'Do entreat,' he said, 'your public men to overrule their ill-conditioned
colleague. I told you a year ago, the mischief that you were doing, but I
do not think that you believed me. You may find too late that I was
right.'
I repeated to him Ellice's opinion that the commerce of England would not
use the canal.
'I have heard that,' he said, 'from Ellice himself, but I differ from
him. I agree with him, indeed, that your sailing vessels will not use the
canal, but I believe that a few years hence you will have no purely
sailing vessels, except for the small coasting trade. Every large ship
will have a propeller; and with propellers, to be employed occasionally,
and sails for ordinary use, the Mediterranean and the Red Sea are very
manageable. I believe that the canal will be useful, and particularly
to you. But whatever be the real merits of the scheme, for God's sake let
it be tried. Do not treat us like children, and say, "We know better what
is good for you than you do yourselves. You shall not make your canal
because you would lose money by it."'
'What did you hear,' I said, 'about the Congress?'
'I heard,' he answered, 'that Clarendon was very good, and was the best,
and that Walewski was very bad, and was the worst.'
'Can you tell me,' I said, 'the real history of the Tripartite Treaty?'
'I can,' he answered. 'There was an old engagement between the three
Powers, entered into last spring, that if they succeeded in the war, they
would unite to force Russia to perform any conditions to which she might
submit.
'This engagement had been allowed to sleep; I will not say that it was
forgotten, but no one seemed disposed to revert to it. But after the
twenty-second Protocol, when Piedmont was allowed to threaten Austria,
and neither England nor France defended her, Buol got alarmed. He feared
that Austria might be left exposed to the vengeance of Russia on the
north and east, and to that of the Italian Liberals on the South. An
alliance with France and England, though only for a specified purpose, at
least would relieve Austria from the appearance of insulation. She would
be able to talk of the two greatest Powers in Europe as her allies, and
would thus acquire a moral force which might save her from attack. He
recalled, therefore, the old engagement to the recollection of Clarendon
and Louis Napoleon, and summoned them to fulfil it. I do not believe that
either of them was pleased. But the engagement was formal, and its
performance, though open to misconstruction, and intended by Austria to
be misconstrued, was attended by some advantages, though different ones,
to France and to England. So both your Government and ours complied.'
_Tuesday, May 20_.--The Tocquevilles and Rivet drank tea with us.
I mentioned to Tocqueville the subject of my conversations with Cousin
and H.
'I agree with Cousin,' he said. 'The attempt to turn our national
activity into speculation and commerce has often been made, but has never
had any permanent success. The men who make these sudden fortunes are not
happy, for they are always suspected of _friponnerie_, and the Government
to which they belong is suspected of _friponnerie_. Still less happy are
those who have attempted to make them, and have failed. And those who
have not been able even to make the attempt are envious and sulky. So
that the whole world becomes suspicious and dissatisfied.
'And even if it were universal, mere material prosperity is not enough
for us. Our Government must give us something more: must gratify our
ambition, or, at least, our vanity.'
'The Government,' said Rivet, 'has been making a desperate plunge in
order to escape from the accusation of _friponnerie_. It has denounced in
the "Moniteur" the _faiseurs_; it has dismissed a poor _aide-de-camp_ of
Jérôme's for doing what everybody has been doing ever since the _coup
d'état_. When Ponsard's comedy, which was known to be a furious satire on
the _agioteurs_, was first played, Louis Napoleon took the whole
orchestra and pit stalls, and filled them with people instructed to
applaud every allusion to the _faiseurs_. And he himself stood in his
box, his body almost out of it, clapping most energetically every attack
on them.'
'At the same time,' I said, 'has he not forced the Orleans Company and
the Lyons Company to buy the Grand Central at much more than its worth?
And was not that done in order to enable certain _faiseurs_ to realise
their gains?'
'He has forced the Orleans Company,' said Rivet, 'to buy up, or rather to
amalgamate the Grand Central; but I will not say at more than its value.
The amount to be paid is to depend on the comparative earnings of the
different lines, for two years before and two years after the purchase.'
'But,' I said, 'is it not true, first, that the Orleans Company was
unwilling to make the purchase? and, secondly, that thereupon the Grand
Central shares rose much in the market?'
'Both these facts,' answered Rivet, 'are true.'
'Do you believe,' I said to Tocqueville, 'H.'s history of the Tripartite
Treaty?'
'I do,' he answered. 'I do not think that at the time when it was made we
liked it. It suited you, who wish to preserve the _statu quo_ in Europe,
which keeps us your inferiors, or, at least, not your superiors. _You_
have nothing to gain by a change. We have. The _statu quo_ does not suit
us. The Tripartite Treaty is a sort of chain--not a heavy one, or a
strong one--but one which we should not have put on if we could have
avoided it.'
'Do you agree,' I asked Tocqueville, 'with Lafosse, Cousin, and H. as to
the effect in Paris of our opposition to the Suez Canal?'
'I agree,' he answered, 'in every word that they have said. There is
nothing that has done you so much mischief in France, and indeed in
Europe.
'I am no engineer; I should be sorry to pronounce a decided opinion as to
the feasibility or the utility of the canal; but your opposition makes us
believe that it is practicable.'
'Those among us,' I answered, 'who fear it, sometimes found their fear on
grounds unconnected with its practicability. They say that it is a
political, not a commercial, scheme. That the object is to give to French
engineers and French shareholders a strip of land separating Egypt from
Syria, and increasing the French interest in Egypt.'
'What is the value,' answered Tocqueville, 'of a strip of land in the
desert where no one can live? And why are the shareholders to be French?
The Greeks, the Syrians, the Dalmatians, the Italians, and the Sicilians
are the people who will use the canal, if anybody uses it. They will form
the bulk of the shareholders, if shareholders there are.
'My strong suspicion is, that if you had not opposed it, there never
would have been any shareholders, and that if you now withdraw your
opposition, and let the scheme go on until calls are made, the
subscribers, who are ready enough with their names as patriotic
manifestations against you as long as no money is to be paid, will
withdraw _en masse_ from an undertaking which, at the very best, is a
most hazardous one.
'As to our influence in Egypt, your journal shows that it is a pet
project of the Viceroy. He hopes to get money and fame from it. You
_imitate_ both his covetousness and his vanity, and throw him for support
upon us.'
_Paris, May_ 21--The Tocquevilles and Chrzanowski[1] drank tea with us.
We talked of the French iron floating batteries.
'I saw one at Cherbourg,' said Tocqueville, 'and talked much with her
commander. He was not in good spirits about his vessel, and feared some
great disaster. However, she did well at Kinburn.'
'She suffered little at Kinburn,' said Chrzanowski, 'because she ventured
little. She did not approach the batteries nearer than 600 metres. At
that distance there is little risk and little service. To knock down a
wall two metres thick from a distance of 600 metres would require at
least 300 blows. How far her own iron sides would have withstood at that
distance the fire of heavy guns I will not attempt to say, as I never saw
her. The best material to resist shot is lead. It contracts over the ball
and crushes it.'
'Kinburn, however,' said Tocqueville, 'surrendered to our floating
batteries.'
'Kinburn surrendered,' said Chrzanowski, 'because you landed 10,000 men,
and occupied the isthmus which connects Kinburn with the main land. The
garrison saw that they were invested, and had no hope of relief. They
were not Quixotic enough, or heroic enough, to prolong a hopeless
resistance. Scarcely any garrison does so.'
We talked of Malta; and I said that Malta was the only great
fortification which I had seen totally unprovided with earth-works.
'The stone,' said Chrzanowski, 'is soft and will not splinter.'
'I was struck,' I said, 'with the lightness of the armament; the largest
guns that I saw, except some recently placed in Fort St. Elmo, were
twenty-four pounders.'
'For land defence,' he answered, 'twenty-four pounders are serviceable
guns. They are manageable and act with great effect within the short
distance within which they are generally used. It is against ships that
large guns are wanted. A very large ball or shell is wasted on the
trenches, but may sink a ship. The great strength of the land defences of
Malta arises from the nature of the ground on which Valetta and Floriana
are built, indeed of which the whole island consists. It is a rock
generally bare or covered with only a few inches of earth. Approaches
could not be dug in it. It would be necessary to bring earth or sand in
ships, and to make the trenches with sand-bags or gabions.'
I asked him if he had read Louis Napoleon's orders to Canrobert,
published in Bazancourt's book?
'I have,' he answered. 'They show a depth of ignorance and a depth of
conceit, compared to which even Thiers is modest and skilful. Canrobert
is not a great general, but he is not a man to whom a civilian, who
never saw a shot fired, ought to give lectures on what he calls "the
great principles" or "the absolute principles of war." He seems to have
taken the correspondence between Napoleon and Joseph for his model,
forgetting that Canrobert is to him what Napoleon was to Joseph. Then he
applies his principles as absurdly as he enunciates them. Thus he orders
Canrobert to send a fleet carrying 25,000 men to the breach at Aboutcha,
to land 3,000 of them, to send them three leagues up the country, and not
to land any more, until those first sent have established themselves
beyond the defile of Agen. Of course those 3,000 men would be useless if
the enemy were _not_ in force, or destroyed if they _were_ in force. To
send on a small body and not to support them is the grossest of faults.
It is the fault which you committed at the Redan, when the men who had
got on to the works were left by you for an hour unsupported, instead of
reinforcements being poured in after them as quickly as they could be
sent.
'In fact,' he continued, 'the horrible and mutual blunders of that
campaign arose from its being managed by the two Emperors from Paris and
from St. Petersburg, Nicholas and Alexander were our best friends. Louis
Napoleon was our worst enemy.
'There is nothing which ought to be so much left to the discretion of
those on the spot as war. Even a commander-in-chief actually present in a
field of battle can do little after the action, if it be really a great
one, has once begun.
'If we suppose 80,000 men to be engaged on each side, each line will
extend at least three miles. Supposing the general to be in the centre,
it will take an _aide-de-camp_ ten minutes to gallop to him from one of
the wings, and ten minutes to gallop back. But in twenty minutes all may
be altered.'
[Footnote 1: 'Chrzanowski has passed thirty years fighting against or for
the Russians. He began military life in 1811 as a sous lieutenant of
artillery in the Polish corps which was attached to the French army. With
that army he served during the march to Moscow, and the retreat. At the
peace, what remained of his corps became a part of the army of the
kingdom of Poland. He had attained the rank of major in that army when
the insurrection on the accession of Nicholas broke out. About one
hundred officers belonging to the staff of the properly Russian army were
implicated, or supposed to be implicated, in that insurrection, and were
dismissed, and their places were supplied from the army of the kingdom of
Poland. Among those so transferred to the Russian army was Chrzanowski.
He was attached to the staff of Wittgenstein, and afterwards of Marshal
Diebitsch, in the Turkish campaigns of 1828 and 1829. In 1830 he took
part with his countrymen in the insurrection against the Muscovites, and
quitted Poland when it was finally absorbed in the Russian Empire. A few
years after a quarrel was brewing between England and Russia. Muscovite
agents were stirring up Persia and Affghanistan against us, and it was
thought that we might have to oppose them on the shores of the Black Sea.
Chrzanowski was attached to the British Embassy at Constantinople and was
employed for some years in ascertaining what assistance Turkey, both in
Europe and in Asia, could afford to us. In 1849 he was selected by
Charles Albert to command the army of the kingdom of Sardinia.
'That army was constituted on the Prussian system, which makes every man
serve, and no man a soldier. It was, in fact, a militia. The men were
enlisted for only fourteen months, at the end of that time they were sent
home, and were recalled when they were wanted, having forgotten their
military training and acquired the habits of cottiers and artisans. They
had scarcely any officers, or even _sous_ officers, that knew anything of
their business. The drill sergeants required to be drilled. The generals,
and indeed the greater part of the officers, were divided into hostile
factions--Absolutists, Rouges, Constitutional Liberals, and even
Austrians--for at that time, in the exaggerated terror occasioned by the
revolutions of 1848, Austria and Russia were looked up to by the greater
part of the noblesse of the Continent as the supporters of order against
Mazzini, Kossuth, Ledru Rollin, and Palmerston. The Absolutists and the
Austrians made common cause, whereas the Rouges or Mazzinists were
bitterest against the Constitutional Liberals. Such an army, even if
there had been no treason, could not have withstood a disciplined enemy.
When it fell a victim to its own defects, and to the treachery of
Ramorino, Chrzanowski retired to Paris.'--(_Extracted from Mr. Senior's
article in the 'North British Review.'_)