Two Chancellors Part 9

Petersburg to his government: "The general opinion here seems to be that, if Russia were ready, it would declare war and try to gain certain advantages from it.... The government is making great efforts to prepare for future events. The cartridge factories work night and day. An order for a hundred Gattling cannon has just been sent to America." They armed, they deterred or intimidated the probable allies of France, thinking thus to equalize for the moment the chances between the two belligerents,[128] and they still hoped to find more than one favorable opportunity in the midst of the numerous events of a war which Napoleon III. himself proclaimed must be "long and difficult."

The terrible disasters of France in the beginning of the campaign suddenly arrested the imaginations in their flight and dissipated the sublime vision of a "new Graeco-Sclavic world," which since 1867 had haunted the minds of those on the banks of the Moscova and the Neva.

With the marvelous political and _realistic_ apt.i.tude which distinguishes it, the Russian nation soon understood that for the moment any crusade in the Orient was impossible, that the destiny of the world was being decided at the foot of the Vosges, and that it must attend to the most urgent and reasonable claims. A curious phenomenon, the peninsula of the Balkan was never as relatively quiet, as little tormented by the "great idea" as during these years 1870-1871, during this "intestine dissension in Europe" which Fuad-Pacha when dying had so feared for the empire of the Osmanlis. Towards the end of the month of August, still before the catastrophe of Sedan, public opinion in Russia cared only for the displeasing article of the treaty of Paris on the subject of the Euxine. "Russia," said an influential journal of St.

Petersburg,[129] "has not hindered the forced unification of Germany, and, in its turn, _it does not dream of the forced unification of the Sclavians_; but it has the right to demand that its position on the Black Sea and the banks of the Danube be ameliorated. We hope that its legitimate demands will be taken into consideration in the European congress which will probably follow the present war." A European congress! that was in truth the only logical issue, however unrea.s.suring in such grave events, disturbers of the equilibrium of the world; and it must render this justice to the greater part of the Russias, that they have the true appreciation of the situation, and aspire to a _role_ as legitimate as honorable. They wish to attain a satisfaction of _amour-propre_; but they did not wish to sacrifice France and the general interests of the Continent to it; the little question was in their eyes only the corollary of the great. At Constantinople one did not augur otherwise from the line of conduct which the cabinet of St.

Petersburg undoubtedly pursued, although dreading it. On the 2d September, Mr. Joy Morris, minister of the United States to the Porte, wrote to his government that the general conviction on the Bosphorus was that Russia would profit by the crisis to bring about the revision of the treaty of 1856. "It would be strange if it did not succeed in it,"

added the "Yankee" diplomat, "seeking, as it will, to obtain honorable conditions of peace for France, and exercising a dominating influence on the regulations of the terms of peace." Unfortunately, and for the first time in his long and popular reign at the chancellor's palace, the "national minister" divorced himself on this occasion from the sentiment of the nation, and in place of acting as "a good European," according to the favorite expression of M. de Talleyrand, he sought above all to show himself the good friend of his former colleague of Frankfort. He took care to renounce the question of the Black Sea,--he owed his country this little consolation after such great mistakes,--but he resolved to separate two causes which public opinion in Russia demanded to have united; and it demanded it with an idea much more politic than generous, in an instinct much more sensible for the vital interests of the future than for the satisfaction more or less lively of the present moment. He thought that he could not better serve the Russian cause on the Euxine, than in injuring as much as possible the cause of Europe in Alsace and Lorraine, and he endeavored above all to let France and Prussia fight out their quarrel in single combat. Immediately after the first French disasters, he seized with _empress.e.m.e.nt_ the ingeniously perfidious idea of the _league of neutrals_, originally an Italian idea, naturalized in England by Earl Granville, and soon became in the hands of the Russian chancellor, as was very acutely remarked, the most efficacious means to "organize impotence in Europe." M. de Beust had vainly essayed, _while adopting the principle_ of the English proposition (19th August) to change the character of it, to make it the point of departure of a concerted intervention; he demanded "efforts not separated, but common in view of a mediation," in place of a ridiculous conception which only "leagued" the states to prevent any collective proceeding. "The combination which the minister of Austria then suggested," wrote on this subject a judicious historian, "was repeated again and again by him during the whole duration of the war. If it had been adopted, it would have changed the course of things. One can say that it is for this reason that Europe did not adopt it."[130]

It is for this reason that Prince Gortchakof especially opposed it from the first day to the last. There was a moment when England itself felt some qualms of conscience and showed a wish for mediation. That was at the beginning of the month of October, after a circular of M. de Bismarck had announced to Europe the conditions of peace of Germany, which were Alsace and Lorraine. "The amba.s.sador of Prussia communicated this circular to the Russian government, and Prince Gortchakof abstained from making his impressions known. Sir A. Buchanan said to him then, that at London they were disposed to be governed in a certain measure by what was done at St. Petersburg. The chancellor replied simply that Prussia, not having asked of him his opinion, he had not given it.[131]

Earl Granville had the, for him, extraordinary courage to return again to the charge, and Sir A. Buchanan read to the Russian chancellor a memorandum timidly asking "if it would not be possible for England and Russia to arrive at an agreement concerning the conditions under which peace could be concluded, and then to make, with the other neutral Powers, an appeal to the humanity of the King of Prussia, also recommending moderation to the French government." Prince Gortchakof gave to those overtures a dry and disdainful reception. Prussia, said he, has indicated its conditions of peace; a victory alone can modify them, and this victory is not probable. Confidential conversations between England and Russia will be then without object; common representations would always have a more or less menacing character.

Isolated action of each of the neutral Powers before the King of Prussia is preferable.[132] Isolated action! Alexander Mikhalovitch was not moved, and for Russia this action was summed up in several personal letters addressed by the august nephew to his royal uncle, very charming letters, which recommended peace, justice, humanity, and moderation, and to which the conqueror of Sedan always replied affectionately, with a moved heart and with tears in his eyes, pleading his duties to his allies, his armies, his people, and his frontiers.[133] It was this "policy of euphemism," as the historian has so well called it, which they did not cease to practice, during the entire war, on the banks of the Neva, towards General Fleury as well as towards M. Thiers and M. de Gabriac, and the last word as well as the first thought of "action" of Prince Gortchakof was to leave France alone with its conqueror, alone till exhaustion, _usque ad finem_. It is known in what terms this end was announced at St. Petersburg. "It is with inexpressible feeling and returning thanks to G.o.d," the Emperor of Germany telegraphed from Versailles to the Emperor of Russia, on the 26th February, 1871, "that I announce to you that the preliminaries of peace have just been signed. Prussia will never forget that it owes to you that the war has not taken extreme dimensions. May G.o.d bless you for it. Your grateful friend for life."

"Long and disastrous" was this war, alas! as the unhappy Caesar had well predicted, long enough at least to let Europe measure all the depth of its abas.e.m.e.nt, and "to give it all the time to blush at nothing,"

according to the strong expression of the poet. Still more humiliating, perhaps, than this abas.e.m.e.nt, is the thought of the perfect similarity of the two terrible catastrophes which succeeded one another in the interval of scarcely four years; in producing its second tragedy so soon after the first, destiny was sufficiently disdainful to our generation not to even change the procedure or bestow any care on the imagination.

The work of 1870 was only the exact copy of that of 1866. You will take the Orient, M. de Bismarck said at St. Petersburg, through General Manteuffel, as on the sh.o.r.e of Biarritz he had told the Emperor Napoleon III. to take Belgium, always making the same gift of the property which did not belong to him, the same gracious gift of the fruit defended by the dragon. The dreamers of Moscow believed in a _new era_, in a new "Graeco-Sclavic-Roumanian world," as Napoleon III. had thought of a Europe remodeled after the principle of nationalities. "Russia will not feel any alarm at the power of Prussia," Prince Gortchakof declared at the beginning of the Hohenzollern affair, exactly as the zealots of the _new right_ had affirmed of France on the eve of the campaign of Bohemia. In both of the terrible years they had counted on the events and opportunities of a war, slow and of divers fortunes; they had even made it a study to derisively equalize the chances of the belligerents, and the surprise and the fright were not less great at St. Petersburg after Reichshoffen and Sedan than it had been at Paris after Nahod and Sadowa. The military preparations were wanting in Russia in 1870, as in France in 1866, and after the one as after the other of the calamities which desolated and overturned the world, they had only egotistical and petty thoughts; they prevented designedly any collective intervention, they aided Prussia in _freeing itself from all European control_; in a word they sacrificed the policy of justice, preservation, and equilibrium to a calculation as false as sordid, and which the great humorist of Varzin had one day called the _politique de pour-boire_.

The Russian chancellor, it is just to acknowledge, was happier after Sedan than Napoleon III. had been after Sadowa: he had his Luxemburg, he could proclaim the abrogation of Article II. of the treaty of Paris, "the abrogation of a theoretical principle without immediate application," as he himself said in an official doc.u.ment.[134] One knows the judgment which at that time the cabinets gave on this "conquest"

purely nominal in reality, and extremely small in any case in proportion to all those which Alexander Mikhalovitch had allowed to his former colleague of Frankfort. He succeeded, but not by legitimate means, by that action of _eclat_ and equity which one had hoped for in Russia, dreaded at Constantinople; he did not provoke the revision of the treaty of 1856, in "seeking to obtain honorable conditions of peace for France and in exercising a dominating influence on the regulation of the terms of peace."[135] He chose precisely "the psychological moment" of the defeats of France, of the disorder of Europe and of the gloomy shock to public right, to give it in his turn a humiliating blow, a _telum imbelle_, but not _sine ictu_. He freed himself and his own chief from an engagement contracted with the Powers, as he had freed his friend of Berlin from any control of Europe. "The procedure of Russia," said Earl Granville, in his remarkable dispatch of the 10th November to Sir A.

Buchanan, "breaks all the treaties: the object of a treaty is to bind the contracting parties one to the other; according to the Russian doctrine, each party submits all to his own authority, and holds himself bound only to himself."

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

Well! we have lived through enough, since the time when an honest conscience uttered this cry of alarm, to see foreign jurisprudence arise without even the formality of a revolution, of a change of ministry or a vote of parliament, to hear it proclaimed by the minister of a regular absolute monarchy, by a Russian chancellor. It is true that the Italians also then hastened to profit by the misfortunes of France, to break in their turn a solemn engagement made with it in a public doc.u.ment, that in 1870 they had even antic.i.p.ated Prince Gortchakof in a proceeding well known to them; but it was not from a government born yesterday that the successor of Count Nesselrode should have borrowed the procedures. There was a day when Alexander Mikhalovitch reproached this very government with _moving with the revolution to reap the heritage of it_.[137]

Since then he has also moved with the revolution,--with one of the most audacious, most violent revolutions which has ever overturned thrones and kingdoms; he has reaped no heritage from it, it is true (it is only too often so in life, as one knows), he only accepted from it a gracious legacy, a legitimate donation, a modest gift in fact, and out of proportion to services rendered, but which was not the less sullied with undue influences, and which injured the right of the third parties, the right of nations.

How otherwise great and glorious might have been the "conquests" of Alexander Mikhalovitch, if, inspiring himself, in the month of October, 1870, with the legitimate ambition of the Russian people, the "national minister" had brought about a concerted action of Europe in order to produce peace between France and Germany, and to regulate the troubled affairs of the Continent! "We have always been of the opinion," wrote M.

de Beust, on the 10th September, to St. Petersburg, "that it is for Russia to take the initiative." Its great influence abroad, its security in the interior, its good relations with the conqueror, a.s.signed to it in truth such an initiative, and certainly neither Austria, Italy, nor England would have hesitated to range themselves under its banner. There was no necessity for a menacing intervention, nor even for that armed neutrality which M. Disraeli recommended:[138] the wish firmly expressed by all the Powers of the Continent would have fully sufficed. They could have thus limited the losses of France, given to Germany a less formidable organization, more in harmony with the aspirations and liberal occupations of our century,--the great va.s.sals of the new emperor would not have failed to lend their aid to it,--a general disarmament would have given to a generation cruelly tried, and which now cannot even rest in its sterility, a reparative and a fruitful work.

And who would dare to doubt that after such services Russia would not have obtained of Europe the grateful abrogation of that onerous article of the treaty of 1856? France would certainly not have thought of opposing it; Austria would not have maintained a clause which it had combated from the beginning, and which, four years before, it had solemnly declared to be "only a question of _amour-propre_," whose gravest interests demanded the sacrifice; as to England, it is well known that in course of time it accommodates itself to everything. How much such a benefit procured for humanity by a monarchical government, absolute indeed, would have given force to the cause of order and preservation, of rejuvenation of monarchical principles! with what prestige it would have surrounded the Russian people; what imperishable splendor it would have attached to the name of Alexander II! The call of destiny was very manifest; the _role_ as plain as easy: the successor of Count Nesselrode shrunk from it. It was only a sin of omission, if you will, but of that sort which the sublime lover of justice Alighieri did not pardon when they were committed against his ideal of _just.i.tia et pax_. On such a sin he inflicted the name of _il gran rifiuto_.

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[108] See Appendix.

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

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

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

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

[113] See, on this subject, the English, French, and Austrian parliamentary doc.u.ments of the year 1868, and especially the reports of the agents of Austria at Ia.s.sy and Bucharest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

i. p. 129.

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

127.

[122] Expressions of the _North German Gazette_ (princ.i.p.al organ of M.

de Bismarck) of the 20th July, 1867, on the occasion of the congress of Moscow.

[123] _Drang nach Osten._

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

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

i. p. 18.

[126] _France and Prussia_, p. 348.

[127] Dispatch of Mr. Schuyler to Mr. Fish, St. Petersburg, 26th August.

General Trochu, _Pour la verite_, p. 90.

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

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

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

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