II.
It is the characteristic of all conventional praise to exaggerate not only the tone, but even to deceive itself sometimes in the amount; there is perfumeand ashes in incense, said the ancients, and there is something equivocal also in the usual manner of congratulating the Russian chancellor on his "triumph" in the question of the Euxine. To pretend that Prince Gortchakof did not favor the audacious designs of Prussia in order to free Russia from its bonds in the Black Sea, that he delivered Europe in advance to Prince Bismarck in the sole hope of some day repudiating to his advantage the act of 1856, is in truth to pay as little honor to his genius as to his patriotism. Certainly the eminent statesman whose "prophetic glance" the grandchildren of Washington[108]celebrated at St. Petersburg in the year of Sadowa, supplicating the eternal God, "who had made the sun stand still for Joshua," also to suspend the course of life for Alexander Mikhaïlovitch, "so that the eyes of the world might long remain fixed on him,"[109]the consummate diplomat who, in the spring of 1867, slighted the important advances made by the cabinets of Vienna and the Tuileries,—certainly this minister did not fail at this moment to put aside with a disdainful smile, the petty hypothesis, that in the approaching and foreseen overturning of Europe, there would be assigned to Russia as its sole victory and conquest, the abolition of any wounding article of a treaty which events had long before rendered "invalid." It was not for such a "plate of lentils," to use the language of M. de Bismarck, that Prince Gortchakof intended to cede to the Hohenzollern the fixedbirthrightof theRomanof; he did not think of abandoning the Occident for such a ridiculous price: he looked higher, and expected to have the lion's share in the quarry to come. Fortune has deceived his hopes, defeated his calculations, and forced him to bend to many unforeseen necessities; but, if it is puerile to allow him to have made virtues of all these vexatious necessities, and to form for him a sort of aureole of lightnings and thunderbolts of the war of 1870, history, in its impartiality, must not the less take into consideration the intentions of Prince Gortchakof, which were as great as the events themselves, and, without denying his defeat, nevertheless accord him the full benefitin magnis voluisse.
They cherished, in fact, great, gigantic projects on the banks of the Moscova and the Neva, in all this agitated and feverish epoch which separated Sedan from Sadowa; they deluded themselves with enchanting dreams; they divided the world between Sclavians and Germans, and the "national" minister responded to the ardent wishes of the entire nation in making the Prussian alliance the pivot of its policy, in seeing in it the absolute condition and the sure pledge of a future of glory and prosperity for Russia. We must look back on the universal mental agitation in consequence of the equally prodigious and unforeseen victory of Prussia in 1866, on the innumerable fantastic plans which were then suddenly formed for the reconstruction of empires and races; it is necessary to recall this endless flight of Minervas all armed, whom the blow of the German Vulcan's hammer caused to spring forth from so many cracked heads who thought themselves Olympian,—thegeneralremouldingwhich our poor philosophy of history, at once so cutting and so malleable, undergoes in the twinkling of an eye,—to appreciate justly the current of strange and impetuous ideas which then seized the people of Peter the Great and of Catherine II. "An irresistible power forces the people to reunite in great masses, making the secondary States disappear, and this tendency is perhaps inspired by a sort of providential prevision of the destinies of the world." This, on the day after Sadowa, was the expression of an official document of incontestable authority, a diplomatic manifest which announcedurbi et orbithe profoundest thoughts of the imperial government of France.[110]How can one be astonished, then, that the children of Rourik followed the same reasoning, and asked themselves with candor if the battle of Koenigsgraetz did not entirely deliver Central Europe to the Hohenzollern and Oriental Europe to the Romanof? After some moments of hesitation and surprise, Muscovite patriotism resolved therefore, to take no umbrage at the ambition of King William I., but it immediately proclaimed that Russia also had a mission to fulfill, an "idea" to realize, and that the sun of national unities and grand combinations shone for all the world.
There was in the old capital of the czars a celebrated journal whose power has since greatly declined, and which, although now an ordinary paper only, but still important, then exercised a preponderant, tyrannic influence, from the Dwina to the Ural: it was occasionally called, and without malice, "thefirst power in the state after the emperor." From the time of the fatal insurrections of Poland, the "Gazette of Moscow" was in truth the monitor of the popular passions of Holy Russia, the office from whence the word of command for public opinion went forth into the vast empire of the North, and it often issued formal instructions for the directing ministers at St. Petersburg. Even at this time the all-powerful organ of M. Katkof made itself the mouth-piece of the nation, and imperiously traced the programme of the policy of the future. Only a short time after the conclusion of the peace of Prague, the journal of Moscow laid down "as an incontestable truth, that the march of events has produced interests which invite the two Powers of Russia and Prussia to ally themselves still more actively than in the past;" it affirmed, moreover, that overtures on this point had been made by M. de Bismarck, "overtures the more acceptable as Prussia has no interests in the Orient; on this question, the cabinet of Berlin could take, in concert with Russia, such an attitude as suited it." The theme was again taken up and developed under many a form and in many an article, until a leader of the 17th February, 1867, impressed on it the great consecration of a speculative and humanitarian principle.
"The new era is at last sketched," one reads there, "and for us Russians it has a peculiar bearing. This era is truly ours; it calls to life a new world kept until now in the shadow and expectation of its destinies, the Græco-Sclavic world. After centuries passed in resignation and servitude, this world at last reaches the moment of renovation; what has solong been forgotten and down-trodden, comes back to the light and prepares for action. The present generations will see great changes, great facts, and great formations. Already on the peninsula of the Balkan, and under the worm-eaten couch of Ottoman tyranny, three groups of lively and strong nationalities are being formed, the Hellenic, Sclavic, and Roumanian groups. Closely bound among themselves by the commonalty of their faith and their historical destinies, these three groups are equally connected with Russia by all the ties of religion and national life. These three groups of nations once reconstructed, Russia will reveal itself in an entirely different light. It will no longer be alone in the world; in place of a sombre, Asiatic power, as it now seems to be, it will become a moral force indispensable to Europe, a Græco-Sclavic civilization completing the Latin-German civilization, which without it would remain imperfect and inert in its sterile exclusiveness." Soon after descending from these rather abstract heights to the more practical ground of ways and means, the fiery apostle of thenew eraexclaimed on the 7th April: "If France sustains by arms and by its political influence therenaissanceof the Latin races, if Prussia acts in the same mannervis-à-visto Germany, why, then, should not Russia, the only independent Sclavic Power, sustain the Sclavic races, and should it not prevent foreign Powers from placing obstacles in the way of their political development? Russia should employ all its powers to introduce in its neighbors of the South a transformation similar to that which took place in Central and Occidental Europe;vis-à-visthe Sclavians itshould take, without the least hesitation, the rôle which France has taken in regard to the Latin races and Prussiavis-à-visthe German world. The task is a noble one, forit is exempt from egotism: it is beneficial, for it will achieve the triumph of the principle of nationalities, and will give a solid basis to the modern equilibrium of Europe; it is worthy of Russia and of its greatness; it is immense, and we have the firm conviction that Russia will fulfill it."
It was under the stimulant of such theories, hopes, and passions, that, in the spring of the year 1867, the strangeethnological exposition of Moscow[111]was instituted, which soon became the pretext for a great demonstration from without, sufficiently inoffensive in appearance to remove all diplomatic embarrassment, well calculated, however, to produce its effect onnaïfand inflammable minds, to fascinate unfortunate, disinherited people, richer in imagination than in culture. Certainly, true science would draw very little profit from this projected reunion in themanégeof Moscow of all the Sclavic "types" with their costumes, their arms, their domestic utensils, and their flora; but the undertaking was considered not the less worthy of the most august protection. The emperor and the empress offered considerable sums to defray the costs of the work, the Grand Duke Vladimir accepted the honorary presidency of it, the high dignitaries of the court and the church charged themselves with its direction. Warm appeals were addressed to the Sclavians of Austria and Turkey, to their differenthistorical, geographical, or other learned societies, to add by numerous contributions to the magnificence of the exposition, and a cloud of emissaries collected in the countries of the Danube and of the Balkan in search of adhesion, samples, and "types." Committees were formed in different parts of the empire, in order to worthily prepare the reception of the "Sclavic guests," who did not fail to swarm to the "national jubilee," and soon acongresswas spoken of, in which should be discussed the wants and the interests of so many "brother peoples," the hopes and the griefs of the great common country, of theidealcountry. It was the moment, it is necessary to recall it, when the Cretan insurrection, always persistent, stirred up by Greece, and exaggerated by the journals too little or too well informed, kept the Christian populations of Turkey in alarm and on their guard; the moment, also, when the Czechen of Bohemia; urging on in consequence almost all the Sclavians of Austria, protested against the Cisleithan constitution, and refused to sit in the representative chambers of the empire. TheKremlinthus became themons sacerof theintransigeansof the two banks of the Leitha, thecongress of Moscowhad all the appearance of anopposition parliamentopposed to the Reichsrath of Vienna, and the language held by the authorized organs of the cabinet of St. Petersburg was not calculated to calm the susceptibilities of the interested governments, nor to dissuade vexatious manifestations. Speaking of the piouspilgrimsof Turkey and Austria who were preparing to visit Moscow, "that holy Mecca of the Sclavians," the "Correspondance Russe," the ministerial journalpar excellence,[112]thus expressed itself in the month of April, 1867: "One cannot reasonably demand of us that we abjure our past. We will let, then, our guests believe that they have come to a sister nationfrom whom they have everything to expectand nothing to fear;we will listen to their grievances, and the recital of their evils can only tighten the ties which unite us with them. If now they intend to establish a comparison between their political state and ours,we will not be foolish enoughto prove to them that they are in the most favorable conditions of Sclavic development. These conditions, we believe, on the contrary, to be bad; we have said so a hundred times, and we can well say so again."
Without doubt the Russian intrigues in the countries of the Danube and the Balkan were not of very recent invention; they even dated back very far in the past, from the reign of the great Catherine. Underhandedly and secretly, the Pan-Sclavic propaganda had been encouraged or protected for nearly a century; but it was for the first time, in this summer of 1867, that the government of St. Petersburg thus loftily assumed the responsibility of such a propaganda, and unfurled in its states the flags of Saints Cyrille and Methode. In an empire where all is watched, regulated, and commanded from the throne, where nothing is done spontaneously, where all is arranged anddevised, "foreign Sclavians," subjects of two neighboring and "friendly" Powers, were admitted, encouraged to come to exposetheir grievances, to bring complaints against their respective governments, to demand assistance and deliverance in the name of a new right of nations, of a principle lately discovered of great combinations and national unities.They were not foolish enoughto dismiss these foreign "deputies," to counsel reason and resignation to them; on the contrary they spoke to them of a "better and approaching condition," they took them through all the cities of the empire amidst enthusiastic manifestations directed by the colonels and archimandrites, they overwhelmed them with testimonies of sympathy, ovations and demonstrations, in which the army, the magistrates, and all the higher official world took part. Generals, admirals, and ministers presided at banquets where the disaster of Sadowa was celebrated as a providential and happy event by the subjects of the Emperor Francis Joseph, where appeals were addressed to the czar "to revenge the secular outrages of the White Mountain and of Kossovo, and to plant the Russian banner on the Dardanelles, and on the basilica of St. Sophia." The shock given by such demonstrations to a whole race, to a whole religious world, was profound and prolonged, and certainly the contemporaneous annals have rarely known a period asincorrectin point of view of international right and of the usages of the chancellors' offices as that which had for its starting point the congress of Moscow and for its end the conference of Paris on the subject of Greece. It was a strange one in truth, this epoch, with such presidents of the council as Ratazzi, Bratiano, Koumondouros, with generalissimos like Garibaldi, Pétropoulaki, and"Philip the Bulgarian;" with these expeditions of Mentana, of Sistow, of theArcadionandEnosis; with these agitations, to mention all, German, Italian, Czech, Croatian, Roumanian, Servian, Bulgarian, Grecian, and Pan-Sclavic. Without entering farther into the tiresome history of these complex and not yet explained events, it suffices, in order to appreciate the general character of them and to comprehend their close ties, to re-read with all the attention which it merits the report, already mentioned, of the ambassador of France to the court of Berlin, dated the 5th January, 1868. "M. de Bismarck must have," wrote M. Benedetti, "a disturbed Italy, in permanent disagreement with France, to constrain us to maintain forces more or less considerable in the States of the Holy See, to be able, if necessary, to excite, by the aid of the revolutionary party, a violent rupture between the government of the emperor and that of King Victor Emmanuel, to neutralize, in a word, our liberty on the Rhine.... And I would not be surprised if M. de Bismarck were the instigator of the new impulse given since last summer to the Pan-Sclavic propaganda; he finds in it the immediate advantage of disturbing Austria by Russia. Russia will assuredly show itself less enterprising, and Prussia on its part will not encourage it (Russia) to renew the question of the Orient, for the simple reason that it itself (Prussia) would gain no advantage in it, if it did not think it indispensable to pay with this price for the liberty which it claims in Germany. The uncertainty of the situation only tightens every day the ties which unite Prussia with Russia and solidifies the ambitions of the one in Germany with those of the other in the Orient."
Apermanent committee for the interests of Sclavic unitywas formed on the day after the congress of Moscow, under the auspices of a grand duke, and his action was not slow in making itself felt among the Ruthenes, the Czechen, the Croatians of Austria; but it was especially in the tributary or subject provinces of the Ottoman Porte that the agitation became as chronic as it was perilous. The unfortunate Turk was assailed on all sides: one day it was the Vladika of Montenegro who demanded of him in a menacing tone some port of the Adriatic, another day the Prince of Servia demanded the evacuation of some fortress, enforcing his request with extraordinary armaments. Numerous convoys of arms arrived from Russia in the Danubian Provinces under the false designation of material for the construction of railroads,[113]while the Greek ships of war did not cease to wish to rekindle with all their strength in the isle of Crete an insurrection about to be extinguished and which, in truth, never was of very great extent. It was the epoch of "committees of aid" and "liberating bands" now overrunning the States of the Pope with the cry "Roma o Morte!" now making incursions in Thessaly to revenge "the outraged manes of Phocion and Philopœmon," or again freeing five times in the space of a year the Danube from the side of Roumania only to awaken in the Balkans "the lion with the golden mane!" "To-day it is our duty, brothers, to prove to European diplomacy that descendants ofthe terrible Krum still exist; the lion with the golden mane and the trumpet of war call you." Thus read in the month of August, 1868, a proclamation dated from the "Balkans," and signed "Provisional Government."[114]"It is a fact," wrote on the 6th February, 1868, in a curious report addressed to Count de Beust by the agent of Austria in the Principalities, Baron d'Eder,—"it is a fact that at Bucharest, as in the different cities on the banks of the Danube, there exist Bulgarian committees; their object is to provoke troubles in Bulgaria, to aid them, to give them more extended proportions than those of the past year. Only quite lately they were persuaded here that on the return of pleasant weather serious complications would break out in Occidental Europe which would permit Russia to declare war against Turkey, and, foreseeing these events, they have made preparations to influence with energy the Bulgarian rising. Although the government of the Principalities is in the hands of a party (radical) traditionally hostile to Russia, it has nevertheless for some time inclined towards this Power, and expects from it the realization of its efforts and its hopes. The journals of the opposition (conservative) combat these Russophile tendencies of the government; they reproach it with acting in concert with Prussia and with preparing difficulties for Austria in case of a conflict between France and Prussia. The journals of the government reply by saying that the national party is from principle the adversary of no Power, and that there is no reason for combatingRussia from the moment that this Power defends the cause of right and of oppressed nationalities."
Assuredly it would be unjust to throw on the Russian government the responsibility of all the disorderly agitations of this epoch in the Sclavic-Græco-Roumanian world, but it is not the less true that it did nothing to stop or even disown them. In looking over the parliamentary documents of this time,—the different blue, red, green, and yellow books of the years 1867-1869,—one is struck at meeting at every step repeated and energetic representations, addressed by the cabinets of London, of the Tuileries, and of Vienna to Servia, Roumania, and to Greece concerning their military preparations, the clandestine shipments of arms and marauding bands, while the cabinets of St. Petersburg and Berlin carefully abstained from any proceeding of this sort. By a piquant change of things here below, which must have astonished the Nesselrode and the Kamptz in their heavenly abode, the Occidental Powers now, England and France, to whom also Austria joined itself, denounced to the world the revolutionary practices of the European demagogic party, while Prussia kept silent, and Russia refused to deny the fact or to plead extenuating circumstances for it. The excuses for the government of Athens Prince Gortchakof kindly found in the Hellenic constitution: "This constitution," said he, "gives to all Greeks full liberty to leave their own country and to take part in any conflict such as existed in Crete;"[115]and that was truly an original spectacle, that of a minister of anautocracy displaying before an old whig like Lord Clarendon the inexorable conditions of a parliamentary and legalrégime. The Porte, it will be remembered, wished to know nothing of a legality which destroyed it; it ended by losing patience, by addressing anultimatumto the government of Athens, and a conference assembled at Paris "to seek for means to smooth over the difference between Turkey and Greece." Some good people apprehended an embarrassed attitude on the part of the Russian chancellor before such areopagus, they even believed him capable of trammeling the labors of this reunion: this was to ignore the resources of a mind as crafty as cultivated, and which profited by the occasion to venture his famousmoton Saturn. "I remember," he wrote to Baron Brunnow, at London, 13th January, 1869, "that there are some persons who accuse Russia of wishing to render the conference abortive. One is not ignorant that the conference emanates from the mind of the emperor. The fable of Saturn has no application in the wanderings of the policy of the imperial cabinet." Alexander Mikhaïlovitch was not at the end of his boldness; he became bitter, almost aggressive; he spoke of the "excitement from without," of a "process of progress," of the "distrust which was attached to every step of Russia," and went so far as to denounce a great conspiracy contrived by the Occidental Powers against the peace of the Levant. "It is impossible for us not to remark," he said, in a dispatch to Baron de Brunnow, of the 17th December, 1868, "that this discordant note is not the only one which has come todisturb the echoes of the Orient. It isthus that we have first seen Servia become the end in view of an agitation which, originated with the press, ended by gaining over diplomacy; Prince MichaelObrenovitchwas suspected, and nothing less than his tragic end was necessary to disarm the hostilities directed against him. Soon after, accusations were directed against the government of the united Principalities: the Bulgarian bands became a motive for incrimination, it was reproached with having tolerated them, it was accused with having encouraged them. This complication was scarcely removed, before a new crisis arose in the relations of Turkey with Greece, a crisis still more grave and more dangerous to the general peace." Decidedly, in absence of the "fable of Saturn," that of the wolf and the lamb had its application in the wanderings of the policy of the imperial cabinet of St. Petersburg.
The conference of Paris succeeded, nevertheless, in its efforts; the Græco-Turkish difference was smoothed over, and with the spring of the year 1869 the cold wind of the propaganda whistled less strongly in the valleys of the Danube and the gorges of the Balkan. There was a sort of lull; but the combustible matters still remained heaped up, ready to catch fire from the first spark. The radicals of Roumania were not the only ones to foresee an offensive action of Russia in the Orient as soon as serious complications should break out in Occidental Europe; that was an almost universal conviction, and one which the children of Rourik shared the very first. The end of the year 1869 was signaled by an incident which did not fail to gravely impress all serious minds. They celebrated at St. Petersburgthe centennial of the institution of the Order of St. George, the great military order of Russia, and of which the first class is only conferred on him who gains a brilliant victory. The Emperor Alexander II. sent this distinction to King William I., to the conqueror of Sadowa and the former champion of 1814. "Accept it," he telegraphed him, "as a new proof of the friendship which unites us, a friendship founded on the souvenir of that great epoch when our united armies fought for a sacred cause which was common to us." And the King of Prussia soon replied by telegraph: "Profoundly touched, andwith tears in my eyes, I thank you for the honor which you have done me, and which I did not expect; but what pleases me still more are the expressions by which you have announced it to me. I see, in truth, in these expressions a new proof of your friendship and your remembrance of the great epoch when our united armies fought for the same sacred cause."[116]
At the commencement of the same year, and while the conference of Paris was still sitting, there died at Nice a faithful servant of the sultan's, one of the last great statesmen of Turkey. Before descending into the tomb, Fuad-Pacha traced with a faltering hand a memorial for his august master, which he said was his political testament. The document was to remain secret, and, in fact, only came to light quite recently.[117]"When this writing is placed before the eyes of your majesty," one reads in it, "I will nolonger be in this world. You can therefore listen to me without distrust, and you should imbue yourself with this great and grievous truth, thatthe Empire of the Osmanlis is in danger." And after having reviewed the different states of the Continent, and marked out the conflict more or less near, but inevitable, between France and Prussia, Fuad-Pacha concluded by these words: "An intestine dissension in Europe, anda Bismarck in Russia, and the face of the world will be changed."
III.
God alone could contemplate his finished work, and say "that it was good;" our poor humanity rarely tastes such a pure enjoyment, and theparty of actionin the councils of the second empire scarcely experienced it in consequence of the events of 1866, which it had so powerfully contributed to create. The ambassador of France at the court of Berlin was among the number of the disabused; the achievement of Italian unity only consoled him, very imperfectly in truth, for the profound blow which the calamity of Sadowa had given his own country. His disenchantment was great; but there is nothing like a great and grievous deception to sharpen and refine a mind naturally sagacious; and if Pascal has spoken of a second ignorance, that which comes after knowledge, there is also for certain diplomats a second knowledge, and like a second sight after a passing blindness. One cannot praise too highly the eminent qualities of observation and of judgment which M. Benedetti showed during the last four years of his embassy at Berlin, and, for thisepoch of 1867 to 1870, history will fully confirm the testimony which he once thought proper to testify of himself, while protesting before his chief,[118]that during his mission in Prussia he had been "an active, correct, and far-seeing agent."
From 1867, in fact, the ambassador worked with patriotic zeal to enlighten his government on the state of affairs in Europe, and to advise it to make a strong resolution, either to resign itself frankly to the inevitable, or to prepare in good time for a conflict very imminent and full of great perils. He represented Prussia as working without cessation to unite all Germany, at the risk of provoking a conflict with France, inclining only too often to consider such a conflict as the surest and most direct means of arriving at its ends. In such a case, he guarded against giving them the least hope from theparticularistsof the South. "At the beginning of a national war," he said, "the most obstinate among them will only be extinguished by the masses who will regard the struggle, whatever may be the circumstances in the midst of which it will break out, as a war of aggression of France against their country; and if the fortune of arms were favorable to them, their demands would know no limits." He also noticed "the most active propaganda" which M. de Bismarck maintained in the countries the other side of the Main: "With the exception of some journals in the pay of the governments (of Munich and Stuttgart), or belonging to the ultra-radical party, the press seconds him in all the Southern States." He also sent word to Paris that the ministerof William I. continued his negotiations with the revolutionary party in Italy; that he received agents of Garibaldi, unknown to the regular government of King Victor Emmanuel, the personal friend of the Emperor Napoleon III., who, at the time of the complications of Mentana, had only sounded Prussia in order to know "in what measure it could lend it its aid."[119]He was also the first to give warning concerning the shadowy practices with Prim and the Spanish candidature of the Hohenzollern. Lastly, one has already seen that he had recognized from the beginning the alarming character and true bearing of the mission of General Manteuffel to Russia.
"However difficult it may be for a great country like France to trace in advance its line of conduct in the actual state of things," said M. Benedetti to his government at the beginning of the year 1868, "and however great may be the part which it expects to take in unforeseen contingencies, the union of Germany under a military government strongly organized, and which in certain respects has of parliamentaryrégimeonly external forms, constitutes, however, a fact which touches too closely our national security to allow us to dispense with preparations, and to solve, without longer delay, the following question: Would such an event endanger the independence or the position of France in Europe,and would not this danger be conjured up only by war? If the government of the emperor thinks that France has nothing to fear from such a radical alteration in the relations of the states situated in the centre of the Continent, it will be desirable, in my opinion, in the interest of the maintenance of peace and public prosperity, to shape entirely and without reserve our attitude according to this conviction. If the contrary opinion is entertained, let us prepare for war without cessation, and let us be well assured in advance of what aid Austria can be to us; let us shape our conduct so as to solve one after the other the questions of the Orient and that of Italy; all our united forces will not be too great to render us victorious on the Rhine."
Especially in his manner of judging of the accord established between the two courts of Berlin and St. Petersburg, M. Benedetti showed a justness and superiority of judgment truly remarkable. He had the merit of foreseeing the understanding from the first moment, and of positively believing in it until the last. In the month of September, 1869, the Emperor of the French had thought of appointing as ambassador to the czar one of his most intimate friends, one of his most devoted coöperators of the 2d December, a general renowned for his bravery and intelligence, a grand equerry. It was sufficient to indicate that they wished to enter into relations as intimate and direct as possible, and in spite of the exchange of telegrams at the festival of St. George, they were already, at the beginning of the year 1870, full of hope; they believed thatthe affair was progressing of itself.[120]The French general, an able man, however, was very quickly taken to the bear hunts, to journeys on sledges, and shown many other marks of august kindness, which he had the modesty to credit to the policy of his master, in place of attributing them with much more reason to his very real and in truth very fascinating personal charms. The conviction of the grand equerry was shared by those surrounding him, especially by his aides-de-camp, who did not delay to praise in their confidential letters addressed to Paris, "the great results obtained" by their chief, and to speak of "his growing favor with the Emperor of all the Russias," in terms very strong and much more military than diplomatic.[121]Without being imposed upon by all these recitals, full of cheerfulness, M. Benedetti did not the less persist in his well founded conviction; even on the 30th June, 1870, on the very eve of the war, he expressed it in a lucid dispatch, from which we will have more than one instructive passage to quote. Speaking of the recent interview (1st-4th June) of the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia at Ems, the ambassador supposes that M. de Bismarck had shown himself then, as generally, on one side favorable to the policy of the cabinet of St. Petersburg in the Orient, and that on the other he endeavoredto excite the susceptibility of the czar in the questions which agitate the national sentiment in Russia as regards Austria, Galicia, etc. "While the minister will have undertaken to reassure the emperor on the first of these two points and to alarm him on the other, the king will have displayed that good grace of which he has always known how to make such a marvelous use to capture the sympathies of his august nephew, and I do not doubt, for my part, that they have left impressions in conformity with his desire. But whatever may have been the means which they employed, their object must have been to strengthen the emperor in the sentiments which they have been able to inspire in him, and they have attained it more or less."
M. Benedetti was, however, far from admitting an official arrangement drawn up in due form between the two courts, and above all far from believing that the minister of Prussia had in all sincerity and candor made the cession and abandonment of the Oriental heritage to the hands of his former colleague of Frankfort, and it is precisely in such estimates that the uncommon perspicacity of the French diplomat shows itself. M. de Bismarck could for the necessities of the moment, simulate indifference regarding the affairs of the Levant, affirm that he "never read the correspondence of Constantinople," and even consider the pretensions of Russia "to introduce a certain unity in the intellectual development of the Sclavians, legitimate;"[122]but the extreme care whichhe used at the same time to maintain the most intimate relations with the Hungarians, his allies of 1866, should have already enlightened the zealots of Moscow concerning the inanity of their dream of a division of the world between the sons of Teut and those of Rourik. "The Hungarians regard us, us Prussians, as their mediate protectors against Vienna in the future," wrote, in a confidential dispatch, Baron de Werther in the month of June, 1867, on his return from the coronation of Buda, to reassure the cabinet of Berlin on the recent enthusiasm of the Magyars reconciled with their "king;" it is not only against Vienna, it is still much more against Moscow and St. Petersburg, against any Sclavic preponderance on the banks of the Danube, that the children of Arpad will in the future have aid from the Hohenzollern. "Prussia has no rightful interests in the Orient," M. de Bismarck was pleased to say in the years 1867-1870, and the organ of M. de Katkof did not cease to repeat this remark so often commented on; but from the day when Prussia identified itself with Germany, or rather incorporated itself in it, it remained charged, under pain of forfeiture, with the Germanic interests and influences in the countries of the Danube and of the Balkan, and the interest then became greater, much greater, than that of France and England.
All this was very well understood by the ambassador of France to the court of Berlin, and from time to time keenly exposed in the dispatches which he addressed to his government during the last years of his mission in Prussia. Writing, in his report of the 5th January, 1868, of the complaisancewith which the chancellor of the confederation of the North always lent himself to the views of Prince Gortchakof, M. Benedetti added, however: "He (M. de Bismarck) persuades himself without doubt that other Powers have an interest of the first order in preserving the Ottoman empire from the covetousness of Russia, and he abandons the care of it to them; he knows, moreover, thatnothing can be definitely accomplished there without the aid or the adhesion of Germany, if Germany is united and strong; he believes, then, that he can, for the present, and without peril, himself sharpen the ambition of the cabinet of St. Petersburg, provided that he obtains in return for this condescension a kind withdrawal from everything which he undertakes in Germany."
"In the Orient," wrote the ambassador some time after (4th February, 1868), "M. de Bismarck is careful to preserve a position which does not bind him in any way, and permits him, according to the necessities of his own designs, to give the hand to Russia, or to ally himself with Occidental Powers; but he can only preserve this position by abstaining from any proceeding which would compromise him with the friends or the adversaries of Turkey." This reasoning was not long in being fully justified by the attitude of Prussia, during the conference of Paris, on the subject of Greece (January, 1869). The cabinet of Berlin did not share in the ardor of Alexander Mikhaïlovitch; it did not defend, as he did, persecuted innocence in the person of "the young Roumania," and of the ServianOmladina, and above all was careful to denounce the greatconspiracy of England, France, and Austria against the peace of the Levant. In reality the minister of Prussia did not wish the death of the just Osmanli, still less the collapse of Hungary, the advance guard of the Germanic "mission" in the East;[123]and his sympathies for a "certain ideal unity" of the Sclavians grew cold in proportion as the hour of the real unity of Germany approached. "Any conflict in the Orient will put it under the influence of Russia," wrote the French diplomat the 27th January, 1870, "and he will seek to excite it; he tried it last year at the beginning of the Græco-Turkish trouble.Russia is a card in his gamefor the eventualities which may arise on the Rhine,and he is particularly careful not to change the rôles, not to become himself a card in the game of the cabinet of St. Petersburg."
Some months after, on the very eve of the war with France (30th June, 1870), M. Benedetti, while thinking that the ties between Russia and Prussia could only have been drawn closer in the recent interview of Ems, concluded by the following observations: "It must not be supposed, however, that M. de Bismarck thinks it opportune to connect his policy closely with that of the Russian cabinet. In my opinion, he has not contracted and is not disposed to make any engagement which might, while compromising Prussia in the complications of which Turkey will become the scene, draw France and England closer together, and create difficulties for him or weaken him on the Rhine. The kind feelings of the chancellor of the confederation of the North for Russia will never be of a nature to limithis liberty of action;he promises in fact more than he means to do, or, in other words, he seeks the alliance with the cabinet of St. Petersburg to gain for himself the benefit of it in case of a conflict in the Occident, but with the well-fixed resolution never to engage the resources or the forces of Germany in the Orient. I have also always been persuaded that no official arrangement has been concluded between the two courts, and we can certainly believe that they did not consider that at Ems."
Everything, in fact, leads us to believe that neither a treaty was signed there, nor conditions discussed; the commonalty of views and the harmony of hearts dispensed with a fatiguing discussion of details. Moreover, it would have been very difficult, in all the useless cases, to make stipulationsen règlefor the eventualities, the time of whose appearance is not known, of which it is impossible to calculate the distant consequences, or even the immediate effects. They contented themselves with the conviction that they had no opposite interests; that, on the contrary, they were congenial and sympathetic, and that it was understood that at the propitious moment each one would be for himself and God for all. It must also be acknowledged that the Russians, in their views concerning the Orient, are not exempt from certainmirages. Europe credits them with much more method than they have in reality: the sentiment is profound and tenacious, but the plans are as wavering as they are different and vague. One might say that this great people suffer in this regard rather from a fascination and almost a fatality which prevents them from pursuing a systematic conquest; it advances on thephantom which possesses it only to make it recoil. It is a matter worthy of notice that Russia is never so far removed from the goal as when it undertakes to force thedénoûment. In 1829, a few halting places only separated its armies from Constantinople, and they turned back. It lost, in 1854, all the fruit of its campaign in Hungary, and of its ascendency in consequence of the catastrophe of February, while its prospects were never as brilliant as on the day when the treaty of Paris expected to close the Black Sea to it. It lost Sebastopol, but it gained the Caucasus and a whole world on the banks of the Amour and the Syr-Daria. The temptation became then very natural in presence of the formidable conflict which since 1867 was preparing in the centre of Europe, rather to await events than to wish to regulate them and to prescribe their course. In a war between the two strongest Powers of the Continent, which promised to be as long as desperate, and which in the end might well equally exhaust the two adversaries and draw several other states into the lists, Russia—thus they surely thought on the banks of the Neva—would always find the opportunity and the means of saying its word and securing its booty. Such a line of conduct seemed entirely marked out for a chancellor to whom so much good fortune had already come while "meditating;" it recommended itself to a policy which only measured the infinity of its aspirations by the uncertainty of possible events. The infinity of desires accommodates itself in case one can do nothing better with the indefinite in the designs, and nothing at times gives such a false impression of depth as emptiness.
It was cruelly ironic of the founder of German unity to choose in each of his successive enterprises an accomplice who was to become his victim in the following undertaking; but he showed, also, his great superiority in having had each time a very clear aim, a well-defined object marked out, and, so to speak, tangible, while his partners allowed themselves to be drawn in, one after the other, in the perilous game, under the impulse of abstract principles, vague desires, and cloudy combinations. At the time of the invasion of the Duchies and his first attempt against the equilibrium of Europe, M. de Bismarck was certainly not at a loss to show his aim: the prey was in reach of his hands, and the roadstead of Kiel spread itself in all its splendor before whoever had eyes to see; but M. de Rechberg is still seeking for it to-day, and to make the motives of his coöperation in this work of iniquity acceptable. "He tried to master the demagogic passions, to gain the ascendency over the revolution,"—these are the pompous and sonorous phrases taken from the "doctrine" with which later the former Austrian minister was to seek to cover up before the Austro-Hungarian delegations his fatal and pitiful policy of 1863. At Biarritz, the president of the Prussian council demanded in very clear terms the line of the Main for his country, while the dreamer of Ham recommended "the great war for the German nationality," and let his undecided glance fall first on the right bank of the Rhine and Mayence, then on the limits of 1814, and only fixed it on the winged lion of St. Mark. From 1867 to 1870, the chancellor of the Northern Confederation resolutely made preparations for the unification ofGermany and the conquest of Alsace and Lorraine, leaving to his former colleague of Frankfort perfect leisure "to awaken the echoes of the Orient," and to demand of them the key to the approaching destinies of Russia. In each of these fatidical circumstances, the same greatrealistis always leading the ideologists to different degrees and to different titles: it is always the same Fortinbras of Shakspere,—thefort en brasof Germany,—proclaiming his dominion where the doctrinary, melancholy, or word-making Hamlets have only lost their way in chimerical and puerile machinations, and, before a "murder which cries out to heaven," find no other words than,—the time is out of joint!
"Russia cannot feel any alarm at the power of Prussia,"[124]said Prince Gortchakof, in reply to the representations which were made him from the beginning of the Hohenzollern affair on "the danger which would result to Russia from the aggrandizement of Prussia, and from the extension of its influence in Europe." As to the Spanish candidature of the Prussian prince, the chancellor recalled that "when Prince Charles of Hohenzollern became (in 1866) sovereign of Roumania, with the support of France and in spite of Russia, this latter had limited itself to remonstrances, and had then accepted the fact, he did not see why to-day Prussia could be moreresponsible for the election of another member of the royal family to the throne of Spain." Thus spoke the minister of the czar at the very beginning of the conflict, the 8th July, 1870, before the renunciation of Prince Anthony, before any exhibition of anger on the part of the cabinet of the Tuileries, and at the moment when Europe still thought well of the legitimate susceptibilities of France. However, when the hour of blindness and giddiness came, and when the government of Napoleon III. lost all the profit of a great diplomatic success by its provoking language before the legislative body, by its demands of Ems, and its fatal declaration of war (15th July), illusions could no longer be cherished concerning the true sentiments of the cabinet of St. Petersburg. "With all due deference to General Fleury," wrote with humor M. de Beust to Prince de Metternich, the 20th July, "Russia perseveres in its alliance with Prussia so far, that in certain eventualities the intervention of the Muscovite arms must be looked upon not as probable, but ascertain." Soon after the declarations of war of the 15th July, the Russian government had addressed to Vienna the very clear and categorical notice that it would not allow Austria to make common cause with France. General Fleury was even soon to think himself lucky with having at least made sure that this invalidating clause touching the empire of the Hapsburg was not explicitly mentioned in the declaration of neutrality which the Emperor Alexander II. published the 23d July.[125]
"Russia has done us much harm," said the Duke de Gramont, in regard to 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 thedilatory negotiationsin 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 therôlesand thought only of his own convenience and opportunities; but Alexander Mikhaïlovitch did not the less apply himself to play hisrôleaccording 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 Græco-Sclavic world," which since 1867 had haunted the minds of those on the banks of the Moscova and the Neva. With the marvelous political andrealisticaptitude which distinguishes it, the Russian nation soon understood that for the momentany 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 arôleas legitimate as honorable. They wish to attain a satisfaction ofamour-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 Constantinopleone 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 withempressementthe ingeniously perfidious idea of theleague 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 principleof 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 announcedto 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 Mikhaïlovitch was not moved, and for Russia this action was summed up in several personal letters addressedby 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 Cæsar had well predicted, long enough at least to let Europe measure all the depth of itsabasement, 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 anew era, in a new "Græco-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 thenew righthad 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 inRussia 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 infreeing 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 thepolitique 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 Mikhaïlovitch had allowed to his former colleague of Frankfort. He succeeded, but not by legitimate means, by that action oféclatand 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 ofEurope and of the gloomy shock to public right, to give it in his turn a humiliating blow, atelum imbelle, but notsine 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 byrepresentatives 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 Mikhaïlovitch reproached this very government withmoving 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 Mikhaïlovitch, 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 limitedthe 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 ofamour-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; therôleas 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 ofjustitia et pax. On such a sin he inflicted the name ofil gran rifiuto.