this interdicting command to Austria.[126] It weighed equally on the
court of Copenhagen and forced it to neutrality, in spite of all the
enthusiasm of the unfortunate Scandinavian people for an alliance with
which was connected a French plan of a landing in the North, an
enterprise of the greatest strategical interest, General Trochu said,
who was to have taken part in it. "Russia," thought with an official
journal of the country, the ambassador of the United States at St.
Petersburg, "has contributed more to the neutrality than any other
nation; by its menaces it has forced Austria not to move, and it has
succeeded, by the influence of the emperor and the hereditary prince, in
hindering Denmark from taking part with France."[127] England, it is
just to add, powerfully seconded in all this the Russian chancellor. It
was more prejudiced than ever against France, thanks to the recent and
terrible revelations of M. de Bismarck concerning the _dilatory
negotiations_ in August, 1866, on the subject of Belgium. It was evident
that for the pleasure of Prince Gortchakof the conflagration came much
too soon. The military preparations of Russia were not made; even the
perfectly "moral" action on the Sclavic world had undergone a rest since
the conference on the subject of Greece. M. de Bismarck had not exactly
consulted the convenience of his colleague on the Neva. As M. Benedetti
had predicted, he had taken care not to invert the _roles_ and thought
only of his own convenience and opportunities; but Alexander
Mikhailovitch did not the less apply himself to play his _role_
according to his strength. A sagacious observer, the ambassador of the
United States, already mentioned, wrote about this time from St.
Petersburg to his government: "The general opinion here seems to be
that, if Russia were ready, it would declare war and try to gain certain
advantages from it.... The government is making great efforts to prepare
for future events. The cartridge factories work night and day. An order
for a hundred Gattling cannon has just been sent to America." They
armed, they deterred or intimidated the probable allies of France,
thinking thus to equalize for the moment the chances between the two
belligerents,[128] and they still hoped to find more than one favorable
opportunity in the midst of the numerous events of a war which Napoleon
III. himself proclaimed must be "long and difficult."
The terrible disasters of France in the beginning of the campaign
suddenly arrested the imaginations in their flight and dissipated the
sublime vision of a "new Graeco-Sclavic world," which since 1867 had
haunted the minds of those on the banks of the Moscova and the Neva.
With the marvelous political and _realistic_ aptitude which
distinguishes it, the Russian nation soon understood that for the moment
any crusade in the Orient was impossible, that the destiny of the world
was being decided at the foot of the Vosges, and that it must attend to
the most urgent and reasonable claims. A curious phenomenon, the
peninsula of the Balkan was never as relatively quiet, as little
tormented by the "great idea" as during these years 1870-1871, during
this "intestine dissension in Europe" which Fuad-Pacha when dying had so
feared for the empire of the Osmanlis. Towards the end of the month of
August, still before the catastrophe of Sedan, public opinion in Russia
cared only for the displeasing article of the treaty of Paris on the
subject of the Euxine. "Russia," said an influential journal of St.
Petersburg,[129] "has not hindered the forced unification of Germany,
and, in its turn, _it does not dream of the forced unification of the
Sclavians_; but it has the right to demand that its position on the
Black Sea and the banks of the Danube be ameliorated. We hope that its
legitimate demands will be taken into consideration in the European
congress which will probably follow the present war." A European
congress! that was in truth the only logical issue, however unreassuring
in such grave events, disturbers of the equilibrium of the world; and it
must render this justice to the greater part of the Russias, that they
have the true appreciation of the situation, and aspire to a _role_ as
legitimate as honorable. They wish to attain a satisfaction of
_amour-propre_; but they did not wish to sacrifice France and the
general interests of the Continent to it; the little question was in
their eyes only the corollary of the great. At Constantinople one did
not augur otherwise from the line of conduct which the cabinet of St.
Petersburg undoubtedly pursued, although dreading it. On the 2d
September, Mr. Joy Morris, minister of the United States to the Porte,
wrote to his government that the general conviction on the Bosphorus was
that Russia would profit by the crisis to bring about the revision of
the treaty of 1856. "It would be strange if it did not succeed in it,"
added the "Yankee" diplomat, "seeking, as it will, to obtain honorable
conditions of peace for France, and exercising a dominating influence on
the regulations of the terms of peace." Unfortunately, and for the first
time in his long and popular reign at the chancellor's palace, the
"national minister" divorced himself on this occasion from the sentiment
of the nation, and in place of acting as "a good European," according to
the favorite expression of M. de Talleyrand, he sought above all to show
himself the good friend of his former colleague of Frankfort. He took
care to renounce the question of the Black Sea,--he owed his country
this little consolation after such great mistakes,--but he resolved to
separate two causes which public opinion in Russia demanded to have
united; and it demanded it with an idea much more politic than generous,
in an instinct much more sensible for the vital interests of the future
than for the satisfaction more or less lively of the present moment. He
thought that he could not better serve the Russian cause on the Euxine,
than in injuring as much as possible the cause of Europe in Alsace and
Lorraine, and he endeavored above all to let France and Prussia fight
out their quarrel in single combat. Immediately after the first French
disasters, he seized with _empressement_ the ingeniously perfidious idea
of the _league of neutrals_, originally an Italian idea, naturalized in
England by Earl Granville, and soon became in the hands of the Russian
chancellor, as was very acutely remarked, the most efficacious means to
"organize impotence in Europe." M. de Beust had vainly essayed, _while
adopting the principle_ of the English proposition (19th August) to
change the character of it, to make it the point of departure of a
concerted intervention; he demanded "efforts not separated, but common
in view of a mediation," in place of a ridiculous conception which only
"leagued" the states to prevent any collective proceeding. "The
combination which the minister of Austria then suggested," wrote on this
subject a judicious historian, "was repeated again and again by him
during the whole duration of the war. If it had been adopted, it would
have changed the course of things. One can say that it is for this
reason that Europe did not adopt it."[130]
It is for this reason that Prince Gortchakof especially opposed it from
the first day to the last. There was a moment when England itself felt
some qualms of conscience and showed a wish for mediation. That was at
the beginning of the month of October, after a circular of M. de
Bismarck had announced to Europe the conditions of peace of Germany,
which were Alsace and Lorraine. "The ambassador of Prussia communicated
this circular to the Russian government, and Prince Gortchakof abstained
from making his impressions known. Sir A. Buchanan said to him then,
that at London they were disposed to be governed in a certain measure by
what was done at St. Petersburg. The chancellor replied simply that
Prussia, not having asked of him his opinion, he had not given it.[131]
Earl Granville had the, for him, extraordinary courage to return again
to the charge, and Sir A. Buchanan read to the Russian chancellor a
memorandum timidly asking "if it would not be possible for England and
Russia to arrive at an agreement concerning the conditions under which
peace could be concluded, and then to make, with the other neutral
Powers, an appeal to the humanity of the King of Prussia, also
recommending moderation to the French government." Prince Gortchakof
gave to those overtures a dry and disdainful reception. Prussia, said
he, has indicated its conditions of peace; a victory alone can modify
them, and this victory is not probable. Confidential conversations
between England and Russia will be then without object; common
representations would always have a more or less menacing character.
Isolated action of each of the neutral Powers before the King of Prussia
is preferable.[132] Isolated action! Alexander Mikhailovitch was not
moved, and for Russia this action was summed up in several personal
letters addressed by the august nephew to his royal uncle, very
charming letters, which recommended peace, justice, humanity, and
moderation, and to which the conqueror of Sedan always replied
affectionately, with a moved heart and with tears in his eyes, pleading
his duties to his allies, his armies, his people, and his
frontiers.[133] It was this "policy of euphemism," as the historian has
so well called it, which they did not cease to practice, during the
entire war, on the banks of the Neva, towards General Fleury as well as
towards M. Thiers and M. de Gabriac, and the last word as well as the
first thought of "action" of Prince Gortchakof was to leave France alone
with its conqueror, alone till exhaustion, _usque ad finem_. It is known
in what terms this end was announced at St. Petersburg. "It is with
inexpressible feeling and returning thanks to God," the Emperor of
Germany telegraphed from Versailles to the Emperor of Russia, on the
26th February, 1871, "that I announce to you that the preliminaries of
peace have just been signed. Prussia will never forget that it owes to
you that the war has not taken extreme dimensions. May God bless you for
it. Your grateful friend for life."
"Long and disastrous" was this war, alas! as the unhappy Caesar had well
predicted, long enough at least to let Europe measure all the depth of
its abasement, and "to give it all the time to blush at nothing,"
according to the strong expression of the poet. Still more humiliating,
perhaps, than this abasement, is the thought of the perfect similarity
of the two terrible catastrophes which succeeded one another in the
interval of scarcely four years; in producing its second tragedy so soon
after the first, destiny was sufficiently disdainful to our generation
not to even change the procedure or bestow any care on the imagination.
The work of 1870 was only the exact copy of that of 1866. You will take
the Orient, M. de Bismarck said at St. Petersburg, through General
Manteuffel, as on the shore of Biarritz he had told the Emperor Napoleon
III. to take Belgium, always making the same gift of the property which
did not belong to him, the same gracious gift of the fruit defended by
the dragon. The dreamers of Moscow believed in a _new era_, in a new
"Graeco-Sclavic-Roumanian world," as Napoleon III. had thought of a
Europe remodeled after the principle of nationalities. "Russia will not
feel any alarm at the power of Prussia," Prince Gortchakof declared at
the beginning of the Hohenzollern affair, exactly as the zealots of the
_new right_ had affirmed of France on the eve of the campaign of
Bohemia. In both of the terrible years they had counted on the events
and opportunities of a war, slow and of divers fortunes; they had even
made it a study to derisively equalize the chances of the belligerents,
and the surprise and the fright were not less great at St. Petersburg
after Reichshoffen and Sedan than it had been at Paris after Nahod and
Sadowa. The military preparations were wanting in Russia in 1870, as in
France in 1866, and after the one as after the other of the calamities
which desolated and overturned the world, they had only egotistical and
petty thoughts; they prevented designedly any collective intervention,
they aided Prussia in _freeing itself from all European control_; in a
word they sacrificed the policy of justice, preservation, and
equilibrium to a calculation as false as sordid, and which the great
humorist of Varzin had one day called the _politique de pour-boire_.
The Russian chancellor, it is just to acknowledge, was happier after
Sedan than Napoleon III. had been after Sadowa: he had his Luxemburg, he
could proclaim the abrogation of Article II. of the treaty of Paris,
"the abrogation of a theoretical principle without immediate
application," as he himself said in an official document.[134] One knows
the judgment which at that time the cabinets gave on this "conquest"
purely nominal in reality, and extremely small in any case in proportion
to all those which Alexander Mikhailovitch had allowed to his former
colleague of Frankfort. He succeeded, but not by legitimate means, by
that action of _eclat_ and equity which one had hoped for in Russia,
dreaded at Constantinople; he did not provoke the revision of the treaty
of 1856, in "seeking to obtain honorable conditions of peace for France
and in exercising a dominating influence on the regulation of the terms
of peace."[135] He chose precisely "the psychological moment" of the
defeats of France, of the disorder of Europe and of the gloomy shock to
public right, to give it in his turn a humiliating blow, a _telum
imbelle_, but not _sine ictu_. He freed himself and his own chief from
an engagement contracted with the Powers, as he had freed his friend of
Berlin from any control of Europe. "The procedure of Russia," said Earl
Granville, in his remarkable dispatch of the 10th November to Sir A.
Buchanan, "breaks all the treaties: the object of a treaty is to bind
the contracting parties one to the other; according to the Russian
doctrine, each party submits all to his own authority, and holds himself
bound only to himself."
At the beginning of the year 1868, an eminent man whom the disasters of
his country were soon to restore to the political life which the second
empire closed to him, rose even here[136] with passionate eloquence
against "the growing mistrust of this elementary right which honor and
good public sense have called the faith of treaties." "We see," said he,
"creating itself every day under our eyes, a fruitful jurisprudence
whose rapid development does not astonish those who know what force
false principles borrow from and lend in turn to the passions which they
favor. Only a few years ago they imposed on this unilateral resilition
of reciprocal treaties some conditions which made the usage of them more
legitimate, or at least more rare and less perilous. They still wished
greatly to admit that, in case one state should want to repudiate a
treaty signed by representatives regularly accredited, it should be
necessary that in its interior one of those great overturnings of
institutions, persons, and things should be effected which is called a
revolution. A revolution was a sheriff's summons by which a nation made
known to whom it should concern its intention to put itself into
bankruptcy and to no longer pay its debts. This was, it seems to me, a
sufficiently great facility, but the last form of new right does not
find it sufficient to its taste. The formality of a revolution is
embarrassing and costly to carry out. A change of ministry, or, better
still, a vote of parliament causes less inconvenience. Nothing more will
be necessary henceforward in order that a convention in which God,
honor, and conscience have been taken to witness the past year be
trampled under foot the following year."
Well! we have lived through enough, since the time when an honest
conscience uttered this cry of alarm, to see foreign jurisprudence arise
without even the formality of a revolution, of a change of ministry or a
vote of parliament, to hear it proclaimed by the minister of a regular
absolute monarchy, by a Russian chancellor. It is true that the Italians
also then hastened to profit by the misfortunes of France, to break in
their turn a solemn engagement made with it in a public document, that
in 1870 they had even anticipated Prince Gortchakof in a proceeding well
known to them; but it was not from a government born yesterday that the
successor of Count Nesselrode should have borrowed the procedures. There
was a day when Alexander Mikhailovitch reproached this very government
with _moving with the revolution to reap the heritage of it_.[137]
Since then he has also moved with the revolution,--with one of the most
audacious, most violent revolutions which has ever overturned thrones
and kingdoms; he has reaped no heritage from it, it is true (it is only
too often so in life, as one knows), he only accepted from it a gracious
legacy, a legitimate donation, a modest gift in fact, and out of
proportion to services rendered, but which was not the less sullied with
undue influences, and which injured the right of the third parties, the
right of nations.
How otherwise great and glorious might have been the "conquests" of
Alexander Mikhailovitch, if, inspiring himself, in the month of October,
1870, with the legitimate ambition of the Russian people, the "national
minister" had brought about a concerted action of Europe in order to
produce peace between France and Germany, and to regulate the troubled
affairs of the Continent! "We have always been of the opinion," wrote M.
de Beust, on the 10th September, to St. Petersburg, "that it is for
Russia to take the initiative." Its great influence abroad, its security
in the interior, its good relations with the conqueror, assigned to it
in truth such an initiative, and certainly neither Austria, Italy, nor
England would have hesitated to range themselves under its banner. There
was no necessity for a menacing intervention, nor even for that armed
neutrality which M. Disraeli recommended:[138] the wish firmly expressed
by all the Powers of the Continent would have fully sufficed. They could
have thus limited the losses of France, given to Germany a less
formidable organization, more in harmony with the aspirations and
liberal occupations of our century,--the great vassals of the new
emperor would not have failed to lend their aid to it,--a general
disarmament would have given to a generation cruelly tried, and which
now cannot even rest in its sterility, a reparative and a fruitful work.
And who would dare to doubt that after such services Russia would not
have obtained of Europe the grateful abrogation of that onerous article
of the treaty of 1856? France would certainly not have thought of
opposing it; Austria would not have maintained a clause which it had
combated from the beginning, and which, four years before, it had
solemnly declared to be "only a question of _amour-propre_," whose
gravest interests demanded the sacrifice; as to England, it is well
known that in course of time it accommodates itself to everything. How
much such a benefit procured for humanity by a monarchical government,
absolute indeed, would have given force to the cause of order and
preservation, of rejuvenation of monarchical principles! with what
prestige it would have surrounded the Russian people; what imperishable
splendor it would have attached to the name of Alexander II! The call of
destiny was very manifest; the _role_ as plain as easy: the successor of
Count Nesselrode shrunk from it. It was only a sin of omission, if you
will, but of that sort which the sublime lover of justice Alighieri did
not pardon when they were committed against his ideal of _justitia et
pax_. On such a sin he inflicted the name of _il gran rifiuto_.
FOOTNOTES:
[100] Dispatch of Count de Muelinen to Baron de Beust, 30th December,
1866.
[101] Dispatch of M. de Beust to Baron de Prokesch at Constantinople,
January 22, 1867.
[102] "What alarms me the most, is the considerable change which the
pacification of the provinces of the Caucasus has given to the situation
of Russia. I have no doubt that in future possibilities the most serious
attacks of the Russians will be directed against our provinces of Asia
Minor." Thus Fuad-Pacha expresses himself at the beginning of 1869 in
his political testament addressed to the sultan.
[103] Remarks of the Emperor Nicholas to Sir Hamilton Seymour. For the
rumors concerning Thessaly and Epirus, see especially the dispatch of
Fuad-Pacha to the ambassadors at Paris and London, 27th February, 1867.
[104] Benedetti, _My Mission in Prussia_, p. 249.
[105] "I wish very much that you would send your carriage before my
door, but on the condition that you get in at my house," one of the
predecessors of M. de Moustier said wittily to M. de Budberg, at the
Hotel of the Quay d'Orsay, some years before, but in the same way in
which Russia encouraged the advances of the cabinet of the Tuileries, at
the same time that it carefully avoided any positive engagement with it.
[106] The preliminaries of Nikolsburg as well as the treaty of Prague
had stipulated the retrocession to Denmark of the northern districts of
Schleswig after a popular vote. One knows that Prussia up to the present
has evaded the execution of this engagement.
[107] M. de Beust wrote concerning these military conventions with a
resigned _finesse_: "An alliance established between two states, one of
which is weak, the other strong; an alliance which has no particular
text, but which should be permanently maintained for all the
eventualities of war, is not of a nature to create a belief in an
_international, independent existence_ of the weak state."--Dispatch to
Count Wimpffen, at Berlin, 28th March, 1867.
[108] See Appendix.
[109] Speech of the assistant secretary of state, Mr. Fox, at the
banquet given by the English Club of St. Petersburg to the mission
extraordinary from the United States in 1866.
[110] Circular of M. de La Valette, 16th September, 1866.
[111] See the _Revue des deux Mondes_ of the 1st September, 1867: "The
Congress of Moscow and the Pan-Sclavic Propaganda."
[112] It emanated directly from the ministry of the interior, was
written in French, and destined to "enlighten" foreign opinion on the
facts and deeds of the Russian government.
[113] See, on this subject, the English, French, and Austrian
parliamentary documents of the year 1868, and especially the reports of
the agents of Austria at Iassy and Bucharest.
[114] Appendix to the dispatch of the Consul de Knappitsch to Baron de
Prokesch at Constantinople, Ibraila, 14th August, 1868.
[115] Dispatch of Sir A. Buchanan to the Earl of Clarendon, 19th
December, 1868.
[116] Official journal of the Russian empire, 12th December, 1869.
[117] One can read this remarkable document, which bears the date of the
3d January, 1869, in the interesting pamphlet of M. J. Lewis Farley,
_The Decline of Turkey_, London, 1875, pp. 27-36.
[118] Private letter to the Count Daru, 27th January, 1870.
[119] See, on this subject, the curious dispatch of the 10th November,
1867. The correspondence of Mazzini with M. de Bismarck during the years
1868 and 1869, suggesting the plan of overthrowing Victor Emmanuel if
this latter became the ally of the Emperor Napoleon III., has been
brought to light only very recently, after the death of the celebrated
Italian agitator.
[120] Confidential letter of M. de Verdiere, St. Petersburg, 3d
February, 1870. _Papers and Correspondence of the Imperial Family_, vol.
i. p. 129.
[121] "The Emperor of Russia has taken the general in great favor; he
takes him continually on bear hunts, and makes him travel with him on a
f... in his one-seated sleigh. That is the height of favor, and I think
that politics are in a good condition."--Confidential letter of M. de
Verdiere, 25th January, 1870. _Papers and Correspondence_, vol. i. p.
127.
[122] Expressions of the _North German Gazette_ (principal organ of M.
de Bismarck) of the 20th July, 1867, on the occasion of the congress of
Moscow.
[123] _Drang nach Osten._
[124] Dispatch of Sir A. Buchanan, St. Petersburg, 9th July, 1870. For
the details of these years, 1870-71, we can only refer the reader to the
very instructive work of M. A. Sorel, _Diplomatic History of the
Franco-German War_, Paris, Plon, 1875, 2 vols. We have only two
reservations to make in regard to a book written with as much sincerity
of investigation as loftiness of mind. The author shows a pronounced
weakness for "the diplomacy of Tours," and limits in much too great a
degree the original views of Prince Gortchakof in his connivance with
Prussia since 1867.
[125] Dispatches of Sir A. Buchanan of the 20th and 23d July. Valfrey,
_History of the Diplomacy of the Government of National Defense_, vol.
i. p. 18.
[126] _France and Prussia_, p. 348.
[127] Dispatch of Mr. Schuyler to Mr. Fish, St. Petersburg, 26th August.
General Trochu, _Pour la verite_, p. 90.