IMPERIAL AND PRESIDENTIAL VISITS
M. Félix Faure had been but a short time President when the Emperor
Alexander III. died in such an unexpected manner. This untoward event
interfered with the advances France had in contemplation; indeed,
already in Paris there had been talk of Russia as _la nation amie et
alliée_. But, on the other hand, the obsequies of the Emperor gave the
French Government an opportunity of manifesting its sympathies with
Russia. A special military mission, headed by General Boisdeffre, at
that time head of the General Staff, was sent to St. Petersburg, where
it remained until the marriage of the new Tsar. It was not only made
much of by those who favoured a _rapprochement_ with France, of whom
there were a considerable number in Russian society, but thanks to the
ability of the French Ambassador, Comte de Montebello, was also brought
into contact with leading Russian politicians.
It was then that the conditions of a defensive alliance between both
countries came under serious discussion. The new Emperor showed himself
unusually gracious to all the members of the mission, and when General
Boisdeffre timidly remarked that the President of the Republic would be
envious of the honour he had experienced of being brought into personal
contact with His Majesty, Nicholas replied, half jokingly and half
earnestly, that perhaps he would pay a visit to the President in Paris,
which city he had a great desire to see.
These words raised roseate anticipations at the time, and later on were
seized upon by the French Government and construed into a promise made
by the Emperor Nicholas II. to visit M. Félix Faure, then President of
France. Nor was the Emperor allowed to forget. General Boisdeffre
returned to Russia some sixteen months later for the Coronation of the
Tsar, and there, together with Comte de Montebello, had many serious
conversations with Prince Lobanoff, the Russian Minister for Foreign
Affairs, and with General Obroutscheff, then head of the Russian General
Staff, who, being married to a Frenchwoman, was one of the staunchest
supporters of an alliance with France. At a direct result of these
interviews, Nicholas II. was induced to promise that his visits to
European Courts on the occasion of his accession to the throne would
include one to Paris.
When the news became official, the enthusiasm it excited among all
classes in France was absolutely indescribable. I remember that one
morning, as I was walking down the Champs Elysées, I saw two workmen,
who were mending one of the lanterns of the Avenue, eagerly scanning a
newspaper with a portrait of the Tsar, and heard one say to the other,
“C’est celui-là qui va nous débarrasser des Prussiens” (“He is the man
who will rid us of the Prussians”). The whole nation saw itself once
more in possession of Alsace and Lorraine, and never thought about the
impending Imperial visit as anything else than the first step towards
that consummation.
In Russia, however, we did not care for it at all. It seemed humiliating
to our national pride that our Sovereign should make the first advances
to a country the government of which represented everything that was
antipathetic to an autocracy like ours. When I say “we,” I am talking of
the saner elements of our country. In Russia, as well as in France, the
anti-German elements hailed the situation with joy, and hoped great
things from a closer union of the two nations.
The Emperor on his side could not but feel flattered at the shower of
praise and compliments that fell from the French nation and the French
press. It tickled his fancy to be received in triumph in the capital of
a Republican country, and to find prostrate at his feet its most rabid
Radicals. He did not see, or did not care to see, the undercurrents that
actuated this enthusiasm; besides, Russia wanted a loan, and wanted it
under favourable conditions. The presence of the Tsar in Paris ensured
the success of such an operation, and, as Henri IV. said, “Paris vaut
bien une messe.”
It is to be questioned which of the two countries indulged most in
platitudes on this memorable occasion. France, at least, was actuated by
the legitimate desire to recover her lost provinces, and she may well be
forgiven if she allowed herself to be carried away beyond the limits of
that courtesy which a great nation is bound to show to any foreign
Sovereign who honours it with a visit. But Russia---- Was it worthy of
her, was it dignified on the part of the Monarch so to stoop in order to
get the money she wanted without the least intention to hold to the
other side of the bargain, or to run into a war with Germany in order to
gratify the feelings of revenge which animated the French nation?
Paris had turned out _en masse_ to see the royal entry. It was a little
after ten o’clock when the report of the guns of Mont Valérien announced
the arrival of the Imperial train at the Ranelagh station. Immediately
the crowd began to cheer, long before they caught sight of the troops
which escorted the carriage in which the Emperor and Empress, with the
President, were driving. The French Government had chosen these troops
with great care, and given the preference to the Spahis and Arabs from
Algeria, whose picturesque costumes and white burnouses added to the
general splendour of the brilliant scene.
It was an event without precedent, this recognition by the only
autocratic Monarch left in Europe, of a Republic from which hitherto
foreign Sovereigns had more or less held aloof. It was bound to create a
deep sensation, not only in France, but throughout the world; and its
consequences promised at that moment to become stupendous. In reality
they were absolutely insignificant, and France certainly played the part
of the dupe in this queer comedy.
But it was not of this that Paris was thinking as it welcomed its
Russian ally. When the mob saw the Empress, pale and lovely, in her
white dress, with an immense bouquet of flowers reposing in her lap, as
she sat beside her Consort, who wore the dark green tunic of the
Preobragensky Regiment, with the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour
across his breast, its joy overstepped all bounds; it was more like a
delirium of mad enthusiasm than anything else. But it was in the Place
de la Concorde that the manifestations became quite grandiose. And I
must say that of all the popular demonstrations I have ever witnessed it
was the most imposing. Row upon row of human beings were massed like
shots in a cartridge, which seemed suddenly on the passage of the
Imperial carriage to explode into one single shout, whilst opposite,
under the waving flags and banners on the terrace of the Tuileries, long
lines of officers in uniform stood looking on the scene over the heads
of the crowd. The statues were covered with human beings, boys and men
who had climbed upon them to have a better view of the procession.
Only one, that of the town of Strasburg, was undecorated, and its
bareness seemed more than suggestive to the impartial spectator. When M.
Félix Faure pointed it out to the Emperor the acclamations of the mob
became deafening. It was a triumph indeed, and if you had asked any one
of these people why they were howling away their enthusiasm and joy,
they would each and all have replied that it meant “Une Alsace
Française,” and that by his visit to Paris Nicholas II. was tacitly
promising it to the French people.
The only one who appeared unconscious of the significance attributed to
his visit was the Emperor himself. Perhaps he knew that whatever people
might think, he was not going to risk the life of even one of his
soldiers in order to gratify the wild hatred of France against his
German neighbours; perhaps, also, he was merely amused by the bright
scene that stretched itself before his eyes; or, maybe, he was thinking
that it would have been a good thing had his own subjects showed such
demonstrative joy whenever he showed himself in the streets of his own
capital. It was something new to him to see the whole population of a
great city let loose without police surveillance--at least, none that
was apparent; a vast multitude who seemed only eager to catch one of his
smiles.
Later on, however, a few discordant notes were heard, even before the
Tsar had left Paris. For one thing, the most rabid Radicals reproached
Nicholas with having called personally on M. Loubet, President of the
Senate, and M. Brisson, President of the Chamber of Deputies. These
visits were not in the programme of the journey, and people said that by
making them the Emperor was identifying himself with the political
opinions of these personages, which were held in suspicion by the
Socialists, who had already become very powerful at that time.
On the other hand, the Conservatives were quite indignant to hear that
at the reception given in his honour at the Hotel de Ville, Nicholas II.
had cordially shaken by the hand a municipal councillor, who in long
bygone days had made himself conspicuous by sending an address of
congratulation to Hartmann, one of the assassins of Alexander II.
Then, to crown all, the leaders of French society and of the Faubourg
St. Germain, who had been invited to meet the Russian Sovereigns at a
lunch given by Baron and Baroness de Mohrenheim, felt sadly chagrined
that neither the Emperor nor the Empress had thought fit to address a
single word to any of them, though there were present such great ladies
as the Duchesse d’Uzès, the Duchesse de Luynes, and Madame Aimery de la
Rochefoucauld.
But all these criticisms proceeded from the few. The many and the masses
felt more than gratified at the unexpected honour which had fallen upon
France. The enthusiasm was especially great after the toasts exchanged
at Chalons between the Tsar and the French President, and to give an
idea of the illusions which at that particular moment seized the whole
French nation, with but very few exceptions, I will reproduce here a
letter which I received one or two days after the departure of the
Russian visitors from a political man who, by virtue of his official
position, ought to have been able to judge of the consequences which
this effervescence of the French public mind might have in the future,
and which proves under what strange misconceptions some people were
labouring:
“I am not at all of your opinion when you tell me that you deplore the
facility with which the French nation has prostrated itself at the feet
of the Cossack. What wind coming from the perfidious shores of Albion
could have made you say such a thing? First of all, he is not a Cossack,
this young Emperor of yours. On the contrary, he produces, together with
his fair Egeria, an immense impression of greatness, seen, as he has
been here, in the full sunlight of our intensive French civilisation,
with his little girl in the background. As for the French crowds, they
haven’t, believe me, prostrated themselves before him; they have only
exchanged a long and passionate embrace with Russia; that is, with a
Europe independent of the Prussian Empire. In this triumphal march of an
Imperator towards our pseudo-Republican capital, the oldest and most
experienced crowned foxes the world has ever seen have found their
Tarpeian rock. Your young Imperial ephebe has emerged out of it
admirably. Nothing that he has done has been out of place; he has shown
simplicity, cordiality, good taste, tact, and everything, in short, that
he ought to have done, without one single false note to mar the concert.
In his place, William II. would only have shown the weight of his sword
and invited us to test it. Nicholas II. is above all this, and has
proved himself of stronger stuff. It is because, in the present case,
the comedians, who generally act in presence of Her Majesty Humanity,
are put to shame by another and newer spectacle, which is far more
powerful than the old scene upon which they had been used to play since
time immemorial.
“In spite of everything, real life will overthrow the false limits into
which one has tried to confine it, and the Treaty of Frankfurt will
share the fate of those of Paris in 1815 and of Westphalia. It was only
real life that could have been strong enough to accomplish this superb
effort, and to set itself up on the ruins of that old mischievous
diplomacy which has produced that snake with three heads called the
Triple Alliance.
“Only two nations could possibly have performed this miracle, and could
have risen against the slavery in which, until now, Europe has been held
in the bondage of the infernal policy of Prince Bismarck. He is the only
real Cossack in the sense we generally attribute to that word, the
Cossack before whom France, even when he vanquished her, has refused to
prostrate herself, and against whom she has risen with sufficient
courage and sufficient strength to deliver from his yoke both Russia and
the dynasty of Romanoff, and to snatch it from the sphere of Prussian
influence. Our two nations have married each other without the help of
any notary, and without the need for any written treaty, and their union
means peace, real peace, against general war which Bismarck wanted to
transform into a _status quo_. This is civilisation in the highest
sense, and Europe owes it not to the fact that France has prostrated
herself before Russia, but to the energetic manner in which the former
has tried and succeeded in establishing its military strength, and
redeeming its lost military prestige.”
I have transcribed this curious letter in its entirety, as it can give,
better than anything else, an idea as to the state of feeling which was
prevailing in Paris in the autumn of the year 1896, when, for the first
time since the fall of the Empire of the Napoleons, a foreign monarch
was officially received with enthusiastic welcome within the doors of
the capital. The enthusiasm was as false as the visit itself, but it
cannot be denied that it gave greater stability to the Republic and
considerably discouraged its enemies.
Nevertheless, nearly a whole year passed before M. Faure returned this
memorable visit, and accomplished his passionate desire by being
welcomed on Russian shores in his capacity of head of the French
Republic. He arrived at Peterhof on a French man-of-war, escorted by a
numerous and powerful squadron, and was received with a cordiality that
must have considerably increased any illusions he may have had
concerning the sincerity of the Russian alliance. St. Petersburg showed
unusual enthusiasm, and the Imperial family treated him with a
familiarity that must have ravished his parvenu heart. As he wrote to
one of his friends in Paris, he held on his knees the little Grand
Duchess Olga, to whom he had brought the most splendid present of dolls
any Imperial child ever received, and the fact of having thus nursed in
his arms the youngest member of the Romanoff family evidently appealed
to his feelings. He began to think himself equal to all these crowned
heads with whom he found himself so unexpectedly thrown into contact,
and to believe himself the real Sovereign of France.
It was dating from this famous visit that M. Faure assumed the
semi-royal manners which considerably displeased many of his former
friends, and caused him to be ridiculed more than he deserved in the
popular cafés chantants of Paris. And, strange though it may appear, the
real popularity which M. Faure had enjoyed until the period of his
return from Russia began to wane. The public reproached him for not
having made the most of his opportunities and for having forgotten, in
his childish joy at the grandeur and magnificence of the reception
awarded to him, the real object of his visit. Disappointment at the
failure to convince Nicholas II. of the necessity of immediately
declaring war on Germany began to make itself felt among the French
nation, and, little by little, both the influence of M. Faure and the
sympathy for Russia began to disappear among the public, which realised
that all the fuss proceeded from the simple desire on the part of Russia
to get the money she wanted at a cheap rate.
I had been away on leave for a few months when I returned to France, and
on the very day I reached Paris I happened to meet the person from whom
I had received a year before the letter which I have reproduced. I could
not help asking him whether he still was of the opinion which he had
professed when he had written to me that enthusiastic anticipation of
the establishment of a solid alliance between France and Russia for the
special purpose of a joint attack against Germany.
I found him furious against M. Faure, to whom he attributed the delay.
Another President, he asserted, would have laid down positive conditions
before he had consented to pay a visit to Peterhof, and made it
subservient to a promise of immediately beginning hostilities against
Germany. When I objected that, in common courtesy, M. Faure could not
have excused himself from accepting the invitation that he had received
personally from the Russian Emperor, my friend replied in those
characteristic words: “Je ne vois pas la nécessité de cela, au
contraire, M. Faure aurait souligné la dignité de la France, en prouvant
qu’elle ne se dérange pas pour rien” (“I do not see the necessity for
it; on the contrary, M. Faure would have given a proof of the dignity
which prevails in France if he had shown that she does not put herself
out for nothing”).
This phrase, coming as it did from a man who was at the period playing
an important part in French politics, will give an idea as to the
opinions which began to prevail against M. Faure.
The Dreyfus affair, which began at that period, intensified it. He did
not, however, live to realise this. He seriously believed himself to be
the right man in the right place, which, in a certain sense, he was,
because of all the Presidents who have held office during the forty odd
years of the existence of the Third Republic in France, he was, perhaps,
the only one that contrived to give it the illusion of a monarchy.
A great deal has been written concerning the sudden death of M. Félix
Faure. It is unfortunately certain that it took place under much to be
deplored circumstances. It is also certain that the manner of his death
has thrown upon his memory an unpleasant shade.
Alas! alas! poor Yorick. In a Republican country the abuses of monarchy
can but too often be met with, and in the case of M. Félix Faure these
came very prominently to the front. He played at being a small King,
even so far as to allow, in a Republican country, the establishment of
the old custom of there being always “une favorite de roi” at his side.
But I must say once I am touching on that subject that I do not believe
for a moment the assertions of the lady in question, that M. Faure used
to consult her in political matters, and that she had great influence
over him in that respect. M. Faure was an exceedingly shrewd politician,
and knew perfectly well what he was about. He was also perfectly aware
that he had numerous enemies who, if they had been able once to prove
that he was confiding gravest matters of State to the discretion of
another, would not have hesitated to make use of this fact to overthrow
him, or at least to put him in such a position that he would have been
obliged to send in his resignation. And M. Faure cared for his position
as President of the French Republic, and would not have jeopardised it
for anything in the world, least of all for a woman.
Perhaps it was as well for his own sake that death removed him from the
political scene, before the curtain fell on the final act in the Dreyfus
drama. What he would have done had he seen all that ensued after the
discovery of the forgery of Colonel Henry, the knowledge of which made
him so unhappy, and after the second condemnation of Captain Dreyfus at
Rennes, it is difficult to say. Those who have known him well, told me
that he had been very much troubled at the development this miserable
business took so unexpectedly, and that he often regretted that he had
not interfered and pardoned Dreyfus at the time of this first
condemnation.
It seems that he had been very much tempted to do so, having always had
some doubts in his own mind as to the Captain’s culpability, but the
President was also aware that his own popularity was on the wane, and
that voices had already accused him of trying to make up to the German
Emperor.
This last fact deserves a few words of explanation. Some enemies of M.
Faure had spread the gossip that his St. Petersburg laurels had not been
sufficient for his inordinate vanity, and that as, in spite of all his
conversations with Nicholas II. he had not succeeded in inducing the
latter to consent to the adoption by Russia of an aggressive policy
against Germany, he had tried to bring about some kind of arrangement
with the German Emperor, and to persuade him to grant autonomy to Alsace
and Lorraine. He knew that such a measure would have largely satisfied a
certain section of public opinion in France. Serious politicians,
however, knew very well that it was useless to hope that Germany would
return without another war, and perhaps not even then, the provinces she
had conquered at the cost of such stupendous sacrifices.
Whether M. Félix Faure ever nursed such a dream, it is difficult to say,
but it was attributed to him, and for an excitable people like the
French such a rumour was sufficient to set the tide against the
President. Had he at that juncture pardoned Captain Dreyfus the outcry
would have been immense, and the word traitor would undoubtedly have
been applied to him. He knew it well, and perhaps this made him keep
more aloof than he ought to have done from the net of intrigues which
surrounded the tragedy of the Hebrew officer who was to draw on his
person the attention of the whole world. But it is also to be regretted,
perhaps, that the President found himself with his hands tied on this
memorable occasion, and that in his dread of losing his position he
forgot his constitutional prerogatives.