heedlessness not less culpable with which Europe encouraged and fanned
it. Europe, which had not dared to touch the Polish question during the
war of the Crimea, thought it opportune to sympathize, to trifle with it
in this moment, the most ill-timed and the most desperate! Lord John
Russell was the first to enter the lists. In 1861 he wrote the famous
despatch to Sir J. Hudson, and persuaded himself and England that by it
he had delivered Italy. The year afterwards, in the celebrated dispatch
of Gotha, he conceived for Denmark a most original constitution in four
parts, with four parliaments, and thus gave the signal for the
dismemberment of the Scandinavian monarchy. This time he believed that
he ought to recommend parliamentary institutions for Poland; and to the
observation of the Russian ambassador that it would be difficult for the
czar to favor on this point his Polish subjects over his own national
ones, he naively asked why he would not extend the same benefit to all
the Russias?[40] Count Rechberg, the fatal minister who then directed
the external affairs at Vienna, experienced on his part the desire of
showing himself compassionate; he accorded himself the malicious and
very costly pleasure of paying the cabinet of St. Petersburg, in Polish
coin, for the sympathies which this latter had shown for the Italian
cause. As if Austria had not already suffered enough from the imaginary
grievances of the Muscovites as regards the pretended "treason" during
the war of the Crimea, it desired to give it very legitimate grievances
by a very real "connivance"[41] in Gallicia; Gallicia became, in fact,
the refuge, the depot of arms, and the place of revictualing for the
insurgents of the kingdom.
It is just to acknowledge that the French government had long hesitated
before starting on a way so perilous. From the first period of the
Polish agitation, a note published in the "Moniteur" of the 23d April,
1861, had put the press and public opinion on guard against "the
supposition that the government of the emperor encouraged hopes which it
could not satisfy."
"The generous ideas of the czar," continued the note of the "Moniteur,"
"are a certain gauge of his desire of realizing the ameliorations of
which the state of Poland admits, and we should wish that it be not
hindered by irritating manifestations." The French government persevered
in this sensible and perfectly amicable attitude towards the czar during
the years 1861 and 1862, in spite of the interest which the Parisian
press did not cease to take in the "dramatic" events of Warsaw, in spite
of several animated debates which were held in the English parliament,
and which were rather addressed to France than to Russia. The Britannic
statesmen in fact had not thought it useless during those two years 1861
and 1862 to slightly embarrass the cabinet of the Tuileries in its very
pronounced liking for the Russian alliance by the frequent and
sympathetic evocation of the name of Poland. Lord Palmerston
especially, in a very _witty_ speech on the 4th April 1862, exalted the
Poles, praised their "indomitable, inextinguishable, inexhaustible"
patriotism, while not neglecting to recall to them the cruel deceptions
which a French emperor had already caused them "at another epoch."
Napoleon III. always resisted the unguarded emotions at home, as well as
the selfish excitements from abroad. Even on the 5th February, after the
breaking out of the fatal revolt, M. Billault, the minister-orator in
the midst of the legislative body, harshly qualified the Polish
insurrection as the work of "revolutionary passions," and insisted with
force on the danger of "useless words and vain protestations;" but the
noisy language of the English ministers, the enigmatical attitude of
Austria, and lastly the military convention which M. de Bismarck
concluded with Russia (8th February, 1863), and which he made public,
ended by involving him. After having done so much for seven years to
gain the Russian "cordiality," after having sacrificed to it almost all
the fruits of the war of the Orient, Napoleon III. overturned brusquely
a scaffolding so laboriously constructed, and prepared to organize
against the government of the czar a _great European remonstrance_ of
which the first and terrible effect was naturally to increase in Poland
the torrent of blood and tears. The general cry at Warsaw was then that
the insurrection must last to justify the intervention of Europe,[42]
that it was necessary to let as much Polish blood flow as sympathetic
ink flowed from the chancellors' offices. One knows the deplorable
issue of this great diplomatic campaign, which lasted nine months, and
only served to demonstrate the profound disagreement between the Powers
of the East. The foreign intermeddling wounded the pride of Russia, and
impelled it to undertake against the Polish nationality a work of
general, methodical, implacable extermination, and one from which it has
never since desisted. However frivolous the diplomatic tourney of the
Occidental Powers in favor of Poland was, the Russians did not the less
think that they had been menaced with a moment of extreme peril, and
that they had only escaped, thanks to the firmness of their "national"
minister, to his patriotic courage, to his acute, dignified, and
vigorous dispatches. Certainly the minister is, humanly speaking, very
excusable for not having protested against a belief so flattering: he
let it go, he let it be said that he had repulsed a new invasion and had
"overcome Europe:" _scripsit et salvavit!_ He was made chancellor, he
received enthusiastic ovations from his compatriots, he became the idol
of the nation by the side of M. Katkof and the sanguinary Mouravief.
During a whole year he did not attend a single banquet in the most
obscure corner of Russia without these three names "saviors and blessed"
being celebrated by speeches, feted in toasts, congratulated by
telegrams, and, whatever repugnance the descendant of the Rourik and the
foster child of the classical humanities must have felt in his spiritual
tribunal at being thus constantly coupled with a fierce journalist and
with a frightful executioner, he made the sacrifice to his love for his
country and for popularity. In his well meaning ardor to receive the
homage which came to him from all sides, he even so far forgot himself
one day as to thank with a stereotyped smile the German nobility of the
Baltic provinces for a diploma as honorary citizen which had been sent
him, and the national party reproached him with a certain bitterness for
the "culpable delight" to which he gave way on this occasion. Alexander
Mikhailovitch had all the honors of the sad campaign of 1863; the
profits of it went to another, to the former colleague of Frankfort, to
the president of the council at Berlin, who was to find in it a solid
and assured basis for all the great strategy in the future. We will show
how the balance sheet of the situation, which created, towards the end
of 1863, the _great European remonstrance_ in the affairs of Poland,
presented itself to the interests and the hopes of Prussia: the happy
quiet of England was duly established; France and Russia were from this
time forward embroiled, and in an irreparable manner; the resentment
against Austria had grown stronger than ever at St. Petersburg, and also
the Prussian minister had more than ever the right of counting on the
grateful friendship, on the devotion to any extent, of Prince
Gortchakof; lastly, it was not so difficult to foresee that after his
signal check of Warsaw the Caesar of the new right would hasten to cast
his glances on Venice, to wish to "do something for Italy," and would
therefore favor more benevolently "a young power of the North" in its
enterprises against the Hapsburg, to whom the Napoleonic ideology had
long since assigned "a great destiny in Germany."
It would, however, do too much honor to human genius to credit M. de
Bismarck with a clear and precise view at first sight of all the
favorable, even prodigious consequences, which the fatal insurrection in
Poland was to bring him. Many circumstances seemed rather to indicate
that, especially in the beginning, the Prussian minister only groped and
sought his way in unfrequented paths. A curious matter, and which
perhaps might give cause for reflection even to-day, M. de Bismarck, who
had certainly studied Russia well, who had lived there for several
years, and had just left it, seems to have very seriously doubted the
strength of this empire in 1863, and doubted it so far that he did not
even think it capable of conquering in that miserable affray with the
unhappy Polish youth! He expressed his fears on this point before the
plenipotentiaries of England and Austria,[43] and went so far one day as
to become very confidential on this subject to the vice-president of the
Prussian chamber, M. Behrend. "This question," said the minister of
William I., towards the middle of the month of February, "can be solved
in two ways: it is either necessary to stifle the insurrection promptly
in concert with Russia, and to come before the Eastern Powers with an
accomplished fact, or one can let the situation develop and aggravate
itself; wait till the Russians are driven from the kingdom, or reduced
to invoke aid, and then _proceed boldly and occupy the kingdom for
Prussia_; at the end of three years all of it will be Germanized.... But
that is a ball-room plan which you propose to me, cried out the
stupefied vice-president (the conversation took place at a court ball).
No, was the answer: I am speaking seriously of serious things. The
Russians are tired of the kingdom, the Emperor Alexander himself told me
at St. Petersburg."[44] This thought of recovering the line of the
Vistula, lost since Jena, haunted more than once the mind of M. de
Bismarck during the year 1863: let it be well understood, he did not
wish to obtain the "rectification of the frontier" except with the
consent of the Emperor Alexander II., but he did not neglect the means
which could force to a slight extent such a solution. One of the most
intimate confidants of the minister, and now the representative of
Germany to the court of King Victor Emmanuel, M. de Keudell, proprietor
of vast domains in the kingdom of Poland, profited by his relations with
the prominent men of the unhappy country to advise them on several
occasions to look to Berlin for help, to demand there, for instance, a
_temporary_ Prussian occupation which would render them not liable to
Russian duty! In looking carefully into the history of this fatal
insurrection, one will perhaps find there other Prussian agents, much
more obscure, but also much more compromising than M. de Keudell. Did
the president of the council at Berlin seriously hope to obtain so much
from the "lassitude" of the Emperor Alexander and the friendship of the
Prince Gortchakof?
Whatever these hopes or _arriere-pensees_ were, M. de Bismarck used a
restless ardor in making evident from the time of his _debut_ his
absolute solidarity with the Russian vice-chancellor as opposed to the
East. He offered him a military convention in the most spontaneous, even
impetuous manner; he undertook his defense on every occasion, and did
not cease to aid him faithfully, ardently, in passages of diplomatic
arms with the cabinets of England, France, and Austria, experiencing
with pleasure the first fire of the notes of M. Drouyn de Lhuys,
supporting with joy the universal clamors of the press, responding with
haughtiness to the interpellations of his parliament. The great men of
the progressionist party understood nothing, on this occasion as on so
many others, of the policy of their "Polignac;" they thought it
inopportune, perilous, and demanded where the German interest was in all
that? To which the Polignac replied one day in the chamber with this
veiled and yet very significant image, that, "Placed before the
chess-board of diplomacy, _the profane spectator_ believes the game
ended at every new piece that he sees advanced, and can even fall into
the illusion that the player is changing his objective point."
Certainly M. de Bismarck did not change his objective point at all, and
always had in mind the aggrandizement of Prussia; but it is evident that
up to the autumn of that year, 1863, he had no well-fixed plan; he
"moved his pieces" in different directions, and awaited the inspiration
of chance to know from what side he should strike "the blow,"--from the
Main, from the Vistula, or from the Elbe? He had aimed at Cassel for a
moment, and had thrown himself with some bluster into the constitutional
conflict of this country with the elector; he had even given on this
occasion the pleasing spectacle of a minister intervening in a
neighboring state to force the prince there to the most strict
observation of parliamentary rule, while himself governing without
regard for the constitution, and by means of taxes levied contrary to
the vote of the chamber. Without speaking of the adventurous projects
which were cherished at Berlin touching a possible rectification of
frontier from the side of the Vistula, on the banks of the Elbe there
was the old, everlasting question of the Duchies, a question hushed up
since the treaty of London, but reawakened anew in 1859 in consequence
of the events in Italy, and become even more dangerous since a famous
dispatch, mortal for Denmark, which Lord John Russell, in a moment of
inconceivable thoughtlessness, had issued from Gotha, the 24th
September, 1862,--precisely the day of M. de Bismarck's accession to the
ministry! The secondary States, the Diet of Frankfort, and M. de
Rechberg himself, had become very ardent, and vied with each other in
German patriotism in this cause of Schleswig-Holstein, a cause which at
bottom they thought to be chimerical, and by which they only wished to
embarrass Prussia, to convince it of "national lukewarmness." The
temptation became great to take at their word the secondary States, the
Diet of Frankfort, even Austria, to unite them against Denmark in a war
which would give Prussia the magnificent port of Kiel, and would permit
it, moreover, to try the "instrument" which King William I. "had been
perfecting" for four years, ... provided that the war could be
_localized_, and that the European Powers would not put themselves in
the way as in 1848! The president of the council at Berlin did not
entirely despair of succeeding by patient and wise manoeuvres. He
counted on the friendship of Prince Gortchakof, on different political
constellations, finally on the strange confusion, and, to speak with
Montaigne, on "the great hubbub of brains" which certain principles of
the new right and of nationality had introduced into each chancellor's
office of the Continent. He said to himself occasionally, that in this
grave enterprise he would certainly have for a determined adversary only
that good Lord Russell, who, after his fatal dispatch of Gotha, had
again altered his mind, had even constituted himself the advocate, the
protector, and the _mentor_ of the unfortunate government of Copenhagen:
such a partner did not greatly frighten the bold cavalier of the Mark.
At first, however, and as long as the negotiations on Poland lasted, the
cavalier of the Mark thought that he ought to use prudence and simulate
to the cabinet of Saint James extreme indifference on the subject of
this "vexatious" affair of the Duchies. Nothing is more instructive than
to follow in the state papers, as well as in the documents communicated
to the _Rigsraad_, the intimate and almost daily effusions by which M.
de Bismarck had been able to persuade, up to the last hour, not only
Lord Russell and his envoy Sir A. Buchanan, but also M. de Quade, the
Danish minister at the court of Berlin, that this question of
Schleswig-Holstein was a _hobby_ of the secondary States and of Austria,
that Prussia was far from sharing those Teutonic effervescences and
concupiscences, and that it would do all that lay in its power to calm,
to allay them. The 14th October, 1863, two weeks after the Diet of
Frankfort had decreed the federal execution in Holstein, M. de Bismarck
stipulated in a conversation with the envoy of Great Britain, Sir A.
Buchanan, to _prevent this execution_, if Denmark accepted the English
mediation.[45] Denmark accepted it, and Lord Russell could at last
breathe. Moreover, on the 6th November, 1863, M. Quade wrote from Berlin
to his government: "The first minister of Prussia, be it on account of
his personal views, or on account of the attitude taken by England, has
put the affair in a position that _exceeds greatly all that one could
have hoped_. I am not certain whether the question is regarded at Vienna
with the same clearness and the same warmth (warmth for the interests of
Denmark!) as it is here." Thus Sir A. Buchanan and M. Quade still judged
the situation on the 6th November. But they were not slow in being
brusquely awakened from their illusions by a despairing dispatch from
the principal secretary of state, dated the 9th November, and couched in
these terms: "If the information which reaches me is exact, M. de
Bismarck no longer offers any objection (_n'oppose plus aucune
objection_) to the federal execution in Holstein; the government of her
majesty can only leave to Germany the responsibility of exposing Europe
to a general war." The information was unfortunately only too correct,
and the vexations of the good Johnny commenced.
Two important facts had taken place in the interval of three weeks which
had passed since the conversation of the 14th October; in this interval,
the cabinet of Saint James had abandoned to the Russian government the
affairs of Poland, and the Emperor Napoleon III. had launched into the
world a fantastic project of a congress _for the arrangement of all the
pending questions_! Charmed in the highest degree with the aid which M.
de Bismarck lent him in this month of October in the Danish
difficulties, the principal secretary of state had at last decided to
make him the sacrifice so often demanded, of the Polish question, even
to recall by telegraph a courier, bearer of a very comminatory note
addressed to the government at St. Petersburg, and to replace this
missive by a most humble dispatch, which renounced all ulterior
controversy on this subject (20th October).[46] On his part, the
Emperor of the French, kept informed of these intrigues, profoundly
vexed at this abandonment by England, and not being able to resolve to
accept his check, nor, above all, to make the avowal of it without
ceremony before the legislative body, had thought (5th November) of that
call for a general congress which only increased the uneasiness of
Europe, and especially inspired the chief of the foreign office with
unspeakable fears. Not content with replying to the invitation of the
cabinet of the Tuileries by a most bitter and offensive note, Lord John
Russell bestirred himself to preserve the foreign courts from the
contagion of the French idea; he almost entirely lost from view the
dangers of Denmark, and only cared to combat the project of Napoleon
III., a project assuredly without vitality, and which, in order to die
its natural death, had no need of such a display of British forces. The
president of the Prussian council thought that the moment had come to
begin his game. The last shadow of an Eastern understanding disappeared;
only the alliance of Russia and Prussia remained intact, unshaken, in
the midst of the general disorder of the cabinets. No European concerted
action for the protection of Denmark was to be feared. M. de Bismarck
could now "no longer have any objection" to the federal execution in
Holstein; and soon an unhoped-for event, one of those magnificent
strokes of fortune, such as the minister of William I. has so often met
with in his marvelous career, proved that he was decidedly in luck. The
sudden death of King Frederick VII. (15th November, 1863) has something
so tragical, so fatal to the destinies of Denmark, that it makes one
think of one of the most disconsolate sayings that antiquity has
bequeathed to us, that mournful cry of the historian: "_Non esse curae
deis securitatem nostram, esse ultionem._"
This death gave in truth an entirely new turn to the Teutonic demands
towards the unfortunate Scandinavian monarchy. Germany did not content
itself with a federal execution in Holstein; it pretended not to
recognize the sovereignty of the new king, Christian IX., in the
Duchies, and wished to enthrone there that intriguing and treacherous
family of Augustenburg from whom M. de Bismarck himself had lately
obtained the retraxit for one million and a half _rixdalers_ paid by the
government of Copenhagen. And it was only from this moment that the
plans of the minister of William I. seemed to be finally settled;
decidedly it was from the side of the Elbe that Prussia was to begin to
"round itself" and complete its unity! The resolution once made, M. de
Bismarck carried it out with ardor, with audacity, with incomparable
acuteness. This trial stroke was a master stroke; and the great
Machiavelli would certainly have found a "divine" pleasure in
contemplating the address, or, as he would have said, the _virtu_ with
which the cavalier of the Mark knew how, in the space of some weeks, to
engross the attention of this poor Lord Russell; to encircle the Emperor
Napoleon; to involve Austria in a distant expedition equally unjust and
foolish; to make use of and at the same time oust the _Bund_; to strike
the secondary States with terror and throw off their _protege_; lastly,
to take into his own hands the holy cause of the German country, and,
according to the word of the Apostle, make himself all things to all
men!