CHAPTER XXV.

France after 1871--Alliance of the Three Emperors--Revolt of

Herzegovina--The Andrássy Note--Murder of the Consuls at Salonika--The

Berlin Memorandum--Rejected by England--Abdul Aziz deposed--Massacres in

Bulgaria--Servia and Montenegro declare War--Opinion in England--

Disraeli--Meeting of Emperors at Reichstadt--Servian Campaign--Declaration

of the Czar--Conference at Constantinople--Its Failure--The London

Protocol--Russia declares War--Advance on the Balkans--Osman at

Plevna--Second Attack on Plevna--The Shipka Pass--Roumania--Third attack

on Plevna--Todleben--Fall of Plevna--Passage of the Balkans--Armistice--

England--The Fleet passes the Dardanelles--Treaty of San Stefano--England

and Russia--Secret Agreement--Convention with Turkey--Congress of

Berlin--Treaty of Berlin--Bulgaria.

[France after 1871.]

The storm of 1870 was followed by some years of European calm. France,

recovering with wonderful rapidity from the wounds inflicted by the war,

paid with ease the instalments of its debt to Germany, and saw its soil

liberated from the foreigner before the period fixed by the Treaty of

Frankfort. The efforts of a reactionary Assembly were kept in check by M.

Thiers; the Republic, as the form of government which divided Frenchmen the

least, was preferred by him to the monarchical restoration which might have

won France allies at some of the European Courts. For two years Thiers

baffled or controlled the royalist majority at Versailles which sought to

place the Comté de Chambord or the chief of the House of Orleans on the

throne, and thus saved his country from the greatest of all perils, the

renewal of civil war. In 1873 he fell before a combination of his

opponents, and McMahon succeeded to the Presidency, only to find that the

royalist cause was made hopeless by the refusal of the Comté de Chambord to

adopt the Tricolour flag, and that France, after several years of trial,

definitely preferred the Republic. Meanwhile, Prince Bismarck had known how

to frustrate all plans for raising a coalition against victorious Germany

among the Powers which had been injured by its successes, or whose

interests were threatened by its greatness. He saw that a Bourbon or a

Napoleon on the throne of France would find far more sympathy and

confidence at Vienna and St. Petersburg than the shifting chief of a

Republic, and ordered Count Arnim, the German Ambassador at Paris, who

wished to promote a Napoleonic restoration, to desist from all attempts to

weaken the Republican Government. At St. Petersburg, where after the

misfortunes of 1815 France had found its best friends, the German statesman

had as yet little to fear. Bismarck had supported Russia in undoing the

Treaty of Paris; in announcing the conclusion of peace with France, the

German Emperor had assured the Czar in the most solemn language that his

services in preventing the war of 1870 from becoming general should never

be forgotten; and, whatever might be the feeling of his subjects, Alexander

II. continued to believe that Russia could find no steadier friend than the

Government of Berlin.

[Alliance of the three Emperors.]

With Austria Prince Bismarck had a more difficult part to play. He could

hope for no real understanding so long as Beust remained at the head of

affairs. But the events of 1870, utterly frustrating Beust's plans for a

coalition against Prussia, and definitely closing for Austria all hope of

recovering its position within Germany, had shaken the Minister's position.

Bismarck was able to offer to the Emperor Francis Joseph the sincere and

cordial friendship of the powerful German Empire, on the condition that

Austria should frankly accept the work of 1866 and 1870. He had dissuaded

his master after the victory of Königgrätz from annexing any Austrian

territory; he had imposed no condition of peace that left behind it a

lasting exasperation; and he now reaped the reward of his foresight.

Francis Joseph accepted the friendship offered him from Berlin, and

dismissed Count Beust from office, calling to his place the Hungarian

Minister Andrássy, who, by conviction as well as profession, welcomed the

establishment of a German Empire, and the definite abandonment by Austria

of its interference in German affairs. In the summer of 1872 the three

Emperors, accompanied by their Ministers, met in Berlin. No formal alliance

was made, but a relation was established of sufficient intimacy to insure

Prince Bismarck against any efforts that might be made by France to gain an

ally. For five years this so-called League of the three Emperors continued

in more or less effective existence, and condemned France to isolation. In

the apprehension of the French people, Germany, gorged with the five

milliards but still lean and ravenous, sought only for some new occasion

for war. This was not the case. The German nation had entered unwillingly

into the war of 1870; that its ruler, when once his great aim had been

achieved, sought peace not only in word but in deed the history of

subsequent years has proved. The alarms which at intervals were raised at

Paris and elsewhere had little real foundation; and when next the peace of

Europe was broken, it was not by a renewal of the struggle on the Vosges,

but by a conflict in the East, which, terrible as it was in the sufferings

and the destruction of life which it involved, was yet no senseless duel

between two jealous nations, but one of the most fruitful in results of all

modern wars, rescuing whole provinces from Ottoman dominion, and leaving

behind it in place of a chaos of outworn barbarism at least the elements

for a future of national independence among the Balkan population.

[Revolt of Herzegovina, Aug., 1875.]

[Andrássy Note, Jan. 31, 1876.]

In the summer of 1875 Herzegovina rose against its Turkish masters, and in

Bosnia conflicts broke out between Christians and Mohammedans. The

insurrection was vigorously, though privately, supported by Servia and

Montenegro, and for some months baffled all the efforts made by the Porte

for its suppression. Many thousands of the Christians, flying from a

devastated land and a merciless enemy, sought refuge beyond the Austrian

frontier, and became a burden upon the Austrian Government. The agitation

among the Slavic neighbours and kinsmen of the insurgents threatened the

peace of Austria itself, where Slav and Magyar were almost as ready to fall

upon one another as Christian and Turk. Andrássy entered into

communications with the Governments of St. Petersburg and Berlin as to the

adoption of a common line of policy by the three Empires towards the Porte;

and a scheme of reforms, intended to effect the pacification of the

insurgent provinces, was drawn up by the three Ministers in concert with

one another. This project, which was known as the Andrássy Note, and which

received the approval of England and France, demanded from the Porte the

establishment of full and entire religious liberty, the abolition of the

farming of taxes, the application of the revenue produced by direct

taxation in Bosnia and Herzegovina to the needs of those provinces

themselves, the institution of a Commission composed equally of Christians

and Mohammedans to control the execution of these reforms and of those

promised by the Porte, and finally the improvement of the agrarian

condition of the population by the sale to them of waste lands belonging to

the State. The Note demanding these reforms was presented in Constantinople

on the 31st of January, 1876. The Porte, which had already been lavish of

promises to the insurgents, raised certain objections in detail, but

ultimately declared itself willing to grant in substance the concessions

which were specified by the Powers. [546]

[Murder of the Consuls at Salonika, May 6.]

Armed with this assurance, the representatives of Austria now endeavoured

to persuade the insurgents to lay down their arms and the refugees to

return to their homes. But the answer was made that promises enough had

already been given by the Sultan, and that the question was, not what more

was to be written on a piece of paper, but how the execution of these

promises was to be enforced. Without some guarantee from the Great Powers

of Europe the refugees refused to place themselves again at the mercy of

the Turk, and the leaders in Herzegovina refused to disband their troops.

The conflict broke out afresh with greater energy; the intervention of the

Powers, far from having produced peace, roused the fanatical passions of

the Mohammedans both against the Christian rayahs and against the foreigner

to whom they had appealed. A wave of religious, of patriotic agitation, of

political disquiet, of barbaric fury, passed over the Turkish Empire. On

the 6th of May the Prussian and the French Consuls at Salonika were

attacked and murdered by the mob. In Smyrna and Constantinople there were

threatening movements against the European inhabitants; in Bulgaria, the

Circassian settlers and the hordes of irregular troops whom the Government

had recently sent into that province waited only for the first sign of an

expected insurrection to fall upon their prey and deluge the land with

blood.

[The Berlin Memorandum, May 13.]

As soon as it became evident that peace was not to be produced by Count

Andrássy's Note, the Ministers of the three Empires determined to meet one

another with the view of arranging further diplomatic steps to be taken in

common. Berlin, which the Czar was about to visit, was chosen as the

meeting-place; the date of the meeting was fixed for the second week in

May. It was in the interval between the despatch of Prince Bismarck's

invitation and the arrival of the Czar, with Prince Gortschakoff and Count

Andrássy, that intelligence came of the murder of the Prussian and French

Consuls at Salonika. This event gave a deeper seriousness to the

deliberations now held. The Ministers declared that if the representatives

of two foreign Powers could be thus murdered in broad daylight in a

peaceful town under the eyes of the powerless authorities, the Christians

of the insurgent provinces might well decline to entrust themselves to an

exasperated enemy. An effective guarantee for the execution of the promises

made by the Porte had become absolutely necessary. The conclusions of the

Ministers were embodied in a Memorandum, which declared that an armistice

of two months must be imposed on the combatants; that the mixed Commission

mentioned in the Andrássy Note must be at once called into being, with a

Christian native of Herzegovina at its head; and that the reforms promised

by the Porte must be carried out under the superintendence of the

representatives of the European Powers. If before the end of the armistice

the Porte should not have given its assent to these terms, the Imperial

Courts declared that they must support these diplomatic efforts by measures

of a more effective character. [547]

[England alone rejects the Berlin Memorandum.]

On the same day that this Memorandum was signed, Prince Bismarck invited

the British, the French, and Italian Ambassadors to meet the Russian and

the Austrian Chancellors at his residence. They did so. The Memorandum was

read, and an urgent request was made that Great Britain France, and Italy

would combine with the Imperial Courts in support of the Berlin Memorandum

as they had in support of the Andrássy Note. As Prince Gortschakoff and

Andrássy were staying in Berlin only for two days longer, it was hoped that

answers might be received by telegraph within forty-eight hours. Within

that time answers arrived from the French and Italian Governments accepting

the Berlin Memorandum; the reply from London did not arrive till five days

later; it announced the refusal of the Government to join in the course

proposed. Pending further negotiations on this subject, French, German,

Austrian, Italian, and Russian ships of war were sent to Salonika to

enforce satisfaction for the murder of the Consuls. The Cabinet of London,

declining to associate itself with the concert of the Powers, and stating

that Great Britain, while intending nothing in the nature of a menace,

could not permit territorial changes to be made in the East without its own

consent, despatched the fleet to Besika Bay.

[Abdul Aziz deposed, May 29.]

[Massacres in Bulgaria.]

[Servia and Montenegro declare war, July 2.]

Up to this time little attention had been paid in England to the revolt of

the Christian subjects of the Porte or its effect on European politics.

Now, however, a series of events began which excited the interest and even

the passion of the English people in an extraordinary degree. The ferment

in Constantinople was deepening. On the 29th of May the Sultan Abdul Aziz

was deposed by Midhat Pasha and Hussein Avni, the former the chief of the

party of reform, the latter the representative of the older Turkish

military and patriotic spirit which Abdul Aziz had incensed by his

subserviency to Russia. A few days later the deposed Sultan was murdered.

Hussein Avni and another rival of Midhat were assassinated by a desperado

as they sat at the council; Murad V., who had been raised to the throne,

proved imbecile; and Midhat, the destined regenerator of the Ottoman Empire

as many outside Turkey believed, grasped all but the highest power in the

State. Towards the end of June reports reached western Europe of the

repression of an insurrection in Bulgaria with measures of atrocious

violence. Servia and Montenegro, long active in support of their kinsmen

who were in arms, declared war. The reports from Bulgaria, at first vague,

took more definite form; and at length the correspondents of German as well

as English newspapers, making their way to the district south of the

Balkans, found in villages still strewed with skeletons and human remains

the terrible evidence of what had passed. The British Ministry, relying

upon the statements of Sir H. Elliot, Ambassador at Constantinople, at

first denied the seriousness of the massacres: they directed, however, that

investigations should be made on the spot by a member of the Embassy; and

Mr. Baring, Secretary of Legation, was sent to Bulgaria with this duty.

Baring's report confirmed the accounts which his chief had refused to

believe, and placed the number of the victims, rightly or wrongly, at not

less than twelve thousand. [548]

[Opinion in England.]

The Bulgarian massacres acted on Europe in 1876 as the massacre of Chios

had acted on Europe in 1822. In England especially they excited the deepest

horror, and completely changed the tone of public opinion towards the Turk.

Hitherto the public mind had scarcely been conscious of the questions that

were at issue in the East. Herzegovina, Bosnia, Bulgaria, were not familiar

names like Greece; the English people hardly knew where these countries

were, or that they were not inhabited by Turks. The Crimean War had left

behind it the tradition of friendship with the Sultan; it needed some

lightning-flash, some shock penetrating all ranks of society, to dispel

once and for all the conventional idea of Turkey as a community resembling

a European State, and to bring home to the English people the true

condition of the Christian races of the Balkan under their Ottoman masters.

But this the Bulgarian massacres effectively did; and from this time the

great mass of the English people, who had sympathised so strongly with the

Italians and the Hungarians in their struggle for national independence,

were not disposed to allow the influence of Great Britain to be used for

the perpetuation of Turkish ascendency over the Slavic races. There is

little doubt that if in the autumn of 1876 the nation had had the

opportunity of expressing its views by a Parliamentary election, it would

have insisted on the adoption of active measures in concert with the Powers

which were prepared to force reform upon the Porte. But the Parliament of

1876 was but two years old; the majority which supported the Government was

still unbroken; and at the head of the Cabinet there was a man gifted with

extraordinary tenacity of purpose, with great powers of command over

others, and with a clear, cold, untroubled apprehension of the line of

conduct which he intended to pursue. It was one of the strangest features

of this epoch that a Minister who in a long career had never yet exercised

the slightest influence upon foreign affairs, and who was not himself

English by birth, should have impressed in such an extreme degree the stamp

of his own individuality upon the conduct of our foreign policy; that he

should have forced England to the very front in the crisis through which

Europe was passing; and that, for good or for evil, he should have reversed

the tendency which since the Italian war of 1859 had seemed ever to be

drawing England further and further away from Continental affairs.

[Disraeli.]

Disraeli's conception of Parliamentary politics was an ironical one. It had

pleased the British nation that the leadership of one of its great

political parties should be won by a man of genius only on the condition of

accommodating himself to certain singular fancies of his contemporaries;

and for twenty years, from the time of his attacks upon Sir Robert Peel for

the abolition of the corn-laws down to the time when he educated his party

into the democratic Reform Bill of 1867, Disraeli with an excellent grace

suited himself to the somewhat strange parts which he was required to play.

But after 1874, when he was placed in office at the head of a powerful

majority in both Houses of Parliament and of a submissive Cabinet, the

antics ended; the epoch of statesmanship, and of statesmanship based on the

leader's own individual thought not on the commonplace of public creeds,

began. At a time when Cavour was rice-growing and Bismarck unknown outside

his own county, Disraeli had given to the world in Tancred his visions of

Eastern Empire. Mysterious chieftains planned the regeneration of Asia by a

new crusade of Arab and Syrian votaries of the one living faith, and

lightly touched on the transfer of Queen Victoria's Court from London to

Delhi. Nothing indeed is perfect; and Disraeli's eye was favoured with such

extraordinary perceptions of the remote that it proved a little uncertain

in its view of matters not quite without importance nearer home. He thought

the attempt to establish Italian independence a misdemeanour; he listened

to Bismarck's ideas on the future of Germany, and described them as the

vapourings of a German baron. For a quarter of a century Disraeli had

dazzled and amused the House of Commons without, as it seemed, drawing

inspiration from any one great cause or discerning any one of the political

goals towards which the nations of Europe were tending. At length, however,

the time came for the realisation of his own imperial policy; and before

the Eastern question had risen conspicuously above the horizon in Europe,

Disraeli, as Prime Minister of England, had begun to act in Asia and

Africa. He sent the Prince of Wales to hold Durbars and to hunt tigers

amongst the Hindoos; he proclaimed the Queen Empress of India; he purchased

the Khedive's shares in the Suez Canal. Thus far it had been uncertain

whether there was much in the Minister's policy beyond what was theatrical

and picturesque; but when a great part of the nation began to ask for

intervention on behalf of the Eastern Christians against the Turks, they

found out that Disraeli's purpose was solid enough. Animated by a deep

distrust and fear of Russia, he returned to what had been the policy of

Tory Governments in the days before Canning, the identification of British

interests with the maintenance of Ottoman power. If a generation of

sentimentalists were willing to sacrifice the grandeur of an Empire to

their sympathies with an oppressed people, it was not Disraeli who would be

their instrument. When the massacre of Batak was mentioned in the House of

Commons, he dwelt on the honourable qualities of the Circassians; when

instances of torture were alleged, he remarked that an oriental people

generally terminated its connection with culprits in a more expeditious

manner. [549] There were indeed Englishmen enough who loved their country

as well as Disraeli, and who had proved their love by sacrifices which

Disraeli had not had occasion to make, who thought it humiliating that the

greatness of England should be purchased by the servitude and oppression of

other races, and that the security of their Empire should be deemed to rest

on so miserable a thing as Turkish rule. These were considerations to which

Disraeli did not attach much importance. He believed the one thing needful

to be the curbing of Russia; and, unlike Canning, who held that Russia

would best be kept in check by England's own armed co-operation with it in

establishing the independence of Greece, he declined from the first to

entertain any project of imposing reform on the Sultan by force, doubting

only to what extent it would be possible for him to support the Sultan in

resistance to other Powers. According to his own later statement he would

himself, had he been left unfettered, have definitely informed the Czar

that if he should make war upon the Porte England would act as its ally.

Public opinion in England, however, rendered this course impossible. The

knife of Circassian and Bashi-Bazouk had severed the bond with Great

Britain which had saved Turkey in 1854. Disraeli--henceforward Earl of

Beaconsfield--could only utter grim anathemas against Servia for presuming

to draw the sword upon its rightful lord and master, and chide those

impatient English who, like the greater man whose name is associated with

Beaconsfield, considered that the world need not be too critical as to the

means of getting rid of such an evil as Ottoman rule. [550]

[Meeting and Treaty of Reichstadt, July 8.]

[The Servian Campaign, July-Oct.]

[Russian enforces an armistice, Oct. 30.]

The rejection by England of the Berlin Memorandum and the proclamation of

war by Servia and Montenegro were followed by the closer union of the

three Imperial Courts. The Czar and the Emperor Francis Joseph, with

their Ministers, met at Reichstadt in Bohemia on the 8th of July.

According to official statements the result of the meeting was that the

two sovereigns determined upon non-intervention for the present, and

proposed only to renew the attempt to unite all the Christian Powers in a

common policy when some definite occasion should arise. Rumours, however,

which proved to be correct, went abroad that something of the nature of

an eventual partition of European Turkey had been the object of

negotiation. A Treaty had in fact been signed providing that if Russia

should liberate Bulgaria by arms, Austria should enter into possession of

Bosnia and Herzegovina. The neutrality of Austria had virtually been

purchased at this price, and Russia had thus secured freedom of action in

the event of the necessary reforms not being forced upon Turkey by the

concert of Europe. Sooner perhaps than Prince Gortschakoff had expected,

the religious enthusiasm of the Russian people and their sympathy for

their kinsmen and fellow-believers beyond the Danube forced the Czar into

vigorous action. In spite of the assistance of several thousands of

Russian volunteers and of the leadership of the Russian General

Tchernaieff, the Servians were defeated in their struggle with the Turks.

The mediation of England was in vain tendered to the Porte on the only

terms on which even at London peace was seen to be possible, the

maintenance of the existing rights of Servia and the establishment of

provincial autonomy in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria. After a brief

suspension of hostilities in September war was renewed. The Servians were

driven from their positions; Alexinatz was captured, the road to Belgrade

lay open, and the doom of Bulgaria seemed likely to descend upon the

conquered Principality. The Turks offered indeed a five months' armistice,

which would have saved them the risks of a winter campaign and enabled

them to crush their enemy with accumulated forces in the following

spring. This, by the advice of Russia, the Servians refused to accept. On

the 30th of October a Russian ultimatum was handed in at Constantinople

by the Ambassador Ignatieff, requiring within forty-eight hours the grant

to Servia of an armistice for two months and the cessation of hostilities.

The Porte submitted; and wherever Slav and Ottoman stood facing one

another in arms, in Herzegovina and Bosnia as well as Servia and

Montenegro, there was a pause in the struggle.

[Declaration of the Czar, Nov. 2.]

[England proposes a Conference.]

The imminence of a war between Russia and Turkey in the last days of

October and the close connection between Russia and the Servian cause

justified the anxiety of the British Government. This anxiety the Czar

sought to dispel by a frank declaration of his own views. On the 2nd of

November he entered into conversation with the British Ambassador, Lord A.

Loftus, and assured him on his word of honour that he had no intention of

acquiring Constantinople; that if it should be necessary for him to occupy

part of Bulgaria his army would remain there only until peace was restored

and the security of the Christian population established; and, generally,

that he desired nothing more earnestly than a complete accord between

England and Russia in the maintenance of European peace and the improvement

of the condition of the Christian population in Turkey. He stated, however,

with perfect clearness that if the Porte should continue to refuse the

reforms demanded by Europe, and the Powers should put up with its continued

refusal, Russia would act alone. Disclaiming in words of great earnestness

all desire for territorial aggrandisement, he protested against the

suspicion with which his policy was regarded in England, and desired that

his words might be made public in England as a message of peace. [551] Lord

Derby, then Foreign Secretary, immediately expressed the satisfaction with

which the Government had received these assurances; and on the following

day an invitation was sent from London to all the European Powers proposing

a Conference at Constantinople, on the basis of a common recognition of the

integrity of the Ottoman Empire, accompanied by a disavowal on the part of

each of the Powers of all aims at aggrandisement or separate advantage. In

proposing this Conference the Government acted in conformity with the

expressed desire of the Czar. But there were two voices within the Cabinet.

Lord Beaconsfield, had it been in his power, would have informed Russia

categorically that England would support the Sultan if attacked. This the

country and the Cabinet forbade: but the Premier had his own opportunities

of utterance, and at the Guildhall Banquet on the 9th of November, six days

after the Foreign Secretary had acknowledged the Czar's message of

friendship, and before this message had been made known to the English

people, Lord Beaconsfield uttered words which, if they were not idle

bluster, could have been intended only as a menace to the Czar or as an

appeal to the war-party at home:--"Though the policy of England is peace,

there is no country so well prepared for war as our own. If England enters

into conflict in a righteous cause, her resources are inexhaustible. She is

not a country that when she enters into a campaign has to ask herself

whether she can support a second or a third campaign. She enters into a

campaign which she will not terminate till right is done."

[Project of Ottoman Constitution.]

The proposal made by the Earl of Derby for a Conference at Constantinople

was accepted by all the Powers, and accepted on the bases specified. Lord

Salisbury, then Secretary of State for India, was appointed to represent

Great Britain in conjunction with Sir H. Elliot, its Ambassador. The

Minister made his journey to Constantinople by way of the European

capitals, and learnt at Berlin that the good understanding between the

German Emperor and the Czar extended to Eastern affairs. Whether the

British Government had as yet gained any trustworthy information on the

Treaty of Reichstadt is doubtful; but so far as the public eye could judge,

there was now, in spite of the tone assumed by Lord Beaconsfield, a fairer

prospect of the solution of the Eastern question by the establishment of

some form of autonomy in the Christian provinces than there had been at any

previous time. The Porte itself recognised the serious intention of the

Powers, and, in order to forestall the work of the Conference, prepared a

scheme of constitutional reform that far surpassed the wildest claims of

Herzegovinian or of Serb. Nothing less than a complete system of

Parliamentary Government, with the very latest ingenuities from France and

Belgium, was to be granted to the entire Ottoman Empire. That Midhat Pasha,

who was the author of this scheme, may have had some serious end in view is

not impossible; but with the mass of Palace-functionaries at Constantinople

it was simply a device for embarrassing the West with its own inventions;

and the action of men in power, both great and small, continued after the

constitution had come into nominal existence to be exactly what it had been

before. The very terms of the constitution must have been unintelligible to

all but those who had been employed at foreign courts. The Government might

as well have announced its intention of clothing the Balkans with the flora

of the deep sea.

[Demands settled at the Preliminary Conference, Dec. 11-21.]

In the second week of December the representatives of the six Great Powers

assembled at Constantinople. In order that the demands of Europe should be

presented to the Porte with unanimity, they determined to hold a series of

preliminary meetings with one another before the formal opening of the

Conference and before communicating with the Turks. At these meetings,

after Ignatieff had withdrawn his proposal for a Russian occupation of

Bulgaria, complete accord was attained. It was resolved to demand the

cession of certain small districts by the Porte to Servia and Montenegro;

the grant of administrative autonomy to Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria;

the appointment in each of these provinces of Christian governors, whose

terms of office should be for five years, and whose nomination should be

subject to the approval of the Powers; the confinement of Turkish troops to

the fortresses; the removal of the bands of Circassians to Asia; and

finally the execution of these reforms under the superintendence of an

International Commission, which should have at its disposal a corps of six

thousand gendarmes to be enlisted in Switzerland or Belgium. By these

arrangements, while the Sultan retained his sovereignty and the integrity

of the Ottoman Empire remained unimpaired, it was conceived that the

Christian population would be effectively secured against Turkish violence

and caprice.

[The Turks refuse the demands of the Conference, Jan. 20, 1877.]

All differences between the representatives of the European Powers having

been removed, the formal Conference was opened on the 23rd of December

under the presidency of the Turkish Foreign Minister, Savfet Pasha. The

proceedings had not gone far when they were interrupted by the roar of

cannon. Savfet explained that the new Ottoman constitution was being

promulgated, and that the salvo which the members of the Conference heard

announced the birth of an era of universal happiness and prosperity in the

Sultan's dominions. It soon appeared that in the presence of this great

panacea there was no place for the reforming efforts of the Christian

Powers. Savfet declared from the first that, whatever concessions might be

made on other points, the Sultan's Government would never consent to the

establishment of a Foreign Commission to superintend the execution of its

reforms, nor to the joint action of the Powers in the appointment of the

governors of its provinces. It was in vain argued that without such

foreign control Europe possessed no guarantee that the promises and the

good intentions of the Porte, however gratifying these might be, would be

carried into effect. Savfet replied that by the Treaty of 1856 the Powers

had declared the Ottoman Empire to stand on exactly the same footing as

any other great State in Europe, and had expressly debarred themselves

from interfering, under whatever circumstances, with its internal

administration. The position of the Turkish representative at the

Conference was in fact the only logical one. In the Treaty of Paris the

Powers had elaborately pledged themselves to an absurdity; and this

Treaty the Turk was never weary of throwing in their faces. But the

situation was not one for lawyers and for the interpretation of

documents. The Conference, after hearing the arguments and the

counter-projects of the Turkish Ministers, after reconsidering its own

demands and modifying these in many important points in deference to

Ottoman wishes, adhered to the demand for a Foreign Commission and for a

European control over the appointment of governors. Midhat, who was now

Grand Vizier, summoned the Great Council of the Empire, and presented to

it the demands of the Conference. These demands the Great Council

unanimously rejected. Lord Salisbury had already warned the Sultan what

would be the results of continued obstinacy; and after receiving Midhat's

final reply the ambassadors of all the Powers, together with the envoys

who had been specially appointed for the Conference, quitted

Constantinople.

[The London Protocol, Mar. 31.]

[The Porte rejects the Protocol.]

[Russia declares war, April 24.]

Russia, since the beginning of November, had been actively preparing for

war. The Czar had left the world in no doubt as to his own intentions in

case of the failure of the European Concert; it only remained for him to

ascertain whether, after the settlement of a definite scheme of reform by

the Conference and the rejection of this scheme by the Porte, the Powers

would or would not take steps to enforce their conclusion. England

suggested that the Sultan should be allowed a year to carry out his good

intentions: Gortschakoff inquired whether England would pledge itself to

action if, at the end of the year, reform was not effected; but no such

pledge was forthcoming. With the object either of discovering some

arrangement in which the Powers would combine, or of delaying the outbreak

of war until the Russian preparations were more advanced and the season

more favourable, Ignatieff was sent round to all the European Courts. He

visited England, and subsequently drew up, with the assistance of Count

Schouvaloff, Russian Ambassador at London, a document which gained the

approval of the British as well as the Continental Governments. This

document, known as the London Protocol, was signed on the 31st of March.

After a reference to the promises of reform made by the Porte, it stated

that the Powers intended to watch carefully by their representatives over

the manner in which these promises were carried into effect; that if their

hopes should be once more disappointed they should regard the condition of

affairs as incompatible with the interests of Europe; and that in such case

they would decide in common upon the means best fitted to secure the

well-being of the Christian population and the interests of general peace.

Declarations relative to the disarmament of Russia, which it was now the

principal object of the British Government to effect, were added. There was

indeed so little of a substantial engagement in this Protocol that it would

have been surprising had Russia disarmed without obtaining some further

guarantee for the execution of reform. But weak as the Protocol was, it was

rejected by the Porte. Once more the appeal was made to the Treaty of

Paris, once more the Sultan protested against the encroachment of the

Powers on his own inviolable rights. Lord Beaconsfield's Cabinet even now

denied that the last word had been spoken, and professed to entertain some

hope in the effect of subsequent diplomatic steps; but the rest of Europe

asked and expected no further forbearance on the part of Russia. The army

of operations already lay on the Pruth: the Grand Duke Nicholas, brother of

the Czar, was appointed to its command; and on the 24th of April the

Russian Government issued its declaration of war.

[Passage of the Danube, June 27.]

[Advance on the Balkans, July.]

[Gourko south of the Balkans, July 15.]

Between the Russian frontier and the Danube lay the Principality of

Roumania. A convention signed before the outbreak of hostilities gave to

the Russian army a free passage through this territory, and Roumania

subsequently entered the war as Russia's ally. It was not, however, until

the fourth week of June that the invaders were able to cross the Danube.

Seven army-corps were assembled in Roumania; of these one crossed the Lower

Danube into the Dobrudscha, two were retained in Roumania as a reserve, and

four crossed the river in the neighbourhood of Sistowa, in order to enter

upon the Bulgarian campaign. It was the desire of the Russians to throw

forward the central part of their army by the line of the river Jantra upon

the Balkans; with their left to move against Rustchuk and the Turkish

armies in the eastern fortresses of Bulgaria; with their right to capture

Nicopolis, and guard the central column against any flank attack from the

west. But both in Europe and in Asia the Russians had underrated the power

of their adversary, and entered upon the war with insufficient forces.

Advantages won by their generals on the Armenian frontier while the

European army was still marching through Roumania were lost in the course

of the next few weeks. Bayazid and other places that fell into the hands of

the Russians at the first onset were recovered by the Turks under Mukhtar

Pasha; and within a few days after the opening of the European campaign the

Russian divisions in Asia were everywhere retreating upon their own

frontier. The Bulgarian campaign was marked by the same rapid successes of

the invader at the outset, to be followed, owing to the same insufficiency

of force, by similar disasters. Encountering no effective opposition on the

Danube, the Russians pushed forward rapidly towards the Balkans by the line

of the Jantra. The Turkish army lay scattered in the Bulgarian fortresses,

from Widdin in the extreme west to Shumla at the foot of the Eastern

Balkans. It was considered by the Russian commanders that two army-corps

would be required to operate against the Turks in Eastern Bulgaria, while

one corps would be enough to cover the central line of invasion from the

west. There remained, excluding the two corps in reserve in Roumania and

the corps holding the Dobrudscha, but one corps for the march on the

Balkans and Adrianople. The command of the vanguard of this body was given

to General Gourko, who pressed on into the Balkans, seized the Shipka Pass,

and descended into Southern Bulgaria (July 15). The Turks were driven from

Kesanlik and Eski Sagra, and Gourko's cavalry, a few hundreds in number,

advanced to within two days' march of Adrianople.

[Osman occupies Plevna, July 19.]

[First engagement at Plevna, July 20.]

[Second battle at Plevna, July 30.]

[The Shipka Pass, Aug. 20-23.]

The headquarters of the whole Russian army were now at Tirnova, the ancient

Bulgarian capital, about half-way between the Danube and the Balkans. Two

army-corps, commanded by the Czarewitch, moved eastwards against Rustchuk

and the so-called Turkish army of the Danube, which was gathering behind

the lines of the Kara Lom; another division, under General Krudener, turned

westward and captured Nicopolis with its garrison. Lovatz and other points

lying westward of the Jantra were occupied by weak detachments; but so

badly were the reconnaissances of the Russians performed in this direction

that they were unaware of the approach of a Turkish army from Widdin,

thirty-five thousand strong, till this was close on their flank. Before the

Russians could prevent him, Osman Pasha, with the vanguard of this army,

had occupied the town and heights of Plevna, between Nicopolis and Lovatz.

On the 20th of July, still unaware of their enemy's strength, the Russians

attacked him at Plevna: they were defeated with considerable loss, and

after a few days one of Osman's divisions, pushing forward upon the

invader's central line, drove them out of Lovatz. The Grand Duke now sent

reinforcements to Krudener, and ordered him to take Plevna at all costs.

Krudener's strength was raised to thirty-five thousand; but in the meantime

new Turkish regiments had joined Osman, and his troops, now numbering about

fifty thousand, had been working day and night entrenching themselves in

the heights round Plevna which the Russians had to attack. The assault was

made on the 30th of July; it was beaten back with terrible slaughter, the

Russians leaving a fifth of their number on the field. Had Osman taken up

the offensive and the Turkish commander on the Lom pressed vigorously upon

the invader's line, it would probably have gone ill with the Russian army

in Bulgaria. Gourko was at once compelled to abandon the country south of

the Balkans. His troops, falling back upon the Shipka Pass, were there

attacked from the south by far superior forces under Suleiman Pasha. The

Ottoman commander, prodigal of the lives of his men and trusting to mere

blindfold violence, hurled his army day after day against the Russian

positions (Aug. 20-23). There was a moment when all seemed lost, and the

Russian soldiers sent to their Czar the last message of devotion from men

who were about to die at their post. But in the extremity of peril there

arrived a reinforcement, weak, but sufficient to turn the scale against the

ill-commanded Turks. Suleiman's army withdrew to the village of Shipka at

the southern end of the pass. The pass itself, with the entrance from

northern Bulgaria, remained in the hands of the Russians.

[Roumania.]

[Third battle of Plevna, Sept 11-12.]

After the second battle of Plevna it became clear that the Russians could

not carry on the campaign with their existing forces. Two army-corps were

called up which were guarding the coast of the Black Sea; several others

were mobilised in the interior of Russia, and began their journey towards

the Danube. So urgent, however, was the immediate need, that the Czar was

compelled to ask help from Roumania. This help was given. Roumanian troops,

excellent in quality, filled up the gap caused by Krudener's defeats, and

the whole army before Plevna was placed under the command of the Roumanian

Prince Charles. At the beginning of September the Russians were again ready

for action. Lovatz was wrested from the Turks, and the division which had

captured it moved on to Plevna to take part in a great combined attack.

This attack was made on the 11th of September under the eyes of the Czar.

On the north the Russians and Roumanians together, after a desperate

struggle, stormed the Grivitza redoubt. On the south Skobeleff carried the

first Turkish position, but could make no impression on their second line

of defence. Twelve thousand men fell on the Russian side before the day was

over, and the main defences of the Turks were still unbroken. On the morrow

the Turks took up the offensive. Skobeleff, exposed to the attack of a far

superior foe, prayed in vain for reinforcements. His men, standing in the

positions that they had won from the Turks, repelled one onslaught after

another, but were ultimately overwhelmed and driven from the field. At the

close of the second day's battle the Russians were everywhere beaten back

within their own lines, except at the Grivitza redoubt, which was itself

but an outwork of the Turkish defences, and faced by more formidable works

within. The assailants had sustained a loss approaching that of the Germans

at Gravelotte with an army one-third of the Germans' strength. Osman was

stronger than at the beginning of the campaign; with what sacrifices Russia

would have to purchase its ultimate victory no man could calculate.

[Todleben besieges Plevna.]

[Fall of Plevna, Dec. 10.]

The three defeats at Plevna cast a sinister light upon the Russian military

administration and the quality of its chiefs. The soldiers had fought

heroically; divisional generals like Skobeleff had done all that man could

do in such positions; the faults were those of the headquarters and the

officers by whom the Imperial Family were surrounded. After the third

catastrophe, public opinion called for the removal of the authors of these

disasters and the employment of abler men. Todleben, the defender of

Sebastopol, who for some unknown reason had been left without a command,

was now summoned to Bulgaria, and virtually placed at the head of the army

before Plevna. He saw that the stronghold of Osman could only be reduced by

a regular siege, and prepared to draw his lines right round it. For a time

Osman kept open his communications with the south-west, and heavy trains of

ammunition and supplies made their way into Plevna from this direction; but

the investment was at length completed, and the army of Plevna cut off from

the world. In the meantime new regiments were steadily pouring into

Bulgaria from the interior of Russia. East of the Jantra, after many

alternations of fortune, the Turks were finally driven back behind the

river Lom. The last efforts of Suleiman failed to wrest the Shipka Pass

from its defenders. From the narrow line which the invaders had with such

difficulty held during three anxious months their forces, accumulating day

by day, spread out south and west up to the slopes of the Balkans, ready to

burst over the mountain-barrier and sweep the enemy back to the walls of

Constantinople when once Plevna should have fallen and the army which

besieged it should be added to the invader's strength. At length, in the

second week of December, Osman's supply of food was exhausted. Victor in

three battles, he refused to surrender without one more struggle. On the

10th of December, after distributing among his men what there remained of

provisions, he made a desperate effort to break out towards the west. His

columns dashed in vain against the besieger's lines; behind him his enemies

pressed forward into the positions which he had abandoned; a ring of fire

like that of Sedan surrounded the Turkish army; and after thousands had

fallen in a hopeless conflict, the general and the troops who for five

months had held in check the collected forces of the Russian Empire

surrendered to their conqueror.

[Crossing of the Balkans, Dec. 25-Jan. 8.]

[Capitulation of Shipka, Jan. 9.]

[Russians enter Adrianople, Jan. 20, 1878.]

If in the first stages of the war there was little that did credit to

Russia's military capacity, the energy that marked its close made amends

for what had gone before. Winter was descending in extreme severity: the

Balkans were a mass of snow and ice; but no obstacle could now bar the

invader's march. Gourko, in command of an army that had gathered to the

south-west of Plevna, made his way through the mountains above Etropol in

the last days of December, and, driving the Turks from Sophia, pressed on

towards Philippopolis and Adrianople. Farther east two columns crossed the

Balkans by bye-paths right and left of the Shipka Pass, and then,

converging on Shipka itself, fell upon the rear of the Turkish army which

still blocked the southern outlet. Simultaneously a third corps marched

down the pass from the north and assailed the Turks in front. After a

fierce struggle the entire Turkish army, thirty-five thousand strong, laid

down its arms. There now remained only one considerable force between the

invaders and Constantinople. This body, which was commanded by Suleiman,

held the road which runs along the valley of the Maritza, at a point

somewhat to the east of Philippopolis. Against it Gourko advanced from the

west, while the victors of Shipka, descending due south through Kesanlik,

barred the line of retreat towards Adrianople. The last encounter of the

war took place on the 17th of January. Suleiman's army, routed and

demoralised, succeeded in making its escape to the Ægæan coast. Pursuit was

unnecessary, for the war was now practically over. On the 20th of January

the Russians made their entry into Adrianople; in the next few days their

advanced guard touched the Sea of Marmora at Rodosto.

[Armistice, Jan. 31.]

Immediately after the fall of Plevna the Porte had applied to the European

Powers for their mediation. Disasters in Asia had already warned it not to

delay submission too long; for in the middle of October Mukhtar Pasha had

been driven from his positions, and a month later Kars had been taken by

storm. The Russians had subsequently penetrated into Armenia and had

captured the outworks of Erzeroum. Each day that now passed brought the

Ottoman Empire nearer to destruction. Servia again declared war; the

Montenegrins made themselves masters of the coast-towns and of

border-territory north and south; Greece seemed likely to enter into the

struggle. Baffled in his attempt to gain the common mediation of the

Powers, the Sultan appealed to the Queen of England personally for her good

offices in bringing the conflict to a close. In reply to a telegram from

London, the Czar declared himself willing to treat for peace as soon as

direct communications should be addressed to his representatives by the

Porte. On the 14th of January commissioners were sent to the headquarters

of the Grand Duke Nicholas at Kesanlik to treat for an armistice and for

preliminaries of peace. The Russians, now in the full tide of victory, were

in no hurry to agree with their adversary. Nicholas bade the Turkish envoys

accompany him to Adrianople, and it was not until the 31st of January that

the armistice was granted and the preliminaries of peace signed.

[England.]

[Vote of Credit, Jan. 28-Feb. 8.]

[Fleet passes the Dardanelles, Feb. 6.]

While the Turkish envoys were on their journey to the Russian headquarters,

the session of Parliament opened at London. The Ministry had declared at

the outbreak of the war that Great Britain would remain neutral unless its

own interests should be imperilled, and it had defined these interests with

due clearness both in its communications with the Russian Ambassador and in

its statements in Parliament. It was laid down that Her Majesty's

Government could not permit the blockade of the Suez Canal, or the

extension of military operations to Egypt; that it could not witness with

indifference the passing of Constantinople into other hands than those of

its present possessors; and that it would entertain serious objections to

any material alterations in the rules made under European sanction for the

navigation of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. [552] In reply to Lord Derby's

note which formulated these conditions of neutrality Prince Gortschakoff

had repeated the Czar's assurance that the acquisition of Constantinople

was excluded from his views, and had promised to undertake no military

operation in Egypt; he had, however, let it be understood that, as an

incident of warfare, the reduction of Constantinople might be necessary

like that of any other capital. In the Queen's speech at the opening of

Parliament, Ministers stated that the conditions on which the neutrality of

England was founded had not hitherto been infringed by either belligerent,

but that, should hostilities be prolonged, some unexpected occurrence might

render it necessary to adopt measures of precaution, measures which could

not be adequately prepared without an appeal to the liberality of

Parliament. From language subsequently used by Lord Beaconsfield's

colleagues, it would appear that the Cabinet had some apprehension that the

Russian army, escaping from the Czar's control, might seize and attempt

permanently to hold Constantinople. On the 23rd of January orders were sent

to Admiral Hornby, commander of the fleet at Besika Bay, to pass the

Dardanelles, and proceed to Constantinople. Lord Derby, who saw no

necessity for measures of a warlike character until the result of the

negotiations at Adrianople should become known, now resigned office; but on

the reversal of the order to Admiral Hornby he rejoined the Cabinet. On the

28th of January, after the bases of peace had been communicated by Count

Schouvaloff to the British Government but before they had been actually

signed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer moved for a vote of £6,000,000 for

increasing the armaments of the country. This vote was at first vigorously

opposed on the ground that none of the stated conditions of England's

neutrality had been infringed, and that in the conditions of peace between

Russia and Turkey there was nothing that justified a departure from the

policy which England had hitherto pursued. In the course of the debates,

however, a telegram arrived from Mr. Layard, Elliot's successor at

Constantinople, stating that notwithstanding the armistice the Russians

were pushing on towards the capital; that the Turks had been compelled to

evacuate Silivria on the Sea of Marmora; that the Russian general was about

to occupy Tchataldja, an outpost of the last line of defence not thirty

miles from Constantinople; and that the Porte was in great alarm, and

unable to understand the Russian proceedings. The utmost excitement was

caused at Westminster by this telegram. The fleet was at once ordered to

Constantinople. Mr. Forster, who had led the opposition to the vote of

credit, sought to withdraw his amendment; and although on the following

day, with the arrival of the articles of the armistice, it appeared that

the Russians were simply moving up to the accepted line of demarcation, and

that the Porte could hardly have been ignorant of this when Layard's

telegram was despatched, the alarm raised in London did not subside, and

the vote of credit was carried by a majority of above two hundred. [553]

[Imminence of war with England.]

When a victorious army is, without the intervention of some external Power,

checked in its work of conquest by the negotiation of an armistice, it is

invariably made a condition that positions shall be handed over to it which

it does not at the moment occupy, but which it might reasonably expect to

have conquered within a certain date, had hostilities not been suspended.

The armistice granted to Austria by Napoleon after the battle of Marengo

involved the evacuation of the whole of Upper Italy; the armistice which

Bismarck offered to the French Government of Defence at the beginning of

the siege of Paris would have involved the surrender of Strasburg and of

Toul. In demanding that the line of demarcation should be carried almost up

to the walls of Constantinople the Russians were asking for no more than

would certainly have been within their hands had hostilities been prolonged

for a few weeks, or even days. Deeply as the conditions of the armistice

agitated the English people, it was not in these conditions, but in the

conditions of the peace which was to follow, that the true cause of

contention between England and Russia, if cause there was, had to be found.

Nevertheless, the approach of the Russians to Gallipoli and the lines of

Tchataldja, followed, as it was, by the despatch of the British fleet to

Constantinople, brought Russia and Great Britain within a hair's breadth of

war. It was in vain that Lord Derby described the fleet as sent only for

the protection of the lives and property of British subjects. Gortschakoff,

who was superior in amenities of this kind, replied that the Russian

Government had exactly the same end in view, with the distinction that its

protection would be extended to all Christians. Should the British fleet

appear at the Bosphorus, Russian troops would, in the fulfilment of a

common duty of humanity, enter Constantinople. Yielding to this threat,

Lord Beaconsfield bade the fleet halt at a convenient point in the Sea of

Marmora. On both sides preparations were made for immediate action. The

guns on our ships stood charged for battle; the Russians strewed the

shallows with torpedoes. Had a Russian soldier appeared on the heights of

Gallipoli, had an Englishman landed on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus,

war would at once have broken out. But after some weeks of extreme danger

the perils of mere contiguity passed away, and the decision between peace

and war was transferred from the accidents of tent and quarter deck to the

deliberations of statesmen assembled in Congress.

[Treaty of San Stefano, Mar. 3.]

The bases of Peace which were made the condition of the armistice granted

at Adrianople formed with little alteration the substance of the Treaty

signed by Russia and Turkey at San Stefano, a village on the Sea of

Marmora, on the 3rd of March. By this Treaty the Porte recognised the

independence of Servia, Montenegro, and Roumania, and made considerable

cessions of territory to the two former States. Bulgaria was constituted an

autonomous tributary Principality, with a Christian Government and a

national militia. Its frontier, which was made so extensive as to include

the greater part of European Turkey, was defined as beginning near Midia on

the Black Sea, not sixty miles from the Bosphorus; passing thence westwards

just to the north of Adrianople; descending to the Ægæan Sea, and following

the coast as far as the Thracian Chersonese; then passing inland westwards,

so as barely to exclude Salonika; running on to the border of Albania

within fifty miles of the Adriatic, and from this point following the

Albanian border up to the new Servian frontier. The Prince of Bulgaria was

to be freely elected by the population, and confirmed by the Porte with the

assent of the Powers; a system of administration was to be drawn up by an

Assembly of Bulgarian notables; and the introduction of the new system into

Bulgaria with the superintendence of its working was to be entrusted for

two years to a Russian Commissioner. Until the native militia was

organised, Russian troops, not exceeding fifty thousand in number, were to

occupy the country; this occupation, however, was to be limited to a term

approximating to two years. In Bosnia and Herzegovina the proposals laid

before the Porte at the first sitting of the Conference of 1876 were to be

immediately introduced, subject to such modifications as might be agreed

upon between Turkey, Russia, and Austria. The Porte undertook to apply

scrupulously in Crete the Organic Law which had been drawn up in 1868,

taking into account the previously expressed wishes of the native

population. An analogous law, adapted to local requirements, was, after

being communicated to the Czar, to be introduced into Epirus, Thessaly, and

the other parts of Turkey in Europe for which a special constitution was

not provided by the Treaty. Commissions, in which the native population was

to be largely represented, were in each province to be entrusted with the

task of elaborating the details of the new organisation. In Armenia the

Sultan undertook to carry into effect without further delay the

improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements, and to guarantee

the security of the Armenians from Kurds and Circassians. As an indemnity

for the losses and expenses of the war the Porte admitted itself to be

indebted to Russia in the sum of fourteen hundred million roubles; but in

accordance with the wishes of the Sultan, and in consideration of the

financial embarrassments of Turkey, the Czar consented to accept in

substitution for the greater part of this sum the cession of the Dobrudscha

in Europe, and of the districts of Ardahan, Kars, Batoum, and Bayazid in

Asia. As to the balance of three hundred million roubles left due to

Russia, the mode of payment or guarantee was to be settled by an

understanding between the two Governments. The Dobrudscha was to be given

by the Czar to Roumania in exchange for Bessarabia, which this State was to

transfer to Russia. The complete evacuation of Turkey in Europe was to take

place within three months, that of Turkey in Asia within six months, from

the conclusion of peace. [554]

[Congress proposed.]

[Opposite purposes of Russia and England.]

It had from the first been admitted by the Russian Government that

questions affecting the interests of Europe at large could not be settled

by a Treaty between Russia and Turkey alone, but must form the subject of

European agreement. Early in February the Emperor of Austria had proposed

that a European Conference should assemble at his own capital. It was

subsequently agreed that Berlin, instead of Vienna, should be the place of

meeting, and instead of a Conference a Congress should be held, that is, an

international assembly of the most solemn form, in which each of the Powers

is represented not merely by an ambassador or an envoy, but by its leading

Ministers. But the question at once arose whether there existed in the mind

of the Russian Government a distinction between parts of the Treaty of San

Stefano bearing on the interests of Europe generally and parts which

affected no States but Russia and Turkey; and whether, in this case, Russia

was willing that Europe should be the judge of the distinction, or, on the

contrary, claimed for itself the right of withholding portions of the

Treaty from the cognisance of the European Court. In accepting the

principle of a Congress, Lord Derby on behalf of Great Britain made it a

condition that every article of the Treaty without exception should be laid

before the Congress, not necessarily as requiring the concurrence of the

Powers, but in order that the Powers themselves might in each case decide

whether their concurrence was necessary or not. To this demand Prince

Gortschakoff offered the most strenuous resistance, claiming for Russia the

liberty of accepting, or not accepting, the discussion of any question that

might be raised. It would clearly have been in the power of the Russian

Government, had this condition been granted, to exclude from the

consideration of Europe precisely those matters which in the opinion of

other States were most essentially of European import. Phrases of

conciliation were suggested; but no ingenuity of language could shade over

the difference of purpose which separated the rival Powers. Every day the

chances of the meeting of the Congress seemed to be diminishing, the

approach of war between Russia and Great Britain more unmistakable. Lord

Beaconsfield called out the Reserves and summoned troops from India; even

the project of seizing a port in Asia Minor in case the Sultan should fall

under Russian influence was discussed in the Cabinet. Unable to reconcile

himself to these vigorous measures, Lord Derby, who had long been at

variance with the Premier, now finally withdrew from the Cabinet (March

28). He was succeeded in his office by the Marquis of Salisbury, whose

comparison of his relative and predecessor to Titus Oates revived the

interest of the diplomatic world in a now forgotten period of English

history.

[Circular of April 1.]

The new Foreign Secretary had not been many days in office when a Circular,

despatched to all the Foreign Courts, summed up the objections of Great

Britain to the Treaty of San Stefano. It was pointed out that a strong

Slavic State would be created under the control of Russia, possessing

important harbours upon the shores of the Black Sea and the Archipelago,

and giving to Russia a preponderating influence over political and

commercial relations on both those seas; that a large Greek population

would be merged in a dominant Slavic majority; that by the extension of

Bulgaria to the Archipelago the Albanian and Greek provinces left to the

Sultan would be severed from Constantinople; that the annexation of

Bessarabia and of Batoum would make the will of the Russian Government

dominant over all the vicinity of the Black Sea; that the acquisition of

the strongholds of Armenia would place the population of that province

under the immediate influence of the Power that held these strongholds,

while through the cession of Bayazid the European trade from Trebizond to

Persia would become liable to be arrested by the prohibitory barriers of

the Russian commercial system. Finally, by the stipulation for an indemnity

which it was beyond the power of Turkey to discharge, and by the reference

of the mode of payment or guarantee to a later settlement, Russia had

placed it in its power either to extort yet larger cessions of territory,

or to force Turkey into engagements subordinating its policy in all things

to that of St. Petersburg.

[Count Schouvaloff.]

[Secret agreement, May 30th.]

[Convention with Turkey, June 4.]

[Cyprus.]

It was the object of Lord Salisbury to show that the effects of the Treaty

of San Stefano, taken in a mass, threatened the peace and the interests of

Europe, and therefore, whatever might be advanced for or against individual

stipulations of the Treaty, that the Treaty as a whole, and not clauses

selected by one Power, must be submitted to the Congress if the examination

was not to prove illusory. This was a just line of argument. Nevertheless

it was natural to suppose that some parts of the Treaty must be more

distasteful than others to Great Britain; and Count Schouvaloff, who was

sincerely desirous of peace, applied himself to the task of discovering

with what concessions Lord Beaconsfield's Cabinet would be satisfied. He

found that if Russia would consent to modifications of the Treaty in

Congress excluding Bulgaria from the Ægæan Sea, reducing its area on the

south and west, dividing it into two provinces, and restoring the Balkans

to the Sultan as a military frontier, giving back Bayazid to the Turks, and

granting to other Powers besides Russia a voice in the organisation of

Epirus, Thessaly, and the other Christian provinces of the Porte, England

might be induced to accept without essential change the other provisions of

San Stefano. On the 7th of May Count Schouvaloff quitted London for St.

Petersburg, in order to lay before the Czar the results of his

communications with the Cabinet, and to acquaint him with the state of

public opinion in England. On his journey hung the issues of peace or war.

Backed by the counsels of the German Emperor, Schouvaloff succeeded in his

mission. The Czar determined not to risk the great results already secured

by insisting on the points contested, and Schouvaloff returned to London

authorised to conclude a pact with the British Government on the general

basis which had been laid down. On the 30th of May a secret agreement, in

which the above were the principal points, was signed, and the meeting of

the Congress for the examination of the entire Treaty of San Stefano was

now assured. But it was not without the deepest anxiety and regret that

Lord Beaconsfield consented to the annexation of Batoum and the Armenian

fortresses. He obtained indeed an assurance in the secret agreement with

Schouvaloff that the Russian frontier should be no more extended on the

side of Turkey in Asia; but his policy did not stop short here. By a

Convention made with the Sultan on the 4th of June, Great Britain engaged,

in the event of any further aggression by Russia upon the Asiatic

territories of the Sultan, to defend these territories by force of arms.

The Sultan in return promised to introduce the necessary reforms, to be

agreed upon by the two Powers, for the protection of the Christian and

other subjects of the Porte in these territories, and further assigned the

Island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England. It was

stipulated by a humorous after-clause that if Russia should restore to

Turkey its Armenian conquests, Cyprus would be evacuated by England, and

the Convention itself should be at an end. [555]

[Congress of Berlin, June 13-July 13.]

[Treaty of Berlin, July 13.]

The Congress of Berlin, at which the Premier himself and Lord Salisbury

represented Great Britain, opened on the 13th of June. Though the

compromise between England and Russia had been settled in general terms,

the arrangement of details opened such a series of difficulties that the

Congress seemed more than once on the point of breaking up. It was mainly

due to the perseverance and wisdom of Prince Bismarck, who transferred the

discussion of the most crucial points from the Congress to private meetings

of his guests, and who himself acted as conciliator when Gortschakoff

folded up his maps or Lord Beaconsfield ordered a special train, that the

work was at length achieved. The Treaty of Berlin, signed on the 13th of

July, confined Bulgaria, as an autonomous Principality, to the country

north of the Balkans, and diminished the authority which, pending the

establishment of its definitive system of government, would by the Treaty

of San Stefano have belonged to a Russian commissioner. The portion of

Bulgaria south of the Balkans, but extending no farther west than the

valley of the Maritza, and no farther south than Mount Rhodope, was formed

into a Province of East Roumelia, to remain subject to the direct political

and military authority of the Sultan, under conditions of administrative

autonomy. The Sultan was declared to possess the right of erecting

fortifications both on the coast and on the land-frontier of this province,

and of maintaining troops there. Alike in Bulgaria and in Eastern Roumelia

the period of occupation by Russian troops was limited to nine months.

Bosnia and Herzegovina were handed over to Austria, to be occupied and

administered by that Power. The cessions of territory made to Servia and

Montenegro in the Treaty of San Stefano were modified with the object of

interposing a broader strip between these two States; Bayazid was omitted

from the ceded districts in Asia, and the Czar declared it his intention to

erect Batoum into a free port, essentially commercial. At the instance of

France the provisions relating to the Greek Provinces of Turkey were

superseded by a vote in favour of the cession of part of these Provinces to

the Hellenic Kingdom. The Sultan was recommended to cede Thessaly and part

of Epirus to Greece, the Powers reserving to themselves the right of

offering their mediation to facilitate the negotiations. In other respects

the provisions of the Treaty of San Stefano were confirmed without

substantial change.

[Comparison of the two Treaties.]

Lord Beaconsfield returned to London, bringing, as he said, peace with

honour. It was claimed, in the despatch to our Ambassadors which

accompanied the publication of the Treaty of Berlin, that in this Treaty

the cardinal objections raised by the British Government to the Treaty of

San Stefano had found an entire remedy. "Bulgaria," wrote Lord Salisbury,

"is now confined to the river-barrier of the Danube, and consequently has

not only ceased to possess any harbour on the Archipelago, but is removed

by more than a hundred miles from the neighbourhood of that sea. On the

Euxine the important port of Bourgas has been restored to the Government of

Turkey; and Bulgaria retains less than half the sea-board originally

assigned to it, and possesses no other port except the roadstead of Varna,

which can hardly be used for any but commercial purposes. The replacement

under Turkish rule of Bourgas and the southern half of the sea-board on the

Euxine, and the strictly commercial character assigned to Batoum, have

largely obviated the menace to the liberty of the Black Sea. The political

outposts of Russian power have been pushed back to the region beyond the

Balkans; the Sultan's dominions have been provided with a defensible

frontier." It was in short the contention of the English Government that

while Russia, in the pretended emancipation of a great part of European

Turkey by the Treaty of San Stefano, had but acquired a new dependency,

England, by insisting on the division of Bulgaria, had baffled this plan

and restored to Turkey an effective military dominion over all the country

south of the Balkans. That Lord Beaconsfield did well in severing Macedonia

from the Slavic State of Bulgaria there is little reason to doubt; that,

having so severed it, he did ill in leaving it without a European guarantee

for good government, every successive year made more plain; the wisdom of

his treatment of Bulgaria itself must, in the light of subsequent events,

remain matter for controversy. It may fairly be said that in dealing with

Bulgaria English statesmen were, on the whole, dealing with the unknown.

Nevertheless, had guidance been accepted from the history of the other

Balkan States, analogies were not altogether wanting or altogether remote.

During the present century three Christian States had been formed out of

what had been Ottoman territory: Servia, Greece, and Roumania. Not one of

these had become a Russian Province, or had failed to develop and maintain

a distinct national existence. In Servia an attempt had been made to retain

for the Porte the right of keeping troops in garrison. This attempt had

proved a mistake. So long as the right was exercised it had simply been a

source of danger and disquiet, and it had finally been abandoned by the

Porte itself. In the case of Greece, Russia, with a view to its own

interests, had originally proposed that the country should be divided into

four autonomous provinces tributary to the Sultan: against this the Greeks

had protested, and Canning had successfully supported their protest. Even

the appointment of an ex-Minister of St. Petersburg, Capodistrias, as first

President of Greece in 1827 had failed to bring the liberated country under

Russian influence; and in the course of the half-century which had since

elapsed it had become one of the commonplaces of politics, accepted by

every school in every country of Western Europe, that the Powers had

committed a great error in 1833 in not extending to far larger dimensions

the Greek Kingdom which they then established. In the case of Roumania, the

British Government had, out of fear of Russia, insisted in 1856 that the

provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia should remain separate: the result was

that the inhabitants in defiance of England effected their union, and that

after a few years had passed there was not a single politician in England

who regarded their union otherwise than with satisfaction. If history

taught anything in the solution of the Eastern question, it taught that the

effort to reserve for the Sultan a military existence in countries which

had passed from under his general control was futile, and that the best

barrier against Russian influence was to be found not in the division but

in the strengthening and consolidation of the States rescued from Ottoman

dominions.

It was of course open to English statesmen in 1878 to believe that all that

had hitherto passed in the Balkan Peninsula had no bearing upon the

problems of the hour, and that, whatever might have been the case with

Greece, Servia, and Roumania, Bulgaria stood on a completely different

footing, and called for the application of principles not based on the

experience of the past but on the divinations of superior minds. Should the

history of succeeding years bear out this view, should the Balkans become a

true military frontier for Turkey, should Northern Bulgaria sink to the

condition of a Russian dependency, and Eastern Roumelia, in severance from

its enslaved kin, abandon itself to a thriving ease behind the garrisons of

the reforming Ottoman, Lord Beaconsfield will have deserved the fame of a

statesman whose intuitions, undimmed by the mists of experience, penetrated

the secret of the future, and shaped, because they discerned, the destiny

of nations. It will be the task of later historians to measure the exact

period after the Congress of Berlin at which the process indicated by Lord

Beaconsfield came into visible operation; it is the misfortune of those

whose view is limited by a single decade to have to record that in every

particular, with the single exception of the severance of Macedonia from

the Slavonic Principality, Lord Beaconsfield's ideas, purposes and

anticipations, in so far as they related to Eastern Europe, have hitherto

been contradicted by events. What happened in Greece, Servia, and Roumania

has happened in Bulgaria. Experience, thrown to the winds by English

Ministers in 1878, has justified those who listened to its voice. There

exists no such thing as a Turkish fortress on the Balkans; Bourgas no more

belongs to the Sultan than Athens or Belgrade; no Turkish soldier has been

able to set foot within the territory whose very name, Eastern Roumelia,

was to stamp it as Turkish dominion. National independence, a living force

in Greece, in Servia, in Roumania, has proved its power in Bulgaria too.

The efforts of Russia to establish its influence over a people liberated by

its arms have been repelled with unexpected firmness. Like the divided

members of Roumania, the divided members of Bulgaria have effected their

union. In this union, in the growing material and moral force of the

Bulgarian State, Western Europe sees a power wholly favourable to its own

hopes for the future of the East, wholly adverse to the extension of

Russian rule: and it has been reserved for Lord Beaconsfield's colleague at

the Congress of Berlin, regardless of the fact that Bulgaria north of the

Balkans, not the southern Province, created that vigorous military and

political organisation which was the precursor of national union, to

explain that in dividing Bulgaria into two portions the English Ministers

of 1878 intended to promote its ultimate unity, and that in subjecting the

southern half to the Sultan's rule they laid the foundation for its

ultimate independence.

[1] Chapters I. to XI. of this Edition.

[2] Chapters XII. to XVIII. of this Edition.

[3] Page 362 of this Edition.

[4] Ranke, Ursprung und Beginn der Revolutionskriege, p. 90. Vivenot,

Quellen zur Geschichte der Kaiserpolitik Oesterreichs, i. 185, 208.

[5] Von Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit, i. 289.

[6] Vivenot, Quellen, i. 372. Buchez et Roux, xiii. 340, xiv. 24.

[7] Häusser, Deutsche Geschichte, i. 88. Vivenot, Herzog Albrecht, i. 78.

[8] Springer, Geschichte Oesterreichs, i. 46.

[9] Pertz, Leben Stein, ii. 402. Paget, Travels in Hungary, i. 131.

[10] Ranke, Ursprung und Beginn, p. 256. Vivenot, Quellen, i. 133, 165. The

acquisition of Bavaria was declared by the Austrian Cabinet to be the

_summum bonum_ of the monarchy.

[11] Biedermann, Deutschland im Achtzehnten Jahrhundert, iv. 1144.

[12] Carlyle, Friedrich, vi. 667.

[13] Häusser, i. 197. Hardenberg (Ranke), i. 139. Von Sybel, i. 272.

[14] "The connection with the House of Austria and the present undertaking

continue to be very unpopular. It is openly said that one half of the

treasure was uselessly spent at Reichenbach, and that the other half will

be spent on the present occasion, and that the sovereign will be reduced to

his former level of Margrave of Brandenburg." Eden, from Berlin; June 19,

1792. Records: Prussia, vol. 151. "He (Möllendorf) reprobated the alliance

with Austria, condemning the present interference in the affairs of France

as ruinous, and censuring as undignified and contrary to the most important

interests of this country the leaving Russia sole arbitress of the fate of

Poland. He, however, said, what every Prussian without any exception of

party will say, that this country can never acquiesce in the establishment

of a good government in Poland, since in a short time it would rise to a

very decided superiority," _Id._, July 17. Mr. Cobden's theory that

the partition of Poland was effected in the interest of good government

must have caused some surprise at Berlin.

[15] The condition of Mecklenburg is thus described in a letter written by

Stein during a journey in 1802:--"I found the aspect of the country as

cheerless as its misty northern sky; great estates, much of them in pasture

or fallow; an extremely thin population; the entire labouring class under

the yoke of serfage; stretches of land attached to solitary ill-built

farmhouses; in short, a monotony, a dead stillness, spreading over the

whole country, an absence of life and activity that quite overcame my

spirits. The home of the Mecklenburg noble, who weighs like a load on his

peasants instead of improving their condition, gives me the idea of the den

of some wild beast, who devastates even thing about him, and surrounds

himself with the silence of the grave." Pertz, Leben Stein, i. 192. For a

more cheerful description of Münster, see _id._, i. 241.

[16] Perthes, Staatsleben, p. 116. Rigby, Letters from France, p. 215.

[17] Buchez et Roux, xvi. 279. One of the originals of this declaration,

handed to the British ambassador, is in the London Records: Prussia, vol.

151.

[18] The accounts of the emigrants sent to England by Lord Elgin, envoy at

Brussels, and Sir J. Murray, our military attaché with Brunswick's army (in

Records: Flanders, vol. 221) are instructive: "The conduct of the army

under the Princes of France is universally reprobated. Their appearance in

dress, in attendants, in preparations, is ridiculous. As an instance,

however trivial, it may be mentioned that on one of the waggons was written

_Toilette de Monsieur_. The spirit of vengeance, however, which they

discover on every occasion is far more serious. Wherever they have passed,

they have exercised acts of cruelty, in banishing and severely punishing

those persons who, though probably culpable, had yet been left untouched by

the Prussian commanders. To such an extent has this been carried that the

commander at Verdun would not suffer any Frenchman (emigrant) to pass a

night in the town without a special permission." Sept. 21. After the

failure of the campaign, Elgin writes of the emigrants: "They everywhere

added to the cruelties for some of which several hussars had been executed:

carried to its extent the vengeance threatened in the Duke of Brunswick's

Declaration, in burning whole villages where a shot was fired on them: and

on the other hand by their self-sufficiency, want of subordination and

personal disrespect, have drawn upon themselves the contempt of the

combined armies." Oct. 6. So late as 1796, the exile Louis XVIII. declared

his intention to restore the "property and rights" (i.e. tithes, feudal

dues, etc.) of the nobles and clergy, and to punish the men who had

"committed offences." See Letter to Pichegru, May 4, 1796, in Manuscrit

Inédit de Louis XVIII., p. 464.

[19] Wordsworth, Prelude, book ix.

[20] The correspondence is in Ranke, Ursprung und Beginn, p. 371. Such was

the famine in the Prussian camp that Dumouriez sent the King of Prussia

twelve loaves, twelve pounds of coffee, and twelve pounds of sugar. The

official account of the campaign is in the _Berlinische Zeitung_ of

Oct. 11, 1792.

[21] Forster, Werke, vi. 386.

[22] "The very night the news of the late Emperor's (Leopold's) death

arrived here (Brussels), inflammatory advertisements and invitations to arm

were distributed." One culprit "belonged to the Choir of St. Gudule: he

chose the middle of the day, and in the presence of many people posted up a

paper in the church, exhorting to a general insurrection. The remainder of

this strange production was the description of a vision he pretended to

have seen, representing the soul of the late emperor on its way to join

that of Joseph, already suffering in the other world." Col. Gardiner, March

20, 1792. Records: Flanders, vol. 220.

[23] Elgin, from Brussels, Nov. 6. "A brisk cannonade has been heard this

whole forenoon in the direction of Mons. It is at this moment somewhat

diminished, though not at an end" Nov. 7. "Several messengers have arrived

from camp in the course of the night, but all the Ministers (I have seen

them all) deny having received one word of detail.... Couriers have been

sent this night in every direction to call in all the detachments on the

frontiers.... The Government is making every arrangement for quitting

Brussels: their papers are already prepared, their carriages ready." ...

Then a PS. "A cannonade is distinctly heard again.... All the emigrants

now here are removing with the utmost haste." Nov. 9th. "The confusion

throughout the country is extreme. The roads are covered with emigrants,

and persons of these provinces flying from the French armies," Records:

Flanders, vol. 222.

[24] In Nov. 1792, Grenville ordered the English envoys at Vienna and

Berlin to discover, if possible, the real designs of aggrandisement held by

those Courts. Mr. Straton, at Vienna, got wind of the agreement against

Poland. "I requested Count Philip Cobenzl" (the Austrian Minister) "that he

would have the goodness to open himself confidentially to me on the precise

object which the two allied Courts might have in contemplation. This,

however, the Count was by no means disposed to do; on the contrary, he went

round the compass of evasion in order to avoid a direct answer. But

determined as I was to push the Austrian Minister, I heaped question on

question, until I forced him to say, blushing, and with evident signs of

embarrassment, 'Count Stadion' (Ambassador at London) 'will be able to

satisfy the curiosity of the British Minister, to whatever point it may be

directed.'" Jan. 20, 1793. Records: Austria, vol. 32. Stadion accordingly

informed Lord Grenville of the Polish and Bavarian plans. Grenville

expressed his concern and regret at the aggression on Poland, and gave

reasons against the Bavarian exchange. To our envoy with the King of

Prussia Grenville wrote: "It may possibly be the intention of the Courts to

adopt a plan of indemnifying themselves for the expense of the war by fresh

acquisitions in Poland, and carrying into execution a new partition of that

country. You will not fail to explain in the most distinct and pointed

manner his Majesty's entire disapprobation of such a plan, and his

determination on no account to concur in any measures which may tend to the

completion of a design so unjust in itself." Jan. 4, 1793. Records: Army in

Germany, vol. 437. At Vienna Cobenzl declared, Feb. 9, that Austria could

not now "even manifest a wish to oppose the projects of Prussia in Poland,

as in that case his Prussian Majesty would probably withdraw his assistance

from the French war; nay, perhaps even enter into an alliance with that

nation and invade Bohemia." Records: Austria, vol. 32.

[25] Auckland, ii. 464. Papers presented to Parliament, 1793. Mr. Oscar

Browning, in _Fortnightly Review_, Feb., 1883.

[26] Von Sybel, ii. 259. Thugut, Vertrauliche Briefe, i. 17. Letters from

Brussels, 23rd March in Records: Flanders, vol. 222. "The Huzars are in

motion all round, so that we hope to have them here to-morrow. Most of the

French troops who arrived last, and which are mostly peasants armed with

pikes, are returning home, besides a great number of their volunteers."

24th March. "At this moment we hear the cannon. The French have just had it

cry'd in the town that all the tailors who are making coats for the army

must bring them made or unmade, and be paid directly.... They beat the

drums to drown the report of the cannon.... You have not a conception of

the confusion in the town.... This moment passed four Austrians with their

heads cut to pieces, and one with his eye poked out. The French are

retiring by the Porte d'Anderlecht." Ostend, April 4th. "This day, before

two of the clock, twenty-five Austrian huzars enter'd the town while the

inhabitants were employed burning the tree of liberty."

[27] Mortimer-Ternaux, vii. 412.

[28] Berriat-St.-Prix, La Justice Révolutionnaire, introd.

[29] "The King of Prussia has been educated in the persuasion that the

execution of that exchange involves the ruin of his family, and he is the

more sore about it that by the qualified consent which he has given to its

taking place he has precluded himself from opposing it by arms.

Accordingly, every idle story which arrives from Munich which tends to

revive this apprehension makes an impression which I am unable, at the

first moment, to efface." Lord Yarmouth, from the Prussian camp, Aug. 12,

1793, Records: Army in Germany, 437. "Marquis Lucchesini, the effectual

director, is desirous of avoiding every expense and every exertion of the

troops; of leaving the whole burden of the war on Austria and the other

combined Powers; and of seeing difficulties multiply in the arrangements

which the Court of Vienna may wish to form I do not perceive any object

beyond this; no desire of diminishing the power of France; no system or

feeling for crushing the opinions, the doctrines, of that country." Elgin,

May 17. Records: Flanders, vol. 223.

[30] Auckland, iii. 24. Thugut, Vertrauliche Briefe, i. 13. Grenville to

Eden, Sept. 7th, 1793, Records: Austria, vol. 34: a most important

historical document, setting out the principles of alliance between England

and Austria. Austria, if it will abandon the Bavarian exchange, may claim

annexations on the border of the Netherlands, in Alsace and Lorraine, and

in the intermediate parts of the frontier of France. England's indemnity

"must be looked for in the foreign settlements and colonies of France....

His Majesty has an interest in seeing the House of Austria strengthen

itself by acquisitions on the French frontier. The Emperor must see with

pleasure the relative increase of the naval and commercial resources of

this country beyond those of France." In the face of this paper, it cannot

be maintained that the war of 1793 was, after the first few months, purely

defensive on England's part; though no doubt Pitt's notion of an indemnity

was fair and modest in comparison with the schemes and acts of his enemy.

[31] The first mention of Bonaparte's name in any British document

occurs in an account of the army of Toulon sent to London in Dec. 1793

by a spy. "Les capitaines d'artillérie, élévé dans cet état, connoissent

leur service et ont tous du talens. Ils préféroient l'employer pour une

meilleure cause.... Le sixtèrne, nommé Bonaparte, trés republicain, a

été tué sous les murs de Toulon." Records: France, vol. 599. Austria

undertook to send 5,000 troops from Lombardy to defend Toulon, but broke

its engagement. "You will wait on M. Thugut (the Austrian Minister) and

claim in the most peremptory terms the performance of this engagement.

It would be very offensive to his Majesty that a request made so

repeatedly on his part should be neglected; but it is infinitely more so

to see that, when this country is straining every nerve for the common

cause, a body of troops for the want of which Toulon may possibly at

this moment be lost, have remained inactive at Milan. You will admit of

no further excuses." Grenville to Eden, Nov. 24, 1793. Thugut's written

answer was, "The Emperor gave the order of march at a moment when the

town of Toulon had no garrison. Its preservation then seemed matter of

pressing necessity, but now all inquietude on this score has happily

disappeared. The troops of different nations already assembled at Toulon

put the place out of all danger." Records: Austria, vol. 35.

[32] Häusser, i. 482. "La Prusse," wrote Thugut at this time, "parviendra

au moyen de son alliance à nous faire plus de mal qu'elle ne nous a fait

par les guerres les plus sanglantes." Briefe, i. 12, 15. Thugut even

proposed that England should encourage the Poles to resist. Eden, April

15; Records: Austria, vol. 33.

[33] The English Government found that Thugut was from the first

indifferent to their own aim, the restoration of the Bourbons, or

establishment of some orderly government in France. In so far as he

concerned himself with the internal affairs of France, he hoped rather for

continued dissension, as facilitating the annexation of French territory by

Austria. "Qu'on profite de ce conflit des partis en France pour tâcher de

se rendre mâitre des forteresses, afin de faire la loi au parti qui aura

prévalu, et l'obliger d'acheter la paix et la protection de l'empereur, en

lui cedant telle partie de ses conquêtes que S.M. jugera de sa covenance."

Briefe, i. 13.

[34] The despatches of Lord Yarmouth from the Prussian and Austrian

headquarters, from July 17 to Nov. 22, 1793, give a lively picture both of

the military operations and of the political intrigues of this period. They

are accompanied by the MS. journal of the Austrian army from Sept. 15 to

Dec. 14, each copy apparently with Wurmser's autograph, and by the original

letter of the Prussian Minister, Lucchesini, to Lord Yarmouth, announcing

the withdrawal of Prussia from the war, "M. de Lucchesini read it to me

very hastily, and seemed almost ashamed of a part of its contents."

Records: Army in Germany, vols. 437, 438, 439.

[35] Hardenberg (Ranke), i. 181, Vivenot, Herzog Albrecht, i. 10.

[36] Elgin reports after this engagement, May 1st, 1794--"The French army

appears to continue much what it has hitherto been, vigorous and

persevering where (as in villages and woods) the local advantages are of a

nature to supply the defects of military science; weak and helpless beyond

belief where cavalry can act, and manoeuvres are possible.... The magazines

of the army are stored, and the provisions regularly given out to the

troops, and good in quality. Indeed, it is singular to observe in all the

villages where we have been forward forage, etc., in plenty, and all the

country cultivated as usual. The inhabitants, however, have retired with

the French army; and to that degree that the tract we have lately taken

possession of is absolutely deserted.... The execution of Danton has

produced no greater effect in the army than other executions, and we have

found many papers on those who fell in the late actions treating it with

ridicule, and as a source of joy." Records: Flanders, 226. "I am in hopes

to hear from you on the subject of the French prisoners, as to where I am

to apply for the money I advance for their subsistence. They are a great

number of them almost naked, some entirely so. It is absolutely shocking to

humanity to see them. I would purchase some coarse clothing for those that

are in the worst state, but know not how far I should be authorised. They

are mostly old men and boys." Consul Harward, at Ostend, March 4th,

_id_.

[37] These events are the subject of controversy. See Hüffer, Oestreich und

Preussen, p. 62 Von Sybel, iii. 138. Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 38. The old

belief, defended by Von Sybel, was that Thugut himself had determined upon

the evacuation of Belgium, and treacherously deprived Coburg of forces for

its defence. But, apart from other evidence, the tone of exasperation that

runs through Thugut's private letters is irreconcilable with this theory.

Lord Elgin, whose reports are used by Von Sybel, no doubt believed that

Thugut was playing false; but he was a bad judge, being in the hands of

Thugut's opponents, especially General Mack, whom he glorifies in the most

absurd way. The other English envoy in Belgium, Lord Yarmouth, reported in

favour of Thugut's good faith in this matter, and against military

intriguers. Records: Army in Germany, vol. 440. A letter of Prince

Waldeck's in Thugut, i. 387, and a conversation between Mack and Sir Morton

Eden, on Feb. 3rd, 1797, reported by the latter in Records: Austria, vol.

48, appear to fix the responsibility for the evacuation of Belgium on these

two generals, Waldeck and Mack, and on the Emperor's confidential military

adviser, Rollin.

[38] "Should the French come they will find this town perfectly empty.

Except my own, I do not think there are three houses in Ostend with a bed

in them. So general a panic I never witnessed." June 30th.--"To remain here

alone would be a wanton sacrifice. God knows 'tis an awful stroke to me to

leave a place just as I began to be comfortably settled." Consul Harward:

Records: Army in Germany, vol. 440. "All the English are arrested in

Ostend; the men are confined in the Capuchin convent, and the women in the

Convent des Soeurs Blancs. All the Flamands from the age of 17 to 32 are

forced to go for soldiers. At Bruges the French issued an order for 800 men

to present themselves. Thirty only came, in consequence of which they rang

a bell on the Grand Place, and the inhabitants thinking that it was some

ordinance, quitted their houses to hear it, when they were surrounded by

the French soldiers, and upwards of 1,000 men secured, gentle and simple,

who were all immediately set to work on the canals." Mr. W. Poppleton,

Flushing, Sept. 4. Records: Flanders, vol. 227.

[39] Malmesbury, ii. 125. Von Sybel, iii. 168. Grenville made Coburg's

dismissal a _sine qua non_ of the continuance of English co-operation.

Instructions to Lord Spencer, July 19, 1794. Records: Austria, 36. But for

the Austrian complaints against the English, see Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 50.

[40] Schlosser, xv. 203: borne out by the Narrative of an Officer, printed

in Annual Register, 1795, p. 143.

[41] Vivenot, Herzog Albrecht, iii. 59, 512. Martens, Recueil des Traités,

vi. 45, 52. Hardenberg, i. 287. Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 32. "Le Roi de

Prusse," wrote the Empress Catherine, "est une méchante bête et un grand

cochon." Prussia made no attempt to deliver the unhappy son of Louis XVI.

from his captivity.

[42] The British Government had formed the most sanguine estimate of the

strength of the Royalist movement in France. "I cannot let your servant

return without troubling you with these few lines to conjure you to use

every possible effort to give life and vigour to the Austrian Government at

this critical moment. Strongly as I have spoken in my despatch of the

present state of France, I have said much less than my information, drawn

from various quarters, and applying to almost every part of France, would

fairly warrant. We can never hope that the circumstances, as far as they

regard the state of France, can be more favourable than they now are. For

God's sake enforce these points with all the earnestness which I am sure

you will feel upon them." Grenville to Eden, April 17, 1795; Records:

Austria, vol. 41. After the failure of the expedition, the British

Government made the grave charge against Thugut that while he was

officially sending Clerfayt pressing orders to advance, he secretly told

him to do nothing. "It is in vain to reason with the Austrian Ministers on

the folly and ill faith of a system which they have been under the

necessity of concealing from you, and which they will probably endeavour to

disguise" Grenville to Eden, Oct., 1795; _id_., vol. 43. This charge,

repeated by historians, is disproved by Thugut's private letters. Briefe,

i. 221, _seq_. No one more bitterly resented Clerfayt's inaction.

[43] The documents relating to the expedition to Quiberon, with several

letters of D'Artois, Charette, and the Vendean leaders, are in Records:

France, vol. 600.

[44] Von Sybel, iii. 537. Buchez et Roux, xxxvi. 485.

[45] For the police interpretation of the _Zauberflöte_, see Springer,

Geschichte Oesterreichs, vol. i. p. 49.

[46] Zobi, Storia Civile della Toscana, i. 284.

[47] Galanti, Descrizione delle Sicilie, 1786, i. 279. He adds, "The

Samnites and the Lucanians could not have shown so horrible a spectacle,

because they had no feudal laws." Galanti's book gives perhaps the best

idea of the immense task faced by monarchy in the eighteenth century in

its struggle against what he justly calls "gli orrori del governo

feudale." Nothing but a study of these details of actual life described by

eye-witnesses can convey an adequate impression of the completeness and the

misery of the feudal order in the more backward countries of Europe till

far down in the eighteenth century. There is a good anonymous account of

Sicily in 1810 in Castlereagh, 8, 217.

[48] Correspondance de Napoleon, i. 260. Botta, lib. vi. Despatches of Col.

Graham, British attaché with the Austrian army, in Records: Italian States,

vol. 57. These most interesting letters, which begin on May 19, show the

discord and suspicion prevalent from the first in the Austrian army.

"Beaulieu has not met with cordial co-operation from his own generals,

still less from the Piedmontese. He accuses them of having chosen to be

beat in order to bring about a peace promised in January last." "Beaulieu

was more violent than ever against his generals who have occasioned the

failure of his plans. He said nine of them were cowards. I believe some of

them are ill-affected to the cause." June 15.--"Many of the officers

comfort themselves with thinking that defeat must force peace, and others

express themselves in terms of despair." July 25,--Beaulieu told Graham

that if Bonaparte had pushed on after the battle of Lodi, he might have

gone straight into Mantua. The preparations for defence were made later.

[49] Thugut, Briefe i. 107. A correspondence on this subject was carried on

in cypher between Thugut and Ludwig Cobenzl, Austrian Ambassador at St.

Petersburg in 1793-4. During Thugut's absence in Belgium, June, 1794,

Cobenzl sent a duplicate despatch, not in cypher, to Vienna. Old Prince

Kaunitz, the ex-minister, heard that a courier had arrived from St

Petersburg, and demanded the despatch at the Foreign Office "like a

dictator." It was given to him. "Ainsi," says Thugut, "adieu au secret qui

depuis un an a été conservé avec tant de soins!"

[50] Wurmser's reports are in Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 477. Graham's daily

despatches from the Austrian head-quarters give a vivid picture of these

operations, and of the sudden change from exultation to despair. Aug.

1.--"I have the honour to inform your lordship that the siege of Mantua is

raised, the French having retreated last night with the utmost

precipitation." Aug. 2.--"The Austrians are in possession of all the French

mortars and cannon, amounting to about 140, with 190,000 shells and bombs;

the loss of the Imperial army is inconsiderable." Aug. 5.--"The rout of

this day has sadly changed the state of affairs. There are no accounts of

General Quosdanovich." Aug. 9.--"Our loss in men and cannon was much

greater than was imagined. I had no idea of the possibility of the extent

of such misfortunes as have overwhelmed us" Aug. 17.--"It is scarcely

possible to describe the state of disorder and discouragement that prevails

in the army. Were I free from apprehension, about the fate of my letter"

(he had lost his baggage and his cypher in it), "I should despair of

finding language adequate to convey a just idea of the discontent of the

officers with General Wurmser. From generals to subalterns the universal

language is 'qu'il faut faire la paix, car nous ne savons pas faire la

guerre.'" Aug. 18.--"Not only the commander-in-chief, but the greatest

number of the generals are objects of contempt and ridicule." Aug. 27.--"I

do not exaggerate when I say that I have met with instances of down-right

dotage." "It was in general orders that wine should be distributed to the

men previous to the attack of the 29th. There was some difficulty in

getting it up to Monte Baldo. General Bayolitzy observed that 'it did not

signify, for the men might get the value in money afterwards.' The men

marched at six in the evening without it, to attack at daybreak, and

received four kreutzers afterwards. This is a fact I can attest. In action

I saw officers sent on urgent messages going at a foot's pace: they say

that their horses are half starved, and that they cannot afford to kill

them."

[51] Grundsätze (Archduke Charles), ii. 202. Bulletins in Wiener Zeitung,

June-Oct., 1796.

[52] Martens, vi. 59.

[53] This seems to me to be the probable truth about Austria's policy in

1796, of which opposite views will be found in Häusser, vol. ii. ch. 1-3,

and in Hüffer, Oestreich und Preussen, p. 142. Thugut professed in 1793 to

have given up the project of the Bavarian exchange in deference to England.

He admitted, however, soon afterwards, that he had again been pressing the

King of Prussia to consent to it, but said that this was a ruse, intended

to make Prussia consent to Austria's annexing a large piece of France

instead. Eden, Sept., 1793; Records: Austria, vol. 34. The incident shows

the difficulty of getting at the truth in diplomacy.

[54] Yet the Government had had warning of this in a series of striking

reports sent by one of Lord Elgin's spies during the Reign of Terror.

"Jamais la France ne fut cultivée comme elle l'est. Il n'y a pas un arpent

qui ne soit ensemencé, sauf dans les lieux où opèrent les armées

belligérantes. Cette culture universelle a été forcée par les Directrices là

où on ne la faisait pas volontairement." June 8, 1794; Records: Flanders,

vol. 226. Elgin had established a line of spies from Paris to the Belgian

frontier. Every one of these persons was arrested by the Revolutionary

authorities. Elgin then fell in with the writer of the above, whose name is

concealed, and placed him on the Swiss frontier. He was evidently a person

thoroughly familiar with both civil and military administration. He appears

to have talked to every Frenchman who entered Switzerland; and his reports

contain far the best information that readied England during the Reign of

Terror, contradicting the Royalists, who said that the war was only kept up

by terrorism. He warned the English Government that the French nation in a

mass was on the side of the Revolution, and declared that the downfall of

Robespierre and the terrorists would make no difference in the prosecution

of the war. The Government seems to have paid no attention to his reports,

if indeed they were ever read.

[55] Correspondance de Napoleon, ii. 28. Thugut, about this time, formed

the plan of annexing Bologna and Ferrara to Austria, and said that if this

result could be achieved, the French attack upon the Papal States would be

no bad matter. See the instructions to Allvintzy, in Vivenot, Clerfayt, p.

511, which also contain the first Austrian orders to imprison Italian

innovators, the beginning of Austria's later Italian policy.

[56] Wurmser had orders to break out southwards into the Papal States.

"These orders he (Thugut) knew had reached the Marshal, but they were also

known to the enemy, as a cadet of Strasoldo's regiment, who was carrying

the duplicate, had been taken prisoner, and having been seen to swallow a

ball of wax, in which the order was wrapped up, he was immediately put to

death and the paper taken out of his stomach." Eden, Jan., 1797; Records:

Austria, vol. 48. Colonel Graham, who had been shut up in Mantua since

Sept. 10, escaped on Dec 17, and restored communication between Wurmser and

Allvintzy. He was present at the battle of Rivoli, which is described in

his despatches.

[57] "We expect every hour to hear of the entry of the Neapolitan troops

and the declaration of a religious war. Every preparation has been made for

such an event." Graves to Lord Grenville, Oct. 1, 1796; Records; Rome, vol.

56.

[58] "The clamours for peace have become loud and importunate. His Imperial

Majesty is constantly assailed by all his Ministers, M. de Thugut alone

excepted, and by all who approach his person. Attempts are even made to

alarm him with a dread of insurrection. In the midst of these calamities M.

de Thugut retains his firmness of mind, and continues to struggle against

the united voice of the nobility and the numerous and trying adversities

that press upon him." Eden, April 1. "The confusion at the army exceeds the

bounds of belief. Had Bonaparte continued his progress hither (Vienna), no

doubt is entertained that he might have entered the place without

opposition. That, instead of risking this enterprise, he should have

stopped and given the Austrians six days to recover from their alarm and to

prepare for defence, is a circumstance which it is impossible to account

for." April 12. "He" (Mack) "said that when this place was threatened by

the enemy, Her Imperial Majesty broke in upon the Emperor while in

conference with his Minister, and, throwing herself and her children at his

feet, determined His Majesty to open the negotiation which terminated in

the shameful desertion of his ally." Aug. 16; Records: Austria, vols. 49,

50. Thugut subsequently told Lord Minto that if he could have laid his hand

upon £500,000 in cash to stop the run on the Bank of Vienna, the war would

have been continued, in which case he believed he would have surrounded

Bonaparte's army.

[59] The cession of the Rhenish Provinces was not, as usually stated,

contained in the Preliminaries. Corr. de Napoleon, 2, 497; Hüffer, p. 259,

where the details of the subsequent negotiations will be found.

[60] Gohier, Mémoires i. Carnot, Réponse à Bailleul. Correspondance de

Napoleon, ii. 188. Miot de Melito, ch. vi.

[61] Martens, Traités, vi. 420; Thugut, Briefe, ii. 64. These letters

breathe a fire and passion rare among German statesmen of that day, and

show the fine side of Thugut's character. The well-known story of the

destruction of Cobenzl's vase by Bonaparte at the last sitting, with the

words, "Thus will I dash the Austrian Monarchy to pieces," is mythical.

Cobenzl's own account of the scene is as follows;--"Bonaparte, excited by

not having slept for two nights, emptied glass after glass of punch. When I

explained with the greatest composure, Bonaparte started up in a violent

rage, and poured out a flood of abuse, at the same time scratching his name

illegibly at the foot of the statement which he had handed in as protocol.

Then without waiting for our signatures, he put on his hat in the

conference-room itself, and left us. Until he was in the street he

continued to vociferate in a manner that could only be ascribed to

intoxication, though Clarke and the rest of his suite, who were waiting in

the hall, did their best to restrain him." "He behaved as if he had escaped

from a lunatic asylum. His own people are all agreed about this." Hüffer,

Oestreich und Preussen, p. 453.

[62] Häusser, Deutsche Geschichte, ii. 147. Vivenot, Rastadter Congress, p.

17. Von Lang, Memoiren, i. 33. It is alleged that the official who drew up

this document had not been made acquainted with the secret clauses.

[63] "Tout annonce qu'il sera de toute impossibilité de finir avec ces

gueux de Français autrement que par moyens de fermeté." Thugut, ii. 105.

For the negotiation at Seltz, see Historische Zeitschrift, xxiii. 27.

[64] Botta, lib. xiii. Letters of Mr. J. Denham and others in Records:

Sicily, vol. 44.

[65] Nelson Despatches, iii. 48.

[66] Bernhardi, Geschichte Russlands, ii. 2, 382.

[67] "Quel bonheur, quelle gloire, quelle consolation pour cette grande et

illustre nation! Que je vous suis obligée, reconnaissante! J'ai pleuré et

embrassé mes enfans, mon mari. Si jamais on fait un portrait du brave

Nelson je le veux avoir dans ma chambre. Hip, Hip, Hip, Ma chère Miladi je

suis folle de joye." Queen of Naples to Lady Hamilton, Sept. 4, 1798;

Records: Sicily, vol. 44. The news of the overwhelming victory of the Nile

seems literally to have driven people out of their senses at Naples. "Lady

Hamilton fell apparently dead, and is not yet (Sept 25) perfectly recovered

from her severe bruises." Nelson Despatches, 3, 130. On Nelson's arrival,

"up flew her ladyship, and exclaiming, 'O God, is it possible?' she fell

into my arms more dead than alive." It has been urged in extenuation of

Nelson's subsequent cruelties that the contagion of this frenzy, following

the effects of a severe wound in the head, had deprived his mind of its

balance. "My head is ready to split, and I am always so sick." Aug. 10. "It

required all the kindness of my friends to set me up." Sept. 25.

[68] Sir W. Hamilton's despatch, Nov. 28, in Records: Sicily, vol. 44,

where there are originals of most of the Neapolitan proclamations, etc., of

this time. Mack had been a famous character since the campaign of 1793.

Elgin's letters to Lord Grenville from the Netherlands, private as well as

public, are full of extravagant praise of him. In July, 1796, Graham writes

from the Italian army: "In the opinion of all here, the greatest general in

Europe is the Quartermaster Mack, who was in England in 1793. Would to God

he was marching, and here now." Mack, on the other hand, did not grudge

flattery to the English:--"Je perdrais partout espoir et patience si je

n'avais pas vu pour mon bonheur et ma consolation l'adorable Triumvirat"

(Pitt, Grenville, Dundas) "qui surveille à Londres nos affaires. Soyez, mon

cher ami, l'organe de ma profonde vénération envers ces Ministres

incomparables." Mack to Elgin, 23. Feb., 1794. The British Government was

constantly pressing Thugut to make Mack commander-in chief. Thugut, who had

formed a shrewd notion of Mack's real quality, gained much obloquy by his

steady refusal.

[69] Signed by Mack. Colletta, p. 176. Mack's own account of the campaign

is in Vivenot, Rastadter Congress, p. 83.

[70] Nelson, iii. 210: Hamilton's despatch, Dec. 28, 1798, in Records;

Sicily, vol. 44. "It was impossible to prevent a suspicion getting abroad

of the intention of the Royal Family to make their escape. However, the

secret was so well kept that we contrived to get their Majesties' treasure

in jewels and money, to a very considerable extent, on board of H.M. ship

the _Vanguard_ the 20th of December, and Lord Nelson went on the next

night by a secret passage into the Palace, and brought off in his boats

their Sicilian Majesties and all the Royal Family. It was not discovered at

Naples, until very late at night, that the Royal Family had escaped.... On

the morning of Christmas Day, some hours before we got into Palermo, Prince

Albert, one of their Majesties' sons, six years of age, was, either from

fright or fatigue, taken with violent convulsions, and died in the arms of

Lady Hamilton, the Queen, the Princesses, and women attendants being in

such confusion as to be incapable of affording any assistance."

[71] See Helfert, Der Rastatter Gesandtenmord, and Sybel's article thereon,

in Hist. Zeitschrift, vol. 32.

[72] Danilevsky-Miliutin, ii. 214. Despatch of Lord W. Bentinck from the

allied head-quarters at Piacenza, June 23, in Records: Italian States, vol.

58. Bentinck arrived a few days before this battle; his despatches cover

the whole North-Italian campaign from this time.

[73] Nelson Despatches, iii. 447; Sir W. Hamilton's Despatch of July 14, in

Records: Sicily, vol. 45. Helfert, Königin Karolina, p. 38. Details of the

proscription in Colletta, v. 6. According to Hamilton, some of the

Republicans in the forts had actually gone to their homes before Nelson

pronounced the capitulation void. "When we anchored in the Bay, the 24th of

June, the capitulation of the castles had in some measure taken place.

Fourteen large polacks had taken on board out of the castles the most

conspicuous and criminal of the Neapolitan rebels that had chosen to go to

Toulon; the others had already been permitted to return to their homes." If

this is so, Nelson's pretext that the capitulation had not been executed

was a mere afterthought. Helfert is mistaken in calling the letter or

proclamation of July 8th repudiating the treaty, a forgery. It is perfectly

genuine. It was published by Nelson in the King's name, and is enclosed in

Hamilton's despatch. Hamilton's exultations about himself and his wife, and

their share in these events, are sorry reading. "In short, Lord Nelson and

I, with Emma, have carried affairs to this happy crisis. Emma is really the

Queen's bosom friend.... You may imagine, when we three agree, what real

business is done.... At least I shall end my diplomatical career

gloriously, as you will see by what the King of Naples writes from this

ship to his Minister in London, owing the recovery of his kingdom to the

King's fleet, and Lord Nelson and me." (Aug. 4, _id_.) Hamilton states the

number of persons in prison at Naples on Sept. 12 to be above eight

thousand.

[74] Castlereagh, iv.; Records: Austria, 56. Lord Minto had just succeeded

Sir Morton Eden as ambassador. The English Government was willing to grant

the House of Hapsburg almost anything for the sake "of strengthening that

barrier which the military means and resources of Vienna can alone oppose

against the future enterprises of France." Grenville to Minto, May 13,

1800. Though they felt some regard for the rights of the King of Piedmont,

Pitt and Grenville were just as ready to hand over the Republic of Genoa to

the Hapsburgs as Bonaparte had been to hand over Venice; in fact, they

looked forward to the destruction of the Genoese State with avowed

pleasure, because it easily fell under the influence of France. Their

principal anxiety was that if Austria "should retain Venice and Genoa and

possibly acquire Leghorn," it should grant England an advantageous

commercial treaty. Grenville to Minto, Feb. 8, 1800; Castlereagh, v. 3-11.

[75] Lord Mulgrave to Grenville, Sept. 12, 1799; Records: Army of

Switzerland, vol. 80. "Suvaroff opened himself to me in the most unreserved

manner. He began by stating that he had been called at a very advanced

period of life from his retirement, where his ample fortune and honours

placed him beyond the allurement of any motives of interest. Attachment to

his sovereign and zeal for his God inspired him with the hope and the

expectation of conquests. He now found himself under very different

circumstances. He found himself surrounded by the parasites or spies of

Thugut, men at his devotion, creatures of his power: an army bigoted to a

defensive system, afraid even to pursue their successes when that system

had permitted them to obtain any; he had to encounter the further check of

a Government at Vienna averse to enterprise, etc."

[76] Miliutin, 2, 20, 3, 186; Minto, Aug. 10, 1799; Records: Austria, vol.

56. "I had no sooner mentioned this topic (Piedmont) than I perceived I had

touched a very delicate point. M. de Thugut's manner changed instantly from

that of coolness and civility to a great show of warmth attended with some

sharpness. He became immediately loud and animated, and expressed chagrin

at the invitation sent to the King of Sardinia.... He considers the

conquest of Piedmont as one made by Austria of an enemy's country. He

denies that the King of Sardinia can be considered as an ally or as a

friend, or even as a neuter; and, besides imputing a thousand instances of

ill-faith to that Court, relies on the actual alliance made by it with the

French Republic by which the King of Sardinia had appropriated to himself

part of the Emperor's dominions in Lombardy, an offence which, I perceive,

will not be easily forgotten.... I mention these circumstances to show the

degree of passion which the Court of Vienna mixes with this discussion."

Minto answered Thugut's invective with the odd remark "that perhaps in the

present extraordinary period the most rational object of this war was to

restore the integrity of the moral principle both in civil and political

life, and that this principle of justice should take the lead in his mind

of those considerations of temporary convenience which in ordinary times

might not have escaped his notice." Thugut then said "that the Emperor of

Russia had desisted from his measure of the King of Sardinia's immediate

recall, leaving the time of that return to the Emperor." On the margin of

the despatch, against this sentence, is written in pencil, in Lord

Grenville's handwriting, "I am persuaded this is not true."

[77] Miliutin, 3, 117. And so almost verbatim in a conversation described

in Eden's despatch, Aug. 31 Records: Austria, vol. 55. "M. de Thugut's

answer was evidently dictated by a suspicion rankling in his mind that the

Netherlands might be made a means of aggrandisement for Prussia. His

jealousy and aversion to that Power are at this moment more inveterate than

I have before seen them. It is probable that he may have some idea of

establishing there the Great Duke of Tuscany."

[78] Thugut's territorial policy did actually make him propose to abolish

the Papacy not only as a temporal Power, but as a religious institution.

"Baron Thugut argued strongly on the possibility of doing without a Pope,

and of each sovereign taking on himself the function of head of the

National Church, as in England. I said that as a Protestant, I could not be

supposed to think the authority of the Bishop of Rome necessary; but that

in the present state of religious opinion, and considering the only

alternative in those matters, viz. the subsistence of the Roman Catholic

faith or the extinction of Christianity itself, I preferred, though a

Protestant, the Pope to the Goddess of Reason. However, the mind of Baron

Thugut is not open to any reasoning of a general nature when it is put in

competition with conquest or acquisition of territory." Minto to Grenville,

Oct. 22, 1799; Records: Austria, vol. 57. The suspicions of Austria current

at the Neapolitan Court are curiously shown in the Nelson Correspondence.

Nelson writes to Minto (Aug. 20) at Vienna: "For the sake of the civilised

world, let us work together, and as the best act of our lives manage to

hang Thugut ... As you are with Thugut, your penetrating mind will discover

the villain in all his actions.... That Thugut is caballing.... Pray keep

an eye upon the rascal, and you will soon find what I say is true. Let us

hang these three miscreants, and all will go smooth." Suvaroff was not more

complimentary. "How can that desk-worm, that night-owl, direct an army from

his dusky nest, even if he had the sword of Scanderbeg?" (Sept. 3.)

[79] Miliutin, iii. 37; Bentinck, Aug. 16, from the battle-field; Records:

Italian States, vol. 58. His letter ends "I must apologise to your Lordship

for the appearance of this despatch" (it is on thin Italian paper and

almost illegible): "we" (_i.e._, Suvaroff's staff) "have had the misfortune

to have had our baggage plundered by the Cossacks."

[80] Every capable soldier saw the ruinous mischief of the Archduke's

withdrawal. "Not only are all prospects of our making any progress in

Switzerland at an end, but the chance of maintaining the position now

occupied is extremely precarious. The jealousy and mistrust that exists

between the Austrians and Russians is inconceivable. I shall not pretend to

offer an opinion on what might be the most advantageous arrangement for the

army of Switzerland, but it is certain that none can be so bad as that

which at present exists." Colonel Crauford, English military envoy, Sept.

5, 1799; Records: Army of Switzerland, vol. 79. The subsequent Operations

of Korsakoff are described in despatches of Colonel Ramsay and Lord

Mulgrave, _id_. vol. 80, 81, Conversations with the Archduke Charles

in those of Mr. Wickham, _id_. vol. 77.

[81] The despatches of Colonel Clinton, English attaché with Suvaroff, are

in singular contrast to the highly-coloured accounts of this retreat common

in histories. Of the most critical part he only says: "On the 6th the army

passed the Panix mountain, which the snow that had fallen during the last

week had rendered dangerous, and several horses and mules were lost on the

march." He expresses the poorest opinion of Suvaroff and his officers: "The

Marshal is entirely worn out and incapable of any exertion: he will not

suffer the subject of the indiscipline of his army to be mentioned to him.

He is popular with his army because he puts no check whatever in its

licentiousness. His honesty is now his only remaining good quality."

Records: Army of Switzerland, vol. 80. The elaborate plan for Suvaroff's

and Korsakoff's combined movements, made as if Switzerland had been an open

country and Massena's army a flock of sheep, was constructed by the

Austrian colonel Weyrother, the same person who subsequently planned the

battle of Austerlitz. On learning the plan from Suvaroff, Lord Mulgrave,

who was no great genius, wrote to London demonstrating its certain failure,

and predicting almost exactly the events that took place.

[82] Miot de Melito, ch. ix. Lucien Bonaparte, Révolution de Brumaire, p.

31.

[83] Law of Feb. 17, 1800 (28 Pluviöse, viii.).

[84] M. Thiers, Feb. 21, 1872.

[85] Parl. Hist, xxxiv. 1198. Thugut, Briefe ii. 445.

[86] Memorial du Dépôt de la Guerre, 1826, iv. 268. Bentinck's despatch,

June 16; Records: Italian States, vol. 59.

[87] Thugut, Briefe ii. 227, 281, 393; Minto's despatch, Sept. 24, 1800;

Records: Austria, vol. 60. "The Emperor was in the act of receiving a

considerable subsidy for a vigorous prosecution of the war at the very

moment when he was clandestinely and in person making the most abject

submission to the common enemy. Baron Thugut was all yesterday under the

greatest uneasiness concerning the event which he had reason to apprehend,

but which was not yet certain. He still retained, however, a slight hope,

from the apparent impossibility of anyone's committing such an act of

infamy and folly. I never saw him or any other man so affected as he was

when he communicated this transaction to me to-day. I said that these

fortresses being demanded as pledges of sincerity, the Emperor should have

given on the same principle the arms and ammunition of the army. Baron

Thugut added that after giving up the soldiers' muskets, the clothes would

be required off their backs, and that if the Emperor took pains to acquaint

the world that he would not defend his crown, there would not be wanting

those who would take it from his head, and perhaps his head with it. He

became so strongly affected that, in laying hold of my hand to express the

strong concern he felt at the notion of having committed me and abused the

confidence I had reposed in his counsels, he burst into tears and literally

wept. I mention these details because they confirm the assurance that every

part of these feeble measures has either been adopted against his opinion

or executed surreptitiously and contrary to the directions he had given."

After the final collapse of Austria, Minto writes of Thugut: "He never for

a moment lost his presence of mind or his courage, nor ever bent to weak

and unbecoming counsels. And perhaps this can be said of him alone in this

whole empire." Jan. 3, 1801, _id._

[88] Martens, vii. 296.

[89] Koch und Schoell, Histoire des Traités, vi. 6. Nelson Despatches, iv.

299.

[90] De Clercq, Traités de la France i. 484.

[91] Parl. Hist., Nov. 3, 1801.

[92] Gagern, Mein Antheil, i. 119. He protests that he never carried the

dog. The waltz was introduced about this time at Paris by Frenchmen

returning from Germany, which gave occasion to the _mot_ that the

French had annexed even the national dance of the Germans.

[93] Perthes, Politische Zustände, i. 311.

[94] Koch und Schoell, vi. 247. Beer, Zehn Jahre Oesterreichischer Politik,

p. 35 Häusser, ii. 398.

[95] Perthes, Politische Zustände, ii. 402, _seq_.

[96] Friedrich, Geschichte des Vatikanischen Konzils, i. 27, 174.

[97] Pertz, Leben Stein, i. 257. Seeley's Stein, i. 125.

[98] The first-hand account of the formation of the Code Napoleon, with

the Procès Verbal of the Council of State and the principal reports,

speeches, etc., made in the Tribunate and the Legislative Bodies, is to

be found in the work of Baron Locré, "La Legislation de la France,"

published at Paris in 1827. Locré was Secretary of the Council of State

under the Consulate and the Empire, and possessed a quantity of records

which had not been published before 1827. The Procès Verbal, though

perhaps not always faithful, contains the only record of Napoleon's own

share in the discussions of the Council of State.