Two Chancellors Part 4

[30] It is true that, in a circular of the 27th May, 1859, the Russian vice-chancellor took care to give a commentary to his proposition, and to prove that the congress which he had planned looked to nothing chimerical. "This congress," said he, "_did not place any power in presence of the unknown_: its programme had been traced in advance. The fundamental idea which had presided at this combination, _prejudiced no essential interest_. _On one side, the state of territorial possession was maintained_, and on the other there could come from the congress _a result which had nothing excessive or unusual in the international relations_." It would be well to re-read this remarkable circular, and to weigh every word of it. One will find in it the most curious and substantial criticism, made, so to speak, by antic.i.p.ation, of the different projects of the congress, those which later the Emperor Napoleon III. was to present to Europe, especially the eccentric project which surprised the world in the imperial speech of the 5th November, 1863.

[31] Ma.s.sari, _Il Conte Cavour_, p. 268.

[32] _Aus der Petersburger Gesellschaft_, vol. ii. p. 90.

[33] In 1862, at the moment of definitely leaving his post at St.

Petersburg, M. de Bismarck received the visit of a colleague, a foreign diplomat. They were speaking of Russia, and the future chancellor of Germany said, among other things, "I am in the habit, when leaving a country where I have lived long, to consecrate to it one of my watch charms, on which I have engraved the final impression which it has left me; do you wish to know the impression which I carry from St.

Petersburg?" And he showed to the puzzled diplomat a little charm on which these words were engraved: "_Russia is nothingness!_"

[34] M. de Bismarck has since presented these quadrupeds to the zoological garden of the former free city of Frankfort.

[35] Constantin Roessler, _Graf Bismarck und die deutsche Nation_, Berlin, 1871.

[36] Frederick William IV. having died the 2d January, 1861, the prince regent took from that day the name William I.

[37] See the remarkable pamphlet ent.i.tled _Europa's Cabinete und Allianzen_, Leipzig, 1862. It is the work of a Russian diplomat, celebrated in political literature, the same whose book on the _Pentarchie_ had such a loud echo under the monarchy of July.

[38] See in the _Revue des deux Mondes_ of the 1st October, 1868, _Les Preliminaires de Sadowa_.

III.

UNITED ACTION.

I.

However great one wishes to make the share of genius in the work of M.

de Bismarck, one cannot deny that a great part also comes from the unforeseen, from an extraordinary combination of circ.u.mstances, in one word, from that G.o.ddess Fortune whom the _minnesinger_ of the Middle Ages did not cease to praise in song, whom Dante himself did not fail to extol in the immortal verses, "The course always luminous like a star in heaven, and the decree always hidden like a serpent in the gra.s.s."

Without doubt, one can admire the extreme audacity with which the present chancellor of Germany has so often let fall from his hand the _iron dice of destiny_; one can even, to speak with the witty Abbe Galiani, suspect more than one cogged one in such a persistent "_pair royal of six_." It is not less true that in his long career as player, the president of the council at Berlin has occasionally met, in the most decisive moments, such marvelous luck as no human wisdom could foresee, that no political subtlety could prepare, and in which the hardy _punter_ only had the merit, very considerable it is true, of not letting the vein exhaust itself or of using up the series. One of these magnificent strokes of luck, one of these perfectly prodigious events fell to the lot of William I. on his accession to power, in the month of January, 1863. This event laid the first foundations of his future greatness, it became the mainspring of his action in Europe, the Archimedean point from whence afterwards he raised up a world of daring projects, and it is necessary to bear it well in mind.

The ideal which M. de Bismarck had before him in taking into his hands the reins of state, was the aggrandizement, "the rounding off" of the monarchy of Frederick II. He had made the premature avowal of it at the time of his mission to Paris; he also declared it very frankly in the first sitting of the commission of the chamber at Berlin, scarcely a week after having been made minister (29th September, 1862). He certainly did not foresee in what measure he should realize this ideal, to what limits he could extend in Germany conquests which should cease to be "moral;" but he clearly foresaw that in this attempt he would find a resolute adversary in Austria, and he made up his mind to it.[39] The only question which engrossed him was the att.i.tude which the other great Powers of Europe would maintain in view of certain events. Among them, he did not count England; with his rare political sagacity, he had early appreciated to what state of domestication and mildness that excellent school of Manchester had reduced the leopard formerly so fierce, and his conviction that proud Albion would not think of evil, and would even allow itself to be disgraced a little, was soon to be fully justified in the piteous campaign of Denmark. "England is far from entering into my calculations," he said in 1862, in a familiar conversation, "and do you know when I ceased to count her? From the day when she renounced of her free will the Ionian Islands; a Power which ceases to take and begins to surrender is a used-up Power." France and Russia remained, and it was not forbidden to think that, skillfully managed, these two states would favor to a certain degree the Prussian designs, or at least would not oppose them too strongly. On the banks of the Neva old grudges existed, sprung from the war of the Orient, imperfectly gratified by the war of Lombardy; the old relations between the Gottorp and the Hohenzollern, always cordial, had become more intimate than ever, thanks to the recent efforts of M. de Bismarck during his sojourn at St. Petersburg; finally, there was his friend Alexander Mikhalovitch, former colleague of Frankfort, so prepossessed in favor of the new minister of King William I., so well united with him in the hatred against Austria, and also so well warned against the "dangerous fiction" of a solidarity which should exist between all the conservative interests. On the banks of the Seine, in the Tuileries, still so much dreaded, there reigned a sovereign who, by dint of studying the general good of humanity, lost more and more the consideration of the French state, and whose vague vacillating regard it was not very difficult to dazzle, especially when one mirrored before him the "new right" and the affranchis.e.m.e.nt of Venice. Moreover, since the congress of Paris, there was established between the two cabinets of the Tuileries and St. Petersburg a "cordiality" which increased from day to day, and in which Prussia began to have a very large share: was there not ground to hope for the latter, in the enterprise which it meditated, a generous cooperation or at least a cordial neutrality of the two Powers so friendly to one another, and so unsympathetic towards the House of Hapsburg?

And yet such an enterprise was so profoundly contrary to the well understood interests and to the firmly rooted traditions of Russia as well as of France, the subst.i.tution in the centre of Europe of a great military and conquering monarchy in the place of a pacific confederation, and one "purely defensive," presented such manifest inconveniences, even such evident dangers for the security and equilibrium of the world, that the president of the council at Berlin could scarcely entertain as regards this matter too flattering hopes.

The bitter resentments at the winter palace, and the sweet dreams at the palace of the Tuileries, could not long prevail against the reality of geography and the brutality of facts. Unless at Paris and St. Petersburg there was a complete want of statesmen with a little political discernment in their minds, a little national history in their souls, one might wager that the two governments, Russian and French, would not remain indifferent spectators to such a formidable overturning in the balance of the Continent. From well-wishing, their neutrality would not delay in becoming by degrees watchful and alarmed, would even change to declared hostility, as the Prussian successes became marked, and it was this cordiality between the two empires, apparently so favorable to Prussia, which would then form another peril, facilitating prompt and decisive action against the Hohenzollern. Such being the situation of Europe at the beginning of the year 1863, what the new minister of William I. could wish for in his boldest combinations, invoke in his most golden dreams, was some unforeseen incident, some extraordinary event which should embroil in an irremediable manner the two emperors Alexander II. and Napoleon III., which should revive at St. Petersburg all the ancient rancor towards Vienna, which should permit Prussia to attach Russia to itself by ties stronger, more indissoluble, while preserving its necessary good relations with the cabinet of the Tuileries. A chimera! the boldest constructor of hypotheses would have certainly cried, before such demands; a problem of algebra and political alchemy unworthy of occupying a mind however frivolous! Well! chance, that providence of the fortunate of earth, did not delay to cause an event which realized to the profit of M. de Bismarck all the conditions of the indicated problem, which filled all the points of such a fantastic programme. "If Italy did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it," the president of the council at Berlin said later in 1865; in the month of January, 1863, he certainly did not think otherwise concerning the Polish questions.

History offers few examples of a fall so rapid, so humiliating, from the sublime to the odious and to the perverse, than was presented on the banks of the Vistula by that lamentable drama which, after two years of bitter revolutions, reached its final catastrophe in this month of January, 1863, as if to celebrate the joyful accession of M. de Bismarck to power. Certainly there was something very poetic and very exalted in those first manifestations from Warsaw, when a people so long, so cruelly tried, knelt one day before the castle of the lieutenant of the king in mute complaint, holding only the image of Christ, and demanding only "its G.o.d and its country!" The lieutenant of the king, who was no other than the old hero of Sebastopol, Prince Michael Gortchakof, had a horror of a conflict so unequal, so strange; he appealed to St.

Petersburg, and,--miracle of divine pity,--from that place, whence for thirty years only orders of blood and punishment had gone forth, there came this time a word of clemency and reparation. A generous spirit then animated the governing and intelligent cla.s.ses in Russia, they were under the influence of ideas of reform and emanc.i.p.ation, they desired the esteem of Europe, the friendship of France, and they had the very sincere desire to be reconciled with Poland. The Emperor Alexander II.

sent his brother to Warsaw; a patriot of rare vigor of mind and of character took in hand the civil government; the instruction, the justice, the administration received a national impress; a modest but certain autonomy was a.s.sured for the country. The precepts of the most common wisdom, the instinct of preservation, the terrible lessons of the past, should have all counseled the Poles to profit by this good disposition of their sovereign, to put to proof the granted inst.i.tutions, to accept with _empress.e.m.e.nt_ the hand stretched out to them. In fact everything counseled them thus, but they bent to the anathema which the Holy Scriptures had long before p.r.o.nounced against every kingdom which allows itself to be guided by women and children.

The women and the youth of the schools resolved to continue to multiply the manifestations which had succeeded so well, and which, in ceasing to be spontaneous, became theatrical and sacrilegious. The European demagogy hastened to transport to a ground so overturned its emblems, its words of disorder, its secret societies, and its _instrumenta regni_; from afar, from the midst of the Palais Royal came recommendations "to leave the Catholic mummeries and to make barricades." The great conservative party showed itself cowardly there as elsewhere, as everywhere, as always; and, in wishing to save its popularity, it lost a whole population. One made a void around the brother of the emperor, around the patriotic minister, and this void was not slow in being filled by horror, by terror and crime. The government struggled in vain against a shadowy organization which enveloped it on all sides; it took contradictory and violent measures. The demagogy gained its cause; it succeeded in throwing into a powerless, foolish revolt an unhappy people which for a century seemed to have imposed on itself the task of astonishing the world by periodical resurrections, and of disheartening it at the same time by suicides, alas, not less periodical!

This criminal folly of a nation could only be equaled by the heedlessness not less culpable with which Europe encouraged and fanned it. Europe, which had not dared to touch the Polish question during the war of the Crimea, thought it opportune to sympathize, to trifle with it in this moment, the most ill-timed and the most desperate! Lord John Russell was the first to enter the lists. In 1861 he wrote the famous despatch to Sir J. Hudson, and persuaded himself and England that by it he had delivered Italy. The year afterwards, in the celebrated dispatch of Gotha, he conceived for Denmark a most original const.i.tution in four parts, with four parliaments, and thus gave the signal for the dismemberment of the Scandinavian monarchy. This time he believed that he ought to recommend parliamentary inst.i.tutions for Poland; and to the observation of the Russian amba.s.sador that it would be difficult for the czar to favor on this point his Polish subjects over his own national ones, he navely asked why he would not extend the same benefit to all the Russias?[40] Count Rechberg, the fatal minister who then directed the external affairs at Vienna, experienced on his part the desire of showing himself compa.s.sionate; he accorded himself the malicious and very costly pleasure of paying the cabinet of St. Petersburg, in Polish coin, for the sympathies which this latter had shown for the Italian cause. As if Austria had not already suffered enough from the imaginary grievances of the Muscovites as regards the pretended "treason" during the war of the Crimea, it desired to give it very legitimate grievances by a very real "connivance"[41] in Gallicia; Gallicia became, in fact, the refuge, the depot of arms, and the place of revictualing for the insurgents of the kingdom.

It is just to acknowledge that the French government had long hesitated before starting on a way so perilous. From the first period of the Polish agitation, a note published in the "Moniteur" of the 23d April, 1861, had put the press and public opinion on guard against "the supposition that the government of the emperor encouraged hopes which it could not satisfy."

"The generous ideas of the czar," continued the note of the "Moniteur,"

"are a certain gauge of his desire of realizing the ameliorations of which the state of Poland admits, and we should wish that it be not hindered by irritating manifestations." The French government persevered in this sensible and perfectly amicable att.i.tude towards the czar during the years 1861 and 1862, in spite of the interest which the Parisian press did not cease to take in the "dramatic" events of Warsaw, in spite of several animated debates which were held in the English parliament, and which were rather addressed to France than to Russia. The Britannic statesmen in fact had not thought it useless during those two years 1861 and 1862 to slightly embarra.s.s the cabinet of the Tuileries in its very p.r.o.nounced liking for the Russian alliance by the frequent and sympathetic evocation of the name of Poland. Lord Palmerston especially, in a very _witty_ speech on the 4th April 1862, exalted the Poles, praised their "indomitable, inextinguishable, inexhaustible"

patriotism, while not neglecting to recall to them the cruel deceptions which a French emperor had already caused them "at another epoch."

Napoleon III. always resisted the unguarded emotions at home, as well as the selfish excitements from abroad. Even on the 5th February, after the breaking out of the fatal revolt, M. Billault, the minister-orator in the midst of the legislative body, harshly qualified the Polish insurrection as the work of "revolutionary pa.s.sions," and insisted with force on the danger of "useless words and vain protestations;" but the noisy language of the English ministers, the enigmatical att.i.tude of Austria, and lastly the military convention which M. de Bismarck concluded with Russia (8th February, 1863), and which he made public, ended by involving him. After having done so much for seven years to gain the Russian "cordiality," after having sacrificed to it almost all the fruits of the war of the Orient, Napoleon III. overturned brusquely a scaffolding so laboriously constructed, and prepared to organize against the government of the czar a _great European remonstrance_ of which the first and terrible effect was naturally to increase in Poland the torrent of blood and tears. The general cry at Warsaw was then that the insurrection must last to justify the intervention of Europe,[42]

that it was necessary to let as much Polish blood flow as sympathetic ink flowed from the chancellors' offices. One knows the deplorable issue of this great diplomatic campaign, which lasted nine months, and only served to demonstrate the profound disagreement between the Powers of the East. The foreign intermeddling wounded the pride of Russia, and impelled it to undertake against the Polish nationality a work of general, methodical, implacable extermination, and one from which it has never since desisted. However frivolous the diplomatic tourney of the Occidental Powers in favor of Poland was, the Russians did not the less think that they had been menaced with a moment of extreme peril, and that they had only escaped, thanks to the firmness of their "national"

minister, to his patriotic courage, to his acute, dignified, and vigorous dispatches. Certainly the minister is, humanly speaking, very excusable for not having protested against a belief so flattering: he let it go, he let it be said that he had repulsed a new invasion and had "overcome Europe:" _scripsit et salvavit!_ He was made chancellor, he received enthusiastic ovations from his compatriots, he became the idol of the nation by the side of M. Katkof and the sanguinary Mouravief.

During a whole year he did not attend a single banquet in the most obscure corner of Russia without these three names "saviors and blessed"

being celebrated by speeches, feted in toasts, congratulated by telegrams, and, whatever repugnance the descendant of the Rourik and the foster child of the cla.s.sical humanities must have felt in his spiritual tribunal at being thus constantly coupled with a fierce journalist and with a frightful executioner, he made the sacrifice to his love for his country and for popularity. In his well meaning ardor to receive the homage which came to him from all sides, he even so far forgot himself one day as to thank with a stereotyped smile the German n.o.bility of the Baltic provinces for a diploma as honorary citizen which had been sent him, and the national party reproached him with a certain bitterness for the "culpable delight" to which he gave way on this occasion. Alexander Mikhalovitch had all the honors of the sad campaign of 1863; the profits of it went to another, to the former colleague of Frankfort, to the president of the council at Berlin, who was to find in it a solid and a.s.sured basis for all the great strategy in the future. We will show how the balance sheet of the situation, which created, towards the end of 1863, the _great European remonstrance_ in the affairs of Poland, presented itself to the interests and the hopes of Prussia: the happy quiet of England was duly established; France and Russia were from this time forward embroiled, and in an irreparable manner; the resentment against Austria had grown stronger than ever at St. Petersburg, and also the Prussian minister had more than ever the right of counting on the grateful friendship, on the devotion to any extent, of Prince Gortchakof; lastly, it was not so difficult to foresee that after his signal check of Warsaw the Caesar of the new right would hasten to cast his glances on Venice, to wish to "do something for Italy," and would therefore favor more benevolently "a young power of the North" in its enterprises against the Hapsburg, to whom the Napoleonic ideology had long since a.s.signed "a great destiny in Germany."

It would, however, do too much honor to human genius to credit M. de Bismarck with a clear and precise view at first sight of all the favorable, even prodigious consequences, which the fatal insurrection in Poland was to bring him. Many circ.u.mstances seemed rather to indicate that, especially in the beginning, the Prussian minister only groped and sought his way in unfrequented paths. A curious matter, and which perhaps might give cause for reflection even to-day, M. de Bismarck, who had certainly studied Russia well, who had lived there for several years, and had just left it, seems to have very seriously doubted the strength of this empire in 1863, and doubted it so far that he did not even think it capable of conquering in that miserable affray with the unhappy Polish youth! He expressed his fears on this point before the plenipotentiaries of England and Austria,[43] and went so far one day as to become very confidential on this subject to the vice-president of the Prussian chamber, M. Behrend. "This question," said the minister of William I., towards the middle of the month of February, "can be solved in two ways: it is either necessary to stifle the insurrection promptly in concert with Russia, and to come before the Eastern Powers with an accomplished fact, or one can let the situation develop and aggravate itself; wait till the Russians are driven from the kingdom, or reduced to invoke aid, and then _proceed boldly and occupy the kingdom for Prussia_; at the end of three years all of it will be Germanized.... But that is a ball-room plan which you propose to me, cried out the stupefied vice-president (the conversation took place at a court ball).

No, was the answer: I am speaking seriously of serious things. The Russians are tired of the kingdom, the Emperor Alexander himself told me at St. Petersburg."[44] This thought of recovering the line of the Vistula, lost since Jena, haunted more than once the mind of M. de Bismarck during the year 1863: let it be well understood, he did not wish to obtain the "rectification of the frontier" except with the consent of the Emperor Alexander II., but he did not neglect the means which could force to a slight extent such a solution. One of the most intimate confidants of the minister, and now the representative of Germany to the court of King Victor Emmanuel, M. de Keudell, proprietor of vast domains in the kingdom of Poland, profited by his relations with the prominent men of the unhappy country to advise them on several occasions to look to Berlin for help, to demand there, for instance, a _temporary_ Prussian occupation which would render them not liable to Russian duty! In looking carefully into the history of this fatal insurrection, one will perhaps find there other Prussian agents, much more obscure, but also much more compromising than M. de Keudell. Did the president of the council at Berlin seriously hope to obtain so much from the "la.s.situde" of the Emperor Alexander and the friendship of the Prince Gortchakof?

Whatever these hopes or _arriere-pensees_ were, M. de Bismarck used a restless ardor in making evident from the time of his _debut_ his absolute solidarity with the Russian vice-chancellor as opposed to the East. He offered him a military convention in the most spontaneous, even impetuous manner; he undertook his defense on every occasion, and did not cease to aid him faithfully, ardently, in pa.s.sages of diplomatic arms with the cabinets of England, France, and Austria, experiencing with pleasure the first fire of the notes of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, supporting with joy the universal clamors of the press, responding with haughtiness to the interpellations of his parliament. The great men of the progressionist party understood nothing, on this occasion as on so many others, of the policy of their "Polignac;" they thought it inopportune, perilous, and demanded where the German interest was in all that? To which the Polignac replied one day in the chamber with this veiled and yet very significant image, that, "Placed before the chess-board of diplomacy, _the profane spectator_ believes the game ended at every new piece that he sees advanced, and can even fall into the illusion that the player is changing his objective point."

Certainly M. de Bismarck did not change his objective point at all, and always had in mind the aggrandizement of Prussia; but it is evident that up to the autumn of that year, 1863, he had no well-fixed plan; he "moved his pieces" in different directions, and awaited the inspiration of chance to know from what side he should strike "the blow,"--from the Main, from the Vistula, or from the Elbe? He had aimed at Ca.s.sel for a moment, and had thrown himself with some bl.u.s.ter into the const.i.tutional conflict of this country with the elector; he had even given on this occasion the pleasing spectacle of a minister intervening in a neighboring state to force the prince there to the most strict observation of parliamentary rule, while himself governing without regard for the const.i.tution, and by means of taxes levied contrary to the vote of the chamber. Without speaking of the adventurous projects which were cherished at Berlin touching a possible rectification of frontier from the side of the Vistula, on the banks of the Elbe there was the old, everlasting question of the Duchies, a question hushed up since the treaty of London, but reawakened anew in 1859 in consequence of the events in Italy, and become even more dangerous since a famous dispatch, mortal for Denmark, which Lord John Russell, in a moment of inconceivable thoughtlessness, had issued from Gotha, the 24th September, 1862,--precisely the day of M. de Bismarck's accession to the ministry! The secondary States, the Diet of Frankfort, and M. de Rechberg himself, had become very ardent, and vied with each other in German patriotism in this cause of Schleswig-Holstein, a cause which at bottom they thought to be chimerical, and by which they only wished to embarra.s.s Prussia, to convince it of "national lukewarmness." The temptation became great to take at their word the secondary States, the Diet of Frankfort, even Austria, to unite them against Denmark in a war which would give Prussia the magnificent port of Kiel, and would permit it, moreover, to try the "instrument" which King William I. "had been perfecting" for four years, ... provided that the war could be _localized_, and that the European Powers would not put themselves in the way as in 1848! The president of the council at Berlin did not entirely despair of succeeding by patient and wise manoeuvres. He counted on the friendship of Prince Gortchakof, on different political constellations, finally on the strange confusion, and, to speak with Montaigne, on "the great hubbub of brains" which certain principles of the new right and of nationality had introduced into each chancellor's office of the Continent. He said to himself occasionally, that in this grave enterprise he would certainly have for a determined adversary only that good Lord Russell, who, after his fatal dispatch of Gotha, had again altered his mind, had even const.i.tuted himself the advocate, the protector, and the _mentor_ of the unfortunate government of Copenhagen: such a partner did not greatly frighten the bold cavalier of the Mark.

At first, however, and as long as the negotiations on Poland lasted, the cavalier of the Mark thought that he ought to use prudence and simulate to the cabinet of Saint James extreme indifference on the subject of this "vexatious" affair of the Duchies. Nothing is more instructive than to follow in the state papers, as well as in the doc.u.ments communicated to the _Rigsraad_, the intimate and almost daily effusions by which M.

de Bismarck had been able to persuade, up to the last hour, not only Lord Russell and his envoy Sir A. Buchanan, but also M. de Quade, the Danish minister at the court of Berlin, that this question of Schleswig-Holstein was a _hobby_ of the secondary States and of Austria, that Prussia was far from sharing those Teutonic effervescences and concupiscences, and that it would do all that lay in its power to calm, to allay them. The 14th October, 1863, two weeks after the Diet of Frankfort had decreed the federal execution in Holstein, M. de Bismarck stipulated in a conversation with the envoy of Great Britain, Sir A.

Buchanan, to _prevent this execution_, if Denmark accepted the English mediation.[45] Denmark accepted it, and Lord Russell could at last breathe. Moreover, on the 6th November, 1863, M. Quade wrote from Berlin to his government: "The first minister of Prussia, be it on account of his personal views, or on account of the att.i.tude taken by England, has put the affair in a position that _exceeds greatly all that one could have hoped_. I am not certain whether the question is regarded at Vienna with the same clearness and the same warmth (warmth for the interests of Denmark!) as it is here." Thus Sir A. Buchanan and M. Quade still judged the situation on the 6th November. But they were not slow in being brusquely awakened from their illusions by a despairing dispatch from the princ.i.p.al secretary of state, dated the 9th November, and couched in these terms: "If the information which reaches me is exact, M. de Bismarck no longer offers any objection (_n'oppose plus aucune objection_) to the federal execution in Holstein; the government of her majesty can only leave to Germany the responsibility of exposing Europe to a general war." The information was unfortunately only too correct, and the vexations of the good Johnny commenced.

Two important facts had taken place in the interval of three weeks which had pa.s.sed since the conversation of the 14th October; in this interval, the cabinet of Saint James had abandoned to the Russian government the affairs of Poland, and the Emperor Napoleon III. had launched into the world a fantastic project of a congress _for the arrangement of all the pending questions_! Charmed in the highest degree with the aid which M.

de Bismarck lent him in this month of October in the Danish difficulties, the princ.i.p.al secretary of state had at last decided to make him the sacrifice so often demanded, of the Polish question, even to recall by telegraph a courier, bearer of a very comminatory note addressed to the government at St. Petersburg, and to replace this missive by a most humble dispatch, which renounced all ulterior controversy on this subject (20th October).[46] On his part, the Emperor of the French, kept informed of these intrigues, profoundly vexed at this abandonment by England, and not being able to resolve to accept his check, nor, above all, to make the avowal of it without ceremony before the legislative body, had thought (5th November) of that call for a general congress which only increased the uneasiness of Europe, and especially inspired the chief of the foreign office with unspeakable fears. Not content with replying to the invitation of the cabinet of the Tuileries by a most bitter and offensive note, Lord John Russell bestirred himself to preserve the foreign courts from the contagion of the French idea; he almost entirely lost from view the dangers of Denmark, and only cared to combat the project of Napoleon III., a project a.s.suredly without vitality, and which, in order to die its natural death, had no need of such a display of British forces. The president of the Prussian council thought that the moment had come to begin his game. The last shadow of an Eastern understanding disappeared; only the alliance of Russia and Prussia remained intact, unshaken, in the midst of the general disorder of the cabinets. No European concerted action for the protection of Denmark was to be feared. M. de Bismarck could now "no longer have any objection" to the federal execution in Holstein; and soon an unhoped-for event, one of those magnificent strokes of fortune, such as the minister of William I. has so often met with in his marvelous career, proved that he was decidedly in luck. The sudden death of King Frederick VII. (15th November, 1863) has something so tragical, so fatal to the destinies of Denmark, that it makes one think of one of the most disconsolate sayings that antiquity has bequeathed to us, that mournful cry of the historian: "_Non esse curae deis securitatem nostram, esse ultionem._"

This death gave in truth an entirely new turn to the Teutonic demands towards the unfortunate Scandinavian monarchy. Germany did not content itself with a federal execution in Holstein; it pretended not to recognize the sovereignty of the new king, Christian IX., in the Duchies, and wished to enthrone there that intriguing and treacherous family of Augustenburg from whom M. de Bismarck himself had lately obtained the retraxit for one million and a half _rixdalers_ paid by the government of Copenhagen. And it was only from this moment that the plans of the minister of William I. seemed to be finally settled; decidedly it was from the side of the Elbe that Prussia was to begin to "round itself" and complete its unity! The resolution once made, M. de Bismarck carried it out with ardor, with audacity, with incomparable acuteness. This trial stroke was a master stroke; and the great Machiavelli would certainly have found a "divine" pleasure in contemplating the address, or, as he would have said, the _virtu_ with which the cavalier of the Mark knew how, in the s.p.a.ce of some weeks, to engross the attention of this poor Lord Russell; to encircle the Emperor Napoleon; to involve Austria in a distant expedition equally unjust and foolish; to make use of and at the same time oust the _Bund_; to strike the secondary States with terror and throw off their _protege_; lastly, to take into his own hands the holy cause of the German country, and, according to the word of the Apostle, make himself all things to all men!

The spectacle which Europe presented at the beginning of the year 1864, was certainly one of the strangest and most painful that history has known. Two great Powers, jealous of one another, and even destined to soon fight in mortal combat for the spoils torn from their victim,--two great Powers, at once incited and cried down by a whole league of princes and peoples of Germany, attacked a feeble state, but nevertheless an old and glorious monarchy, and one whose existence was proclaimed by all the cabinets to be necessary to the balance of nations; they attacked it under the most futile pretext, in the name of a cause which the very chief of the coalition had formerly qualified as "eminently iniquitous, frivolous, disastrous, and revolutionary." It was, moreover, to punish King Christian IX. for his disobedience to the _Bund_ that Prussia and Austria had charged themselves with this work of "justice;" and this work they inaugurated with a formal declaration of their own disobedience to the same _Bund_; they acted "as proxies for Germany," and entire Germany protested against the usurpation of the mandate! All these monstrous things Europe saw and let pa.s.s, this same Europe which, in 1848 at the time of the first German aggression against the Scandinavian monarchy, had not failed in its duty, and had fulfilled it n.o.bly in spite of the great revolutionary tempest which might have served it as an excuse. The Powers were then unanimous in defending the weak against the oppressor; the Emperor Nicholas was in accord on this point with the Republic of General Cavaignac, and it was only the diplomats improvised by the "surprise" of February who had not shown at this time a sufficient knowledge of the conditions necessary for the equilibrium of the world. It has been reserved for the most tried statesmen, for chancellors grown old in the tradition and respect for treaties, for the representatives of regular and strong monarchies, to allow the consummation of a revolutionary work which the Bastide and Petetin would have thought their duty not to admit![47] Without doubt it is, above all, England who will bear before posterity the shame of the ruin of Denmark, for she it was who had taken in hand the cause of the Scandinavian kingdom, who had counseled, guided, reprimanded up to the last day, and who had solemnly declared _that in the moment of danger it (Denmark) should not fight alone_; it would, however, be unjust to pretend to completely exonerate the rest of the European Powers. More than one thoughtful and honest mind a.s.signed at that time to this dismemberment of a monarchy in the nineteenth century all the import that another dismemberment had had in the preceding century, and foresaw from it with anxiety great overturnings and formidable catastrophes in the future. The _nafs_, or, to speak with M. de Bismarck, the _profane_, could alone believe the game finished after this first stroke dealt to the right of nations, after this first exploit also of the marvelous "instrument" which the Prussian government had employed so many years and so much time to "perfect."

The cannon of Missunde was for the cavalier of the Mark what the cannon of Toulon had formerly been for a certain officer of Corsica, and this short campaign of the Duchies revealed many things to the future conqueror of Europe. He learned there that legitimate rights, sacred treaties, stipulated minutes, the sworn faith and many other old-fashioned things reputed ina.s.sailable were much more feeble and decaying than the poor fortresses erected by the Danes in the preceding ages, and, if Moltke and Roon made in this war a perfectly satisfactory trial of their needle gun, he could for his part prove the precious, unalterable qualities of his own instrument. It must be plainly said that during the whole of this expedition against Denmark, Prince Gortchakof did not cease to favor the Prussian minister by all means, to tender him with ardor, and very often privately, a helping hand at each new difficulty. His aid was absolute and the more efficacious since it took the appearance of a busy neutrality in search of a pacific arrangement. It was thus that he aided the president of the council at Berlin in forcing into the stubborn head of Lord Russell the equally specious and pleasing reasoning, that the occupation of Holstein by the federal troops would become a t.i.tle of validity in the hands of the new King of Denmark. "M. de Bismarck told me," Sir A. Buchanan wrote on the 28th November, "that a federal execution would prevent any revolutionary movement in Holstein, and would be at the same time to a certain degree an _indirect recognition_ of King Christian IX. as Duke of Holstein on the part of the Diet of Frankfort. His excellency affirmed that the alarming state of Germany forced him to proceed at once to the execution; but he could not or would not explain to me how such an execution could be a recognition of the sovereignty of King Christian, and could avoid the appearance of an occupation." Three days afterwards, the 1st December, Lord Napier wrote on his part from St. Petersburg: "The language of Prince Gortchakof makes me believe that he is persuaded that M. de Bismarck has _moderate views_ in this question. The vice-chancellor is disposed to consider a federal execution, if it is well conducted, as a _preservative measure_. In his opinion, the federal troops, acting according to judicious instructions, will a.s.sure order and maintain the necessary distinction between the legislative and the dynastic question." "_I despoil, then I recognize!_" said M. de Bismarck by a logic belonging to him alone,[48] but which Prince Gortchakof shared at this moment, and which the two friends soon tried to apply also to Schleswig, after the chief of the foreign office had resigned himself to it in Holstein. "This morning the Russian vice-chancellor suggested to me," again wrote Lord Napier from St. Petersburg under date of the 11th January, "that one should bind Denmark to _admit_ the occupation of Schleswig by the forces of Austria and Prussia under t.i.tle of a _guarantee_ given to these two Powers as regards the German population of the Duchy." Thus the state papers and the doc.u.ments communicated to the _Rigsraad_ continue to instruct and edify us; one does not find there a single insinuation or "suggestion" sent from the banks of the Spree against Denmark which was not at once reverberated on the banks of the Neva. And yet Denmark has always been the friend and the _protege_ of the empire of the czars! More than any other Power in the world, Russia was interested in preserving the liberty of the Baltic, in not letting the port of Kiel fall into the hands of Germany; more than any other Power, also, it was interested in remembering that Courland and Livonia talked German much more purely and harmoniously than Schleswig! Lastly, it was certainly the cause of the revolution against that of legitimate sovereignty which was engaged in this debate on the Eider; the old Nesselrode had declared so in a celebrated circular, and what would the Emperor Nicholas have said of such complacency for revolution on the part of a Russian chancellor?

Alexander Mikhalovitch will yet cause the astonishment of history by the immensity of his grat.i.tude towards M. de Bismarck.

II.

Thus was inaugurated, concerning Poland and Denmark, that common action of the two ministers of Russia and Prussia, which was to continue for so many years, and have such a considerable, such a disastrous influence on the affairs of the Continent. With this year 1863 the second period of the ministry of Prince Gortchakof commences, his second _term_, which was a.s.suredly much less open to discussion. To the French "cordiality,"

properly dosed and taken in fact as a tonic, which had prevailed till then, the Prussian friendship, undeniably too pa.s.sionate and too absorbing, succeeded. In fact, in this second period, Alexander Mikhalovitch no longer preserved that calm and reserved mind, and that intelligent egotism which made his fortune at the time of his intimacy with the Emperor Napoleon III.; he embraced all the opinions, every cause of his formidable friend at Berlin, unfortunately without possessing his astonishing flexibility of mind, his marvelous art of turning and twisting. Nothing, for instance, equals the address with which M. de Bismarck can, if necessary, forget a disagreeable past, and, above all, be unable to remember his wrong-doings toward others; in fact, he has a charming euphemism, he calls them _misunderstandings_.

More than once, from the height of the tribune, he has adorned with this name his long and outrageous conflict against parliament which he sustained up to the war of 1866 against Austria (a little misunderstanding which cost 40,000 men their lives!). And how can one help admiring the affection, the enthusiasm, which he has inspired in that excellent Lord Russell, certainly the statesman whom he ridiculed and ill-treated the most in 1863, during the Danish contention? As for his Polish quarrels with the Eastern Powers in the same year (1863), he was the more ready to forget them as those very Powers felt that a great act of folly had been committed. He dictated to King William a most polite reply, full of tender souvenirs of Compiegne, in answer to the letter of Napoleon III. concerning the congress, and toward the end of the year he was already in touching accord with the cabinet of the Tuileries concerning the treaty of London, a treaty which guaranteed the entireness of the Danish monarchy, and which a circular of M. Drouyn de Lhuys now qualified as an _impotent work_! As regards Austria, he soon granted it full indulgence for its Polish error in the spring, and even forgave the very reprehensible enterprise which it attempted in the month of August at Frankfort, on _the day of the princes_. In the month of November he had already made it his companion and accomplice in the wars of the Duchies. Prince Gortchakof appeared in a very different light; he was never willing to pardon France and Austria for their intermeddling in the affairs of Poland, and remained immovable to every attempt at reconciliation. He knew no intimacy except with the cabinet of Berlin, and his former colleague of Frankfort became his only confidant and ally. The famous aphorism of 1856 then underwent an important modification; beginning with 1863, the Russian chancellor began to sulk while continuing to _meditate_, and the Achaeans have paid dearly for this spite of Achilles. The "sulks" of Alexander Mikhalovitch have been almost as fatal for Europe as the dreams of Napoleon III.

This Napoleonic policy regarding the affairs of Germany, at once reasonable and chimerical, ingenious and ingenuous, which he sincerely thought would work good, and which only acc.u.mulated disasters and ruin, seemed like a dream, a real _summer night's dream_. One day they had a sublime vision at the Tuileries: Italy was completed in its unity, Austria reexalted, Prussia rendered more h.o.m.ogeneous, Germany more satisfied, Europe regenerated, and France consolidated and glorious. All this only depended on a single hypothesis, but a hypothesis which did not exist, on a battle fought and won by the brave _Kaiserliks_ always inured against this Prussian _Landwehr_ which for half a century had not smelt powder, and it was on this frail skiff, on this "nut-sh.e.l.l," as the Puck of Midsummer Night's Dream had said, that the fortune of Caesar and that of France was embarked! In fact, at this moment, all the world believed in the incomparable military superiority of Austria over its bold rival in Germany; no one admitted the possibility of a Prussian victory, still less a victory as decisive, as startling as that at Sadowa. "That was," M. Rouher said later, in a memorable session of the legislative body,--"that was an event which Austria, which France, which the military man, which the simple citizen had all considered as unlikely; for there was an universal presumption that Austria would be victorious and that Prussia would pay, and pay dearly, the price of its imprudence." This presumption, very real and universal at that time, remained the sole excuse of Napoleon III. before history, for that lamentable phantasmagoria which was announced to the world by the speech of Auxerre in the month of May, 1866, but whose origin goes back as far as the convention of September and the first journey of M. de Bismarck to France after his campaign in Denmark in the autumn of 1864.[49]

"I have at least one superiority over my conqueror," the Emperor of Austria, Francis I., said to M. de Talleyrand, the negotiator of the peace of Presburg, with a dignity not without keenness; "I can reenter my capital after such a disaster, while it would be difficult for your master, in spite of all his genius, to do the same thing in a similar situation." This curious _mot_ displayed in a striking manner the profound, incurable vice of all Caesarism. No more than the conqueror of Austerlitz, could Napoleon III. accept a check; he was obliged _to do great things_, condemned to success and prestige. Soon after the misadventures and the miscalculations in the affairs of Poland, of Denmark, and of the congress, he was forced to look out for a revenge, he cast his glances from north to south, "struck an att.i.tude" by means of the convention of September, which seemed to be the preface of a new and great work. He was isolated in Europe, incensed against England, very much embarra.s.sed in regard to Russia, more than cool with Austria, and it was with a certain inward trepidation that one saw M. de Bismarck hasten to France (October, 1864) at the first news of the convention concluded with the cabinet of Turin. Evidently "something was to be done for Italy;" without rancor, as without prejudices, the president of the Prussian council came to renew the conversations broken off two years before at the time of his short mission to Paris.

He added nothing to the truth; he only affirmed that his alliance with the Hapsburg in the war against Denmark had been a simple incident, and he allowed to be clearly seen his desire to keep for Prussia the countries recently conquered on the Elbe in the name of the Germanic Confederation. For the rest, he only varied the ancient theme on the inevitable imminent duel between Berlin and Vienna, on the advantages which Italy might gather from it, on the advantage that would accrue to France, having Prussia, with a better defined and firmer outline, as its natural, unfailing ally in all the questions of _civilization_ and _progress_. Such expressions, coming from a minister who had shown his character in the campaign of the Duchies, now met an auditory much more attentive than that of 1862. Without yet taking him for a perfectly _serious_ man, they began to recognize in him the qualities of a useful man, of a man of the future, whom Italy should cultivate with care, whom France, for its part, should watch carefully, encourage, and manage. The leaders of the imperial democracy, Prince Napoleon first of all, showed themselves especially taken with the prospectives which were opened to them. A distinguished member of this group, a diplomat reputed to be acute above all, and whose name even allied him to the Italian cause, was sought out in his retreat and placed at the head of the mission at Berlin, elevated now to an emba.s.sy. Another member of the "party of action," equally unattached for some time, a former amba.s.sador at Rome, was not long in being recalled into the councils of the empire: by the side of M. Rouher, he was destined to form there a useful counterpoise to the slightly "antiquated" ideas of M. Drouyn de Lhuys. Finally, on the other side of the Alps, at Turin, a general, well known for his "Prussomania," had taken in hand the direction of political affairs on the 23d September. Each of these personages,--M. Benedetti, M. de La Valette, General La Marmora,--will have his _role_ and his day in the great drama of 1866.

At this time, however, in the autumn of 1864, no plan was fixed or even discussed: one had only come as yet to simple confidences, to vague and fleeting conversations, to that which, in diplomatic language, one had not even dared to call an exchange of ideas; but the impression which the Prussian minister obtained from this rapid journey to France was sufficiently encouraging for him soon to launch that circular of the 24th December, 1864, which became the point of departure for his action against Austria. It was in this circular, in fact, that M. de Bismarck broached for the first time the question of the countries of the Elbe, which he well knew to be a question of war. Six months before, in the peremptory declaration made the 28th May, 1864, in the midst of the conference of London, Austria and Prussia had demanded the "reunion of the Duchies of Schleswig and of Holstein in a single state under the sovereignty of the hereditary Prince of Augustenburg," and the cabinet of Berlin took care to add then that this prince had, "in the eyes of Germany, _the greatest right_ to the succession; that his recognition by the _Bund_ was consequently a.s.sured, and that, moreover, he would reunite the _indubitable suffrages_ of the great majority of the population of this country." Quite different were the sentiments of the Prussian minister towards the end of the same year, some time after his return from Paris. In a circular dispatch addressed to the German courts, the president of the council of Berlin declared now (24th December, 1864) that grave doubts a.s.sailed his mind touching the t.i.tles of the Duke of Augustenburg, that several serious compet.i.tors, such as the Princes of Oldenburg and Hesse, had arisen in the interval;[50]

that in the midst of such multiplied and such confused claims he was perplexed; that his conscience was not sufficiently enlightened on this point of right; that he felt the need of meditating and of "consulting the legists!"

The world knows the magnificent decree which the "legists"--the syndics of the crown--did not delay in p.r.o.nouncing, as well as the conclusions which the scrupulous minister conscientiously drew from them. There were judges at Berlin, and they proved it in overruling all parties, in declaring them all badly grounded in their pretensions: Hesse, Oldenburg, Brandenburg, Sonderburg, Augustenburg, none of them had the right of succession to Schleswig-Holstein. The King of Denmark alone had the t.i.tles! But as the King of Denmark had been forced by the war to abandon the provinces of the Elbe to the sovereigns of Prussia and Austria, M. de Bismarck concluded therefrom that the two monarchs could dispose of their "property" as they wished, without any intervention of the _Bund_, and he demanded of the Emperor Francis Joseph the cession of his part of the conquest for ready cash. The Prussian minister made this impudent demand in an arrogant dispatch, full of menaces, dated the 11th July, 1865, from Carlsbad, from the very place where the old King William had come to enjoy the Austrian hospitality during the season.

The alarm was great for some weeks. M. de Bismarck made no mystery of the negotiations which he entered upon with Italy; he said to M. de Gramont "that far from dreading the war, he desired it by all means;"

some days after, he even declared to M. de Pfordten, president of the council of Bavaria, "that Austria could not sustain a campaign, that it would suffice to strike a single blow, to fight a single and great battle from the side of Silesia to obtain satisfaction of the Hapsburg."

In reality, he only wished to sound the ground and to make a careful examination. At this moment he was not yet sufficiently sure of the disposition of the Emperor Napoleon to dare to risk the great cast; he also wanted time to persuade the pious Hohenzollern to p.r.o.nounce the "G.o.d wills it!" of a fratricidal war. He had to content himself with that convention of Gastein (14th August, 1865) which was only a provisional arrangement, yet the first breach made in the rights of the _Bund_, and like an indirect consecration of the conclusions which he had pretended, to draw from the decree p.r.o.nounced by the famous syndics of the crown.