The fourteenth volume of _L'Empire Liberal_, issued in 1909, carries
M. Emile Ollivier's very interesting reminiscences of that eventful
period up to the outbreak of the Franco-German War in July 1870. It
contains many curious particulars of the incidents and transactions
culminating in the rupture with Prussia that brought about the
downfall of his ministry and the ruin of the Second Empire.
Autobiographies by men who have taken a prominent part in the
momentous scenes which they describe have often the powerful effect of
a dramatic representation: the actors reappear on the stage; they
plead for themselves; they give vivid impressions of the scenes; they
repeat the very words that were spoken; they revive the intense
emotion of the audience during the contest between those who are
hurrying on toward some fatal catastrophe and those who are striving
to prevent it. M. Ollivier's volume is the story of a great historic
tragedy; the principal _dramatis personae_ are celebrities of the first
rank; on their speech and action depend the destinies of France, and
the spectators are the nations of Europe. If we make due allowance for
the fact that the author's main object is to explain and defend the
part which he himself played in these important affairs, we may credit
him with an honest desire to set a strange, complicated, and oft-told
story in a clear light before the present generation.
M. Ollivier cites, in the first page of this volume, Machiavelli's
observation that mankind at large judges those who give advice in
affairs of state not by the wisdom of their counsels but by the
results. He agrees that this method is not rational, looking to the
haphazard course of human affairs, but he admits that the multitude
can judge by no other standard; and he appeals to historians for an
impartial revision of the popular verdict, founded on careful
examination of the real facts and circumstances. Yet he fears lest in
his own country the decline of patriotic enthusiasm, the cooling of
military ardour, that he notices in France at the present time, may
have rendered Frenchmen incapable of realising the hot resentment, the
intense susceptibility to affronts, the element of heroism, which were
dominant forty years ago in the national character. And he therefore
has little or no expectation that the falsehood of legends which have
been circulated regarding the events of 1870 will be proved, to his
countrymen, even by the most irrefragable demonstration. All political
parties in France, he says, have combined to hold their own ministry
responsible for that calamitous war; he despairs of obtaining from
them a hearing. He awaits with resignation the time when some
inquisitive student of history may light upon a dusty copy of his book
in the recesses of a library, and may set himself to explain how these
things actually happened to readers of the future.
The story of the decline and fall of the second French empire has
often been told; yet it may be worth while to remind English readers
of the political situation in France just forty years ago. The Emperor
Napoleon III., importuned by reformers and reactionaries, by those who
pressed him to step forward into Liberalism, and by those who insisted
that he must stand still, had at last decided upon making those
changes in the form of his government that inaugurated the Liberal
Empire; and on January 3, 1870, the new ministry took office,
supported by the goodwill of the moderate party in the Chamber of
Deputies and by the general approval of the country. M. Ollivier was
recognised as its leader and spokesman, chosen by the emperor, and
enjoying his particular confidence; though he was not prime minister
in the English constitutional sense, for the power of issuing direct
orders, and of overruling the Cabinet, was still reserved to the
sovereign; nor was he always consulted in important military or
foreign affairs. The complex and enigmatic character of Napoleon III.
is becoming gradually intelligible to the world at large, and public
opinion has lately been veering round to a less unfavourable
conclusion upon it than heretofore. He had long been reviled as a
truculent despot, artful and dangerous, powerful and perfidious; the
genius of Victor Hugo had set on him a brand of infamy. In reality, if
we may trust later French writers, there was much that was good in his
nature, and they are disposed to regard him with compassion. M. de la
Gorce says that throughout his life Napoleon had been a humane prince.
From the entertaining memoirs of General du Barail, whose military
services brought him into frequent relations with the emperor, we
should draw the impression that the emperor was affable, considerate,
and sincerely well-intentioned. Giuseppe Pasolini, the Italian
statesman, found him simple and easy in conversation, naturally
right-minded and kindly,[42] though weak and irresolute. He was
equally capable of forming bold projects or adopting cautious
decisions; but he was apt to hesitate and turn round at the moment for
action; and it was just here that he was so unlike his uncle, Napoleon
I., who would have classed him among the _ideologues_ whom he
despised. He invented the theory of nationalities to justify his
polity of encouraging the unification of Italy, and of permitting the
aggrandisement of Germany; in the former instance he alienated the
Italians by refusing obstinately to allow them to occupy Rome; in the
latter case his neutrality when Prussia attacked Austria in 1866 was
the proximate cause of his ruin. He might have read in Machiavelli's
_Principe_ a warning of the danger of standing aside when the
neighbouring potentates come to blows. The result, it is there said,
is that the winner in such a contest becomes doubly formidable, while
the loser resents your neutral attitude, and will not help you when
the victor turns upon you with all his strength. Machiavelli declares
that this policy has always been _perniciosissimo_; and so it proved
to be in the case of the French Empire. In domestic affairs also the
Liberal Empire took up a kind of half-way position, which was assailed
by the extreme parties on both sides; for thorough-going Imperialists
like Rouher asserted that a Napoleon could only rule by retaining
absolute authority; while uncompromising Liberals demanded full
parliamentary control. Ollivier's ministry took office with the avowed
object of gradually extending constitutional administration; but he
found that, as Tocqueville had said in his _Ancien Regime_, the most
dangerous moment for an absolute government is when it endeavours to
introduce reforms.
General du Barail, in the memoirs already quoted, gives M. Ollivier
full credit for his honesty, ability, and sincere patriotism in
undertaking his difficult task, which was begun in an evil hour, and
failed through adverse circumstance. In May 1870, Ollivier, who was
holding the portfolio of Foreign Affairs, transferred it to the Duc de
Gramont, foreseeing no troubles abroad, and desiring to give his
whole attention to politics at home. The external policy of the
ministry was decidedly pacific; they relied on a quiet moment for
developing the new constitutional system; they had no notion of
changing horses in mid-stream, yet most unluckily they were caught by
a sudden flood. At the end of June it was announced in Madrid that
Leopold of Hohenzollern, son of the Roumanian prince, had accepted the
crown of Spain that had been secretly offered to him by Marshal Prim;
and the news, M. Ollivier says, startled all France like the bursting
of a bomb. It had always, we must remember, been a cardinal maxim of
French statesmanship that the maintenance of a preponderant influence
in Spain was essential to the security of France; while, on the other
hand, a complete subordination of Spanish to French interests has been
held by other governments to be dangerous to the balance of power in
Europe. The collision between these two principles had been the cause
of great wars and diplomatic quarrels. Louis XIV. only succeeded in
securing the Spanish throne for his grandson after a long war. When
Napoleon I. made his nefarious attempt to impose his brother on the
Spaniards as their king, his pretext was that under the Bourbon
dynasty Spain had always been a dependency of France; and it had been
the invariable aim of English policy to prevent a close association of
the two kingdoms. The question had long been regarded on all sides as
one of vital importance; and in 1869, when some information of secret
negotiations between Bismarck and Marshal Prim had leaked out, the
French ambassador at Berlin, Benedetti, had warned Bismarck that
France would oppose the election of a Prussian prince to the vacant
throne of Spain. Bismarck had treated the information as an improbable
rumour, yet he had carefully abstained from a formal assurance that
the king would forbid Prince Leopold to accept any such offer.[43] It
was therefore quite certain that in 1870, when the relations between
France and Prussia were in a very critical state, the announcement
that Prince Leopold had been chosen for Spain would be treated as a
most threatening move on the political chessboard. Italy was under
deep obligation to Prussia for aid in expelling the Austrians from
Venice; the St. Gothard railway had been openly promoted and
subsidised by Germany for direct and secure communication with Italy
in case of need; and now the family connection which was obviously
contemplated would bring Spain into the circle of alliances that
Bismarck was drawing round the French frontier. It was a strategical
manoeuvre that the imperial government was bound to resist. Within
France all factions were for once unanimous in demanding immediate and
resolute protest; and the clerical party, very powerful in that
country, were especially vehement in denouncing the project of placing
the scion of a great Protestant dynasty on the 'throne of Charles V.'
M. Ollivier tells us that when the news first reached him it brought
upon him suddenly and painfully the presentiment of impending war, to
the discomfiture of all his efforts for the preservation of peace
until the Liberal Empire should have been consolidated in France.
The plot--for it was nothing less--had been skilfully concerted
between Berlin and Madrid; and even the parts to be played in
anticipation of French remonstrances had been rehearsed. When
Benedetti went to the Berlin Foreign Office for explanations, he found
that Bismarck was absent at his country house and the king at Ems; and
Von Thiele, the Under-Secretary, cut short his interrogation by
replying at once that the Prussian Government knew nothing of, and had
no concern with, the Hohenzollern candidature, adding that the Spanish
people had a right to choose their own king. At Madrid,
notwithstanding the French ambassador's attempts to check Prim's
jubilant activity, Leopold's acceptance of the crown was proclaimed to
all the foreign courts as a matter for joyful congratulation; and the
Cortes were summoned for July 20 to elect their new monarch. To demand
satisfaction from Spain would have been to fall into Bismarck's net;
for the Hohenzollern prince would have been elected nevertheless, and
if French troops had then marched into Spain the Prussian army would
have crossed the Rhine, whereby the French would have been placed
between two fires. It was necessary to fix the responsibility for
these proceedings upon Prussia, and to act promptly; but the precise
line to be adopted was the subject of anxious deliberation in the
emperor's council--that is, in a meeting of the Cabinet presided over
by him. Finally, Ollivier proposed, as he has told us, to speak out so
plainly that Prussia must understand France to be in earnest, and to
say that the Hohenzollern could not be permitted to reign at Madrid.
Marshal Le Boeuf had assured the council that the army was in the
highest condition of efficiency and readiness; and when M. Ollivier
inquired whether, in the event of war, any help from other governments
could be relied upon, Napoleon produced certain letters from the
Austrian emperor and the King of Italy, which he interpreted as
distinct assurances of armed support in the case of a rupture with
Prussia. The wording of a declaration to be made before the French
Chamber of Deputies was carefully settled--it was delivered next day
(July 6) by the Duc de Gramont, and received with immense enthusiasm.
Some objection was taken, then and afterwards, to its menacing tone;
but we may agree with M. Ollivier that this outspoken warning to
Prussia was at the moment judicious and effective; and we may admit
that up to this point no exception could be taken to the procedure of
the French Government.
M. Ollivier dates from July 6 the first of five phases, or alternating
changes (_peripeties_), which the diplomatic campaign, as he terms it,
traversed in its headlong course. They are successively described and
commented upon in the chapters of his volume; and they may be here set
down in his own language, for the guidance of our readers through the
complicated transactions that ensued:
'Le premier moment est la declaration ministerielle du 6 juillet;
le second, la renonciation du Prince Antoine (11 juillet); le
troisieme, la demande de garanties de la droite (12 juillet); le
quatrieme, le soufflet de Bismarck et la fabrication de la depeche
d'Ems; le cinquieme, notre reponse au soufflet de Bismarck par
notre declaration de guerre du 15 juillet.'
These are, in fact, the five acts of a portentous drama, full of
shifting scenes and striking situations, on the issues of which
depended the fortunes of France and of Germany; it was played out with
ill-omened rapidity in nine days. In regard to the train of causes and
consequences that brought France to the tremendous disaster upon which
the curtain fell, diverse accounts have been given to the world by the
leading actors--by M. de Gramont, by Bismarck, Benedetti, and, the
latest by many years, by M. Ollivier. His narrative does raise
somewhat higher the veil which has hitherto kept in partial obscurity
certain dark corners of the stage upon which these things went on. We
know more now of the precise motives and considerations, the personal
influences and impulses which diverted the Cabinet, after starting on
the right path, into leaving it for rash and perilous adventures. On
some points of interest he is, indeed, still reticent, and on others
his evidence is in conflict with different narratives; but in regard
to facts actually known to him we may accept his testimony, though in
matters of opinion we may sometimes differ from him.
M. Ollivier insists that Gramont's declaration of July 6 was
altogether _irreprochable_; he writes that he has read it again after
so many years with satisfaction. He admits that it contained,
substantially, an intimation to Prussia that she must choose between
withdrawing the Hohenzollern candidate and accepting war with France;
but he argues that this straightforward and peremptory warning was
justified by its effects; that Bismarck was taken aback and
discomfited by the resolute attitude of the French ministry, supported
enthusiastically by the Chamber of Deputies; and that Prince Antoine
was thereby so intimidated as to compel his son Leopold to retract his
acceptance of the Spanish crown. On the other hand, this stern
language alarmed cautious deputies, and though it stirred Paris to a
pitch of wild excitement it was read with uneasiness in the cooler air
of the French provinces, where the prospect of imminent war met with
scanty welcome.[44] The foreign governments were startled. Bismarck,
in his _Reminiscences_, says that it was an 'official international
threat, uttered with the hand on the sword-hilt,' From the Austrian
chancellor, Count Beust, came earnest advice against marching hastily
into Prussia; while the British Cabinet, in particular, doubted the
wisdom of taking up such high ground, from which it might be difficult
to retreat, at the opening of a grave and complicated question. And
our ambassador in Paris, Lord Lyons, whose calm judgment and friendly
counsels M. Ollivier acknowledges unreservedly, exerted himself
throughout this critical time to deprecate precipitate words and
deeds.
Simultaneously Benedetti, the French ambassador at Berlin, had been
ordered to seek an interview with the Prussian king, and to impress
upon him the necessity of appeasing the just indignation of the French
people by forbidding Leopold to accept the crown of Spain. The king
replied, as is well known, that he had treated the candidature
entirely as a family matter, quite apart from the sphere of
international politics; that he had nevertheless communicated with
Leopold, and could give Benedetti no positive answer until he should
have heard from that prince. If, as has been asserted, the king had
been cognisant of Bismarck's secret negotiations, this reply was more
evasive than ingenuous; and we may note that he immediately directed
his own ambassador, Werther, who was present at Ems, to return at once
to Paris. M. Ollivier scores the king's order to the credit of
Benedetti's diplomacy, since it amounted to an admission that the
question in debate was much more than a mere family concern. And he
adds that he immediately urged Gramont to allow no more equivocation
upon this essential point, but to press Werther for a straightforward
reply upon it. It will be seen that this pressure was carried rather
too far at the French Foreign Office, with an important effect upon
the course of negotiations.
But at this juncture supervened the _coup de theatre_, as M. Ollivier
styles it, which opens the second act of the drama. Olozaga, the
Spanish ambassador at Paris, had been left in complete ignorance of
the privy correspondence between Prim and Bismarck for procuring the
nomination of a king from the Hohenzollern family, and this sudden
revelation of its result by no means pleased him. He proposed to the
Emperor Napoleon to despatch to Prince Antoine at Sigmaringen (in
Prussian territory) an agent of his own, who should use every effort
to convince the prince that his son must be imperatively commanded to
withdraw his acceptance of Prim's offer. The emperor, whose sincere
wish was for peace, consented willingly, and the mission was entirely
successful. By long and strenuous argument the envoy had finally
persuaded the father that his son, Leopold, would find himself in a
precarious position on the Spanish throne, with France alienated and
openly hostile; and the result was that Prince Antoine not only laid
on his son a positive command to withdraw, but also telegraphed the
decision to the principal German newspapers, to Olozaga at Paris, and
to Madrid. According to M. Ollivier, Bismarck felt the blow keenly; it
shattered his carefully organised plans; he found himself baffled and
humiliated; he has himself said that his first thought was to resign
office.[45] To the king, on the other hand, the news brought welcome
relief; he supposed that he had now only to await Prince Antoine's
letter confirming the public telegram, when the dispute would
naturally drop with the disappearance of its cause. This was,
moreover, the expectation at that moment of the French emperor, who
observed that, if France and England were preparing to fight for the
possession of an island in the Channel, it would be absurd to go to
war after discovering that the island had sunk to the bottom of the
sea.
In those days, M. Ollivier explains, any telegram of political
interest that passed over the Paris wires was communicated, by
special arrangement, to the Ministere de l'Interieur; and accordingly
he received a copy of Prince Antoine's message to Olozaga before it
reached its address. The contents filled him with exultation--he could
feel no doubt that peace had now been triumphantly secured, mainly by
the unflinching tone of the Cabinet's declaration. He carried the
paper with him to the Chamber, where Olozaga rushed up to him in the
lobby, drew him into a corner, read to him with much obvious
excitement the telegram which Ollivier had already in his pocket, and
hurried on to the Foreign Office. Naturally the incident aroused
general curiosity; the deputies surrounded the minister, and eagerly
pressed him for information. M. Ollivier tells us that he hesitated
for some time before divulging his secret; but that on the whole he
found no good reason for withholding news that would certainly appear
within a few hours in the evening papers, so he read out the telegram
to all present. We believe that few men, who had not been trained by
experience to the cautious habits of official life, would have done
otherwise. But M. de la Gorce[46] has pointed out that the chief
minister ought to have kept silence until the renunciation had been
approved and confirmed by the King of Prussia, who was in hourly
expectation of Prince Antoine's letter, and whose acquiescence,
transmitted through Benedetti to the French Government, would have
probably brought the whole affair to an honourable termination. It may
be objected that this is to argue from consequences, since known,
which could hardly be foreseen at the moment; yet one must admit that
reticence would have been preferable, for we have to remember that M.
Ollivier was disclosing a telegram intercepted, so to speak, on its
passage to a foreign embassy, thereby forestalling not only the
Spanish ambassador but also the French Foreign Office.
The news ran round the Palais Legislatif, inside and outside, and
spread through Paris with electrical rapidity.
'En meme temps debouchait du Palais Legislatif une bande agitee;
c'etait a qui envahirait les fiacres de la place, a qui les
escaladerait, a qui les prendrait d'assaut. A la Bourse, criaient
les hommes d'affaires; nous doublons le prix de la course, et au
triple galop. Parmi les journalistes, meme empressement et concert
de meme nature, et on voyait les haridelles de la place sortir
l'une apres l'autre et s'elancer rapides comme des fleches.'
Apparently all this stir and hurry had already affected M. Ollivier
with some misgivings; for when, on going into one of the
committee-rooms, he met Gressier, formerly a minister, he assured him
that he (Ollivier) had no intention of making the renunciation a
stepping-stone toward further demands. 'To take up that ground,'
replied Gressier, 'will be a proof of courage, but it will bring down
your ministry, for the country will never be content with this degree
of satisfaction.' M. Ollivier soon found that he was right; for a
crowd of deputies began to protest against the faint-heartedness of a
government that seemed willing to drop the whole affair, leaving
Prussia to escape scot-free; and M. Ollivier had scarcely entered the
Chamber when Clement Duvernois rose with an interpellation asking what
guarantees the Cabinet proposed to require for the purpose of
restraining Prussia from inventing more complications of this sort.
Olozaga had taken his telegram to M. de Gramont, who by no means
shared M. Ollivier's joy over it. He observed that the effect was
rather to embarrass his negotiations with Prussia, since that
government could now make the renunciation a pretext for disowning
the responsibility which he desired to fix upon the king with regard
to the whole business; and, moreover, he added, public opinion in
France will consider such a conclusion unsatisfactory. He was at that
moment engaged in colloquy with Werther, the Prussian ambassador, who
had presented himself at the Foreign Office, where presently M.
Ollivier joined them, Olozaga having departed. What followed is
treated by some French writers as the most ill-conceived of all the
false moves made by the French players in this hazardous diplomatic
game. Gramont had been urging Werther to advise the Prussian king to
write a letter to the emperor, to the effect that in authorising the
acceptance of the Spanish throne by Leopold he had no idea of giving
umbrage to France; that the king associated himself with the prince's
renunciation, and hoped that all causes of misunderstanding between
the two governments were thereby removed. Gramont sketched out what he
thought the king might say, and actually made over his note to the
Prussian ambassador, by way of _aide-memoire_; precisely as in 1867
Benedetti had trusted Bismarck with his draft of the secret treaty
proposed for the annexation of Belgium to France, which Bismarck
afterwards published in the _Times_ of July 1870. M. Ollivier, who
agreed with and supported Gramont, now maintains that his arrival
changed the character of the conference, that it ceased to be an
official interview between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and an
ambassador, and thenceforward became merely one of those free
unofficial conversations in which politicians explain their views
without compromising their respective governments. But we are obliged
to remark that in our judgment this plea is inadmissible, for M. de
Gramont has explicitly stated that the interview, so far as he was
concerned, was official,[47] and Werther could not have been expected
to appreciate this subtle yet important distinction--of which nothing
seems to have been said to him--while M. Ollivier should have foreseen
that Bismarck would certainly ignore it. The result was that Werther
did transmit to his king the suggestion of the two French ministers;
that the king was deeply offended at having been required to send what
he called, not unreasonably, a letter of excuses; that Bismarck used
Werther's despatch to kindle national indignation throughout Germany;
and that Werther himself was reprimanded and recalled.
The scene now shifts to St. Cloud, where the poor emperor, who had
supposed that Prince Antoine's telegram signified peace with honour,
found a military party eager for war, and hotly asserting that the
empire would be totally discredited unless satisfaction were demanded
from Prussia for conniving at the Hohenzollern candidature. The
interpellation of Duvernois in the Chamber was cited as a forcible
expression of public opinion. M. Gramont now arrived at the palace
with his report of the interview with Werther, in which the latter had
persistently declared that the king had nothing whatever to do with
Leopold's withdrawal. The emperor's unstable mind began to waver; he
forgot or put aside his arrangement with M. Ollivier--that the
ministers should meet him next morning for consultation over this new
aspect of the affair--and he proceeded then and there to hold a
Cabinet Council.
What passed at this Council has never been exactly known. The reproach
of a ruinous blunder lies heavy on those who took part in it. Gramont
says no more than that the deliberations were conscientious, and that
every one, including the emperor, earnestly desired peace.[48] M.
Ollivier tells us, in the volume now before us, that of all the
Cabinet ministers the Duc de Gramont alone was summoned; whether he
learnt subsequently who were also present, and what share they took in
promoting the decision, he leaves his readers to guess. It is clear
that the proceeding was irregular and totally unconstitutional, and
other French writers hint that Gramont's silence is intended to shield
_une personne auguste_ from responsibility for a decision that was
fatally wrong. When the Council broke up at 7 P. M. (July 12) Gramont
immediately despatched from the Foreign Office his famous telegram to
Benedetti at Ems, instructing him to require from the Prussian king a
positive assurance that he would not authorise the renewal of
Leopold's candidature--a demand, in short, for guarantees. At his
office he met Lord Lyons, to whom he expounded his reasons for
treating the single renunciation as inadequate, to the great surprise
of our ambassador, who objected so strenuously to Gramont's views and
intentions that the minister, somewhat shaken, merely said that the
formal decision would be made public next morning. While the emperor
and two councillors were then taking irrevocable steps toward a
collision, and were unconsciously playing into the hands of their
arch-enemy, the leaders of the warlike faction in the Chamber and the
Parisian press were clamouring with fury and vitriolic sarcasm against
a faint-hearted and contemptible ministry that shrank from seizing the
opportunity of humbling Prussia.
Again the scene changes, this time to the Foreign Office, where M.
Ollivier, in total ignorance of that evening's Council at St. Cloud,
sought and found the Duc de Gramont about midnight. He had come to
ask whether any fresh news had been received from Benedetti at Ems;
and Gramont answered by showing him the telegram just despatched by
the Council's order to Benedetti, with a letter to himself from the
emperor desiring that its language should be stiffened. Naturally M.
Ollivier could hardly control his resentment at discovering that an
extremely grave resolution had been adopted and acted upon without
consulting or even warning him beforehand; that the emperor, in spite
of his promises to govern constitutionally, had reverted to such an
extreme use of autocratic power; and that Gramont had made no attempt
to check it, had even abetted the irregularity. However, the telegram
had gone to Ems--it was too late to remedy that mischief--but the
Cabinet would have to answer before the Chamber for its despatch. He
said to Gramont:
'On va vous accuser d'avoir premedite la guerre et de n'avoir vu
dans l'incident Hohenzollern qu'un pretexte de la provocation.
N'accentuez pas votre premiere depeche comme vous le prescrit
l'Empereur, attenuez la. Benedetti aura deja accompli sa mission
lorsque cette attenuation lui parviendra, mais devant la Chambre
vous y trouverez un argument pour etablir vos intentions
pacifiques.'[49]
And he at once drafted a telegram instructing Benedetti to require
from the king no more than that he should agree not to permit Leopold
to retract the particular renunciation which his father had obtained
from him; instead of requiring a general assurance against _any
future_ retractation. Gramont telegraphed accordingly, but in
continuation, not in correction, of his earlier message, so that the
latter part of the instructions to Benedetti was inconsistent with the
former part. But this second telegram reached Ems, as M. Ollivier had
foreseen, too late, for Benedetti had already seen the king, and had
been urging him persistently to satisfy the French Government by
conceding the general assurance.
M. Ollivier's description of the distress and perplexity that kept him
without sleep during the rest of that eventful night will be read with
a feeling of sincere commiseration. This, then, he reflected, was the
first fruit of imperial liberalism, that the chief minister was
slighted by his sovereign, ill-served and even betrayed by his
colleagues, and committed, behind his back, to a most hazardous
policy. He had been too soft-hearted to insist on making a clean sweep
of the old official class in forming his Cabinet; he had thought to
replace the decrepit absolutism by a young and liberal empire; and
here was the personal power reappearing at the first crisis. The idea
of having given the signal for war was abhorrent to him; he felt
violently tempted to resign and retire. Yet, on reflection, to tender
his resignation at such a moment would be, he felt, an act of culpable
egoism, it would inevitably bring on the war; for the government would
pass into the hands of a rash and impetuous war-party, manifestly bent
on marching against Prussia if the king persisted in refusing, as on
hearing of Ollivier's resignation he would assuredly refuse, the
guarantees that had been demanded by the Council held at St. Cloud. On
the other hand, by remaining in the ministry he might still command a
majority in the Cabinet; nor did he despair of a majority in the
Chamber to support him in cancelling, at some future stage of the
negotiations, this demand for guarantees if he could recover the
emperor's confidence. He might fail, but then he would fall
honourably, having subordinated personal susceptibilities to
considerations of his country's interest; so he finally determined not
to resign office.
Our sympathies are unquestionably due to a minister who, finding
himself placed, by no act of his own, in a situation of the utmost
perplexity, resolves to take no account of his political reputation
and personal interests, and to choose the course that he believes to
be necessary, in arduous circumstances, for the honour and safety of
his country. To a British prime minister his duty would have been
clear, he would have tendered his resignation immediately; but under
the Liberal Empire the ultimate decision upon questions before the
Cabinet still lay with the sovereign, and thus the responsibilities of
his principal minister remained ambiguous and indefinite.
Nevertheless, though it is easy to be wise after the event, our
opinion must be that M. Ollivier would have done his country better
service by resigning office; for though it is very probable that war
could not have been thereby averted, yet unqualified disapproval of
the demand for guarantees might have rallied to his side all those
who, in the Cabinet, the Chamber, and the country, were undoubtedly
opposed to incurring terrible risks in order to obtain pledges against
future contingencies. Among the late Lord Acton's _Historical Essays_
there is a remarkable paper on 'The Causes of the Franco-Prussian
War,' in which the considerations that may justify Gramont's demand
for guarantees are fairly stated. It is there argued that the Prussian
king, who had first 'sanctioned' Prince Leopold's candidature, and
afterwards its withdrawal, had left the initiative in both cases to
Prince Leopold. He had thus kept himself quite free to sanction a
second acceptance as he had done the first--'he held in his hands a
convenient _casus belli_, to be used or dropped at pleasure';
remembering that the Hohenzollern candidature had been 'a meditated
offence, long and carefully prepared, insolently denied, which
demanded reparation.'[50] But one might reply that the best way of
foiling these deep and deliberate designs, manifestly contrived to
provoke war, was to give the adversary no such plausible pretext for
driving France into hostilities as was furnished to Bismarck by
Gramont's demand. It is evident, however, that in July 1870 all Paris
was in a state of irrepressible agitation, that the Imperialists in
the Chamber were determined to push the Government into a defiant and
warlike policy, and that they were acting in the foolhardy conviction
that the French army could beat the Prussians, and that a victorious
campaign would consolidate the Napoleonic dynasty.
The next day, July 13, is an evil date in the history of France, when
she was hurried into war by a swift succession and very unlucky
conjunction of incidents. The Council met early, and decided by a
majority not to call out the army reserves, although Marshal Le
Boeuf energetically declared that if there were any prospect of war,
not an hour should be lost in preparation. M. de la Gorce relates that
four of the councillors passed grave censure on the irregular
proceedings of the previous evening, and condemned Gramont's telegram.
M. Ollivier says that it was resolved not to insist further if the
guarantees were refused by the king, and for the moment to keep the
demand for them secret, merely informing the Chamber that negotiations
with Prussia were in progress. Ollivier took his _dejeuner_ at the
palace, where the household staff greeted him very coldly, and the
empress, by whom he sat, turned her back on him. In the Chamber
Duvernois asked in a surly tone when the debate on his interpellation
would come on, and July 15 was fixed for it. Everything now depended
on the issue of Benedetti's interview with the king at Ems, which took
place early on the morning of the 13th, when they met as the king was
returning by the public promenade from taking the waters. What
followed is well known. The king was surprised and disappointed at
learning from the ambassador that Prince Leopold's resignation had not
settled everything; Benedetti pressed on him Gramont's new demand for
ulterior guarantees; the king positively refused to give them, and
parted from him coldly though courteously, promising, however, to see
him again after receiving the letter expected from Prince Antoine. But
in the course of that day came Werther's report of his conversation
with the two French ministers, which the king's private secretary
opened and carried, in some trepidation, to his majesty. The king was
grievously offended; he wrote to Queen Augusta that to require him to
stand before the world as a repentant sinner was nothing less than
impertinence, and he sent his aide-de-camp, Prince Radziwill (one of
the highest Prussian nobles), to inform Benedetti that Leopold's
letter of resignation had arrived, and that, as the affair was thus
completely ended, no further audience was necessary. The ambassador
replied that he was particularly instructed to obtain the king's
specific approbation of Leopold's action, and was therefore obliged to
solicit another interview. The king replied by his aide-de-camp that
so far as he had approved Leopold's acceptance of the crown he
approved the retractation; but the request for another interview,
though it was twice repeated during the day, was civilly and firmly
refused.
M. Ollivier argues that Werther's report in no way affected the king's
behaviour to Benedetti; he affirms that it made no difference at all,
and that the king's determination to hold no further intercourse with
him was entirely due to Benedetti's indiscreet importunity at the
morning's meeting, which was witnessed, it may be noted, by a crowd
of observant bystanders. We may assume that the king had at no time
the slightest intention of acceding to the demand for guarantees; but
it seems to us impossible to maintain that Werther's report, which was
put into his majesty's hand at such a critical moment, and which
undeniably gave serious offence, did not exacerbate relations which
had already been strained, or induce the king to break off abruptly
the personal negotiations with the French minister. And we may add
that if Benedetti had been cognisant of this report, he might have
understood the king's sudden change of temper, and might have spared
himself some rebuffs. When the matter came afterwards to his
knowledge, he declared that the effect on the king of Werther's report
had been deplorable.
Bismarck had been telegraphing from Berlin to Ems that if the king
accorded to Benedetti any more interviews he must resign office; and
the news of Prince Leopold's renunciation seemed to cut away the
ground upon which he had been manoeuvring for a quarrel with France.
But his spirits revived on receiving by telegraph from the king a
brief summary of the Ems incidents, stating that Benedetti's
importunate requisition for guarantees had been rejected by his
majesty, who had subsequently resolved
'de ne plus recevoir le comte Benedetti a cause de sa pretention,
et de lui faire dire simplement par un aide de camp ... que sa
Majeste avait recu du prince Leopold confirmation de la nouvelle
mandee de Paris, et qu'elle n'avait plus rien a dire a
l'ambassadeur.'
The telegram also authorised Bismarck to communicate this statement to
the foreign courts and to the press, whereupon Bismarck gave it
immediate publication, having made (to use his own phrase) 'some
suppressions'; having, in fact, maliciously tampered with the text and
falsified the tone, according to M. Ollivier and other French writers.
His official organ, the _North German Gazette_, was directed to print
off a supplement and to paste it up all over Berlin, and copies of
this supplement were distributed gratis in the streets. A thrill of
patriotic enthusiasm electrified the nation, who were unanimous in
applauding the king in defying the French, and mocking at their
ambassador's humiliation.
'Dans toutes les langues, dans tous les pays, courait la
falsification offensee lancee par Bismarck. L'effet de cette
publicite effroyable se produisit d'abord en Allemagne avec autant
d'intensite qu'a Berlin. Les journaux faisaient rage.'
This is what M. Ollivier has called 'Le soufflet de Bismarck'; and
never was the art of changing the tone and import of words without
altering their substance more effectively employed; for it must be
acknowledged that the communication to the press was an accurate
rendering of the facts contained in the king's telegram, which was
stiff but not actually discourteous; whereas Bismarck put the sting
into it by little more than adroit condensation. We are told that when
the king received this revised edition of his message he read it
twice, was much moved, and said, 'This means war'; and that it rang
throughout Europe like an alarm-bell. At the same time, and before
Bismarck's action had been known in Paris, M. Ollivier, as he tells
us, was struggling vigorously against the torrent of reproaches and
imputations of cowardice which threatened to overthrow his Cabinet if
they flinched from the demand for guarantees.
Late on July 13 came a telegram from Benedetti that the king had
consented to approve unreservedly Prince Leopold's renunciation, but
distinctly refused any further concession. This, cried the war-party
at St. Cloud, is totally insufficient; the emperor was irresolute, and
merely summoned his Council for next day. Ollivier was determined, for
his part, to accept the king's assurance as conclusively satisfactory;
and he relates how, on the morning of the 14th, he was engaged in
drafting, for approval by the Council, a ministerial declaration to
that effect, when the Duc de Gramont entered his room with a copy of
Bismarck's circular telegram, and said:
'"Mon cher, vous voyez un homme qui vient de recevoir une gifle."
Il me tend alors une petite feuille de papier jaune que je verrai
eternellement devant mes yeux.... On n'echoua jamais plus pres du
port. Je restai quelques instants silencieux et atterre.'
At the Council, which was immediately summoned, Gramont threw his
portfolio on the table, saying that after what had happened a Foreign
Minister who should not vote for war would be unworthy to hold office;
and Marshal Le Boeuf informed his colleagues that they had not a
moment to lose, for Prussia was already arming. Nevertheless the
Council set themselves to a deliberate investigation of the actual
facts. Their conclusion, after six hours of discussion, was that,
according to diplomatic rule and international custom, no exception
could have been taken to the king's refusal, courteously worded, of
the interview which Benedetti had, it seemed to them, rather
pertinaciously desired; but that a reasonable refusal had been
converted into one that was offensive by its publication in terms that
were intentionally curt and stinging. Nevertheless Ollivier, clinging
to any slight chance of avoiding war, persuaded the emperor and the
Council to agree that Leopold's resignation, as approved by the
Prussian king, should be accepted by France, and that, on the further
question, whether members of a reigning family in one country could be
permitted to become kings in another, an appeal for some authoritative
ruling should be made to a general congress. But in the course of that
day the ministers received from various quarters more evidence that
Bismarck's inflammatory telegram had been sent officially to the
Prussian diplomatists at all the foreign courts; and they heard that
Paris was literally foaming with exasperation at their dilatory
indecision, while the temper of the Chamber convinced them that the
proposal for a congress would be rejected with fiery scorn. Berlin and
Paris vied with each other in turbulent patriotism and warlike fury,
and Marshal Le Boeuf, being again and for the last time questioned
by the Council, replied positively that the French army was quite
ready, and that no better opportunity of settling accounts with
Prussia could be expected. The Council rescinded its former decision,
and voted unanimously for war. The empress alone (Ollivier notes
particularly) expressed no opinion and gave no vote.
On July 15 Ollivier pronounced in the Chamber the declaration that had
been drawn up by himself and the Duc de Gramont. It was to the effect
that the Cabinet had throughout made every possible exertion to
preserve peace, but that their patience was exhausted when they found
that the King of Prussia had sent an aide-de-camp to the French
ambassador informing him that no more interviews could be granted, and
that the Prussian Government, by way of giving point and unequivocal
significance to this message, had circulated it to all other foreign
governments in Europe. Having spared no pains to avoid war, the
ministers would now accept the challenge, and prepare for the
consequences.
M. Ollivier has given a vivid description of the scene that ensued.
His final words were barely audible in the storm of applause that
swept through the assembly, and the vote of urgency for the motion to
provide the necessary war-funds was demanded with enthusiastic
outcries, varied by angry vituperation of the few deputies who stood
up to oppose it. But Thiers immediately arose and, in spite of many
disorderly interruptions, made a passionate appeal to the assembly to
reflect before precipitating the country into war. His speech, with
the violent cries of dissent interjected by the war-party, is
reproduced by M. Ollivier in order, as he says, that his readers may
judge for themselves how far it merited the unstinted eulogy that has
since been bestowed upon it; for M. Ollivier evidently considers that
those who have credited Thiers with heroic patriotism in making this
strenuous effort to avert the catastrophe have over-praised him. Yet
with this view we believe that few of those who read the pages in this
volume which contain the speech will agree. They will admire, rather,
the courage and fervid eloquence of a veteran statesman who vainly
strove to persuade a frantic assembly that it was fatally misled, that
it was plunging the nation into war on a mere point of form, grasping
at a shadow after the substantial and reasonable demand for
satisfaction had been obtained by Leopold's renunciation; who reminded
the deputies that the official papers authenticating the supposed
insult had never been laid before them, and implored them not to risk
the issues of a terrible contest upon a doubtful question of national
susceptibility. M. Ollivier goes so far as to affirm that no one could
be more justly accused of having brought on the war of 1870 than
Thiers himself, because it was his vehement condemnation of the policy
which allowed Prussia to beat down Austria in 1866, and to set up a
formidable military power on the frontier of France, that inspired the
whole French people with the suspicion, jealous animosities, and alarm
which rendered a war on the Rhine between the two nations eventually
unavoidable. But Thiers in his speech emphatically repeated his
conviction that sooner or later France must fight Prussia to redress
the balance of military power between the rival countries; and the
whole point of his speech lay in one sentence: 'Je trouve l'occasion
detestablement choisie' ('Your _casus belli_ is ill chosen and utterly
indefensible'). It cannot be denied that in 1870 the public opinion of
Europe was on his side: for England and Austria, whose goodwill toward
France was unquestionable, were foremost in their efforts to deter the
French ministers from war and in deploring their infatuation when it
had been proclaimed. At St. Petersburg the Russian emperor told the
French ambassador plainly that the demand for guarantees was
unreasonable. Nor is it likely that the general judgment of the
time--that Thiers did his best to save the empire from a disastrous
blunder--will have been revoked by posterity, or affected by anything
that has since been pleaded in extenuation.
'If (said Thiers) the Hohenzollern candidature had not been withdrawn,
all France would have rallied to the support of your declaration, and
all Europe would have held you to be in the right; but it _has_ been
withdrawn with the approbation of the Prussian king, and you had
absolutely no pretext for making any further demand. What will Europe
say when you shed torrents of blood on a point of form?' M. Thiers
concluded his speech by urging the ministers to lay before the Chamber
the actual documents which, as they asserted, rendered war inevitable.
M. Ollivier, in his reply, declined to communicate certain documents
which, he said, were confidential and could not be produced without
infringement of diplomatic rules; and he laid stress on the
impossibility of tolerating the affront which had been intentionally
put upon France by Bismarck's circular telegram. And it was at the end
of this speech that he made use of the phrase which has become
historical as the typical expression of the levity and rashness with
which his ministry threw their nation into a tremendous war, insomuch
that it has become one main cause why he is so commonly charged, very
unfairly, with the whole responsibility for the blind haste that led
to the defeat and dismemberment of his country. 'Oui, de ce jour
commence pour les ministres mes collegues et pour moi, une grande
responsabilite. Nous l'acceptons le coeur leger.' The words were at
once taken up sharply and severely; and M. Ollivier went on to explain
that he meant a heart not weighted by remorse, since he and his
colleagues had done everything that was consistent with humanity and
with honour to avert a dire necessity; and since the armies of France
would be upholding a cause that was just. He now comments bitterly on
the malignity which has fastened this stigma on his name, merely
because in the heat and flurry of debate, which left him not a moment
to pick his words or arrange his sentences, he said something that he
is sure no honest man who listened to his explanation could
misconstrue into unfeeling frivolity. And in his criticism of the
speech in which M. Thiers so vehemently condemned the conduct of the
ministers he repeats emphatically that the war was not brought on by
the demand for guarantees, but by Bismarck's false and insulting
publication of the king's refusal to consider that demand. This
affront, he maintains, was insufferable. Yet we learn from his
narrative that before entering the Chamber on this eventful day M.
Ollivier had found at the Foreign Office Benedetti, just arrived from
Ems, who had already seen Bismarck's telegram in a newspaper, and
could have assured the ministers that it was a perfidious
misrepresentation, since the king had not treated him with actual
discourtesy. Nevertheless M. Ollivier quotes and entirely adopts the
'proud and manly' utterances of the Duc de Gramont who stood up and
addressed the assembly towards the close of the debate.
'After what you have just heard,' he said, 'one fact is enough. The
Prussian Government has informed all the Cabinets of Europe of the
refusal to receive our ambassador or to continue the discussion with
him. That is an affront to the emperor and to France, and if (_par
impossible_) a Chamber could be found in my country to bear or suffer
it, I would not remain Minister of Foreign Affairs for five minutes.'
These haughty words (we are told) electrified the Chamber, and a
committee to examine the papers on which the ministers relied to prove
their case was immediately appointed. These were brought by Gramont,
who, however, said that he would not lay before the committee the
precise words of Bismarck's insulting telegram, because his knowledge
of it came only from a very confidential communication made to him by
the French representatives at certain foreign courts who had been
permitted to see the original, so that the authentic text was not in
his possession. This excuse was accepted, somewhat imprudently, by the
committee; and their chairman proceeded to question Gramont closely on
one point--whether, after Leopold's retirement had become known, the
King of Prussia had been required at one and the same time to approve
it formally and to promise that the candidature should never be
revived. During the debate it had been objected by those who opposed
the war-party that after obtaining the king's approval, and not till
then, the Foreign Secretary demanded this promise, and that on this
new demand the king took offence and briefly declined any further
interview with Benedetti. Gramont answered the chairman with a direct
affirmative; he stated that the two concessions had been required
simultaneously, and M. Ollivier undertakes to prove that this
statement was correct. He argues, if we understand him rightly, that
before Leopold had withdrawn his candidature, the king had been
pressed to advise or order him to do so, and that this requisition
included by implication the demand for a guarantee against its
renewal. When Leopold had retired without the king's intervention, the
royal order became unnecessary; but the implied demand still remained
in force, and was merely repeated in subsequent telegrams.[51] On this
we must remark that both Benedetti and the Prussian king entirely
missed the alleged implication; that the question of guarantees was
never raised by the telegrams interchanged between Gramont and
Benedetti before Leopold's retirement had become public, when both the
king and the ambassador treated it as entirely new; and that at any
rate such an important and highly contentious demand should obviously
have been stated with unequivocal distinctness, since any other course
was quite certain to produce misunderstandings and recriminations. And
it is no matter for surprise that various French writers have since
accused the Duc de Gramont of misstating the facts upon which the
committee reported to the Chamber that the papers laid before them
amply sustained the ministerial request for the grant of an urgent
war-subsidy, which was thereupon voted by an immense majority. In the
Senate, where the money was granted with even more promptitude and
with zealous unanimity, the proceedings were expedited by a report
from Marshal Le Boeuf that the enemy had already crossed the French
frontier, and M. Rouher, a thorough Imperialist, headed a deputation
of senators to congratulate the emperor, in the name of the Senate, on
having drawn the sword when the Prussian king rejected the demand for
guarantees. M. Ollivier reasonably complains that this unauthorised
demonstration was awkward and mischievous; for while the Senate was
thus made to attribute the rupture to the king's refusal, the ministry
was declaring war on account of the 'soufflet de Bismarck'--the insult
embodied in the Prussian telegram. Yet M. Ollivier, looking back in
the calm evening of life on these stormy days, might have brought
himself by reflection to admit that between these two pretexts there
was little to choose--that neither of them justified a government in
staking the fortunes of the nation and the empire on the hazard of a
great war. When Rouher had read his address, the sovereigns conversed
with the senators, and it was remarked that while the empress was
lively and confident of success, the emperor spoke sadly of the long
and difficult task, requiring a most violent effort, that lay before
them.
Having brought his narrative up to the moment when the Chamber by
voting the subsidy had practically determined upon war, M. Ollivier
stops to comment upon and explain the strenuous opposition made to the
vote by M. Thiers and by the small section of deputies who represented
the Radical Left. He is convinced that this latter party were mainly
actuated in their ardent protests by a desire to embarrass and, if
possible, to overthrow his Government, of which they had been
consistent adversaries. They had calculated, he explains, on the
probability that the ministry would flinch from the rupture with
Prussia, would adopt some pacific compromise that would be rejected
with indignation by the Chamber, and would be contemptuously expelled
from office. When this calculation had been foiled by the resolutely
courageous attitude of the Cabinet, they foresaw (he believes) that a
triumphant campaign would greatly strengthen the Government and would
utterly discredit the Opposition, so they changed their tactics and
fought against the ministerial proposals with accusations of criminal
recklessness and prophecies of disaster. It is hardly possible, after
so long an interval of time, to form any opinion upon these somewhat
invidious suggestions. The action of those who opposed the war,
whatever may have been their motives, was outwardly consistent enough,
and the construction placed upon it by M. Ollivier may seem rather
subtle and far-fetched. At the present day, however, this question
does not particularly concern any one, though we may agree that at
that moment no one in France contemplated the possibility of defeat in
the field. The French army was assumed by all parties to be
invincible, and the minority in opposition did undoubtedly believe and
fear that the empire would be consolidated by victories. M. Thiers in
his speech only touched generally upon the chances and perils of war,
and even Gambetta voted with the Government upon the conviction that
success was beyond doubt; while not only in Paris, but in all the
great towns, the determination to fight was acclaimed because a
triumphant campaign was supposed to be certain. It was to be
anticipated, indeed, that a brave and high-spirited nation, very
sensitive on the point of honour, and confident in its military
superiority, would respond enthusiastically to the signal of war
against a rival whose ill-will was notorious, who was accused of
plotting the injury of their country and of deliberately insulting
their Government.
A public declaration of hostilities was sent to Berlin, though M.
Ollivier tells us that his ministry regarded it as a superfluous
formality which they would have preferred leaving to Prussia.
'La declaration fut libellee d'une maniere assez maladroite par les
commis des Affaires etrangeres, et elle ne fut pas meme lue au
Conseil. Elle fut communiquee uniquement par la forme et sans
discussion aux Assemblees, et envoyee a la Prusse le 19 juillet.'
This perfunctory method of composition is characteristic of the
prevailing official atmosphere.
The document was delivered by the French charge d'affaires to
Bismarck, and in the dialogue that followed between the two
diplomatists, which M. Ollivier relates in full, we have an excellent
sample of the Prussian Chancellor's sardonic and incisive manner.
Bismarck asserted that if he had been present at the interviews with
Benedetti he might have prevented the war, whereas the king's
conciliatory tone at Ems had misled the French ministers into the
blunder of using threats and making intolerable demands, until at last
they found themselves confronted by a strong Government, backed by the
Prussian nation in the firm resolution to defend itself. In reporting
this conversation to the Foreign Office the charge d'affaires said
that Bismarck appeared to be sincerely afflicted with regret for the
rupture between the two countries, that he evidently saw, too late,
his error in having secretly encouraged the Hohenzollern candidature,
and that the result of all these unhappy complications had left the
well-meaning chancellor inconsolable. Such a candid confession of
remorse and regret moved the Frenchman's compassion to a degree that
profoundly irritates M. Ollivier:
'Un tel exces de credulite finit par exasperer. Et la plupart des
diplomates de ce temps-la etaient de cette force. Bien pietre
serait l'histoire qui se modelerait sur leurs appreciations.'
We may agree that the sympathy of the charge d'affaires with
Bismarck's ingenuous contrition was ill-bestowed. But the tendency to
fix upon French diplomacy a responsibility for national calamities
that is much more justly chargeable to the account of the Imperial
Government, is somewhat unduly prominent in certain parts of M.
Ollivier's otherwise fair and conscientious narrative of the
transactions that culminated in the war.
When Bismarck announced to the Prussian Reichstag that war had been
declared, he was interrupted by an outburst of long and enthusiastic
cheering. He said, briefly, that he had no papers to lay before them,
because the single official document received from the French
Government was the declaration of war; and the only motive for
hostilities he understood to be his own circular _telegramme de
journal_ addressed to Prussian envoys abroad and to other friendly
Powers for the purpose of explaining what had occurred. This, he
observed, was not at all an official document. He added that a demand
for a letter of excuses had been made through Werther to the king; and
the real origin of the war he alleged to be the hatred and jealousy
with which the independence and prosperity of Germany were regarded in
France. Upon this adroit but incomplete exposition of causes and
circumstances M. Ollivier comments with intelligible severity, laying
stress on the fact that afterwards Bismarck threw off his disguise,
and openly took to himself the credit of having deliberately contrived
to bring on the war at his own time. In fact, the later German
historians have confirmed this statement by their critical examination
of the records and other evidence; though instead of concluding that
his conduct was immoral they unite, according to M. Ollivier, in
applauding his political genius. Almost the whole story of the
connected machinations by which France was led step by step into war
have since been disclosed, and the only part which is still unrevealed
relates to the original devices by which Bismarck and Marshal Prim
concerted the preliminaries to the offer of the Spanish throne to
Leopold.[52]
It is cheerfully admitted by the German historians who are cited in
this volume that the train of incidents which produced so well-timed
an explosion was scientifically laid by the Prussian chancellor. But
they maintain that he was only countermining the underground
combinations of the French, who were known to be organising a triple
alliance with Italy and Austria for a combined assault upon Prussia;
and that the journey of the Austrian Archduke Albert to Paris in
March 1870 convinced Bismarck that he had no time to lose, because war
must be provoked before these alliances were consummated. And they
cite the example of Frederick the Great, who disconcerted the secret
preparations of his enemies by the sudden dash upon Dresden which
opened the Seven Years' War. This defence of his own very skilful and
not less astute manoeuvres was endorsed by Bismarck in a speech
before the Chamber in 1876; nor does it appear to us so untenable as
M. Ollivier holds it to be. He argues that the fear of being attacked
by France, if it had really influenced Bismarck's conduct in 1870,
must have been a wild hallucination, for the chancellor must have been
well aware that the emperor's policy at that time was decidedly
pacific, and that his own (Ollivier's) views were still more so. He
assures us that the project of a triple alliance was intended to be
exclusively defensive, that it never passed beyond the 'academic'
stage, or reached any practical form. The confidential negotiations of
1869 with Austria and Italy had been left, he says, in the stage of
unfinished outline, nor was it even suspected either by the French or
by the Italian ministry that they had been carried further. On the
other hand, it cannot be denied that in 1869 these negotiations had
been carried quite far enough to inspire the Prussian chancellor with
serious disquietude, if, as is very probable, he had good information
of them. We know, from M. Ollivier's very interesting account of what
passed at the first meeting of the Cabinet on July 6, when the
ministers resolved to announce to the Chamber their determination to
resent and resist the Hohenzollern candidature, that the emperor and
M. de Gramont regarded the understanding with Italy and Austria as
being much more than academic. It is there stated that when Ollivier
hesitated to accept Gramont's assurance that the assistance of these
two Powers, in the event of hostilities with Prussia, had been
virtually secured, the Emperor Napoleon took from a drawer in his
bureau certain letters written in 1869 by the Austrian emperor and the
King of Italy, and, after reading them aloud, told the ministers that
these writings undoubtedly amounted to promises of help in the
circumstances that were then actually under discussion. The Cabinet
accepted these proofs that the alliances might be reckoned upon as
substantial, so that it is not unreasonable to suppose that Bismarck
had drawn the same conclusion from the intimations that had reached
him, and had set himself to provoke a war before the secret
combinations against him should be ready for action. It must be borne
in mind that from 1866 he had been deliberately preparing for it,
being convinced, as he said later, that until France had been defeated
in the field, his grand design of founding a German empire, with its
capital at Berlin, could not be realised.
We may therefore be permitted to suggest that the discussion with
which M. Ollivier closes this volume is to some extent superfluous,
for it is incontestable that Bismarck had reasons for desiring the
war, and that France was inveigled into declaring it. In the final
section he returns to the question whether France or Prussia were
responsible for the rupture; and after summing up the evidence he
pronounces judgment against Prussia. It was Prussia that invented the
Hohenzollern candidature, against which France was bound to protest
forcibly; and even if it be admitted, he says, that the French Cabinet
was wrong in taking mortal offence at the insolent official version of
the king's refusal to receive the French ambassador, there can be no
doubt that this public affront infuriated the French nation, and drove
it to the extremity of war. That the explosion was instantaneous he
regards as a proof that it had not been expected nor premeditated by
France. All these things are, indeed, neither denied nor deniable, for
Bismarck's own arrogant revelations leave no doubt that the war had
been desired and premeditated by that astute and far-seeing
politician; and though upon the methods by which the Hohenzollern
candidature was originally started Bismarck is judiciously silent, we
may be morally certain that the instigation came from Berlin. The
maxim _Fecit cui prodest_ affords fair ground for this inference,
particularly when we remember the obvious improbability that the
Spanish ministry would have gratuitously set up a candidature which
must infallibly have brought their country into collision with its
formidable neighbour.
How the French Government fell into a net that had been spread for
them is to most of us sufficiently clear. Whether the emperor and his
ministers ought to have detected and avoided it, is the real question,
and it is practically the only question that concerns M. Ollivier. In
the final pages of his book, which touch in dignified and pathetic
words upon the injustice of the reproaches that have been heaped upon
him and the rancorous calumnies by which he has been pursued, his
readers are told that, having done his best to defend the cause of his
nation, he will terminate his work without taking up his personal
justification, though on one point he desires not to be misunderstood.
It has been pleaded on his behalf, he says, that he was in fact
opposed to the declaration of war, but agreed to it under the violent
pressure of public opinion, or else from reluctance to betray internal
dissensions that would have broken up the ministry, or for other
reasons. M. Ollivier insists, on the contrary, that after Bismarck's
'soufflet' he was convinced that peace could be maintained only at
the price of his country's abject humiliation; and that he chose the
alternative of war as infinitely preferable, without the least regard
to his personal reputation or interests. We may willingly agree that
M. Ollivier acted throughout from motives of high-minded patriotism,
and although we cannot acquit him on the charge of grave imprudence we
may freely admit that he was entangled in a situation of extraordinary
difficulty. To Englishmen, who are familiar with the regular and
recognised working of constitutional government, it will be plain that
he was the victim of a system that had placed him before the public as
the nominal head of a Cabinet that he was supposed to have formed, and
of a party in the Chamber that he was expected to lead. Whereas in
fact he had no proper control over the policy of the Cabinet, and no
solid support in the Chamber. The emperor presided at the meetings of
the Cabinet; and it is clear that the ultimate decision in the
supremely important departments of the army and of foreign affairs was
still reserved to the sovereign, on whom the Foreign Secretary (as we
should call him) could urge his views separately, and from whom he
could take orders independently of the first minister. In this
radically false position M. Ollivier found himself committed to
measures on which he had not been consulted, and hurried into
dangerous courses of action for which he had no recognised official
responsibility, since they were sanctioned by the emperor's
unquestionable authority. We have to remember, also, that in July
1870, liberal institutions had been no more than six months under
trial after eighteen years of autocratic rule, that the advocates of
the old _regime_ were numerous and openly hostile to the reforms, and
that all the ministers of the new _regime_ lacked experience in the
art and practice of constitutional administration. It is among those
conditions and circumstances that we must find some explanation of
their imprudence, and of their inability to make a stand against the
emperor's weakness, the clamour of hot-headed deputies, and the
war-cries of journalists; some excuse, in short, for the heedlessness
with which a well-meaning ministry stepped into the snare that had
been laid for them.
When, in 1871, the ex-emperor was told of M. Ollivier's earnest
protest against the cruel injustice of holding him alone answerable
for the national disasters, Napoleon is reported to have replied that
this responsibility must be shared by the ministry, the Chamber, and
himself.
'Si je n'avais pas voulu la guerre, j'aurais renvoye mes ministres;
si l'opposition etait venue d'eux, ils auraient donne leur
demission; enfin, si la Chambre avait ete contraire a l'entreprise,
elle eut vote contre.'[53]
In a broad and general sense this conclusion may be accepted, for all
parties concerned were heavily to blame; and manifestly the disasters
were the outcome of a situation in which weakness and rashness were
matched against unscrupulous statecraft and the deep-laid combinations
of a consummate strategist.