representative of Austria. There were however thirty-one States
exclusive of the free cities, represented in the last period of the
Diet's existence. The Diet was so constituted that each of the following
States or combination of States had one representative: Austria;
Prussia; Bavaria; Kingdom of Saxony; Hanover; Wuertemberg; Grand Duchy of
Baden; Electorate of Hesse; Grand Ducal Hesse; Denmark, for the Duchies
of Holstein and Lauenburg; The Netherlands, for Limburg and Luxemburg;
The Duchies of Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Saxe-Altenburg;
Brunswick and Nassau; The two Mecklenburgs (Schwerin and Strelitz);
Oldenburg, Anhalt and two Schwarzburgs (Rudolstadt and Sonderhausen);
Lichtenstein, Reuss, Schaumburg Lippe, Lippe Detmold, Waldeck and Hesse
Homburg; The free cities, Lubeck, Frankfort, Bremen and Hamburg.
The votes were equal. Sittings were secret.
On important occasions the assembly was resolved into what was called
the _plenum_, in which a greater number of votes were assigned to the
chief States, and the total number of voices was then increased to
seventy. In these cases a majority of three fourths was necessary for
any question to be carried.
The leading idea with the founders of the Diet was the preservation of
internal tranquillity, the next, the formation of a league which should
inspire other nations with respect.
Ambassadors were accredited to the Diet.--TRANSLATOR.
[5] Russian circular of the 27th May, 1859, concerning the war in Italy.
[6] This young lieutenant was M. de Bismarck. The _Landwehr_ is divided
into two levies. The soldier belongs to the first levy seven years, to
the second levy for a like period.--TRANSLATOR.
[7] A writer in a position to be well informed, a former under secretary
of state in the ministry of Prince Schwarzenberg, thus narrates the
origin of Russian intervention in Hungary, tracing it back to 1833, to
the celebrated interview of Munchengraetz between the Emperor Francis I.
of Austria and the Czar Nicholas. In one of the confidential
conversations, Francis spoke with sadness and apprehensions of the
sickly and nervous state of his son and prospective successor, and
begged the czar to maintain towards that son the friendship which he had
always had for the father. "Nicholas fell on his knees, and raising his
right hand to heaven, swore to give to the successor of Francis all aid
and succor he should ever need. The old Emperor of Austria was
profoundly touched, and placed his hands on the head of the kneeling
czar as a token of benediction." This strange scene had no witness, but
each of the two sovereigns narrated it some months later to a superior
officer who then commanded the division of the army stationed at
Munchengraetz. This superior officer was no other than the Prince of
Windischgraetz, who, later, in 1848, nominated and made generalissimo of
the Austrian army at the critical moment of the Hungarian insurrection,
took upon himself to recall to Nicholas, in a letter, the pledge
formerly given at Munchengraetz. The czar replied by placing his whole
army at the disposition of his imperial and apostolic majesty.--Cf.
Hefter, _Geschichte Oesterreichs_, Prague, 1869, vol. i. pp. 68-69.
[8] Session of the Prussian chamber of the 6th September, 1849. This
speech is not reproduced in the official collection of the _speeches_ of
M. de Bismarck published at Berlin.
[9] The battle of Sadowa, or as it is more commonly called in Germany, the
battle of Koenigsgraetz, was fought on the 3d of July, 1866, and decided the
result of the conflict between Prussia and Austria.--TRANSLATOR.
[10] We take the liberty of citing on this subject a piquante _scene
d'antichambre_ which has its instructive side. There was then at Vienna,
in the ministry of foreign affairs, a very original figure, an usher,
the memory of whom is not effaced at the Ballplatz. He bore the uncouth
name of Kadernoschka; placed in the large waiting room before the
cabinet of the minister, it was his duty to introduce the different
visitors to the chief. This M. Kadernoschka was an usher of great style:
he had been trained by the old Prince Metternich himself and loved to
recall that he had "exercised his functions" from the time of the famous
congress of 1815! One day, after a long interview with Prince
Gortchakof, Count Buol sees this good Kadernoschka entering with a more
than usually solemn air. He had a communication to make to his
Excellency "in the interest of the service!" And Count Buol learns that
the Russian envoy, after having left his Excellency, had appeared
entirely overcome and suffocating with anger,--that he had asked for a
glass of water; that for half an hour he had walked up and down in the
waiting room, gesticulating with violence, talking to himself, and
crying from time to time in French: "Oh! some day they shall pay me well
for that, they shall pay me for that!"
[11] Protocol of the conference of the 17th April, 1855.
[12] A religious ceremony which, in the Protestant Church, corresponds
in a certain degree to the first communion in the Catholic Church.
[13] Referring to Henry IV., Emperor of Germany from 1056 to 1106, who
humbled himself before Pope Gregory VII. at Canossa in 1077.--TRANSLATOR.
[14] Referring to the closing words of Cato's speeches: _Caeterum censeo
Carthaginem esse delendam_.--TRANSLATOR.
[15] Treaty of Gastein, 14th August, 1865, between Austria and Prussia
on the one side and Denmark on the other.--TRANSLATOR.
[16] _Sturm and Drang-Periode_, first period of Goethe and Schiller.
[17] Varzin, the Tusculum of the German chancellor, is situated in
Pomerania, to the right of the Stettin-Danzig road, and about ten miles
from Schlawe. The comfortable dwelling-house is almost surrounded by a
magnificent park of beech and oak trees. Varzin has been in M. de
Bismarck's possession since 1867.--TRANSLATOR.
[18] In the popular edition of the book of M. Hesekiel, this scene is
_illustrated_ by a vignette.
[19] Berlin is situated on the river Spree.--TRANSLATOR.
[20] Session of the chamber of the 15th November, 1849. One knows that
the chancellor of Germany has lately enacted a law which institutes
civil marriage in Prussia. However, none of the speeches which have been
cited is found in the official collection of the _speeches_ of M. de
Bismarck published at Berlin.
[21] Session of the chamber of the 21st April, 1849. See also the
interpellation of M. Temme in the session of the 17th April, 1863.
[22] A circular of Prince Schwarzenberg, made public by a calculated
indiscretion, after having related the incident of the telegraph, and
the desperate course of M. de Manteuffel as regards the Austrian
minister, added: "His majesty the Emperor thinks it his duty to comply
with the desire of the King of Prussia, _so modestly expressed_."
[23] Shakspere, _Henry IV._ part I. act iii. scene I.
[24] It does not, however, fail to be interesting, and to even have a
very piquant side. Still full of the conviction that they had made on
Denmark a war "eminently iniquitous, frivolous, and revolutionary," the
Prussian plenipotentiary to the _Bund_ labored, in 1852, very actively
in dissipating for the future a possible cause of perturbation, and
negotiated an Esau bargain with the Duke Christian-August Augustenburg,
the former upholder of _Schleswig-Holsteinism_, and eventual pretender
to the Duchies. Thanks to the intervention of M. de Bismarck, the old
duke signed for the sum of one million and a half rixdalers given by the
government of Copenhagen, a solemn act, by which he bound "_himself and
his family_, on his princely word and honor, to undertake nothing which
could disturb the tranquillity of the Danish monarchy." That did not
prevent the son of Christian from impudently insisting on his pretended
rights in 1863, nor even M. de Bismarck from supporting them for a
certain time, up to the moment when the famous syndics of the crown cast
the doubt in the soul of the first minister at Berlin and proved to him
that the Duchies, belonging by right to no one, belonged to King William
by the fact of conquest.
[25] The minister of Nassau, Baron Max de Gagern was at the head of this
deputation.
II.
A NATIONAL MINISTER AND A FAULT-FINDING DIPLOMAT AT ST. PETERSBURG.
I.
In the prodigious development which advanced the empire of the czars
after the impulse which the genius of Peter the Great had given it, one
can certainly signalize more than one Russian minister of foreign
affairs whose name has a right to be commemorated by history. For
instance, the mind of Count Panine was not an ordinary one, who
conceived and caused to be accepted by different states the idea of
_armed neutrality_ at sea, and this at an epoch when Russia scarcely
began to be reckoned among the maritime powers of the second or third
class. If in this bold conception, as well as in the still more
interesting attempts of Panine to limit the absolute power of the czars
by aristocratic institutions, the remote influence of an Italian origin
could be seen (the Panine descended from the Pagnini of Lucca), one
cannot, however, overlook the perfectly indigenous, largely,
autochthonal character of another famous minister of the same century,
that of the Chancellor Bestoujef, whose figure Rulhiere has drawn so
very originally. Bestoujef, who spoke perfectly, feigned stammering, and
had the courage to simulate this defect for seventeen years. In his
conversations with foreign ambassadors he stammered in such a manner as
not to be understood. He also complained of being deaf, of not
understanding all the _finesses_ of the French language, and had the
same thing repeated a thousand times. He was in the habit of writing
diplomatic notes with his own hand in a manner perfectly illegible. They
were sent back to him and sometimes he could decipher their meaning.
Having fallen into disgrace, Bestoujef immediately recovered his speech,
hearing, and all the senses.
Very different is the type which was presented during all of the first
half of this century by the immediate predecessor of Prince Gortchakof,
the chancellor of the emperors Alexander I. and Nicholas. Connected with
Germany by origin and the interests of his family, never even having
learned to speak the language of the country whose relations with other
powers he watched over, Count Charles Robert de Nesselrode did not the
less complete a long and laborious career to the satisfaction of his two
august masters, and figured with honor in congresses and conferences at
the side of Talleyrand and Metternich. Without having recourse to the
too Asiatic subterfuges of a Bestoujef, Count Nesselrode knew and
practiced all the allowable tricks of the profession, and few men
equaled him in the art of preserving an air of dignity and ease in the
midst of the most embarrassing situations. He knew how to change his
conduct without too great a change of language, and among other things
managed in a very delicate manner the transition between the policy of
the czar Alexander I. (unfavorable to the Greeks) and the frankly
philhellenic sympathies of his successor. During the last Oriental
crisis he placed all the resources of a shrewd and subtle mind at the
service of a cause in which he saw nothing but grave dangers, and of
which he ignored the national and religious side completely. Differing
from Bestoujef, and much more European in this sense than in many
others, M. de Nesselrode lost in his disgrace or rather in his retreat,
the greater part of his faculties and his virtues, and above all caused
an immense deception by his posthumous memoirs, composed in the decline
of life and of a hopeless insignificance. But perhaps this was nothing
but a last trait of cleverness and diplomatic malice in order to deceive
on this point profane curiosity, and to leave behind him a work as empty
and uninstructive as possible of a life so well filled.
Not one, however, of the Russian statesmen who have just been named was
a great minister in the Occidental acceptation of the word. No one of
them (in order to make comparisons in absolute monarchies only) had the
position of a Duke de Choiseul in France during the last century, the
authority of a Prince Clement de Metternich in Austria in the present
century, or even the notoriety and popularity which Prince Gortchakof
actually enjoys in Russia itself. Bestoujef, Panine, Nesselrode were,
one may say, much better known abroad than in their own country, and
their contemporaries were far from attributing to them the merit which
posterity later saw in them, thanks to the posthumous revelations of the
archives. No one of them was raised to power by a current of opinion,
nor sustained in his position by public favor; not one of them
pretended to show an individuality, to impress a personal direction on
the affairs, which he conducted. This is because since Peter the Great
to the present government, the _eclat_ of the imperial name in Russia
cast into the shade every other name, and instead of being a favorite or
a great captain, every state servant was only the subaltern executor of
a single and absolute will. The external policy, above all, was then
considered as the exclusive domain of the sovereign, and the very fixity
of the system rendered in some degree secondary and unimportant the
question of the persons charged with fulfilling it. In fact, from the
time of Peter the Great, the Russian government has always had in its
relations with Europe certain traditions approved by experience, and
certain sacred principles, from which it never deviated even in a small
degree. The minister of foreign affairs at St. Petersburg, whatever his
name might be, always had to labor to augment Russian _prestige_ among
the Christian populations of the Orient, to guard the maintenance of the
equilibrium of power between Austria and Prussia, and to extend the
influence of his government among the secondary States of Germany. To
these rules, so to speak, elementary and invariable, of the external
Russian policy, there was added from the year 1815 an international
principle of preservation, a superior idea of solidarity between the
governments for the defense of established order, the feeling of the
duties and of the common interests created in the representatives of the
monarchical authority in opposition to subversive passions sprung from
the revolution, and it was this _ensemble_ of the views and convictions
of the two emperors Alexander I. and Nicholas which Count Nesselrode
had, during almost half a century, to enforce, in all the acts and
documents emanating from the chancellor's office at St. Petersburg.
It has been the destiny of the successor of Count Nesselrode to break
little by little with all this _ensemble_ of traditions and principles,
and to inaugurate for the empire of the czars, in its external
relations, an entirely new policy. One may dispute the merit of this
policy, and dispute it the more widely as it is still far from having
borne all its fruit. What is indisputable and astonishes at first sight,
is that Prince Gortchakof has been able to attach his name to a change
of system which is marked in the diplomatic annals of his country, and
to create for himself, as minister of foreign affairs in Russia, a
situation entirely personal, an important position, such as none of his
predecessors ever had. Alexander Mikhailovitch is not only the faithful
servant of his august master, he is the veritable chief of his
department, the directing minister; he accepts boldly his part of the
responsibility, and above all his share of the _eclat_ in the different
transactions of Europe. An equally new phenomenon in Russia, this
minister not only retains the favor of his sovereign, but also that of
the nation. He manages the public opinion of his country, he watches
over it, sometimes he even flatters it, and it repays him. It has had
some moments of infatuation for Alexander Mikhailovitch, even some
moments of enthusiasm,--after the affairs of Poland; more than that, it
has in a measure brought forward and created him. This elevation of the
plenipotentiary of Vienna to the high position left vacant by Count
Nesselrode in the month of April, 1856, was not without its results.
In 1815, on his triumphal return from the congress of Vienna, Alexander
could select as he wished from the celebrated men who then formed the
_etat-major_ of Russian diplomacy, the least known and the most humble
of this illustrious body. Passing over Capo d'Istria, Pozzo di Borgo,
Ribeaupierre, Razoumovsky, Stakelberg, d'Anstett, it was lawful for him
to confide the direction of the external policy to a German gentleman of
Westphalian origin, born at Lisbon, and Russian only by naturalization.
In 1856, after the congress of Paris, the choice of Prince Gortchakof
for the same position was, we will not say imposed, but certainly
indicated to the Emperor Alexander II. by the voice of the people, or,
if one likes it better, by that voice of the _salons_ which did not
delay at this moment in taking more and more a popular tone. And since
his _debut_ at the Hotel of the Place du Palais the former pupil of
Zarkoe-Zeloe distinguished himself by liberal ways and advances made in
a public spirit, which must have occasionally astonished his
predecessor, still living and in possession of the honored title of
chancellor. For the first time, a Russian minister had _mots_, not only
for the _salons_, but also for the lecture halls and the bureaux of
journalists, words which went straight to the heart of the great lady
and country gentleman, the humble student and proud officer of the
_gardes_. His aphorism on Austria[26] went the rounds of all the
Russias. Another aphorism, taken from a circular, soon transported the
nation: the celebrated phrase, "Russia does not sulk, but meditates,"
seemed to be dictated by the very soul of the people, and drew from it a
cry of enthusiasm. It was then that one remembered the awakening of the
Russian spirit after a long period of compression; the journals, the
thoughtful periodicals, inaugurated their joyful _ebats_, the authors,
the literary men, began to have an importance hitherto unknown;
Alexander Mikhailovitch, who always displayed a liking and sympathy for
Russian literature, the former fellow scholar of Pouchkine, passed for a
patriotic statesman in the eyes of Pogodine, Axakof, Katkof, etc. One
perceived that he had a great hatred for Austria, a pronounced desire
for the French alliance, and the nation, which also shared equally and
even in an exaggerated manner, these two sentiments, saluted in him the
national minister _par excellence_. A strange comparison, well made to
demonstrate the inanity of words and the instability of things on earth,
is the manner in which the most decided partisan of the empire of the
Hapsburg, M. de Bismarck, the future conqueror of Sadowa, entered into
the _caenaculum_ of diplomats; and at the same time it was the implacable
enemy of the Germans and the warm friend of the French whom, in 1856,
the Russians exalted above all in the person of their vice-chancellor,
the statesman who, later, by a policy of omission and commission, was to
favor as no one else did, the dismemberment of France and the
constitution of a Germany greater, more powerful, and more formidable
than the history of past centuries has ever known! It is true that by
the "Germans" the Russia of 1856 meant principally the Austrians,[27]
and that in the France of that day it admired above all a certain
absolutism in the democratic instincts which showed itself touched with
the misfortunes of Italy, which professed to sympathize with Roumania,
Servia, Montenegro, and which had not yet pronounced the fatal name of
Poland.
"Calm yourself," the emperor of the French said to M. de Cavour, in the
month of April, 1856, after the closing of the congress of Paris,--"Calm
yourself; I have a presentiment that the present peace will not last
long."[28] Prince Gortchakof had without doubt the same presentiment,
and perhaps others more positive in this respect. The thought of "making
war for an idea," the thought of freeing Italy, had long been fixed in
the mind of Napoleon III.; at the moment of signing the treaty of Paris
"with an eagle's feather," he let his hidden and dreaming glance fall on
the classic plains of Lombardy. Now, for the enterprise which France
meditated against Austria, and in which it could scarcely count on an
angry neutrality of England, it was thought useful to secure in good
season the friendship of Russia and Prussia. Prussia had emerged from
the Oriental crisis very much weakened with its policy "of the free
hand;" England, Austria, and Turkey had even had little desire to admit
it to the honors of the congress. The president of the council at
Berlin, M. de Manteuffel, was obliged to wait long in the antechamber,
while the plenipotentiaries of Europe were in full deliberation, and it
was only at the instance of the emperor of the French that the Prussian
envoy was at last admitted. Napoleon III. insisted absolutely, in 1856,
on allowing _that_ Prussia to retake its position in Europe which
fourteen years later was to dethrone him! As for Russia, we have already
spoken of the politenesses and cordialities of which Count Orlof was the
recipient from France during all the time of the congress. Since then,
in the successive arrangements of the various difficulties which the
execution of some of the clauses of the treaty of Paris caused to arise
(Belgrade, Isle of Serpents, navigation of the Danube, etc.), one saw
the arguments or interpretations of the Russian plenipotentiary
sustained almost constantly by the plenipotentiary of France. In the
different and numerous conferences and commissions which followed in
these years, 1856-1859, for regulating the pending questions, the
distribution of the votes was almost invariably thus: England and
Austria on one side, on the other France, Russia, and Prussia.[29]
Although Prince Gortchakof acknowledged with good grace all these
attentions of the cabinet of the Tuileries, he was not sufficiently
complaisant to follow it in a campaign of remonstrances against the
government of Naples, a campaign undertaken in concert with the cabinet
of Saint James, in consequence of the famous letters addressed to Lord
Aberdeen by M. Gladstone on the _regime_ of King Ferdinand II. A similar
intermeddling in the internal affairs of an independent state did not
seem very correct in the eyes of the successor of Count Nesselrode; but
he was the more forward in seconding the Emperor Napoleon III. in his
generous designs every time that there was a question of ameliorating
the lot of the Christian populations in the Ottoman empire, of
augmenting their autonomy, and, as was said then, of _reforming the
Turk_. "To reform the Turk," maliciously thought M. Thouvenel,
ambassador of France at Constantinople, "it is necessary to begin by
first impaling him;" one commenced, however, by applying to him the
question of _hatt-houmayoum_, by interrogating him concerning his
intentions in favor of the rajahs of Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Herzegovina,
and by thus annoying in a certain degree the cabinets of Vienna and
London. Much greater was naturally the solicitude for the vassal States
of the good padishah, for Moldavia, Wallachia, Servia, and Montenegro;
these States already had a demi-independence, they made it possible to
render it entire.