The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 Part 2

"After the fatal year 1866, the Empire was in a state of decadence."--L. GREGOIRE, _Histoire de France_.

The irony of history is nowhere more manifest than in the curious destiny which called a Napoleon III. to the place once occupied by Napoleon I., and at the very time when the national movements, unwittingly called to vigorous life by the great warrior, were attaining to the full strength of manhood. Napoleon III. was in many ways a well-meaning dreamer, who, unluckily for himself, allowed his dreams to encroach on his waking moments. In truth, his sluggish but very persistent mind never saw quite clearly where dreams must give way to realities; or, as M. de Falloux phrased it, "He does not know the difference between dreaming and thinking[7]." Thus his policy showed an odd mixture of generous haziness and belated practicality.

[7] _Notes from a Diary, 1851-1872_, by Sir M.E. Grant Duff, vol. i. p.

120.

Long study of his uncle's policy showed him, rightly enough, that it erred in trampling down the feeling of nationality in Germany and elsewhere. The nephew resolved to avoid this mistake and to pose as the champion of the oppressed and divided peoples of Italy, Germany, Poland, and the Balkan Peninsula--a programme that promised to appeal to the ideal aspirations of the French, to embarra.s.s the dynasties that had overthrown the first Napoleon, and to yield substantial gains for his nephew. Certainly it did so in the case of Italy; his championship of the Roumanians also helped on the making of that interesting Princ.i.p.ality (1861) and gained the good-will of Russia; but he speedily forfeited this by his wholly ineffective efforts on behalf of the Poles in 1863. His great mistakes, however, were committed in and after the year 1863, when he plunged into Mexican politics with the chimerical aim of founding a Roman Catholic Empire in Central America, and favoured the rise of Prussia in connection with the Schleswig-Holstein question. By the former of these he locked up no small part of his army in Mexico when he greatly needed it on the Rhine; by the latter he helped on the rise of the vigorous North German Power.

As we have seen, he secretly advised Prussia to take both Schleswig and Holstein, thereby announcing his wish for the effective union of Germans with the one great State composed almost solely of Germans. "I shall always be consistent in my conduct," he said. "If I have fought for the independence of Italy, if I have lifted up my voice for Polish nationality, I cannot have other sentiments in Germany, or obey other principles." This declaration bespoke the doctrinaire rather than the statesman. Untaught by the clamour which French Chauvinists and ardent Catholics had raised against his armed support of the Italian national cause in 1859, he now proposed to further the aggrandis.e.m.e.nt of the Protestant North German Power which had sought to part.i.tion France in 1815.

The clamour aroused by his leanings towards Prussia in 1864-66 was naturally far more violent, in proportion as the interests of France were more closely at stake. Prussia held the Rhine Province; and French patriots, who clung to the doctrine of the "natural frontiers"--the Ocean, Pyrenees, Alps, and Rhine--looked on her as the natural enemy.

They pointed out that millions of Frenchmen had shed their blood in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars to win and to keep the Rhine boundary; and their most eloquent spokesman, M. Thiers, who had devoted his historical gifts to glorifying those great days, pa.s.sionately declaimed against the policy of helping on the growth of the hereditary foe.

We have already seen the results of this strife between the pro-Prussian foibles of the Emperor and the eager prejudices of Frenchmen, whose love of oppressed and divided nations grew in proportion to their distance from France, and changed to suspicion or hatred in the case of her neighbours. In 1866, under the breath of ministerial arguments and oratorical onslaughts Napoleon III.'s policy weakly wavered, thereby giving to Bismarck's statecraft a decisive triumph all along the line.

In vain did he in the latter part of that year remind the Prussian statesman of his earlier promises (always discreetly vague) of compensation for France, and throw out diplomatic feelers for Belgium, or at any rate Luxemburg[8]. In vain did M. Thiers declare in the Chamber of Deputies that France, while recognising accomplished facts in Germany, ought "firmly to declare that we will not allow them to go further" (March 14, 1867). Bismarck replied to this challenge of the French orator by publishing five days later the hitherto secret military alliances concluded with the South German States in August 1866.

Thenceforth France knew that a war with Prussia would be war with a united Germany.

[8] In 1867 Bismarck's promises went so far as the framing of a secret compact with France, one article of which stated that Prussia would not object to the annexation of Belgium by France. The agreement was first published by the _Times_ on July 25, 1870, Bismarck then divulging the secret so as to inflame public opinion against France.

In the following year the Zollverein, or German Customs' Union (which had been gradually growing since 1833), took a definitely national form in a Customs' Parliament which a.s.sembled in April 1868, thus unifying Germany for purposes of trade as well as those of war. This sharp rebuff came at a time when Napoleon's throne was tottering from the utter collapse of his Mexican expedition; when, too, he more than ever needed popular support in France for the beginnings of a more const.i.tutional rule. Early in 1867 he sought to buy Luxemburg from Holland. This action aroused a storm of wrath in Prussia, which had the right to garrison Luxemburg; but the question was patched up by a Conference of the Powers at London, the Duchy being declared neutral territory under the guarantee of Europe; the fortifications of its capital were also to be demolished, and the Prussian garrison withdrawn. This success for French diplomacy was repeated in Italy, where the French troops supporting the Pope crushed the efforts of Garibaldi and his irregulars to capture Rome, at the sanguinary fight of Mentana (November 3, 1867). The official despatch, stating that the new French rifle, the _cha.s.sepot_, "had done wonders," spread jubilation through France and a sharp anti-Gallic sentiment throughout Italy.

And while Italy heaved with longings for her natural capital, popular feelings in France and North Germany made steadily for war.

Before entering upon the final stages of the dispute, it may be well to take a bird's-eye view of the condition of the chief Powers in so far as it explains their att.i.tude towards the great struggle.

The condition of French politics was strangely complex. The Emperor had always professed that he was the elect of France, and would ultimately crown his political edifice with the corner-stone of const.i.tutional liberty. Had he done so in the successful years 1855-61, possibly his dynasty might have taken root. He deferred action, however, until the darker years that came after 1866. In 1868 greater freedom was allowed to the Press and in the case of public meetings. The General Election of the spring of 1869 showed large gains to the Opposition, and decided the Emperor to grant to the Corps Legislatif the right of initiating laws concurrently with himself, and he declared that Ministers should be responsible to it (September 1869).

These and a few other changes marked the transition from autocracy to the "Liberal Empire." One of the champions of const.i.tutional principles, M. Emile Ollivier, formed a Cabinet to give effect to the new policy, and the Emperor, deeming the time ripe for consolidating his power on a democratic basis, consulted the country in a _plebiscite_, or ma.s.s vote, primarily as to their judgment on the recent changes, but implicitly as to their confidence in the imperial system as a whole. His skill in joining together two topics that were really distinct, gained him a tactical victory. More than 7,350,000 affirmative votes were given, as against 1,572,000 negatives; while 1,900,000 voters registered no vote.

This success at the polls emboldened the supporters of the Empire; and very many of them, especially, it is thought, the Empress Eugenie, believed that only one thing remained in order to place the Napoleonic dynasty on a lasting basis--that was, a successful war.

Champions of autocracy pointed out that the growth of Radicalism coincided with the period of military failures and diplomatic slights.

Let Napoleon III., they said in effect, imitate the policy of his uncle, who, as long as he dazzled France by triumphs, could afford to laugh at the efforts of const.i.tution-mongers. The big towns might prate of liberty; but what France wanted was glory and strong government. Such were their pleas: there was much in the past history of France to support them. The responsible advisers of the Emperor determined to take a stronger tone in foreign affairs, while the out-and-out Bonapartists jealously looked for any signs of official weakness so that they might undermine the Ollivier Ministry and hark back to absolutism. When two great parties in a State make national prestige a catchword of the political game, peace cannot be secure: that was the position of France in the early part of 1870[9].

[9] See Ollivier's great work, _L'Empire liberal_, for full details of this time.

The eve of the Franco-German War was a time of great importance for the United Kingdom. The Reform Bill of 1867 gave a great accession of power to the Liberal Party; and the General Election of November 1868 speedily led to the resignation of the Disraeli Cabinet and the accession of the Gladstone Ministry to power. This portended change in other directions than home affairs. The tradition of a spirited foreign policy died with Lord Palmerston in 1865. With the entry of John Bright to the new Cabinet peace at all costs became the dominant note of British statesmanship. There was much to be said in favour of this. England needed a time of rest in order to cope with the discontent of Ireland and the problems brought about by the growth of democracy and commercialism in the larger island. The disestablishment and partial disendowment of the Protestant Church in Ireland (July 1869), the Irish Land Act (August 1870), and the Education Act of 1870, showed the preoccupation of the Ministry for home affairs; while the readiness with which, a little later, they complied with all the wishes of the United States in the "Alabama" case, equally proclaimed their pacific intentions. England, which in 1860 had exercised so powerful an influence on the Italian national question, was for five years a factor of small account in European affairs. Far from pleasing the combatants, our neutrality annoyed both of them. The French accused England of "deserting" Napoleon III. in his time of need--a charge that has lately been revived by M. Hanotaux. To this it is only needful to reply that the French Emperor entered into alliance with us at the time of the Crimean War merely for his own objects, and allowed all friendly feeling to be ended by French threats of an invasion of England in 1858 and his shabby treatment of Italy in the matter of Savoy and Nice a year later.

On his side, Bismarck also complained that our feeling for the German cause went no further than "theoretical sympathy," and that "during the war England never compromised herself so far in our favour as to endanger her friendship with France. On the contrary." These vague and enigmatic charges at bottom only express the annoyance of the combatants at their failure to draw neutrals into the strife[10].

[10] Hanotaux, _Contemporary France_, vol. i. p. 9 (Eng. ed.); _Bismarck: his Reflections and Reminiscences,_ vol. ii. p. 61. The popular Prussian view about England found expression in the comic paper _Kladderdatsch_:--

Deutschland beziehe billige Sympathien Und Frankreich theures Kriegsmateriel.

The traditions of the United States, of course, forbade their intervention in the Franco-Prussian dispute. By an article of their political creed termed the Monroe Doctrine, they a.s.serted their resolve not to interfere in European affairs and to prevent the interference of any strictly European State in those of the New World. It was on this rather vague doctrine that they cried "hands off" from Mexico to the French Emperor; and the abandonment of his _protege_, the so-called Emperor Maximilian, by French troops, brought about the death of that unhappy prince and a sensible decline in the prestige of his patron (June 1867).

Russia likewise remembered Napoleon III.'s championship of the Poles in 1863, which, however Platonic in its nature, caused the Czar some embarra.s.sment. Moreover, King William of Prussia had soothed the Czar's feelings, ruffled by the dethroning of three German dynasties in 1866, by a skilful reply which alluded to his (King William's) desire to be of service to Russian interests elsewhere--a hint which the diplomatists of St. Petersburg remembered in 1870 to some effect.

For the rest, the Czar Alexander II. (1855-81) and his Ministers were still absorbed in the internal policy of reform, which in the sixties freed the serfs and gave Russia new judicial and local inst.i.tutions, doomed to be swept away in the reaction following the murder of that enlightened ruler. The Russian Government therefore pledged itself to neutrality, but in a sense favourable to Prussia. The Czar ascribed the Crimean War to the ambition of Napoleon III., and remembered the friendship of Prussia at that time, as also in the Polish Revolt of 1863[11]. Bismarck's policy now brought its reward.

[11] See Sir H. Rumbold's _Recollections of a Diplomatist_ (First Series), vol. ii. p. 292, for the Czar's hostility to France in 1870.

The neutrality of Russia is always a matter of the utmost moment for the Central Powers in any war on their western frontiers. Their efforts against Revolutionary France in 1792-94 failed chiefly because of the ambiguous att.i.tude of the Czarina Catherine II.; and the collapse of Frederick William IV.'s policy in 1848-51 was due to the hostility of his eastern neighbour. In fact, the removal of anxiety about her open frontier on the east was now worth a quarter of a million of men to Prussia.

But the Czar's neutrality was in one matter distinctly friendly to his uncle, King William of Prussia. It is an open secret that unmistakable hints went from St. Petersburg to Vienna to the effect that, if Austria drew the sword for Napoleon III. she would have to reckon with an irruption of the Russians into her open Galician frontier. Probably this accounts for the conduct of the Hapsburg Power, which otherwise is inexplicable. A war of revenge against Prussia seemed to be the natural step to take. True, the Emperor Francis Joseph had small cause to like Napoleon III. The loss of Lombardy in 1859 still rankled in the breast of every patriotic Austrian; and the suspicions which that enigmatical ruler managed to arouse, prevented any definite agreement resulting from the meeting of the two sovereigns at Salzburg in 1867.

The relations of France and Austria were still in the same uncertain state before the War of 1870. The foreign policy of Austria was in the hands of Count Beust, a bitter foe of Prussia; but after the concession of const.i.tutional rule to Hungary by the compromise (_Ausgleich_) of 1867, the Dual Monarchy urgently needed rest, especially as its army was undergoing many changes. The Chancellor's action was therefore clogged on all sides. Nevertheless, when the Luxemburg affair of 1867 brought France and Prussia near to war, Napoleon began to make advances to the Court of Vienna. How far they went is not known. Beust has a.s.serted in his correspondence with the French Foreign Minister, the Duc de Gramont (formerly amba.s.sador at Vienna), that they never were more than discussions, and that they ended in 1869 without any written agreement.

The sole understanding was to the effect that the policy of both States should be friendly and pacific, Austria reserving the right to remain neutral if France were compelled to make war. The two Empires further promised not to make any engagement with a third Power without informing the other.

This statement is not very convincing. States do not usually bind themselves in the way just described, unless they have some advantageous agreement with the Power which has the first claim on their alliance. It is noteworthy, however, that the Duc de Gramont, in the correspondence alluded to above, admits that, as Amba.s.sador and as Foreign Minister of France, he never had to claim the support of Austria in the war with Prussia[12].

[12] _Memoirs of Count Beust_, vol. ii. pp. 358-359 (Appendix D, Eng.

edit.).

How are we to reconcile these statements with the undoubted fact that the Emperor Napoleon certainly expected help from Austria and also from Italy? The solution of the riddle seems to be that Napoleon, as also Francis Joseph and Victor Emmanuel, kept their Foreign Ministers in the dark on many questions of high policy, which they transacted either by private letters among themselves, or through military men who had their confidence. The French and Italian sovereigns certainly employed these methods, the latter because he was far more French in sympathy than his Ministers.

As far back as the year 1868, Victor Emmanuel made overtures to Napoleon with a view to alliance, the chief aim of which, from his standpoint, was to secure the evacuation of Rome by the French troops, and the gain of the Eternal City for the national cause. Prince Napoleon lent his support to this scheme, and from an article written by him we know that the two sovereigns discussed the matter almost entirely by means of confidential letters[13]. These discussions went on up to the month of June 1869. Francis Joseph, on hearing of them, urged the French Emperor to satisfy Italy, and thus pave the way for an alliance between the three Powers against Prussia. Nothing definite came of the affair, and chiefly, it would seem, owing to the influence of the Empress Eugenie and the French clerics. She is said to have remarked: "Better the Prussians in Paris than the Italian troops in Rome." The diplomatic situation therefore remained vague, though in the second week of July 1870, the Emperor again took up the threads which, with greater firmness and foresight, he might have woven into a firm design.

[13] _Revue des deux Mondes_ for April 1, 1878.

The understanding between the three Powers advanced only in regard to military preparations. The Austrian Archduke Albrecht, the victor of Custoza, burned to avenge the defeat of Koniggratz, and with this aim in view visited Paris in February to March 1870. He then proposed to Napoleon an invasion of North Germany by the armies of France, Austria, and Italy. The French Emperor developed the plan by more specific overtures which he made in the month of June; but his Ministers were so far in the dark as to these military proposals that they were then suggesting the reduction of the French army by 10,000 men, while Ollivier, the Prime Minister, on June 30 declared to the French Chamber that peace had never been better a.s.sured[14].

[14] Seign.o.bos, _A Political History of Contemporary Europe_, vol. ii.

pp. 806-807 (Eng. edit.). Oncken, _Zeitalter des Kaisers Wilhelm_ (vol.

i. pp. 720-740), tries to prove that there was a deep conspiracy against Prussia. I am not convinced by his evidence.

And yet on that same day General Lebrun, aide-de-camp to the Emperor, was drawing up at Paris a confidential report of the mission with which he had lately been entrusted to the Austrian military authorities. From that report we take the following particulars. On arriving at Vienna, he had three private interviews with the Archduke Albrecht, and set before him the desirability of a joint invasion of North Germany in the autumn of that year. To this the Archduke demurred, on the ground that such a campaign ought to begin in the spring if the full fruits of victory were to be gathered in before the short days came. Austria and Italy, he said, could not place adequate forces in the field in less than six weeks owing to lack of railways[15].

[15] _Souvenirs militaires_, by General B.L.J. Lebrun (Paris 1895), pp.

95-148.

Developing his own views, the Archduke then suggested that it would be desirable for France to undertake the war against North Germany not later than the middle of March 1871, Austria and Italy at the same time beginning their mobilisations, though not declaring war until their armies were ready at the end of six weeks. Two French armies should in the meantime cross the Rhine in order to sever the South Germans from the Confederation of the North, one of them marching towards Nuremberg, where it would be joined by the western army of Austria and the Italian forces sent through Tyrol. The other Austrian army would then invade Saxony or Lusatia in order to strike at Berlin.

He estimated the forces of the States hostile to Prussia as follows:--

+------------------------------------------------------------------+ | |Men. |Horses. |Cannon. | +-------------------------------+------------+----------+----------+ |France |309,000 |35,000 |972 | |Austria (exclusive of reserve) |360,000 |27,000 |1128 | |Italy |68,000 |5000 |180 | |Denmark |260,000 (?) |2000 |72 | +-------------------------------+------------+----------+----------+

He thus reckoned the forces of the two German Confederations:--

+-------------------------------+------------+----------+----------+ | |Men. |Horses. |Cannon. | |North |377,000 |48,000 |1284 | |South |97,000 |10,000 |288 | +-------------------------------+------------+----------+----------+

but the support of the latter might be hoped for. Lebrun again urged the desirability of a campaign in the autumn, but the Archduke repeated that it must begin in the spring. In that condition, as in his earlier statement that France must declare war first, while her allies prepared for war, we may discern a deep-rooted distrust of Napoleon III.

On June 14 the Archduke introduced Lebrun to the Emperor Francis Joseph, who informed him that he wanted peace; but, he added, "if I make war, I must be forced to it." In case of war Prussia might exploit the national German sentiment existing in South Germany and Austria. He concluded with these words, "But if the Emperor Napoleon, compelled to accept or to declare war, came with his armies into South Germany, not as an enemy but as a liberator, I should be forced on my side to declare that I [would] make common cause with him. In the eyes of my people I could do no other than join my armies to those of France. That is what I pray you to say for me to the Emperor Napoleon; I hope that he will see, as I do, my situation both in home and foreign affairs." Such was the report which Lebrun drew up for Napoleon III. on June 30. It certainly led that sovereign to believe in the probability of Austrian help in the spring of 1871, but not before that time.

The question now arises whether Bismarck was aware of these proposals.

If warlike counsels prevailed at Vienna, it is probable that some preparations would be made, and the secret may have leaked out in this way, or possibly through the Hungarian administration. In any case, Bismarck knew that the Austrian chancellor, Count Beust, thirsted for revenge for the events of 1866[16]. If he heard any whispers of an approaching league against Prussia, he would naturally see the advantage of pressing on war at once, before Austria and Italy were ready to enter the lists. Probably in this fact will be found one explanation of the origin of the Franco-German War.

[Footnote 16: _Bismarck: his Reflections and Reminiscences_, vol. ii. p.