coolness that surprised and, for a moment, disconcerted the marquis:
“I formerly knew Count George de Walden, but for some time had lost sight
of him. Nevertheless, his sentence fills me with horror, and I would do
anything in the world to deliver him from it—him and the rest.”
“Him and the rest? One as soon as the other?”
“One as soon as the other; they all excite my pity. I wish the emperor
would pardon them all.” Her voice by no means accorded with her words; but
Adelardi continued as if he did not perceive it:
“Pardon them all! That would be chimerical. But there are some who are
deserving of clemency.”
“The emperor is more lenient towards inferior criminals than to those who,
after being loaded with favors, forget his kindness.”
“And yet there may be extenuating circumstances even in some cases of that
number.”
“Do you know of any that would be of any avail to Count George?” said she
eagerly.
“Not quite so loud; we may be overheard.”
“Yes; you are right,” she said, resuming her former tone. “Let us change
our seats; we look as if we were plotting something here, and should avoid
attracting attention. Let us examine the albums on yonder table. There we
can continue our conversation with less restraint.”
“Well,” continued she, as soon as they had effected the change proposed,
and were seated before the albums, which they pretended to be examining
carefully.
“Well,” replied Adelardi, “what I mean is that many things of no avail in
the eye of the law might not be without influence over him who is head of
the law.”
And while she was listening with interest, unintentionally betrayed by her
eager, agitated expression, her glowing cheeks, and parted lips, Adelardi
pleaded his friend’s cause, relating what we have already learned
respecting his apparent, rather than real, complicity, his ignorance of
the actual designs of the conspirators, and the circumstances that led to
his presence among the insurgents on the twenty‐fourth of December. In
short, he gave her all the details of which she had been totally ignorant,
having only heard, during her absence, of George’s offence and the
sentence he had incurred.
“And the emperor,” said she eagerly, “does he know it was he who saved his
brother’s life that dreadful day?”
“I doubt it; there were only two witnesses who could attest it. One of
these did not come forward, for fear of compromising himself; the other
was exceptionable.”
“Who was the other?”
“A man named Fabiano Dini, George’s secretary; but a great culprit, not
considered worthy of credit. He told the truth, however, ardently hoping
his testimony might save his master.”
“He is doubtless condemned to the same fate?”
“Yes, but to a more severe one; his sentence is for life, whereas George’s
is only for twenty‐five years.”
“Only twenty‐five years!” repeated she, with a shudder.
“Yes, it is horrible; it is worse than death! And George will envy the
wretch who was the prime cause of his misfortune, for Dini, seriously
wounded on the twenty‐fourth of December, will probably die before the sad
day fixed for their departure.”
They were now interrupted by something not foreign to the subject of their
discourse. A lady, unpretendingly clad, who till now had remained aloof,
approached the young maid of honor, and, with a faltering, respectful
tone, asked if the petition addressed his imperial majesty had been
granted.
“Yes,” said Vera eagerly. “Permission has been accorded. The Princess ——
received it this very hour. I left it myself at her door, on my way here.”
She kindly extended her hand to the person who addressed her. The latter
bent down as if to kiss it, but Vera prevented it by cordially embracing
her.
“Behold a true, faithful friend in misfortune,” said she, as the other
left them. “She herself is capable of going to Siberia with her whose
_dame de compagnie_ she was in happier days. But then, the Princess —— has
in her misfortunes the happiness of feeling herself beloved and respected
by all.”
“Assuredly,” said Adelardi. “She is really an admirable woman.”
“So admirable that she is beyond my comprehension.”
“How so?”
“I do not understand how a person can resolve on the course she wishes to
pursue—she and the others.”
“What!” said Adelardi, looking at her with surprise. “You do not
understand how a woman can thus wholly devote herself to the man—the
husband whom she loves.”
Vera shook her head. “No,” said she. “I do not wish to appear better than
I am. If I were in such a position, if I had the misfortune of loving one
of those convicts, he might rely on my exertions to obtain his pardon, and
to use every means in my power to that end. But, as to sharing his lot and
following him to Siberia, no, my dear marquis, I frankly acknowledge that
is a proof of devoted affection I feel wholly incapable of.”
Another form at this moment passed before the marquis’ mental vision,
beside which the beauty actually before him paled, and slightly modified
the lively admiration with which he regarded her.
“Well,” said he, after a moment’s reflection, “I know one of these
convicts for whom a woman—a young lady of about your age—is ready to give
a still greater proof of devotion than the Princess ——, for she is not his
wife. She is only—his betrothed, and wishes to marry him on purpose to
share his fate.”
“That is something entirely original,” said Vera.
“To do that,” pursued Adelardi, “she has a double favor to obtain, and is
coming to St. Petersburg for that purpose. She will be here to‐morrow, or,
at the latest, in a few days. I have been commissioned to solicit for her
an audience of the empress. Can I do so through your instrumentality?”
“Certainly. All these requests pass through my hands, and none have been
rejected. But this is really the most singular case that has occurred.”
She drew her tablets and a pencil from her pocket. “The name of your
_protégée_?” said she.
Adelardi hesitated an instant, then, noting a little anxiously the effect
produced, said:
“Her name is—Fleurange d’Yves.” He was relieved to hear the maid of honor
say, after carefully writing down the name:
“Fleurange! that is a very singular name, and one I never heard before.
To‐morrow,” continued she, rising, and returning the tablets to her
pocket, “before noon you shall have a reply. _Au revoir_, Monsieur le
Marquis.”
As she gave him her hand, she added in a low tone: “I thank you for all
your information, and will endeavor to avail myself of it. If you see
Count George, tell him—but no, tell him nothing. If by the merest chance I
succeed, it will be time enough then to tell him what he owes to my
efforts. If I do not—it will be better for him to remain ignorant of my
failure.”
The Marquis Adelardi returned home greatly preoccupied, and absently took
up two letters lying on the table. But after opening them, he successively
read them with equal interest. First, he looked at one of the signatures:
“Clement Dornthal? He is the cousin who accompanies the fair traveller.
They have arrived, then.—Well, the end of the drama is approaching: we
must all endeavor to play our parts with prudence. Mine is not the
easiest!”
He opened the other note, and hastily ran over it. “Thursday! I shall see
him on Thursday at two o’clock. Poor George! it will be a sad meeting, in
spite of the news I have to surprise and console him.”
He had the satisfaction of learning by this note that, thanks to the
powerful influence brought to bear on the occasion, he would be permitted
to pass an hour with the prisoner every day during the week that yet
remained before the sad train of exiles would set forth.
“Poor George!” he again repeated. “Can it be he has really come to
this?—But who knows what may yet take place? If the proverb, ‘What woman
wills, God wills,’ is true, all hope is not lost, for here are two women
evidently with the will to aid him, and energetic enough to overrule the
most adverse destiny. Two—doubtless one too many, and I have been rather
bold to risk a fearful collision. But things have come to such a point
that they can hardly be worse. If the fair Vera succeeds, it is George’s
affair to get out of the complication of gratitude to her who has saved
him, and the one ready to follow him. But if she fails, as seems only too
probable, then the case will be very simple: our charming heroine will
have no rival to fear.”
LIV.
After the succession of disagreeable surprises Mademoiselle Josephine had
experienced during her painful journey, another of a different nature, but
the greatest of all, awaited her at the end. Her imagination, we are
aware, never furnished her with anything beyond the strictest necessity.
It was only with difficulty she succeeded in comprehending that her dear
Gabrielle had decided to marry a stranger condemned to the galleys, and
this inconceivable idea seemed to have penetrated her mind to the
exclusion of all others. She was going to join a prisoner, and from the
day of her departure from Heidelberg she looked upon herself as on the way
to a dungeon. When therefore she heard the words, “We have arrived!” and
their sledge passed under the arch of an immense _porte cochêre_, she
shivered with fear. It was, consequently, with a sort of stupefaction she
found herself in a brilliantly lighted vestibule, whence a broad staircase
led to a fine long gallery opening into one salon after another, at the
end of which our travellers were ushered into a dining‐room, where supper
was awaiting them of a quality to which mademoiselle was quite as
unaccustomed as to the splendor with which it was served. She looked
around with mute surprise, hardly daring touch the dishes before her, and
looking at her two companions with an interrogative expression of the
greatest perplexity. But they both seemed affected and preoccupied to such
a degree as not to notice what was passing around them, and mademoiselle,
faithful to her habits, forbore questioning them for the moment.
The repast was made in silence; after which Clement wrote a note which she
heard him ask a valet to send to _M. le Marquis_. Then the two ladies were
conducted to the apartments prepared for them. Fleurange embraced her
companion and wished her good‐night, and Mademoiselle Josephine was left
alone in a chamber surpassing any she had ever seen, with large mirrors
around her, in which for the first time in her life she saw herself from
head to foot. There was also a bed _à baldaquin_, which she scarcely dared
think destined for her modest person, but in which at length she extended
herself with a respect that for a long time troubled her repose. Never had
the excellent Josephine found herself so completely out of her element.
She wondered if it was really herself beneath those curtains of silk, and,
when at last she fell asleep, it was to dream that Gabrielle, splendidly
apparelled, was mounting a throne, and she, Mademoiselle Josephine,
arrayed in a similar manner, was at her side. Her disturbed slumbers were
not of long duration. Before day she was up, and impatiently waiting for
the hour when she could leave her fine chamber and sally forth to explore
this strange dwelling which the night before seemed so much like a fairy
palace.
This impression was not lessened by the light of day. The rooms were
really splendid, and furnished with the taste the Princess Catherine
everywhere displayed, and which was as carefully consulted in the house
where she only spent three months of the year, as in her palace at
Florence, which she made her home. Mademoiselle went from one room to
another in a state of continually increasing admiration, and, while thus
walking about, she found everywhere the same mild temperature, which
seemed something marvellous, for all the doors were open, and not only
were there no fires to be seen, but no glass or even sashes in the
windows. Apparently there was nothing to screen her from the frosty air
without—freezing indeed, for on their arrival at St. Petersburg the
thermometer was down to fifteen or sixteen degrees, and yet—what was the
secret of this wonderful fact? She was not cold in the least, though the
sight of the large windows made her shiver, and she only ventured to stand
at a distance and look at the view without.
She beheld a vast plain covered with snow, with carriage‐ways in every
direction, bordered with branches of fir. Vehicles of all kinds were
crossing to and fro. Yonder was a succession of vast buildings, and
farther off were the gloomy walls of a fortress flanked by a church whose
gilded spire glittered in the winter sun—a sun radiant, but without
warmth; which imparted a dazzling brilliancy to the snow, but whose
deceptive light, far from alleviating the severity of the season, was, on
the contrary, the surest sign of its merciless rigor.
While thus admiring and wondering at everything, Mademoiselle came to the
last salon of the _enfilade_, where, before one of the large windows, she
perceived Fleurange motionless and absorbed in such profound reverie that
she did not notice her approach.
“Ah! Gabrielle, here you are! God be praised! I was lost, but no longer
feel so, now I have found you. But, for pity’s sake! what are you doing at
that open window?”
At this, Fleurange turned around with a smile. “Open! my dear
mademoiselle? We should not be alive long, clad as we are.”
“I really do not understand why I do not feel the cold, and yet—”
Fleurange motioned for her to approach (for the old lady still kept at a
respectful distance from the dangerous openings), and made her touch the
thick glass, one pane of which composed the window—a luxury at that time
peculiar to St. Petersburg, and which often deceived eyes more experienced
than those of the simple Josephine. Reassured, but more and more amazed,
she remained beside Fleurange at the window, profiting by the occasion to
ask all the questions hitherto repressed. Everything was gradually
explained to her, and she comprehended that this magnificent house
belonged to Count George’s mother.
“And he?” she ventured to say when Fleurange had answered all the
questions,—“he, Gabrielle, where is he?”
“He!” repeated Fleurange, as a flush rose to her cheeks and her eyes
filled with tears—“he is there: there, mademoiselle, within the walls of
the fortress before us!”
Poor Josephine started with surprise. “Pardon me!” said she. “If I had
known that, I should not have mentioned him.”
“Why, mademoiselle?—The sight of those walls does not make me afraid! On
the contrary, I long to enter them. I long to leave all this splendor
which separates me from him as it did before! O my dear friend! you must
not pity me the day I am united to him!”
The language of passion always had a strange effect on this elderly
maiden, but she only allowed herself to reply meekly:
“Well, my dear child, we will not pity you! It is Clement and I who will
need pity when that day comes, and you must not be vexed if—” And in spite
of herself, great tears filled her eyes, which she promptly wiped away.
She remained silent for some moments, then spoke of something else,
feeling if she resumed the subject it would speedily lead to an explosion
of grief which she resolved to restrain that she might not afflict her
young friend.
“What wide plain is that between the quay and the fortress?” she soon
continued.
“That is the Neva,” replied Fleurange, smiling.
“The Neva?”
“Yes, the river that runs through the city.”
“The river?” repeated Mademoiselle Josephine. “Come, Gabrielle, I know I
am very ignorant of everything relating to foreign countries, but still,
not to such a degree as to believe that. A river!—when I see with my own
eyes hundreds of carriages on it, sledges and chariots of all kinds, going
in every direction, and houses and sheds!—And what are those two great
mountains I see yonder?”
“They are ice‐hills, such as they have in Russia, mademoiselle, and which
were imitated in wood three years ago at Paris. Do you remember? I am told
these are only erected temporarily during the carnival.”
“Very well; but what you have said does not prove that to be the river,
and that you are right.”
“It seems incredible, I know, but everything we see there now will
disappear in the spring, leaving only a broad stream between that fine
granite quay and the fortress. But I confess I can scarcely realize it
myself, never having seen it.”
Clement now appeared. He looked pale and disposed to be silent, and gave
every indication of having passed a no less restless night than
Mademoiselle Josephine, though for a different reason. After exchanging
some words with his companions, his eyes glanced over the broad river,
and, like those of Fleurange, fastened on the gloomy walls of the
fortress. It was a strange chance that led them all there precisely
opposite. Clement gazed at the place with despair, jealousy, and horror,
but still was unable to turn his eyes away.
“There, then, is the end,” thought he; “for her, the end desired: for me,
the grave of my youth! Yes, when she once enters those walls, all will be
at an end for me, were I to live beyond the usual period. My life will be
ended at twenty years of age!”—
These reflections and others of the same nature were not calculated to
make Clement very agreeable that morning. He was not only serious, which
often happened, but, contrary to his habit, he was gloomy and taciturn.
Their breakfast was despatched in silence, after which it was only by a
great effort he gradually succeeded in regaining his usual manner.
“Cousin Gabrielle,” said he then, “I appear morose this morning, I am
aware, and I beg your pardon. But I am only sad, I assure you—sad in view
of what is approaching. This is pardonable, I hope,” continued he, taking
Mademoiselle Josephine’s hand; “you will not require us, will you, to
leave you without regret?”
“That is what I said to her a moment ago,” said poor Josephine, wiping
away her tears. “She says she is happy; that she longs to be there,”
casting a glance across the river. “We only desire her happiness, I am
sure; but then for us—”
“Yes,” said Clement, with a sad smile of bitterness, “for us the few days
to come will not be very happy, and we really have reason to be sad. As
for me, Gabrielle, I also regret those just ended; for in this new sphere
my _rôle_ is at an end. I am now to be for ever deprived of the pleasure
of being useful to you in any way.”
He was still speaking when the Marquis Adelardi was announced; and he
hastily rose.
“Stay, Clement,” said Fleurange eagerly—“stay. I wish this excellent
friend to become acquainted with you.”
“I also wish to make his acquaintance, but not now. Tell him that to‐
morrow, yes, to‐morrow morning—or even this evening, if he will receive
me, I will call at his residence. Do not detain me now.”
And before the marquis appeared he was gone. He felt he should be _de
trop_ at this interview of such deep import to Fleurange, for such it was.
To see George’s friend once more, his confidential friend—him who at this
solemn period had become the intermediary authorized by his mother!—There
was great reason to be agitated at such a thought. Besides, Adelardi had
always inspired her with sympathy and confidence, and in this new sphere
she realized how beneficial his experience would be, for Clement was right
in saying he could no longer be of any use. He was as ignorant as she of
the habits and usages of the court. And yet, to obey the Princess
Catherine’s instructions, her first object must be to obtain an audience
of the empress—a formidable prospect, which frightened her a thousand
times more than all that afterwards awaited her. She therefore received
the marquis with such childlike confidence as to redouble the regard he
had always felt for her. There was the same beauty, the same simplicity
about her, and, above all, the charm most attractive to eyes as _blasés_
as his—of resembling no one else in the world! The extraordinary courage
she showed herself capable of made him appreciate the more that which she
manifested in separating from George, and revealed to him the whole extent
of the sacrifice then made with so much firmness.
The mission confided to Adelardi assumed, therefore, a graver aspect in
his eyes than before, and he was for an instant tempted to reproach
himself for having, the night previous, invoked the aid of a rival in
George’s behalf, who might prove an enemy to the charming girl before him.
On all accounts, however, he could not regret this last effort for his
friend’s welfare. In case Vera failed, and by chance was afterwards
tempted to display any ill‐will at another’s performing an act of
devotedness she declared herself incapable of, he had taken some
precautions to defeat her, and flattered himself the favor would be
obtained before she discovered by whom it was implored.
Meanwhile, the maid of honor was punctual. The marquis had already
received her reply, and now placed it in his young friend’s hands.
“Your request is granted: Mademoiselle Fleurange d’Yves will be received
by her majesty on Thursday, at two o’clock.
V. L.”
“The day after to‐morrow!” said Fleurange with emotion. Then, blushing as
she continued: “But how happens it that the name which I have not borne
for so long occurs in this note?”
“It is yours, is it not?” replied the marquis evasively.
“Yes, it is mine, but—” she stopped. A particular remembrance was now
associated with the name of Fleurange. No one had called her so but George
for more than three years. And the day for ever graven on her memory, he
told her he should keep that name for himself—himself alone. She regretted
to find it here written by a strange hand, and felt an involuntary
contraction of the heart.
“I should have preferred the request made in the name I generally bear.”
“Pardon me. I am to blame in this,” said Adelardi. “I supposed it a matter
of indifference. I thought the name of Fleurange would particularly
attract the attention of her whose favor you seek, and remain more surely
in her memory.”
This was merely an excuse which occurred to him in reply to a question he
had not anticipated. His real motive was to conceal from the maid of honor
another name perhaps more familiar, and which might be connected in her
mind with some prejudice injurious to the success of the petition of which
she was the intermediary.
To Be Continued.
Sayings.
“We serve God by climbing up to heaven from virtue to virtue; we serve
Satan by descending into hell from vice to vice.”—_S. Bonaventura._
He who reflects upon death has already cut short the evil habit of
talkativeness; and he who has received the gift of inward and spiritual
tears, shuns it as he would fire.—_S. John Climacus._
Spiritual blessings attained by much prayer and labor are solid and
durable.—_Ibid._
The first degree of interior peace is to banish from us all the noise and
commotion created by the passions, which disturb the profound tranquillity
of the heart. The last and most excellent degree is to stand in no fear of
this disturbance, and to be perfectly insensible to its
excitement.—_Ibid._
The heart of the meek is the throne on which the Lord reposes.—_Ibid._
The day will belong to him who is first in possession.—_Ibid._
Prince Von Bismarck And The Interview Of The Three Emperors.
By M. Adolphe Dechamps, Min. D’état
From La Revue Générale De Bruxelles.
MY DEAR FRIEND: You question me about the events which during the past two
years have been subverting Europe, and you in particular ask me what I
think of the meeting of the three emperors at Berlin, and of the policy of
von Bismarck.
Your first inquiry is too general for me to take up in a letter which I
wish to avoid making too long, but in a work which I am writing at present
I will endeavor to do so to the extent of my ability. About the year 1849,
I went to work on an _Étude sur la France_, out of which, during the
second Empire, I put forth three separate publications.(189) In these I
followed the course of Napoleon III., both in the successes and in the
blunders which brought about his fall; and now in the midst of the
obscurity of general politics which thickens more and more from day to
day, and wherein the attentive observer perceives more sinister flashes
than gleams of sunshine, I am about to complete the main work which I
began more than twenty years ago.
In 1859, I sent my first publication on the _Second Empire_ to the aged
Prince von Metternich, who honored me with his friendship, and asked him
for his views about the condition of Europe, which was then on the eve of
being profoundly changed by the war in Italy.
The following is an extract from the interesting reply which I received
from him only a short time before his death: “After having been a witness
and spectator of the catastrophes which burst forth between the years 1789
and 1795, in the latter one I made my first entry into the higher walks of
the political world, and 1801 was the first year of my diplomatic career.
I consequently cannot be in ignorance of anything that has taken place
since the two remote epochs above mentioned. Now, am I thereby in advance
of other living men? Can I consider myself capable of drawing up a
prognostication of what will happen even so far only as regards the most
immediate future? Certainly not! But, nevertheless, one thing I know I can
do, I can venture to affirm that not during the course of the last seven
decades has there been a single moment when the elements which make up
_social existence_ have found themselves plunged in so general a struggle
as they are now.”
Since the prince thus wrote me, we have had the campaign of Italy against
Austria in 1859; the war in Germany which ended in Sadowa; the civil war
in the United States of N. A.; the colossal war of 1870; the astounding
fall of the second French Empire; the rule of the Commune, and the
conflagration in Paris; a Republican government in France; the setting up
of the Empire of Germany; the Italian Revolution in Rome, which keeps the
Pope a captive in the Vatican and all the church in mourning; we have had
Spain contended for by three dynasties and a prey to anarchy and civil
war; and we have a socialistic revolution stirring up everywhere the
laboring masses and unsettling the deepest foundations of the society of
our day!
What would old Prince von Metternich say if, having before him the immense
upheaving of which we are witnesses, he could be now called upon to reply
to the general inquiry which you have put to me? He would decline giving
an opinion; he would refuse to make any predictions; he would confine
himself to the expression of deeper fears, because of the general and
formidable struggle now raging between all the elements which make up the
very life of society. I will do just as he would, and for a hundredfold
more reasons than he could have. I feel, as do all those who have any
political instinct, that decisive and dreadful events are drawing nigh;
though I cannot yet distinctly perceive them, I feel them, as one does the
approach of a storm, from the heaviness of the air before seeing the
lightning flash or hearing the thunder roll.
I lay aside, then, your general inquiry, and take up the second one, which
is more precise, and which relates to the meeting at Berlin and to the
policy of von Bismarck.
It is almost needless for me to mention that, retired as I have been for a
long time from politics, any opinions which I may express are merely
individual ones, that I alone am responsible for them, and that nobody can
claim a right to extend that responsibility to my friends, and still less
to the political party which I have had the honor of serving. I make this
express reservation.
What is, then, the meaning, the character, and the bearing of the meeting
of the three emperors? Is it a congress? Is it an alliance?
It is neither one nor the other, and this has been carefully proclaimed.
It is not an _European_ congress, since England and France were not
present at it, the one having been left aside, and the other naturally
excluded. It is not a _congress_, since no treaty will sanction its views
and results. But, besides, Prince von Bismarck wants neither congress nor
treaty. He attached great importance to signing the treaty of Prague alone
with Austria and the treaty of Frankfort alone with France; he refused,
with a certain _hauteur_, to allow any interference of the other European
powers in those treaties, although they brought about a fundamental change
in the status and equilibrium of Europe.
In times past, after a great war, Europe has always intervened through a
solemn congress in which it dictated the terms of a general peace, thereby
securing for it solidity and duration. Thus the treaty of Westphalia
brought with it its consequent peace, the treaty of Vienna the peace of
1815, and more recently the treaty of the Congress of Paris in 1856
followed upon the war in the Crimea. Heretofore Europe has been subject to
a system of equilibrium: Bismarck has done away with the latter, and
broken up the former.
But he perceived the danger of this attitude and this situation. Germany
had vanquished Austria, crushed France, and had won European supremacy,
but she stood alone. Austria, forced out first from Italy, afterwards from
Germany, could not, without feeling a deep and natural jealousy, see the
German Empire rise to the first rank while she sank to the second. Russia
cannot see the German Empire extend from the Danube to the Baltic, and
overtop the Slavic Empire, without becoming also jealous. England cannot
look upon this state of things, which leaves her nothing to do but to keep
quiet and silent, without feeling somewhat as Austria and Russia do. There
is felt, then, at St. Petersburg, as at Vienna, and perhaps at London, an
invincible distrust of the predominance of Germany and of the rupture, for
her benefit, of the equilibrium of Europe. There are deep and opposing
interests which are incompatible with a true alliance between the three
emperors, and, albeit they have at Berlin shaken hands, toasted, and
fraternally embraced one another and exchanged certain general ideas, they
have not allied themselves on settled political views.
M. von Bismarck has himself pretty accurately defined the meeting at
Berlin: “It is of importance that no one should suppose that the meeting
of the three emperors has for its object any special political projects.
Beyond a doubt, this meeting amounts to a signal recognition of the new
German Empire, but no political design has directed it.”
It amounts to this or very nearly this: M. von Bismarck wanted neither a
congress nor a treaty, nor did he seek an alliance which was impossible of
attainment just now; but he was determined to put an end to his present
isolation, and he sought in particular to cut short the dream of
retaliation in which France might indulge from a hoped‐for alliance with
Russia or with Austria.
The government of Berlin has in the meeting of the three emperors sought
two and perhaps three ends: I. To bring about the recognition of the
German Empire by the two great military powers of the North, and in that
way deprive France of all hope of finding an ally, with a view to war,
either at St. Petersburg or at Vienna. II. To discourage at the same time
the _particularism_(190) of Bavaria and of South Germany, which has always
looked for a support in the direction of Vienna. The third end may be to
disarm the resistance of Catholics to the absurd and odious persecutions
organized against them, by intimating to them that their cause has been
abandoned by the Apostolic Emperor, the head of the House of Hapsburg.
The remarkable letter published in _Der Wanderer_ of Vienna, under the
heading of “The Order of Battle,” sets forth very cleverly each of these
two hopes aforesaid of the Berlin diplomats.
“Those diplomats,” says _Der Wanderer_, “are rather barefacedly making
game of Austria’s good‐nature. They calculate that this good‐nature will
have the effect of paralyzing two (as M. von Bismarck considers them)
implacable enemies of the empire, but heretofore friends of the Hapsburg
dynasty; I mean the particularism of the minor states and the Catholic
opposition. ‘Thanks to the house of Austria,’ say they, ‘we are going to
disarm those reptiles, and pull out their venomous fangs.’ At the same
time, those diplomats do not conceal their joy (premature, I hope) at what
they call the _Canossa_(191) of Berlin and the retaliation of Olmutz. ‘We
will get the old seal of the empire’ (I quote their words textually)
‘affixed to our heritage by the House of Austria.’ ”
It would seem, then, that the Emperor of Austria, by appearing at Berlin,
meant to say to particularism and perhaps to the Catholic body: You need
no longer count on me. And the Emperor of Russia went there to offer a
toast to the German army and to signify to France: Do not count on any
alliance with me for a war hereafter.
This would indeed be the crowning of M. von Bismarck’s policy. Since the
two great wars against Austria and against France which by their
prodigious results assuredly far surpassed his hopes and previsions, he
has but one solicitude and one thought—to isolate France, to secure her
military and political impotence, to file down the old lion’s teeth and to
muzzle him.
To this end, he needed strong and impenetrable frontiers, which he got by
the acquisition of Alsace and Lorraine. Prince von Bismarck cannot fail to
perceive that the annexation of these two provinces to Germany constitutes
for it, in a political point of view, a source of weakness rather than of
strength; that it is an additional embarrassment to the difficulties
following the organization of German unity; that Alsace and Lorraine will
be, for a long time to come, another bleeding Poland on the flanks of the
new empire; nevertheless, the conquest of these two provinces seemed to
him, in a military point of view, indispensable as a first material
guarantee against the possibility of retaliation on the part of France. By
the possession of those provinces, he turns against France the formidable
triple line of defence of the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Vosges; at
Strasbourg and at Metz he holds the strategical keys of France; these two
strongholds are, so to speak, iron gates of which the bolts are kept at
Berlin. The other Rhenish frontiers are defended by the armed neutrality
of Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Switzerland. Seated behind its
impassable frontiers, and relying upon its powerful military organization
and the remembrance of its recent triumphs, the German Empire appears
perfectly secure from attack.
But even all this was not enough for Prince von Bismarck. He has just been
repeating the policy which turned out so well for him in the war of 1866
against Austria. Then, through the guilty and senseless connivance of
Napoleon III., he allied himself to Italy; he compelled Austria to divide
her forces, to have two armies, one at Verona, the other in Bohemia—which
was making sure beforehand of the defeat of Austria. M. von Bismarck has
just begun a second time this skilful manœuvre. He has formed an offensive
and defensive alliance with Italy which owes its political life to France,
and repays the boon by treachery. By means of this alliance he would
compel France, in the event of a war, to have an army of the Alps and an
army of the Rhine, which would be equivalent to certain defeat.
Any war of retaliation is consequently for a long time to come rendered
impossible.
There would be left to France only one resource, and that a distant one,
viz., an alliance with a great military power, such as Austria, or, in
particular, Russia, whose secret jealousies she would turn to her account.
But such an alliance presupposes France raised up, in a political,
military, and moral sense, from her present ruin, and in possession of a
settled government, stable within and influential without. Can a republic,
even a conservative one, and even if it always had at its head as capable
a statesman as M. Thiers, so raise France? Can a republic which is a good
enough raft to take refuge on for a while, a so to speak narrow bed, which
will do for France, wounded and ailing, to lie on during the period of
convalescence—can it, in a country which lacks manly habits and historical
institutions, unite enough solidity, security, wise liberty, strength, and
grandeur to become the ally of so great an empire as Russia? To my mind,
the idea of an alliance between a French republic and one of the two
empires of the North against the German Empire is one of those
impossibilities which need but to be asserted, not to be argued. If France
could succeed in reuniting the separated links of her history, in
reconciling her present with her past, if she were to again become a
traditional, representative, and free monarchy, one holding itself
equidistant from the abuses of the old _régime_ and the errors of the
Revolution—oh! then her situation would indeed be changed, and great
alliances at present impossible might become possible soon thereafter. But
such alliances would not have for their object never‐ending retaliations
and new wars; they would bear their fruits through social peace, through
the restoration of authority and order, and through that true, prudent,
and measured liberty which, now that they have it not, they talk so much
about. The greatness of France depends less on the extent of her frontiers
than on her political, social, and religious renovation.
It is because M. von Bismarck understands perfectly that an alliance
between one of the great military empires of the North and republican
France is a chimerical project, that he encourages the adherents of the
republic at Versailles to sustain their work.
Anyhow, M. von Bismarck, having in view the nature of contingencies, has
sought to shut France out from hopes or temptations in this direction;
after, having in her folly dreamt of getting a frontier on the Rhine, she
has wretchedly lost, through the folly of her emperor, her eastern
frontier; after, having sworn to tear in pieces the treaty of 1815, to
which she had submitted with detestation, she has had to sign at Frankfort
the treaty in virtue of which she was invaded and dismembered.
The new Empire of Germany, resting on its formidable army, protected by
impenetrable frontiers, certain of an alliance with Italy which renders
the undertaking of war against it almost impossible for France, sustained
by the official friendship of Austria and of Russia, compels France to be
resigned and peaceful; condemns her to political and military impotence,
or, what may sound better, to walk in the ways of prudence. M. Thiers, in
words which the French press has published, has recently made a resolute
profession of this policy of prudence, by proclaiming that he desires
peace—peace to build up and fructify; and that France, at all events, will
not seek to break it.
When, from the balcony of the Imperial Palace at Berlin, it is proclaimed
that the object and result of the meeting of three emperors is to sanction
the _statu quo_ of Europe, and to consolidate a general peace, we believe
that they mean what they proclaim; but what is the signification of the
proclamation? Why, that they have thereby accepted the actual state of
things which has grown out of the recent wars; that is to say, the
European supremacy of the German Empire, founded on the powerlessness or
the cautious prudence of France; and that they think to have extinguished
the centre of combustion from which the firebrand of war might be again
hurled over Europe.
This is assuredly a clever policy, one in which Prince von Bismarck might
allow himself to take a certain pride.
But in this serene sky there is one dark cloud, and we may well suppose
that this cloud has disturbed the optimism of the diplomats assembled at
Berlin. This cloud is that dreaded unknown future when France will be no
longer governed by M. Thiers.
Salvation is not to come to France from the republic; in France there is
neither a republic nor a monarchy; the forces which tend to a monarchy are
disunited, and consequently powerless, and those which tend to a republic
are still more divided; the nation is living under an administration _ad
interim_; there is an absence of settled government and settled
institutions, and an impossibility of establishing either, because of the
wide divisions of irreconcilable parties, of anarchy in principles and
ideas. The salvation of France for the time being is one man, a leader
whose hand is pliable, firm, and commanding enough to hold political
parties in submission and keep down the rivalries which would give France
over to another civil war. M. Thiers believes that any present attempt to
set up a monarchy would light up a civil war; while the conviction of the
majority of the Assembly at Versailles is just as strong that, if the
republic lasts, this civil war will break out on the morrow of the day
when France will have lost M. Thiers. Probably both are right; it is
rather to the condition itself of France than to the men that lead her
that this lamentable state of affairs is to be attributed which finds its
expression in the government of a provisional republic having nothing to
look forward to in the future but unfathomable darkness and mystery.
M. Thiers is the embodiment of the conservative republic, which will last
just so long as he lives, and I desire that his needed dictatorship be
prolonged for a long while yet; but can we reasonably entertain such a
hope? He has undertaken the admirable work of saving France; he has in
Paris fought and won the great battle against anarchy; he has carried the
loans through, reorganized the army and finances of France; he is pushing
forward the evacuation of her territory; he maintains order. All this is
very fine and grand; he is indeed acting the part of the saviour of his
country; but let him not seek to do more; let him not be ambitious to
become the founder of a government; let him rather be content with merely
playing the first part at the head of affairs.
I thoroughly appreciate the work M. Thiers is engaged in; he directs his
policy by the light of present events, the only ones he can control; he is
going through the reparative period, _but what is he preparing_? What is
he founding for the future? What heritage will he leave after him, and who
will be his heir? Such are the questions which must come up to every
reflecting mind, and in particular to his, so remarkably clear,
perspicacious, and penetrating.
The weak side of his policy is that it leaves France on a political _terra
incognita_. The creation of a few additional institutions will not suffice
to raise France out of the provisional status in which she lies since her
fall; I mean such as a vice‐presidency, the establishing of a lower house,
all which would be adding shadows to shadows. It would never amount to
anything more than an administration _ad interim_, and a period of
expectation of a definite, stable, regular government having influence
abroad, such an one as France feels that she does not but should possess.
The question for M. Thiers, as well as for France and for Europe, remains
the same: What is being prepared, what will the future bring?
As we know the tree by its fruits, so do we judge a policy by its results,
and so will M. Thiers be judged.
If he leaves after him the heritage of a traditional and representative
monarchy, or if, like a second Washington, he leaves as his successor to
France a second John Adams or Thomas Jefferson who will enter upon the
work of consolidating a republic really conservative, free, Christian, and
powerful, he will indeed be a great man; but, if he is to be followed in
power by a Gambetta who will be the predecessor of the socialist _commune_
of Paris, he will, notwithstanding the immense services he has rendered,
be severely judged by history. No one assuredly ought to understand this
better than he.
Is the second President of the fourth or fifth French Republic to be a now
unforeseen Jefferson or a Gambetta?
Such is the dreaded question now before us. These threatening
eventualities have doubtless been attentively considered at the conference
in Berlin. M. von Bismarck may have developed thereat the political plan
which I have endeavored to analyze, and which has for its object the
founding of the peace of Europe on France’s inability to undertake another
war; but revolutionary and demagogical France, bearing incendiarism from
Paris to Madrid, to Rome, and perhaps elsewhere, must be opposed in some
other way than by the establishment of impenetrable frontiers and the
formation of alliances; and on these other means of opposition the three
emperors must have seriously conferred at Berlin, and I doubt much whether
waging war against the Catholic Church has seemed to them the best way to
avert the danger aforesaid.
II.
I have sought in this letter to set forth the character and import of the
meeting at Berlin, and to show the policy which Prince von Bismarck has
endeavored to inaugurate there. I have not been eaves‐dropping at the
doors of the chambers in which the three emperors and their chancellors
held their deliberations; but there is no difficulty in conjecturing what
was talked about, and, I may add, what was thought therein.
We must not overestimate the importance of these conversations; the
meeting at Berlin will no more bring about positive results for the
solution of pending questions in Europe than did the numerous interviews
which Napoleon III. had with the Emperor of Austria, the ministers of
Great Britain, and the czar. As we have stated before, it is not a
congress; it forms no alliances, and no treaty determining the new
European equilibrium will come out of it. What M. von Bismarck wished
particularly to bring about was the presence of the two emperors with
their counsellors in the capital of the new empire. Their mere presence
signified, in the eyes of the prince chancellor:
The recognition of the German Empire; the sanction of the treaties of
Prague and Frankfort, which were to form the basis of the new equilibrium
of Europe.
The impossibility for France to find a powerful ally that would enable her
to attempt a war of retaliation.
On the part of Austria, the abandonment of all idea of returning to her
old German policy, and the repudiation of all connivance with the
_particularistic_ resistance of the lesser states of Germany.
I will presently examine whether the presence at Berlin of the head of the
dynasty of Hapsburg signifies also the repudiation of the Catholic
movement which the persecutions directed against the church have stirred
up throughout entire Germany.
Assuredly this policy of M. von Bismarck shows, I will not say grandeur,
but skill and audacity; and it has been crowned by wonderful success. When
I saw Prince von Bismarck raise Prussia, that a few years ago could hardly
rank among the great powers, to the height of the Empire of Germany
through the victories of 1866 and 1871—when I contemplated these
astounding results, I was for a moment tempted to consider him as a great
minister, as one of the rare successors of Richelieu or of Stein.
I was the more inclined to this judgment because, as a Belgian, I was
grateful for the honest and upright policy which he had followed as
regards Napoleon III. before the last war. There is no longer any room for
doubt, now that the diplomatic documents are known, that Napoleon III., in
order to redeem the unpardonable blunder which he had committed by
favoring the war of 1861 between Prussia and Austria, endeavored to obtain
in Luxemburg and in Belgium the compensations which he considered needful
for him in view of the aggrandizement of Prussia. We know about the rough
draft of the Benedetti treaty, which no amount of equivocation and timid
denial can do away with.
I had, in my work published in 1865, clearly denounced the plot; and from
the Belgian tribune, because I had pointed out these perils to its
government, I have been called a political visionary and almost a traitor
to my country. Subsequent events have justified my allegations, and now
every one knows that the dangers which we ran for a time were more real,
nearer at hand, and greater than even I imagined them to be.
The war of 1870 was the consequence of the refusal of the government of
Berlin to yield to the guilty covetousness of Napoleon III. I ascribe the
honor of the former to M. von Bismarck and to the integrity of William IV.
I had proclaimed the existence of two eminent perils: a diplomatic peril,
viz., an alliance of France with Prussia, of which Belgium would have been
the stakes and the victim; the chance of a war between those two nations,
in which France might have been victorious. We have, almost by a miracle,
escaped those two perils; through the war of 1870, Belgium has been
preserved from diplomatic conspiracies, and as a Belgian I can never
forget it.(192)
Belgium, since the late war, finds herself in a new position which has not
attracted the attention it deserves.
Belgium, for a long time back coveted by France, particularly by France
under the Empire and under the Republic, had, above all, to fear an
alliance between France and Prussia, which latter might sacrifice her to
the political combinations growing out of such an alliance. That is what
Napoleon III. attempted in the Benedetti negotiation, and it was this
peril which before the recent war alarmed my patriotism.
Now this peril has vanished. An alliance between the German Empire and
France is now put off for a long time. But there is another motive still
more powerful, and which constitutes our complete security, which is this:
that the existence of a _neutral_ and _strong_ Belgium has become
henceforward for the German Empire a necessity of the highest order. Since
the government of Berlin has thought it indispensable for strategic
purposes to hold Metz and the lines of the Meuse and of the Vosges, it
cannot allow, under any consideration, independent Belgium to disappear
and France to occupy that territory of Belgium which is watered by the
Meuse and the Scheldt. Our neutrality protects the Rhine on the side of
the gap between the Sambre and the Meuse, but can afford this protection
only provided our neutrality is politically and militarily strong to such
an extent as our financial resources will warrant.
Our neutrality, in order to be one of the supports of the peace of Europe,
must be ever an honest one; it must stand as a barrier against aggression
whether from the east or from the south; it must be hostile to no power.
On the other hand, it is plain that, in order to fill this position of
barrier and guarantee, Belgium must remain always armed and able to repel
an attack at the outset; otherwise, she would become politically useless,
and, in the event of a war, the occupation of her territory would follow
as the fatal result of such omission.
This was true before the late war, and on this point my views have not
changed; but, since the new European situation created by the war, this
truth is twice as plain, and our duties to Europe have increased twofold.
It is important that all our political men, without distinction of party,
and that the entire nation, understand well the position to which we have
been brought by recent events.
Far from being hostile to the German Empire, I find in it a new guarantee
for the independence of my country. Our neutrality now rests on all the
powers and on all the treaties that have been made: it had become a habit,
after the advent of the Napoleonic Empire, to consider England as the
special protector of our national independence, but now that Germany has a
particular and powerful interest in that independence, instead of one
special support only, we now have two.
It is proper that I should make this statement, as I am about to submit M.
von Bismarck’s policy to a severe criticism. In this page of history which
I have been rapidly writing, I have not been wanting in praise; and, if
these lines are ever read by M. von Bismarck, he cannot complain of the
appreciation which I have so far expressed of his policy. In the pages
that follow, I shall not spare criticism. Much as I have admired the
policy which prepared the war, in equal degree does my mind fail to
comprehend the policy followed at Berlin since the peace, and which
appears to me to be a perfect antithesis of the former one.
This latter policy appears to me so incomprehensible that I ask myself
whether Prince von Bismarck, instead of being a political genius like
Stein, is not entering upon the path of error in which Napoleon III. came
to his ruin.
Napoleon III. has also been the ruler of Europe; the second Empire for
many years enjoyed preponderance in Europe, and might have retained it
much longer but for the accumulated blunders of imperial policy. Napoleon
III., who had begun his reign isolated from other monarchs, and to whom
the appellation of _my cousin_ had been disdainfully denied, found
himself, immediately after the war in the Crimea and after the Congress of
Paris, at the head of a great Western alliance formed with England and
Austria and by isolating Russia and annulling Prussia. He had reached the
zenith of power in Europe; he had a star in which he and every one besides
believed; kings and emperors came to Fontainebleau and to the Tuileries to
pay their court to the _parvenu_ sovereign who had been transformed into a
Louis XIV., just as has happened at Berlin.
When I saw Napoleon III., at the summit of such a situation, break with
his own hands, like a hot‐brained child, this magnificent Western alliance
to which he was indebted for his high fortune; conspire at the Congress of
Paris with M. de Cavour to bring about that fatal war in Italy against
Austria which was the first cause of his disasters; turn out of the
straight path of conservative principles which he had sworn to follow, and
then lose himself in the tortuous and obscure ways of revolution, my
judgment of him was definitively made. A man who could commit such a folly
was neither a statesman nor a political genius; he was merely a lucky
adventurer who had been helped on and spoiled by events, but who did not
know enough to turn them to account.
It was just then, in 1859, on the eve of the war in Italy, that I wrote my
first work on _Le Second Empire_, in which I did not hesitate to predict
that this war, no matter how much glory it might make for the emperor,
would nevertheless amount to a political defeat which would lead to the
fall of the Empire. “The heads of even the wisest men,” I said, “are
liable to turn when they have reached such an elevation as he has arrived
at.” And I selected as the epigraph of my work, the words which old Prince
von Metternich had uttered when speaking of the extreme good‐fortune of
the Emperor of the French: “He is successful,” said the prince to me; “he
has excellent cards in his hands, and he plays his game well, but he will
be lost as a revolutionary emperor on the Italian reef.” This remarkable
prediction, made long before the war in Italy, has been verified to the
letter, and my book, written in 1859, was merely a commentary upon it
which subsequent events have confirmed.
M. von Bismarck is also at the acme of his triumph; he is presiding at his
Congress of Paris. Behold Prussia, which but a few years ago had hardly
any voice in the councils of Europe, now become the German Empire, and
behold the Emperor of Germany getting the czar and the Emperor Francis
Joseph to sanction at Berlin his victories, his conquests, and his
political supremacy, by leaving France isolated, and making of no account
England, which had kept herself aloof in her policy of forbearance.
Well, I do not hesitate to select this hour of triumph, when M. von
Bismarck’s policy has been crowned at Berlin, in the midst of festivities
the splendor of which is talked of far and wide, to predict its failure in
the end if he does not change it. My reason for asserting this in presence
of a state of things so contrary to my prediction is that M. von Bismarck
is committing one of those blunders, I dare not say one of those political
follies, which astonish reason, and which form the premises of a syllogism
having for its conclusion an inevitable failure. The blunder is precisely
similar to that perpetrated by Napoleon III., who, in consequence of
having allied himself with revolutionary Italy, was led from Mexico to
Sadowa, and from Sedan to Chiselhurst. This blunder on the part of M. von
Bismarck, and of which he will yet repent, is his alliance with
revolutionary Italy, which drags him into a war against the Catholic
Church, which has always proved fatal to those who have attempted it, and
which destroys the work of German unity which he had associated with his
name. The epigraph of my work on _Le Second Empire_, borrowed from Prince
von Metternich, might serve for this letter as well, if applied to the
Emperor of Germany and his chancellor; if the head of the dynasty of the
Hohenzollerns continues in the path of revolution in which M. von Bismarck
has led him, “he will also perish, like the revolutionary emperor on the
Italian reef.”
Is it rashness on my part to point out to Prince von Bismarck and to the
German Emperor the Tarpeian rock so nigh to the capitol to which they have
ascended? Am I unjust towards the prince chancellor?
No one had a higher opinion of his political merit than I, and in
appreciating, as I have done in this letter, his astounding successes, I
have not been sparing of praise nor indeed of admiration. If, then, I am
compelled to draw a comparison between Napoleon III. and him, and to
measure by the blunder committed by the Emperor of the French in 1859 that
which he is now committing, I must ask his pardon, for I make a great
difference between those two contemporary personages. In the same degree
that Napoleon III. was irresolute, beset by somnolent indolence and
continual hesitation, so does, on the other hand, Prince von Bismarck know
how to show a tenacious persistence and audacity in the carrying out of
his designs; but this very tenacity may be a source of additional danger,
if he enters upon a road which leads to an abyss; he will go forward in it
quicker and more irremediably than another would, because he knows neither
how to stop nor to draw back.
Let us, then, study the policy of M. von Bismarck.
And, in the first place, without wishing in the least to belittle the
share which evidently belongs to him in the triumphs of Prussia, we must,
nevertheless, admit that another important share falls to Count von
Moltke, the greatest warrior of our day; and an equally considerable part
is due to the blunders of his adversaries, Austria and Imperial France.
If, for example, Napoleon III. had not betrayed Austria in 1866 by
allowing and favoring the alliance between Prussia and Italy, a war
against Austria would have been impossible, and the victory of Sadowa
would not have taken place; the senseless war of 1870, which grew out of
the victory of Sadowa, would have been without either cause or pretext;
France would be now erect, Austria would have maintained its influential
position in Germany, and the German Empire would not have been established
for the profit of Prussian _unitarisme_.
With the foundation of German unity, of the German Empire, Napoleon has
had almost as much to do as M. von Bismarck. The great chancellor has
found ready for him two instruments which he did not invent: the military
genius of von Moltke, and the folly of Napoleon. To complete the
expression of my thought, I will add that the German Emperor has only
been, as he himself proclaimed after his victories, a mere instrument in
the hands of Divine Providence for the chastisement of France. France has
been unfaithful to her past history, from which she has severed herself;
she has been unfaithful to the monarchical form of government which has
rendered her glorious, and to the church which has made her great; she has
lost, by a twofold apostasy, her political faith and her Catholic faith;
she no longer possesses her institutions, which have been, one after the
other, destroyed either by the old _régime_ or by the Revolution; she no
longer knows how to restore the monarchy, the elements of which have been
scattered in the tempests of revolution; she knows not how to keep up a
republic of which she has neither the habits, the historical conditions,
nor the conditions social and political; she is in that state through
which nations, condemned to perish, fall and decay, and out of which those
nations which God wishes to save can get, only through punishment by fire
or by the sword. M. von Bismarck has been, and may become again, that fire
and that sword; which may perhaps be an honor, but does not justify pride.
The political work, then, which has produced the German Empire undoubtedly
deserves praise, and assuredly does honor to the political merits of
Prince von Bismarck, but does not facilitate the forming of a definitive
judgment in his regard. It is in the work of peace that the statesman
shows himself, and I must say it, that in this respect I do not find M.
von Bismarck as great as events seemed to have made him out to be; just as
he has been seen to be intelligent, fortunate, almost great during the
period of warfare, so in like degree do I incline to consider him, in the
period of present organization, improvident and blind.
This work of organization is a difficult one; it requires wisdom and time.
M. von Bismarck has recourse to precipitation, to force, and to wrath.
German unity, inuring to the benefit of Prussia, could not, before the war
of 1866, have been foreseen. When, in 1863, the Emperor of Austria made
his triumphal entry into Frankfort, bearing in his hand federal reform, he
was surrounded by all the princes of Germany. Prussia stood alone,
abandoned by all Germany; and, if Napoleon had not foolishly thwarted the
plans of the Emperor Francis Joseph, the Emperor of Germany would have
been crowned, not at Berlin, but at Vienna.
After the war of 1866, Prusso‐Germanic unitarism had not yet been
accomplished. Saxony and the states of the South which had fought by the
side of Austria were defeated; they submitted to, rather than accepted,
the terms which Prussia forced on them as the consequence of their defeat.
Northern Germany was bounded by the Main, and the minor states ever felt
themselves drawn towards Vienna, their old centre of attraction.
It was the war of 1870, declared by Napoleon against the whole of Germany,
notwithstanding the patriotic protest of M. Thiers, which all at once
created this unity; this unity, which brought all the Germans together
under one flag, received thus the baptism of glory and of blood.
But the Prusso‐German unitarism, extemporized and rough‐cast by the war,
was not consolidated; many difficulties remained to be overcome.
M. von Bismarck saw before him two formidable adversaries: the
particularism of the middle states, and socialist democracy, which claims
to abolish unity for its own gain, by substituting the German Republic for
the German Empire.
Several symptoms go to show that the particularist movement, which had
been stopped by the war, is reviving, and certainly the hostile action
directed against the Catholics assists powerfully towards giving it new
life. The symptoms of the awakening of this movement are numerous; it is
needless that I should enumerate them; they are perfectly known at Berlin,
and have assuredly become aggravated since the religious war undertaken by
M. von Bismarck.
The particularism of the states, then, is not dead, and red democracy is
full of life. These are the two great difficulties which M. von Bismarck’s
policy finds in its way. To these must be added a third one: the
assimilation of the two conquered provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, so
thoroughly French by the ties of history, of religion, of habits, and of
interests.
To overcome these obstacles, to organize unity, the basis of the new
empire, to accomplish his great work, M. von Bismarck needs prudence,
time, and the hand of a true statesman.
Now, what does the Prince von Bismarck do? To the three considerable
existing obstacles he adds another one, greater and more dangerous than
the former, a difficulty which did not exist, which he of his own accord
created, which he wantonly got up, and which will crush him; I mean the
religious difficulty, the brutal war, the veritable persecution which he
is organizing against the Catholics. He had to fight against particularist
opposition and radical opposition; he himself, with deliberate purpose,
needlessly and without reason, raises up a third one—the opposition of
sixteen millions of Catholics united with their bishops; that is to say,
almost half of the new empire which he thus unsettles and, so to speak,
dissolves with his own hand.
Can anything be imagined more incomprehensible or more thoroughly
preposterous?
What end is M. von Bismarck pursuing? By what thought and what views is he
guided? The prince chancellor is neither mad nor blind; he has given
abundant evidence of this; and yet, is it not folly, is it not blindness,
to thus throw, without any appreciable motive, and with a heart as light
as that of M. Emile Ollivier, sixteen millions of Catholics, including all
their clergy and all their bishops, into a resistance which will be all
the more obstinate and formidable because it will derive its strength from
the oppression of conscience, from the suppression of liberty, the rending
of the constitution, from the violation of justice and of rights? I have
put these questions to eminent Germans of all parties, but have never got
clear and satisfactory answers.
The Catholic Germans behaved admirably during the war; the Bavarian,
Westphalian, and Rhenish troops were everywhere foremost under fire and in
earning honor and glory. The priests and religious, both men and women,
have shown a heroic devotedness on the battlefields, in the ambulances,
and in the hospitals, so that M. Windthorst was enabled to say in the
parliament at Berlin that many of those religious would go into exile
wearing on their breasts the iron cross which they had earned during the
last campaign.(193) The old antipathies against Prussia which prevailed
along the Rhine and beyond the Main among Catholic populations were dying
out; the establishment of religious liberty in Prussia on a more generous
basis than in the lesser states had won the Catholics over to unity under
Prussian hegemony; and the illustrious Bishop of Mayence, Mgr. de
Ketteler, in an address which made a great noise in Germany and throughout
Europe, raised the standard of rallying and unity.
The German Empire was consequently very near being established. M. von
Bismarck stirs up a religious war which divides it in two and breaks it
asunder. The war had brought together under the same flag Germans of all
nationalities and all religious beliefs. Should not, then, all manner of
pains have been taken to keep them united in the mutual work of the
organization of the empire? Should not the first thought of a politician,
after having achieved such wonderful success, and having before him the
obstacles which still remained to be overcome, have been to begin by
establishing peace in religious matters?
But I must repeat the question, What did M. von Bismarck do? He repulses
the Westphalians and people of the Rhine who had become reconciled; he
revives in Bavaria and in the South that particularism which was dying
out; and on the political grievance he grafts a religious one; he doubles
the obstacles of all kinds which lie in the way of his plans for
Germanizing Alsace and Lorraine, so thoroughly French and Catholic; into
their bleeding wounds he, as it were, introduces gangrene, by entering
upon an unheard‐of religious persecution, and without any pretext that he
dare avow; he compromises in the most serious manner the work of unity,
towards the founding of which he had aided so much; he acts as would the
greatest adversary of that unity who could not contrive any better means
for its destruction than to do just what Prince von Bismarck is doing—he
drives into the ranks of opposition nearly half of the soundest population
of the empire; he sets against himself the two hundred million Catholics
spread throughout the world, and who are everywhere protesting against his
oppression; he will also turn against him the old conservatives, who have
been deeply hurt by the enactment of the law in regard to schools, as well
as all sincere friends of religious and political liberty, so audaciously
ignored by him. These friends of liberty are becoming scarce; they
maintain, in the face of this odious violation of their principles, a
shameful silence which they will have to break, if they wish to avoid
making liberalism synonymous with hypocrisy.
Have I erred in comparing the policy of M. von Bismarck with that of
Napoleon III., and his present blunder with that committed by the ex‐
emperor when, after the Congress of Paris, he broke up the splendid
Western alliance?
When I endeavor to interpret M. von Bismarck’s conduct, I can find but one
motive which can serve for its explanation, and that is his alliance with
Italy. That alliance, which he conceived necessary in order to keep the
forces of France divided, and to render a war of retaliation impossible,
has drawn him into a fatal hostility against the Catholic Church.
His ally, Victor Emanuel, has conquered the Roman States by stratagem and
by violence; he has usurped in Rome the throne of the pontiff king, who
among the monarchs of Europe possesses assuredly the most ancient and most
venerated titles to sovereignty; he holds the Pope captive in the Vatican,
until such time as he can compel him to set out on the road to exile; he
deprives the Sovereign Pontiff of the church of that sovereignty on which
his independence rests, and thus throws the universal church into alarm
and mourning.
This outrage against the church, perpetrated at Rome by the Italian
government, has had its counterpart in Berlin. No doubt the condition
which Victor Emanuel set upon alliance with him has been to make the
German Empire enter into the vast plot got up against the independence and
liberty of Catholicity.
Well! without being a prophet, it is not difficult to predict that the
Italian alliance will prove as fatal to the German Empire as it has been
to the second Napoleonic Empire, and that on the Italian rock M. von
Bismarck’s work will be dashed to pieces, if he allows it to remain in the
evil path in which it is now so deeply sunk.
III.
Prince Bismarck considers himself to be the successor of Stein, to whom he
has caused a statue to be erected, and whose great policy he claims that
he is continuing. In this respect, he is profoundly mistaken; and, very
far from following that policy, he abandons and betrays it.
Stein and all his school have, like Burke and Pitt, combated the
principles of the French Revolution. French ideas had, at the close of the
last century, invaded Germany, and the armies of the first Republic had no
difficulty in conquering by their arms a country which they had before
overrun with their ideas.
Baron von Stein, that restorer of the German _Vaterland_ and liberty, was
a mortal foe of the French Revolution. His mission and his work were to
withdraw Germany from the fatal path into which, following France, she had
strayed, and to bring her back into the path laid out for her by her
history.
He could not save Prussia from the defeat at Jena, but he trained her, by
his thorough and excellent reforms, for revenge at Waterloo and Sedan. He
it was who formed Scharnhorst, the organizer of military Prussia, and
whose system Count von Moltke perfected; he, probably, who became the soul
of the patriotic movement in 1813; he it was who, together with
Scharnhorst, Stadion, and Gagern, gave to Germany that powerful impulse
out of which came the great present situation; he it was who stood the
distinguished protector of the German historical school, that real
antithesis of the French revolutionary school, which former had as its
influential organs Niebuhr, Eichhorn, Schlegel, Görres, the two Grimms, de
Savigny, etc., and which M. de Sybel represents still in our day.
Stein was a conservative, a patriot, and a Christian. What he fought
against in the French Revolution was that philosophic and abstract method
that France had adopted, destructive of all national tradition; that
spirit of exclusive and narrow equality which influenced her course, and
in the pursuit of which, according to M. de Tocqueville, she has lost
liberty; that absolutism, whether in democracy or in Cæsarism, that
obliteration of the individual, that indifference to rights, that worship
of brute force, that extinguishment of all local, provincial, and
autonomous life, that exaggerated idea of the state, that oppression of
religious liberty, of Christian teaching, and of the Catholic Church, all
of which characterized the French Revolution.
Stein wanted a Germany united, but federal, Christian, liberal,
traditional, and historical; he wanted her, as Burke did England, to be
the reverse of revolutionary France.
Now, is it not Stein’s work, that Germany born of his reforming genius,
that M. von Bismarck is destroying? The _liberal national_ party, on which
he leans, is merely a _doctrinaire_ French party, anti‐historic,
ideological, and anti‐religious, the harbinger of levelling and radical
democracy; a party which inclines to absolutism and Cæsarism, adores
centralization, unconditional unification, and the omnipotence of the
state, and which is the adversary of all proud and free consciences, and
of any independent church. It is not the Protestant idea, but the Masonic
and Hegelian one which this party represents.
Stein was a Christian, a conservative, and a German; the Prince von
Bismarck is sceptical, revolutionary, and belongs to the French school.
Stein sought to found German unity on federal liberties, in the alliance
of the church with the school, and on peace between religious
denominations; M. von Bismarck overturns that basis, substitutes in its
place absolutist and Prussian unification, secularized teaching, and
religious discord.
It is surprising that, when in France the ideas which inspired the French
Revolution have been abandoned even by the most intelligent part of the
school of liberalism; by such men as Tocqueville, Thierry, and Guizot, who
are discouraged, and talk more openly of their disappointments than of
their hopes; when M. Renan asserts that the French Revolution “is an
experimental failure”; when the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, through the pen
of M. Montégut, proclaims “that the Revolution is politically bankrupt”;
on the very morrow of the final miscarriage of that Revolution under its
two forms of government, the Empire fallen at Sedan, and the social
Republic fallen under the ruins of the Paris Commune—it is at that very
time that Prince von Bismarck thinks it skilful and profound to import
that French revolutionary system into Germany! M. Renan has cause for
rejoicing; he has given utterance to a wish which M. von Bismarck has set
about to fulfil. “France,” he said, “need not be considered lost if we can
believe that Germany will be in her turn drawn into that witches’ dance in
which all our virtue has been lost.”
To sum up: German unity, the great German Empire, which such an
extraordinary concurrence of circumstances had created, is being dissolved
and ruined by Prince von Bismarck through the most inconceivable of
political blunders. He throws sixteen millions of Catholics, once friendly
to the Empire, into opposition to it; he gives a new food and new strength
to the particularism of the Southern States, and to the Polonism of Posen;
he makes twofold the difficulties of accomplishing the assimilation of
Alsace and Lorraine; to political grievances he superadds religious
grievances, far more to be dreaded than the former; he enkindles an
implacable religious war upon the ruins of that denominational peace which
King Frederic William III. had happily established, and by aid of which
the present emperor and the empress Augusta had, in the opening period of
their reign, won the hearts of the Catholics of the Rhine. To cover this
blunder, M. von Bismarck enters into the Italian alliance which destroyed
the second Napoleonic Empire, and will destroy the German Empire; and he
abandons the historic German policy restored by Stein, to rush into the
retinue of the _national liberal_ party, into the paths of the French
Revolution, into that _witches’ dance_ to which M. Renan refers; and he
inoculates his own country with the poison which has killed France!
IV.
But there is one final consequence of the policy of Prince von Bismarck to
which I wish to call attention, and which is not least in gravity.
Austria, after having lost Italy, had, by the treaty of Prague, been
excluded from Germany. Nevertheless, the German Empire, under the hegemony
of Prussia, had not been set up; there existed only a Northern Germany,
having the Main as its boundary; the Southern States, and even Saxony,
preserved a certain autonomy; and Austria might hope by a wise policy to
draw little by little into the sphere of her influence and attraction
those countries which had been accustomed to look upon Vienna as their
political pole.
The war of 1871 against France, which had united all the Germans under one
flag, established German unity and the German Empire. The boundaries of
the Empire were moved from the Main to the Danube, and all hope for
Austria to regain her old German position was gone.
Austria accepted this situation; the Emperor Francis Joseph and his two
counsellors, Count von Beust and Count Andràssy, worked together to bring
about a sincere reconciliation between Austria and the German Empire.
They gave up the idea of bringing back the Southern States into the circle
of Austrian influence; they feared, on the contrary, lest the German
provinces of Austria, detaching themselves little by little from the
weakened rule of the Hapsburgs, might be irresistibly drawn towards
Berlin, the powerful and glorious centre of the German _Vaterland_.
Those fears may at present be entirely set at rest. There has been a
complete reversal in the position of things. The people, for the most part
so Catholic, of the Tyrol, of Lower Austria, and of Bohemia, will lose all
inclination to draw nearer to the German Empire, where a bitter
persecution is being waged against their religious faith. The bonds which
unite them to Austria will be drawn the tighter. On the other hand, will
not the Catholics of the Rhine, of Westphalia, of Poland, of Suabia, of
Franconia, of Würtemberg, of Bavaria, of Alsace, and of Lorraine, driven
from the bosom of the German Empire, in which they are no longer citizens,
but pariahs, be tempted to look again in the direction of Austria, the
centre of their older sympathies? All Austria has to do is not to
interfere; M. von Bismarck is working for her.
The prince chancellor, notwithstanding the elated confidence which he has
in his strength, has understood the danger of the situation.
In order to change it, he had but one easy thing to do, and that was to
modify his policy, to give up persecuting the Catholics, to admit that he
had gone astray, and to return to a calmer and wiser policy; but this he
would not do; he has preferred to keep on, and to try to drag Austria into
the same road.
Last year, at Gastein, he tried to induce Count von Beust to join in the
campaign which he wished to begin against the _internationale rouge_ and
the _internationale noire_, but the Emperor Francis Joseph baffled the
attempt. The prince chancellor renewed it the same year with the emperor
himself at Salzburg, but he failed a second time.
Has he met with more success at Berlin, upon the occasion of the meeting
of the three emperors? Has he tried to get Russia and Austria to recognize
not only the German Empire, but to sanction by their adhesion to it his
home policy against “Romanism,” that is to say, against the Catholic
Church, or has he at least succeeded in inducing the belief that he had
not tried in vain? Has he sought to drag them into the war which he is
carrying on against the Jesuits, against the religious orders, against
denominational liberty, against Catholic teaching, against the clergy and
the bishops, until such time as he can make it break forth at Rome, by
laying, in the next conclave, an audacious and sacrilegious hand on the
pontifical tiara?
We shall find this out before long. If Austria follows the policy of the
centralist party of the German professors at Vienna and at Prague, to
which Count von Beust has already yielded too much, and which is identical
with the policy of the _national liberal_ party of Berlin, she will have
advanced the interests of Prince von Bismarck, and not her own; she will
have labored for him and against herself; she will have turned aside the
danger imminent to the German Empire through M. von Bismarck’s blunders,
and of which the Austro‐Hungarian Empire should have profited; she will
have, with her _historical good‐nature_, served the views of Prussia to
the detriment of her own; and Francis Joseph, the Apostolic Emperor,
unfaithful to his traditions and to the arms of his house, will have made
his policy subordinate to that of a Lutheran emperor!
I positively refuse to believe that any such result can come out of the
interview at Berlin, albeit that our generation is accustomed to the
realization of political impossibilities. I would fain persuade myself
that, if the Prince von Bismarck has endeavored to draw Austria into his
war against the Catholics and against Rome, he will have failed at Berlin
as he did at Salzburg through the good sense of the Emperor Francis
Joseph.
V.
The more I study M. von Bismarck’s policy, the less I understand it. If he
were a sectarian pietist, I could account to myself for the idea of
perfecting the political and military unity of Germany by a religious
unity, of creating a _Protestant state_: it would indeed be a sorry
Utopia, and to attempt it would be to make the mistake of being three
centuries behind his time.
But M. von Bismarck is neither a sectarian nor a fanatic; he is rather, I
believe, a sceptic who has little care for religious controversies, and
who probably understands very little about the question of the Papal
Infallibility which he is wielding as a warlike weapon against the church.
M. von Bismarck is a politician; politics he aims at and should be busied
in; his mission is to help found an empire and not a schism or a sect.
Now, it is the Empire, the political work, which he gravely compromises by
disturbing so profoundly through a denominational conflict the religious
quiet which that work needed for its consolidation. Instead of the _German
state_ founded on unity and general assent, it is the _Protestant state_
founded on the deepest and most incurable divisions that he seems to aim
at creating. There is no difficulty in predicting that he will lose the
political unity in the pursuit of a religious unity which is but a
chimerical and impossible anachronism.
This political course which the prince chancellor has inspired the Emperor
William to follow, whose past one makes such a striking contrast with it,
is to me an insoluble enigma, and raises doubts in my mind of M. von
Bismarck’s transcendent ability.
I will nevertheless try to make out this political enigma, by studying the
pretexts on which the government of Berlin relies to justify itself, the
circumstances by which it has been enticed, and the temptation to which it
has yielded.
The _pretext_ which it puts forward is the decision of the Vatican Council
in regard to the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff in matters of
doctrine.
The _circumstances_ by which it was carried away are the Italian alliance
abroad and the alliance with the _national liberal_ party at home.
The _temptation_ that misleads it is the hope, fortunately disappointed,
which the stand of the _inopportunist_ bishops of Germany and of Austria
caused it to form, which stand the Berlin government had mistaken for a
real dissent from doctrine, and destined to become the foundation of a
national church separated from Rome by that dissent.
I call the question of Papal Infallibility a pretext, and, in fact, it is
a groundless quarrel without any importance or earnest meaning.
I am not called upon to enter here into a theological dissertation upon
the dogma of the infallibility of the church and of its sovereign
magistracy, etc. I refer my readers to the excellent works which have been
published on the subject, and I trust to be excused for mentioning in
particular those written by my brother the Archbishop of Mechlin.
I will say but one word _en passant_ on the question. For every Catholic,
there is no longer any open question. Before the council, discussion was
allowable; since the definition proclaimed by an œcumenical council united
to the Pope, all discussion is closed.
Every one knows of the conversation between a very intelligent lady of
great faith and the Count de Montalembert, shortly before the death of
that illustrious friend, in which she asked him what he would do if the
council together with the Pope should define infallibility. “Well, I will
quietly believe it,” replied the great orator, with the firm accent of the
Christian who knows his catechism, and who recites his act of faith.
In fact, no father nor doctor of the church, from Origen and S. Cyprian
down to S. Thomas and Bossuet, no council, no theologian, no Catholic, has
ever doubted the doctrinal infallibility of the church. The controversy
lay with the Gallicans, who claimed that the words of the Pope addressed
to the church _ex cathedrâ_ needed the assent of a council or of the
church throughout the world to acquire the character of infallibility.
All the old Catholics of all the schools, Gallican even included, were
agreed to accord to the definitions of a council united with the Pope,
that is to say, the church, the divine privilege of infallibility set
forth in Holy Scriptures and in all tradition. On this point Bossuet holds
the same doctrine as Fénelon and Count de Maistre.
Now, in the present instance we have a council united to the Pope, and no
council, from that of Trent back to that of Nicæa, has been more
numerously attended, more solemn, freer, or more œcumenical, than that of
the Vatican. To deny this is downright nonsense, in which those take
refuge who seek to hide their apostasy from their own eyes. If the Council
of the Vatican has not been œcumenical and free, then manifestly no
council in the past has ever been.
To reject the doctrinal definition of the Council of the Vatican, in which
the Sovereign Pontiff and the bishops of all the world, whether
opportunist or inopportunist, have agreed, would undoubtedly be to abandon
the church of Christ, and to renounce the Catholic faith; it would be
going beyond Gallicanism, which never thought of calling in question the
decisions of a council united to a pope; even beyond the Jansenism of Port
Royal, which would perhaps have accepted the Bull of Innocent X. if
sanctioned by a council; it would be going beyond 1682, back to Luther;
that is to say, to open heresy, and to the entire abandonment of the
church, our mother.
How can M. Döllinger not see this? He who in 1832, at Munich, where the
encyclical of Gregory XVI. reached M. de Lamennais, insisted with the
latter, with all his force as a theologian, that he should submit to the
pontifical encyclical, which, in the doctor’s eyes, was binding on
conscience, although no council had adhered to it—how can he now, in his
own case, resist the decisions of Pius IX. and the Council of the Vatican?
He who has written so many works of grave learning, and in particular that
one on _The Church and the Churches_, how comes it that he does not see
that he is no longer in the church, and that he is seeking a shelter for
his revolt in the smallest, the poorest, and the most dilapidated of those
churches of a day which, in the name of history, he has so severely
condemned? How can he find himself at ease and his soul tranquil in those
ridiculous conventicles of Munich and of Cologne, by the side of Michelis,
of Reinkens, Friedrich, Schulte, the ex‐abbé Michaud, the ex‐father
Hyacinthe, and surrounded by Jansenist and Anglican bishops, by Protestant
and schismatic ministers, by rationalists of all colors? How comes it that
his faith and his learning are not shocked when brought into the midst of
that confusion of doctrines and of tongues, and of ignorance of all kinds,
which rendered the Congress of Cologne so notorious; that congress whereat
the question was discussed “of the reunion of the old Catholics with the
other churches having affinity of faith,” which means with all the sects
separated from Rome, to the exclusion of the great universal church of S.
Augustine, S. Thomas, Pascal, Descartes, Bossuet, Fénelon, de Maistre,
Lacordaire, of the eight hundred bishops of the council, and of the
sainted Pontiff Pius IX.? How can he, a man of learning, a priest,
advanced in years, on the brink of eternity, prefer to put himself under
the pastoral crook and the jurisdiction of the Jansenist Archbishop of
Utrecht, or of a schismatic Armenian bishop, and fraternize with the
Anglican bishops of Lincoln, Ely, and Maryland, rather than remain an
humble priest, but proud of that Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church whose
admirable unity bursts forth in the midst of the vast persecution which is
being begun and prepared for her, and of which the Provost of Munich
consents to be the guilty instrument?
This closes my parenthetical remarks on Dr. Döllinger and the Old
Catholics, who are in reality merely old Jansenists and very old
Protestants, and I come back to M. von Bismarck and to his policy.
Prince von Bismarck and the governments of Germany have no occasion to
trouble themselves about the question of settling whether infallibility
attaches to the Pope speaking _ex cathedrâ_, or to the Pope united to the
council; these are all dogmatic theses with which they have no concern.
The pretext got up by politics for trespassing on the domain of religious
faith is the following: The politicians allege that the declaration of the
council has conferred upon the Pope a _new authority_, that this authority
is _absolute_ and _unlimited_, and that this state of things affects the
relations between the church and the state, which is thereby thrown upon
its defence against possible usurpation. The Emperor of Germany, in a
conversation which he recently had at Ems with M. Contzen, the courageous
Burgomaster of Aix‐la‐Chapelle, brought out this singular idea of the
politicians when he alleged “that the church, by proclaiming the dogma of
infallibility, had declared war to the state.”
How can this be? In what respect does the question of the infallibility of
the church touch the relations between the church and the state?
The declaration of the Vatican Council is not new; it belongs almost
textually to the Council of Florence when it proclaimed the faith which
had existed for centuries; it is ancient; all, or nearly all, the bishops
at the late council were agreed, and are now all agreed, as to the ground
of the doctrine; they were only divided on the question of opportuneness,
and Mgr. the Bishop of Orléans, in his pastoral letter of assent, declared
that he has always professed the doctrine which had been proclaimed.
Nothing, then, has been changed, and church and state remain in precisely
the same situation of reciprocal independence in their distinct spheres,
and of harmony in their relations, in which they were before the council.
Some either imagine, through most admirable ignorance, or hypocritically
make show of believing, that the pontifical infallibility is a _personal_
privilege, in this sense, that it is conferred _on a person who cannot err
in anything_, that the Pope is infallible in all that he says and in
everything; that he could lay upon the faithful the obligation of
believing any decision that he might proclaim whether in the exclusive
domain of science or in the exclusive domain of politics, where faith is
not at all involved.
The object of infallibility is the doctrine of the faith and of the
revealed law. The church has the deposit of revelation, of the Holy
Scriptures, and of tradition; the Pope is its supreme guardian; the
evangelical promise of infallibility is nothing else than the promise of
_fidelity_ in the custody of this sacred deposit! When the Pope or the
council united to the Pope declares that a truth is contained in the
deposit of revelation, they do not invent matter, they repeat and discern;
they do not create a new truth, they confirm an old one, and cause new
light to beam from it.
Infallibility is, then, not personal in the absurd sense in which the word
is used; neither is it absolute and without limits; its domain, which is
that of faith and morals, is clearly marked out by the constitution of the
Vatican Council. “According to the perfectly clear text of the decree,”
say the Prussian bishops who met at Fulda in 1871, “all allusion to the
domain of politics is completely excluded from the definition of this
dogma.” His Eminence Cardinal Antonelli, in his despatch of the 19th of
March, 1870, to the Nuncio at Paris, is even more precise. “Political
affairs belong,” he says, “according to the order of God and the teachings
of the church, to the province of the secular authority, _without any
dependence whatever_ on any other.”
But, as between the secular power and the church, relations are necessary,
these are settled by the two authorities through arrangements or
concordats.
I allow myself to call Prince von Bismarck’s attention to this point.
Positive relations between the church and states have been settled by
concordats only; always, at all periods of history, the popes alone have
negotiated concordats with the states; pontifical infallibility has
absolutely no connection with concordats, and the Pope when he signs them
does not speak _ex cathedrâ_ and as supreme doctor of the church. How,
then, can the declaration of the council have changed the relations
between the church and governments, and how can the church, by proclaiming
the dogma of infallibility, be said to have declared war to the state?
It is, then, a mere matter of pretext. In point of fact, it is the German
Empire which is laying claim to absolute and unlimited power in the domain
of religion as well as in the domain of politics; it examines and judges
dogmas, intrudes itself into ecclesiastical discipline; it closes the
priest’s mouth in his pulpit—by the lex Lutziana; it closes Catholic
colleges and schools; it forbids religious to preach, to hear confessions,
and even to celebrate Mass; it forbids the bishops to canonically exclude
from the bosom of the church those who openly separate themselves
therefrom; it banishes, for no crime, without trial and in bodies, the
religious orders, in the same way that Louis XIV. (though he could give
better reasons) drove the Huguenots from the soil of France; it favors
schism, and aims at establishing a national church. It is, then, the
German state _which is declaring war to the church_, and which is raising
claim to political and religious infallibility by founding a veritable
civil theocracy.
Let us put aside the pretext, which can in no wise serve either for the
justification or for the explanation of the conduct of the government of
Berlin. Let us examine the real motives which governed that conduct, the
circumstances by which the emperor was carried away, and the fatal
temptations which deluded him.
VI.
Foremost among these reasons and temptations has been, as I have said
before, the alliance with Italy. It was the first cause, and was the
signal for the sudden change which took place in the interior policy of
the German Empire. This is evident from the fact that the political storm
burst forth during the last session of Parliament precisely upon the
occasion of a paragraph in the draft of the address got up by the national
liberal party, and which was a stone hurled at the papacy. This was taking
place at Berlin at the very hour when the Italo‐German alliance had been
concluded at Rome; the coincidence is striking, and proves that war
against the Catholic Church and her head has been made a condition of this
alliance.
The next temptation, the second blunder of Prince von Bismarck, has been
his exclusive alliance with the national liberal party, whose character I
have defined above. This alliance with pseudo‐liberalism is the corollary
of his alliance with Italy; both rest within and without on the
revolutionary and anti‐Christian principle. War on Rome and the papacy has
been the condition of the alliance with Italy; war on the Catholics in
Germany has been the condition of the alliance with the national liberal
party.
Prince von Bismarck had, for several years, met a keen resistance to his
plans from the national liberal party, while during the same period he
found a support in the conservative section of the Prussian chambers, with
whom were joined the few Catholics of note who happened to be members of
them.
To‐day he turns away from this weakened but still powerful conservative
section, and he wages the bitterest war against the centre section, which
is made up of Catholics. These two sections watch over the deposit of old
German traditions; they wish to preserve the federal and constitutional
character of the Empire, to maintain the Christian and denominational
character of the schools, and throughout the nation, religious peace.
Latterly the conservative section has become weak; it has yielded to M.
von Bismarck’s policy; but sooner or later its traditions will bring it to
the side of the section of the centre, in order that both may unite in
sustaining the historic principles of the Germanic race against the
centralizing anti‐religious policy of the national liberal party, which
represents above all else the idea of the French Revolution.
The section of the centre, which, in 1870, in point of numbers amounted in
the parliament to but very little, has seen its power increase
proportionately with the development of the pseudo‐liberal party of
centralization, of omnipotence of the state, of political levelling, and
of anti‐Christian reaction. The outrage committed on the papacy by the
Italian government gave increased energy to the Catholic movement, and the
section of the centre, which, at the time it was first organized,
consisted of fifty members only, saw its numbers increase after the
elections to more than sixty, all united together by strong convictions;
it can count to‐day nearly eighty, and it is safe to predict that, unless
the government sends into the interior, or into exile, or puts in prison
the leaders of the Catholic movement, the party of the centre will, after
the next elections, thanks to the war begun against the church, have
gained a force of more than one hundred votes, which will thus
counterbalance those of the national liberal party.
It is this growing power of the party of the centre, the fruit of M. von
Bismarck’s policy, which has impelled him to his policy of violence and
anger against the Catholic Church; he means to make the clergy, the
Jesuits, the religious orders, and the bishops pay for the political loss
of rest occasioned to him by this phalanx which is growing into a legion,
and at whose head stand such powerful leaders as Reichensperger,
Mallinckrodt, and Windthorst. The eloquent words of these orators, as in
former times those of O’Connell in England, and Montalembert in France,
spread beyond the boundaries of Germany, to arouse and stir up everywhere
all lovers of right, justice, true liberty, and the church of Jesus
Christ.
The third temptation of the German government has been the stand taken in
the Vatican Council by nearly all the bishops of Germany and of Austria.
These pious and learned prelates were all agreed, along with those of the
entire world, as to the mere ground of the doctrine; all or nearly all
were infallibilists; Josephism, Fébronianism, had been for a long time
dying, if not dead; but these same bishops were nearly all inopportunists.
This M. von Bismarck misapprehended, he believed that there was, among the
bishops in council, a real dissent as to doctrine; he imagined that the
majority of the German and Austrian bishops would separate from Rome to
follow M. Döllinger in the path of defection or of schism, through which
he is moving to his ruin. The Italian alliance and the alliance with the
national liberal party carried M. von Bismarck into hostile action against
Rome; the difference of opinion among the bishops on the question of the
opportuneness of the decision by the council led him to hope that he would
find therein the elements for a _Janist_(194) and national church.
In this he has been entirely mistaken. “He had left the Holy Spirit out of
his reckoning,” said recently to me a learned ecclesiastic of Berlin, and
I add that he had also not reckoned on the faith and virtue of the
episcopate.
Observe what is going on and how the Catholic tide is rising and
resisting. M. von Bismarck met at Sedan a splendid, courageous French
army, which, badly led and crushed by the fire of the German artillery,
was forced to capitulate; he will henceforth find in opposition to him the
Catholic populations, with their clergy and their bishops at their head,
who will rise, in the name of God and of the liberty of the church, who
will resist and never surrender.
M. von Bismarck is about to have experience of what the Catholic bishops
are and of what they can do. They will not conspire; they will not sow
rebellion and revolution; they will not join themselves to the red
international party, but they will resist and will not yield. “In this
present sad condition of things,” said the bishops met together at Fulda
in April, 1872, “we will fulfil our duty by not disturbing the peace
between the church and the state.” “As Christians,” said the learned
Bishop of Paderborn, in his touching address to the exiled Jesuits—“as
Christians, we can oppose neither force nor overt resistance to the
measures of governmental authority. Albeit such measures seem to us
iniquitous and unjustifiable, we may only meet them by that passive
resistance which our divine Master Jesus Christ has taught us by his words
and example; that silence, calm and full of dignity; that patience,
tranquil and resigned, but abounding in hope; that loving prayer which
heaps burning coals on the heads of our persecutors.”
Such is the admirable language of the German bishops, as it fell from the
lips of the Archbishop of Cologne, Mgr. von Droste‐Vischering, on the very
day preceding that on which he was led captive by a guard of soldiers to
the fortress of Minden. The calm and intrepid Bishop of Ermeland is
deprived of his salary and injured in his authority; he is marked out for
punishment, and he awaits the coming of the soldiers with the fetters to
bind him.
I cannot recall the venerated name of Mgr. Krementz without adding to it
the illustrious one of Mgr. Mermillod, whom all Europe will continue to
address as Bishop of Hebron and Geneva, despite that decision of the
council of state which forbids him to exercise any function whatever,
whether as bishop or as curate, and which cuts him off from all salary.
Here, then, we have this _republican_ and _liberal_ Switzerland
suppressing the Jesuits and all cognate religious orders, the brothers of
the schools, the sisters of charity; closing seminaries, as at Soleure,
because the moral theology of S. Liguori was taught there; unseating
bishops, as at Geneva; and the people that do these things are yet
shameless enough to talk of liberty, while all the speech‐makers of
liberalism, whose hair stands erect at the mention of the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes, and who dinned the world with their clamors in the
young Mortara case, cannot find a single word of liberality, not a single
protest, not a single expression of indignation, to stigmatize these
unheard‐of outrages against all liberties at once, and against all the
rights of human conscience.
I have just been adverting to the passive resistance of the bishops in
Germany; but the lay movement, which is kept strictly within the law, is
less passive, less resigned, and is somewhat inflamed by politics. The
reaction against the unwarranted persecution set on foot a year ago is
breaking out everywhere. A committee of direction has been formed at
Mainz, whose business is to centralize the legal resistance of German
Catholics for the defence of religious liberty thus threatened and
assailed. This committee, in their address dated in July last, call upon
the Catholics of Germany to a crusade in opposition to the aggressions of
the government. “We claim,” says this address, “for our creed that liberty
and independence guaranteed to it by the constitution; and under the
device, _For God and our Country_, we will fight to the last for the
maintenance of our rights.” This address is signed by some of the most
illustrious names of Germany, foremost among which I may mention those of
Count Felix de Löe, of Baron de Frankenberg, of Count C. de Stolberg, and
of the Prince of Isenburg.
A numerous meeting of Catholics voted to send the Archbishop of Munich an
address praising him for his firmness and encouraging him in the contest
which he is maintaining. At Breslau, a Catholic Congress has just
assembled with great _éclat_. All the Catholic men of note in Germany were
present at it. Vent was therein given to the most energetic complaints and
the most indignant protests, resolutions of great firmness were adopted, a
new impulse was given to all those associations which, like that of S.
Boniface, of S. Charles Borromeo, and of Pius IX., have multiplied on
German soil works of teaching and of charity; powerful preparations were
in this congress made for resistance, while confiding in their rights and
in God.
While the Catholic laity were thus meeting and organizing at Breslau and
at Mainz, the bishops were quietly deliberating at Fulda, presided over by
the Archbishop of Cologne, who is mindful of his illustrious predecessor,
Clement Augustus. There, as the apostles of old in the _cenaculum_, they
tarry in prayer, and they will come forth with a confidence and a courage
such as have overcome adversaries far more powerful than the Prince von
Bismarck.
VII.
The old _régime_, before it died out, made trial of rebellion against the
church. Frederick the Great was certainly as able as M. von Bismarck; he
had the world at his feet, and the church in Germany, infected with the
doctrines of Fébronius, was apparently in the pangs of death. The last act
recorded in history of the then three ecclesiastical electors of Mayence,
Cologne, and Trèves had been to meet with the Archbishop of Salzburg,
Primate of Germany, for the purpose of drawing up the _Punctuations of
Ems_ (1786), which were a code of rebellion against the Holy See. What a
contrast with the present assembling of the German bishops at Fulda! These
servile _Punctuations of Ems_ were beginning to be carried out, when the
armies of the French Republic came down and inflicted upon the authors of
them the punishment they deserved.
Every one knows about Pombal, Choiseul, and Charles III., who confined the
Jesuits within certain territorial limits, drove them away, cast them into
prison, or sent them into exile, pretty much in the same way as M. von
Bismarck is doing.
The power which did all this was swallowed up by the French Revolution.
This revolution, _satanic_, to use M. de Maistre’s term, _out and out
anti‐Christian_, as M. de Tocqueville calls it, in its turn drove out,
exiled, put to death, whether in the massacre of September, the drownings
of the Loire, by the axe of the guillotine or the dagger of ruffians, the
priests, Jesuits, and religious whom the old régime had spared.
But this sanguinary revolution went down in the slough of the Directory,
and Napoleon put an end to it.
That extraordinary man perceived that persecution wounds the hand which
uses it; he sought to make peace with the church; he reopened the
churches, recalled the priests and the bishops, and signed the concordat.
This was the great epoch of his reign: Ulm, Austerlitz, and Jena.
But the potent emperor, intoxicated by glory and by pride, having become
master of the world, thought he would be master of the church as well; his
rule was over bodies, he sought to extend it over souls; which is the
dream of all founders of empire. He stretched out his hand to the States
of the Church, and annexed them to the French Empire; for which he was
excommunicated by that gentle Pope Pius VII. He seized the pope, bore him
away from Rome into exile at Savona and at Fontainebleau, and he found
that under the lamb‐like exterior of his victim there beat the heart of a
lion. He summoned together the council of 1811, thinking that it would be
an easy matter to form a national church of which he would be Supreme
Pontiff.
This took place in 1811. The next year brought the campaign of 1812, to be
followed by the events of 1813 and 1814; Leipsic, Elba, Waterloo, and the
rock of St. Helena last of all.
There is another example nearer to our times, upon which I have looked as
a witness, and which I submit for the meditations of the Emperor of
Germany.
King William I. of Orange fell into precisely the same blunder which
William IV. is now repeating. He ruled over the beautiful kingdom of the
Netherlands, so easy for him to maintain, and which through his mistakes
was broken up. He, too, sought to constitute national unity through unity
of language and of religion. So he suppressed, in 1825, the Catholic
schools and colleges in Belgium, drove out the Jesuits and the brothers of
the Christian schools, founded at Louvain the Philosophic College in which
the clergy of the future national church were to be trained, violated the
right to teach and of association, prosecuted the Bishop of Ghent, Mgr. de
Broglie, got him condemned, and he was pilloried, in effigy, on a public
square of Ghent, between two felons. This reckless and blind policy
excited in Belgium a movement of resistance similar to that which we
remark at the present moment in Germany. Five years later, in 1830, the
Catholic liberal union was brought about, and every one knows the events
to which it gave birth.
This much is matter of history. The German persecution is a trial for the
church and for Catholics, but it will also bear with it the salvation
which a trial properly borne always brings. Two results will come out of
this trial: the Catholic Church, which they mean to weaken or prostrate,
will, as always heretofore, come out of the contest more united and more
powerful; Protestantism, in whose name the persecution is set on foot,
will be mortally wounded by it, and will see its dissolution hastened;
pseudo‐liberalism, which will have played the part of intolerance and
persecution, will be unmasked, and all the friends of a prudent and
sincere liberty will make their reconciliation with the persecuted, one
with that great Catholic Church, ever militant, ever attacked, sometimes a
martyr, but which ever in the end comes out triumphant over these trials
which temper her anew, purify her, and add to her greatness. The world
will understand that in trials such as she is now going through in Germany
she is fighting for the liberty of the conscience of the human race.
Governments, and in particular great empires founded on force, look upon
the independence of the universal church with feelings of jealousy and
impatience; the idea of a national church has always been a favorite and a
pleasing one with despotisms, because it promises them a servile
instrument to carry out their designs. But when the church is subject to
the state, there can be no church. The high level of the consciences of
the people sinks as freedom disappears. The true and divine church can be
contained within no boundaries and in no nationality; it is the spiritual
kingdom of consciences and of souls; from the independence of the church,
the independence of consciences and souls derives its life. If the church
is under the yoke of the state, all consciences must suffer like
subjection. The world will at last comprehend that national churches, that
is, churches in subjection, can have only enslaved souls as followers, and
that there can be no freedom for the conscience of man, except upon the
sole condition of the independence of a church, accountable, not to any
human power, but to God.