III.

However great one wishes to make the share of genius in the work of M. de Bismarck, one cannot deny that a great part also comes from the unforeseen, from an extraordinary combination of circumstances, in one word, from that goddess Fortune whom theminnesingerof the Middle Ages did not cease to praise in song, whom Dante himself did not fail to extol in the immortal verses, "The course always luminous like a star in heaven, and the decree always hidden like a serpent in the grass." Without doubt, one can admire the extreme audacity with which the present chancellor of Germany has so often let fall from his hand theiron dice of destiny; one can even, to speak with the witty Abbé Galiani, suspect more than one cogged one in such a persistent "pair royal of six." It is not less true that in his long career as player, the president of the council at Berlin has occasionally met, in the most decisive moments, such marvelous luck as no human wisdom could foresee, that no political subtlety could prepare, and in which the hardypunteronly had the merit, very considerable it is true, of not letting the vein exhaust itself or of using up the series. One of these magnificent strokes of luck, one of these perfectly prodigious events fell to the lot of William I.on his accession to power, in the month of January, 1863. This event laid the first foundations of his future greatness, it became the mainspring of his action in Europe, the Archimedean point from whence afterwards he raised up a world of daring projects, and it is necessary to bear it well in mind.

The ideal which M. de Bismarck had before him in taking into his hands the reins of state, was the aggrandizement, "the rounding off" of the monarchy of Frederick II. He had made the premature avowal of it at the time of his mission to Paris; he also declared it very frankly in the first sitting of the commission of the chamber at Berlin, scarcely a week after having been made minister (29th September, 1862). He certainly did not foresee in what measure he should realize this ideal, to what limits he could extend in Germany conquests which should cease to be "moral;" but he clearly foresaw that in this attempt he would find a resolute adversary in Austria, and he made up his mind to it.[39]The only question which engrossed him was the attitude which the other great Powers of Europe would maintain in view of certain events. Among them, he did not count England; with his rare political sagacity, he had early appreciated to what state of domestication and mildness that excellent school of Manchester had reduced the leopard formerly so fierce, and his conviction that proud Albion would notthink of evil, and would even allow itself to be disgraced a little, was soon to be fully justified in the piteous campaign of Denmark. "England is far from entering into my calculations," he said in 1862, in a familiar conversation, "and do you know when I ceased to count her? From the day when she renounced of her free will the Ionian Islands; a Power which ceases to take and begins to surrender is a used-up Power." France and Russia remained, and it was not forbidden to think that, skillfully managed, these two states would favor to a certain degree the Prussian designs, or at least would not oppose them too strongly. On the banks of the Neva old grudges existed, sprung from the war of the Orient, imperfectly gratified by the war of Lombardy; the old relations between the Gottorp and the Hohenzollern, always cordial, had become more intimate than ever, thanks to the recent efforts of M. de Bismarck during his sojourn at St. Petersburg; finally, there was his friend Alexander Mikhaïlovitch, former colleague of Frankfort, so prepossessed in favor of the new minister of King William I., so well united with him in the hatred against Austria, and also so well warned against the "dangerous fiction" of a solidarity which should exist between all the conservative interests. On the banks of the Seine, in the Tuileries, still so much dreaded, there reigned a sovereign who, by dint of studying the general good of humanity, lost more and more the consideration of the French state, and whose vague vacillating regard it was not very difficult to dazzle, especially when one mirrored before him the "new right" and the affranchisement of Venice. Moreover, since the congress of Paris,there was established between the two cabinets of the Tuileries and St. Petersburg a "cordiality" which increased from day to day, and in which Prussia began to have a very large share: was there not ground to hope for the latter, in the enterprise which it meditated, a generous coöperation or at least a cordial neutrality of the two Powers so friendly to one another, and so unsympathetic towards the House of Hapsburg?

And yet such an enterprise was so profoundly contrary to the well understood interests and to the firmly rooted traditions of Russia as well as of France, the substitution in the centre of Europe of a great military and conquering monarchy in the place of a pacific confederation, and one "purely defensive," presented such manifest inconveniences, even such evident dangers for the security and equilibrium of the world, that the president of the council at Berlin could scarcely entertain as regards this matter too flattering hopes. The bitter resentments at the winter palace, and the sweet dreams at the palace of the Tuileries, could not long prevail against the reality of geography and the brutality of facts. Unless at Paris and St. Petersburg there was a complete want of statesmen with a little political discernment in their minds, a little national history in their souls, one might wager that the two governments, Russian and French, would not remain indifferent spectators to such a formidable overturning in the balance of the Continent. From well-wishing, their neutrality would not delay in becoming by degrees watchful and alarmed, would even change to declared hostility, as the Prussian successesbecame marked, and it was this cordiality between the two empires, apparently so favorable to Prussia, which would then form another peril, facilitating prompt and decisive action against the Hohenzollern. Such being the situation of Europe at the beginning of the year 1863, what the new minister of William I. could wish for in his boldest combinations, invoke in his most golden dreams, was some unforeseen incident, some extraordinary event which should embroil in an irremediable manner the two emperors Alexander II. and Napoleon III., which should revive at St. Petersburg all the ancient rancor towards Vienna, which should permit Prussia to attach Russia to itself by ties stronger, more indissoluble, while preserving its necessary good relations with the cabinet of the Tuileries. A chimera! the boldest constructor of hypotheses would have certainly cried, before such demands; a problem of algebra and political alchemy unworthy of occupying a mind however frivolous! Well! chance, that providence of the fortunate of earth, did not delay to cause an event which realized to the profit of M. de Bismarck all the conditions of the indicated problem, which filled all the points of such a fantastic programme. "If Italy did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it," the president of the council at Berlin said later in 1865; in the month of January, 1863, he certainly did not think otherwise concerning the Polish questions.

History offers few examples of a fall so rapid, so humiliating, from the sublime to the odious and to the perverse, than was presented on the banks of the Vistula by that lamentable drama which, after twoyears of bitter revolutions, reached its final catastrophe in this month of January, 1863, as if to celebrate the joyful accession of M. de Bismarck to power. Certainly there was something very poetic and very exalted in those first manifestations from Warsaw, when a people so long, so cruelly tried, knelt one day before the castle of the lieutenant of the king in mute complaint, holding only the image of Christ, and demanding only "its God and its country!" The lieutenant of the king, who was no other than the old hero of Sebastopol, Prince Michael Gortchakof, had a horror of a conflict so unequal, so strange; he appealed to St. Petersburg, and,—miracle of divine pity,—from that place, whence for thirty years only orders of blood and punishment had gone forth, there came this time a word of clemency and reparation. A generous spirit then animated the governing and intelligent classes in Russia, they were under the influence of ideas of reform and emancipation, they desired the esteem of Europe, the friendship of France, and they had the very sincere desire to be reconciled with Poland. The Emperor Alexander II. sent his brother to Warsaw; a patriot of rare vigor of mind and of character took in hand the civil government; the instruction, the justice, the administration received a national impress; a modest but certain autonomy was assured for the country. The precepts of the most common wisdom, the instinct of preservation, the terrible lessons of the past, should have all counseled the Poles to profit by this good disposition of their sovereign, to put to proof the granted institutions, to accept withempressementthe hand stretched out tothem. In fact everything counseled them thus, but they bent to the anathema which the Holy Scriptures had long before pronounced against every kingdom which allows itself to be guided by women and children. The women and the youth of the schools resolved to continue to multiply the manifestations which had succeeded so well, and which, in ceasing to be spontaneous, became theatrical and sacrilegious. The European demagogy hastened to transport to a ground so overturned its emblems, its words of disorder, its secret societies, and itsinstrumenta regni; from afar, from the midst of the Palais Royal came recommendations "to leave the Catholic mummeries and to make barricades." The great conservative party showed itself cowardly there as elsewhere, as everywhere, as always; and, in wishing to save its popularity, it lost a whole population. One made a void around the brother of the emperor, around the patriotic minister, and this void was not slow in being filled by horror, by terror and crime. The government struggled in vain against a shadowy organization which enveloped it on all sides; it took contradictory and violent measures. The demagogy gained its cause; it succeeded in throwing into a powerless, foolish revolt an unhappy people which for a century seemed to have imposed on itself the task of astonishing the world by periodical resurrections, and of disheartening it at the same time by suicides, alas, not less periodical!

This criminal folly of a nation could only be equaled by the heedlessness not less culpable with which Europe encouraged and fanned it. Europe,which had not dared to touch the Polish question during the war of the Crimea, thought it opportune to sympathize, to trifle with it in this moment, the most ill-timed and the most desperate! Lord John Russell was the first to enter the lists. In 1861 he wrote the famous despatch to Sir J. Hudson, and persuaded himself and England that by it he had delivered Italy. The year afterwards, in the celebrated dispatch of Gotha, he conceived for Denmark a most original constitution in four parts, with four parliaments, and thus gave the signal for the dismemberment of the Scandinavian monarchy. This time he believed that he ought to recommend parliamentary institutions for Poland; and to the observation of the Russian ambassador that it would be difficult for the czar to favor on this point his Polish subjects over his own national ones, he naïvely asked why he would not extend the same benefit to all the Russias?[40]Count Rechberg, the fatal minister who then directed the external affairs at Vienna, experienced on his part the desire of showing himself compassionate; he accorded himself the malicious and very costly pleasure of paying the cabinet of St. Petersburg, in Polish coin, for the sympathies which this latter had shown for the Italian cause. As if Austria had not already suffered enough from the imaginary grievances of the Muscovites as regards the pretended "treason" during the war of the Crimea, it desired to give itvery legitimate grievances by a very real "connivance"[41]in Gallicia; Gallicia became, in fact, the refuge, the depot of arms, and the place of revictualing for the insurgents of the kingdom.

It is just to acknowledge that the French government had long hesitated before starting on a way so perilous. From the first period of the Polish agitation, a note published in the "Moniteur" of the 23d April, 1861, had put the press and public opinion on guard against "the supposition that the government of the emperor encouraged hopes which it could not satisfy."

"The generous ideas of the czar," continued the note of the "Moniteur," "are a certain gauge of his desire of realizing the ameliorations of which the state of Poland admits, and we should wish that it be not hindered by irritating manifestations." The French government persevered in this sensible and perfectly amicable attitude towards the czar during the years 1861 and 1862, in spite of the interest which the Parisian press did not cease to take in the "dramatic" events of Warsaw, in spite of several animated debates which were held in the English parliament, and which were rather addressed to France than to Russia. The Britannic statesmen in fact had not thought it useless during those two years 1861 and 1862 to slightly embarrass the cabinet of the Tuileries in its very pronounced liking for the Russian alliance by the frequent and sympathetic evocation of the name of Poland. Lord Palmerstonespecially, in a verywittyspeech on the 4th April 1862, exalted the Poles, praised their "indomitable, inextinguishable, inexhaustible" patriotism, while not neglecting to recall to them the cruel deceptions which a French emperor had already caused them "at another epoch." Napoleon III. always resisted the unguarded emotions at home, as well as the selfish excitements from abroad. Even on the 5th February, after the breaking out of the fatal revolt, M. Billault, the minister-orator in the midst of the legislative body, harshly qualified the Polish insurrection as the work of "revolutionary passions," and insisted with force on the danger of "useless words and vain protestations;" but the noisy language of the English ministers, the enigmatical attitude of Austria, and lastly the military convention which M. de Bismarck concluded with Russia (8th February, 1863), and which he made public, ended by involving him. After having done so much for seven years to gain the Russian "cordiality," after having sacrificed to it almost all the fruits of the war of the Orient, Napoleon III. overturned brusquely a scaffolding so laboriously constructed, and prepared to organize against the government of the czar agreat European remonstranceof which the first and terrible effect was naturally to increase in Poland the torrent of blood and tears. The general cry at Warsaw was then that the insurrection must last to justify the intervention of Europe,[42]that it was necessary to let as much Polish blood flow as sympatheticink flowed from the chancellors' offices. One knows the deplorable issue of this great diplomatic campaign, which lasted nine months, and only served to demonstrate the profound disagreement between the Powers of the East. The foreign intermeddling wounded the pride of Russia, and impelled it to undertake against the Polish nationality a work of general, methodical, implacable extermination, and one from which it has never since desisted. However frivolous the diplomatic tourney of the Occidental Powers in favor of Poland was, the Russians did not the less think that they had been menaced with a moment of extreme peril, and that they had only escaped, thanks to the firmness of their "national" minister, to his patriotic courage, to his acute, dignified, and vigorous dispatches. Certainly the minister is, humanly speaking, very excusable for not having protested against a belief so flattering: he let it go, he let it be said that he had repulsed a new invasion and had "overcome Europe:"scripsit et salvavit!He was made chancellor, he received enthusiastic ovations from his compatriots, he became the idol of the nation by the side of M. Katkof and the sanguinary Mouravief. During a whole year he did not attend a single banquet in the most obscure corner of Russia without these three names "saviors and blessed" being celebrated by speeches, fêted in toasts, congratulated by telegrams, and, whatever repugnance the descendant of the Rourik and the foster child of the classical humanities must have felt in his spiritual tribunal at being thus constantly coupled with a fierce journalist and with a frightful executioner, he made the sacrifice to his love for his country and forpopularity. In his well meaning ardor to receive the homage which came to him from all sides, he even so far forgot himself one day as to thank with a stereotyped smile the German nobility of the Baltic provinces for a diploma as honorary citizen which had been sent him, and the national party reproached him with a certain bitterness for the "culpable delight" to which he gave way on this occasion. Alexander Mikhaïlovitch had all the honors of the sad campaign of 1863; the profits of it went to another, to the former colleague of Frankfort, to the president of the council at Berlin, who was to find in it a solid and assured basis for all the great strategy in the future. We will show how the balance sheet of the situation, which created, towards the end of 1863, thegreat European remonstrancein the affairs of Poland, presented itself to the interests and the hopes of Prussia: the happy quiet of England was duly established; France and Russia were from this time forward embroiled, and in an irreparable manner; the resentment against Austria had grown stronger than ever at St. Petersburg, and also the Prussian minister had more than ever the right of counting on the grateful friendship, on the devotion to any extent, of Prince Gortchakof; lastly, it was not so difficult to foresee that after his signal check of Warsaw the Cæsar of the new right would hasten to cast his glances on Venice, to wish to "do something for Italy," and would therefore favor more benevolently "a young power of the North" in its enterprises against the Hapsburg, to whom the Napoleonic ideology had long since assigned "a great destiny in Germany."

It would, however, do too much honor to human genius to credit M. de Bismarck with a clear and precise view at first sight of all the favorable, even prodigious consequences, which the fatal insurrection in Poland was to bring him. Many circumstances seemed rather to indicate that, especially in the beginning, the Prussian minister only groped and sought his way in unfrequented paths. A curious matter, and which perhaps might give cause for reflection even to-day, M. de Bismarck, who had certainly studied Russia well, who had lived there for several years, and had just left it, seems to have very seriously doubted the strength of this empire in 1863, and doubted it so far that he did not even think it capable of conquering in that miserable affray with the unhappy Polish youth! He expressed his fears on this point before the plenipotentiaries of England and Austria,[43]and went so far one day as to become very confidential on this subject to the vice-president of the Prussian chamber, M. Behrend. "This question," said the minister of William I., towards the middle of the month of February, "can besolved in two ways: it is either necessary to stifle the insurrection promptly in concert with Russia, and to come before the Eastern Powers with an accomplished fact, or one can let the situation develop and aggravate itself; wait till the Russians are driven from the kingdom, or reduced to invoke aid, and thenproceed boldly and occupy the kingdom for Prussia; at the end of three years all of it will be Germanized.... But that is a ball-room plan which you propose to me, cried out the stupefied vice-president (the conversation took place at a court ball). No, was the answer: I am speaking seriously of serious things. The Russians are tired of the kingdom, the Emperor Alexander himself told me at St. Petersburg."[44]This thought of recovering the line of the Vistula, lost since Jena, haunted more than once the mind of M. de Bismarck during the year 1863: let it be well understood, he did not wish to obtain the "rectification of the frontier" except with the consent of the Emperor Alexander II., but he did not neglect the means which could force to a slight extent such a solution. One of the most intimate confidants of the minister, and now the representative of Germany to the court of King Victor Emmanuel, M. de Keudell, proprietor of vast domains in the kingdom of Poland, profited by his relations with the prominent men of the unhappy country to advise them on several occasions to look to Berlin for help, to demand there, for instance, atemporaryPrussian occupationwhich would render them not liable to Russian duty! In looking carefully into the history of this fatal insurrection, one will perhaps find there other Prussian agents, much more obscure, but also much more compromising than M. de Keudell. Did the president of the council at Berlin seriously hope to obtain so much from the "lassitude" of the Emperor Alexander and the friendship of the Prince Gortchakof?

Whatever these hopes orarrière-penséeswere, M. de Bismarck used a restless ardor in making evident from the time of hisdébuthis absolute solidarity with the Russian vice-chancellor as opposed to the East. He offered him a military convention in the most spontaneous, even impetuous manner; he undertook his defense on every occasion, and did not cease to aid him faithfully, ardently, in passages of diplomatic arms with the cabinets of England, France, and Austria, experiencing with pleasure the first fire of the notes of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, supporting with joy the universal clamors of the press, responding with haughtiness to the interpellations of his parliament. The great men of the progressionist party understood nothing, on this occasion as on so many others, of the policy of their "Polignac;" they thought it inopportune, perilous, and demanded where the German interest was in all that? To which the Polignac replied one day in the chamber with this veiled and yet very significant image, that, "Placed before the chess-board of diplomacy,the profane spectatorbelieves the game ended at every new piece that he sees advanced, and can even fall into the illusion that the player is changing his objective point."

Certainly M. de Bismarck did not change his objective point at all, and always had in mind the aggrandizement of Prussia; but it is evident that up to the autumn of that year, 1863, he had no well-fixed plan; he "moved his pieces" in different directions, and awaited the inspiration of chance to know from what side he should strike "the blow,"—from the Main, from the Vistula, or from the Elbe? He had aimed at Cassel for a moment, and had thrown himself with some bluster into the constitutional conflict of this country with the elector; he had even given on this occasion the pleasing spectacle of a minister intervening in a neighboring state to force the prince there to the most strict observation of parliamentary rule, while himself governing without regard for the constitution, and by means of taxes levied contrary to the vote of the chamber. Without speaking of the adventurous projects which were cherished at Berlin touching a possible rectification of frontier from the side of the Vistula, on the banks of the Elbe there was the old, everlasting question of the Duchies, a question hushed up since the treaty of London, but reawakened anew in 1859 in consequence of the events in Italy, and become even more dangerous since a famous dispatch, mortal for Denmark, which Lord John Russell, in a moment of inconceivable thoughtlessness, had issued from Gotha, the 24th September, 1862,—precisely the day of M. de Bismarck's accession to the ministry! The secondary States, the Diet of Frankfort, and M. de Rechberg himself, had become very ardent, and vied with each other in German patriotism in this cause of Schleswig-Holstein,a cause which at bottom they thought to be chimerical, and by which they only wished to embarrass Prussia, to convince it of "national lukewarmness." The temptation became great to take at their word the secondary States, the Diet of Frankfort, even Austria, to unite them against Denmark in a war which would give Prussia the magnificent port of Kiel, and would permit it, moreover, to try the "instrument" which King William I. "had been perfecting" for four years, ... provided that the war could belocalized, and that the European Powers would not put themselves in the way as in 1848! The president of the council at Berlin did not entirely despair of succeeding by patient and wise manœuvres. He counted on the friendship of Prince Gortchakof, on different political constellations, finally on the strange confusion, and, to speak with Montaigne, on "the great hubbub of brains" which certain principles of the new right and of nationality had introduced into each chancellor's office of the Continent. He said to himself occasionally, that in this grave enterprise he would certainly have for a determined adversary only that good Lord Russell, who, after his fatal dispatch of Gotha, had again altered his mind, had even constituted himself the advocate, the protector, and thementorof the unfortunate government of Copenhagen: such a partner did not greatly frighten the bold cavalier of the Mark.

At first, however, and as long as the negotiations on Poland lasted, the cavalier of the Mark thought that he ought to use prudence and simulate to the cabinet of Saint James extreme indifference on thesubject of this "vexatious" affair of the Duchies. Nothing is more instructive than to follow in the state papers, as well as in the documents communicated to theRigsraad, the intimate and almost daily effusions by which M. de Bismarck had been able to persuade, up to the last hour, not only Lord Russell and his envoy Sir A. Buchanan, but also M. de Quade, the Danish minister at the court of Berlin, that this question of Schleswig-Holstein was ahobbyof the secondary States and of Austria, that Prussia was far from sharing those Teutonic effervescences and concupiscences, and that it would do all that lay in its power to calm, to allay them. The 14th October, 1863, two weeks after the Diet of Frankfort had decreed the federal execution in Holstein, M. de Bismarck stipulated in a conversation with the envoy of Great Britain, Sir A. Buchanan, toprevent this execution, if Denmark accepted the English mediation.[45]Denmark accepted it, and Lord Russell could at last breathe. Moreover, on the 6th November, 1863, M. Quade wrote from Berlin to his government: "The first minister of Prussia, be it on account of his personal views, or on account of the attitude taken by England, has put the affair in a position thatexceeds greatly all that one could have hoped. I am not certain whether the question is regarded at Vienna with the same clearness and the same warmth (warmth for the interests of Denmark!) as it is here." Thus Sir A. Buchanan and M. Quade still judged the situation on the 6th November. But they were notslow in being brusquely awakened from their illusions by a despairing dispatch from the principal secretary of state, dated the 9th November, and couched in these terms: "If the information which reaches me is exact, M. de Bismarck no longer offers any objection (n'oppose plus aucune objection) to the federal execution in Holstein; the government of her majesty can only leave to Germany the responsibility of exposing Europe to a general war." The information was unfortunately only too correct, and the vexations of the good Johnny commenced.

Two important facts had taken place in the interval of three weeks which had passed since the conversation of the 14th October; in this interval, the cabinet of Saint James had abandoned to the Russian government the affairs of Poland, and the Emperor Napoleon III. had launched into the world a fantastic project of a congressfor the arrangement of all the pending questions! Charmed in the highest degree with the aid which M. de Bismarck lent him in this month of October in the Danish difficulties, the principal secretary of state had at last decided to make him the sacrifice so often demanded, of the Polish question, even to recall by telegraph a courier, bearer of a very comminatory note addressed to the government at St. Petersburg, and to replace this missive by a most humble dispatch, which renounced all ulterior controversy on this subject (20th October).[46]On hispart, the Emperor of the French, kept informed of these intrigues, profoundly vexed at this abandonment by England, and not being able to resolve to accept his check, nor, above all, to make the avowal of it without ceremony before the legislative body, had thought (5th November) of that call for a general congress which only increased the uneasiness of Europe, and especially inspired the chief of the foreign office with unspeakable fears. Not content with replying to the invitation of the cabinet of the Tuileries by a most bitter and offensive note, LordJohn Russell bestirred himself to preserve the foreign courts from the contagion of the French idea; he almost entirely lost from view the dangers of Denmark, and only cared to combat the project of Napoleon III., a project assuredly without vitality, and which, in order to die its natural death, had no need of such a display of British forces. The president of the Prussian council thought that the moment had come to begin his game. The last shadow of an Eastern understanding disappeared; only the alliance of Russia and Prussia remained intact, unshaken, in the midst of the general disorder of the cabinets. No European concerted action for the protection of Denmark was to be feared. M. de Bismarck could now "no longer have any objection" to the federal execution in Holstein; and soon an unhoped-for event, one of those magnificent strokes of fortune, such as the minister of William I. has so often met with in his marvelous career, proved that he was decidedly in luck. The sudden death of King Frederick VII. (15th November, 1863) has something so tragical, so fatal to the destinies of Denmark, that it makes one think of one of the most disconsolate sayings that antiquity has bequeathed to us, that mournful cry of the historian: "Non esse curæ deis securitatem nostram, esse ultionem."

This death gave in truth an entirely new turn to the Teutonic demands towards the unfortunate Scandinavian monarchy. Germany did not content itself with a federal execution in Holstein; it pretended not to recognize the sovereignty of the new king, Christian IX., in the Duchies, and wished to enthrone there that intriguing and treacherous familyof Augustenburg from whom M. de Bismarck himself had lately obtained the retraxit for one million and a halfrixdalerspaid by the government of Copenhagen. And it was only from this moment that the plans of the minister of William I. seemed to be finally settled; decidedly it was from the side of the Elbe that Prussia was to begin to "round itself" and complete its unity! The resolution once made, M. de Bismarck carried it out with ardor, with audacity, with incomparable acuteness. This trial stroke was a master stroke; and the great Machiavelli would certainly have found a "divine" pleasure in contemplating the address, or, as he would have said, thevirtuwith which the cavalier of the Mark knew how, in the space of some weeks, to engross the attention of this poor Lord Russell; to encircle the Emperor Napoleon; to involve Austria in a distant expedition equally unjust and foolish; to make use of and at the same time oust theBund; to strike the secondary States with terror and throw off theirprotégé; lastly, to take into his own hands the holy cause of the German country, and, according to the word of the Apostle, make himself all things to all men!

The spectacle which Europe presented at the beginning of the year 1864, was certainly one of the strangest and most painful that history has known. Two great Powers, jealous of one another, and even destined to soon fight in mortal combat for the spoils torn from their victim,—two great Powers, at once incited and cried down by a whole league of princes and peoples of Germany, attacked a feeble state, but nevertheless an old and glorious monarchy, and one whose existence was proclaimed by all the cabinetsto be necessary to the balance of nations; they attacked it under the most futile pretext, in the name of a cause which the very chief of the coalition had formerly qualified as "eminently iniquitous, frivolous, disastrous, and revolutionary." It was, moreover, to punish King Christian IX. for his disobedience to theBundthat Prussia and Austria had charged themselves with this work of "justice;" and this work they inaugurated with a formal declaration of their own disobedience to the sameBund; they acted "as proxies for Germany," and entire Germany protested against the usurpation of the mandate! All these monstrous things Europe saw and let pass, this same Europe which, in 1848 at the time of the first German aggression against the Scandinavian monarchy, had not failed in its duty, and had fulfilled it nobly in spite of the great revolutionary tempest which might have served it as an excuse. The Powers were then unanimous in defending the weak against the oppressor; the Emperor Nicholas was in accord on this point with the Republic of General Cavaignac, and it was only the diplomats improvised by the "surprise" of February who had not shown at this time a sufficient knowledge of the conditions necessary for the equilibrium of the world. It has been reserved for the most tried statesmen, for chancellors grown old in the tradition and respect for treaties, for the representatives of regular and strong monarchies, to allow the consummation of a revolutionary work which the Bastide and Petetin would have thought their duty not to admit![47]Without doubt it is, aboveall, England who will bear before posterity the shame of the ruin of Denmark, for she it was who had taken in hand the cause of the Scandinavian kingdom, who had counseled, guided, reprimanded up to the last day, and who had solemnly declaredthat in the moment of danger it (Denmark) should not fight alone; it would, however, be unjust to pretend to completely exonerate the rest of the European Powers. More than one thoughtful and honest mind assigned at that time to this dismemberment of a monarchy in the nineteenth century all the import that another dismemberment had had in the preceding century, and foresaw from it with anxiety great overturnings and formidable catastrophes in the future. Thenaïfs, or, to speak with M. de Bismarck, theprofane, could alone believe the game finished after this first stroke dealt to the right of nations, after this first exploit also of the marvelous "instrument" which the Prussian government had employed so many years and so much time to "perfect."

The cannon of Missunde was for the cavalier of the Mark what the cannon of Toulon had formerly been for a certain officer of Corsica, and this short campaign of the Duchies revealed many things to the future conqueror of Europe. He learned there that legitimate rights, sacred treaties, stipulated minutes, the sworn faith and many other old-fashioned things reputed inassailable were much morefeeble and decaying than the poor fortresses erected by the Danes in the preceding ages, and, if Moltke and Roon made in this war a perfectly satisfactory trial of their needle gun, he could for his part prove the precious, unalterable qualities of his own instrument. It must be plainly said that during the whole of this expedition against Denmark, Prince Gortchakof did not cease to favor the Prussian minister by all means, to tender him with ardor, and very often privately, a helping hand at each new difficulty. His aid was absolute and the more efficacious since it took the appearance of a busy neutrality in search of a pacific arrangement. It was thus that he aided the president of the council at Berlin in forcing into the stubborn head of Lord Russell the equally specious and pleasing reasoning, that the occupation of Holstein by the federal troops would become a title of validity in the hands of the new King of Denmark. "M. de Bismarck told me," Sir A. Buchanan wrote on the 28th November, "that a federal execution would prevent any revolutionary movement in Holstein, and would be at the same time to a certain degree anindirect recognitionof King Christian IX. as Duke of Holstein on the part of the Diet of Frankfort. His excellency affirmed that the alarming state of Germany forced him to proceed at once to the execution; but he could not or would not explain to me how such an execution could be a recognition of the sovereignty of King Christian, and could avoid the appearance of an occupation." Three days afterwards, the 1st December, Lord Napier wrote on his part from St. Petersburg: "The language of Prince Gortchakofmakes me believe that he is persuaded that M. de Bismarck hasmoderate viewsin this question. The vice-chancellor is disposed to consider a federal execution, if it is well conducted, as apreservative measure. In his opinion, the federal troops, acting according to judicious instructions, will assure order and maintain the necessary distinction between the legislative and the dynastic question." "I despoil, then I recognize!" said M. de Bismarck by a logic belonging to him alone,[48]but which Prince Gortchakof shared at this moment, and which the two friends soon tried to apply also to Schleswig, after the chief of the foreign office had resigned himself to it in Holstein. "This morning the Russian vice-chancellor suggested to me," again wrote Lord Napier from St. Petersburg under date of the 11th January, "that one should bind Denmark toadmitthe occupation of Schleswig by the forces of Austria and Prussia under title of aguaranteegiven to these two Powers as regards the German population of the Duchy." Thus the state papers and the documents communicated to theRigsraadcontinue to instruct and edify us; one does not find there a single insinuation or "suggestion" sent from the banks of the Spree against Denmark which was not at once reverberated on the banks of the Neva. And yet Denmark has always been the friend and theprotégéof the empire of the czars! More than any other Power in the world, Russia was interested in preservingthe liberty of the Baltic, in not letting the port of Kiel fall into the hands of Germany; more than any other Power, also, it was interested in remembering that Courland and Livonia talked German much more purely and harmoniously than Schleswig! Lastly, it was certainly the cause of the revolution against that of legitimate sovereignty which was engaged in this debate on the Eider; the old Nesselrode had declared so in a celebrated circular, and what would the Emperor Nicholas have said of such complacency for revolution on the part of a Russian chancellor? Alexander Mikhaïlovitch will yet cause the astonishment of history by the immensity of his gratitude towards M. de Bismarck.

II.

Thus was inaugurated, concerning Poland and Denmark, that common action of the two ministers of Russia and Prussia, which was to continue for so many years, and have such a considerable, such a disastrous influence on the affairs of the Continent. With this year 1863 the second period of the ministry of Prince Gortchakof commences, his secondterm, which was assuredly much less open to discussion. To the French "cordiality," properly dosed and taken in fact as a tonic, which had prevailed till then, the Prussian friendship, undeniably too passionate and too absorbing, succeeded. In fact, in this second period, Alexander Mikhaïlovitch no longer preserved that calm and reserved mind, and that intelligent egotism which made his fortune at the time of his intimacy with the Emperor Napoleon III.; he embraced all the opinions, every cause ofhis formidable friend at Berlin, unfortunately without possessing his astonishing flexibility of mind, his marvelous art of turning and twisting. Nothing, for instance, equals the address with which M. de Bismarck can, if necessary, forget a disagreeable past, and, above all, be unable to remember his wrong-doings toward others; in fact, he has a charming euphemism, he calls themmisunderstandings. More than once, from the height of the tribune, he has adorned with this name his long and outrageous conflict against parliament which he sustained up to the war of 1866 against Austria (a little misunderstanding which cost 40,000 men their lives!). And how can one help admiring the affection, the enthusiasm, which he has inspired in that excellent Lord Russell, certainly the statesman whom he ridiculed and ill-treated the most in 1863, during the Danish contention? As for his Polish quarrels with the Eastern Powers in the same year (1863), he was the more ready to forget them as those very Powers felt that a great act of folly had been committed. He dictated to King William a most polite reply, full of tender souvenirs of Compiègne, in answer to the letter of Napoleon III. concerning the congress, and toward the end of the year he was already in touching accord with the cabinet of the Tuileries concerning the treaty of London, a treaty which guaranteed the entireness of the Danish monarchy, and which a circular of M. Drouyn de Lhuys now qualified as animpotent work! As regards Austria, he soon granted it full indulgence for its Polish error in the spring, and even forgave the very reprehensible enterprise which it attempted in the month of Augustat Frankfort, onthe day of the princes. In the month of November he had already made it his companion and accomplice in the wars of the Duchies. Prince Gortchakof appeared in a very different light; he was never willing to pardon France and Austria for their intermeddling in the affairs of Poland, and remained immovable to every attempt at reconciliation. He knew no intimacy except with the cabinet of Berlin, and his former colleague of Frankfort became his only confidant and ally. The famous aphorism of 1856 then underwent an important modification; beginning with 1863, the Russian chancellor began to sulk while continuing tomeditate, and the Achaeans have paid dearly for this spite of Achilles. The "sulks" of Alexander Mikhaïlovitch have been almost as fatal for Europe as the dreams of Napoleon III.

This Napoleonic policy regarding the affairs of Germany, at once reasonable and chimerical, ingenious and ingenuous, which he sincerely thought would work good, and which only accumulated disasters and ruin, seemed like a dream, a realsummer night's dream. One day they had a sublime vision at the Tuileries: Italy was completed in its unity, Austria reëxalted, Prussia rendered more homogeneous, Germany more satisfied, Europe regenerated, and France consolidated and glorious. All this only depended on a single hypothesis, but a hypothesis which did not exist, on a battle fought and won by the braveKaiserliksalways inured against this PrussianLandwehrwhich for half a century had not smelt powder, and it was on this frail skiff, on this "nut-shell," as the Puck of Midsummer Night'sDream had said, that the fortune of Cæsar and that of France was embarked! In fact, at this moment, all the world believed in the incomparable military superiority of Austria over its bold rival in Germany; no one admitted the possibility of a Prussian victory, still less a victory as decisive, as startling as that at Sadowa. "That was," M. Rouher said later, in a memorable session of the legislative body,—"that was an event which Austria, which France, which the military man, which the simple citizen had all considered as unlikely; for there was an universal presumption that Austria would be victorious and that Prussia would pay, and pay dearly, the price of its imprudence." This presumption, very real and universal at that time, remained the sole excuse of Napoleon III. before history, for that lamentable phantasmagoria which was announced to the world by the speech of Auxerre in the month of May, 1866, but whose origin goes back as far as the convention of September and the first journey of M. de Bismarck to France after his campaign in Denmark in the autumn of 1864.[49]

"I have at least one superiority over my conqueror," the Emperor of Austria, Francis I., said to M. de Talleyrand, the negotiator of the peace of Presburg, with a dignity not without keenness; "I can reënter my capital after such a disaster, while it would be difficult for your master, in spite of all his genius, to do the same thing in a similar situation." This curiousmotdisplayed in a strikingmanner the profound, incurable vice of all Cæsarism. No more than the conqueror of Austerlitz, could Napoleon III. accept a check; he was obligedto do great things, condemned to success and prestige. Soon after the misadventures and the miscalculations in the affairs of Poland, of Denmark, and of the congress, he was forced to look out for a revenge, he cast his glances from north to south, "struck an attitude" by means of the convention of September, which seemed to be the preface of a new and great work. He was isolated in Europe, incensed against England, very much embarrassed in regard to Russia, more than cool with Austria, and it was with a certain inward trepidation that one saw M. de Bismarck hasten to France (October, 1864) at the first news of the convention concluded with the cabinet of Turin. Evidently "something was to be done for Italy;" without rancor, as without prejudices, the president of the Prussian council came to renew the conversations broken off two years before at the time of his short mission to Paris.

He added nothing to the truth; he only affirmed that his alliance with the Hapsburg in the war against Denmark had been a simple incident, and he allowed to be clearly seen his desire to keep for Prussia the countries recently conquered on the Elbe in the name of the Germanic Confederation. For the rest, he only varied the ancient theme on the inevitable imminent duel between Berlin and Vienna, on the advantages which Italy might gather from it, on the advantage that would accrue to France, having Prussia, with a better defined and firmer outline, as its natural, unfailing ally in all the questions ofcivilizationandprogress. Such expressions, coming from a minister who had shown his character in the campaign of the Duchies, now met an auditory much more attentive than that of 1862. Without yet taking him for a perfectlyseriousman, they began to recognize in him the qualities of a useful man, of a man of the future, whom Italy should cultivate with care, whom France, for its part, should watch carefully, encourage, and manage. The leaders of the imperial democracy, Prince Napoleon first of all, showed themselves especially taken with the prospectives which were opened to them. A distinguished member of this group, a diplomat reputed to be acute above all, and whose name even allied him to the Italian cause, was sought out in his retreat and placed at the head of the mission at Berlin, elevated now to an embassy. Another member of the "party of action," equally unattached for some time, a former ambassador at Rome, was not long in being recalled into the councils of the empire: by the side of M. Rouher, he was destined to form there a useful counterpoise to the slightly "antiquated" ideas of M. Drouyn de Lhuys. Finally, on the other side of the Alps, at Turin, a general, well known for his "Prussomania," had taken in hand the direction of political affairs on the 23d September. Each of these personages,—M. Benedetti, M. de La Valette, General La Marmora,—will have hisrôleand his day in the great drama of 1866.

At this time, however, in the autumn of 1864, no plan was fixed or even discussed: one had only come as yet to simple confidences, to vague and fleeting conversations, to that which, in diplomaticlanguage, one had not even dared to call an exchange of ideas; but the impression which the Prussian minister obtained from this rapid journey to France was sufficiently encouraging for him soon to launch that circular of the 24th December, 1864, which became the point of departure for his action against Austria. It was in this circular, in fact, that M. de Bismarck broached for the first time the question of the countries of the Elbe, which he well knew to be a question of war. Six months before, in the peremptory declaration made the 28th May, 1864, in the midst of the conference of London, Austria and Prussia had demanded the "reunion of the Duchies of Schleswig and of Holstein in a single state under the sovereignty of the hereditary Prince of Augustenburg," and the cabinet of Berlin took care to add then that this prince had, "in the eyes of Germany,the greatest rightto the succession; that his recognition by theBundwas consequently assured, and that, moreover, he would reunite theindubitable suffragesof the great majority of the population of this country." Quite different were the sentiments of the Prussian minister towards the end of the same year, some time after his return from Paris. In a circular dispatch addressed to the German courts, the president of the council of Berlin declared now (24th December, 1864) that grave doubts assailed his mind touching the titles of the Duke of Augustenburg, that several serious competitors, such as the Princes of Oldenburg and Hesse, had arisen in the interval;[50]that in the midst of such multiplied and such confused claims he was perplexed; that his conscience was not sufficiently enlightened on this point of right; that he felt the need of meditating and of "consulting the legists!"

The world knows the magnificent decree which the "legists"—the syndics of the crown—did not delay in pronouncing, as well as the conclusions which the scrupulous minister conscientiously drew from them. There were judges at Berlin, and they proved it in overruling all parties, in declaring them all badly grounded in their pretensions: Hesse, Oldenburg, Brandenburg, Sonderburg, Augustenburg, none of them had the right of succession to Schleswig-Holstein. The King of Denmark alone had the titles! But as the King of Denmark had been forced by the war to abandon the provinces of the Elbe to the sovereigns of Prussia and Austria, M. de Bismarck concluded therefrom that the two monarchs could dispose of their "property" as they wished, without any intervention of theBund, and he demanded of the Emperor Francis Joseph the cession of his partof the conquest for ready cash. The Prussian minister made this impudent demand in an arrogant dispatch, full of menaces, dated the 11th July, 1865, from Carlsbad, from the very place where the old King William had come to enjoy the Austrian hospitality during the season. The alarm was great for some weeks. M. de Bismarck made no mystery of the negotiations which he entered upon with Italy; he said to M. de Gramont "that far from dreading the war, he desired it by all means;" some days after, he even declared to M. de Pfordten, president of the council of Bavaria, "that Austria could not sustain a campaign, that it would suffice to strike a single blow, to fight a single and great battle from the side of Silesia to obtain satisfaction of the Hapsburg." In reality, he only wished to sound the ground and to make a careful examination. At this moment he was not yet sufficiently sure of the disposition of the Emperor Napoleon to dare to risk the great cast; he also wanted time to persuade the pious Hohenzollern to pronounce the "God wills it!" of a fratricidal war. He had to content himself with that convention of Gastein (14th August, 1865) which was only a provisional arrangement, yet the first breach made in the rights of theBund, and like an indirect consecration of the conclusions which he had pretended, to draw from the decree pronounced by the famous syndics of the crown.

The very day on which he signed this equivocal transaction at Gastein, M. de Bismarck wrote his wife a short note as follows: "For several days I have not found a moment of leisure to write you. CountBlome is again here, and we are doing our best to preserve peace and stop up the crevices of the building. Day before yesterday I devoted an entire day to hunting. I think that I wrote you that I returned disgusted from my first expedition; this time I at least killed a roe, but I saw nothing else during the three hours that I devoted without cessation to experiments on all sorts of insects, and the noisy activity of the cascade below me drew from my heart the cry: 'Little brook, leave there thy murmur.'[51]After all, it was a very good shot made across the precipice. The animal, killed instantly, fell with its four feet in the air from a height of several church steeples into the torrent at my feet." After all, he no more missed the shot than when he slew, in order that he might no longer be the cherished candidate of theBund, the poor Augustenburg, and made the little Duchy of Lauenberg fall into the Prussian game-bag! This fact of the chase and of diplomacy even had an extraordinary reëcho in Germany, in France, and even as far as Lord Russell, who experienced the shock. The principal secretary of state insisted on the honor of associating himself with M. Drouyn de Lhuys in a very eloquent protest against the arrangements made at Gastein, and the iron-clad squadron of England, which had not appeared in the Baltic since the war of Denmark, came this time at least to pay a courteous visit to the French fleet at Cherbourg. There, however, the demonstration of the two Powers of the East limited itself; M. de Bismarck could enjoy in peace his triumph and the title of count which the fortunate campaign of 1865 brought him.

Is it admissible to depart from the gravity of history to describe still another incident of Gastein, a littlegenrepicture of manners which was much talked of at this epoch, and even became the object of confidential explanations between the president of the Prussian council and a devoted friend, all extremely devout? And why not, since the letter of M. de Bismarck to M. André (de Roman) concerning Mlle. Pauline Lucca is one of the most curious pages of his familiar correspondence, if it throws light in a very picturesque manner on that vast and bald forehead on which the hand of King William had just placed the coronet of a count. Well, in the midst of those political negotiations and the deer hunts, M. de Bismarck found time at Gastein to be photographed in a romantic attitude with Mlle. Lucca, firstcantatriceof the royal opera at Berlin. The photographs caused a certain scandal on the banks of the Spree; the leaders ofthe party of the crosswere especially moved at the thermal license which the former Levite of the tabernacle, the fervent disciple of MM. Stahl and de Gerlach, took. M. André (de Roman) was perfectly willing to accept therôleof Nathan in the Bible, and, in a sermon written in entire confidence, he did not limit himself to talking of the Bethsabea of the opera; he also spoke some well-chosen words touching the reparation by arms which the first minister of Prussia had but lately wished to impose on the good Doctor Virchow, the very learned and very peaceful discoverer oftrichina. M. André found that that was not the conduct of a true Christian; he did not conceal that his old friends sighed at not seeing their Eliakim assist atdivine service, and even began to be rather uneasy at the state of his soul. It was to such a sermon that M. de Bismarck replied by the confidential letter which follows, and which a lucky indiscretion has since given to the public, a letter assuredly very characteristic, and which makes one think once more of Cromwell, whose memory has been so often called forth in the course of this study:—

"Dear André,[52]—Although my time is very much restricted, I cannot, however, refuse to reply to a summons addressed to me by an upright heart, and in the name of Christ. I am profoundly pained at scandalizing Christians who have faith, but I have the certainty that it is an inevitable circumstance in my position. I will not yet speak of the parties who are necessarily opposed to me in politics, and who not the less count in their midst a great number of Christians, who have far preceded me in the way of salvation, and with whom, nevertheless, I am obliged to be in conflict on account of matters which, in my estimation as well as theirs, are terrestrial; I appeal only to what you yourself said: 'That nothing that is omitted or committed in the elevated regions remains hidden.' Where is the man who, in a similar situation, would not cause scandal, rightly or wrongly? I will grant you much more still, for your expression 'does not remain hidden' is not exact. Would to God that apart from the sin the world knows I had not upon my soul others which remain unknown, and for which I can only hope for pardon in my faith in the blood of Christ! As a statesman, I even think that I use far too much consideration; according to my idea I am rather cowardly, and that perhaps because it is notso easy in the questions which come before me to arrive always at that clearness at the bottom of which confidence in God exists. He who reproaches me with being a political man without conscience, wrongs me; he should first commence by himself testing his conscience on the field of battle. As regards the matter of Virchow, I have long since passed the age in which, on similar questions, one seeks counsel from flesh and blood. If I expose my life for a cause, I do it not only in this faith which I have fortified by a long and painful combat, but also by fervent and humble prayer before God; this faith, the word of man cannot shake, not even the word of a friend in the Lord, and of a servant of the church. It is not true that I have never attended a church. For just seven months, I have been either absent from Berlin or ill; who then can have made the observation on my negligence? I willingly agree that it has often happened, much less for want of time than for considerations of health, especially in the winter; I am always ready to give more detailed explanations to all those who consider it their vocation to be my judges in this matter: as for you, you will believe me without other details of medicine. As to the Lucca photograph, you would probably judge less severely, if you knew to what chance it owes its origin. Besides, Mlle. Lucca, although acantatrice, is a lady whom the world has never, any more than it has me, reproached with illicit relations. Nevertheless, I would have certainly taken care to keep away from the glass pointed at us, if I had in a tranquil moment reflected on the scandal which so many faithful friends would find in this jest. You see by the details into which I enter that I consider your letter as well meant, and that I do not dream in any way of placing myself above the judgment of those who share with me the same faith; but I expect from your friendship andfrom your Christian knowledge which you commend to others, in future circumstances, more indulgence and charity in their judgments: all of us have need of them. I am of the great number of sinners to whom the glory of God is wanting; I do not hope the less with them that in His mercy, He will not withdraw from me the staff of the humble faith by the aid of which I seek to find my way in the midst of the doubts and dangers of my position; this confidence, however, should not render me deaf to the reproaches of friends, nor impatient at proud and harsh judgments."

Let us lock up the hair shirt with the discipline; let us only think of the diplomat in tunic and helmet, of the "iron count" (der eiserne Graf), as his people soon called him, and let us look at the disposition of France towards him at the moment when, after having left the rugged valley of Gastein, he prepared to visit the delightful region of Biarritz, to salute, interrogate, divine, and ... cast down the sphinx!

In the councils of the empire the debates had become from day to day sharper between the ancients and the moderns, between those zealous for the new right and the partisans of a more circumspect and traditional policy, in proportion as the Austro-Prussian conflict had grown more bitter and aggravated. The ardent ones would have willingly concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with Prussia. They showed the irresistible movement which was drawing Germany towards unity, and the advantages which France would reap by favoring this evolution in place of opposing it, by attaching to itself by the ties of an eternal recognition the Piedmont of Germany, as it had already done with that of the peninsula.Passionate friends of Italy, and still more violent adversaries of Austria, this bulwark of the reaction, of legitimacy and of temporal power, they cherished in the kingdom of Frederick the Great the incontestable representative of civilization, and trembled at seeing it going toward certain defeat in an unequal contest with theKaiserliks. To hear them, the united action of France, Italy, and Prussia was not too much to preserve the cause of progress and to place Europe on new and immovable bases. Why, however, should not Belgium be the legitimate recompense of the French efforts in favor of Germany, as Savoy had been in consequence of the constitution of the kingdom of Italy, and how decline a combination in which each of the three nations representingpar excellencemodern ideas on the Continent was called to complete its respective unity?

Very different was in this respect the sentiment of the "ancients," the statesmen of the old school, of a whole political group of which M. Drouyn de Lhuys was in the cabinet the most authorized and clearsighted, if not the firmest. First casting aside all desire for Belgium, as a certain cause of a formidable conflict with England, they asserted the absolute impossibility of finding for France a compensation, however small it might be, in proportion to the injury which the unification of Germany would cause it. Without misunderstanding the Germanic aspirations for a federal reform, for a more homogeneous and united constitution, they asked what obligation France was under to hasten such a work, and if in any case it were not more desirable that such atransformation should be accomplished by the enlightened and pacific classes, by the federal diet, even by Austria,—always respecting acquired rights and particular sovereignties,—rather than by a power peculiarly military, bureaucratic, and centralistic? Was not that also the almost general wish of the other side of the Rhine, of the dynasties as well as of the chambers, of the princes as well as of the peoples, and had not the pretension of Prussia, among others, of confiscating for its own profit the conquest of Denmark aroused the consciences of all of them? Only the press of France and Italy which persisted in speaking of "the Piedmontese mission" of the Hohenzollern; on the banks of the Main and Elbe, every one rejected this pretended mission, and even theNational-Verein, brought into contempt some time before while demanding "a united Germany with a Prussian point," did not the less repudiate M. de Bismarck, and declared him unworthy of taking in hand so holy a cause. As to the danger of seeing Prussia succumb in the conflict, and thus render the Hapsburg all powerful in Germany, there was a very simple means of preventing such an eventuality, that was to refuse the government of Berlin any aid in the enterprise which it meditated. However bold in truth M. de Bismarck was, it was not doubtful that he would never dare to defy Austria and its allies of theBundin the face of a formal veto of France, which at the same time would take from him all hope of aid from Italy.[53]The plan to follow in such events seemed then as clearly indicated as singularly easy. Without mixing directly in German affairs, without wounding at all the Teutonic susceptibilities, one could oppose an insuperable barrier to Prussian ambition; one had only to maintain thestatu quo. Such a policy would inevitably have the warm support of England, and would encourage the resistance of Austria and the secondary States. Without doubt, the Venetian question would be thus warded off; but, besides that, the peace of Europe and the greatness of France were well worth "the pearl of the Adriatic;" it was not forbidden to have great hopes for the city of lagoons from the progress of time, and from the good relations preserved and augmented between France and Austria.

Generally silent in the midst of these contradictory debates, loving, moreover, to plan beneath the passions and agitations of his surrounding counselors in the serenity of a calm and meditative intelligence, the Emperor Napoleon III. slowly ripened a project which seemed to him to sufficiently take into consideration the different arguments of the two sides, and which, moreover, well answered the recommendation made by him at about the same time to his minister of foreign affairs,inertia sapientia!Italy naturally was of more real interest to him than to M. Drouyn de Lhuys; that was a passion, perhaps indeed a youthful contract, and it was even so with the Empress Eugenie, who had become ardent for the affranchisement of Venice since the entry of M. de La Valette to the ministry, also since the day when M. the Cavalier Nigra had turned some couplets full of graceful allusions to a gondola which she had had made for the lake of Fontainbleau. Not less inveterate, but much more fatal, was Louis Napoleon's liking for the country of Blücher and Scharnhorst; the "great destinies" of the monarchy of Brandenburg in Germany formed one of the articles of his cosmopolitan faith. "The geographical position of Prussia is badly defined!" as he cried out the following year, at a solemn moment, and in a document too much forgotten.[54]He certainly did not intend to destroy the empire of Hapsburg, and allow the Hohenzollern to rule from the Sound to the Adriatic, as such a course would have readily recognized theintransigeansand the know-nothings of the principle of nationality. A strong appreciator of logic in the affairs of states, and in that (in that alone, perhaps!) truly French spirit, the former prisoner of Ham would have willingly constructed an essentially Protestant Prussia opposed to a traditionally Catholic Austria in the centre of Germany, leaving for the secondary States an intermediary and fluctuating situation in a religious as well as in a political point of view. An augmentedand rounded Prussia on the Elbe and the Baltic, and thus rendered "stronger and more homogeneous in the North," seemed to him a useful combination, almost indispensable, counterbalancing Russia, and it was perfectly just that in exchange for new and vast Protestant territories, which it would acquire, the monarchy of Frederick II. should lose Silesia, a Catholic country and former patrimony of Hapsburg, that it should also renounce the Catholic provinces of the Rhine, situated too far outside of its natural orbit. "One would thus maintain for Austria its great position in Germany," above all its position as a great Catholic state, and the return of Silesia would be for the Emperor Francis Joseph an ample compensation for the Venetian province which he would cede to King Victor Emmanuel. For the secondary States of the Confederation, one would mediatize for their profit several of the little unimportant princes; one would add to them, perhaps, as a new member of theBund, a new State composed entirely of Rhenish provinces taken from Prussia; one would assure for them, in any case, "a closer union, a more powerful organization, a more importantrôle," which the great leaders of the party of Würzburg, the advocates of thetriad, MM. de Beust, de Pfordten, and de Dalwigk, did not cease to demand. A curious fact, in these vast projects which embraced the world and which tended to determine and to satisfy the "legitimate wants" of Italy, Prussia, Austria, the Germanic Confederation, the only obscure question, and never decided in the mind of the French sovereign, was that of the compensations which, in the presence of this universal alteration, he could claimfor his own country. He did not dare to touch the problem of Belgium; it would be, he declared very honestly, "an act of brigandage."[55]Neither did he deceive himself on the impossibility of annexing important Germanic territories; generally he stopped at the idea of a simple rectification of frontiers on the side of the Saar and the Palatinate, and of the neutralization of the German line of fortresses on the Rhine. Even reduced to these modest proportions, the end did not seem to him to be less worthy of being ardently pursued, in view of the very great and moral satisfaction France would find in the achievement of its work in Italy, and in the rational ordering of affairs in Germany.

Moreover, that which, in the situation in which he was engaged, especially flattered his instincts, generous at bottom and vaguely humanitarian, was that he hoped to reap considerable advantages for his own country, for the entire universe, without any necessity of drawing the sword, without spilling a drop of blood, "by moral force only," by the ascendancy of the name of France. He was resolved to "remain in a watchful neutrality," not to leave it except in the extreme case of the too complete victories of one of the belligerents menacing "the overthrow of the equilibrium and the modification of the map of Europe for the benefit of a single Power." He proclaimed it very loudly, on all occasions, and gloriedin such "disinterested" policy,—a very strange policy, however, and which, according to the very judiciousmotof Prince Napoleon, declared itself in advancehostile to the conqueror. "You have changed the address of your letter," said with fine raillery the conqueror of Austerlitz to the Prussian envoy who brought him the congratulations of his sovereign; the nephew of Napoleon I. acted in such a manner that he could not change the address, alienating in advance the still unknown conqueror. It is true that he believed he knew him, that, with all the world, he saw him in the Emperor of Austria, and that he counted on making with him preventive arrangements. Moreover, even should the army of William I. show itself much superior to the general opinion one had of it,—and, more perspicacious in that than his followers, he fully admitted such an eventuality,—still he only saw in this case a long and fatiguing conflict which would exhaust the two parties and would allow him more easily to intervene as judge of the combat and as protector of the right. He thus hoped, in any case, at his time and at his convenience, to be able to pronounce a word of peace, of equity, and of equilibrium, and he was convinced that "this word would be heard." It was important for the moment that Prussia should begin the combat, and to decide it in its favor it would be necessary for it to procure the alliance of Italy. It was also necessary to carefully avoid with the court of Berlin an untimely debate on the combinations and compensations to come; the least insistence on this delicate point might wound the patriotic feelings of William I., cool his warlike ardor, destroy in theembryo a world of great things,novus rerum ordo! It was better to ask nothing, to promise nothing, to compromise nothing. Moreover, what use in demanding notes of a bankrupt, taking sureties from one whose fate seemed so little assured, and whom, according to all probabilities, one would soon have to protect, to defend against too hard conditions which its Austrian conqueror would wish to impose on it?

Back to Index Next