Napoleon III.--The Mexican Expedition--Withdrawal of the French and death
of Maximilian--The Luxemburg Question--Exasperation in France against
Prussia--Austria--Italy--Mentana--Germany after 1866--The Spanish
candidature of Leopold of Hohenzollern--French declaration--Benedetti and
King William--Withdrawal of Leopold and demand for guarantees--The
telegram from Ems--War--Expected Alliances of France--Austria--Italy--
Prussian plans--The French army--Causes of French inferiority--
Weissenburg--Wörth--Spicheren--Borny--Mars-la-Tour--Gravelotte--Sedan--
The Republic proclaimed at Paris--Favre and Bismarck--Siege of
Paris--Gambetta at Tours--The Army of the Loire--Fall of Metz--Fighting
at Orleans--Sortie of Champigny--The Armies of the North, of the Loire,
of the East--Bourbaki's ruin--Capitulation of Paris and Armistice--
Preliminaries of Peace--Germany--Establishment of the German Empire--The
Commune of Paris--Second siege--Effects of the war as to Russia and
Italy--Rome.
[Napoleon III.]
The reputation of Napoleon III. was perhaps at its height at the end of the
first ten years of his reign. His victories over Russia and Austria had
flattered the military pride of France; the flowing tide of commercial
prosperity bore witness, as it seemed, to the blessings of a government at
once firm and enlightened; the reconstruction of Paris dazzled a generation
accustomed to the mean and dingy aspect of London and other capitals before
1850, and scarcely conscious of the presence or absence of real beauty and
dignity where it saw spaciousness and brilliance. The political faults of
Napoleon, the shiftiness and incoherence of his designs, his want of grasp
on reality, his absolute personal nullity as an administrator, were known
to some few, but they had not been displayed to the world at large. He had
done some great things, he had conspicuously failed in nothing. Had his
reign ended before 1863, he would probably have left behind him in popular
memory the name of a great ruler. But from this time his fortune paled. The
repulse of his intervention on behalf of Poland in 1863 by the Russian
Court, his petulant or miscalculating inaction during the Danish War of the
following year, showed those to be mistaken who had imagined that the
Emperor must always exercise a controlling power in Europe. During the
events which formed the first stage in the consolidation of Germany his
policy was a succession of errors. Simultaneously with the miscarriage of
his European schemes, an enterprise which he had undertaken beyond the
Atlantic, and which seriously weakened his resources at a time when
concentrated strength alone could tell on European affairs, ended in
tragedy and disgrace.
[The Mexican Project.]
There were in Napoleon III., as a man of State, two personalities, two
mental existences, which blended but ill with one another. There was the
contemplator of great human forces, the intelligent, if not deeply
penetrative, reader of the signs of the times, the brooder through long
years of imprisonment and exile, the child of Europe, to whom Germany,
Italy, and England had all in turn been nearer than his own country; and
there was the crowned adventurer, bound by his name and position to gain
for France something that it did not possess, and to regard the greatness
of every other nation as an impediment to the ascendency of his own.
Napoleon correctly judged the principle of nationality to be the dominant
force in the immediate future of Europe. He saw in Italy and in Germany
races whose internal divisions alone had prevented them from being the
formidable rivals of France, and yet he assisted the one nation to effect
its union, and was not indisposed, within certain limits, to promote the
consolidation of the other. That the acquisition of Nice and Savoy, and
even of the Rhenish Provinces, could not in itself make up to France for
the establishment of two great nations on its immediate frontiers Napoleon
must have well understood: he sought to carry the principle of
agglomeration a stage farther in the interests of France itself, and to
form some moral, if not political, union of the Latin nations, which should
embrace under his own ascendency communities beyond the Atlantic as well as
those of the Old World. It was with this design that in the year 1862 he
made the financial misdemeanours of Mexico the pretext for an expedition to
that country, the object of which was to subvert the native Republican
Government, and to place the Hapsburg Maximilian, as a vassal prince, on
its throne. England and Spain had at first agreed to unite with France in
enforcing the claims of the European creditors of Mexico; but as soon as
Napoleon had made public his real intentions these Powers withdrew their
forces, and the Emperor was left free to carry out his plans alone.
[The Mexican Expedition, 1862-1865.]
[Napoleon compelled to withdraw, 1866-7.]
[Fall and Death of Maximilian.]
The design of Napoleon to establish French influence in Mexico was
connected with his attempt to break up the United States by establishing
the independence of the Southern Confederacy, then in rebellion, through
the mediation of the Great Powers of Europe. So long as the Civil War in
the United States lasted, it seemed likely that Napoleon's enterprise in
Mexico would be successful. Maximilian was placed upon the throne, and the
Republican leader, Juarez, was driven into the extreme north of the
country. But with the overthrow of the Southern Confederacy and the
restoration of peace in the United States in 1865 the prospect totally
changed. The Government of Washington refused to acknowledge any authority
in Mexico but that of Juarez, and informed Napoleon in courteous terms that
his troops must be withdrawn. Napoleon had bound himself by Treaty to keep
twenty-five thousand men in Mexico for the protection of Maximilian. He
was, however, unable to defy the order of the United States. Early in 1866
he acquainted Maximilian with the necessities of the situation, and with
the approaching removal of the force which alone had placed him and could
sustain him on the throne. The unfortunate prince sent his consort, the
daughter of the King of the Belgians, to Europe to plead against this act
of desertion; but her efforts were vain, and her reason sank under the just
presentiment of her husband's ruin. The utmost on which Napoleon could
venture was the postponement of the recall of his troops till the spring of
1867. He urged Maximilian to abdicate before it was too late; but the
prince refused to dissociate himself from his counsellors who still
implored him to remain. Meanwhile the Juarists pressed back towards the
capital from north and south. As the French detachments were withdrawn
towards the coast the entire country fell into their hands. The last French
soldiers quitted Mexico at the beginning of March, 1867, and on the 15th of
May, Maximilian, still lingering at Queretaro, was made prisoner by the
Republicans. He had himself while in power ordered that the partisans of
Juarez should be treated not as soldiers but as brigands, and that when
captured they should be tried by court-martial and executed within
twenty-four hours. The same severity was applied to himself. He was
sentenced to death and shot at Queretaro on the 19th of June.
[Decline of Napoleon's reputation.]
Thus ended the attempt of Napoleon III. to establish the influence of
France and of his dynasty beyond the seas. The doom of Maximilian excited
the compassion of Europe; a deep, irreparable wound was inflicted on the
reputation of the man who had tempted him to his treacherous throne, who
had guaranteed him protection, and at the bidding of a superior power had
abandoned him to his ruin. From this time, though the outward splendour of
the Empire was undiminished, there remained scarcely anything of the
personal prestige which Napoleon had once enjoyed in so rich a measure. He
was no longer in the eyes of Europe or of his own country the profound,
self-contained statesman in whose brain lay the secret of coming events; he
was rather the gambler whom fortune was preparing to desert, the usurper
trembling for the future of his dynasty and his crown. Premature old age
and a harassing bodily ailment began to incapacitate him for personal
exertion. He sought to loosen the reins in which his despotism held France,
and to make a compromise with public opinion which was now declaring
against him. And although his own cooler judgment set little store by any
addition of frontier strips of alien territory to France, and he would
probably have been best pleased to pass the remainder of his reign in
undisturbed inaction, he deemed it necessary, after failure in Mexico had
become inevitable, to seek some satisfaction in Europe for the injured
pride of his country. He entered into negotiations with the King of Holland
for the cession of Luxemburg, and had gained his assent, when rumours of
the transaction reached the North German Press, and the project passed from
out the control of diplomatists and became an affair of rival nations.
[The Luxemburg question, Feb.-May, 1867.]
Luxemburg, which was an independent Duchy ruled by the King of Holland, had
until 1866 formed a part of the German Federation; and although Bismarck
had not attempted to include it in his own North German Union, Prussia
retained by the Treaties of 1815 a right to garrison the fortress of
Luxemburg, and its troops were actually there in possession. The proposed
transfer of the Duchy to France excited an outburst of patriotic resentment
in the Federal Parliament at Berlin. The population of Luxemburg was indeed
not wholly German, and it had shown the strongest disinclination to enter
the North German league; but the connection of the Duchy with Germany in
the past was close enough to explain the indignation roused by Napoleon's
project among politicians who little suspected that during the previous
year Bismarck himself had cordially recommended this annexation, and that
up to the last moment he had been privy to the Emperor's plan. The Prussian
Minister, though he did not affect to share the emotion of his countrymen,
stated that his policy in regard to Luxemburg must be influenced by the
opinion of the Federal Parliament, and he shortly afterwards caused it to
be understood at Paris that the annexation of the Duchy to France was
impossible. As a warning to France he had already published the Treaties of
alliance between Prussia and the South German States, which had been made
at the close of the war of 1866, but had hitherto been kept secret. [530]
Other powers now began to tender their good offices. Count Beust, on behalf
of Austria, suggested that Luxemburg should be united to Belgium, which in
its turn should cede a small district to France. This arrangement, which
would have been accepted at Berlin, and which, by soothing the irritation
produced in France by Prussia's successes, would possibly have averted the
war of 1870, was frustrated by the refusal of the King of Belgium to part
with any of his territory--Napoleon, disclaiming all desire for territorial
extension, now asked only for the withdrawal of the Prussian garrison from
Luxemburg; but it was known that he was determined to enforce this demand
by arms. The Russian Government proposed that the question should be
settled by a Conference of the Powers at London. This proposal was accepted
under certain conditions by France and Prussia, and the Conference
assembled on the 7th of May. Its deliberations were completed in four days,
and the results were summed up in the Treaty of London signed on the 11th.
By this Treaty the Duchy of Luxemburg was declared neutral territory under
the collective guarantee of the Powers. Prussia withdrew its garrison, and
the King of Holland, who continued to be sovereign of the Duchy, undertook
to demolish the fortifications of Luxemburg, and to maintain it in the
future as an open town. [531]
[Exasperation in France against Prussia.]
Of the politicians of France, those who even affected to regard the
aggrandisement of Prussia and the union of Northern Germany with
indifference or satisfaction were a small minority. Among these was the
Emperor, who, after his attempts to gain a Rhenish Province had been
baffled, sought to prove in an elaborate State-paper that France had won
more than it had lost by the extinction of the German Federation as
established in 1815, and by the dissolution of the tie that had bound
Austria and Prussia together as members of this body. The events of 1866
had, he contended, broken up a system devised in evil days for the purpose
of uniting Central Europe against France, and had restored to the Continent
the freedom of alliances; in other words, they had made it possible for the
South German States to connect themselves with France. If this illusion was
really entertained by the Emperor, it was rudely dispelled by the discovery
of the Treaties between Prussia and the Southern States and by their
publication in the spring of 1867. But this revelation was not necessary to
determine the attitude of the great majority of those who passed for the
representatives of independent political opinion in France. The Ministers
indeed were still compelled to imitate the Emperor's optimism, and a few
enlightened men among the Opposition understood that France must be content
to see the Germans effect their national unity; but the great body of
unofficial politicians, to whatever party they belonged, joined in the
bitter outcry raised at once against the aggressive Government of Prussia
and the feeble administration at Paris, which had not found the means to
prevent, or had actually facilitated, Prussia's successes. Thiers, who more
than any one man had by his writings popularised the Napoleonic legend and
accustomed the French to consider themselves entitled to a monopoly of
national greatness on the Rhine, was the severest critic of the Emperor,
the most zealous denouncer of the work which Bismarck had effected. It was
only with too much reason that the Prussian Government looked forward to an
attack by France at some earlier or later time as almost certain, and
pressed forward the military organisation which was to give to Germany an
army of unheard-of efficiency and strength.
[France and Prussia after 1867.]
There appears to be no evidence that Napoleon III. himself desired to
attack Prussia so long as that Power should strictly observe the
stipulations of the Treaty of Prague which provided for the independence of
the South German States. But the current of events irresistibly impelled
Germany to unity. The very Treaty which made the river Main the limit of
the North German Confederacy reserved for the Southern States the right of
attaching themselves to those of the North by some kind of national tie.
Unless the French Emperor was resolved to acquiesce in the gradual
development of this federal unity until, as regarded the foreigner, the
North and the South of Germany should be a single body, he could have no
confident hope of lasting peace. To have thus anticipated and accepted the
future, to have removed once and for all the sleepless fears of Prussia by
the frank recognition of its right to give all Germany effective Union,
would have been an act too great and too wise in reality, too weak and
self-renouncing in appearance, for any chief of a rival nation. Napoleon
did not take this course; on the other hand, not desiring to attack Prussia
while it remained within the limits of the Treaty of Prague, he refrained
from seeking alliances with the object of immediate and aggressive action.
The diplomacy of the Emperor during the period from 1866 to 1870 is indeed
still but imperfectly known; but it would appear that his efforts were
directed only to the formation of alliances with the view of eventual
action when Prussia should have passed the limits which the Emperor himself
or public opinion in Paris should, as interpreter of the Treaty of Prague,
impose upon this Power in its dealings with the South German States.
[Negotiations with Austria, 1868-69.]
The Governments to which Napoleon could look for some degree of support
were those of Austria and Italy. Count Beust, now Chancellor of the
Austrian Monarchy, was a bitter enemy to Prussia, and a rash and
adventurous politician, to whom the very circumstance of his sudden
elevation from the petty sphere of Saxon politics gave a certain levity and
unconstraint in the handling of great affairs. He cherished the idea of
recovering Austria's ascendency in Germany, and was disposed to repel the
extension of Russian influence westwards by boldly encouraging the Poles to
seek for the satisfaction of their national hopes in Galicia under the
Hapsburg Crown. To Count Beust France was the most natural of all allies.
On the other hand, the very system which Beust had helped to establish in
Hungary raised serious obstacles against the adoption of his own policy.
Andrássy, the Hungarian Minister, while sharing Beust's hostility to
Russia, declared that his countrymen had no interest in restoring Austria's
German connection, and were in fact better without it. In these
circumstances the negotiations of the French and the Austrian Emperor were
conducted by a private correspondence. The interchange of letters continued
during the years 1868 and 1869, and resulted in a promise made by Napoleon
to support Austria if it should be attacked by Prussia, while the Emperor
Francis Joseph promised to assist France if it should be attacked by
Prussia and Russia together. No Treaty was made, but a general assurance
was exchanged between the two Emperors that they would pursue a common
policy and treat one another's interests as their own. With the view of
forming a closer understanding the Archduke Albrecht visited Paris in
February, 1870, and a French general was sent to Vienna to arrange the plan
of campaign in case of war with Prussia. In such a war, if undertaken by
the two Powers, it was hoped that Italy would join. [532]
[Italy after 1866.]
[Mentana, Nov. 3, 1867.]
The alliance of 1866 between Prussia and Italy had left behind it in each
of these States more of rancour than of good-will. La Marmora had from the
beginning to the end been unfortunate in his relations with Berlin. He had
entered into the alliance with suspicion; he would gladly have seen Venetia
given to Italy by a European Congress without war; and when hostilities
broke out, he had disregarded and resented what he considered an attempt of
the Prussian Government to dictate to him the military measures to be
pursued. On the other hand, the Prussians charged the Italian Government
with having deliberately held back its troops after the battle of Custozza
in pursuance of arrangements made between Napoleon and the Austrian Emperor
on the voluntary cession of Venice, and with having endangered or minimised
Prussia's success by enabling the Austrians to throw a great part of their
Italian forces northwards. There was nothing of that comradeship between
the Italian and the Prussian armies which is acquired on the field of
battle. The personal sympathies of Victor Emmanuel were strongly on the
side of the French Emperor; and when, at the close of the year 1866, the
French garrison was withdrawn from Rome in pursuance of the convention made
in September, 1864, it seemed probable that France and Italy might soon
unite in a close alliance. But in the following year the attempts of the
Garibaldians to overthrow the Papal Government, now left without its
foreign defenders, embroiled Napoleon and the Italian people. Napoleon was
unable to defy the clerical party in France; he adopted the language of
menace in his communications with the Italian Cabinet; and when, in the
autumn of 1867, the Garibaldians actually invaded the Roman States, he
despatched a body of French troops under General Failly to act in support
of those of the Pope. An encounter took place at Mentana on November 3rd,
in which the Garibaldians, after defeating the Papal forces, were put to
the rout by General Failly. The occupation of Civita Vecchia was renewed,
and in the course of the debates raised at Paris on the Italian policy of
the Government, the Prime Minister, M. Rouher, stated, with the most
passionate emphasis that, come what might, Italy should never possess
itself of Rome. "Never," he cried, "will France tolerate such an outrage on
its honour and its dignity." [533]
[Napoleon and Italy after Mentana.]
[Italy and Austria.]
The affair of Mentana, the insolent and heartless language in which General
Failly announced his success, the reoccupation of Roman territory by French
troops, and the declaration made by M. Rouher in the French Assembly,
created wide and deep anger in Italy, and made an end for the time of all
possibility of a French alliance. Napoleon was indeed, as regarded Italy,
in an evil case. By abandoning Rome he would have turned against himself
and his dynasty the whole clerical interest in France, whose confidence he
had already to some extent forfeited by his policy in 1860; on the other
hand, it was vain for him to hope for the friendship of Italy whilst he
continued to bar the way to the fulfilment of the universal national
desire. With the view of arriving at some compromise he proposed a European
Conference on the Roman question; but this was resisted above all by Count
Bismarck, whose interest it was to keep the sore open; and neither England
nor Russia showed any anxiety to help the Pope's protector out of his
difficulties. Napoleon sought by a correspondence with Victor Emmanuel
during 1868 and 1869 to pave the way for a defensive alliance; but Victor
Emmanuel was in reality as well as in name a constitutional king, and
probably could not, even if he had desired, have committed Italy to
engagements disapproved by the Ministry and Parliament. It was made clear
to Napoleon that the evacuation of the Papal States must precede any treaty
of alliance between France and Italy. Whether the Italian Government would
have been content with a return to the conditions of the September
Convention, or whether it made the actual possession of Rome the price of a
treaty-engagement, is uncertain; but inasmuch as Napoleon was not at
present prepared to evacuate Civita Vecchia, he could aim at nothing more
than some eventual concert when the existing difficulties should have been
removed. The Court of Vienna now became the intermediary between the two
Powers who had united against it in 1859. Count Beust was free from the
associations which had made any approach to friendship with the kingdom of
Victor Emmanuel impossible for his predecessors. He entered into
negotiations at Florence, which resulted in the conclusion of an agreement
between the Austrian and the Italian Governments that they would act
together and guarantee one another's territories in the event of a war
between France and Prussia. This agreement was made with the assent of the
Emperor Napoleon, and was understood to be preparatory to an accord with
France itself; but it was limited to a defensive character, and it implied
that any eventual concert with France must be arranged by the two Powers in
combination with one another. [534]
[Isolation of France.]
At the beginning of 1870 the Emperor Napoleon was therefore without any
more definite assurance of support in a war with Prussia than the promise
of the Austrian Sovereign that he would assist France if attacked by
Prussia and Russia together, and that he would treat the interests of
France as his own. By withdrawing his protection from Rome Napoleon had
undoubtedly a fair chance of building up this shadowy and remote engagement
into a defensive alliance with both Austria and Italy. But perfect
clearness and resolution of purpose, as well as the steady avoidance of all
quarrels on mere incidents, were absolutely indispensable to the creation
and the employment of such a league against the Power which alone it could
have in view; and Prussia had now little reason to fear any such exercise
of statesmanship on the part of Napoleon. The solution of the Roman
question, in other words the withdrawal of the French garrison from Roman
territory, could proceed only from some stronger stimulus than the
declining force of Napoleon's own intelligence and will could now supply.
This fatal problem baffled his attempts to gain alliances; and yet the
isolation of France was but half acknowledged, but half understood; and a
host of rash, vainglorious spirits impatiently awaited the hour that should
call them to their revenge on Prussia for the triumphs in which it had not
permitted France to share.
[Germany, 1867-1870.]
Meanwhile on the other side Count Bismarck advanced with what was most
essential in his relations with the States of Southern Germany--the
completion of the Treaties of Alliance by conventions assimilating the
military systems of these States to that of Prussia. A Customs-Parliament
was established for the whole of Germany, which, it was hoped, would be the
precursor of a National Assembly uniting the North and the South of the
Main. But in spite of this military and commercial approximation, the
progress towards union was neither so rapid nor so smooth as the patriots
of the North could desire. There was much in the harshness and
self-assertion of the Prussian character that repelled the less disciplined
communities of the South. Ultramontanism was strong in Bavaria; and
throughout the minor States the most advanced of the Liberals were opposed
to a closer union with Berlin, from dislike of its absolutist traditions
and the heavy hand of its Government. Thus the tendency known as
Particularism was supported in Bavaria and Würtemberg by classes of the
population who in most respects were in antagonism to one another; nor
could the memories of the campaign of 1866 and the old regard for Austria
be obliterated in a day. Bismarck did not unduly press on the work of
consolidation. He marked and estimated the force of the obstacles which too
rapid a development of his national policy would encounter. It is possible
that he may even have seen indications that religious and other influences
might imperil the military union which he had already established, and that
he may not have been unwilling to call to his aid, as the surest of all
preparatives for national union, the event which he had long believed to be
inevitable at some time or other in the future, a war with France.
[The Spanish candidature of Leopold of Hohenzollern.]
[Leopold accepts the Spanish Crown, July 3, 1870.]
Since the autumn of 1868 the throne of Spain had been vacant in consequence
of a revolution in which General Prim had been the leading actor. It was
not easy to discover a successor for the Bourbon Isabella; and after other
candidatures had been vainly projected it occurred to Prim and his friends
early in 1869 that a suitable candidate might be found in Prince Leopold of
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, whose elder brother had been made Prince of
Roumania, and whose father, Prince Antony, had been Prime Minister of
Prussia in 1859. The House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was so distantly
related to the reigning family of Prussia that the name alone preserved the
memory of the connection; and in actual blood-relationship Prince Leopold
was much more nearly allied to the French Houses of Murat and Beauharnais.
But the Sigmaringen family was distinctly Prussian by interest and
association, and its chief, Antony, had not only been at the head of the
Prussian Administration himself, but had, it is said, been the first to
suggest the appointment of Bismarck to the same office. The candidature of
a Hohenzollern might reasonably be viewed in France as an attempt to
connect Prussia politically with Spain; and with so much reserve was this
candidature at the first handled at Berlin that, in answer to inquiries
made by Benedetti in the spring of 1869, the Secretary of State who
represented Count Bismarck stated on his word of honour that the
candidature had never been suggested. The affair was from first to last
ostensibly treated at Berlin as one with which the Prussian Government was
wholly unconcerned, and in which King William was interested only as head
of the family to which Prince Leopold belonged. For twelve months after
Benedetti's inquiries it appeared as if the project had been entirely
abandoned; it was, however, revived in the spring of 1870, and on the 3rd
of July the announcement was made at Paris that Prince Leopold had
consented to accept the Crown of Spain if the Cortes should confirm his
election.
[French Declaration, July 6.]
At once there broke out in the French Press a storm of indignation against
Prussia. The organs of the Government took the lead in exciting public
opinion. On the 6th of July the Duke of Gramont, Foreign Minister, declared
to the Legislative Body that the attempt of a Foreign Power to place one of
its Princes on the throne of Charles V. imperilled the interests and the
honour of France, and that, if such a contingency were realised, the
Government would fulfil its duty without hesitation and without weakness.
The violent and unsparing language of this declaration, which had been
drawn up at a Council of Ministers under the Emperor's presidency, proved
that the Cabinet had determined either to humiliate Prussia or to take
vengeance by arms. It was at once seen by foreign diplomatists, who during
the preceding days had been disposed to assist in removing a reasonable
subject of complaint, how little was the chance of any peaceable settlement
after such a public challenge had been issued to Prussia in the Emperor's
name. One means of averting war alone seemed possible, the voluntary
renunciation by Prince Leopold of the offered Crown. To obtain this
renunciation became the task of those who, unlike the French Minister of
Foreign Affairs, were anxious to preserve peace.
[Ollivier's Ministry.]
The parts that were played at this crisis by the individuals who most
influenced the Emperor Napoleon are still but imperfectly known; but there
is no doubt that from the beginning to the end the Duke of Gramont, with
short intermissions, pressed with insane ardour for war. The Ministry now
in office had been called to their places in January, 1870, after the
Emperor had made certain changes in the constitution in a Liberal
direction, and had professed to transfer the responsibility of power from
himself to a body of advisers possessing the confidence of the Chamber.
Ollivier, formerly one of the leaders of the Opposition, had accepted the
Presidency of the Cabinet. His colleagues were for the most part men new to
official life, and little able to hold their own against such
representatives of unreformed Imperialism as the Duke of Gramont and the
War-Minister Leboeuf who sat beside them. Ollivier himself was one of the
few politicians in France who understood that his countrymen must be
content to see German unity established whether they liked it or not. He
was entirely averse from war with Prussia on the question which had now
arisen; but the fear that public opinion would sweep away a Liberal
Ministry which hesitated to go all lengths in patriotic extravagance led
him to sacrifice his own better judgment, and to accept the responsibility
for a policy which in his heart he disapproved. Gramont's rash hand was
given free play. Instructions were sent to Benedetti to seek the King of
Prussia at Ems, where he was taking the waters, and to demand from him, as
the only means of averting war, that he should order the Hohenzollern
Prince to revoke his acceptance of the Crown. "We are in great haste,"
Gramont added, "for we must gain the start in case of an unsatisfactory
reply, and commence the movement of troops by Saturday in order to enter
upon the campaign in a fortnight. Be on your guard against an answer merely
leaving the Prince of Hohenzollern to his fate, and disclaiming on the part
of the King any interest in his future." [535]
[Benedetti and King William at Ems, July 9-14.]
Benedetti's first interview with the King was on the 9th of July. He
informed the King of the emotion that had been caused in France by the
candidature of the Hohenzollern Prince; he dwelt on the value to both
countries of the friendly relation between France and Prussia; and, while
studiously avoiding language that might wound or irritate the King, he
explained to him the requirements of the Government at Paris. The King had
learnt beforehand what would be the substance of Benedetti's communication.
He had probably been surprised and grieved at the serious consequences
which Prince Leopold's action had produced in France; and although he had
determined not to submit to dictation from Paris or to order Leopold to
abandon his candidature, he had already, as it seems, taken steps likely to
render the preservation of peace more probable. At the end of a
conversation with the Ambassador, in which he asserted his complete
independence as head of the family of Hohenzollern, he informed Benedetti
that he had entered into communication with Leopold and his father, and
that he expected shortly to receive a despatch from Sigmaringen. Benedetti
rightly judged that the King, while positively refusing to meet Gramont's
demands, was yet desirous of finding some peaceable way out of the
difficulty; and the report of this interview which he sent to Paris was
really a plea in favour of good sense and moderation. But Gramont was
little disposed to accept such counsels. "I tell you plainly," he wrote to
Benedetti on the next day, "public opinion is on fire, and will leave us
behind it. We must begin; we wait only for your despatch to call up the
three hundred thousand men who are waiting the summons. Write, telegraph,
something definite. If the King will not counsel the Prince of Hohenzollern
to resign, well, it is immediate war, and in a few days we are on the
Rhine."
[Leopold withdraws, July 12.]
[Guarantee against renewal demanded.]
[Benedetti and the King, July 13.]
Nevertheless Benedetti's advice was not without its influence on the
Emperor and his Ministers. Napoleon, himself wavering from hour to hour,
now inclined to the peace-party, and during the 11th there was a pause in
the military preparations that had been begun. On the 12th the efforts of
disinterested Governments, probably also the suggestions of the King of
Prussia himself, produced their effects. A telegram was received at Madrid
from Prince Antony stating that his son's candidature was withdrawn. A few
hours later Ollivier announced the news in the Legislative Chamber at
Paris, and exchanged congratulations with the friends of peace, who
considered that the matter was now at an end. But this pacific conclusion
little suited either the war-party or the Bonapartists of the old type, who
grudged to a Constitutional Ministry so substantial a diplomatic success.
They at once declared that the retirement of Prince Leopold was a secondary
matter, and that the real question was what guarantees had been received
from Prussia against a renewal of the candidature. Gramont himself, in an
interview with the Prussian Ambassador, Baron Werther, sketched a letter
which he proposed that King William should send to the Emperor, stating
that in sanctioning the candidature of Prince Leopold he had not intended
to offend the French, and that in associating himself with the Prince's
withdrawal he desired that all misunderstandings should be at an end
between the two Governments. The despatch of Baron Werther conveying this
proposition appears to have deeply offended King William, whom it reached
about midday on the 13th. Benedetti had that morning met the King on the
promenade at Ems, and had received from him the promise that as soon as the
letter which was still on its way from Sigmaringen should arrive he would
send for the Ambassador in order that he might communicate its contents at
Paris. The letter arrived; but Baron Werther's despatch from Paris had
arrived before it; and instead of summoning Benedetti as he had promised,
the King sent one of his aides-de-camp to him with a message that a written
communication had been received from Prince Leopold confirming his
withdrawal, and that the matter was now at an end. Benedetti desired the
aide-de-camp to inform the King that he was compelled by his instructions
to ask for a guarantee against a renewal of the candidature. The
aide-de-camp did as he was requested, and brought back a message that the
King gave his entire approbation to the withdrawal of the Prince of
Hohenzollern, but that he could do no more. Benedetti begged for an
audience with His Majesty. The King replied that he was compelled to
decline entering into further negotiation, and that he had said his last
word. Though the King thus refused any further discussion, perfect courtesy
was observed on both sides; and on the following morning the King and the
Ambassador, who were both leaving Ems, took leave of one another at the
railway station with the usual marks of respect.
[Publication of the telegram from Ems, July 13.]
[War decided at Paris, July 14.]
That the guarantee which the French Government had resolved to demand would
not be given was now perfectly certain; yet, with the candidature of Prince
Leopold fairly extinguished, it was still possible that the cooler heads at
Paris might carry the day, and that the Government would stop short of
declaring war on a point on which the unanimous judgment of the other
Powers declared it to be in the wrong. But Count Bismarck was determined
not to let the French escape lightly from the quarrel. He had to do with an
enemy who by his own folly had come to the brink of an aggressive war, and,
far from facilitating his retreat, it was Bismarck's policy to lure him
over the precipice. Not many hours after the last message had passed
between King William and Benedetti, a telegram was officially published at
Berlin, stating, in terms so brief as to convey the impression of an actual
insult, that the King had refused to see the French Ambassador, and had
informed him by an aide-de-camp that he had nothing more to communicate to
him. This telegram was sent to the representatives of Prussia at most of
the European Courts, and to its agents in every German capital. Narratives
instantly gained currency, and were not contradicted by the Prussian
Government, that Benedetti had forced himself upon the King on the
promenade at Ems, and that in the presence of a large company the King had
turned his back upon the Ambassador. The publication of the alleged
telegram from Ems became known in Paris on the 14th. On that day the
Council of Ministers met three times. At the first meeting the advocates of
peace were still in the majority; in the afternoon, as the news from Berlin
and the fictions describing the insult offered to the French Ambassador
spread abroad, the agitation in Paris deepened, and the Council decided
upon calling up the Reserves; yet the Emperor himself seemed still disposed
for peace. It was in the interval between the second and the third meeting
of the Council, between the hours of six and ten in the evening, that
Napoleon finally gave way before the threats and importunities of the
war-party. The Empress, fanatically anxious for the overthrow of a great
Protestant Power, passionately eager for the military glory which alone
could insure the Crown to her son, won the triumph which she was so
bitterly to rue. At the third meeting of the Council, held shortly before
midnight, the vote was given for war.
In Germany this decision had been expected; yet it made a deep impression
not only on the German people but on Europe at large that, when the
declaration of war was submitted to the French Legislative Body in the form
of a demand for supplies, no single voice was raised to condemn the war for
its criminality and injustice: the arguments which were urged against it by
M. Thiers and others were that the Government had fixed upon a bad cause,
and that the occasion was inopportune. Whether the majority of the Assembly
really desired war is even now matter of doubt. But the clamour of a
hundred madmen within its walls, the ravings of journalists and
incendiaries, who at such a time are to the true expression of public
opinion what the Spanish Inquisition was to the Christian religion,
paralysed the will and the understanding of less infatuated men. Ten votes
alone were given in the Assembly against the grant demanded for war; to
Europe at large it went out that the crime and the madness was that of
France as a nation. Yet Ollivier and many of his colleagues up to the last
moment disapproved of the war, and consented to it only because they
believed that the nation would otherwise rush into hostilities under a
reactionary Ministry who would serve France worse than themselves. They
found when it was too late that the supposed national impulse, which they
had thought irresistible, was but the outcry of a noisy minority. The
reports of their own officers informed them that in sixteen alone out of
the eighty-seven Departments of France was the war popular. In the other
seventy-one it was accepted either with hesitation or regret. [536]
[Initial forces of either side.]
[Expected Alliances of France.]
[Austria preparing.]
How vast were the forces which the North German Confederation could bring
into the field was well known to Napoleon's Government. Benedetti had kept
his employers thoroughly informed of the progress of the North German
military organisation; he had warned them that the South German States
would most certainly act with the North against a foreign assailant; he had
described with great accuracy and great penetration the nature of the tie
that existed between Berlin and St. Petersburg, a tie which was close
enough to secure for Prussia the goodwill, and in certain contingencies the
armed support, of Russia, while it was loose enough not to involve Prussia
in any Muscovite enterprise that would bring upon it the hostility of
England and Austria. The utmost force which the French military
administration reckoned on placing in the field at the beginning of the
campaign was two hundred and fifty thousand men, to be raised at the end of
three weeks by about fifty thousand more. The Prussians, even without
reckoning on any assistance from Southern Germany, and after allowing for
three army-corps that might be needed to watch Austria and Denmark, could
begin the campaign with three hundred and thirty thousand. Army to army,
the French thus stood according to the reckoning of their own War Office
outnumbered at the outset; but Leboeuf, the War-Minister, imagined that the
Foreign Office had made sure of alliances, and that a great part of the
Prussian Army would not be free to act on the western frontier. Napoleon
had in fact pushed forward his negotiations with Austria and Italy from the
time that war became imminent. Count Beust, while clearly laying it down
that Austria was not bound to follow France into a war made at its own
pleasure, nevertheless felt some anxiety lest France and Prussia should
settle their differences at Austria's expense; moreover from the victory of
Napoleon, assisted in any degree by himself, he could fairly hope for the
restoration of Austria's ascendency in Germany and the undoing of the work
of 1866. It was determined at a Council held at Vienna on the 18th of July
that Austria should for the present be neutral if Russia should not enter
the war on the side of Prussia; but this neutrality was nothing more than a
stage towards alliance with France if at the end of a certain brief period
the army of Napoleon should have penetrated into Southern Germany. In a
private despatch to the Austrian Ambassador at Paris Count Beust pointed
out that the immediate participation of Austria in the war would bring
Russia into the field on King William's side. "To keep Russia neutral," he
wrote, "till the season is sufficiently advanced to prevent the
concentration of its troops must be at present our object; but this
neutrality is nothing more than a means for arriving at the real end of our
policy, the only means for completing our preparations without exposing
ourselves to premature attack by Prussia or Russia." He added that Austria
had already entered into a negotiation with Italy with a view to the armed
mediation of the two Powers, and strongly recommended the Emperor to place
the Italians in possession of Rome. [537]
[France, Austria, and Italy.]
Negotiations were now pressed forward between Paris, Florence, and Vienna,
for the conclusion of a triple alliance. Of the course taken by these
negotiations contradictory accounts are given by the persons concerned in
them. According to Prince Napoleon, Victor Emmanuel demanded possession of
Rome and this was refused to him by the French Emperor, in consequence of
which the project of alliance failed. According to the Duke of Gramont, no
more was demanded by Italy than the return to the conditions of the
September Convention; this was agreed to by the Emperor, and it was in
pursuance of this agreement that the Papal States were evacuated by their
French garrison on the 2nd of August. Throughout the last fortnight of
July, after war had actually been declared, there was, if the statement of
Gramont is to be trusted, a continuous interchange of notes, projects, and
telegrams between the three Governments. The difficulties raised by Italy
and Austria were speedily removed, and though some weeks were needed by
these Powers for their military preparations, Napoleon was definitely
assured of their armed support in case of his preliminary success. It was
agreed that Austria and Italy, assuming at the first the position of armed
neutrality, should jointly present an ultimatum to Prussia in September
demanding the exact performance of the Treaty of Prague, and, failing its
compliance with this summons in the sense understood by its enemies, that
the two Powers would immediately declare war, their armies taking the field
at latest on the 15th of September. That Russia would in that case assist
Prussia was well known; but it would seem that Count Beust feared little
from his northern enemy in an autumn campaign. The draft of the Treaty
between Italy and Austria had actually, according to Gramont's statement,
been accepted by the two latter Powers, and received its last amendments in
a negotiation between the Emperor Napoleon and an Italian envoy, Count
Vimercati, at Metz. Vimercati reached Florence with the amended draft on
the 4th of August, and it was expected that the Treaty would be signed on
the following day. When that day came it saw the forces of the French
Empire dashed to pieces. [538]
[Prussian Plans.]
Preparations for a war with France had long occupied the general staff at
Berlin. Before the winter of 1868 a memoir had been drawn up by General
Moltke, containing plans for the concentration of the whole of the German
forces, for the formation of each of the armies to be employed, and the
positions to be occupied at the outset by each corps. On the basis of this
memoir the arrangements for the transport of each corps from its depôt to
the frontier had subsequently been worked out in such minute detail that
when, on the 16th of July, King William gave the order for mobilisation,
nothing remained but to insert in the railway time-tables and
marching-orders the day on which the movement was to commence. This
minuteness of detail extended, however, only to that part of Moltke's plan
which related to the assembling and first placing of the troops. The events
of the campaign could not thus be arranged and tabulated beforehand; only
the general object and design could be laid down. That the French would
throw themselves with great rapidity upon Southern Germany was considered
probable. The armies of Baden, Würtemberg, and Bavaria were too weak, the
military centres of the North were too far distant, for effective
resistance to be made in this quarter to the first blows of the invader.
Moltke therefore recommended that the Southern troops should withdraw from
their own States and move northwards to join those of Prussia in the
Palatinate or on the Middle Rhine, so that the entire forces of Germany
should be thrown upon the flank or rear of the invader; while, in the event
of the French not thus taking the offensive, France itself was to be
invaded by the collective strength of Germany along the line from
Saarbrücken to Landau, and its armies were to be cut off from their
communications with Paris by vigorous movements of the invader in a
northerly direction. [539]
[German mobilisation.]
The military organisation of Germany is based on the division of the
country into districts, each of which furnishes at its own depôt a small
but complete army. The nucleus of each such corps exists in time of peace,
with its own independent artillery, stores, and material of war. On the
order for mobilisation being given, every man liable to military service,
but not actually serving, joins the regiment to which he locally belongs,
and in a given number of days each corps is ready to take the field in full
strength. The completion of each corps at its own depôt is the first stage
in the preparation for a campaign. Not till this is effected does the
movement of troops towards the frontier begin. The time necessary for the
first act of preparation was, like that to be occupied in transport,
accurately determined by the Prussian War Office. It resulted from General
Moltke's calculations that, the order of mobilisation having been given on
the 16th of July, the entire army with which it was intended to begin the
campaign would be collected and in position ready to cross the frontier on
the 4th of August, if the French should not have taken up the offensive
before that day. But as it was apprehended that part at least of the French
army would be thrown into Germany before that date, the westward movement
of the German troops stopped short at a considerable distance from the
border, in order that the troops first arriving might not be exposed to the
attack of a superior force before their supports should be at hand. On the
actual frontier there was placed only the handful of men required for
reconnoitring, and for checking the enemy during the few hours that would
be necessary to guard against the effect of a surprise.
[The French Army.]
The French Emperor was aware of the numerical inferiority of his army to
that of Prussia; he hoped, however, by extreme rapidity of movement to
penetrate Southern Germany before the Prussian army could assemble, and so,
while forcing the Southern Governments to neutrality, to meet on the Upper
Danube the assisting forces of Italy and Austria. It was his design to
concentrate a hundred and fifty thousand men at Metz, a hundred thousand at
Strasburg, and with these armies united to cross the Rhine into Baden;
while a third army, which was to assemble at Châlons, protected the
north-eastern frontier against an advance of the Prussians. A few days
after the declaration of war, while the German corps were still at their
depôts in the interior, considerable forces were massed round Metz and
Strasburg. All Europe listened for the rush of the invader and the first
swift notes of triumph from a French army beyond the Rhine; but week after
week passed, and the silence was still unbroken. Stories, incredible to
those who first heard them, yet perfectly true, reached the German
frontier-stations of actual famine at the advanced posts of the enemy, and
of French soldiers made prisoners while digging in potato-fields to keep
themselves alive. That Napoleon was less ready than had been anticipated
became clear to all the world; but none yet imagined the revelations which
each successive day was bringing at the headquarters of the French armies.
Absence of whole regiments that figured in the official order of battle,
defective transport, stores missing or congested, made it impossible even
to attempt the inroad into Southern Germany within the date up to which it
had any prospect of success. The design was abandoned, yet not in time to
prevent the troops that were hurrying from the interior from being sent
backwards and forwards according as the authorities had, or had not, heard
of the change of plan. Napoleon saw that a Prussian force was gathering on
the Middle Rhine which it would be madness to leave on his flank; he
ordered his own commanders to operate on the corresponding line of the
Lauter and the Saar, and despatched isolated divisions to the very
frontier, still uncertain whether even in this direction he would be able
to act on the offensive, or whether nothing now remained to him but to
resist the invasion of France by a superior enemy. Ollivier had stated in
the Assembly that he and his colleagues entered upon the war with a light
heart; he might have added that they entered upon it with bandaged eyes.
The Ministers seem actually not to have taken the trouble to exchange
explanations with one another. Leboeuf, the War-Minister, had taken it
for granted that Gramont had made arrangements with Austria which would
compel the Prussians to keep a large part of their forces in the interior.
Gramont, in forcing on the quarrel with Prussia, and in his negotiations
with Austria, had taken it for granted that Leboeuf could win a series of
victories at the outset in Southern Germany. The Emperor, to whom alone the
entire data of the military and the diplomatic services of France were
open, was incapable of exertion or scrutiny, purposeless, distracted with
pain, half-imbecile.
[Causes of French military inferiority.]
That the Imperial military administration was rotten to the core the
terrible events of the next few weeks sufficiently showed. Men were in high
place whose antecedents would have shamed the better kind of brigand. The
deficiencies of the army were made worse by the diversion of public funds
to private necessities; the looseness, the vulgar splendour, the base
standards of judgment of the Imperial Court infected each branch of the
public services of France, and worked perhaps not least on those who were
in military command. But the catastrophe of 1870 seemed to those who
witnessed it to tell of more than the vileness of an administration; in
England, not less than in Germany, voices of influence spoke of the doom
that had overtaken the depravity of a sunken nation; of the triumph of
simple manliness, of Godfearing virtue itself, in the victories of the
German army. There may have been truth in this; yet it would require a nice
moral discernment to appraise the exact degeneracy of the French of 1870
from the French of 1854 who humbled Russia, or from the French of 1859 who
triumphed at Solferino; and it would need a very comprehensive acquaintance
with the lower forms of human pleasure to judge in what degree the
sinfulness of Paris exceeds the sinfulness of Berlin. Had the French been
as strict a race as the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae, as devout as the
Tyrolese who perished at Königgrätz, it is quite certain that, with the
numbers which took the field against Germany in 1870, with Napoleon III. at
the head of affairs, and the actual generals of 1870 in command, the armies
of France could not have escaped destruction.
[Cause of German Success.]
The main cause of the disparity of France and Germany in 1870 was in truth
that Prussia had had from 1862 to 1866 a Government so strong as to be able
to force upon its subjects its own gigantic scheme of military organisation
in defiance of the votes of Parliament and of the national will. In 1866
Prussia, with a population of nineteen millions, brought actually into the
field three hundred and fifty thousand men, or one in fifty-four of its
inhabitants. There was no other government in Europe, with the possible
exception of Russia, which could have imposed upon its subjects, without
risking its own existence, so vast a burden of military service as that
implied in this strength of the fighting army. Napoleon III. at the height
of his power could not have done so; and when after Königgrätz he
endeavoured to raise the forces of France to an equality with those of the
rival Power by a system which would have brought about one in seventy of
the population into the field, his own nominees in the Legislative Body,
under pressure of public opinion, so weakened the scheme that the effective
numbers of the army remained little more than they were before. The true
parallel to the German victories of 1870 is to be found in the victories of
the French Committee of Public Safety in 1794 and in those of the first
Napoleon. A government so powerful as to bend the entire resources of the
State to military ends will, whether it is one of democracy run mad, or of
a crowned soldier of fortune, or of an ancient monarchy throwing new vigour
into its traditional system and policy, crush in the moment of impact
communities of equal or greater resources in which a variety of rival
influences limit and control the central power and subordinate military to
other interests. It was so in the triumphs of the Reign of Terror over the
First Coalition; it was so in the triumphs of King William over Austria and
France. But the parallel between the founders of German unity and the
organisers of victory after 1793 extends no farther than to the sources of
their success. Aggression and adventure have not been the sequels of the
war of 1870. The vast armaments of Prussia were created in order to
establish German union under the House of Hohenzollern, and they have been
employed for no other object. It is the triumph of statesmanship, and it
has been the glory of Prince Bismarck, after thus reaping the fruit of a
well-timed homage to the God of Battles, to know how to quit his shrine.
[The frontier, Aug. 2.]
[Saarbrücken, Aug 2.]
[Weissenburg, Aug 4.]
[Battle of Wörth, Aug. 6.]