedetti, _My Mission in Prussia_, p. 249.

[105] "I wish very much that you would send your carriage before my door, but on the condition that you get in at my house," one of the predecessors of M. de Moustier said wittily to M. de Budberg, at the Hotel of the Quay d'Orsay, some years before, but in the same way in which Russia encouraged the advances of the cabinet of the Tuileries, at the same time that it carefully avoided any positive engagement with it.

[106] The preliminaries of Nikolsburg as well as the treaty of Prague had stipulated the retrocession to Denmark of the northern districts of Schleswig after a popular vote. One knows that Prussia up to the present has evaded the execution of this engagement.

[107] M. de Beust wrote concerning these military conventions with a resigned _finesse_: "An alliance established between two states, one of which is weak, the other strong; an alliance which has no particular text, but which should be permanently maintained for all the eventualities of war, is not of a nature to create a belief in an _international, independent existence_ of the weak state."--Dispatch to Count Wimpffen, at Berlin, 28th March, 1867.

[108] See Appendix.

[109] Speech of the assistant secretary of state, Mr. Fox, at the banquet given by the English Club of St. Petersburg to the mission extraordinary from the United States in 1866.

[110] Circular of M. de La Valette, 16th September, 1866.

[111] See the _Revue des deux Mondes_ of the 1st September, 1867: "The Congress of Moscow and the Pan-Sclavic Propaganda."

[112] It emanated directly from the ministry of the interior, was written in French, and destined to "enlighten" foreign opinion on the facts and deeds of the Russian government.

[113] See, on this subject, the English, French, and Austrian parliamentary documents of the year 1868, and especially the reports of the agents of Austria at Iassy and Bucharest.

[114] Appendix to the dispatch of the Consul de Knappitsch to Baron de Prokesch at Constantinople, Ibraila, 14th August, 1868.

[115] Dispatch of Sir A. Buchanan to the Earl of Clarendon, 19th December, 1868.

[116] Official journal of the Russian empire, 12th December, 1869.

[117] One can read this remarkable document, which bears the date of the 3d January, 1869, in the interesting pamphlet of M. J. Lewis Farley, _The Decline of Turkey_, London, 1875, pp. 27-36.

[118] Private letter to the Count Daru, 27th January, 1870.

[119] See, on this subject, the curious dispatch of the 10th November, 1867. The correspondence of Mazzini with M. de Bismarck during the years 1868 and 1869, suggesting the plan of overthrowing Victor Emmanuel if this latter became the ally of the Emperor Napoleon III., has been brought to light only very recently, after the death of the celebrated Italian agitator.

[120] Confidential letter of M. de Verdiere, St. Petersburg, 3d February, 1870. _Papers and Correspondence of the Imperial Family_, vol. i. p. 129.

[121] "The Emperor of Russia has taken the general in great favor; he takes him continually on bear hunts, and makes him travel with him on a f... in his one-seated sleigh. That is the height of favor, and I think that politics are in a good condition."--Confidential letter of M. de Verdiere, 25th January, 1870. _Papers and Correspondence_, vol. i. p. 127.

[122] Expressions of the _North German Gazette_ (principal organ of M. de Bismarck) of the 20th July, 1867, on the occasion of the congress of Moscow.

[123] _Drang nach Osten._

[124] Dispatch of Sir A. Buchanan, St. Petersburg, 9th July, 1870. For the details of these years, 1870-71, we can only refer the reader to the very instructive work of M. A. Sorel, _Diplomatic History of the Franco-German War_, Paris, Plon, 1875, 2 vols. We have only two reservations to make in regard to a book written with as much sincerity of investigation as loftiness of mind. The author shows a pronounced weakness for "the diplomacy of Tours," and limits in much too great a degree the original views of Prince Gortchakof in his connivance with Prussia since 1867.

[125] Dispatches of Sir A. Buchanan of the 20th and 23d July. Valfrey, _History of the Diplomacy of the Government of National Defense_, vol. i. p. 18.

[126] _France and Prussia_, p. 348.

[127] Dispatch of Mr. Schuyler to Mr. Fish, St. Petersburg, 26th August. General Trochu, _Pour la verite_, p. 90.

[128] Prince Gortchakof was far from having at the beginning absolute confidence in the victory of Prussia; he told M. Thiers more than one _piquant_ detail on this subject. Deposition of M. Thiers before the commission of inquiry, p. 12. In an interview, towards the end of July, with a political personage whom he knew to be in relation with Napoleon III., he even let these words fall: "Tell the Emperor of the French to be moderate." Valfrey, vol. i. 79.

[129] The _Golos_, quoted in the dispatch of Mr. Schuyler, 27th August.

[130] A. Sorel, _Diplomatic History_, vol. i. p. 254. Let us quote the passage from another dispatch of M. de Beust, dated the 29th September, and destined for London: "Let us not fear to say it: what to-day serves powerfully to prolong the conflict to the extreme horrors of a war of extermination, is, on one side illusions and false hopes, on the other indifference and contempt for Europe, spectator of the combat."

[131] A. Sorel, _Diplomatic History_, vol. i. p. 402.

[132] Report of Sir A. Buchanan of the 17th October.

[133] It was only the simple recommendation of an armistice, with no other design of influencing what might be the conditions of peace, that Prince Gortchakof declined to make common cause. M. d'Oubril, his minister at Berlin, found himself at the last moment without instructions on this subject. "It is singular enough," wrote Lord Loftus, on the 26th October, "that Russia, after having in many circumstances, proved its desire for peace, thus stands aside and prefers isolated to common action."

[134] Dispatch of Prince Gortchakof to Baron Brunnow at London, November 20, 1870.

[135] Dispatch of Mr. Joy Morris of the 2d September, quoted above.

[136] See the _Revue des deux Mondes_ of the 1st February, 1868 ("The Diplomacy and the Principles of the French Revolution," by M. le Prince Albert de Broglie).

[137] Note to Prince Gagarine at Turin, 10th October, 1860.

[138] Speech on the 1st August, in the House of Commons.