Bulgaria, despite the murder of four patriots by his bravos at Dubnitza,
Bulgaria flung back the threats by electing 470 supporters of
independence and unity, as against 30 Russophils and 20 deputies of
doubtful views. The Sobranje met at Tirnova, and, disregarding his
protest, proceeded to elect Prince Waldemar of Denmark; it then
confirmed Stambuloff in his almost dictatorial powers. The Czar's
influence over the Danish Royal House led to the Prince promptly
refusing that dangerous honour, which it is believed that Russia then
designed for the Prince of Mingrelia, a dignitary of Russian Caucasia.
The aim of the Czar and of Kaulbars now was to render all government
impossible; but they had to deal with a man far more resolute and astute
than Prince Alexander. Stambuloff and his countrymen fairly wearied out
Kaulbars, until that imperial agent was suddenly recalled (November 19).
He also ordered the Russian Consuls to withdraw.
It is believed that the Czar recalled him partly because of the obvious
failure of a hectoring policy, but also owing to the growing
restlessness of Austria-Hungary, England, and Italy at Russia's
treatment of Bulgaria. For several months European diplomacy turned on
the question of Bulgaria's independence; and here Russia could not yet
count on a French alliance. As has been noted above, Alexander III. and
de Giers had tied their hands by the alliance contracted at Skiernewice
in 1884; and the Czar had reason to expect that the Austro-German
compact would hold good against him if he forced on his solution of the
Balkan Question.
Probably it was this consideration which led him to trust to underground
means for assuring the dependence of Bulgaria. If so, he was again
disappointed. Stambuloff met his agents everywhere, above ground and
below ground. That son of an innkeeper at Tirnova now showed a power of
inspiring men and controlling events equal to that of the innkeeper of
the Pusterthal, Andreas Hofer. The discouraged Bulgarians everywhere
responded to his call; at Rustchuk they crushed a rising of Russophil
officers, and Stambuloff had nine of the rebels shot (March 7, 1887).
Thereafter he acted as dictator and imprisoned numbers of suspects. His
countrymen put up with the loss of civic freedom in order to secure the
higher boon of national independence.
In the main, however, the freedom of Bulgaria from Russian control was
due to events transpiring in Central Europe. As will appear in Chapter
XII. of this work, the Czar and de Giers became convinced, early in the
year 1887, that Bismarck was preparing for war against France, and they
determined to hold aloof from other questions, in order to be free to
checkmate the designs of the war party at Berlin. The organ usually
inspired by de Giers, the _Nord_, uttered an unmistakable warning on
February 20, 1887, and even stated that, with this aim in view, Russia
would let matters take their course in Bulgaria.
Thus, once again, the complexities of the general situation promoted the
cause of freedom in the Balkans; and the way was cleared for a resolute
man to mount the throne at Sofia. In the course of a tour to the
European capitals, a Bulgarian delegation found that man. The envoys
were informed that Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, a grandson of Louis
Philippe on the spindle-side, would welcome the dangerous honour. He was
young, ambitious, and, as events were to prove, equally tactful and
forceful according to circumstances. In vain did Russia seek to prevent
his election by pushing on the Sultan to intervene. Abdul Hamid was not
the man to let himself long be the catspaw of Russia, and now invited
the Powers to name one or two candidates for the throne of Bulgaria.
Stambuloff worked hard for the election of Prince Ferdinand; and on July
7, 1887, he was unanimously elected by the Sobranje. Alone among the
Great Powers, Russia protested against his election and threw many
difficulties in his path. In order to please the Czar, the Sultan added
his protest; but this act was soon seen to be merely a move in the
diplomatic game.
Limits of space, however, preclude the possibility of noting later
events in the history of Bulgaria, such as the coolness that clouded the
relations of the Prince to Stambuloff, the murder of the latter, and the
final recognition of the Prince by the Russian Government after the
"conversion" of his little son, Boris, to the Greek Church (Feb. 1896).
In this curious way was fulfilled the prophetic advice given by Bismarck
to the Prince not long after his acceptance of the crown of Bulgaria:
"Play the dead (_faire mort_). . . . Let yourself be driven gently by the
stream, and keep yourself, as hitherto, above water. Your greatest ally
is time--force of habit. Avoid everything that might irritate your
enemies. Unless you give them provocation, they cannot do you much harm,
and in course of time the world will become accustomed to see you on the
throne of Bulgaria[219]."
[Footnote 219: _Personal Reminiscences of Prince Bismarck_, by S.
Whitman, p. 179.]
Time has worked on behalf of Bulgaria, and has helped to strengthen this
Benjamin of the European family. Among the events which have made the
chief States of to-day, none are more remarkable than those which
endowed a population of downtrodden peasants with a passionate desire
for national existence. Thanks to the liberating armies of Russia, to
the prowess of Bulgarians themselves, to the inspiring personality of
Prince Alexander and the stubborn tenacity of Stambuloff, the young
State gained a firm grip on life. But other and stranger influences were
at work compelling that people to act for itself; these are to be found
in the perverse conduct of Alexander III. and of his agents. The policy
of Russia towards Bulgaria may be characterised by a remark made by Sir
Robert Morier to Sir M. Grant Duff in 1888: "Russia is a great
bicephalic creature, having one head European, and the other Asiatic,
but with the persistent habit of turning its European face to the East,
and its Asiatic face to the West[220]." Asiatic methods, put in force
against Slavised Tartars, have certainly played no small part in the
upbuilding of this youngest of the European States.
[Footnote 220: Sir M. Grant Duff, _Notes from a Diary (1886-88)_, vol.
ii. p. 139.]
In taking leave of the Balkan peoples, we may note the strange tendency
of events towards equipoise in the Europe of the present age. Thirty
years ago the Turkish Empire seemed at the point of dissolution. To-day
it is stronger than ever; and this cause is to be found, not so much in
the watchful cunning of Abdul Hamid, as in the vivifying principle of
nationality, which has made of Bulgaria and Roumania two strong barriers
against Russian aggression in that quarter. The feuds of those States
have been replaced by something like friendship, which in its turn will
probably ripen into alliance. Together they could put 250,000 good
troops in the field--that is, a larger force than that which the Turks
had in Europe during the war with Russia. Turkey is therefore fully as
safe as she was under Abdul Aziz.
An enlightened ruler could consolidate her position still further. Just
as Austria has gained in strength by having Venetia as a friendly and
allied land, rather than a subject province heaving with discontent, so,
too, it is open to the Porte to secure the alliance of the Balkan States
by treating them in an honourable way, and by according good government
to Macedonia.
Possibly the future may see the formation of a federation of all the
States of European Turkey. If so, Russia will lose all foothold in a
quarter where she formerly had the active support of three-fourths of
the population. However that may be, it is certain that her mistakes in
and after the year 1878 have profoundly modified the Eastern Question.
They have served to cancel those which, as it seems to the present
writer, Lord Beaconsfield committed in the years 1876-77; and the
skilful diplomacy of Lord Salisbury and Sir William White has regained
for England the prestige which she then lost among the rising peoples of
the Peninsula.
The final solution of the tangled racial problems of Mace donia cannot
be long deferred, in spite of the timorous selfishness of the Powers who
incurred treaty obligations for the welfare of that land; and, when that
question can be no longer postponed or explained away, it is to be hoped
that the British people, taking heed of the lessons of the past, will
insist on a solution that will conform to the claims of humanity, which
have been proved to be those of enlightened statesmanship[221].
[Footnote 221: For the recent developments of the Macedonian Question,
see _Turkey in Europe_, by "Odysseus" (1900); _the Middle Eastern
Question_, by V. Chirol, 18s. net (Murray); _A Tour in Macedonia_, by
G.F. Abbot (1903); _The Burden of the Balkans_, by Miss Edith Durham
(1904); _The Balkans from Within_, by R. Wyon (1904); _The Balkan
Question_, edited by L. Villari (1904); _Critical Times in Turkey_, by
G. King-Lewis (1904); _Pro Macedonia_, by V. Bérard (Paris, 1904); _La
Péninsule balkanique_, by Capitaine Lamouche (Paris, 1899).]
CHAPTER XI
NIHILISM AND ABSOLUTISM IN RUSSIA
THE HOUSE OF ROMANOFF
Catharine II.
(1762-1796.)
|
|
Paul.
(1796-1801.)
|
___________________
| |
Alexander I. Nicholas I.
(1801-1825.) (1825-1855.)
|
________________________________________
| | | |
Alexander II. Constantine. Nicholas. Michael.
(1855-1881.)
|
___________________________________________________________
| | | | | |
Nicholas. Alexander III. Alexis. Marie. Sergius. Paul.
(Died in (1881-1894.) (Duchess of (Assassinated
1865.) | Edinburgh.) Feb. 17, 1905.)
|
Nicholas II.
(1894--.)
The Whig statesman, Charles James Fox, once made the profound though
seemingly paradoxical assertion that the most dangerous part of a
Revolution was the Restoration that ended it. In a similar way we may
hazard the statement that the greatest danger brought about by war lies
in the period of peace immediately following. Just as the strain
involved by any physical effort is most felt when the muscles and nerves
resume their normal action, so, too, the body politic is liable to
depression when once the time of excitement is over and the artificial
activities of war give place to the tiresome work of paying the bill.
England after Waterloo, France and Germany after the war of 1870, afford
examples of this truth; but never perhaps has it been more signally
illustrated than in the Russia of 1878-82.
There were several reasons why the reaction should be especially sharp
in Russia. The Slav peoples that form the great bulk of her population
are notoriously sensitive. Shut up for nearly half the year by the
rigours of winter, they naturally develop habits of brooding
introspection or coarse animalism--witness the plaintive strains of
their folk-songs, the pessimism that haunts their literature, and the
dram-drinking habits of the peasantry. The Muscovite temperament and the
Muscovite climate naturally lead to idealist strivings against the
hardships of life or a dull grovelling amongst them. Melancholy or vodka
is the outcome of it all.
The giant of the East was first aroused to a consciousness of his
strength by the invasion of Napoleon the Great. The comparative ease
with which the Grand Army was engulfed left on the national mind of
Russia a consciousness of pride never to be lost even amidst the cruel
disappointments of the Crimean War. Holy Russia had once beaten back the
forces of Europe marshalled by the greatest captain of all time. She was
therefore a match for the rest of the Continent. Such was the belief of
every patriotic Muscovite. As for the Turks, they were not worthy of
entering the lists against the soldiers of the Czar. Did not every
decade bring further proofs of the decline of the Ottomans in governing
capacity and military prowess? They might harry Bulgarian peasants and
win laurels over the Servian militia. But how could that bankrupt State
and its undisciplined hordes hold up against the might of Russia and the
fervour of her liberating legions?
After the indulgence of these day dreams the disillusionment caused by
the events at Plevna came the more cruelly. One general after another
became the scapegoat for the popular indignation. Then the General
Staff was freely censured, and whispers went round that the Grand Duke
Nicholas, brother of the Czar, was not only incompetent to conduct a
great war, but guilty of underhand dealings with the contractors who
defrauded the troops and battened on the public funds. Letters from the
rank and file showed that the bread was bad, the shoes were rotten, the
rifles outclassed by those of the Turks, and that trenching-tools were
lacking for many precious weeks[222]. Then, too, the Bulgarian peasants
were found to be in a state of comfort superior to that of the bulk of
their liberators--a discovery which aroused in the Russian soldiery
feelings like those of the troops of the old French monarchy when they
fought side by side with the soldiers of Washington for the triumph of
democracy in the New World. In both cases the lessons were stored up, to
be used when the champions of liberty returned home and found the old
order of things clanking on as slowly and rustily as ever.
[Footnote 222: _Russia Before and After the War_, translated by E.F.
Taylor (London, 1880), chap. xvi.: "We have been cheated by blockheads,
robbed by people whose incapacity was even greater than their
villainy."]
Finally, there came the crushing blow of the Treaty of Berlin. The
Russian people had fought for an ideal: they longed to see the cross
take the place of the crescent which for five centuries had flashed
defiance to Christendom from the summit of St. Sofia at Constantinople.
But Britain's ironclads, Austria's legions, and German diplomacy barred
the way in the very hour of triumph; and Russia drew back. To the Slav
enthusiasts of Moscow even the Treaty of San Stefano had seemed a
dereliction of a sacred duty; that of Berlin seemed the most
cowardly of betrayals. As the Princess Radziwill confesses in her
_Recollections_--that event made Nihilism possible.
As usual, the populace, whether reactionary Slavophils or Liberals of
the type of Western Europe, vented its spleen on the Government. For a
time the strongest bureaucracy in Europe was driven to act on the
defensive. The Czar returned stricken with asthma and prematurely aged
by the privations and cares of the campaign. The Grand Duke Nicholas was
recalled from his command, and, after bearing the signs of studied
hostility of the Czarevitch, was exiled to his estates in February 1879.
The Government inspired contempt rather than fear; and a new spirit of
independence pervaded all classes. This was seen even as far back as
February 1878, in the acquittal of Vera Zazulich, a lady who had shot
the Chief of the Police at St. Petersburg, by a jury consisting of
nobles and high officials; and the verdict, given in the face of damning
evidence, was generally approved. Similar crimes occurred nearly every
week[223]. Everything therefore, favoured the designs of those who
sought to overthrow all government. In a word, the outcome of the war
was Nihilism.
[Footnote 223: _Ibid_. chap. xvii. The Government thereafter dispensed
with the ordinary forms of justice for political crimes and judged them
by special Commissions.]
The father of this sombre creed was a wealthy Russian landlord named
Bakunin; or rather, he shares this doubtful honour with the Frenchman
Prudhon. Bakunin, who was born in 1814, entered on active life in the
time of soulless repression inaugurated by the Czar Nicholas I.
(1825-1855). Disgusted by Russian bureaucracy, the youth eagerly drank
in the philosophy of Western Europe, especially that of Hegel. During a
residence at Paris, he embraced and developed Prudhon's creed that
"property is theft," and sought to prepare the way for a crusade against
all Governments by forming the Alliance of Social Democracy (1869),
which speedily became merged in the famous "Internationale." Driven
successively from France and Central Europe, he was finally handed over
to the Russians and sent to Siberia; thence he escaped to Japan and came
to England, finally settling in Switzerland. His writings and speeches
did much to rouse the Slavs of Austria, Poland, and Russia to a sense of
their national importance, and of the duty of overthrowing the
Governments that cramped their energies.
As in the case of Prudhon his zeal for the non-existent and hatred of
the actual bordered on madness, as when he included most of the results
of art, literature, and science in his comprehensive anathemas.
Nevertheless his crusade for destruction appealed to no small part of
the sensitive peoples of the Slavonic race, who, differing in many
details, yet all have a dislike of repression and a longing to have
their "fling[224]." A union in a Panslavonic League for the overthrow of
the Houses of Romanoff, Hapsburg, and Hohenzollern promised to satisfy
the vague longings of that much-baffled race, whose name, denoting
"glorious," had become the synonym for servitude of the lowest type.
Such was the creed that disturbed Eastern and Central Europe throughout
the period 1847-78, now and again developing a kind of iconoclastic
frenzy among its votaries.
[Footnote 224: For this peculiarity and a consequent tendency to
extremes, see Prof. G. Brandes _Impressions of Russia_, p. 22.]
This revolutionary creed absorbed another of a different kind. The
second creed was scientific and self-centred; it had its origin in the
Liberal movement of the sixties, when reforms set in, even in
governmental circles. The Czar, Alexander II., in 1861 freed the serfs
from the control of their lords, and allotted to them part of the plots
which they had hitherto worked on a servile tenure. For various reasons,
which we cannot here detail, the peasants were far from satisfied with
this change, weighted, as it was, by somewhat onerous terms, irksome
restrictions, and warped sometimes by dishonest or hostile officials.
Limited powers of local government were also granted in 1864 to the
local Zemstvos or land-organisations; but these again failed to satisfy
the new cravings for a real system of self-government; and the Czar,
seeing that his work produced more ferment than gratitude, began at the
close of the sixties to fall back into the old absolutist ways[225].
[Footnote 225: See Wallace's _Russia_, 2 vols.; _Russia under the
Tzars_, by "Stepniak," vol. ii. chap. xxix.; also two lectures on
Russian affairs by Prof. Vinogradoff, in _Lectures on the History of the
Nineteenth Century_ (Camb. 1902).]
At that time, too, a band of writers, of whom the novelist Turgenieff
is the best known, were extolling the triumphs of scientific research
and the benefits of Western democracy. He it was who adapted to
scientific or ethical use the word "Nihilism" (already in use in France
to designate Prudhon's theories), so as to represent the revolt of the
individual against the religious creed and patriarchal customs of old
Russia. "The fundamental principle of Nihilism," says "Stepniak," "was
absolute individualism. It was the negation, in the name of individual
liberty, of all the obligations imposed upon the individual by society,
by family life, and by religion[226]."
[Footnote 226: _Underground Russia_, by "Stepniak," Introduction, p. 4.
Or, as Turgenieff phrased it in one of his novels: "a Nihilist is a man
who submits to no authority, who accepts not a single principle upon
faith merely, however high such a principle may stand in the eyes of
men." In short, a Nihilist was an extreme individualist and
rationalist.]
For a time these disciples of Darwin and Herbert Spencer were satisfied
with academic protests against autocracy; but the uselessness of such
methods soon became manifest; the influence of professors and
philosophic Epicureans could never permeate the masses of Russia and
stir them to their dull depths. What "the intellectuals" needed was a
creed which would appeal to the many.
This they gained mainly from Bakunin. He had pointed the way to what
seemed a practical policy, the ownership of the soil of Russia by the
Mirs, the communes of her myriad villages. As to methods, he advocated a
propaganda of violence. "Go among the people," he said, and convert them
to your aims. The example of the Paris Communists in 1871 enforced his
pleas; and in the subsequent years thousands of students, many of them
of the highest families, quietly left their homes, donned the peasants'
garb, smirched their faces, tarred their hands, and went into the
villages or the factories in the hope of stirring up the thick
sedimentary deposit of the Russian system[227]. In many cases their
utmost efforts ended in failure, the tragi-comedy of which is finely
set forth in Turgenieff's _Virgin Soil_. Still more frequently their
goal proved to be--Siberia. But these young men and women did not toil
for nought. Their efforts hastened the absorption of philosophic
Nihilism in the creed of Prudhon and Bakunin. The Nihilist of
Turgenieff's day had been a hedonist of the clubs, or a harmless weaver
of scientific Utopias; the Nihilist of the new age was that most
dangerous of men, a desperado girt with a fighting creed.
[Footnote 227: _Russia in Revolution_, by G.H. Perriss, pp. 204-206,
210-214; Arnaudo, _I Nihilismo_ (Turin, 1879). See, too, the chapters
added by Sir D.M. Wallace to the new edition of his work
_Russia_ (1905).]
The fusing of these two diverse elements was powerfully helped on by the
white heat of indignation that glowed throughout Russia when details of
the official peculation and mismanagement of the war with Turkey became
known. Everything combined to discredit the Government; and enthusiasts
of all kinds felt that the days for scientific propaganda and stealthy
agitation were past. Voltaire must give way to Marat. It was time for
the bomb and the dagger to do their work.
The new Nihilists organised an executive committee for the removal of
the most obnoxious officials. Its success was startling. To name only a
few of their chief deeds: on August 15, 1878, a Chief of the Police was
slain near one of the Imperial Palaces at the capital; and, in February
1879, the Governor of Kharkov was shot, the Nihilists succeeding in
announcing his condemnation by placards mysteriously posted up in every
large town. In vain did the Government intervene and substitute a
military Commission in place of trial by jury. Exile and hanging only
made the Nihilists more daring, and on more than one occasion the Czar
nearly fell a victim to their desperadoes.
The most astounding of these attempts was the explosion of a mine under
the banqueting-hall of the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg on the
evening of February 17, 1880, when the Imperial family escaped owing to
a delay in the arrival of the Grand Duke of Hesse. Ten soldiers were
killed and forty-eight wounded in and near the guard-room.
The Czar answered outrage by terrorism. A week after this outrage he
issued a ukase suspending the few remaining rights of local
self-government hitherto spared by the reaction, and vesting practically
all executive powers in a special Commission, presided over by General
Loris Melikoff. This man was an Armenian by descent, and had
distinguished himself as commander in the recent war in Asia, the
capture of Kars being largely due to his dispositions. To these warlike
gifts, uncommon in the Armenians of to-day, he added administrative
abilities of a high order. Enjoying in a peculiar degree the confidence
of Alexander II., he was charged with the supervision of all political
trials and a virtual control of all the Governors-General of the Empire.
Thereupon the central committee of the Nihilists proclaimed war _à
outrance_ until the Czar conceded to a popularly elected National
Assembly the right to reform the life of Russia.
Here was the strength of the Nihilist party. By violent means it sought
to extort what a large proportion of the townsfolk wished for and found
no means of demanding in a lawful manner. Loris Melikoff, gifted with
the shrewdness of his race, saw that the Government would effect little
by terrorism alone. Wholesale arrests, banishment, and hangings only
added to the number of the disaffected, especially as the condemned went
to their doom with a calm heroism that inspired the desire of imitation
or revenge. Repression must clearly be accompanied by reforms that would
bridge over the gulf ever widening between the Government and the
thinking classes of the people. He began by persuading the Emperor to
release several hundreds of suspects and to relax the severe measures
adopted against the students of the Universities. Lastly, he sought to
induce the Czar to establish representative institutions, for which even
the nobles were beginning to petition. Little by little he familiarised
him with the plan of extending the system of the Zemstvos, so that there
should be elective councils for towns and provinces, as well as
delegations from the provincial _noblesse_. He did not propose to
democratise the central Government. In his scheme the deputies of
nobles and representatives of provinces and towns were to send delegates
to the Council of State, a purely consultative body which Alexander I.
had founded in 1802.
Despite the tentative nature of these proposals, and the favourable
reception accorded to them by the Council of State, the Czar for several
days withheld his assent. On March 9 he signed the ukase, only to
postpone its publication until March 12. Not until the morning of March
13 did he give the final order for its publication in the _Messager
Officiel_. It was his last act as lawgiver. On that day (March 1, and
Sunday, in the Russian calendar) he went to the usual military parade,
despite the earnest warnings of the Czarevitch and Loris Melikoff as to
a rumoured Nihilist plot. To their pleadings he returned the answer,
"Only Providence can protect me, and when it ceases to do so, these
Cossacks cannot possibly help." On his return, alongside of the
Catharine Canal, a bomb was thrown under his carriage; the explosion
tore the back off the carriage, injuring some of his Cossack escort, but
leaving the Emperor unhurt. True to his usual feelings of compassion, he
at once alighted to inquire after the wounded. This act cost him his
life. Another Nihilist quickly approached and flung a bomb right at his
feet. As soon as the smoke cleared away, Alexander was seen to be
frightfully mangled and lying in his blood. He could only murmur,
"Quick, home; carry to the Palace; there die." There, surrounded by his
dearest ones, Alexander II. breathed his last.
In striking down the liberator of the serfs when on the point of
recurring to earlier and better methods of rule, the Nihilists had dealt
the death-blow to their own cause. As soon as the details of the outrage
were known, the old love for the Czar welled forth: his imperfections in
public and private life, the seeming weakness of his foreign policy, and
his recent use of terrorism against the party of progress were
forgotten; and to the sensitive Russian nature, ever prone to extremes,
his figure stood forth as the friend of peace, and the would-be
reformer, hindered in his efforts by unwise advisers and an
untoward destiny.
* * * * *
His successor was a man cast in a different mould. It is one of the
peculiarities of the recent history of Russia that her rulers have
broken away from the policy of their immediate predecessors, to recur to
that which they had discarded. The vague and generous Liberalism of
Alexander I. gave way in 1825 to the stern autocracy of his brother,
Nicholas I. This being shattered by the Crimean War, Alexander II.
harked back to the ideals of his uncle, and that, too, in the wavering
and unsatisfactory way which had brought woe to that ruler and unrest to
the people. Alexander III., raised to the throne by the bombs of the
revolutionaries, determined to mould his policy on the principles of
autocracy and orthodoxy. To pose as a reformer would have betokened fear
of the Nihilists; and the new ruler, gifted with a magnificent physique,
a narrow mind, and a stern will, ever based his conduct on elementary
notions that appealed to the peasant and the common soldier. In 1825
Nicholas I. had cowed the would-be rebels at his capital by a display of
defiant animal courage. Alexander III. resolved to do the like. He had
always been noted for a quiet persistence on which arguments fell in
vain. The nickname, "bullock," which his father early gave him
(shortened by his future subjects to "bull"), sufficiently summed up the
supremacy of the material over the mental that characterised the new
ruler. Bismarck, who knew him, had a poor idea of his abilities, and
summed up his character by saying that he looked at things from the
point of view of a Russian peasant[228]. That remark supplies a key to
Russian politics during the years 1881-94.
[Footnote 228: _Reminiscences of Bismarck_, by S. Whitman, p. 114;
_Bismarck: some Secret Pages of his History_, by M. Busch, vol. iii.
p. 150.]
At first, when informed by Melikoff that the late Czar was on the point
of making the constitutional experiment described above, Alexander III.
exclaimed, "Change nothing in the orders of my father. This shall count
as his will and testament." If he had held to this generous resolve the
world's history would perhaps have been very different. Had he published
his father's last orders; had he appealed to the people, like another
Antony over the corpse of Cæar, the enthusiastic Slav temperament
would have eagerly responded to this mark of Imperial confidence.
Loyalty to the throne and fury against the Nihilists would have been the
dominant feelings of the age, impelling all men to make the wisest use
of the thenceforth sacred bequest of constitutional freedom.
The man who is believed to have blighted these hopes was Pobyedonosteff,
the Procureur of the highest Ecclesiastical Court of the Empire. To him
had been confided the education of the present Czar; and the fervour of
his orthodoxy, as well as the clear-cut simplicity of his belief in old
Muscovite customs, had gained complete ascendancy over the mind of his
pupil. Different estimates have been formed as to the character of
Pobyedonosteff. In the eyes of some he is a conscientious zealot who
believes in the mission of Holy Russia to vivify an age corrupted by
democracy and unbelief; others regard him as the Russian Macchiavelli,
straining his beliefs to an extent which his reason rejects, in order to
gain power through the mechanism of the autocracy and the Greek Church.
The thin face, passionless gaze, and coldly logical utterance bespeak
the politician rather than the zealot; yet there seems to be good reason
for believing that he is a "fanatic by reflection," not by
temperament[229]. A volume of _Reflections_ which he has given to the
world contains some entertaining judgments on the civilisation of the
West. It may be worth while to select a few, as showing the views of the
man who, through his pupil, influenced the fate of Russia and of
the world.
[Footnote 229: _Russia under Alexander III._, by H. von
Samson-Himmelstierna, Eng. ed. ch. vii.]
Parliament is an institution serving for the satisfaction of
the personal ambition, vanity, and self-interest of its
members. The institution of Parliament is indeed one of the
greatest illustrations of human delusion. . . . On the pediment
of this edifice is inscribed, "All for the public good." This
is no more than a lying formula: Parliamentarism is the
triumph of egoism--its highest expression. . . .
From the day that man first fell, falsehood has ruled the
world--ruled it in human speech, in the practical business of
life, in all its relations and institutions. But never did
the Father of Lies spin such webs of falsehood of every kind
as in this restless age. . . . The press is one of the falsest
institutions of our time.
In the chapter "Power and Authority" the author holds up to the gaze of
a weary world a refreshing vision of a benevolent despotism which will
save men in spite of themselves.
Power is the depository of truth, and needs, above all
things, men of truth, of clear intellects, of strong
understandings, and of sincere speech, who know the limits of
"yes" and "no," and never transcend them, etc[230].
[Footnote 230: _Pobyedonosteff; his Reflections_, Eng. ed.]
To this Muscovite Laud was now entrusted the task of drafting a
manifesto in the interests of "power" and "truth."
Meanwhile the Nihilists themselves had helped on the cause of reaction.
Even before the funeral of Alexander II. their executive committee had
forwarded to his successor a document beseeching him to give up
arbitrary power and to take the people into his confidence. While
purporting to impose no conditions, the Nihilist chiefs urged him to
remember that two measures were needful preliminaries to any general
pacification, namely, a general amnesty of all political offenders, as
being merely "executors of a hard civic duty"; and "the convocation of
representatives of all the Russian people for a revision and reform of
all the private laws of the State, according to the will of the nation."
In order that the election of this Assembly might be a reality, the Czar
was pressed to grant freedom of speech and of public meetings[231].
[Footnote 231: The whole document is printed in the Appendix to
"Stepniak's" _Underground Russia_.]
It is difficult to say whether the Nihilists meant this document as an
appeal, or whether the addition of the demand of a general amnesty was
intended to anger the Czar and drive him into the arms of the
reactionaries. In either case, to press for the immediate pardon of his
father's murderers appeared to Alexander III. an unpardonable insult.
Thenceforth between him and the revolutionaries there could be no truce.
As a sop to quiet the more moderate reformers, he ordered the
appointment of a Commission, including a few members of Zemstvos, and
even one peasant, to inquire into the condition of public-houses and the
excessive consumption of vodka. Beyond this humdrum though useful
question the imperial reformer did not deign to move.
After a short truce, the revolutionaries speedily renewed their efforts
against the chief officials who were told off to crush them; but it soon
became clear that they had lost the good-will of the middle class. The
Liberals looked on them, not merely as the murderers of the liberating
Czar, but as the destroyers of the nascent constitution; and the masses
looked on unmoved while five of the accomplices in the outrage of March
13 were slowly done to death. In the next year twenty-two more suspects
were arrested on the same count; ten were hanged and the rest exiled to
Siberia. Despite these inroads into the little band of desperadoes, the
survivors compassed the murder of the Public Prosecutor as he sat in a
café at Odessa (March 30, 1882). On the other hand, the official police
were helped for a time by zealous loyalists, who formed a "Holy Band"
for secretly countermining the Nihilist organisation. These amateur
detectives, however, did little except appropriate large donations,
arrest a few harmless travellers and no small number of the secret
police force. The professionals thereupon complained to the Czar, who
suppressed the "Holy Band."
The events of the years 1883 and 1884 showed that even the army, on
which the Czar was bestowing every care, was permeated with Nihilism,
women having by their arts won over many officers to the revolutionary
cause. Poland, also, writhing with discontent under the Czar's stern
despotism, was worked on with success by their emissaries; and the
ardour of the Poles made the recruits especially dangerous to the
authorities, ever fearful of another revolt in that unhappy land.
Finally, the Czar was fain to shut himself up in nearly complete
seclusion in his palace at Gatchina, near St. Petersburg, or in his
winter retreat at Livadia, on the southern shores of the Crimea.
These facts are of more than personal and local importance. They
powerfully affected the European polity. These were the years which saw
the Bulgarian Question come to a climax; and the impotence of Russia
enabled that people and their later champions to press on to a solution
which would have been impossible had the Czar been free to strike as he
undoubtedly willed. For the present he favoured the cause of peace
upheld by his chancellor, de Giers; and in the autumn of the year 1884,
as will be shown in the following chapter, he entered into a compact at
Skiernewice, which virtually allotted to Bismarck the arbitration on all
urgent questions in the Balkans. As late as November 1885, we find Sir
Robert Morier, British ambassador at the Russian Court, writing
privately and in very homely phrase to his colleague at Constantinople,
Sir William White: "I am convinced Russia does not want a general war in
Europe about Turkey now, and that she is really suffering from a
gigantic _Katzenjammer_ (surfeit) caused by the last war[232]." It is
safe to say that Bulgaria largely owes her freedom from Russian control
to the Nihilists.
[Footnote 232: _Memoirs and Correspondence of Sir William White_, edited
by H.S. Edwards, ch. xviii.]
For the Czar the strain of prolonged warfare against unseen and
desperate foes was terrible. Surrounded by sentries, shadowed by secret
police, the lonely man yet persisted in governing with the assiduity and
thoroughness of the great Napoleon. He tried to pry into all the affairs
of his vast empire; and, as he held aloof even from his chief Ministers,
he insisted that they should send to him detailed reports on all the
affairs of State, foreign and domestic, military and naval, religious
and agrarian. What wonder that the Nihilists persisted in their efforts,
in the hope that even his giant strength must break down under the
crushing burdens of toil and isolation. That he held up so long shows
him to have been one of the strongest men and most persistent workers
known to history. He had but one source of inspiration, religious zeal,
and but one form of relaxation, the love of his devoted Empress.
It is needless to refer to the later phases of the revolutionary
movement. Despite their well-laid plans, the revolutionaries gradually
lost ground; and in 1892 even Stepniak confessed that they alone could
not hope to overthrow the autocracy. About that time, too, their party
began to split in twain, a younger group claiming that the old terrorist
methods must be replaced by economic propaganda of an advanced
socialistic type among the workers of the towns. For this new departure
and its results we must refer our readers to the new materials brought
to light by Sir D. Mackenzie Wallace in the new edition of his work
_Russia_ (1905).
Here we can point out only a few of the more general causes that
contributed to the triumph of the Czar. In the first place, the
difficulties in the way of common action among the proletariat of Russia
are very great. Millions of peasants, scattered over vast plains, where
the great struggle is ever against the forces of nature, cannot
effectively combine. Students of history will observe that even where
the grievances are mainly agrarian, as in the France of 1789, the first
definite outbreak is wont to occur in great towns. Russia has no Paris,
eager to voice the needs of the many.
Then again, the Russian peasants are rooted in customs and superstitions
which cling about the Czar with strange tenacity and are proof against
the reasoning of strangers. Their rising could, therefore, be very
partial; besides which, the land is for the most part unsuited to the
guerilla tactics that so often have favoured the cause of liberty in
mountainous lands. The Czar and his officials know that the strength of
their system lies in the ignorance of the peasants, in the soldierly
instincts of their immense army, and in the spread of railways and
telegraphs, which enables the central power to crush the beginnings of
revolt. Thus the Czar's authority, resting incongruously on a faith dumb
and grovelling as that of the Dark Ages, and on the latest developments
of mechanical science, has been able to defy the tendencies of the age
and the strivings of Russian reformers.
* * * * *
The aim of this work prescribes a survey of those events alone which
have made modern States what they are to-day; but the victory of
absolutism in Russia has had so enormous an influence on the modern
world--not least in the warping of democracy in France--that it will be
well to examine the operation of other forces which contributed to the
set back of reform in that Empire, especially as they involved a change
in the relations of the central power to alien races in general, and to
the Grand Duchy of Finland in particular.
These forces, or ideals, may be summed up in the old Slavophil motto,
"Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality." These old Muscovite ideals had lent
strength to Nicholas I. in his day; and his grandson now determined to
appeal to the feeling of Nationality in its narrowest and strongest
form. That instinct, which Mazzini looked on as the means of raising in
turn all the peoples of the world to the loftier plane of Humanity, was
now to be the chief motive in the propulsion of the Juggernaut car of
the Russian autocracy.
The first to feel the weight of the governmental machine were the Jews.
Rightly or wrongly, they were thought to be concerned in the peculations
that disgraced the campaign of 1877 and in the plot for the murder of
Alexander II. In quick succession the officials and the populace found
out that outrages on the Jews would not be displeasing at headquarters.
The secret once known, the rabble of several towns took the law into
their own hands. In scores of places throughout the years 1881 and 1882,
the mob plundered and fired their shops and houses, beat the wretched
inmates, and in some cases killed them outright. At Elisabetgrad and
Kiev the Jewish quarters were systematically pillaged and then given
over to the flames. The fury reached its climax at the small town of
Balta; the rabble pillaged 976 Jewish houses, and, not content with
seizing all the wealth that came to hand, killed eight of the traders,
besides wounding 211 others.
Doubtless these outrages were largely due to race-hatred as well as to
spite on the part of the heedless, slovenly natives against the keen and
grasping Hebrews. The same feelings have at times swept over Roumania,
Austria, Germany, and France. Jew-baiting has appealed even to nominally
enlightened peoples as a novel and profitable kind of sport; and few of
its votaries have had the hypocritical effrontery to cloak their conduct
under the plea of religious zeal. The movement has at bottom everywhere
been a hunt after Jewish treasure, embittered by the hatred of the clown
for the successful trader, of the individualist native for an alien,
clannish, and successful community. In Russia religious motives may
possibly have weighed with the Czar and the more ignorant and bigoted of
the peasantry; but levelling and communistic ideas certainly accounted
for the widespread plundering--witness the words often on the lips of
the rioters: "We are breakfasting on the Jews; we shall dine on the
landlords, and sup on the priests." In 1890 there appeared a ukase
ordering the return of the Jews to those provinces and districts where
they had been formerly allowed to settle--that is, chiefly in the South
and West; and all foreign Jews were expelled from the Empire. It is
believed that as many as 225,000 Jewish families left Russia in the
sixteen months following[233].
[Footnote 233: Rambaud, _Histoire de la Russie_, ch. xxxviii.; Lowe,
_Alexander III. of Russia_, ch. viii.; H. Frederic, _The New Exodus_;
Professor Errera, _The Russian Jews_.]
The next onslaught was made against a body of Christian dissenters, the
humble community known as Stundists. These God-fearing peasants had
taken a German name because the founder of their sect had been converted
at the _Stunden_, or hour-long services, of German Lutherans long
settled in the south of Russia; they held a simple evangelical faith;
their conduct was admittedly far better than that of the peasants, who
held to the mass of customs and superstitions dignified by the name of
the orthodox Greek creed; and their piety and zeal served to spread the
evangelical faith, especially among the more emotional people of South
Russia, known as Little Russians.
Up to the year 1878, Alexander II. refrained from persecuting them,
possibly because he felt some sympathy with men who were fast raising
themselves and their fellows above the old level of brutish ignorance.
But in that year the Greek Church pressed him to take action. If he
chastised them with whips, his son lashed them with scorpions. He saw
that they were sapping the base of one of the three pillars that
supported the imperial fabric--Orthodoxy, in the Russian sense. Orders
went forth to stamp out the heretic pest. At once all the strength of
the governmental machine was brought to bear on these non-resisting
peasants. Imprisonment, exile, execution--such was their lot. Their
communities, perhaps the happiest then to be found in rural Russia, were
broken up, to be flung into remote corners of Transcaucasia or Siberia,
and there doomed to the régime of the knout or the darkness of the
mines[234]. According to present appearances the persecutors have
succeeded. The evangelical faith seems to have been almost stamped out
even in South Russia; and the Greek Church has regained its hold on the
allegiance, if not on the beliefs and affections, of the masses.
[Footnote 234: See an article by Count Leo Tolstoy in the _Contemporary
Review_ for November 1895; also a pamphlet on "The Stundists," with
Preface by Rev. J. Brown, D.D.]
To account for this fact, we must remember the immense force of
tradition and custom among a simple rural folk, also that very many
Russians sincerely believe that their institutions and their national
creed were destined to regenerate Europe. See, they said in effect,
Western Europe oscillates between papal control and free thought; its
industries, with their _laissez faire_ methods, raise the few to
enormous wealth and crush the many into a new serfdom worse than the
old. For all these evils Russia has a cure; her autocracy saves her from
the profitless wrangling of Parliaments; her national Church sums up the
beliefs and traditions of nobles and peasants; and at the base of her
social system she possesses in the "Mir" a patriarchal communism against
which the forces of the West will beat in vain. Looking on the Greek
Church as a necessary part of the national life, they sought to wield
its powers for nationalising all the races of that motley Empire.
"Russia for the Russians," cried the Slavophils. "Let us be one people,
with one creed. Let us reverence the Czar as head of the Church and of
the State. In this unity lies our strength." However defective the
argument logically, yet in the realm of sentiment, in which the Slavs
live, move, and have their being, the plea passed muster. National pride
was pressed into the service of the persecutors; and all dissenters,
whether Roman Catholics of Poland, Lutherans of the Baltic Provinces, or
Stundists of the Ukraine, felt the remorseless grinding of the State
machine, while the Greek Church exalted its horn as it had not done for
a century past.
Other sides of this narrowly nationalising policy were seen in the
determined repression of Polish feelings, of the Germans in the Baltic
provinces, and of the Armenians of Transcaucasia. Finally, remorseless
pressure was brought to bear on that interesting people, the Finns. We
can here refer only to the last of these topics. The Germans in the
Provinces of Livonia, Courland, and Esthonia formed the majority only
among the land-holding and merchant classes; and the curbing of their
semi-feudal privileges wore the look of a democratic reform.
* * * * *
The case was far different with the Finns. They are a non-Aryan people,
and therefore differ widely from the Swedes and Russians. For centuries
they formed part of the Swedish monarchy, deriving thence in large
measure their literature, civilisation, and institutions. To this day
the Swedish tongue is used by about one-half of their gentry and
burghers. On the annexation of Finland by Alexander I., in consequence
of the Franco-Russian compact framed at Tilsit in 1807, he made to their
Estates a solemn promise to respect their constitution and laws. Similar
engagements have been made by his successors. Despite some attempts by
Nicholas I. to shelve the constitution of the Grand Duchy, local
liberties remained almost intact up to a comparatively recent time. In
the year 1869 the Finns gained further guarantees of their rights.
Alexander II. then ratified the laws of Finland, and caused a statement
of the relations between Finland and Russia to be drawn up.
In view of the recent struggle between the Czar and the Finnish people,
it may be well to give a sketch of their constitution. The sovereign
governs, not as Emperor of Russia, but as Grand Duke of Finland. He
delegates his administrative powers to a Senate, which is presided over
by a Governor-General. This important official, as a matter of fact, has
always been a Russian; his powers are, or rather were[235], shared by
two sections of the Finnish Senate, each composed of ten members
nominated by the Grand Duke. The Senate prepares laws and ordinances
which the Grand Duke then submits to the Diet. This body consists of
four Orders--nobles, clergy, burghers, and peasants. Since 1886 it has
enjoyed to a limited extent the right of initiating laws. The Orders sit
and vote separately. In most cases a resolution that is passed by three
of them becomes law, when it has received the assent of the Grand Duke.
But the assent of a majority in each of the four Orders is needed in the
case of a proposal that affects the constitution of the Grand Duchy and
the privileges of the Orders. In case a Bill is accepted by two Orders
and is rejected by the other two, a deadlock is averted by each of the
Orders appointing fifteen delegates; these sixty delegates, meeting
without discussion, vote by ballot, and a bare majority carries the day.
Measures are then referred to the Grand Duke, who, after consulting the
Senate, gives or witholds his assent[236].
[Footnote 235: A law of the autumn of 1902 altered this. It delegated
the administration to the Governor-General, _assisted by_ the Senate.]
[Footnote 236: For the constitution of Finland and its relation to
Russia, see _A Précis of the Public Law of Finland_, by L. Mechelin,
translated by C.J. Cooke (1889); _Pour la Finlande_, par Jean Deck;
_Pour la Finlande, La Constitution du Grand Duché de Finlande_ (Paris,
1900). J.R. Danielsson, _Finland's Union with the Russian Empire_
(Borga, 1891).]
A very important clause of the law of 1869 declares that "Fundamental
laws can be made, altered, explained, or repealed, only on the
representation of the Emperor and Grand Duke, and with the consent of
all the Estates." This clause sharply marked off Finland from Russia,
where the power of the Czar is theoretically unlimited. New taxes may
not be imposed nor old taxes altered without the consent of the Finnish
Diet; but, strange to say, the customs dues are fixed by the Government
(that is, by the Grand Duke and the Senate) without the co-operation of
the Diet. Despite the archaic form of its representation, the Finnish
constitution (an offshoot of that of Sweden) has worked extremely well;
and in regard to civil freedom and religious toleration, the Finns take
their place among the most progressive communities of the world.
Moreover, the constitution is no recent and artificial creation; it
represents customs and beliefs that are deeply ingrained in a people
who, like their Magyar kinsmen, cling firmly to the old, even while they
hopefully confront the facts of the present. There was every ground for
hope. Between the years 1812 and 1886 the population grew from 900,000
to 2,300,000, and the revenue from less than 7,000,000 marks (a Finnish
mark = about ten pence) to 40,000,000 marks.
Possibly this prosperity prompted in the Russian bureaucracy the desire
to bring the Grand Duchy closely into line with the rest of the Empire.
On grounds other than constitutional, the bureaucrats had a case. They
argued that while the revenue of Finland was increasing faster than that
of Russia Proper, yet the Grand Duchy bore no share of the added
military burdens. It voted only 17 per cent of its revenue for military
defence as against 28 per cent set apart in the Russian Budget. The fact
that the Swedish and Finnish languages, as well as Finnish money, were
alone used on the railways of the Grand Duchy, even within a few miles
of St. Petersburg, also formed a cause of complaint. When, therefore,
the Slavophils began to raise a hue and cry against everything that
marred the symmetry of the Empire, an anti-Finnish campaign lay in the
nature of things. Historical students discovered that the constitution
was the gift of the Czars, and that their goodwill had been grossly
misused by the Finns. Others, who could not deny the validity of the
Finnish constitution, claimed that even constitutions and laws must
change with changing circumstances; that a narrow particularism was out
of place in an age of railways and telegraphs; and that Finland must
take its fair share in the work of national defence[237].
[Footnote 237: See for the Russian case d'Elenew, _Les Prétentions des
Séparatistes finlandais_ (1895); also _La Conquête de la Finlande_, by
K. Ordine (1889)--answered by J.R. Danielsson, _op. cit._; also
_Russland und Finland vom russischen Standpunkte aus betrachtet_, by
"Sarmatus" (1903).]
Little by little Alexander III. put in force this Slavophil creed
against Finland. His position as Grand Duke gave him the right of
initiating laws; but he overstepped his constitutional powers by
imposing various changes. In January 1890 he appointed three committees,
sitting at St. Petersburg, to bring the coinage, the customs system, and
the postal service of Finland into harmony with those of Russia. In June
there appeared an imperial ukase assimilating the postal service of
Finland to that of Russia--an illegal act which led to the resignation
of the Finnish Ministers. In May 1891 the "Committee for Finnish
Affairs," sitting at St. Petersburg, was abolished; and that year saw
other efforts curbing the liberty of the Press, and extending the use of
the Russian language in the government of the Grand Duchy.
The trenches having now been pushed forward against the outworks of
Finnish freedom, an assault was prepared against the ramparts--the
constitution itself. The assailants discovered in it a weak point, a
lack of clearness in the clauses specifying the procedure to be followed
in matters where common action had to be taken in Finland and in Russia.
They saw here a chance of setting up an independent authority, which,
under the guise of _interpreting_ the constitution, could be used for
its suspension and overthrow. A committee, consisting of six Russians
and four Finns, was appointed at the close of the year 1892 to codify
laws and take the necessary action. It sat at St. Petersburg; but the
opposition of the Finnish members, backed up by the public opinion of
the whole Duchy, sufficed to postpone any definite decision. Probably
this time of respite was due to the reluctance felt by Alexander III. in
his closing days to push matters to an extreme.
The alternating tendencies so well marked in the generations of the
Romanoff rulers made themselves felt at the accession of Nicholas II.
(Nov. 1, 1894). Lacking the almost animal force which carried Alexander
III. so far in certain grooves, he resembles the earlier sovereigns of
that name in the generous cosmopolitanism and dreamy good nature which
shed an autumnal haze over their careers. Unfortunately the reforming
Czars have been without the grit of the crowned Boyars, who trusted in
Cossack, priest, and knout; and too often they have bent before the
reactionary influences always strong at the Russian Court. To this
peculiarity in the nature of Nicholas II. we may probably refer the
oscillations in his Finnish policy. In the first years of his reign he
gradually abated the rigour of his father's regime, and allowed greater
liberty of the Press in Finland. The number of articles suppressed sank
from 216 in the year 1893 to 40 in 1897[238].
[Footnote 238: _Pour la Finlande_, par Jean Deck, p. 36.]
The hopes aroused by this display of moderation soon vanished. Early in
1898 the appointment of General Kuropatkin to the Ministry for War for
Russia foreboded evil to the Grand Duchy. The new Minister speedily
counselled the exploitation of the resources of Finland for the benefit
of the Empire. Already the Russian General Staff had made efforts in
this direction; and now Kuropatkin, supported by the whole weight of the
Slavophil party, sought to convince the Czar of the danger of leaving
the Finns with a separate military organisation. A military committee,
in which there was only one Finn, the Minister Procope, had for some
time been sitting at St. Petersburg, and finally gained over Nicholas
II. to its views. He is said to have formed his final decision during
his winter stay at Livadia in the Crimea, owing to the personal
intervention of Kuropatkin, and that too in face of a protest from the
Finnish Minister, Procope, against the suspension by imperial ukase of a
fundamental law of the Grand Duchy. The Czar must have known of the
unlawfulness of the present procedure, for on November 6/18, 1894,
shortly after his accession, he signed the following declaration:--
. . . We have hereby desired to confirm and ratify the
religion, the fundamental laws, the rights and privileges of
every class in the said Grand Duchy, in particular, and all
its inhabitants high and low in general, which they,
according to the constitution of this country, had enjoyed,
promising to preserve the same steadfastly and in full
force[239].
[Footnote 239: _The Rights of Finland_, p. 4 (Stockholm 1899). See too
for the whole question _Finland and the Tsars, 1809-1899_, by J.R.
Fisher (London, 2nd Edit. 1900).]
The military system of Finland having been definitely organised by the
Finnish law of 1878, that statute clearly came within the scope of those
"fundamental laws" which Nicholas II. had promised to uphold in full
force. We can imagine, then, the astonishment which fell on the Finnish
Diet and people on the presentation of the famous Imperial Manifesto of
February 3/15, 1899. While expressing a desire to leave purely Finnish
affairs to the consideration of the Government and Diet of the Grand
Duchy, the Czar warned his Finnish subjects that there were others that
could not be so treated, seeing that they were "closely bound up with
the needs of the whole Empire." As the Finnish constitution pointed out
no way of treating such subjects, it was needful now to complete the
existing institutions of the Duchy. The Manifesto proceded as follows:--
Whilst maintaining in full force the now prevailing statutes
which concern the promulgation of local laws touching
exclusively the internal affairs of Finland, We have found it
necessary to reserve to Ourselves the ultimate decision as to
which laws come within the scope of the general legislation
of the Empire. With this in view, We have with Our Royal Hand
established and confirmed the fundamental statutes for the
working out, revision, and promulgation of laws issued for
the Empire, including the Grand Duchy of Finland, which are
proclaimed simultaneously herewith[240].
[Footnote 240: _The Rights of Finland_, pp. 6-7 also in _Pour la
Finlande_, par J. Deck, p. 43.]
The accompanying enactments made it clear that the Finnish Diet would
thenceforth have only consultative duties in respect to any measure
which seemed to the Czar to involve the interests of Russia as well as
of Finland. In fact, the proposals of February 15 struck at the root of
the constitution, subjecting it in all important matters to the will of
the autocrat at St. Petersburg. At once the Finns saw the full extent of
the calamity. They observed the following Sunday as a day of mourning;
the people of Helsingfors, the capital, gathered around the statue of
Alexander II., the organiser of their liberties, as a mute appeal to the
generous instincts of his grandson. Everywhere, even in remote villages,
solemn meetings of protest were held; but no violent act marred the
impressiveness of these demonstrations attesting the surprise and grief
of a loyal people.
By an almost spontaneous impulse a petition was set on foot begging the
Czar to reconsider his decision. If ever a petition deserved the name
"national," it was that of Finland. Towns and villages signed almost _en
masse_. Ski-runners braved the hardships of a severe winter in the
effort to reach remote villages within the Arctic Circle; and within
five days (March 10-14) 529,931 names were signed, the marks of
illiterates being rejected. All was in vain. The Czar refused to receive
the petition, and ordered the bearers of it to return home[241].
[Footnote 241: _The Rights of Finland_, pp. 23-30.]
The Russian Governor-General of Finland then began a brisk campaign
against the Finnish newspapers. Four were promptly suppressed, while
there were forty-three cases of "suspension" in the year 1899 alone. The
public administration also underwent a drastic process of russification,
Finnish officials and policemen being in very many cases ousted by
Muscovites. Early in the year 1901 local postage stamps gave place to
those of the Empire. Above all, General Kuropatkin was able almost
completely to carry out his designs against the Finnish army, the law of
1901 practically abolishing the old constitutional force and compelling
Finns to serve in any part of the Empire--in defiance of the old
statutes which limited their services to the Grand Duchy itself.
The later developments of this interesting question fall without the
scope of this volume. We can therefore only state that the steadfast
opposition of the Finns to these illegal proceedings led to still
harsher treatment, and that the few concessions granted since the
outbreak of the Japanese War have apparently failed to soothe the
resentment aroused by the former unprovoked attacks upon the liberties
of Finland.
* * * * *
One fact, which cannot fail to elicit the attention of thoughtful
students of contemporary history, is the absence of able leaders in the
popular struggles of the age. Whether we look at the orderly resistance
of the Finns, the efforts of the Russian revolutionaries, or the fitful
efforts now and again put forth by the Poles, the same discouraging
symptom is everywhere apparent. More than once the hour seemed to have
struck for the overthrow of the old order, but no man appeared. Other
instances might of course be cited to show that the adage about the
hour and the man is more picturesque than true. The democratic movements
of 1848-49 went to pieces largely owing to the coyness of the requisite
hero. Or rather, perhaps, we ought to say that the heroes were there, in
the persons of Cavour and Garibaldi, Bismarck and Moltke; but no one was
at hand to set them in the places which they filled so ably in 1858-70.
Will the future see the hapless, unguided efforts of to-day championed
in an equally masterful way? If so, the next generation may see strange
things happen in Russia, as also elsewhere.
Two suggestions may be advanced, with all diffidence, as to the reasons
for the absence of great leaders in the movements of to-day. As we noted
in the chapter dealing with the suppression of the Paris Commune of
1871, the centralised Governments now have a great material advantage in
dealing with local disaffection owing to their control of telegraphs,
railways, and machine-guns. This fact tells with crushing force, not
only at the time of popular rising, but also on the men who work to that
end. Little assurance was needed in the old days to compass the
overthrow of Italian Dukes and German Translucencies. To-day he would be
a man of boundlessly inspiring power who could hopefully challenge Czar
or Kaiser to a conflict. The other advantage which Governments possess
is in the intellectual sphere. There can be no doubt that the mere size
of the States and Governments of the present age exercises a deadening
effect on the minds of individuals. As the vastness of London produces
inertia in civic affairs, so, too, the great Empires tend to deaden the
initiative and boldness of their subjects. Those priceless qualities are
always seen to greatest advantage in small States like the Athens of
Pericles, the England of Elizabeth, or the Geneva of Rousseau; they are
stifled under the pyramidal mass of the Empire of the Czars; and as a
result there is seen a respectable mediocrity, equal only to the task of
organising street demonstrations and abortive mutinies. It may be that
in the future some commanding genius will arise, able to free himself
from the paralysing incubus, to fire the dull masses with hope, and to
turn the very vastness of the governmental machine into a means of
destruction. But, for that achievement, he will need the magnetism of a
Mirabeau, the savagery of a Marat, and the organising powers of a
Bonaparte.
CHAPTER XII
THE TRIPLE AND DUAL ALLIANCES
"International policy is a fluid element which, under certain
conditions, will solidify, but, on a change of atmosphere,
reverts to its original condition."--Bismarck's _Reflections
and Reminiscences._
It is one thing to build up a system of States: it is quite another
thing to guarantee their existence. As in the life of individuals, so in
that of nations, longevity is generally the result of a sound
constitution, a healthy environment, and prudent conduct. That the new
States of Europe possessed the first two of these requisites will be
obvious to all who remember that they are co-extensive with those great
limbs of Humanity, nations. Yet even so they needed protection from the
intrigues of jealous dynasties and of dispossessed princes or priests,
which have so often doomed promising experiments to failure. It is
therefore essential to our present study to observe the means which
endowed the European system with stability.
Here again the master-builder was Bismarck. As he had concentrated all
the powers of his mind on the completion of German unity (with its
natural counterpart in Italy), so, too, he kept them on the stretch for
its preservation. For two decades his policy bestrode the continent like
a Colossus. It rested on two supporting ideas. The one was the
maintenance of alliance with Russia, which had brought the events of the
years 1863-70 within the bounds of possibility; the other aim was the
isolation of France. Subsidiary notions now and again influenced him, as
in 1884 when he sought to make bad blood between Russia and England in
Central Asian affairs (see Chapter XIV.), or to busy all the Powers in
colonial undertakings: but these considerations were secondary to the
two main motives, which at one point converged and begot a haunting fear
(the realisation of which overclouded his last years) that Russia and
France would unite against Germany.
In order, as he thought, to obviate for ever a renewal of the "policy of
Tilsit" of the year 1807, he sought to favour the establishment of the
Republic in France. In his eyes, the more Radical it was the better: and
when Count von Arnim, the German ambassador at Paris, ventured to
contravene his instructions in this matter, he subjected him to severe
reproof and finally to disgrace. However harsh in his methods, Bismarck
was undoubtedly right in substance. The main consideration was that
which he set forth in his letter of December 20, 1872, to the
Count:--"We want France to leave us in peace, and we have to prevent
France finding an ally if she does not keep the peace. As long as France
has no allies she is not dangerous to Germany." A monarchical reaction,
he thought, might lead France to accord with Russia or Austria. A
Republic of the type sought for by Gambetta could never achieve that
task. Better, then, the red flag waving at Paris than the
_fleur-de-lys._
Still more important was it to bring about complete accord between the
three empires. Here again the red spectre proved to be useful. Various
signs seemed to point to socialism as the common enemy of them all. The
doctrines of Bakunin, Herzen, and Lassalle had already begun to work
threateningly in their midst, and Bismarck discreetly used this
community of interest in one particular to bring about an agreement on
matters purely political. In the month of September 1872 he realised one
of his dearest hopes. The Czar, Alexander II., and the Austrian Emperor,
Francis Joseph, visited Berlin, where they were most cordially received.
At that city the chancellors of the three empires exchanged official
memoranda--there seems to have been no formal treaty[242]--whereby they
agreed to work together for the following purposes: the maintenance of
the boundaries recently laid down, the settlement of problems arising
from the Eastern Question, and the repression of revolutionary movements
in Europe.
[Footnote 242: In his speech of February 19, 1878, Bismarck said, "The
_liaison_ of the three Emperors, which is habitually designated an
alliance, rests on no written agreement and does not compel any one of
the three Emperors to submit to the decisions of the two others."]
Such was the purport of the Three Emperors' League of 1872. There is
little doubt that Bismarck had worked on the Czar, always nervous as to
the growth of the Nihilist movement in Russia, in order to secure his
adhesion to the first two provisions of the new compact, which certainly
did not benefit Russia. The German Chancellor has since told us that, as
early as the month of September 1870, he sought to form such a league,
with the addition of the newly-united Italian realm, in order to
safeguard the interests of monarchy against republicans and
revolutionaries[243]. After the lapse of two years his wish took effect,
though Italy as yet did not join the cause of order. The new league
stood forth as the embodiment of autocracy and a terror to the
dissatisfied, whether revengeful Gauls, Danes, or Poles, intriguing
cardinals--it was the time of the "May Laws"--or excited men who waved
the red flag. It was a new version of the Holy Alliance formed after
Waterloo by the monarchs of the very same Powers, which, under the plea
of watching against French enterprises, succeeded in bolstering up
despotism on the Continent for a whole generation.
[Footnote 243: Débidour, _Histoire diplomatique de l'Europe_, vol. ii.
pp. 458-59; Bismarck, _Reflections and Reminiscences_, vol. ii.
ch. xxix.]
Fortunately for the cause of liberty, the new league had little of the
solidity of its predecessor. Either because the dangers against which it
guarded were less serious, or owing to the jealousies which strained its
structure from within, signs of weakness soon appeared, and the imposing
fabric was disfigured by cracks which all the plastering of
diplomatists failed to conceal. An eminent Russian historian, M.
Tatischeff, has recently discovered the hidden divulsive agency. It
seems that, not long after the formation of the Three Emperors' League,
Germany and Austria secretly formed a separate compact, whereby the
former agreed eventually to secure to the latter due compensation in the
Balkan Peninsula for her losses in the wars of 1859 and 1866 (Lombardy,
Venetia, and the control of the German Confederation, along with
Holstein)[244].
[Footnote 244: _The Emperor Alexander II.: His Life and Reign_, by S.S.
Tatischeff (St. Petersburg, 1903), Appendix to vol. ii.]
That is, the two Central Powers in 1872 secretly agreed to take action
in the way in which Austria advanced in 1877-78, when she secured
Herzegovina. When and to what extent Russian diplomatists became aware
of this separate agreement is not known, but their suspicion or their
resentment appears to have prompted them to the unfriendly action
towards Germany which they took in the year 1875. According to the
Bismarck _Reflections and Reminiscences_, the Russian Chancellor, Prince
Gortchakoff, felt so keenly jealous of the rapid rise of the German
Chancellor to fame and pre-eminence as to spread "the lie" that Germany
was about to fall upon France. Even the uninitiated reader might feel
some surprise that the Russian Chancellor should have endangered the
peace of Europe and his own credit as a statesman for so slight a
motive; but it now seems that Bismarck's assertion must be looked on as
a "reflection," not as a "reminiscence."
The same remark may perhaps apply to his treatment of the "affair of
1875," which largely determined the future groupings of the Powers. At
that time the recovery of France from the wounds of 1870 was well nigh
complete; her military and constitutional systems were taking concrete
form; and in the early part of the year 1875 the Chambers decreed a
large increase to the armed forces in the form of "the fourth
battalions." At once the military party at Berlin took alarm, and
through their chief, Moltke, pressed on the Emperor William the need of
striking promptly at France. The Republic, so they argued, could not
endure the strain which it now voluntarily underwent; the outcome must
be war; and war at once would be the most statesmanlike and merciful
course. Whether the Emperor in any way acceded to these views is not
known. He is said to have more than once expressed a keen desire to end
his reign in peace.
The part which Bismarck played at this crisis is also somewhat obscure.
If the German Government wished to attack France, the natural plan would
have been to keep that design secret until the time for action arrived.
But it did not do so. Early in the month of April, von Radowitz, a man
of high standing at the Court of Berlin, took occasion to speak to the
French ambassador, de Gontaut-Biron, at a ball, and warned him in the
most significant manner of the danger of war owing to the increase of
French armaments. According to de Blowitz, the Paris correspondent of
the _Times_ (who had his information direct from the French Premier, the
Duc Decazes), Germany intended to "bleed France white" by compelling her
finally to pay ten milliards of francs in twenty instalments, and by
keeping an army of occupation in her Eastern Departments until the last
half-milliard was paid. The French ambassador also states in his account
of these stirring weeks that Bismarck had mentioned to the Belgian envoy
the impossibility of France keeping up armaments, the outcome of which
must be war[245].
[Footnote 245: De Blowitz, _Memoirs_, ch. v.; _An Ambassador of the
Vanquished_ (ed. by the Duc de Broglie), pp. 180 _et seq_. Probably the
article "Krieg in Sicht," published in the _Berlin Post_ of April 15,
1875, was "inspired."]
As Radowitz continued in favour with Bismarck, his disclosure of German
intentions seems to have been made with the Chancellor's approval; and
we may explain his action as either a threat to compel France to reduce
her army, a provocation to lead her to commit some indiscretion, or a
means of undermining the plans of the German military party. Leaving
these questions on one side, we may note that Gontaut-Biron's report to
the Duc Decazes produced the utmost anxiety in official circles at
Paris. The Duke took the unusual step of confiding the secret to
Blowitz, showed him the document, along with other proofs of German
preparations for war, and requested him to publish the chief facts in
the _Times_. Delane, the editor of the _Times_, having investigated the
affair, published the information on May 4. It produced an immense
sensation. The Continental Press denounced it as an impudent fabrication
designed to bring on war. We now know that it was substantially correct.
Meanwhile Marshal MacMahon and the Duc Decazes had taken steps to
solicit the help of the Czar if need arose. They despatched to St.
Petersburg General Leflô, armed with proofs of the hostile designs of
the German military chiefs. A perusal of them convinced Alexander II. of
the seriousness of the situation; and he assured Leflô of his resolve to
prevent an unprovoked attack on France. He was then about to visit his
uncle, the German Emperor; and there is little doubt that his influence
at Berlin helped to end the crisis.
Other influences were also at work, emanating from Queen Victoria and
the British Government. It is well known that Her late Majesty wrote to
the Emperor William stating that it would be "easy to prove that her
fears [of a Franco-German war] were not exaggerated[246]." The source of
her information is now known to have been unexceptionable. It reached
our Foreign Office through the medium of German ambassadors. Such is the
story imparted by Lord Odo Russell, our Ambassador at Berlin, to his
brother, and by him communicated to Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff. It
concerns an interview between Gortchakoff and Bismarck in which the
German Chancellor inveighed against the Russian Prince for blurting out,
at a State banquet held the day before, the news that he had received a
letter from Queen Victoria, begging him to work in the interests of
peace. Bismarck thereafter sharply upbraided Gortchakoff for this
amazing indiscretion. Lord Odo Russell was present at their interview
in order to support the Russian Chancellor, who parried Bismarck's
attack by affecting a paternal interest in his health:--
"Come, come, my dear Bismarck, be calm. You know that I am
very fond of you. I have known you since your childhood. But
I do not like you when you are hysterical. Come, you are
going to be hysterical. Pray be calm: come, come, my dear
fellow." A short time after this interview Bismarck
complained to Odo of "the preposterous folly and ignorance of
the English and all other Cabinets, who had mistaken stories
got up for speculations on the Bourse for the true policy of
the German Government." "Then will you," asked Odo, "censure
your four ambassadors who have misled us and the other
Powers?" Bismarck made no reply[247].
[Footnote 246: _Bismarck: his Reflections_, etc., vol. ii. pp. 191-193,
249-153 (Eng. ed.); the _Bismarck Jahrbuch_, vol. iv. p. 35.]
[Footnote 247: Sir M. Grant Duff, _Notes from a Diary, 1886-88_, vol. i.
p. 129. See, too, other proofs of the probability of an attack by
Germany on France in Professor Geffcken's _Frankreich, Russland, und der
Dreibund_, pp. 90 _et seq._]
It seems, then, that the German Chancellor had no ground for suspicion
against the Crown Princess as having informed Queen Victoria of the
suggested attack on France; but thenceforth he had an intense dislike of
these august ladies, and lost no opportunity of maligning them in
diplomatic circles and through the medium of the Press. Yet, while
nursing resentful thoughts against Queen Victoria, her daughter, and the
British Ministry, the German Chancellor reserved his wrath mainly for
his personal rival at St. Petersburg. The publication of Gortchakoff's
circular despatch of May 10, 1875, beginning with the words, "Maintenant
la paix est assurée," was in his eyes the crowning offence.
The result was the beginning of a good understanding between Russia and
France, and the weakening of the Three Emperors' League[248]. That
league went to pieces for a time amidst the disputes at the Berlin
Congress on the Eastern Question, where Germany's support of Austria's
resolve to limit the sphere of Muscovite influence robbed the Czar of
prospective spoils and placed a rival Power as "sentinel on the
Balkans." Further, when Germany favoured Austrian interests in the many
matters of detail that came up for settlement in those States, the rage
in Russian official circles knew no bounds. Newspapers like the _Journal
de St. Pétersbourg_, the _Russki Mir_, and the _Golos_, daily poured out
the vials of their wrath against everything German; and that prince of
publicists, Katkoff, with his coadjutor, Élie de Cyon, moved heaven and
earth in the endeavour to prove that Bismarck alone had pushed Russia on
to war with Turkey, and then had intervened to rob her of the fruits of
victory. Amidst these clouds of invective, friendly hands were thrust
forth from Paris and Moscow, and the effusive salutations of would-be
statesmen marked the first beginnings of the present alliance. A Russian
General--Obretchoff--went to Paris and "sounded the leading personages
in Paris respecting a Franco-Russian alliance[249]."
[Footnote 248: _Histoire de l'Entente franco-russe_, by Élie de Cyon,
ch. i. (1895).]
[Footnote 249: _Our Chancellor_, by M. Busch, vol. ii. pp. 137-138.]
Clearly, it was high time for the two Central Powers to draw together.
There was little to hinder their _rapprochement_. Bismarck's clemency to
the Hapsburg Power in the hour of Prussia's triumph in 1866 now bore
fruit; for when Russia sent a specific demand that the Court of Berlin
must cease to support Austrian interests or forfeit the friendship of
Russia, the German Chancellor speedily came to an understanding with
Count Andrassy in an interview at Gastein on August 27-28, 1879. At
first it had reference only to a defensive alliance against an attack by
Russia, Count Andrassy, then about to retire from his arduous duties,
declining to extend the arrangement to an attack by another
Power--obviously France. The plan of the Austro-German alliance was
secretly submitted by Bismarck to the King of Bavaria, who signified his
complete approval[250]. It received a warm welcome from the Hapsburg
Court; and, when the secret leaked out, Bismarck had enthusiastic
greetings on his journey to Vienna and thence northwards to Berlin. The
reason is obvious. For the first time in modern history the centre of
Europe seemed about to form a lasting compact, strong enough to impose
respect on the restless extremities. That of 1813 and 1814 had aimed
only at the driving of Napoleon I. from Germany. The present alliance
had its roots in more abiding needs.
[Footnote 250: _Bismarck: Reflections and Reminiscences_, vol. ii. pp.
251-289.]
Strange to say, the chief obstacle was Kaiser Wilhelm himself. The old
sovereign had very many claims on the gratitude of the German race, for
his staunchness of character, singleness of aim, and homely good sense
had made the triumphs of his reign possible. But the newer light of
to-day reveals the limitations of his character. He never saw far ahead,
and even in his survey of the present situation Prussian interests and
family considerations held far too large a space. It was so now. Against
the wishes of his Chancellor, he went to meet the Czar at Alexandrovo;
and while the Austro-German compact took form at Gastein and Vienna,
Czar and Kaiser were assuring each other of their unchanging friendship.
Doubtless Alexander II. was sincere in these professions of affection
for his august uncle; but Bismarck paid more heed to the fact that
Russia had recently made large additions to her army, while dense clouds
of her horsemen hung about the Polish border, ready to flood the
Prussian plains. He saw safety only by opposing force to force. As he
said to his secretary, Busch: "When we [Germany and Austria] are united,
with our two million soldiers back to back, they [the Russians], with
their Nihilism, will doubtless think twice before disturbing the peace."
Finally the Emperor William agreed to the Austro-German compact,
provided that the Czar should be informed that if he attacked Austria he
would be opposed by both Powers[251].
[Footnote 251: _Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of his History_, by M.
Busch, vol. ii. p. 404; _Bismarck: Reflections and Reminiscences_, vol.
ii. p. 268.]
It was not until November 5, 1887, that the terms of the treaty were
made known, and then through the medium of the _Times_. The official
publication did not take place until February 3, 1888, at Berlin,
Vienna, and Buda-Pesth. The compact provides that if either Germany or
Austria shall be attacked by Russia, each Power must assist its
neighbour with all its forces. If, however, the attack shall come from
any other Power, the ally is pledged merely to observe neutrality; and
not until Russia enters the field is the ally bound to set its armies in
motion. Obviously the second case implies an attack by France on
Germany; in that case Austria would remain neutral, carefully watching
the conduct of Russia. As far as is known, the treaty does not provide
for joint action, or mutual support, in regard to the Eastern Question,
still less in matters further afield.
In order to give pause to Russia, Bismarck even indulged in a passing
flirtation with England. At the close of 1879, Lord Dufferin, then
British ambassador at St. Petersburg, was passing through Berlin, and
the Chancellor invited him to his estate at Varzin, and informed him
that Russian overtures had been made to France through General
Obretcheff, "but Chanzy [French ambassador at St. Petersburg], having
reported that Russia was not ready, the French Government became less
disposed than ever to embark on an adventurous policy[252]."
[Footnote 252: _The Life of the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava_, by Sir A.
Lyall (1905), vol. i. p. 304.]
To the end of his days Bismarck maintained that the Austro-German
alliance did not imply the lapse of the Three Emperors' League, but that
the new compact, by making a Russian attack on Austria highly dangerous,
if not impossible, helped to prolong the life of the old alliance.
Obviously, however, the League was a mere "loud-sounding nothing" (to
use a phrase of Metternich's) when two of its members had to unite to
guard the weakest of the trio against the most aggressive. In the spirit
of that statesmanlike utterance of Prince Bismarck, quoted as motto at
the head of this chapter, we may say that the old Triple Alliance slowly
dissolved under the influence of new atmospheric conditions. The three
Emperors met for friendly intercourse in 1881, 1884, and 1885; and at or
after the meeting of 1884, a Russo-German agreement was formed, by
which the two Powers promised to observe a friendly neutrality in case
either was attacked by a third Power. Probably the Afghan question, or
Nihilism, brought Russia to accept Bismarck's advances; but when the
fear of an Anglo-Russian war passed away, and the revolutionists were
curbed, this agreement fell to the ground; and after the fall of
Bismarck the compact was not renewed[253].
[Footnote 253: On October 24, 1896, the _Hamburger Nachrichten_, a paper
often inspired by Bismarck, gave some information (all that is known)
about this shadowy agreement.]
* * * * *
It will be well now to turn to the events which brought Italy into line
with the Central Powers and thus laid the foundation of the Triple
Alliance of to-day.
The complex and uninteresting annals of Italy after the completion of
her unity do not concern us here. The men whose achievements had
ennobled the struggle for independence passed away in quick succession
after the capture of Rome for the national cause. Mazzini died in March
1872 at Pisa, mourning that united Italy was so largely the outcome of
foreign help and monarchical bargainings. Garibaldi spent his last years
in fulminating against the Government of Victor Emmanuel. The
soldier-king himself passed away in January 1878, and his relentless
opponent, Pius IX., expired a month later. The accession of Umberto I.
and the election of Leo XIII. promised at first to assuage the feud
between the Vatican and the Quirinal, but neither the tact of the new
sovereign nor the personal suavity of the Pope brought about any real
change. Italy remained a prey to the schism between Church and State. A
further cause of weakness was the unfitness of many parts of the
Peninsula for constitutional rule. Naples and the South were a century
behind the North in all that made for civic efficiency, the taint of
favouritism and corruption having spread from the governing circles to
all classes of society. Clearly the time of wooing had been too short
and feverish to lead up to a placid married life.
During this period of debt and disenchantment came news of a slight
inflicted by the Latin sister of the North. France had seized Tunis, a
land on which Italian patriots looked as theirs by reversion, whereas
the exigencies of statecraft assigned it to the French. It seems that
during the Congress of Berlin (June-July 1878) Bismarck and Lord
Salisbury unofficially dropped suggestions that their Governments would
raise no objections to the occupation of Tunis by France. According to
de Blowitz, Bismarck there took an early opportunity of seeing Lord
Beaconsfield and of pointing out the folly of England quarrelling with
Russia, when she might arrange matters more peaceably and profitably
with her. England, said he, should let Russia have Constantinople and
take Egypt in exchange; "France would not prove inexorable--besides, one
might give her Tunis or Syria[254]." Another Congress story is to the
effect that Lord Salisbury, on hearing of the annoyance felt in France
at England's control over Cyprus, said to M. Waddington at Berlin: "Do
what you like with Tunis; England will raise no objections." A little
later, the two Governments came to a written understanding that France
might occupy Tunis at a convenient opportunity.
[Footnote 254: De Blowitz, _Memoirs_, ch. vi., also Busch, _Our
Chancellor_, vol. ii. pp. 92-93.]
The seizure of Tunis by France aroused all the more annoyance in Italy
owing to the manner of its accomplishment. On May 11, 1881, when a large
expedition was being prepared in her southern ports, M. Barthélémy de
St. Hilaire disclaimed all idea of annexation, and asserted that the
sole aim of France was the chastisement of a troublesome border tribe,
the Kroumirs; but on the entry of the "red breeches" into Kairwan and
the collapse of the Moslem resistance, the official assurance proved to
be as unsubstantial as the inroads of the Kroumirs. Despite the protests
that came from Rome and Constantinople, France virtually annexed that
land, though the Sultan's representative, the Bey, still retains the
shadow of authority[255].
[Footnote 255: It transpired later on that Barthélémy de St. Hilaire did
not know of the extent of the aims of the French military party, and
that these subsequently gained the day; but this does not absolve the
Cabinet and him of bad faith. Later on France fortified Bizerta, in
contravention (so it is said) of an understanding with the British
Government that no part of that coast should be fortified.]
In vain did King Umberto's ministers appeal to Berlin for help against
France. They received the reply that the affair had been virtually
settled at the time of the Berlin Congress[256]. The resentment produced
by these events in Italy led to the fall of the Cairoli Ministry, which
had been too credulous of French assurances; and Depretis took the helm
of State. Seeing that Bismarck had confessed his share in encouraging
France to take Tunis, Italy's _rapprochement_ to Germany might seem to
be unnatural. It was so. In truth, her alliance with the Central Powers
was based, not on good-will to them, but on resentment against France.
The Italian Nationalists saw in Austria the former oppressor, and still
raised the cry of _Italia irredenta _for the recovery of the Italian
districts of Tyrol, Istria, and Dalmatia. In January 1880, we find
Bismarck writing: "Italy must not be numbered to-day among the
peace-loving and conservative Powers, who must reckon with this fact. . . .
We have much more ground to fear that Italy will join our adversaries
than to hope that she will unite with us, seeing that we have no more
inducements to offer her[257]."
[Footnote 256: _Politische Geschichte der Gegenwart_, for 1881, p. 176;
quoted by Lowe, _Life of Bismarck_, vol. ii. p. 133.]
[Footnote 257: _Bismarck: Some Secret Pages_, etc., vol. iii. p. 291.]
This frame of mind changed after the French acquisition of Tunis.
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes
should have been the feeling of MM. Waddington and Ferry when Bismarck
encouraged them to undertake that easiest but most expensive of
conquests. The nineteenth century offers, perhaps, no more successful
example of Macchiavellian statecraft. The estrangement of France and
Italy postponed at any rate for a whole generation, possibly for the
present age, that war of revenge in which up to the spring of 1881 the
French might easily have gained the help of Italy. Thenceforth they had
to reckon on her hostility. The irony of the situation was enhanced by
the fact that the Tunis affair, with the recriminations to which it led,
served to bring to power at Paris the very man who could best have
marshalled the French people against Germany.
Gambetta was the incarnation of the spirit of revenge. On more than one
occasion he had abstained from taking high office in the shifting
Ministries of the seventies; and it seems likely that by this
calculating coyness he sought to keep his influence intact, not for the
petty personal ends which have often been alleged, but rather with a
view to the more effective embattling of all the national energies
against Germany. Good-will to England and to the Latin peoples,
hostility to the Power which had torn Elsass-Lothringen from
France--such was the policy of Gambetta. He had therefore protested,
though in vain, against the expedition to Tunis; and now, on his
accession to power (November 9, 1881), he found Italy sullenly defiant,
while he and his Radical friends could expect no help from the new
autocrat of all the Russias. All hope of a war of revenge proved to be
futile; and he himself fell from power on January 26, 1882[258]. The
year to which he looked forward with high hopes proved to be singularly
fatal to the foes of Germany. The armed intervention of Britain in Egypt
turned the thoughts of Frenchmen from the Rhine to the Nile. Skobeleff,
the arch enemy of all things Teutonic, passed away in the autumn; and
its closing days witnessed the death of Gambetta at the hands of
his mistress.
[Footnote 258: Seignobos, _A Political History of Contemporary Europe_,
vol. i. p. 210 (Eng. Ed.).]
The resignation of Gambetta having slackened the tension between Germany
and France, Bismarck displayed less desire for the alliance of Italy.
Latterly, as a move in the German parliamentary game, he had coquetted
with the Vatican; and as a result of this off-hand behaviour, Italy was
slow in coming to accord with the Central Powers. Nevertheless, her
resentment respecting Tunis overcame her annoyance at Bismarck's
procedure; and on May 20, 1882, treaties were signed which bound Italy
to the Central Powers for a term of five years. Their conditions have
not been published, but there are good grounds for thinking that the
three allies reciprocally guaranteed the possession of their present
territories, agreed to resist attack on the lands of any one of them,
and stipulated the amount of aid to be rendered by each in case of
hostilities with France or Russia, or both Powers combined. Subsequent
events would seem to show that the Roman Government gained from its
northern allies no guarantee whatever for its colonial policy, or for
the maintenance of the balance of power in the Mediterranean[259].
[Footnote 259: For the Triple Alliance see the _Rev. des deux Mondes_,
May 1, 1883; also Chiala, _Storia contemporanea--La Triplice e la
Duplice Alleanza_ (1898).]
Very many Italians have sharply questioned the value of the Triple
Alliance to their country. Probably, when the truth comes fully to
light, it will be found that the King and his Ministers needed some
solid guarantee against the schemes of the Vatican to drive the monarchy
from Rome. The relations between the Vatican and the Quirinal were very
strained in the year 1882; and the alliance of Italy with Austria
removed all fear of the Hapsburgs acting on behalf of the Jesuits and
other clerical intriguers. The annoyance with which the clerical party
in Italy received the news of the alliance shows that it must have
interfered with their schemes. Another explanation is that Italy
actually feared an attack from France in 1882 and sought protection from
the Central Powers. We may add that on the renewal of the Triple
Alliance in 1891, Italy pledged herself to send two corps through Tyrol
to fight the French on their eastern frontier if they attacked Germany.
But it is said that that clause was omitted from the treaty on its last
renewal, in 1902.
The accession of Italy to the Austro-German Alliance gave pause to
Russia. The troubles with the Nihilists also indisposed Alexander III.
from attempting any rash adventures, especially in concert with a
democratic Republic which changed its Ministers every few months. His
hatred of the Republic as the symbol of democracy equalled his distrust
of it as a political kaleidoscope; and more than once he rejected the
idea of a _rapprochement_ to the western Proteus because of "the absence
of any personage authorised to assume the responsibility for a treaty of
alliance[260]." These were the considerations, doubtless, which led him
to dismiss the warlike Ignatieff, and to entrust the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs to a hard-headed diplomatist, de Giers (June 12, 1882). His
policy was peaceful and decidedly opposed to the Slavophil propaganda of
Katkoff, who now for a time lost favour.
[Footnote 260: Élie de Cyon, _op. cit._ p. 38.]
For the present, then, Germany was safe. Russia turned her energies
against England and achieved the easy and profitable triumphs in Central
Asia which nearly brought her to war with the British Government (see
Chapter xiv.).
In the year 1884 Bismarck gained another success in bringing about the
signature of a treaty of alliance between the three Empires. It was
signed on March 24, 1884, at Berlin, but was not ratified until
September, during a meeting of the three Emperors at Skiernewice. M.
Élie de Cyon gives its terms as follows:
(1) If one of the three contracting parties makes war on a fourth Power,
the other two will maintain a benevolent neutrality. (To this Bismarck
sought to add a corollary, that if two of them made war on a fourth
Power, the third would equally remain neutral; but the Czar is said to
have rejected this, in the interests of France.) (2) In case of a
conflict in the Balkan Peninsula, the three Powers shall consult their
own interests; and in the case of disagreement the third Power shall
give a casting vote. (A protocol added here that Austria might annex
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and occupy Novi-Bazar.) (3) The former special
treaties between Russia and Germany, or Russia and Austria, are
annulled. (4) The three Powers will supervise the execution of the terms
of the Treaty of Berlin respecting Turkey; and if the Porte allows a
fourth Power (evidently England) to enter the Dardanelles, it will
incur the hostility of one of the three Powers (Russia). (5) They will
not oppose the union of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia "if it comes about
by the force of circumstances"; and will not allow Turkey to fortify the
Balkan Passes. Finally, by Article 6, they forbid any one of the
contracting Powers to occupy the Balkan Principalities. The compact held
good only for three years.
If these terms are correctly stated, the treaty was a great triumph for
Austria and Germany at the expense of Russia. It is not surprising that
the Czar finally broke away from the constraint imposed by the
Skiernewice compact. As we have seen, his conduct towards Bulgaria in
1885-86 brought him very near to a conflict with the Central Powers. The
mystery is why he ever joined them on terms so disadvantageous. The
explanation would seem to be that, like the King of Italy, he felt an
alliance with the "conservative" Powers of Central Europe to be some
safeguard against the revolutionary elements then so strong in Russia.
In the years 1886-87 that danger became less acute, and the dictates of
self-interest in foreign affairs resumed their normal sway. At the
beginning of the year 1887 Katkoff regained his influence over the mind
of the Czar by convincing him that the troubles in the Balkan Peninsula
were fomented by the statesmen of Berlin and Vienna in order to distract
his attention from Franco-German affairs. Let Russia and France join
hands, said Katkoff in effect, and then Russia would have a free hand in
Balkan politics and could lay down the law in European matters
generally.
In France the advantage of a Russian alliance was being loudly asserted
by General Boulanger--then nearing the zenith of his popularity--as also
by that brilliant leader of society, Mme. Adam, and a cluster of
satellites in the Press. Even de Giers bowed before the idea of the
hour, and allowed the newspaper which he inspired, _Le Nord_, to use
these remarkable words (February 20, 1887):
Henceforth Russia will watch the events on the Rhine, and
relegates the Eastern Question to the second place. The
interests of Russia forbid her, in case of another
Franco-German war, observing the same benevolent neutrality
which she previously observed. The Cabinet of St. Petersburg
will in no case permit a further weakening of France. In
order to keep her freedom of action for this case, Russia
will avoid all conflict with Austria and England, and will
allow events to take their course in Bulgaria.
Thus, early in the year 1887, the tendency towards that equilibrium of
the Powers, which is the great fact of recent European history, began to
exercise a sedative effect on Russian policy in Bulgaria and in Central
Asia. That year saw the delimitation of the Russo-Afghan border, and the
adjustment in Central Asian affairs of a balance corresponding to the
equilibrium soon to be reached in European politics. That, too, was the
time when Bulgaria began firmly and successfully to assert her
independence and to crush every attempt at a rising on the part of her
Russophil officers. This was seen after an attempt which they made at
Rustchuk, when Stambuloff condemned nine of them to death. The Russian
Government having recalled all its agents from Bulgaria, the task of
saving these rebels devolved on the German Consuls, who were then doing
duty for Russia. Their efforts were futile, and Katkoff used their
failure as a means of poisoning the Czar's mind not only against
Germany, but also against de Giers, who had suggested the supervision of
Russian interests by German Consuls[261].
[Footnote 261: Élie de Cyon, _op. cit._ p. 274.]
Another incident of the spring-tide of 1887 kindled the Czar's anger
against the Teutons more fiercely and with more reason. On April 20, a
French police commissioner, Schnaebele, was arrested by two German
agents or spies on the Alsacian border in a suspiciously brutal manner,
and thrown into prison. Far from soothing the profound irritation which
this affair produced in France, Bismarck poured oil upon the flames a
few days later by a speech which seemed designed to extort from France a
declaration of war. That, at least, was the impression produced on the
mind of Alexander III., who took the unusual step of sending an
autograph letter to the Emperor William I. He, in his turn, without
referring the matter to Bismarck, gave orders for the instant release of
Schnaebele[262]. Thus the incident closed; but the disagreeable
impression which it created ended all chance of renewing the Three
Emperors' League. The Skiernewice compact, which had been formed for
three years, therefore came to an end.
[Footnote 262: See the _Nouvelle Revue_ for April 15, 1890, for Cyon's
version of the whole affair, which is treated with prudent brevity by
Oncken, Blum, and Delbrück.]
Already, if we may trust the imperfect information yet available, France
and Russia had sought to break up the Triple Alliance. In the closing
weeks of 1886 de Giers sought to entice Italy into a compact with Russia
with a view to an attack on the Central States (her treaty with them
expired in the month of May following), and pointed to Trieste and the
Italian districts of Istria as a reward for this treachery. The French
Government is also believed to have made similar overtures, holding out
the Trentino (the southern part of Tyrol) as the bait. Signor Depretis,
true to the policy of the Triple Alliance, repelled these offers--an act
of constancy all the more creditable seeing that Bismarck had on more
than one occasion shown scant regard for the interests of Italy.
Even now he did little to encourage the King's Government to renew the
alliance framed in 1882. Events, however, again brought the Roman
Cabinet to seek for support. The Italian enterprise in Abyssinia had
long been a drain on the treasury, and the annihilation of a force by
those warlike mountaineers on January 26, 1887, sent a thrill of horror
through the Peninsula. The internal situation was also far from
promising. The breakdown of attempts at a compromise between the
monarchy and Pope Leo XIII. revealed the adamantine hostility of the
Vatican to the King's Government in Rome. A prey to these
discouragements, King Umberto and his advisers were willing to renew
the Triple Alliance (March 1887), though on terms no more advantageous
than before. Signor Depretis, the chief champion of the alliance, died
in July; but Signor Crispi, who thereafter held office, proved to be no
less firm in its support. After a visit to Prince Bismarck at his abode
of Friedrichsruh, near Hamburg, the Italian Prime Minister came back a
convinced Teutophil, and announced that Italy adhered to the Central
Powers in order to assure peace to Europe.
Crispi also hinted that the naval support of England might be
forthcoming if Italy were seriously threatened; and when the naval
preparations at Toulon seemed to portend a raid on the ill-protected
dockyard of Spezzia, British warships took up positions at Genoa in
order to render help if it were needed. This incident led to a
discussion in the _Neue Freie Presse_ of Vienna, owing to a speech made
by Signor Chiala at Rome. Mr. Labouchere also, on February 10, 1888,
sharply questioned Sir James Fergusson in the House of Commons on the
alleged understanding between England and Italy. All information,
however, was refused[263].
[Footnote 263: Hansard, vol. cccxii. pp. 1180 _et seq._; Chiala, _La
Triplice e la Duplice Alleanza_, app. ii.; Mr. Stillman, _Francesco
Crispi_ (p. 177), believes in the danger to Spezzia.]
Next to nothing, then, is known on the interesting question how far the
British Government went in framing an agreement with Italy, and through
her, with the Triple Alliance. We can only conjecture the motives which
induced the Salisbury Cabinet to make a strategic turn towards that
"conservative" alliance, and yet not definitely join it. The isolation
of England proved, in the sequel, to be not only a source of annoyance
to the Continental Powers but of weakness to herself, because her
statesmen failed to use to the full the potential advantages of their
position at the middle of the see-saw. Bismarck's dislike of England was
not incurable; he was never a thorough-going "colonial"; and it is
probable that the adhesion of England to his league would have
inaugurated a period of mutual good-will in politics, colonial policy,
and commerce. The abstention of England has in the sequel led German
statesmen to show all possible deference to Russia, generally at the
expense of British interests.
The importance of this consideration becomes obvious when the dangers of
the year 1887 are remembered. The excitement caused in Russia and France
by the Rustchuk and Schnaebele affairs, the tension in Germany produced
by the drastic proposals of a new Army Bill, and, above all, the
prospect of the triumph of Boulangist militarism in France, kept the
Continent in a state of tension for many months. In May, Katkoff nearly
succeeded in persuading the Czar to dismiss de Giers and adopt a warlike
policy, in the belief that a strong Cabinet was about to be formed at
Paris with Boulanger as the real motive power. After a long ministerial
crisis the proposed ministerial combination broke down; Boulanger was
shelved, and the Czar is believed to have sharply rebuked Katkoff for
his presumption[264]. This disappointment of his dearest hopes preyed on
the health of that brilliant publicist and hastened his end, which
occurred on August 1, 1887.
[Footnote 264: This version (the usual one) is contested by Cyon, who
says that Katkoff's influence over the Czar was undermined by a mean
German intrigue.]
The seed which Katkoff had sown was, however, to bring forth fruit.
Despite the temporary discomfiture of the Slavophils, events tended to
draw France and Russia more closely together. The formal statement of
Signor Crispi that the Triple Alliance was a great and solid fact would
alone have led to some counter move; and all the proofs of the
instability of French politics furnished by the Grévy-Wilson scandals
could not blind Russian statesmen to the need of some understanding with
a great Power[265].
[Footnote 265: See the Chauvinist pamphlets, _Échec et Mat à la
Politique de l'Ennemi de la France_, by "un Russe" (Paris, 1887); and
_Nécessité de l'Alliance franco-russe_, by P. Pader (Toulouse, 1888).]
Bismarck sought to give the needed hand-grip. In November 1887, during
an interview with the Czar at Berlin, he succeeded in exposing the
forgery of some documents concerning Bulgaria which had prejudiced
Alexander against him. He followed up this advantage by secretly
offering the Cabinet of St. Petersburg a guarantee of German support in
case of an attack from Austria; but it does not appear that the Czar
placed much trust in the assurance, especially when Bismarck made his
rhetorical fanfare of February 6, 1888, in order to ensure the raising
of a loan of 28,000,000 marks for buying munitions of war.
That speech stands forth as a landmark in European politics. In a
simple, unadorned style the German Chancellor set forth the salient
facts of the recent history of his land, showing how often its peace had
been disturbed, and deducing the need for constant preparation in a
State bordered, as Germany was, by powerful neighbours:--"The pike in
the European pool prevent us from becoming carp; but we must fulfil the
designs of Providence by making ourselves so strong that the pike can do
no more than amuse us." He also traced the course of events which led to
the treaties with Austria and Italy, and asserted that by their
formation and by the recent publication of the treaty of 1882 with
Austria the German Government had not sought in any way to threaten
Russia. The present misunderstandings with that Power would doubtless
pass away; but seeing that the Russian Press had "shown the door to an
old, powerful, and effective friend, which we were, we shall not knock
at it again."
Bismarck's closing words--"We Germans fear God and nothing else in the
world; and it is the fear of God which makes us seek peace and ensue
it"--carried the Reichstag with him, with the result that the proposals
of the Government were adopted almost unanimously, and Bismarck received
an overwhelming ovation from the crowd outside. These days marked the
climax of the Chancellor's career and the triumph of the policy which
led to the Triple Alliance.
The question, which of the two great hostile groups was the more sincere
in its championship of peace principles, must remain one of the riddles
of the age. Bismarck had certainly given much provocation to France in
the Schnaebele affair; but in the year 1888 the chief danger to the
cause of peace came from Boulanger and the Slavophils of Russia. The
Chancellor, having carried through his army proposals, posed as a
peacemaker; and Germany for some weeks bent all her thoughts on the
struggle between life and death which made up the ninety days' reign of
the Emperor Frederick III. Cyon and other French writers have laboured
to prove that Bismarck's efforts to prevent his accession to the throne,
on the ground that he was the victim of an incurable disease, betokened
a desire for immediate war with France.