article, that I did not cease, before the war, to dissuade M.
Drouyn de Lhuys from speaking at Berlin of eventual
compensations and preventive engagements, from fear of seeing
Prussia give up the combat with Austria, I will reply by the
following extract from a letter which M. Drouyn de Lhuys
himself addressed to me on the 31st March, during the
negotiation opened between the two cabinets of Berlin and
Florence: "I have read with pleasure," said he to me, "the
private letters which you have written to me during the
present month. I beg leave to express to you all my thanks
for them. If I have received them without replying
immediately, it was because I had nothing to modify _in the
instructions_ which I have given you on different occasions.
We are still of the same opinions. While recognizing the
gravity of the new crisis in which we participate, we see, in
the contention which presents itself to-day, no sufficient
motive for us to depart from our attitude of neutrality. We
have explained ourselves frankly to the court of Prussia.
When we have been asked by the cabinet of Vienna, we have
firmly declared to it, that we wish to remain neutral,
although it has observed to us that our neutrality was more
favorable to Prussia than to Austria. _We await, then, the
armed conflict_, if it must break out, in the attitude in
which we really are. The king himself has acknowledged that
the present circumstances do not offer the bases of accord
that his majesty desires. The course of events, the nature
and the bearing of the interests which are involved, and the
dimensions which the war will take, as well as the questions
which it will give rise to, will _then_ determine the
elements of the understanding which can exist between Prussia
and us."
In this same letter, the whole of which can be read on page
77 of "My Mission in Prussia," M. Drouyn de Lhuys wished
moreover to indicate to me the consideration which obliged us
to observe a reserved attitude in view of the efforts made by
Prussia, and by Italy, to act in concert, and he added at the
close: "That is the whole truth concerning our opinions. I
approve, however, completely of your attitude and your
language, and I trust that you will continue to keep me
equally well informed of all the details of this crisis."
Would M. Drouyn de Lhuys have acknowledged the receipt of my
correspondence in these terms, if it was intended to deter
him from any plan of contracting eventual engagements with
Prussia, if there had existed between the minister and the
ambassador the disagreement the whole responsibility of which
M. Klaczko wishes to throw on me? I dwell no longer on this
subject, leaving to the penetration of your readers the task
of seeing things more clearly; I only wish you to remark
that, if M. Klaczko, as I suppose, has seen that letter
before writing his article, it becomes impossible to explain
the errors of it.
I regret to say, however, that I should have to criticise
almost all his work, if I wished to correct the defective
parts of it; but I do not intend to abuse my right of reply,
and I will go no farther. I will rectify, however, another
error on account of its particular importance. Replying to a
telegraphic question of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, I wrote him on
the 8th June, 1866, that no one in Prussia, from the king to
the most humble of his subjects, with the exception of M. de
Bismarck, would consent, in my opinion, to abandon to us any
part of the German territory on the Rhine. After having
quoted an extract from my dispatch, M. Klaczko adds: "And
this is the same diplomat who had so well appreciated the
situation before the campaign of Bohemia, it is the same
ambassador _who now undertakes_ to present to M. de Bismarck
the demands of the cabinet of the Tuileries, who went so far
as to submit to him, on the 5th August, a plan of a secret
treaty implying the abandonment to France of the whole left
bank of the Rhine, without excepting the great fortress of
Mayence!"
M. Klaczko mistakes. I did not take upon myself to make this
communication, and his allegation, deprived, moreover, of all
proof, astonishes me the more as he could have seen in "My
Mission in Prussia," that affairs were not conducted in that
manner; that, on the contrary, while pointing out the serious
and new difficulties which seemed to oppose this project, I
demanded time to previously go to Paris to confer with the
government, and that I was _ordered_ to proceed. Did I do
well or badly in obeying? That is another question; but M.
Klaczko should all the more abstain from presenting this
incident in such a manner as to emphasize the consequences of
it, which have been grave and gloomy, as he is careful to
remember.
If it is thus that M. Klaczko understands the duties of the
historian, I can only express my surprise at it. He,
doubtless, did not perceive that party spirit and personal
sympathies have suggestions which loyalty disavows. I regret
it for a publicist who had accustomed the readers of the
"Revue des deux Mondes" to better prepared and more
impartially written studies. As far as I am concerned, you
will understand, Mr. Editor, that I could not sanction by my
silence assertions so destitute of foundation, and that M.
Klaczko has forced me to protest in spite of my very sincere
desire to avoid any polemics, and to maintain a reserve from
which it is painful for me to depart. This letter, however,
has no other object, and while asking you to insert it in the
next number of the "Revue," I beg you to accept the assurance
of my highest regard.
BENEDETTI.
* * * * *
M. Benedetti's letter was communicated to M. Julian Klaczko, who
returned it to us with the following observations:--
M. le Comte Benedetti confounds two very different
negotiations which have been spoken of in our work, as well
as the two very distinct estimations of which they have been
the object on our part. It was only in the affair concerning
the treaty on Belgium, in the month of August, 1866, that the
conduct of M. Benedetti toward his minister seemed incorrect
to us; we have not passed the same judgment on his attitude
in the months of March and April of the same year, as regards
the secret treaty negotiated between M. de Bismarck and
General Govone; still less have we reproached him with having
been the inspirer of this treaty _without the knowledge of
his government_. We have only affirmed that his dispatches at
that time were of a nature to deter the French government
from any attempt at a prior engagement with Prussia in view
of the eventualities of the war.
M. Benedetti in truth did not cease to represent the court of
Berlin as inaccessible to any overture of this sort. Even on
the 8th June, 1866, on the eve of the war, he wrote: "The
apprehensions which France inspires everywhere in Germany
still exist, and they will reawaken unanimously and violently
at the slightest indication which could reveal our intention
to extend ourselves toward the East.... The king, like the
most humble of his subjects, would not listen at this moment
to the possibility of a sacrifice (on the Rhine). The crown
prince, profoundly sensible 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
the cession of the little county of Glatz." ("My Mission in
Prussia," pp. 171-172). In his other reports, as well as
throughout his whole book, M. Benedetti always returns to
this circumstance, that he never "encouraged hopes" on this
side, and that he "sufficiently indicated that one would not
obtain in any case, with the consent of Prussia, territorial
concessions on the frontier of the East." ("My Mission," p.
176).
That was, however, not the sentiment of the Italian
negotiators at the court of Berlin. M. de Barral, in a
telegram addressed the 6th May to General La Marmora, thus
expressed himself: "They are busily occupied with
negotiations, we are assured, which are taking place between
France and Austria to indemnify Italy, and which will have
gone as far as the line of the Rhine to France. To the
observation which I made on the danger of such an offer by a
German Power, Bismarck replied to me by shrugging his
shoulders, indicating very clearly that, should the case
occur, he would not recoil from this means of
aggrandizement!" On his side, General Govone, in his very
minute report of the 7th May, relates the same incident in a
fuller and much more explicit manner. "M. de Bismarck wishes
to know the intentions and desires of the emperor; he has
spoken of them to M. de Barral; he told him to try to learn
something about them through M. Nigra; he has even given them
cause to believe that he will be disposed to abandon to him
the banks of the Rhine, having been informed by his agents
that the emperor was negotiating with Austria, and that
Austria would cede to him, so he believes, Venetia, and would
even invite him to take possession of the left bank of the
Rhine." M. de Barral, to whom he spoke, cried out: "But
Austria should not thus compromise itself with Germany while
sacrificing countries which belong to the confederation!" M.
de Bismarck made a gesture which seemed to say: "I too would
cede them." Lastly, in his report of the 3d June, five days
before the dispatch of M. Benedetti concerning "the king and
the most humble of his subjects," General Govone quotes the
following reply of M. de Bismarck to his demand whether one
could not find "some geographical line" to indemnify France?
"There will be the Mosel (said M. de Bismarck). I am, he
added, much less German than Prussian, and I would have no
difficulty in conceding to France the cession of all the
country between the Mosel and the Rhine: the Palatinate,
Oldenburg, a part of the Prussian territory, etc. But the
king will have great scruples, and can only decide in a
supreme moment when it is a question of losing or winning
all. At any rate, to bring the mind of the king to any
arrangement with France, it will be necessary to know the
minimum (_il limite minimo_) of the pretensions of this
Power." (La Marmora, "Un po piu di luce," p. 211, 221, 275).
Thus the Italian negotiators differed notably from M.
Benedetti in their opinion on this very grave point; in all
the confidential and evidently sincere relations which they
had with their own government, they considered a territorial
and previous arrangement between France and Prussia as a very
difficult thing, without doubt, but not impossible. We have
not discussed in our work the question whether it was General
Govone or M. Benedetti who had judged the situation best; we
have not even mentioned this divergence of opinions: we have
only asked how M. Benedetti could have believed that after
Sadowa and Nikolsburg he would find Prussia accessible to
arrangements which it had not wished to accept before its
immense victories and in the midst of an extremely perilous
crisis? How could he have undertaken on this 5th August[146]
to demand of M. de Bismarck for France all the left bank of
the Rhine without excepting the great fortress of Mayence,
when on the 8th June he was persuaded that one could not
obtain from Prussia even a territory of the value of the
county of Glatz? We have given the only possible explanation
of this contradiction, the only one, we dare affirm, which
has presented itself to the minds of all those who have
studied these events. Before the campaign of Bohemia, we
said, M. Benedetti did not think it possible to obtain
territorial concessions from Prussia, and had shown all the
more plainly the difficulties of such a demand which he
feared to see Prussia refuse and thus render its _connubio_
with Italy abortive, if they insisted prematurely, too firmly
on the point of compensations. He desired rather to count on
the military events to procure advantages for his country,
on "the necessities to which the war might reduce the
Prussian government" ("My Mission," p. 172), for he did not
expect any more than the most ordinary of mortals the
startling blow of Sadowa. After Sadowa he was dismayed at the
success of the Hohenzollern; patriotic anguish for France
succeeded in his heart to the generous sympathies for Italy,
and, as he himself says, "in view of the important
acquisitions of Prussia he was of the opinion that a
territorial remodeling was henceforward necessary for the
security of France." ("My Mission," p. 177). This remodeling
he had _at first_ hoped to find on the Rhine, "provided that
the language of his government was firm and its attitude
resolute" (p. 178); he had then sought it on the Meuse and
the Escaut, and had allowed himself to be drawn into that
secret negotiation on Belgium which was to be so fatal to
France.
It was probably not the _patriotic anguish_ attributed by us
to M. Benedetti on the day after Sadowa, that could have
wounded his feelings. Could it be the Italian sympathies with
which we have credited him that awakened his
susceptibilities? But the pronounced liking for the country
and the cause of M. de Cavour has been the principal and
marked characteristic of the political life of the former
ambassador of France to the court of Berlin; in sight, and
with the knowledge, of every one, M. Benedetti has always
been reckoned among the most distinguished members of a party
which had great influence in the councils of the second
empire, a party which considered Italian unity as the most
glorious work of the reign, the most useful for France, and,
in its eyes, the _connubio_ of Italy and Prussia seemed 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! The diplomatic career
of M. Benedetti, even presents in this respect a character
of unity and indivisibility which will arouse the eternal
admiration of all Italian patriots. In 1860 he had negotiated
and brought to a successful end the treaty on Savoy and Nice,
in exchange for which the imperial government tore up the
treaty of Zurich, and sanctioned implicitly the annexations
of Tuscany and Emilia. In 1861 he was made minister
plenipotentiary of France to Turin, as if to console Italy
for the recent death of M. de Cavour, to reestablish in any
case beyond the Alps the friendly relations which the
invasion of the kingdom of Naples had for a moment strongly
compromised. In the summer of the following year (August,
1862), the harmony between France and Italy was again
troubled in consequence of Aspromonte, and of the circular of
General Durando, of the 10th September, which demanded the
evacuation of Rome. M. Thouvenel was then obliged to leave
the Hotel of the Quai d'Orsay, giving place to M. Drouyn de
Lhuys; and M. Benedetti, as well as his colleague of Rome, M.
de La Valette, hastened to give his resignation, in order to
mark with _eclat_ his disapprobation as regarded a system
become less favorable to the aspirations of Italy. He did not
reenter the career until two years later, the 7th October,
1864, after the convention of the 15th September had given
satisfaction to the wishes of the cabinet of Turin concerning
Rome, also after M. de Bismarck had passed by Paris and had
placed there the first beacons of the great combination
against Austria. The post at Berlin was then raised to an
embassy, and M. Benedetti became the holder of it. His former
colleague of Rome, M. de La Valette, did not delay to sit in
the councils of the empire, and at the same moment General La
Marmora, well known for his _Prussomania_, undertook the
direction of affairs at Turin. And from the beginning of the
year 1865, M. de Bismarck engaged in his first campaign
against Austria concerning the Duchies, and made his first
proceedings at Florence to combine an understanding with
Italy. The _connubio_ was not definitely consummated until
April, 1866, under the eyes of M. Benedetti.
No one that we know (and we less than any one) has reproached
M. Benedetti with having favored this _connubio without the
knowledge of his government_; but M. Benedetti will doubtless
not pretend that this understanding between Italy and Prussia
did not have all his sympathies. General Govone had no
confidences for him at Berlin, perhaps; it was M. Benedetti,
on the contrary, who made the Italian negotiator precious
confidences,--that one among others, "that M. de Bismarck was
a sort of _maniac_, whom he (Benedetti) knew and had
_followed_ for nearly fifteen years."[147] He had advised
him, also, "not to sign any treaty, but only to have a
project thoroughly discussed and ready to sign when the
mobilization of Prussia should be achieved." Would M.
Benedetti seek to persuade that by this advice he had wished
to hinder the _connubio_? No, assuredly, by such advice M.
Benedetti told General Govone to act only in earnest. It was
good counsel that he gave him. Now one does not give good
counsel for an affair which one wishes to see go under.
Moreover, it was not the Italians that it was necessary to
render favorable to the _connubio_; they inclined to it
naturally: the important part was to gain over the court of
Berlin, to triumph over its scruples, to reassure it, above
all, as to the intentions of France. "I think that I should
announce to you," the Italian negotiator telegraphed on the
28th March to General La Marmora, "that the president (M. de
Bismarck) keeps M. Benedetti exactly informed."[148] M. de
Bismarck would certainly not have thought of keeping M.
Benedetti so exactly informed, if he had credited him with an
aversion or even a lukewarmness for the Italian marriage.
Then, as since, in France as well as abroad, in the eyes of
the publicists as well as in the eyes of his own chiefs (as
we are going to prove immediately), the former ambassador of
France to the court of Berlin has always passed for the agent
of the imperial government who wished most ardently for the
success of the Italo-Prussian combination, and the book, "My
Mission in Prussia," has not succeeded at all in shaking a
conviction which we do not fear to call general.
We would never have thought of intruding in such an important
debate our obscure person and our humble writings; but, since
M. Benedetti has kindly wished to recognize in the works
previously published by us in the "Revue des deux Mondes,"
"studies better prepared and more impartially written," we
feel less hesitation in quoting one of those pages which we
consecrated even here seven years ago to that pathetic
episode of contemporaneous history. Speaking in our
"Preliminaries of Sadowa," of the treaty negotiated between
M. de Bismarck and General Govone in the spring of 1866, we
expressed ourselves as follows: "There was only one strong
mind like M. de Bismarck to enter into a compact with this
secretary of the dreaded kingdom who assisted his colleague
the Count de Barral; in the depths M. Benedetti appeared from
time to time. In this respect, we involuntarily stretch our
hand toward that volume of Machiavelli; we are seized with a
desire to re-read a chapter from the "Legazioni." How happy
he would have been, the great Florentine, to contemplate his
three compatriots fighting with a _barbarian_! At Paris, one
only saw (in this treaty) the single, prodigious fact of a
pact concluded between a monarch by the grace of God, and a
king of the national will, and one went into ecstacies over
the skill of M. Benedetti. There was only one diplomat of the
new school who could perform such a miracle!" Lastly, at the
beginning of the same study, in relating the circumstances
which in 1864 had brought on the political stage those
formerly disgraced by the affair Durando, we said: "Without
doubt it cost M. Drouyn de Lhuys something to accept as a
colleague M. de La Valette, who made no secret of his desire
to take his department from him; it cost him still more,
probably, to allow such an open adversary as M. Benedetti to
be imposed on him as principal agent. Two years later, after
Sadowa, and on the day when he gave up his portfolio, the
same minister was yet to countersign another decree which
raised M. Benedetti to the dignity of the grand cross. Who
knows, however, whether, in the mind of M. Drouyn de Lhuys,
this second signature was not destined to avenge somewhat the
first? In truth, perhaps that was a peculiar trait of mind, a
Parthian trait, to distinguish so highly an agent for having
only too well served a policy the responsibility of which he
not the less repudiated."[149]
Did the former chiefs of the ex-ambassador of France to the
court of Berlin judge otherwise of it? M. Benedetti himself
furnishes us on this point with valuable testimony, which we
will take care not to neglect. He says ("My Mission," p. 148)
that in January, 1870, M. Daru, then minister of foreign
affairs, had made, in a letter, allusion to the events of
1866, in terms which could not but strongly affect the
ambassador: "The territorial state of Prussia," M. Daru had
written him, "results from events which _perhaps_ it has not
depended on you to bring about." Thus, even four years after
Sadowa, they did not cease to attribute to M. Benedetti, to
the bureaux of the Quai d'Orsay, a notable part in these
gloomy events. The ambassador found it opportune to enlighten
his new chief on "the _role_ which he played in this
circumstance," by a private letter dated the 27th January,
1870. "I am not ignorant," we read there, "of all that has
been said on this point; but, by a feeling which you will
appreciate, I do not doubt, I have never thought of declining
the share of responsibility which has been cast on me, and,
for this purpose, to set at right the errors too easily
gathered by a badly informed public." He affirmed, therefore,
that he was then "an active, correct, foreseeing informer,"
and he appeals to his correspondence deposited in the
archives of foreign affairs. "I should add that I never, _and
in none of the missions which I have fulfilled_, have
undertaken other correspondences than those whose marks exist
in the department, or in the hands of your predecessors, and
that I never had, _in all the epochs of my career_, other
orders to execute than those that have been given me directly
through them." ("My Mission," pp. 148-149). Yet that is not
sufficient for M. Benedetti, and in publishing this letter he
accompanies it (p. 150) with a triumphant commentary: "I have
affirmed a fixed and indubitable fact in mentioning, in my
letter (to M. Daru), that I did not have the honor, _on any
occasion_ (these words are underlined by M. Benedetti
himself), to sustain a direct and confidential correspondence
with the emperor. He has deigned to grant me his confidence,
and occasionally to testify to me his satisfaction; he has
never ceased to transmit to me his orders by the mediation of
his minister of foreign affairs, with whom I have exclusively
corresponded. No one will suppose, I think, that I would
affirm this in such absolute terms as I have in writing to M.
Daru, my immediate chief, if I had not been fully
authorized."