cannot, however, refuse to reply to a summons addressed to me
by an upright heart, and in the name of Christ. I am
profoundly pained at scandalizing Christians who have faith,
but I have the certainty that it is an inevitable
circumstance in my position. I will not yet speak of the
parties who are necessarily opposed to me in politics, and
who not the less count in their midst a great number of
Christians, who have far preceded me in the way of salvation,
and with whom, nevertheless, I am obliged to be in conflict
on account of matters which, in my estimation as well as
theirs, are terrestrial; I appeal only to what you yourself
said: 'That nothing that is omitted or committed in the
elevated regions remains hidden.' Where is the man who, in a
similar situation, would not cause scandal, rightly or
wrongly? I will grant you much more still, for your
expression 'does not remain hidden' is not exact. Would to
God that apart from the sin the world knows I had not upon my
soul others which remain unknown, and for which I can only
hope for pardon in my faith in the blood of Christ! As a
statesman, I even think that I use far too much
consideration; according to my idea I am rather cowardly, and
that perhaps because it is not so easy in the questions
which come before me to arrive always at that clearness at
the bottom of which confidence in God exists. He who
reproaches me with being a political man without conscience,
wrongs me; he should first commence by himself testing his
conscience on the field of battle. As regards the matter of
Virchow, I have long since passed the age in which, on
similar questions, one seeks counsel from flesh and blood. If
I expose my life for a cause, I do it not only in this faith
which I have fortified by a long and painful combat, but also
by fervent and humble prayer before God; this faith, the word
of man cannot shake, not even the word of a friend in the
Lord, and of a servant of the church. It is not true that I
have never attended a church. For just seven months, I have
been either absent from Berlin or ill; who then can have made
the observation on my negligence? I willingly agree that it
has often happened, much less for want of time than for
considerations of health, especially in the winter; I am
always ready to give more detailed explanations to all those
who consider it their vocation to be my judges in this
matter: as for you, you will believe me without other details
of medicine. As to the Lucca photograph, you would probably
judge less severely, if you knew to what chance it owes its
origin. Besides, Mlle. Lucca, although a _cantatrice_, is a
lady whom the world has never, any more than it has me,
reproached with illicit relations. Nevertheless, I would have
certainly taken care to keep away from the glass pointed at
us, if I had in a tranquil moment reflected on the scandal
which so many faithful friends would find in this jest. You
see by the details into which I enter that I consider your
letter as well meant, and that I do not dream in any way of
placing myself above the judgment of those who share with me
the same faith; but I expect from your friendship and from
your Christian knowledge which you commend to others, in
future circumstances, more indulgence and charity in their
judgments: all of us have need of them. I am of the great
number of sinners to whom the glory of God is wanting; I do
not hope the less with them that in His mercy, He will not
withdraw from me the staff of the humble faith by the aid of
which I seek to find my way in the midst of the doubts and
dangers of my position; this confidence, however, should not
render me deaf to the reproaches of friends, nor impatient at
proud and harsh judgments."
Let us lock up the hair shirt with the discipline; let us only think of
the diplomat in tunic and helmet, of the "iron count" (_der eiserne
Graf_), as his people soon called him, and let us look at the
disposition of France towards him at the moment when, after having left
the rugged valley of Gastein, he prepared to visit the delightful region
of Biarritz, to salute, interrogate, divine, and ... cast down the
sphinx!
In the councils of the empire the debates had become from day to day
sharper between the ancients and the moderns, between those zealous for
the new right and the partisans of a more circumspect and traditional
policy, in proportion as the Austro-Prussian conflict had grown more
bitter and aggravated. The ardent ones would have willingly concluded an
offensive and defensive alliance with Prussia. They showed the
irresistible movement which was drawing Germany towards unity, and the
advantages which France would reap by favoring this evolution in place
of opposing it, by attaching to itself by the ties of an eternal
recognition the Piedmont of Germany, as it had already done with that of
the peninsula. Passionate friends of Italy, and still more violent
adversaries of Austria, this bulwark of the reaction, of legitimacy and
of temporal power, they cherished in the kingdom of Frederick the Great
the incontestable representative of civilization, and trembled at seeing
it going toward certain defeat in an unequal contest with the
_Kaiserliks_. To hear them, the united action of France, Italy, and
Prussia was not too much to preserve the cause of progress and to place
Europe on new and immovable bases. Why, however, should not Belgium be
the legitimate recompense of the French efforts in favor of Germany, as
Savoy had been in consequence of the constitution of the kingdom of
Italy, and how decline a combination in which each of the three nations
representing _par excellence_ modern ideas on the Continent was called
to complete its respective unity?
Very different was in this respect the sentiment of the "ancients," the
statesmen of the old school, of a whole political group of which M.
Drouyn de Lhuys was in the cabinet the most authorized and clearsighted,
if not the firmest. First casting aside all desire for Belgium, as a
certain cause of a formidable conflict with England, they asserted the
absolute impossibility of finding for France a compensation, however
small it might be, in proportion to the injury which the unification of
Germany would cause it. Without misunderstanding the Germanic
aspirations for a federal reform, for a more homogeneous and united
constitution, they asked what obligation France was under to hasten such
a work, and if in any case it were not more desirable that such a
transformation should be accomplished by the enlightened and pacific
classes, by the federal diet, even by Austria,--always respecting
acquired rights and particular sovereignties,--rather than by a power
peculiarly military, bureaucratic, and centralistic? Was not that also
the almost general wish of the other side of the Rhine, of the dynasties
as well as of the chambers, of the princes as well as of the peoples,
and had not the pretension of Prussia, among others, of confiscating for
its own profit the conquest of Denmark aroused the consciences of all of
them? Only the press of France and Italy which persisted in speaking of
"the Piedmontese mission" of the Hohenzollern; on the banks of the Main
and Elbe, every one rejected this pretended mission, and even the
_National-Verein_, brought into contempt some time before while
demanding "a united Germany with a Prussian point," did not the less
repudiate M. de Bismarck, and declared him unworthy of taking in hand so
holy a cause. As to the danger of seeing Prussia succumb in the
conflict, and thus render the Hapsburg all powerful in Germany, there
was a very simple means of preventing such an eventuality, that was to
refuse the government of Berlin any aid in the enterprise which it
meditated. However bold in truth M. de Bismarck was, it was not doubtful
that he would never dare to defy Austria and its allies of the _Bund_ in
the face of a formal veto of France, which at the same time would take
from him all hope of aid from Italy.[53] The plan to follow in such
events seemed then as clearly indicated as singularly easy. Without
mixing directly in German affairs, without wounding at all the Teutonic
susceptibilities, one could oppose an insuperable barrier to Prussian
ambition; one had only to maintain the _statu quo_. Such a policy would
inevitably have the warm support of England, and would encourage the
resistance of Austria and the secondary States. Without doubt, the
Venetian question would be thus warded off; but, besides that, the peace
of Europe and the greatness of France were well worth "the pearl of the
Adriatic;" it was not forbidden to have great hopes for the city of
lagoons from the progress of time, and from the good relations preserved
and augmented between France and Austria.
Generally silent in the midst of these contradictory debates, loving,
moreover, to plan beneath the passions and agitations of his surrounding
counselors in the serenity of a calm and meditative intelligence, the
Emperor Napoleon III. slowly ripened a project which seemed to him to
sufficiently take into consideration the different arguments of the two
sides, and which, moreover, well answered the recommendation made by him
at about the same time to his minister of foreign affairs, _inertia
sapientia_! Italy naturally was of more real interest to him than to M.
Drouyn de Lhuys; that was a passion, perhaps indeed a youthful contract,
and it was even so with the Empress Eugenie, who had become ardent for
the affranchisement of Venice since the entry of M. de La Valette to the
ministry, also since the day when M. the Cavalier Nigra had turned some
couplets full of graceful allusions to a gondola which she had had made
for the lake of Fontainbleau. Not less inveterate, but much more fatal,
was Louis Napoleon's liking for the country of Bluecher and Scharnhorst;
the "great destinies" of the monarchy of Brandenburg in Germany formed
one of the articles of his cosmopolitan faith. "_The geographical
position of Prussia is badly defined!_" as he cried out the following
year, at a solemn moment, and in a document too much forgotten.[54] He
certainly did not intend to destroy the empire of Hapsburg, and allow
the Hohenzollern to rule from the Sound to the Adriatic, as such a
course would have readily recognized the _intransigeans_ and the
know-nothings of the principle of nationality. A strong appreciator of
logic in the affairs of states, and in that (in that alone, perhaps!)
truly French spirit, the former prisoner of Ham would have willingly
constructed an essentially Protestant Prussia opposed to a traditionally
Catholic Austria in the centre of Germany, leaving for the secondary
States an intermediary and fluctuating situation in a religious as well
as in a political point of view. An augmented and rounded Prussia on
the Elbe and the Baltic, and thus rendered "stronger and more
homogeneous in the North," seemed to him a useful combination, almost
indispensable, counterbalancing Russia, and it was perfectly just that
in exchange for new and vast Protestant territories, which it would
acquire, the monarchy of Frederick II. should lose Silesia, a Catholic
country and former patrimony of Hapsburg, that it should also renounce
the Catholic provinces of the Rhine, situated too far outside of its
natural orbit. "One would thus maintain for Austria its great position
in Germany," above all its position as a great Catholic state, and the
return of Silesia would be for the Emperor Francis Joseph an ample
compensation for the Venetian province which he would cede to King
Victor Emmanuel. For the secondary States of the Confederation, one
would mediatize for their profit several of the little unimportant
princes; one would add to them, perhaps, as a new member of the _Bund_,
a new State composed entirely of Rhenish provinces taken from Prussia;
one would assure for them, in any case, "a closer union, a more powerful
organization, a more important _role_," which the great leaders of the
party of Wuerzburg, the advocates of the _triad_, MM. de Beust, de
Pfordten, and de Dalwigk, did not cease to demand. A curious fact, in
these vast projects which embraced the world and which tended to
determine and to satisfy the "legitimate wants" of Italy, Prussia,
Austria, the Germanic Confederation, the only obscure question, and
never decided in the mind of the French sovereign, was that of the
compensations which, in the presence of this universal alteration, he
could claim for his own country. He did not dare to touch the problem
of Belgium; it would be, he declared very honestly, "an act of
brigandage."[55] Neither did he deceive himself on the impossibility of
annexing important Germanic territories; generally he stopped at the
idea of a simple rectification of frontiers on the side of the Saar and
the Palatinate, and of the neutralization of the German line of
fortresses on the Rhine. Even reduced to these modest proportions, the
end did not seem to him to be less worthy of being ardently pursued, in
view of the very great and moral satisfaction France would find in the
achievement of its work in Italy, and in the rational ordering of
affairs in Germany.
Moreover, that which, in the situation in which he was engaged,
especially flattered his instincts, generous at bottom and vaguely
humanitarian, was that he hoped to reap considerable advantages for his
own country, for the entire universe, without any necessity of drawing
the sword, without spilling a drop of blood, "by moral force only," by
the ascendancy of the name of France. He was resolved to "remain in a
watchful neutrality," not to leave it except in the extreme case of the
too complete victories of one of the belligerents menacing "the
overthrow of the equilibrium and the modification of the map of Europe
for the benefit of a single Power." He proclaimed it very loudly, on all
occasions, and gloried in such "disinterested" policy,--a very strange
policy, however, and which, according to the very judicious _mot_ of
Prince Napoleon, declared itself in advance _hostile to the conqueror_.
"You have changed the address of your letter," said with fine raillery
the conqueror of Austerlitz to the Prussian envoy who brought him the
congratulations of his sovereign; the nephew of Napoleon I. acted in
such a manner that he could not change the address, alienating in
advance the still unknown conqueror. It is true that he believed he knew
him, that, with all the world, he saw him in the Emperor of Austria, and
that he counted on making with him preventive arrangements. Moreover,
even should the army of William I. show itself much superior to the
general opinion one had of it,--and, more perspicacious in that than his
followers, he fully admitted such an eventuality,--still he only saw in
this case a long and fatiguing conflict which would exhaust the two
parties and would allow him more easily to intervene as judge of the
combat and as protector of the right. He thus hoped, in any case, at his
time and at his convenience, to be able to pronounce a word of peace, of
equity, and of equilibrium, and he was convinced that "this word would
be heard." It was important for the moment that Prussia should begin the
combat, and to decide it in its favor it would be necessary for it to
procure the alliance of Italy. It was also necessary to carefully avoid
with the court of Berlin an untimely debate on the combinations and
compensations to come; the least insistence on this delicate point might
wound the patriotic feelings of William I., cool his warlike ardor,
destroy in the embryo a world of great things, _novus rerum ordo_! It
was better to ask nothing, to promise nothing, to compromise nothing.
Moreover, what use in demanding notes of a bankrupt, taking sureties
from one whose fate seemed so little assured, and whom, according to all
probabilities, one would soon have to protect, to defend against too
hard conditions which its Austrian conqueror would wish to impose on it?
So complicated and specious as was the strategy planned by the Emperor
of the French, there is no doubt that M. de Bismarck penetrated it from
the beginning, that he divined it, foresaw it in some way, even before
it was completely fixed in the mind of its author, and we have on this
subject a most striking proof. In the month of August, 1865, at the time
when the first conferences were held between the two governments of
Prussia and Italy against Austria, which were soon to interrupt the
brusque conclusion of the armistice of Gastein, M. Nigra wrote to
General La Marmora, being evidently inspired by the observations of his
Prussian colleague at Paris, Count Goltz: "The cabinet of Berlin would
not wish that, war once declared and begun, France should come, like the
Neptune of Virgil, to dictate peace, lay down conditions, or convoke a
congress at Paris."[56] Thus all is foreseen in those few lines written
long before Biarritz, all up to that congress which a Napoleon III.
would naturally not fail to extol one day or another, and which he in
fact was to advance in the month of May, 1866. "The difficulty consists,
then," continues M. Nigra in his dispatch, "in obtaining from France a
promise of absolute neutrality. Will, or can, the Emperor Napoleon make
this promise? _Will he give it in writing as Prussia wishes it?_" This
promise of _absolute_ neutrality M. de Bismarck certainly did not obtain
at Biarritz (October, 1865), still less was there a question of any
engagement _in writing_; but he learned there from august lips that
Italy was right in wishing to "complete its unity," that it should not
fail to profit by the first favorable occasion,--that France, for its
part, was resolved to respect Germany, not to contradict on the other
side of the Rhine the "national aspirations." Unless the map of Europe
was to be modified to its detriment, France would preserve the
neutrality, and this neutrality would not be other than "favorable" to a
combination in which the interests of Italy were engaged. It is
allowable to recall a reminiscence which is like a fragment of the
conversations of Biarritz in this curious declaration, made six months
afterwards by the president of the council of Prussia to General
Govone,[57] "that apart from the profit which he might find in it, and
with no _regard for principles_, the Emperor of the French would sooner
approve the great war for the German nationality than the war for the
Duchies of the Elbe!"
What, during his sojourn at Biarritz, could hardly have escaped a
sagacious observer like M. de Bismarck, was the hold which his profound
attachment for the country of Cavour and Manin had on the mind of Louis
Napoleon; there was the key to the position, the real word of the
Sphinx, and that certainty acquired, compensated in the eyes of the
Prussian minister for many still disquieting doubts, made him pass over
many a reticence of the august, taciturn man.[58] For certain reasons,
he could even congratulate himself on the reserve which he preserved
towards him, on the care which he took to avoid a discussion in detail;
that released him on his part from any precise engagement, from any
premature offer; it allowed him to confine himself to generalities, to
make fantastic journeys over spaces and centuries,--and he neglected
nothing. He spoke of Belgium and a part of Switzerland as the necessary
and legitimate complement of French unity,--of the common action of
France and Germany for the cause of progress and humanity,--of a future
accord between Paris, Berlin, and Florence, even London and Washington,
to conduct the destinies of Europe, to regulate those of the entire
world, to lead, for instance, Russia to its real vocation in Asia and
Austria to its civilizing mission on the Danube. How many times was seen
on this henceforward historical coast of the Gulf of Biscay, the Emperor
Napoleon slowly walking and leaning on the arm of Prosper Merimee, while
the president of the Prussian council followed him at a respectful
distance, haranguing, gesticulating, and generally receiving for reply
only a dull and slightly incredulous look, and how the thought remains
to-day sadly fixed on this strange group of the romantic Caesar, the
romancing Cesarean and the terrible realist who, very obsequious at
this moment towards his imperial host, four years later was to harshly
assign him the prison of Wilhelmshoehe! From time to time Napoleon III.
caused the author of "Colomba" to understand by a furtive pressure of
the arm how amusing he found this diplomat with the futile imagination,
this representative of a more than problematical Power, who so cleverly
dismembered Europe and distributed the kingdoms. "He is crazy!" he even
whispered one day in the ear of his companion; but, before recriminating
a remark so cruelly expiated since, one can well recall the following
passage of a dispatch which General Govone wrote the year after: "In
speaking to me of Count Bismarck, M. Benedetti told me that he was, so
to speak, a _maniacal_ diplomat,"[59] and M. Benedetti took care to add
that he had long known his man, that he had "followed" him for nearly
fifteen years!
Is it not necessary in fact to be a little _maniacal_, to have that
"little grain of folly" which Moliere attributes to all great men, and
which Boerhaave believes he finds in every great genius,[60] to launch
the monarchy of Brandenburg into an adventure so eminently perilous as
that of 1866? The minister of William I. remarked correctly, however, at
Paris, that he would perhaps meet a second Olmuetz, and his biographers
quote a characteristic speech of his, "that death on the scaffold is
under certain circumstances neither the most dishonorable nor the worst
of deaths." In a diplomatic point of view, his only assurance was the
profound love of Napoleon III. for the Italian cause, and after as
before Biarritz the "Neptune of Virgil" arose, always menacing, free to
pronounce his _quos ego_: the war once declared and begun, France could
always dictate peace, lay down the conditions or convoke a congress. The
whole point, then, was not to allow the benevolent neutrality of
Napoleon III. the time to work those infallible changes; all that was
necessary was to act quickly and well, to strike a blow at the beginning
which should dictate peace to Vienna and respect to Paris; victory was
only possible at this price! But, however, there has always been luck
and misfortune in the affairs of this world,--"the all powerful God is
capricious," according to the singular expression of M. de Bismarck at
one of the most solemn moments,[61]--how far could one count on an army
formed only a few years before, and which, as well as its chiefs, had
never gone through a great campaign? An extraordinary circumstance in
truth, and one which will never cease to be an astonishing fact in
history, of the two eminent men who took upon themselves more especially
the terrible responsibility of commencing the combat, neither of them
had had a superior command, or had made his name illustrious on a
historical field of battle! Before 1864, the only campaign in which
General Moltke had ever assisted was that of Syria between the Turks and
the Egyptians; in 1864 he had borne arms against his own country in that
invasion of Denmark which was certainly not calculated to produce
Turennes and Bonapartes. General de Roon had formed a part in 1832 of a
"corps of observation" which watched the French besieging Antwerp, and
had only distinguished himself since by books of military geography.
"After all that we have heard said of these officers," General Govone
wrote from Berlin on the 2d April, 1866, "the army is not enthusiastic
for the war against Austria; there is rather in its ranks sympathy for
the Austrian army. I know well that the war, once declared, the army
will be electrified, and will do its duty bravely; but it is neither a
spur nor a support for the policy which Count de Bismarck wishes to make
prevail."[62]