Prussia to the ambassador of France at those first conversations in
Moravia! M. de Bismarck began by renewing the fantasies of Biarritz, and
it was the very opposite of a Tilsit who appeared to form plans at the
head-quarters at Bruenn: the son of Frederick William III., conquered at
Jena, seemed to wish to offer to the nephew of Napoleon I. to share the
world with him, to share it to the detriment of Russia and England! "He
endeavored to prove to me," wrote M. Benedetti on the 15th July, "that
the reverses of Austria allowed France and Prussia to modify their
territorial situation, and to solve at the present time the greater part
of the difficulties which will continue to menace the peace of Europe. I
reminded him that treaties existed, and that the war which he desired to
prevent would be the first result of such a policy. M. de Bismarck
answered me, that I misunderstood, that France and Prussia, united and
resolved to remodel their respective frontiers by binding one another by
solemn engagements, were henceforward in a position to regulate together
these questions, without fear of meeting an armed resistance _either on
the part of England or on the part of Russia_." In other words,--and
these words were likewise employed in the report of M. Benedetti,--the
Prussian minister believed that "he could free himself from the
obligation to submit to the control of Europe," thanks to a separate
agreement with France. As to the means to bring about this precious
agreement, it was perfectly simple: France had only to seek its fortune
along the Meuse and the Escaut. "I do not tell your excellency anything
new," wrote M. Benedetti to his chief, some days after, from Nikolsburg,
in announcing to him that M. de Bismarck was of the opinion "that we
should seek compensation in Belgium, and that he offered to act in
concert with us." He did not, however, utterly repel the idea of giving
France its share on the Rhine, not, for instance, in the Prussian
territories, where it would be difficult to persuade King William to
renounce any portion of his possession; "but something could perhaps be
found in the Palatinate," that is, in Bavaria. He was always "much more
Prussian than German," and reasonable terms could be made with the
Walhalla.
The French government fell into the trap which was thus set, and it then
aided Prussia in _freeing itself from all control of Europe_, in working
at these preliminaries of Nikolsburg, signed the 26th July, and which
sealed the exclusion of Austria from Germany, and constituted a
confederation of the North, under the hegemony of the Hohenzollern. This
grave attack on public right and the equilibrium of the world once
conceded, and the war virtually ended, one began to talk of
compensations. In a letter addressed to M. de Goltz, and dated from Vichy
the 3d August, M. Drouyn de Lhuys declared that the emperor, his august
master, "had not wished to complicate the difficulties of a work of
_European interest_ in treating _prematurely_ with Prussia" on
territorial questions; but the moment seemed finally come to consider
these questions, all the more as they were preparing to obtain large
annexations north of the Main. "The king," M. de Bismarck had written to
M. de Goltz the 10th July,--"the king cares less for the constitution of
a political northern confederation, and _above all desires annexations_;
he would rather abdicate than return without an important territorial
acquisition."[82] In fact, besides the Duchies of the Elbe, the
abandonment of which had been stipulated at Nikolsburg, Prussia still
wished to absorb the free cities, Cassel, Hanover, even Saxony, and at
the Tuileries they hoped to measure the French demands according to the
number of souls and of square leagues that William the Conqueror should
demand for himself. "The great war for German nationality," which the
popular Caesar had recommended at Biarritz, turned in a measure into "this
human cattle market," so blamed at the congress of Vienna, at the
"execrated" treaties of 1815,--and how is it possible not to acknowledge
that France played a _role_ there unworthy of itself? It was for it to
deny at once the new and the old right, the principle of national will as
well as that of the legitimacy of princes; it wished, moreover, to
realize an illicit gain and a paltry sum on the occasion of a great
universal calamity, and, to speak with the English humorist, to profit by
the eruption of Vesuvius to boil an egg! M. de Bismarck uttered at this
moment a cruel _mot_, but which was not entirely unmerited. "France,"
said he to a former minister of the Germanic Confederation,--"France
_follows a Trinkgeld policy_ (_la France fait une politique de
pour-boire_)."
A letter written by M. Rouher on the 6th August, 1866, and since found
among the papers of the Tuileries,[83] makes us see the strange
illusions which the French government then cherished, and the ambassador
of Prussia at Paris did his best to sustain. "M. de Goltz finds our
pretension legitimate in principle," wrote the minister of state; "he
considers that satisfaction ought to be given to the only wish of our
country to constitute between France and Prussia _a necessary and
fruitful alliance_." The embarrassment is solely to determine the sum of
the demands that should be put forward. "The empress would demand much
or nothing, in order not to compromise our final pretensions." As for M.
Rouher, he thinks that "public opinion would have _food_ and
_direction_, if to-morrow we could say officially, Prussia consents that
we retake the frontiers of 1814, and thus efface the consequences of
Waterloo." Let it be well understood, the minister of state does not
admit "that this rectification would serve as a receipt for the future!"
"Without doubt, new facts must develop in order that new pretensions
arise, but these facts will certainly be developed. Germany is only in
the first of those numerous oscillations which it will undergo before
finding its new position. Let us be more ready, in the future, to better
profit by events; opportunities will not be wanting. The States south of
the Main, especially, will be, in a few years from now, an apple of
discord or a matter for a compromise. M. de Goltz does not dissimulate
at present the covetousness as regards this group of confederates."
Thus, at the very moment that they boasted of "saving" the States of the
South, of establishing on the other side of the Rhine a new political
combination which the minister of state was soon to adorn with the
famous name of _three fragments_, and to declare, marvelously reassuring
for France, they already waited for an opportunity to abandon this
combination, and to traffic for it "at a reasonable price!"
How naive to think that after Sadowa and Nikolsburg, the ruin of Austria
consummated, Germany completely subjected, all intervention of Europe
checked, and the military weakness of France proclaimed to all the
winds,[84] that one would find Prussia accessible to those arrangements
which it had not wished to make before its immense victories, at the
moment of its greatest perplexities, and in the midst of the anguish of
a crisis which all the world agreed in proclaiming perilous in the
extreme! Even on the 8th June, on the eve of the war, M. Benedetti thus
summed up the state of public opinion in Prussia in regard to France:
"The apprehensions which we inspire everywhere in Germany still exist,
and they will awaken unanimously and violently at the least sign which
would allow our intention of enlarging our boundaries towards the East
to be guessed. The king, like the most humble of his subjects, would not
bear at this moment the suggestion of the probability of a sacrifice on
the Rhine. The crown prince, so profoundly convinced of the dangers of
the policy of which he is the witness, declared, not long ago, to one of
my colleagues, with extreme vivacity, that he preferred war to cession,
if it was only the little county of Glatz."[85] And it was the same
diplomat who had so appreciated the situation before the campaign of
Bohemia, it was this same ambassador who now took upon himself to
present to M. de Bismarck the demands of the cabinet of the Tuileries,
who even submitted to him on the 5th August a project for a secret
treaty, implying the abandonment to France of all the left bank of the
Rhine, without excepting the great fortress of Mayence! "In view of the
important acquisitions which the peace assures to the Prussian
government," said M. Benedetti, "I was of the opinion that a territorial
remodeling would hereafter be necessary for our security; I have
instigated nothing, I have still less guaranteed the success; I have
only allowed myself to hope for it, provided that our language were firm
and our attitude resolute." Was firmness wanting, or was too much of it
shown? In any case, M. de Bismarck asserts that he replied in a tone
which certainly showed no irresolution. "Very well," he replied to the
pressing entreaties of the ambassador, "then we will have war. But let
his majesty well observe, that such a war could become in certain
eventualities _a_ war with a revolution, and that in presence of
revolutionary dangers, the German dynasties would prove to be much more
firmly established than that of Napoleon."[86]
That was not, however, the last remark of the Prussian minister.
Perfectly decided not to admit the discussion on the subject of the
Rhine, he took care, nevertheless, not to completely discourage the
French ambassador, and to continue a game with him which later, in his
circular of the 29th July, 1870, he called by the name, unknown until
then in the diplomatic dictionary, of _dilatory negotiations_. He spoke
of his liking for Napoleon III., of his great ambition to solve in
concert with him the important problems of the future. "Prussia needs an
alliance with a great Power;" that was his inmost conviction; he did not
cease to preach it to the king his august master,--and what alliance
more desirable, in a point of view of progress and of civilization, than
that with the French empire? He thus returned to his recent effusions of
Bruenn and Nikolsburg; he insinuated "that _other arrangements_ could be
made which would satisfy the respective interests of the two
countries,"[87] and he strengthened M. Benedetti in his design to return
to Paris and to expose the situation.
At Paris the conflict of Powers was carried on with vigor between the
minister of foreign affairs and the ambassador of Prussia, M. de Goltz,
ably seconded by the _party of action_, to which the arrival of M.
Benedetti (11th August) brought considerable support. M. Drouyn de Lhuys
was not at all surprised at the _Prussian ingratitude_, as M. Benedetti
had expressed it in one of his last dispatches,[88] but, by a logic
which escapes us, he did not the less rejoice at seeing the French
demands at last stated, "They can be taken up again in good time." He
had no doubt of the use that they would soon make on the banks of the
Spree of the project of the treaty of the 5th August! He hoped, besides,
that the final refusal given at Berlin would cause the ardent promoters
of dangerous intrigues to reflect that it would prevent certain
engagements for the future which he apprehended above all. M. de Goltz
suddenly told him that he had come to an agreement with the emperor
concerning the annexations to be effected by William I. in Northern
Germany, and a letter addressed the 12th August by the chief of state to
the Marquis de La Valette cut short all controversy with Prussia. "It
results from my conversation with Benedetti," wrote Napoleon III. to the
minister of the interior, "that we will have all Germany against us for
a small profit; it is important not to let public opinion be mistaken on
this point." The misfortune was only that the imperial government
allowed itself at this moment to be misled on a very dangerous point,
and that Belgium became for it, from that time, the object of a
negotiation as deceptive as fatal, and from which later, at the
beginning of the war of 1870, it in vain endeavored to elude the
crushing responsibility.
That M. de Bismarck was, from the beginning, the great tempter of the
imperial government, and the tempter repulsed even for a long time, in
these shadowy projects concerning the country of the Meuse and the
Escaut, is a truth which to-day cannot be doubted, the authentic
documents published lately suffice to convince the most incredulous
mind. It was not only in his conversations with General Govone that the
president of the Prussian council indicated on several occasions, and
very clearly, Belgium and certain parts of Switzerland as the most
proper territories to "indemnify France:" long before the spring of the
year 1866, even long before the interview of Biarritz, M. de Bismarck
had tried to _sell the bear-skin_, as Napoleon III. said to him one day.
General La Marmora, who understood it a long time, adds that "the bear
was neither in the Alps nor in the Carpathians; he was very well (_stava
benone_) and he neither wished to die nor to be caged up."[89] Such
suggestions were, without doubt, of a nature to startle the _party of
action_ in the councils of the empire, they were, however, eagerly
received by it; but scornfully checked, up to that point, by M. Drouyn
de Lhuys, treated as "projects of brigandage" by the chief of the state,
they had to await that hour of _patriotic anguish_ which marked the
arrival of Benedetti, to be at last taken into serious consideration.
Certainly the ambassador of France at the court of Berlin had, in this
year 1866, a very difficult and painful situation, we had almost said a
pathetic one. He had worked with ardor, with passion, to bring about
this _connubio_ of Italy and Prussia, which seemed to him to be an
immense good fortune for the imperial policy, a brilliant victory gained
over the old order of things to the profit of the "new right" and
Napoleonic ideas. In the fear, very well founded besides, of seeing this
work miscarry and Prussia draw back, if one spoke to it of eventual
compensations and preventive engagements, he had not ceased to dissuade
his government from any attempt of this kind, and to lay stress upon the
fierce, intractable, and suspicious patriotism of the House of
Hohenzollern, even to the point of being sometimes suspected at the
Hotel of the Quai d'Orsay of somewhat exaggerating the colors, and of
making a certain devil blacker and more German than he really was. The
work had at last succeeded; succeeded beyond all expectations; succeeded
in inspiring fear, in suddenly convincing M. Benedetti "that a
territorial remodeling was henceforth necessary to the security of
France." This remodeling he had flattered himself for a moment with
having obtained on the Rhine: "He had not guaranteed the success, but he
had allowed himself to _hope_ for it." Refused with firmness, if not
with pride, "and having taken the measure of Prussian ingratitude," he
was nevertheless soon given to hope what the minister of William I. had
insinuated to him, "that other proper arrangements could be made to
satisfy the respective interests of the two countries," and he had
grasped at the expedient which was thus pictured before his eyes, with
so much the more feverish energy as he saw in it a new triumph for the
modern right and the principles dear to his party. Anxious to repair the
consequences of a policy to which for his part he had contributed more
than any other to make it successful; recognizing, however, the
difficulties, if not the impossibility, for the court of Berlin to cede
any portion of the German soil, and always convinced of the sincere
desire of M. de Bismarck "to indemnify France,"[90] at this decisive
hour he made himself, at the side of Napoleon III., the interpreter of
the ideas which he had gathered from the head-quarters at Bruenn, and
pleaded with warmth for this necessary and fruitful alliance with
Prussia, which, extolled for a long time by the Palais Royal, had
recently deluded even the well balanced mind of M. Rouher.
Let it be well understood, there was no question of immediate action, of
which, indeed, the military situation of the country allowed no thought;
the question was simply of an agreement and a solidarity to be
established for future eventualities, for the time more or less distant,
but inevitable, when Prussia should think of crowning its work, of
freeing the Main, of extending its rule from the Baltic to the
Alps,--this question was of _boldly taking stand on the ground of
nationalities_! "If France boldly takes its stand on the ground of
nationalities," said a curious note found among the papers of the
Tuileries, and which incontestably sums up the ideas of the party of
action at this epoch,[91] "it is necessary to establish now that there
exists no Belgian nationality, and to fix this essential point with
Prussia. As the cabinet of Berlin seemed to be, on the other hand,
disposed to enter with France into arrangements which would suit France,
there would be time to negotiate a secret act which should bind the two
parties. Without pretending that this act was a perfectly sure
guarantee, it would have the double advantage of compromising Prussia,
and would be for it a gage of the sincerity of the policy or of the
intentions of the Emperor.... To be certain of finding at Berlin a
confidence which is necessary for the maintenance of an intimate
understanding, we must try to dissipate the apprehensions which have
always been entertained, which have been reawakened, and even
overexcited by our last communications. This result cannot be obtained
by words; an act is necessary, and one which will regulate the ulterior
lot of Belgium in concert with Prussia, in proving at Berlin that the
emperor seeks elsewhere than on the Rhine the extension necessary for
France since the events of which Germany was the theatre. We must at
least have a relative certainty that the Prussian government will not
oppose our aggrandizement in the North."
III.
It was with the mission of negotiating a _secret act_, binding the two
parties in the sense indicated by the note which we have just given,
that M. Benedetti left Paris towards the end of the month of August. The
act was to provide for an offensive and defensive alliance between the
two states, and, in exchange for the recognition of the changes already
accomplished or still to be accomplished in Germany, to assure to
Napoleon III. the diplomatic aid of Prussia for the acquisition of
Luxemburg, and its _armed_ aid at the moment when France should judge it
opportune to annex Belgium. Immediately on his arrival at his post the
French ambassador went resolutely to work: he carried on the negotiation
_without the knowledge of his immediate chief_, and only referred to the
emperor and the minister of state.[92] He begged the president of the
council of Prussia to regard the propositions of the 5th August, those
relative to the left bank of the Rhine, as null and void, as a joke of
M. Drouyn de Lhuys during the sickness of his august master, and
submitted to him a new project in five articles concerning Belgium. It
matters little that the ambassador of France had with him the minute of
it which he had written in the cabinet of the Prussian minister, at his
request, and, "in some measure at his dictation;" it is certain that
Benedetti acted according to the instructions from Paris,[93] and that
M. de Bismarck on his part did not decline such overtures. He had even
made observations on some of the terms employed in the draft, and
insisted on introducing several changes in the text. The project thus
amended was sent to Paris, and returned anew to Berlin with
rectifications made by the emperor and M. Rouher. On the banks of the
Seine, in the councils of the small number initiated in the secret,
they were full of expectation and cheerfulness; they debated the
question of the successor of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, and the opinions were
divided between M. La Valette and M. Benedetti; they exchanged ideas
which were soon expressed in a sadly celebrated document, and they
rejoiced at seeing "the treaties of 1815 destroyed, the coalition of the
three Powers of the North broken, and Prussia made sufficiently
independent and sufficiently compact to ignore its former
traditions."[94] All of a sudden a discouraging dispatch from the
ambassador of France at the court of Berlin (29th August) troubled their
minds, and they had again some apprehensions on the subject of the
"necessary and fruitful alliance" which they flattered themselves with
having established.
The conferences had continued up to the last days of the month of
August, and M. de Bismarck had lent himself with good grace to the
_dilatory negotiations_. In the mean time, the peace of Prague, the
definite peace with Austria, was signed (26th August); the States of the
South had adhered one after the other to the stipulations of Nikolsburg,
and solemnly recognized the confederation of the North, as well as the
territorial acquisitions of Prussia. The secret act concerning Belgium
was in the hands of the minister of William I., and only needed to be
fairly copied and signed, but at this moment M. Benedetti suddenly met
with strange inconceivable distrusts which did not fail to wound him
deeply. M. de Bismarck hesitated, spoke to him of his fears "that the
Emperor Napoleon would wish to make use of such a negotiation to create
suspicion between Prussia and England." The stupefaction of the French
ambassador was extreme. "What degree of confidence can we on our side
accord to those open to such suspicions?" he asked in his dispatch of
the 29th August.[95] The proceeding seemed to him unjustifiable, and, in
order not to be tempted to qualify it, he judged it opportune "to go for
a fortnight to Carlsbad where he would hold himself ready to return to
Berlin on receipt of the first telegram which M. de Bismarck should
address to him." Slightly moved at this circumstance, the court of the
Tuileries was not the less obstinate in believing in the _secret act_
which was preparing at Berlin; it dismissed M. Drouyn de Lhuys, and long
before the arrival of his successor from Constantinople, M. de Moustier,
they hastened to publish that famous circular of the 16th September,
which bore the signature of the minister of the interior, M. de La
Valette, and was one more pledge given to the conqueror of Sadowa. The
manifest praised the theory of combinations and affirmed that "Prussia,
enlarged, free henceforth from any solidarity, would assure the
independence of Germany;" as to the most secret hopes, scarcely an
allusion was made to them: "France can only desire territorial
aggrandizements which do not alter its powerful cohesion." Nothing
happened, however, and M. Benedetti waited in vain under the elms and
the beautiful firs of Carlsbad: M. de Bismarck gave no sign of life. He
had gone to Varzin, from whence he did not return until the month of
December. The _dilatory negotiations_ had borne all their fruit in the
month of August, and the French government would have been too happy if
all those shadowy intrigues had remained for it only a simple deception:
they became its chastisement.