Two Chancellors Part 10

[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 circ.u.mstances, 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.

VI.

TEN YEARS OF a.s.sOCIATION.

On the 9th January, 1873, Napoleon III. pa.s.sed sadly away from the land of exile at Chiselhurst, and a short time after, the 27th March, William I. entered on the sixty-sixth year of a life in which a.s.suredly the most extraordinary favors of fortune have not been wanting. Germany celebrated the _fete_ of its new emperor with transports of joy, the more noisy and sincere since the monarch had waited for this anniversary to ratify a last convention with the government of Versailles, a convention which a.s.sured the antic.i.p.ated payment of the fifth milliard of the French ransom, and the very early return of the troops of occupation from the other side of the Vosges. The great accounts with _the hereditary enemy_ thus definitely settled, the conqueror of Sedan thought, on his part, of acquitting himself of a little debt of the heart: he resolved to carry to the Emperor Alexander II. the expression of his lively grat.i.tude for the loyal aid which he had lent him during a memorable period of trials and combats. Long foreseen, from time to time announced and put off, the journey to St. Petersburg was at length undertaken at the beginning of pleasant weather, and M. de Bismarck took care to state precisely on this occasion the date as well as the character of the close a.s.sociation of interests established between Russia and Prussia, and which became so fatal to the Occident. "The commonalty of views,"--thus the official organ of the German chancellor expressed itself,[139]--"which brought about the alliance of Prussia and Russia in 1863, at the time of the Polish insurrection, was the point of departure for this present policy of the two states, which, on the occasion of the great events of the last years, has affirmed its power.

Since the att.i.tude of Russia in the question of Schleswig-Holstein, up to the important proofs of sympathy given to Germany by the Emperor Alexander during the last war, all has concurred to render this alliance still more firm."

By a sort of historical fiction which confounds the reason not a little, but which a sovereign will imposes on acts and even public monuments in Russia, the campaign of 1870 did not cease to be exalted in the official spheres of the empire of the czars as the continuation of the work of 1814, as the final episode of "that great epoch when the united armies of Russia and Prussia fought for a sacred cause which was common to them both."[140] At the Kremlin, in the splendid hall consecrated by the Emperor Nicholas to the military glories of the country, and which is the _arc de l'Etoile_ of Holy Russia, the foreign tourist is astonished to see glittering now in letters of gold on the marble the names of Moltke, of Roon, and other captains of Germany who shone in the last war against France.[141] And the conqueror of Sedan might imagine that he was still in the midst of his subjects in traversing in 1873 the vast Muscovite plains: from the frontier to the Gulf of Finland the journey was an uninterrupted succession of triumphs and ovations. At each depot where the imperial train stopped a guard of honor was in waiting, and played the German national song; the czar came to meet his august guest to Gatchina, and the 27th April the two sovereigns entered the capital of Peter the Great. The skies were gloomy and cold, and the sun refused to lighten "the city of wet streets and dry hearts," as one of its poets has called it; but human industry did all that was possible to supply the place of nature, and make amends for the irreparable outrage of the climate. "All the green-houses of the capital, without excepting those of the imperial gardens," says an eye-witness,[142] "were literally devastated to improvise around the gates and windows a spring which, r.e.t.a.r.ded in our North, only arrived with summer," and the rich carpets suspended from the ledges or stretched along the edifices gave to the boreal city the joyous aspect of the city of lagoons. "The perspective of Izmalovsky, the perspective of Voznessensky, the Grande-Morskaa, formed a sort of continuous alley of draperies of the Russian, German, and Prussian colors. On a great number of balconies, one saw in the midst of the verdure and the flowers the busts of the two monarchs crowned with laurel. The facade of the great stable Preobrajensky was ornamented with a number of standards surrounding a colossal cross of that military order of Saint George of which his majesty the Emperor William is the oldest knight and the only grand ribbon." The crowd pressed close to the pa.s.sage of the guests from Berlin; the unreserved Prince de Bismarck and the taciturn Count de Moltke especially attracted the eyes of the spectators.

For twelve days there was an endless succession of reviews, parades, tatoos, illuminations, b.a.l.l.s, _raouts_, banquets, concerts, and gala representations. Among the latter, the chroniclers mention the two splendid ballets of the "Roi Candaule" and "Don Quixotte." The people had also their part in the rejoicings, especially on the evening of the 29th April, at the gigantic festival of the Place du Palais. The two sovereigns were present at the immense balcony concert above the piazza of the castle. "On their arrival, five electric suns all at once lighted the square with such intensity that one could distinguish the features of all the spectators, and the orchestra struck up the national Prussian hymn. The total number of musicians was 1,550, in addition to 600 trumpets and 350 drums. After the hymn the "March of King Frederick William III." was played; then came a whole series of military marches, the "March of Steinmetz," the "Watch on the Rhine," the "March of the Garde of 1808," to the music of which the Russian regiments returned to St. Petersburg after the campaign of Eylau, and the "March of Paris,"

which the allied armies heard in olden times at the time of their triumphal entry into the capital of France. The military prayer, "G.o.d is great in Zion," also produced an immense effect." One can hardly explain how, in the midst of music entirely consecrated to the G.o.ds Mars and Vulcan, the sweet romance of Weber, ent.i.tled "The Praise of Tears,"

could be introduced, unless it was a discreet homage rendered to the well known sensibility of the old Hohenzollern, and of which many speeches, letters, or telegrams bear in history authentic traces. This easily impressionable character of the sovereign of Germany was visible as far as was necessary at St. Petersburg; it showed itself especially at the moment when the two monarchs made their adieux in the imperial _salons_ of the depot of Gatchina. In order not to succ.u.mb to his emotion, William I. had to leave the _salon_ brusquely; his head bent forward, his features contracted, he went out with hasty steps and reached the car _without turning round_.

However, if during this sojourn of the Prussian guests on the banks of the Neva all the honors were for the uncle of the czar, the curiosity of the public, panting and almost feverish, willingly turned, one may be sure, to the extraordinary minister whose uniform of the white cura.s.siers set off his imposing stature--to this chancellor of Germany who, in the short s.p.a.ce of a l.u.s.trum, had founded an empire on the ruins of two others. One had not had time to forget at St. Petersburg the grumbling diplomat, who from 1859 to 1862 astonished and amused the Russian society by his slanders against his own court, by his pleasantries on the "old fogies of Potsdam" and the "Philistines of the Spree," and who occasionally repeated the famous _mot_ of M.

Prudhomme--the _mot_: "_If I were the government!_"--he who was to laugh at it the first. He was the government at this time, he was even the master of Europe; and his star had dimmed the star of a Hapsburg, of a Napoleon! The subject gave rise to more than one touching reconciliation, to many a _piquant_ reminiscence, and there was room also for futile remarks for the _plerisque vana mirantibus_ of which the immortal historian speaks in presence of any prodigious change of fortune. In presence of the man of the five milliards, the great ladies at the winter palace remembered a certain amba.s.sadress ten years before, who one day boldly declared that she could not pay forty silver roubles for early asparagus, who another day avowed in all candor that she owed her new diamond ear-rings only to the exchange of a valuable snuff-box, an old gift of the Prince of Darmstadt.[143] The amba.s.sadress was the wife of Prince de Bismarck, then baron, prince to-day, a good prince too, and having lost nothing of his former affability. He was easy, playful, earnest, as at the time of his mission in Russia; he inquired for friends, acquaintances, small or great people whom he had known formerly, and seemed to renew relations and conversations as if interrupted only yesterday. The statesman disappeared entirely, to show only the courtier and the man of the world, and it was only in his relations with Prince Gortchakof, a sagacious observer tells us, that he laid aside the foreign minister, and only appeared as the companion, almost as the compatriot. He showed him the deference of an affectionate friend towards his elder,--of a disciple towards the master, said the flatterers, without thinking of evil, without thinking, above all, on the _discipulus supra magistrum_ of whom Alexander Mikhalovitch, a good Latinist himself, perhaps thought.

They often appeared thus in public, at numerous _fetes_ and receptions, side by side, the one towering above the crowd with his strongly-marked head, the other also easily recognizable by his fine, _spirituel_, and rather sharp features. According to that ingenious court etiquette of which the good Homer has given the first precept, in making Diomede and Glaucus exchange their brilliant armor, the Russian minister wore the insignia of the black Eagle of Prussia, and the Prussian minister the insignia of St. Andrew of Russia,--and this exchange of ribbons involuntarily recalled the commonalty of ties which had for so long united these ill.u.s.trious diplomats. Such a cordial, unalterable understanding between two statesmen directing two different empires, was a.s.suredly a rare phenomenon, well calculated to excite attention, and which, during the pompous solemnities of St. Petersburg, did not cease, in fact, to occupy reflective minds. They sought in vain in the past for the example of a harmony of action as constant and glowing: certain political friendships celebrated in history, those among others of Choiseul and Kaunitz, of Dubois and Stanhope, or yet of Mazarin and Cromwell, were only evoked an instant to be immediately recognized as deceptive souvenirs, apparent a.n.a.logies only. No one, however, disregarded the considerable, decisive influence which the accord between the two chancellors has had on the recent destinies of Europe; nor did any one doubt the prodigious benefit which M. de Bismarck has been able to draw from this juncture in his bold enterprises: the opinions began to differ only when there was a question of settling the accounts of Russia, of fixing well the profits brought to the empire of the czars by this a.s.sociation of ten years, the most turbulent ten years which the Continent has known since the day of Waterloo.

According to the ideas of some, there was only advantage and gain for the people of Rourik, in the situation created by the immense events of Sadowa and Sedan. They showed the humiliating treaty of 1856 torn up, Austria punished for its "treason" at the time of the Crimean war, France sunken and weakened, England a resigned spectator of the progress of General Kaufman at Bokhara, and Russia recovering its ancient prestige, tasting in all quiet the vengeance, that pleasure of the G.o.ds and of the great favorites of the G.o.ds like Alexander Mikhalovitch. Is there not in truth, was said, a marvelous fortune, an imposing unity in the career of this minister who, at the conference of Vienna, had sworn to take revenge for the abas.e.m.e.nt of his country, and who has so well kept his word? Is there not a grand Nemesis in the successive chastis.e.m.e.nt of these proud "allies" who, in 1853, had undertaken the defense of the crescent against the cross of St. Andrew, who, ten years later, had dared to raise the question of Poland? At the present time Austria and France are rivals in flattering, obsequious conduct before the so decried "barbarian of the North," England solicits of him a _modus vivendi_ in central Asia; and this enviable and glorious position Russia has obtained without conflict, without sacrifices, only by _meditating_, developing its interior prosperity, and letting its neighbor act alone, its secular, tried friend, whose devotion has never been doubted. It is only just that Prussia should reap the fruits of its valor and its fidelity, and the well known sentiments of the Emperor William towards the czar, the family ties which have so long united the two courts; lastly, the destinies, so distinct and yet so connected, of the two states, are certain gages of a future, permanent, and immovable understanding. How many times has Prussia solemnly declared that it has no interest in the Oriental question. The day when the question of the succession of the Osmanli arises, the Hohenzollern will prove his grat.i.tude to the Romanof. The little jealousies and the little rivalries have had their day, like the little states and the little artifices of influence and of the balance of power: the future is for a rational policy based on the nature of things, the reality of geography, the h.o.m.ogeneity of races; and this policy a.s.signs to Russia and Germany their respective _roles_ and corollaries. In point of view of general principles, we can only rejoice that the sceptre of the Occident has escaped a turbulent, volcanic nation now making Jacobin, now ultramontane propaganda, but always revolutionary, to pa.s.s into the hands of a well-ordered, hierarchical, and disciplined state, as it is.

Lastly, Sadowa and Sedan were Protestant victories over the first two Catholic Powers, and the contest in which M. de Bismarck engaged against the Roman Curia is only the logical consequence of this great fact of history; but without even sharing certain ideas, widely spread however, of a possible fusion of the Protestant and Orthodox beliefs, it is not for the church of Photius, in any case, to take umbrage at the mortal blow given to the Vatican.

To such justifications, in which neither convincing arguments nor sharp touches were wanting, those dissenting opposed objections inspired by a patriotism equally sincere, but much less hopeful. Also admiring the facility and prompt.i.tude with which Russia has arisen from its great disaster of the Crimea, they pretended only that this great result had been obtained long before the advent of M. de Bismarck, long before any a.s.sociation with him, and that from the year 1860 the empire of the Rourik had retaken the great position which it deserved in Europe, when the sovereigns of Austria, Prussia, and so many of the princes of Germany had come to salute the czar at Warsaw, to recognize his moral supremity, and that Napoleon III. on his part sought his friendship and accepted his arbitration. The great ability with which Prince Gortchakof used the "French cordiality" for the good of Russia, without giving up any essential interests, and without compromising the conservative and traditional principles of his government, always remained one of his greatest claims to the grat.i.tude of his country, and it would have been desirable had he preserved the same moderation, the same reserve, later in this intimacy with Prussia, which on the occasion of the Polish insurrection had replaced the former understanding with the Tuileries.

The successor of Nesselrode exaggerated, without doubt, the bearing and the danger of the famous _remonstrances_ on the subject of Poland, as well as the nature of the services, very selfish as a whole, which his friend of Berlin then rendered him; in any case, that was certainly not a reason to pout at Europe after the affair had turned out to the striking advantage of the Russian government, to pout at it during long years, to wish no other ally than Prussia, and to persist, in respect to this last Power, in the constant policy of let-go, let-do, and let-take.

This was in general the profound misfortune of the fifteen or twenty last years,--thought these enlightened patriots,--that rancor and bad humor had played such a great _role_ in the grave affairs of the world: sad sentiments surely, and from which the present chancellor of Germany has alone been able to preserve himself! It was through anger at the conduct of the cabinet of St. Petersburg in the Italian question, that Austria took under its protection the insurgents of Poland; it was through bad humor towards England in the question of the congress that Napoleon III. abandoned the cause of Denmark, and Alexander Mikhalovitch yielded to such motives more than to any others; he was the first to practice this "policy of spite" with his imaginary grievances against Austria in the war of the Orient, as he was also not the last to cherish a certain "_policy de pour-boire_" with his _league of the neutrals_ which hindered any concerted action of the Powers.

What happy opportunities for the preservation of Europe, for the glory of his nation and the splendor of his august master, has not the Russian chancellor let pa.s.s through love for Prussia: in the spring of 1867, when France and Austria offered him such large concessions in the Orient; in the autumn of 1870, when England and Austria solicited him to take the initiative in the work of peace! What illusions also in that belief, that Prince Gortchakof has sacrificed nothing during those ten years of a.s.sociation with his formidable colleague! Was the port of Kiel, the key of the Baltic, delivered into the hands of the Germans, nothing? Was that nothing, the dismemberment of the Danish monarchy, the country of the future empress? Was the va.s.salage of Queen Olga nothing?

The overturning and spoliation of so many reigning families allied by blood to the House of Romanof, the loss of the independence of these secondary States always so devoted and so faithful to Russia? Lastly, was this profound overturning of the ancient European equilibrium, and the unmeasured, gigantic aggrandizement of a neighboring Power, nothing?

"Greatness is a relative thing, and a country can be diminished, while remaining the same, when new forces acc.u.mulate around it."[144] These words, which Napoleon III. heard on the day after Sadowa, Russia could well apply to itself, since the day of Sedan, for a.s.suredly no one would wish to pretend that the abolition of Article III. of the treaty of Paris is the equivalent of the forces acc.u.mulated by Prussia in the centre of Europe. As to the _hopes_ in the Orient, they are very contingent, like every speculation of heritage: the _sick man_ has already so many times deceived the expectations of his doctors, one can no longer count the mortal crises which should have carried him off, and perhaps it is not Russia that should complain of this prolongation of the agony. It is still a question in truth if Russia is now in a position to take care of the succession, if it is sufficiently supplied with implements for such a vast establishment; if, in a word, it has all its military and financial strength, as well as all the administrative _personnel_ indispensable to advantageously occupy the domains as various as extended. It cannot take possession of European provinces like the countries along the Amour and Syr-Daria; it runs the risk of finding more than one ungovernable Poland among those peoples of the Danube and the Balkan; and the unity of the law, the uniformity of the _svod_, will not be so easy to establish in the countries where, side by side, the most incongruous inst.i.tutions have flourished from the _regime_ of the cimeter to that of the parliament. Will not the transformation of Turkey transform, however, in turn the Muscovite people, and will not history on this occasion be careful to repeat the great and pathetic lessons of _Graecia capta_? Will Russia still be Russia the day when it rules the Oriental peninsula, and can an empire bathed by the blue waves of the Bosphorus preserve its capital on the icy banks of Finland? Grave and obscure problems before which it is allowable to stop, to conceive apprehensions and doubts. What is not doubtful, on the contrary, is that at the destined hour Prussia will make its conditions and will stipulate its compensations. It will not be a debt of grat.i.tude which it will think of paying then, it will be a new bargain which it will make. Will it demand as the price of its consent, Holland, Jutland, or the German territories of Austria? the frontier of the Vistula, or the provinces of the Baltic?

But who knows if this prolonged drama of Turkish decadence is not yet destined to receive a _denoument_ little or not at all foreseen, yet very original and nothing less than illogical. The publicists and the patriots of Berlin do not speak to-day of the mission of Austria in the countries of the Danube and the Bosphorus, which they say is called by Providence to strengthen in these countries German interests, to bring there "German culture." Since the great day of Sedan, especially, exhortations and summons are not wanting to this Power "to seek its centre of gravity elsewhere than at Vienna," in short, to justify its secular name of _Ostreich_, and to become an empire of the East, in the true meaning of the word. A monarchy constantly menaced with the early loss of its Germanic possessions on the Leitha may at length be brought to try the experiment, when, above all, care is taken to present to it this experiment as a necessity and as a virtue; a state which has never been strongly centralized, and which has always oscillated between dualism and a federal system more or less definite, will even have a great chance to appear to Europe as the most proper outline of this medley of races, of religions, of inst.i.tutions, which stretches from the Iron Gates to the Golden Horn. An _empire of the East_ of Germanic traditions and influences on the Bosphorus, more to the South a kingdom of Greece enlarged by Thessaly and Epirus, lastly, in the North a Germany completed in its unity by the Cisleithan provinces,--that will be something to fully content the world, not excepting England. We must acknowledge, one solution of the formidable Ottoman question is like another, and every hypothesis, every fantasy, has the right to appear, when one touches this fantastic world of the Orient, and that world not less mysterious and terrible which the great recluse of Varzin carries in his head.

What, in any case, is not within the domain of hypothesis and fantasy, what unfortunately is only a too evident and palpable reality, is, that in place of this "combination purely and exclusively defensive," as Prince Gortchakof one day so justly called the old _Bund_,--in place of a league of peaceful states, all devoted friends of Russia, and forming for it a continual succession of ramparts,--the empire of Alexander II.

now sees before it, firmly settled all along its frontier, a formidable Power, the strongest Power of the Continent, ambitious, avaricious, enterprising, and having henceforward the undoubted mission of defending against it what they have agreed to call the _interests of the Occident_. This Power can always excite the Polish question, if it wishes to, according to its wants, and quite differently than the cabinets of Paris and London would do it: has not the argument for such a "_coup au coeur_" been very warmly sustained in 1871, by certain Hungarian statesmen in the confidence of the Prussian minister? The conduct of the government of Berlin at the time of the last insurrection of Warsaw did not injure it in the future: the pa.s.sionate speeches of M.

de Bismarck in 1849 against the revolt of the Magyars did not prevent him from arming, many years later, the legions of General Klapka. We cannot at least deny the Prussian plans in 1863 on the left bank of the Vistula, "the natural frontier;" now, do not the friends of Berlin occasionally insinuate that this would be the most efficacious means to end the spirit of Polonism? They do not speak of the provinces of the Baltic, as before Sadowa they repudiated all thoughts of ever wishing to free the Main; but the Teutonic effervescence from Courland and Livonia goes on increasing, and to what grievous sacrifices will the Hohenzollern not resign himself when he thinks that he hears a voice from above, the voice of "German brothers?"

Certainly it would have made the prince regent tremble in 1858, if any one had spoken to him then of a war against a Hapsburg, and of a companion in arms named Garibaldi; he ended, however, by accepting the hard necessity, and he gave the signal for a fratricidal combat, with grief in his soul and tears in his eyes. Is it not puerile, however, to measure the destinies of nations by the life, more or less long, of this or that sovereign? An emperor can reign in Germany who has neither affection for, nor the remembrance of Alexander II.; he can raise up "a Pharaoh who knows not Joseph," to speak with Holy Writ, and then there is something stronger in the world than czar and emperor: the necessity of history, the fatality of race. A formidable race that of these conquerors of Sadowa and Sedan, whose invading and conquering minds have from the beginning survived all transformations and accommodated themselves to all disguises! Humble, and at the same time presumptuous, temperate and prolific, expansive and tenacious, practicing with persistence their old proverb, _ubi bene, ibi patria_, and nevertheless always preserving a rough attachment for the _mother country_, the Germans infiltrate every country, penetrate all regions, disdain no corner of the habitable world. They have their friends and relations on all the thrones and in all the offices of the world; they people the industrial centres of Europe and the solitudes of the far West; they decide the presidential elections in the United States; they furnish the largest contingent of the high administrative _personnel_ in the empire of the czars, and the remembrance is still recent of that statistic of the Russian army, which, in 100 superior officers, counts eighty of German origin.[145] So Germany appeared before the great strokes of fortune of 1866 and of 1870, before the era of _iron and blood_, before M. de Bismarck had awakened in it the secret of its strength, had said to it the magic word, _tu regere imperio populos_! Is it necessary to recall now the hatred which the Germans have always borne against the Sclavic name, the extermination which they lately vowed on the Elbe and the Oder; and does not the mind recoil in terror before a new conflict of the two races, to-day more probable than ever? It is allowable to treat all these apprehensions as boyish dreams, hollow thoughts of _literati_ and professors; but the eminent men, the serious men, the _augures_ and _aruspices_ of politics, have they in our day treated otherwise many a formidable problem? Have they not used the same language on the question of Schleswig-Holstein and the German pretensions to Alsace, in regard to the unity of Italy and the plans of the _National Verein_? That would be a curious chapter of contemporaneous history to write, that of the _Diplomats and Professors_, and which could well show that of these two respectable bodies the most pedantic and the most ideological is not exactly the one which a vain people thinks.

Is there not,--the same persons continue, more careful of the interests of the present and the future than of the unseasonable reminiscences of the past,--is there not ideological force, for instance, in the manner of a.s.similating the two epochs of 1814 and 1870, and of saluting in Field Marshal Moltke the continuator of the work of Koutouzof? At the time of the memorable war of which the burning of Moscow had given the heroic signal, it was all Europe that arose against an insolent master and bore deliverance to states trodden and ground down by a universal dominion. Was it the same in the last conflagration? and can one not rather say that it was France, on the contrary, that fought at this moment for the equilibrium of the world and the independence of kingdoms, trying to repair by a tardy and badly conceived effort a series of culpable errors, but from which it was not the only one to suffer? Different in their motives, the two epochs scarcely resemble each other more as to ways and means. It was "a war by means of revolutions" that the Prussian minister had early announced to M.

Benedetti, and he has kept his word; he had regards, attenuations, _comprehensions_ for the _commune_ difficult to justify; now he openly protects the Republican _regime_ in France against any attempt at restoration, thus sacrificing the monarchical principle and the highest considerations of European order to a purely selfish and vindictive calculation. That is not the spirit which animated the allies of 1814; the magnanimous Alexander I. especially understood differently the duties of sovereigns and the solidarity of conservative interests. And what a severe judgment would the Emperor Nicholas have given on every _ensemble_ of the policy of Berlin, on that regeneration of Germany which has not ceased to be the revolution from above, from the federal execution in Holstein up to the arrest of the syndics of the crown; from the destruction of the _Bund_ up to the overturning of the dynasty of the Guelphs; from the formation of the Hungarian legions and the close relations with Mazzini to the _Kulturkampf_ against the Catholic Church!

That we may not be deceived in fact, we can still say it is the revolution alone which finds its profit in the war made to-day in Germany on Catholicism, and very great, very _nave_ is the illusion of those who flatter themselves with seeing Protestant or Orthodox ideas, the religious spirit in general, benefited by the losses of Papacy. It suffices to cast a glance on the great battalions of the _Kulturkampf_ to recognize their G.o.d; they bear on their banners very clearly the sign under whose name they expect to conquer. Are these sincere Protestants, these _evangelical men_ for whom the Gospel is a truth, who first rush to the a.s.sault or who only follow it with their wishes and their prayers? a.s.suredly not; all those who from the Reformation have not kept the name in vain, but the strong doctrine, openly repudiate this dissension, while sighing in their souls. They have the just feeling that in our epoch, so overturned, so profoundly disturbed by the genius of negation, religious interests are conjointly responsible between them just as well as conservative interests. Those eager for the combat, the zealots "filled with the divine spirit," are precisely those who admit neither divinity nor spirit, who have no other positive religion than positivism; and it is not in them surely that Luther resuscitated would wish to recognize his children. The great adversary of Rome in the sixteenth century held on to the revelation, he held on to his Bible, to his dogma of pardon: are not all these things very "old-fashioned," and very laughable in the eyes of the disciples of Strauss and Darwin? The apostle of Wittemberg believed in justification through faith; the apostles of Berlin believe in justification through success.

It is a grave matter,--at length conclude these men, alarmed in their patriotism and in their conservative sentiments,--an extremely perilous matter for a great state to abandon, in its relations with the Powers, certain established maxims, certain rules of conduct tried by long experience, become in a manner the _arcana imperii_, and Napoleon III.

has just paid dearly for such a rupture with the ancient traditions in the exterior policy of France. Russia had also, in regard to Europe, sacred traditions, which have made the greatness and the strength of the preceding reigns; under these reigns, they were jealous in defending the liberty of the Baltic, they watched over the maintenance of the equilibrium of strength between Austria and Prussia, they appreciated the friendship and the devotion of the secondary States of Germany, and they caused the monarchical principle to be everywhere respected as opposed to revolution. Then Russia never had to repent at having turned aside from the ways hollowed out by the triumphal car of Peter the Great, of Catherine II., of Alexander I., and of Nicholas!

Thus spoke the independent minds on the banks of the Neva while the official world there displayed all the northern magnificence in honor of William the Conqueror: however, they only lent a reasoning and touching language to a vague, but intense and profound sentiment which agitated the very soul of Russia. With that habit of obedience and discipline that one can often accuse of a servile instinct, but which with this people is also sometimes a great and admirable patriotic instinct, the children of Rourik were careful not to cross the government in the brilliant reception which it gave the Prussian; they limited themselves to remaining impa.s.sible witnesses of a spectacle which did not appeal to their inmost feelings. The press showed itself abstemious of descriptions, more sparing still in reflections during these days of _fetes_ and festivals; the officials of Berlin only praised them with having maintained a _decorous_ tone. Such was also the tone of Russian society taken as a whole; the beautiful _perspectives_ of the imperial residence appealed to the moral as well as to the physical man; flowers from hot-houses on the first floor, ice under foot! The guests were not the last to see the contrast: with the exquisite perfumes of exotic plants, they breathed from time to time the sharp air of the country, the rough North wind, and it was not M. de Bismarck himself who did not seem to feel the circ.u.mambient atmosphere. One found in him more vivacity and enjoyment than of dash and warmth; his words preserved a measuredness which was not usual with him, and seemed to designedly avoid all _eclat_ and all light. A curious matter, during this sojourn of two weeks in the capital of Russia, the former grumbling diplomat did not let any of his sallies and jokes escape, of which he is generally so prodigal,--none of those amazing indiscretions which are at once the amus.e.m.e.nt and the horror of the _salons_ and the chancellors' offices.

They only gleaned a single sensational expression fallen from those lips which have so often p.r.o.nounced the decree of destiny, the expression "that he could not even admit the thought of being hostile to Russia."

The declaration seemed explicit and rea.s.suring, and like a discreet reply to an apprehension which did not dare to show itself openly. The incredulous or fretful souls could not, however, desist from observing that only ten years before such an a.s.surance given to the empire of the czars by a minister of Prussia, would have seemed very superfluous, would have even provoked smiles.

Here ends the task which was imposed on us in undertaking this study.

The meeting of the two chancellors in the capital of Peter the Great, in the spring of 1873, was like the epilogue of a common action which has lasted ten years, and which has contributed so much to change the face of the world. Since this epoch, Europe has known no tempest, although occasionally menacing and threatening clouds have not ceased to traverse its still obscured horizon. There were even glimmerings and indications that the old and fatal agreement between the cabinets of Berlin and St.

Petersburg was no longer as absolute as in the past, that it admitted certain intermissions, or at least certain differences of opinions and appreciations. It is thus that the government of the czar refused to follow the chancellor of Germany in his Spanish campaign, in his feverish adhesion to the presidency of Marshal Serrano, and it did not seem doubtful that the personal intervention of Alexander II., strongly supported by England in the past year, turned from France an iniquitous aggression and a terrible calamity. Since that epoch, also, the adhesion of Austria to the official policy of the two Northern states has come--we cannot emphasize it too much--either to complete or to complicate an a.s.sociation in which it becomes difficult to discover any common interests, and which, up to this day at least, has only found harmony in silence. The future alone can unveil the importance and the virtue of this extolled alliance of three empires, as badly known as it is badly conceived, perhaps; but one will scarcely be deceived in supposing that to-day, in this double and troubled household, it is M.

de Bismarck who can think himself the happiest of the three.

FOOTNOTES:

[139] _Provincial Correspondence_ of the 1st May, 1873.

[140] Telegram from the czar to King William I. of the 9th December, 1869. Quite recently, at the last banquet of St. George, the Emperor Alexander II. said: "I am happy to be able to state that the close alliance between our three empires and our three armies, founded by our august predecessors for the defense of the same cause, exists intact at the present moment." Official journal of the Russian empire of the 12th December, 1875.

[141] Count Tarnowski, "A Visit to Moscow," _Revue de Cracovie_, November, 1785.

[142] _Ausder Petersburger Gesellschaft._ The other descriptions are taken from the _Journal de St. Petersburg_, and _L'Invalide Russe_ of that time.

[143] _Aus der Petersburger Gesellschaft_, vol. ii. p. 89.

[144] Confidential note of M. Magne, 20th July, 1866. _Papers and Correspondence of the Imperial Family_, vol. i. p. 241.

[145] The _Golos_, several years ago, advanced these curious statistics, the effect of which was profound at the time. The name of Kozlof had a moment of celebrity in Russia: hearing it p.r.o.nounced at the end of a long list of purely Teutonic names, at the presentation of the officers of a grand army corps, the czarovich cried out, "At last! thank G.o.d."

Fr. J. Celestin, _Russland seit Aufheburg der Leibeigenschaft_, Laibach, 1875, p. 334.

APPENDIX.

LETTER FROM M. BENEDETTI TO THE EDITOR OF THE "REVUE DES DEUX MONDES." REPLY OF M. KLACZKO.

PARIS, _24th September_, 1875.