VI.

On the 9th January, 1873, Napoleon III. passed sadly away from the land of exile at Chiselhurst, and a short time after, the 27th March, William I. entered on the sixty-sixth year of a life in which assuredly the most extraordinary favors of fortune have not been wanting. Germany celebrated thefêteof its new emperor with transports of joy, the more noisy and sincere since the monarch had waited for this anniversary to ratify a last convention with the government of Versailles, a convention which assured the anticipated payment of the fifth milliard of the French ransom, and the very early return of the troops of occupation from the other side of the Vosges. The great accounts withthe hereditary enemythus definitely settled, the conqueror of Sedan thought, on his part, of acquitting himself of a little debt of the heart: he resolved to carry to the Emperor Alexander II. the expression of his lively gratitude for the loyal aid which he had lent him during a memorable period of trials and combats. Long foreseen, from time to time announced and put off, the journey to St. Petersburg was at length undertaken at the beginning of pleasant weather, and M. de Bismarck took care to state precisely on this occasion the date as well as the character of the closeassociation of interests established between Russia and Prussia, and which became so fatal to the Occident. "The commonalty of views,"—thus the official organ of the German chancellor expressed itself,[139]—"which brought about the alliance of Prussia and Russia in 1863, at the time of the Polish insurrection, was the point of departure for this present policy of the two states, which, on the occasion of the great events of the last years, has affirmed its power. Since the attitude of Russia in the question of Schleswig-Holstein, up to the important proofs of sympathy given to Germany by the Emperor Alexander during the last war, all has concurred to render this alliance still more firm."

By a sort of historical fiction which confounds the reason not a little, but which a sovereign will imposes on acts and even public monuments in Russia, the campaign of 1870 did not cease to be exalted in the official spheres of the empire of the czars as the continuation of the work of 1814, as the final episode of "that great epoch when the united armies of Russia and Prussia fought for a sacred cause which was common to them both."[140]At the Kremlin, in the splendid hall consecrated by the Emperor Nicholas to the military glories of the country, and which is thearc de l'Etoileof Holy Russia, theforeign tourist is astonished to see glittering now in letters of gold on the marble the names of Moltke, of Roon, and other captains of Germany who shone in the last war against France.[141]And the conqueror of Sedan might imagine that he was still in the midst of his subjects in traversing in 1873 the vast Muscovite plains: from the frontier to the Gulf of Finland the journey was an uninterrupted succession of triumphs and ovations. At each depot where the imperial train stopped a guard of honor was in waiting, and played the German national song; the czar came to meet his august guest to Gatchina, and the 27th April the two sovereigns entered the capital of Peter the Great. The skies were gloomy and cold, and the sun refused to lighten "the city of wet streets and dry hearts," as one of its poets has called it; but human industry did all that was possible to supply the place of nature, and make amends for the irreparable outrage of the climate. "All the green-houses of the capital, without excepting those of the imperial gardens," says an eye-witness,[142]"were literally devastated to improvise around the gates and windows a spring which, retarded in our North, only arrived with summer," and the rich carpets suspended from the ledges or stretched along the edifices gave to the boreal city the joyous aspect of the city of lagoons. "The perspective of Izmaïlovsky, the perspective of Voznessensky, the Grande-Morskaïa, formed a sort of continuous alley of draperies of theRussian, German, and Prussian colors. On a great number of balconies, one saw in the midst of the verdure and the flowers the busts of the two monarchs crowned with laurel. The façade of the great stable Préobrajensky was ornamented with a number of standards surrounding a colossal cross of that military order of Saint George of which his majesty the Emperor William is the oldest knight and the only grand ribbon." The crowd pressed close to the passage of the guests from Berlin; the unreserved Prince de Bismarck and the taciturn Count de Moltke especially attracted the eyes of the spectators.

For twelve days there was an endless succession of reviews, parades, tatoos, illuminations, balls,raouts, banquets, concerts, and gala representations. Among the latter, the chroniclers mention the two splendid ballets of the "Roi Candaule" and "Don Quixotte." The people had also their part in the rejoicings, especially on the evening of the 29th April, at the gigantic festival of the Place du Palais. The two sovereigns were present at the immense balcony concert above the piazza of the castle. "On their arrival, five electric suns all at once lighted the square with such intensity that one could distinguish the features of all the spectators, and the orchestra struck up the national Prussian hymn. The total number of musicians was 1,550, in addition to 600 trumpets and 350 drums. After the hymn the "March of King Frederick William III." was played; then came a whole series of military marches, the "March of Steinmetz," the "Watch on the Rhine," the "March of the Garde of 1808," to the music ofwhich the Russian regiments returned to St. Petersburg after the campaign of Eylau, and the "March of Paris," which the allied armies heard in olden times at the time of their triumphal entry into the capital of France. The military prayer, "God is great in Zion," also produced an immense effect." One can hardly explain how, in the midst of music entirely consecrated to the gods Mars and Vulcan, the sweet romance of Weber, entitled "The Praise of Tears," could be introduced, unless it was a discreet homage rendered to the well known sensibility of the old Hohenzollern, and of which many speeches, letters, or telegrams bear in history authentic traces. This easily impressionable character of the sovereign of Germany was visible as far as was necessary at St. Petersburg; it showed itself especially at the moment when the two monarchs made their adieux in the imperialsalonsof the depot of Gatchina. In order not to succumb to his emotion, William I. had to leave thesalonbrusquely; his head bent forward, his features contracted, he went out with hasty steps and reached the carwithout turning round.

However, if during this sojourn of the Prussian guests on the banks of the Neva all the honors were for the uncle of the czar, the curiosity of the public, panting and almost feverish, willingly turned, one may be sure, to the extraordinary minister whose uniform of the white curassiers set off his imposing stature—to this chancellor of Germany who, in the short space of a lustrum, had founded an empire on the ruins of two others. One had not had time to forget at St. Petersburg the grumbling diplomat, who from 1859 to 1862 astonished and amusedthe Russian society by his slanders against his own court, by his pleasantries on the "old fogies of Potsdam" and the "Philistines of the Spree," and who occasionally repeated the famousmotof M. Prudhomme—themot: "If I were the government!"—he who was to laugh at it the first. He was the government at this time, he was even the master of Europe; and his star had dimmed the star of a Hapsburg, of a Napoleon! The subject gave rise to more than one touching reconciliation, to many apiquantreminiscence, and there was room also for futile remarks for theplerisque vana mirantibusof which the immortal historian speaks in presence of any prodigious change of fortune. In presence of the man of the five milliards, the great ladies at the winter palace remembered a certain ambassadress ten years before, who one day boldly declared that she could not pay forty silver roubles for early asparagus, who another day avowed in all candor that she owed her new diamond ear-rings only to the exchange of a valuable snuff-box, an old gift of the Prince of Darmstadt.[143]The ambassadress was the wife of Prince de Bismarck, then baron, prince to-day, a good prince too, and having lost nothing of his former affability. He was easy, playful, earnest, as at the time of his mission in Russia; he inquired for friends, acquaintances, small or great people whom he had known formerly, and seemed to renew relations and conversations as if interrupted only yesterday. The statesman disappeared entirely, to show only the courtier and the man of the world, and it was only in his relations with Prince Gortchakof,a sagacious observer tells us, that he laid aside the foreign minister, and only appeared as the companion, almost as the compatriot. He showed him the deference of an affectionate friend towards his elder,—of a disciple towards the master, said the flatterers, without thinking of evil, without thinking, above all, on thediscipulus supra magistrumof whom Alexander Mikhaïlovitch, a good Latinist himself, perhaps thought.

They often appeared thus in public, at numerousfêtesand receptions, side by side, the one towering above the crowd with his strongly-marked head, the other also easily recognizable by his fine,spirituel, and rather sharp features. According to that ingenious court etiquette of which the good Homer has given the first precept, in making Diomede and Glaucus exchange their brilliant armor, the Russian minister wore the insignia of the black Eagle of Prussia, and the Prussian minister the insignia of St. Andrew of Russia,—and this exchange of ribbons involuntarily recalled the commonalty of ties which had for so long united these illustrious diplomats. Such a cordial, unalterable understanding between two statesmen directing two different empires, was assuredly a rare phenomenon, well calculated to excite attention, and which, during the pompous solemnities of St. Petersburg, did not cease, in fact, to occupy reflective minds. They sought in vain in the past for the example of a harmony of action as constant and glowing: certain political friendships celebrated in history, those among others of Choiseul and Kaunitz, of Dubois and Stanhope, or yet of Mazarin and Cromwell, wereonly evoked an instant to be immediately recognized as deceptive souvenirs, apparent analogies only. No one, however, disregarded the considerable, decisive influence which the accord between the two chancellors has had on the recent destinies of Europe; nor did any one doubt the prodigious benefit which M. de Bismarck has been able to draw from this juncture in his bold enterprises: the opinions began to differ only when there was a question of settling the accounts of Russia, of fixing well the profits brought to the empire of the czars by this association of ten years, the most turbulent ten years which the Continent has known since the day of Waterloo.

According to the ideas of some, there was only advantage and gain for the people of Rourik, in the situation created by the immense events of Sadowa and Sedan. They showed the humiliating treaty of 1856 torn up, Austria punished for its "treason" at the time of the Crimean war, France sunken and weakened, England a resigned spectator of the progress of General Kaufman at Bokhara, and Russia recovering its ancient prestige, tasting in all quiet the vengeance, that pleasure of the gods and of the great favorites of the gods like Alexander Mikhaïlovitch. Is there not in truth, was said, a marvelous fortune, an imposing unity in the career of this minister who, at the conference of Vienna, had sworn to take revenge for the abasement of his country, and who has so well kept his word? Is there not a grand Nemesis in the successive chastisement of these proud "allies" who, in 1853, had undertaken the defense of the crescent against the cross of St.Andrew, who, ten years later, had dared to raise the question of Poland? At the present time Austria and France are rivals in flattering, obsequious conduct before the so decried "barbarian of the North," England solicits of him amodus vivendiin central Asia; and this enviable and glorious position Russia has obtained without conflict, without sacrifices, only bymeditating, developing its interior prosperity, and letting its neighbor act alone, its secular, tried friend, whose devotion has never been doubted. It is only just that Prussia should reap the fruits of its valor and its fidelity, and the well known sentiments of the Emperor William towards the czar, the family ties which have so long united the two courts; lastly, the destinies, so distinct and yet so connected, of the two states, are certain gages of a future, permanent, and immovable understanding. How many times has Prussia solemnly declared that it has no interest in the Oriental question. The day when the question of the succession of the Osmanli arises, the Hohenzollern will prove his gratitude to the Romanof. The little jealousies and the little rivalries have had their day, like the little states and the little artifices of influence and of the balance of power: the future is for a rational policy based on the nature of things, the reality of geography, the homogeneity of races; and this policy assigns to Russia and Germany their respectiverôlesand corollaries. In point of view of general principles, we can only rejoice that the sceptre of the Occident has escaped a turbulent, volcanic nation now making Jacobin, now ultramontane propaganda, but always revolutionary, to pass into the hands of a well-ordered, hierarchical, and disciplinedstate, as it is. Lastly, Sadowa and Sedan were Protestant victories over the first two Catholic Powers, and the contest in which M. de Bismarck engaged against the Roman Curia is only the logical consequence of this great fact of history; but without even sharing certain ideas, widely spread however, of a possible fusion of the Protestant and Orthodox beliefs, it is not for the church of Photius, in any case, to take umbrage at the mortal blow given to the Vatican.

To such justifications, in which neither convincing arguments nor sharp touches were wanting, those dissenting opposed objections inspired by a patriotism equally sincere, but much less hopeful. Also admiring the facility and promptitude with which Russia has arisen from its great disaster of the Crimea, they pretended only that this great result had been obtained long before the advent of M. de Bismarck, long before any association with him, and that from the year 1860 the empire of the Rourik had retaken the great position which it deserved in Europe, when the sovereigns of Austria, Prussia, and so many of the princes of Germany had come to salute the czar at Warsaw, to recognize his moral supremity, and that Napoleon III. on his part sought his friendship and accepted his arbitration. The great ability with which Prince Gortchakof used the "French cordiality" for the good of Russia, without giving up any essential interests, and without compromising the conservative and traditional principles of his government, always remained one of his greatest claims to the gratitude of his country, and it would have been desirable had he preservedthe same moderation, the same reserve, later in this intimacy with Prussia, which on the occasion of the Polish insurrection had replaced the former understanding with the Tuileries. The successor of Nesselrode exaggerated, without doubt, the bearing and the danger of the famousremonstranceson the subject of Poland, as well as the nature of the services, very selfish as a whole, which his friend of Berlin then rendered him; in any case, that was certainly not a reason to pout at Europe after the affair had turned out to the striking advantage of the Russian government, to pout at it during long years, to wish no other ally than Prussia, and to persist, in respect to this last Power, in the constant policy of let-go, let-do, and let-take.

This was in general the profound misfortune of the fifteen or twenty last years,—thought these enlightened patriots,—that rancor and bad humor had played such a greatrôlein the grave affairs of the world: sad sentiments surely, and from which the present chancellor of Germany has alone been able to preserve himself! It was through anger at the conduct of the cabinet of St. Petersburg in the Italian question, that Austria took under its protection the insurgents of Poland; it was through bad humor towards England in the question of the congress that Napoleon III. abandoned the cause of Denmark, and Alexander Mikhaïlovitch yielded to such motives more than to any others; he was the first to practice this "policy of spite" with his imaginary grievances against Austria in the war of the Orient, as he was also not the last to cherish a certain "policy de pour-boire" with hisleague of the neutralswhich hindered any concerted action of the Powers. What happy opportunities for the preservation of Europe, for the glory of his nation and the splendor of his august master, has not the Russian chancellor let pass through love for Prussia: in the spring of 1867, when France and Austria offered him such large concessions in the Orient; in the autumn of 1870, when England and Austria solicited him to take the initiative in the work of peace! What illusions also in that belief, that Prince Gortchakof has sacrificed nothing during those ten years of association with his formidable colleague! Was the port of Kiel, the key of the Baltic, delivered into the hands of the Germans, nothing? Was that nothing, the dismemberment of the Danish monarchy, the country of the future empress? Was the vassalage of Queen Olga nothing? The overturning and spoliation of so many reigning families allied by blood to the House of Romanof, the loss of the independence of these secondary States always so devoted and so faithful to Russia? Lastly, was this profound overturning of the ancient European equilibrium, and the unmeasured, gigantic aggrandizement of a neighboring Power, nothing?

"Greatness is a relative thing, and a country can be diminished, while remaining the same, when new forces accumulate around it."[144]These words, which Napoleon III. heard on the day after Sadowa, Russia could well apply to itself, since the day of Sedan, for assuredly no one would wish to pretend that the abolition of Article III. of the treaty of Paris is theequivalent of the forces accumulated by Prussia in the centre of Europe. As to thehopesin the Orient, they are very contingent, like every speculation of heritage: thesick manhas already so many times deceived the expectations of his doctors, one can no longer count the mortal crises which should have carried him off, and perhaps it is not Russia that should complain of this prolongation of the agony. It is still a question in truth if Russia is now in a position to take care of the succession, if it is sufficiently supplied with implements for such a vast establishment; if, in a word, it has all its military and financial strength, as well as all the administrativepersonnelindispensable to advantageously occupy the domains as various as extended. It cannot take possession of European provinces like the countries along the Amour and Syr-Daria; it runs the risk of finding more than one ungovernable Poland among those peoples of the Danube and the Balkan; and the unity of the law, the uniformity of thesvod, will not be so easy to establish in the countries where, side by side, the most incongruous institutions have flourished from therégimeof the cimeter to that of the parliament. Will not the transformation of Turkey transform, however, in turn the Muscovite people, and will not history on this occasion be careful to repeat the great and pathetic lessons ofGræcia capta? Will Russia still be Russia the day when it rules the Oriental peninsula, and can an empire bathed by the blue waves of the Bosphorus preserve its capital on the icy banks of Finland? Grave and obscure problems before which it is allowable to stop, to conceive apprehensions and doubts. Whatis not doubtful, on the contrary, is that at the destined hour Prussia will make its conditions and will stipulate its compensations. It will not be a debt of gratitude which it will think of paying then, it will be a new bargain which it will make. Will it demand as the price of its consent, Holland, Jutland, or the German territories of Austria? the frontier of the Vistula, or the provinces of the Baltic?

But who knows if this prolonged drama of Turkish decadence is not yet destined to receive adénoûmentlittle or not at all foreseen, yet very original and nothing less than illogical. The publicists and the patriots of Berlin do not speak to-day of the mission of Austria in the countries of the Danube and the Bosphorus, which they say is called by Providence to strengthen in these countries German interests, to bring there "German culture." Since the great day of Sedan, especially, exhortations and summons are not wanting to this Power "to seek its centre of gravity elsewhere than at Vienna," in short, to justify its secular name ofOstreich, and to become an empire of the East, in the true meaning of the word. A monarchy constantly menaced with the early loss of its Germanic possessions on the Leitha may at length be brought to try the experiment, when, above all, care is taken to present to it this experiment as a necessity and as a virtue; a state which has never been strongly centralized, and which has always oscillated between dualism and a federal system more or less definite, will even have a great chance to appear to Europe as the most proper outline of this medley of races, of religions, of institutions, which stretches from the Iron Gates to theGolden Horn. Anempire of the Eastof Germanic traditions and influences on the Bosphorus, more to the South a kingdom of Greece enlarged by Thessaly and Epirus, lastly, in the North a Germany completed in its unity by the Cisleithan provinces,—that will be something to fully content the world, not excepting England. We must acknowledge, one solution of the formidable Ottoman question is like another, and every hypothesis, every fantasy, has the right to appear, when one touches this fantastic world of the Orient, and that world not less mysterious and terrible which the great recluse of Varzin carries in his head.

What, in any case, is not within the domain of hypothesis and fantasy, what unfortunately is only a too evident and palpable reality, is, that in place of this "combination purely and exclusively defensive," as Prince Gortchakof one day so justly called the oldBund,—in place of a league of peaceful states, all devoted friends of Russia, and forming for it a continual succession of ramparts,—the empire of Alexander II. now sees before it, firmly settled all along its frontier, a formidable Power, the strongest Power of the Continent, ambitious, avaricious, enterprising, and having henceforward the undoubted mission of defending against it what they have agreed to call theinterests of the Occident. This Power can always excite the Polish question, if it wishes to, according to its wants, and quite differently than the cabinets of Paris and London would do it: has not the argument for such a "coup au cœur" been very warmly sustained in 1871, by certain Hungarian statesmen in the confidence of the Prussian minister?The conduct of the government of Berlin at the time of the last insurrection of Warsaw did not injure it in the future: the passionate speeches of M. de Bismarck in 1849 against the revolt of the Magyars did not prevent him from arming, many years later, the legions of General Klapka. We cannot at least deny the Prussian plans in 1863 on the left bank of the Vistula, "the natural frontier;" now, do not the friends of Berlin occasionally insinuate that this would be the most efficacious means to end the spirit of Polonism? They do not speak of the provinces of the Baltic, as before Sadowa they repudiated all thoughts of ever wishing to free the Main; but the Teutonic effervescence from Courland and Livonia goes on increasing, and to what grievous sacrifices will the Hohenzollern not resign himself when he thinks that he hears a voice from above, the voice of "German brothers?"

Certainly it would have made the prince regent tremble in 1858, if any one had spoken to him then of a war against a Hapsburg, and of a companion in arms named Garibaldi; he ended, however, by accepting the hard necessity, and he gave the signal for a fratricidal combat, with grief in his soul and tears in his eyes. Is it not puerile, however, to measure the destinies of nations by the life, more or less long, of this or that sovereign? An emperor can reign in Germany who has neither affection for, nor the remembrance of Alexander II.; he can raise up "a Pharaoh who knows not Joseph," to speak with Holy Writ, and then there is something stronger in the world than czar and emperor: the necessity of history, the fatality of race. A formidable race that ofthese conquerors of Sadowa and Sedan, whose invading and conquering minds have from the beginning survived all transformations and accommodated themselves to all disguises! Humble, and at the same time presumptuous, temperate and prolific, expansive and tenacious, practicing with persistence their old proverb,ubi bene, ibi patria, and nevertheless always preserving a rough attachment for themother country, the Germans infiltrate every country, penetrate all regions, disdain no corner of the habitable world. They have their friends and relations on all the thrones and in all the offices of the world; they people the industrial centres of Europe and the solitudes of the far West; they decide the presidential elections in the United States; they furnish the largest contingent of the high administrativepersonnelin the empire of the czars, and the remembrance is still recent of that statistic of the Russian army, which, in 100 superior officers, counts eighty of German origin.[145]So Germany appeared before the great strokes of fortune of 1866 and of 1870, before the era ofiron and blood, before M. de Bismarck had awakened in it the secret of its strength, had said to it the magic word,tu regere imperio populos! Is it necessary to recall now the hatred which the Germans have always borne against the Sclavic name, the extermination which they lately vowed on theElbe and the Oder; and does not the mind recoil in terror before a new conflict of the two races, to-day more probable than ever? It is allowable to treat all these apprehensions as boyish dreams, hollow thoughts ofliteratiand professors; but the eminent men, the serious men, theauguresandaruspicesof politics, have they in our day treated otherwise many a formidable problem? Have they not used the same language on the question of Schleswig-Holstein and the German pretensions to Alsace, in regard to the unity of Italy and the plans of theNational Verein? That would be a curious chapter of contemporaneous history to write, that of theDiplomats and Professors, and which could well show that of these two respectable bodies the most pedantic and the most ideological is not exactly the one which a vain people thinks.

Is there not,—the same persons continue, more careful of the interests of the present and the future than of the unseasonable reminiscences of the past,—is there not ideological force, for instance, in the manner of assimilating the two epochs of 1814 and 1870, and of saluting in Field Marshal Moltke the continuator of the work of Koutouzof? At the time of the memorable war of which the burning of Moscow had given the heroic signal, it was all Europe that arose against an insolent master and bore deliverance to states trodden and ground down by a universal dominion. Was it the same in the last conflagration? and can one not rather say that it was France, on the contrary, that fought at this moment for the equilibrium of the world and the independence of kingdoms, trying to repair by a tardy andbadly conceived effort a series of culpable errors, but from which it was not the only one to suffer? Different in their motives, the two epochs scarcely resemble each other more as to ways and means. It was "a war by means of revolutions" that the Prussian minister had early announced to M. Benedetti, and he has kept his word; he had regards, attenuations,comprehensionsfor thecommunedifficult to justify; now he openly protects the Republicanrégimein France against any attempt at restoration, thus sacrificing the monarchical principle and the highest considerations of European order to a purely selfish and vindictive calculation. That is not the spirit which animated the allies of 1814; the magnanimous Alexander I. especially understood differently the duties of sovereigns and the solidarity of conservative interests. And what a severe judgment would the Emperor Nicholas have given on everyensembleof the policy of Berlin, on that regeneration of Germany which has not ceased to be the revolution from above, from the federal execution in Holstein up to the arrest of the syndics of the crown; from the destruction of theBundup to the overturning of the dynasty of the Guelphs; from the formation of the Hungarian legions and the close relations with Mazzini to theKulturkampfagainst the Catholic Church!

That we may not be deceived in fact, we can still say it is the revolution alone which finds its profit in the war made to-day in Germany on Catholicism, and very great, verynaïveis the illusion of those who flatter themselves with seeing Protestant or Orthodox ideas, the religious spirit in general,benefited by the losses of Papacy. It suffices to cast a glance on the great battalions of theKulturkampfto recognize their God; they bear on their banners very clearly the sign under whose name they expect to conquer. Are these sincere Protestants, theseevangelical menfor whom the Gospel is a truth, who first rush to the assault or who only follow it with their wishes and their prayers? Assuredly not; all those who from the Reformation have not kept the name in vain, but the strong doctrine, openly repudiate this dissension, while sighing in their souls. They have the just feeling that in our epoch, so overturned, so profoundly disturbed by the genius of negation, religious interests are conjointly responsible between them just as well as conservative interests. Those eager for the combat, the zealots "filled with the divine spirit," are precisely those who admit neither divinity nor spirit, who have no other positive religion than positivism; and it is not in them surely that Luther resuscitated would wish to recognize his children. The great adversary of Rome in the sixteenth century held on to the revelation, he held on to his Bible, to his dogma of pardon: are not all these things very "old-fashioned," and very laughable in the eyes of the disciples of Strauss and Darwin? The apostle of Wittemberg believed in justification through faith; the apostles of Berlin believe in justification through success.

It is a grave matter,—at length conclude these men, alarmed in their patriotism and in their conservative sentiments,—an extremely perilous matter for a great state to abandon, in its relations with thePowers, certain established maxims, certain rules of conduct tried by long experience, become in a manner thearcana imperii, and Napoleon III. has just paid dearly for such a rupture with the ancient traditions in the exterior policy of France. Russia had also, in regard to Europe, sacred traditions, which have made the greatness and the strength of the preceding reigns; under these reigns, they were jealous in defending the liberty of the Baltic, they watched over the maintenance of the equilibrium of strength between Austria and Prussia, they appreciated the friendship and the devotion of the secondary States of Germany, and they caused the monarchical principle to be everywhere respected as opposed to revolution. Then Russia never had to repent at having turned aside from the ways hollowed out by the triumphal car of Peter the Great, of Catherine II., of Alexander I., and of Nicholas!

Thus spoke the independent minds on the banks of the Neva while the official world there displayed all the northern magnificence in honor of William the Conqueror: however, they only lent a reasoning and touching language to a vague, but intense and profound sentiment which agitated the very soul of Russia. With that habit of obedience and discipline that one can often accuse of a servile instinct, but which with this people is also sometimes a great and admirable patriotic instinct, the children of Rourik were careful not to cross the government in the brilliant reception which it gave the Prussian; they limited themselves to remaining impassible witnesses of a spectacle which did not appeal to their inmost feelings. The press showed itself abstemious of descriptions,more sparing still in reflections during these days offêtesand festivals; the officials of Berlin only praised them with having maintained adecoroustone. Such was also the tone of Russian society taken as a whole; the beautifulperspectivesof the imperial residence appealed to the moral as well as to the physical man; flowers from hot-houses on the first floor, ice under foot! The guests were not the last to see the contrast: with the exquisite perfumes of exotic plants, they breathed from time to time the sharp air of the country, the rough North wind, and it was not M. de Bismarck himself who did not seem to feel the circumambient atmosphere. One found in him more vivacity and enjoyment than of dash and warmth; his words preserved a measuredness which was not usual with him, and seemed to designedly avoid alléclatand all light. A curious matter, during this sojourn of two weeks in the capital of Russia, the former grumbling diplomat did not let any of his sallies and jokes escape, of which he is generally so prodigal,—none of those amazing indiscretions which are at once the amusement and the horror of thesalonsand the chancellors' offices. They only gleaned a single sensational expression fallen from those lips which have so often pronounced the decree of destiny, the expression "that he could not even admit the thought of being hostile to Russia." The declaration seemed explicit and reassuring, and like a discreet reply to an apprehension which did not dare to show itself openly. The incredulous or fretful souls could not, however, desist from observing that only ten years before such an assurance given to the empire of the czars by aminister of Prussia, would have seemed very superfluous, would have even provoked smiles.

Here ends the task which was imposed on us in undertaking this study. The meeting of the two chancellors in the capital of Peter the Great, in the spring of 1873, was like the epilogue of a common action which has lasted ten years, and which has contributed so much to change the face of the world. Since this epoch, Europe has known no tempest, although occasionally menacing and threatening clouds have not ceased to traverse its still obscured horizon. There were even glimmerings and indications that the old and fatal agreement between the cabinets of Berlin and St. Petersburg was no longer as absolute as in the past, that it admitted certain intermissions, or at least certain differences of opinions and appreciations. It is thus that the government of the czar refused to follow the chancellor of Germany in his Spanish campaign, in his feverish adhesion to the presidency of Marshal Serrano, and it did not seem doubtful that the personal intervention of Alexander II., strongly supported by England in the past year, turned from France an iniquitous aggression and a terrible calamity. Since that epoch, also, the adhesion of Austria to the official policy of the two Northern states has come—we cannot emphasize it too much—either to complete or to complicate an association in which it becomes difficult to discover any common interests, and which, up to this day at least, has only found harmony in silence. The future alone can unveil the importance and the virtue of this extolled alliance of three empires, as badlyknown as it is badly conceived, perhaps; but one will scarcely be deceived in supposing that to-day, in this double and troubled household, it is M. de Bismarck who can think himself the happiest of the three.

LETTER FROM M. BENEDETTI TO THE EDITOR OF THE "REVUE DES DEUX MONDES." REPLY OF M. KLACZKO.

LETTER FROM M. BENEDETTI TO THE EDITOR OF THE "REVUE DES DEUX MONDES." REPLY OF M. KLACZKO.

Paris,24th September, 1875.To the Editor,—You published in the last number of the "Revue des deux Mondes," an article by M. Klaczko, which forces me to ask you for an opportunity for a short explanation. I surely would not wish to contest with any one the right of estimating the events of which this author has undertaken the anecdotal history, and of judging, as best one can, of the part which I took in them; I call, on the contrary, with all my heart, in my own interest as well as in that of the government which I have had the honor to serve, for the examination and the discussion; for it, as for me, I can only be satisfied with the light which already flashes from it, and with the errors which have been dissipated; but the discussion is serious and useful only if it is loyal, and it is loyal only when recounting fixed and undeniable facts.Now, here is what I read in the article of M. Klaczko: "Certainly the ambassador of France at the court of Berlin had, in this year 1866 a very difficult and painful position, we had almost said a pathetic one. He had worked withardor, withpassion, to bring about thisconnubioof Italy and Prussia, which seemed to him to be an immense good fortune for the imperial policy, a brilliantvictory gained over the old order of things to the profit of the 'new right' and Napoleonic ideas. In the fear, very well founded besides, of seeing this work miscarry and Prussia draw back, if one spoke to it of eventual compensations and preventive engagements, he had notceased to dissuadehis government from any attempt of this kind." Pp. 210, 211. Already, at p. 206, in a note, M. Klaczko had said: "M. Drouyn de Lhuys, who had already obtained from Austria the cession, in any case, of Venetia, insisted at this moment more strongly than ever, that they should also take pledges in advance from Prussia, 'the most formidable, the most active of the parties.' M. Benedettidid not cease to opposesuch a proceeding, fearing that Prussia would renounce in this case all idea of war against Austria."Now, these allegations have no meaning, or they signify that I was the real inspirer, if not the negotiator, without the knowledge of my government, of the treaty of alliance concluded in 1866 between Prussia and Italy; that I, moreover, turned, by incessant efforts, M. Drouyn de Lhuys from his intention of demanding of the Berlin government, before the war against Austria, the pledges eventually necessary for the security of France.M. Klaczko neither corroborates these assertions by any known fact, nor by the extract from an official document; he gives no proof of them in any degree or in any way.As to what concerns the Prusso-Italian treaty, he was informed, however, since he continually quotes the publication which I made in 1871, under the title, "My Mission in Prussia," that I repudiated any participation in this act; he knew that I had claimed to have shown it, and it is not sufficient to contradict me; in such a case it is necessary to prove the contrary, to establish that, far from having remained ignorant, as I maintained, of theaccord between Prussia and Italy, I had been the principal instigator of it.It is of importance to me that the readers of the "Revue des deux Mondes" be enlightened; they have seen the article of M. Klaczko, it is just to place under their eyes some words only from the dispatches which I published.... I wrote on the 14th March, 1866: "The early arrival of an Italian officer, General Govone, is announced, who comes to Berlin charged with an important mission; this news ... has caused considerable emotion. If it is confirmed, one will not fail to believe that Prussia and Italy are negotiating a treaty of alliance."The third day after, I added: "General Govone arrived day before yesterday at Berlin. According to Count Bismarck and the Italian minister, he is charged with a military mission, and his journey will have simply for its object the study of the perfection arrived at in the instruments of war."Two days later, I was in a position to inform my government exactly, and I said: "I wrote you, announcing the arrival of General Govone, that, according to M. de Bismarck and the Italian minister, this envoy of the cabinet of Florence was simply charged with studying the military condition of Prussia. Forgetting, without doubt, what he had told me on this point, M. de Bismarck informed me yesterday that General Govone was authorized to conclude arrangements with the Prussian government. The communications which he has made to the president of the council substantiate this." In closing this dispatch, I added: "The legation of Italy observes toward me absolute reserve. I do not know whether to regret it. The confidences of M. de Bismarck, which I cannot, however, decline, already place me in a sufficiently delicate position."At last, on the 27th March, when the plenipotentiaries had already held several conferences, I wrote to M. Drouyn de Lhuys: "(M. de Bismarck) has spoken to me of his conferences with General Govone and the Italian minister, ... and I am so much the better in a position to inform you that M. de Barral, Italian minister,hasAT LASTdecided on his part not to hide from me entirely his proceedings and the intentions of his government."One of two things, either M. Klaczko admits that my correspondence was sincere, or he supposes that it was drawn up with the design of dissimulating my conduct and the part which I clandestinely took in the negotiation. In the first case, no one will conceive how he can pretend that I laboredwith ardor and with passion to bring about this connubio of Italy and Prussia. In the second hypothesis matters are changed, and I shall expect that M. Klaczko will be explained as far as he goes by the expression of my opinion.For the moment, I will invoke the only testimony that no one can suspect, that of the Italian plenipotentiary. The correspondence of General Govone was published after his death and subsequently to "My Mission in Prussia," through the efforts of General La Marmora, who has omitted nothing. In this correspondence, where all is told in detail, my name is quoted twice, the first time in a telegram of the 28th March, twelve days after the arrival of the Italian plenipotentiary at Berlin, and here is what he says as regards me: "I think that I ought to announce to you that the president (M. de Bismarck) keeps M. Benedetti exactly advised."In the letter in which my name appears for the second and last time, dated the 6th April, on the very eve of the signing of the treaty (the dates are valuable, and it is well to retain them), General Govone mentions a visit which he paid me, the first since his arrival at Berlin;and what did I say to him concerning these negotiations? I quote literally: "Yesterday, after my visit to M. de Bismarck, I saw M. Benedetti; he thought that it was preferable for us to sign no treaty, but only to have a project all discussed and ready to sign when the mobilization of Prussia should be achieved."Do these two extracts, Mr. Editor, authorize the belief that I was the confidant and the counselor of the Italian envoy? Do they not confirm, on the contrary, from point to point the sincerity of my correspondence? In what has M. Klaczko sought, where has he seen that I labored for the accord between Italy and Prussia? Should he not have told us before making such a grave assertion? Does he think to reproach me for having endeavored to keep myself informed as to what was passing, and for having instructed my government exactly?As to the assertion of M. Klaczko, twice repeated in his article, that I did not cease, before the war, to dissuade M. Drouyn de Lhuys from speaking at Berlin of eventual compensations and preventive engagements, from fear of seeing Prussia give up the combat with Austria, I will reply by the following extract from a letter which M. Drouyn de Lhuys himself addressed to me on the 31st March, during the negotiation opened between the two cabinets of Berlin and Florence: "I have read with pleasure," said he to me, "the private letters which you have written to me during the present month. I beg leave to express to you all my thanks for them. If I have received them without replying immediately, it was because I had nothing to modifyin the instructionswhich I have given you on different occasions. We are still of the same opinions. While recognizing the gravity of the new crisis in which we participate, we see, in the contention which presents itself to-day, no sufficient motive for us to depart from our attitude of neutrality. We haveexplained ourselves frankly to the court of Prussia. When we have been asked by the cabinet of Vienna, we have firmly declared to it, that we wish to remain neutral, although it has observed to us that our neutrality was more favorable to Prussia than to Austria.We await, then, the armed conflict, if it must break out, in the attitude in which we really are. The king himself has acknowledged that the present circumstances do not offer the bases of accord that his majesty desires. The course of events, the nature and the bearing of the interests which are involved, and the dimensions which the war will take, as well as the questions which it will give rise to, willthendetermine the elements of the understanding which can exist between Prussia and us."In this same letter, the whole of which can be read on page 77 of "My Mission in Prussia," M. Drouyn de Lhuys wished moreover to indicate to me the consideration which obliged us to observe a reserved attitude in view of the efforts made by Prussia, and by Italy, to act in concert, and he added at the close: "That is the whole truth concerning our opinions. I approve, however, completely of your attitude and your language, and I trust that you will continue to keep me equally well informed of all the details of this crisis."Would M. Drouyn de Lhuys have acknowledged the receipt of my correspondence in these terms, if it was intended to deter him from any plan of contracting eventual engagements with Prussia, if there had existed between the minister and the ambassador the disagreement the whole responsibility of which M. Klaczko wishes to throw on me? I dwell no longer on this subject, leaving to the penetration of your readers the task of seeing things more clearly; I only wish you to remark that, if M. Klaczko, as I suppose, has seen that letter before writing his article, it becomes impossible to explain the errors of it.I regret to say, however, that I should have to criticise almost all his work, if I wished to correct the defective parts of it; but I do not intend to abuse my right of reply, and I will go no farther. I will rectify, however, another error on account of its particular importance. Replying to a telegraphic question of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, I wrote him on the 8th June, 1866, that no one in Prussia, from the king to the most humble of his subjects, with the exception of M. de Bismarck, would consent, in my opinion, to abandon to us any part of the German territory on the Rhine. After having quoted an extract from my dispatch, M. Klaczko adds: "And this is the same diplomat who had so well appreciated the situation before the campaign of Bohemia, it is the same ambassadorwho now undertakesto present to M. de Bismarck the demands of the cabinet of the Tuileries, who went so far as to submit to him, on the 5th August, a plan of a secret treaty implying the abandonment to France of the whole left bank of the Rhine, without excepting the great fortress of Mayence!"M. Klaczko mistakes. I did not take upon myself to make this communication, and his allegation, deprived, moreover, of all proof, astonishes me the more as he could have seen in "My Mission in Prussia," that affairs were not conducted in that manner; that, on the contrary, while pointing out the serious and new difficulties which seemed to oppose this project, I demanded time to previously go to Paris to confer with the government, and that I wasorderedto proceed. Did I do well or badly in obeying? That is another question; but M. Klaczko should all the more abstain from presenting this incident in such a manner as to emphasize the consequences of it, which have been grave and gloomy, as he is careful to remember.If it is thus that M. Klaczko understands the dutiesof the historian, I can only express my surprise at it. He, doubtless, did not perceive that party spirit and personal sympathies have suggestions which loyalty disavows. I regret it for a publicist who had accustomed the readers of the "Revue des deux Mondes" to better prepared and more impartially written studies. As far as I am concerned, you will understand, Mr. Editor, that I could not sanction by my silence assertions so destitute of foundation, and that M. Klaczko has forced me to protest in spite of my very sincere desire to avoid any polemics, and to maintain a reserve from which it is painful for me to depart. This letter, however, has no other object, and while asking you to insert it in the next number of the "Revue," I beg you to accept the assurance of my highest regard.Benedetti.

Paris,24th September, 1875.

To the Editor,—You published in the last number of the "Revue des deux Mondes," an article by M. Klaczko, which forces me to ask you for an opportunity for a short explanation. I surely would not wish to contest with any one the right of estimating the events of which this author has undertaken the anecdotal history, and of judging, as best one can, of the part which I took in them; I call, on the contrary, with all my heart, in my own interest as well as in that of the government which I have had the honor to serve, for the examination and the discussion; for it, as for me, I can only be satisfied with the light which already flashes from it, and with the errors which have been dissipated; but the discussion is serious and useful only if it is loyal, and it is loyal only when recounting fixed and undeniable facts.

Now, here is what I read in the article of M. Klaczko: "Certainly the ambassador of France at the court of Berlin had, in this year 1866 a very difficult and painful position, we had almost said a pathetic one. He had worked withardor, withpassion, to bring about thisconnubioof Italy and Prussia, which seemed to him to be an immense good fortune for the imperial policy, a brilliantvictory gained over the old order of things to the profit of the 'new right' and Napoleonic ideas. In the fear, very well founded besides, of seeing this work miscarry and Prussia draw back, if one spoke to it of eventual compensations and preventive engagements, he had notceased to dissuadehis government from any attempt of this kind." Pp. 210, 211. Already, at p. 206, in a note, M. Klaczko had said: "M. Drouyn de Lhuys, who had already obtained from Austria the cession, in any case, of Venetia, insisted at this moment more strongly than ever, that they should also take pledges in advance from Prussia, 'the most formidable, the most active of the parties.' M. Benedettidid not cease to opposesuch a proceeding, fearing that Prussia would renounce in this case all idea of war against Austria."

Now, these allegations have no meaning, or they signify that I was the real inspirer, if not the negotiator, without the knowledge of my government, of the treaty of alliance concluded in 1866 between Prussia and Italy; that I, moreover, turned, by incessant efforts, M. Drouyn de Lhuys from his intention of demanding of the Berlin government, before the war against Austria, the pledges eventually necessary for the security of France.

M. Klaczko neither corroborates these assertions by any known fact, nor by the extract from an official document; he gives no proof of them in any degree or in any way.

As to what concerns the Prusso-Italian treaty, he was informed, however, since he continually quotes the publication which I made in 1871, under the title, "My Mission in Prussia," that I repudiated any participation in this act; he knew that I had claimed to have shown it, and it is not sufficient to contradict me; in such a case it is necessary to prove the contrary, to establish that, far from having remained ignorant, as I maintained, of theaccord between Prussia and Italy, I had been the principal instigator of it.

It is of importance to me that the readers of the "Revue des deux Mondes" be enlightened; they have seen the article of M. Klaczko, it is just to place under their eyes some words only from the dispatches which I published.... I wrote on the 14th March, 1866: "The early arrival of an Italian officer, General Govone, is announced, who comes to Berlin charged with an important mission; this news ... has caused considerable emotion. If it is confirmed, one will not fail to believe that Prussia and Italy are negotiating a treaty of alliance."

The third day after, I added: "General Govone arrived day before yesterday at Berlin. According to Count Bismarck and the Italian minister, he is charged with a military mission, and his journey will have simply for its object the study of the perfection arrived at in the instruments of war."

Two days later, I was in a position to inform my government exactly, and I said: "I wrote you, announcing the arrival of General Govone, that, according to M. de Bismarck and the Italian minister, this envoy of the cabinet of Florence was simply charged with studying the military condition of Prussia. Forgetting, without doubt, what he had told me on this point, M. de Bismarck informed me yesterday that General Govone was authorized to conclude arrangements with the Prussian government. The communications which he has made to the president of the council substantiate this." In closing this dispatch, I added: "The legation of Italy observes toward me absolute reserve. I do not know whether to regret it. The confidences of M. de Bismarck, which I cannot, however, decline, already place me in a sufficiently delicate position."

At last, on the 27th March, when the plenipotentiaries had already held several conferences, I wrote to M. Drouyn de Lhuys: "(M. de Bismarck) has spoken to me of his conferences with General Govone and the Italian minister, ... and I am so much the better in a position to inform you that M. de Barral, Italian minister,hasAT LASTdecided on his part not to hide from me entirely his proceedings and the intentions of his government."

One of two things, either M. Klaczko admits that my correspondence was sincere, or he supposes that it was drawn up with the design of dissimulating my conduct and the part which I clandestinely took in the negotiation. In the first case, no one will conceive how he can pretend that I laboredwith ardor and with passion to bring about this connubio of Italy and Prussia. In the second hypothesis matters are changed, and I shall expect that M. Klaczko will be explained as far as he goes by the expression of my opinion.

For the moment, I will invoke the only testimony that no one can suspect, that of the Italian plenipotentiary. The correspondence of General Govone was published after his death and subsequently to "My Mission in Prussia," through the efforts of General La Marmora, who has omitted nothing. In this correspondence, where all is told in detail, my name is quoted twice, the first time in a telegram of the 28th March, twelve days after the arrival of the Italian plenipotentiary at Berlin, and here is what he says as regards me: "I think that I ought to announce to you that the president (M. de Bismarck) keeps M. Benedetti exactly advised."

In the letter in which my name appears for the second and last time, dated the 6th April, on the very eve of the signing of the treaty (the dates are valuable, and it is well to retain them), General Govone mentions a visit which he paid me, the first since his arrival at Berlin;and what did I say to him concerning these negotiations? I quote literally: "Yesterday, after my visit to M. de Bismarck, I saw M. Benedetti; he thought that it was preferable for us to sign no treaty, but only to have a project all discussed and ready to sign when the mobilization of Prussia should be achieved."

Do these two extracts, Mr. Editor, authorize the belief that I was the confidant and the counselor of the Italian envoy? Do they not confirm, on the contrary, from point to point the sincerity of my correspondence? In what has M. Klaczko sought, where has he seen that I labored for the accord between Italy and Prussia? Should he not have told us before making such a grave assertion? Does he think to reproach me for having endeavored to keep myself informed as to what was passing, and for having instructed my government exactly?

As to the assertion of M. Klaczko, twice repeated in his article, that I did not cease, before the war, to dissuade M. Drouyn de Lhuys from speaking at Berlin of eventual compensations and preventive engagements, from fear of seeing Prussia give up the combat with Austria, I will reply by the following extract from a letter which M. Drouyn de Lhuys himself addressed to me on the 31st March, during the negotiation opened between the two cabinets of Berlin and Florence: "I have read with pleasure," said he to me, "the private letters which you have written to me during the present month. I beg leave to express to you all my thanks for them. If I have received them without replying immediately, it was because I had nothing to modifyin the instructionswhich I have given you on different occasions. We are still of the same opinions. While recognizing the gravity of the new crisis in which we participate, we see, in the contention which presents itself to-day, no sufficient motive for us to depart from our attitude of neutrality. We haveexplained ourselves frankly to the court of Prussia. When we have been asked by the cabinet of Vienna, we have firmly declared to it, that we wish to remain neutral, although it has observed to us that our neutrality was more favorable to Prussia than to Austria.We await, then, the armed conflict, if it must break out, in the attitude in which we really are. The king himself has acknowledged that the present circumstances do not offer the bases of accord that his majesty desires. The course of events, the nature and the bearing of the interests which are involved, and the dimensions which the war will take, as well as the questions which it will give rise to, willthendetermine the elements of the understanding which can exist between Prussia and us."

In this same letter, the whole of which can be read on page 77 of "My Mission in Prussia," M. Drouyn de Lhuys wished moreover to indicate to me the consideration which obliged us to observe a reserved attitude in view of the efforts made by Prussia, and by Italy, to act in concert, and he added at the close: "That is the whole truth concerning our opinions. I approve, however, completely of your attitude and your language, and I trust that you will continue to keep me equally well informed of all the details of this crisis."

Would M. Drouyn de Lhuys have acknowledged the receipt of my correspondence in these terms, if it was intended to deter him from any plan of contracting eventual engagements with Prussia, if there had existed between the minister and the ambassador the disagreement the whole responsibility of which M. Klaczko wishes to throw on me? I dwell no longer on this subject, leaving to the penetration of your readers the task of seeing things more clearly; I only wish you to remark that, if M. Klaczko, as I suppose, has seen that letter before writing his article, it becomes impossible to explain the errors of it.

I regret to say, however, that I should have to criticise almost all his work, if I wished to correct the defective parts of it; but I do not intend to abuse my right of reply, and I will go no farther. I will rectify, however, another error on account of its particular importance. Replying to a telegraphic question of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, I wrote him on the 8th June, 1866, that no one in Prussia, from the king to the most humble of his subjects, with the exception of M. de Bismarck, would consent, in my opinion, to abandon to us any part of the German territory on the Rhine. After having quoted an extract from my dispatch, M. Klaczko adds: "And this is the same diplomat who had so well appreciated the situation before the campaign of Bohemia, it is the same ambassadorwho now undertakesto present to M. de Bismarck the demands of the cabinet of the Tuileries, who went so far as to submit to him, on the 5th August, a plan of a secret treaty implying the abandonment to France of the whole left bank of the Rhine, without excepting the great fortress of Mayence!"

M. Klaczko mistakes. I did not take upon myself to make this communication, and his allegation, deprived, moreover, of all proof, astonishes me the more as he could have seen in "My Mission in Prussia," that affairs were not conducted in that manner; that, on the contrary, while pointing out the serious and new difficulties which seemed to oppose this project, I demanded time to previously go to Paris to confer with the government, and that I wasorderedto proceed. Did I do well or badly in obeying? That is another question; but M. Klaczko should all the more abstain from presenting this incident in such a manner as to emphasize the consequences of it, which have been grave and gloomy, as he is careful to remember.

If it is thus that M. Klaczko understands the dutiesof the historian, I can only express my surprise at it. He, doubtless, did not perceive that party spirit and personal sympathies have suggestions which loyalty disavows. I regret it for a publicist who had accustomed the readers of the "Revue des deux Mondes" to better prepared and more impartially written studies. As far as I am concerned, you will understand, Mr. Editor, that I could not sanction by my silence assertions so destitute of foundation, and that M. Klaczko has forced me to protest in spite of my very sincere desire to avoid any polemics, and to maintain a reserve from which it is painful for me to depart. This letter, however, has no other object, and while asking you to insert it in the next number of the "Revue," I beg you to accept the assurance of my highest regard.

Benedetti.

M. Benedetti's letter was communicated to M. Julian Klaczko, who returned it to us with the following observations:—

M. le Comte Benedetti confounds two very different negotiations which have been spoken of in our work, as well as the two very distinct estimations of which they have been the object on our part. It was only in the affair concerning the treaty on Belgium, in the month of August, 1866, that the conduct of M. Benedetti toward his minister seemed incorrect to us; we have not passed the same judgment on his attitude in the months of March and April of the same year, as regards the secret treaty negotiated between M. de Bismarck and General Govone; still less have we reproached him with having been the inspirer of this treatywithout the knowledge of his government. We have only affirmed that his dispatches at that time were of a nature to deter the French government from any attempt at a prior engagement with Prussia in view of the eventualities of the war.M. Benedetti in truth did not cease to represent the court of Berlin as inaccessible to any overture of this sort. Even on the 8th June, 1866, on the eve of the war, he wrote: "The apprehensions which France inspires everywhere in Germany still exist, and they will reawaken unanimously and violently at the slightest indication which could reveal our intention to extend ourselves toward the East.... The king, like the most humble of his subjects, would not listen at this moment to the possibility of a sacrifice (on the Rhine). The crown prince, profoundly sensible of the dangers of the policy of which he is the witness, declared, not long ago, to one of my colleagues, with extreme vivacity, that he preferred war to the cession of the little county of Glatz." "My Mission in Prussia," pp. 171-172. In his other reports, as well as throughout his whole book, M. Benedetti always returns to this circumstance, that he never "encouraged hopes" on this side, and that he "sufficiently indicated that one would not obtain in any case, with the consent of Prussia, territorial concessions on the frontier of the East." ("My Mission," p. 176).That was, however, not the sentiment of the Italian negotiators at the court of Berlin. M. de Barral, in a telegram addressed the 6th May to General La Marmora, thus expressed himself: "They are busily occupied with negotiations, we are assured, which are taking place between France and Austria to indemnify Italy, and which will have gone as far as the line of the Rhine to France. To the observation which I made on the danger of such an offer by a German Power, Bismarck replied to me by shrugging his shoulders, indicating very clearly that, should the case occur, he would not recoil from this means of aggrandizement!" On his side, General Govone, in his very minute report of the 7th May, relates the same incident in a fuller and much moreexplicit manner. "M. de Bismarck wishes to know the intentions and desires of the emperor; he has spoken of them to M. de Barral; he told him to try to learn something about them through M. Nigra; he has even given them cause to believe that he will be disposed to abandon to him the banks of the Rhine, having been informed by his agents that the emperor was negotiating with Austria, and that Austria would cede to him, so he believes, Venetia, and would even invite him to take possession of the left bank of the Rhine." M. de Barral, to whom he spoke, cried out: "But Austria should not thus compromise itself with Germany while sacrificing countries which belong to the confederation!" M. de Bismarck made a gesture which seemed to say: "I too would cede them." Lastly, in his report of the 3d June, five days before the dispatch of M. Benedetti concerning "the king and the most humble of his subjects," General Govone quotes the following reply of M. de Bismarck to his demand whether one could not find "some geographical line" to indemnify France? "There will be the Mosel (said M. de Bismarck). I am, he added, much less German than Prussian, and I would have no difficulty in conceding to France the cession of all the country between the Mosel and the Rhine: the Palatinate, Oldenburg, a part of the Prussian territory, etc. But the king will have great scruples, and can only decide in a supreme moment when it is a question of losing or winning all. At any rate, to bring the mind of the king to any arrangement with France, it will be necessary to know the minimum (il limite minimo) of the pretensions of this Power." La Marmora, "Un pó più di luce," p. 211, 221, 275.Thus the Italian negotiators differed notably from M. Benedetti in their opinion on this very grave point; in all the confidential and evidently sincere relations which they had with their own government, they considered aterritorial and previous arrangement between France and Prussia as a very difficult thing, without doubt, but not impossible. We have not discussed in our work the question whether it was General Govone or M. Benedetti who had judged the situation best; we have not even mentioned this divergence of opinions: we have only asked how M. Benedetti could have believed that after Sadowa and Nikolsburg he would find Prussia accessible to arrangements which it had not wished to accept before its immense victories and in the midst of an extremely perilous crisis? How could he have undertaken on this 5th August[146]to demand of M. de Bismarck for France all the left bank of the Rhine without excepting the great fortress of Mayence, when on the 8th June he was persuaded that one could not obtain from Prussia even a territory of the value of the county of Glatz? We have given the only possible explanation of this contradiction, the only one, we dare affirm, which has presented itself to the minds of all those who have studied these events. Before the campaign of Bohemia, we said, M. Benedetti did not think it possible to obtain territorial concessions from Prussia, and had shown all the more plainly the difficulties of such a demand which he feared to see Prussia refuse and thus render itsconnubiowith Italy abortive, if they insisted prematurely, too firmly on the point of compensations. He desired rather to count on the military events to procure advantages for hiscountry, on "the necessities to which the war might reduce the Prussian government" ("My Mission," p. 172), for he did not expect any more than the most ordinary of mortals the startling blow of Sadowa. After Sadowa he was dismayed at the success of the Hohenzollern; patriotic anguish for France succeeded in his heart to the generous sympathies for Italy, and, as he himself says, "in view of the important acquisitions of Prussia he was of the opinion that a territorial remodeling was henceforward necessary for the security of France." ("My Mission," p. 177). This remodeling he hadat firsthoped to find on the Rhine, "provided that the language of his government was firm and its attitude resolute" (p. 178); he had then sought it on the Meuse and the Escaut, and had allowed himself to be drawn into that secret negotiation on Belgium which was to be so fatal to France.It was probably not thepatriotic anguishattributed by us to M. Benedetti on the day after Sadowa, that could have wounded his feelings. Could it be the Italian sympathies with which we have credited him that awakened his susceptibilities? But the pronounced liking for the country and the cause of M. de Cavour has been the principal and marked characteristic of the political life of the former ambassador of France to the court of Berlin; in sight, and with the knowledge, of every one, M. Benedetti has always been reckoned among the most distinguished members of a party which had great influence in the councils of the second empire, a party which considered Italian unity as the most glorious work of the reign, the most useful for France, and, in its eyes, theconnubioof Italy and Prussia seemed an immense good fortune for the imperial policy, a brilliant victory gained over the old order of things, to the profit of the "new right" and Napoleonic ideas! The diplomatic career of M. Benedetti,even presents in this respect a character of unity and indivisibility which will arouse the eternal admiration of all Italian patriots. In 1860 he had negotiated and brought to a successful end the treaty on Savoy and Nice, in exchange for which the imperial government tore up the treaty of Zurich, and sanctioned implicitly the annexations of Tuscany and Emilia. In 1861 he was made minister plenipotentiary of France to Turin, as if to console Italy for the recent death of M. de Cavour, to reëstablish in any case beyond the Alps the friendly relations which the invasion of the kingdom of Naples had for a moment strongly compromised. In the summer of the following year (August, 1862), the harmony between France and Italy was again troubled in consequence of Aspromonte, and of the circular of General Durando, of the 10th September, which demanded the evacuation of Rome. M. Thouvenel was then obliged to leave the Hotel of the Quai d'Orsay, giving place to M. Drouyn de Lhuys; and M. Benedetti, as well as his colleague of Rome, M. de La Valette, hastened to give his resignation, in order to mark withéclathis disapprobation as regarded a system become less favorable to the aspirations of Italy. He did not reënter the career until two years later, the 7th October, 1864, after the convention of the 15th September had given satisfaction to the wishes of the cabinet of Turin concerning Rome, also after M. de Bismarck had passed by Paris and had placed there the first beacons of the great combination against Austria. The post at Berlin was then raised to an embassy, and M. Benedetti became the holder of it. His former colleague of Rome, M. de La Valette, did not delay to sit in the councils of the empire, and at the same moment General La Marmora, well known for hisPrussomania, undertook the direction of affairs at Turin. And from the beginning of the year 1865, M. de Bismarckengaged in his first campaign against Austria concerning the Duchies, and made his first proceedings at Florence to combine an understanding with Italy. Theconnubiowas not definitely consummated until April, 1866, under the eyes of M. Benedetti.No one that we know (and we less than any one) has reproached M. Benedetti with having favored thisconnubio without the knowledge of his government; but M. Benedetti will doubtless not pretend that this understanding between Italy and Prussia did not have all his sympathies. General Govone had no confidences for him at Berlin, perhaps; it was M. Benedetti, on the contrary, who made the Italian negotiator precious confidences,—that one among others, "that M. de Bismarck was a sort ofmaniac, whom he (Benedetti) knew and hadfollowedfor nearly fifteen years."[147]He had advised him, also, "not to sign any treaty, but only to have a project thoroughly discussed and ready to sign when the mobilization of Prussia should be achieved." Would M. Benedetti seek to persuade that by this advice he had wished to hinder theconnubio? No, assuredly, by such advice M. Benedetti told General Govone to act only in earnest. It was good counsel that he gave him. Now one does not give good counsel for an affair which one wishes to see go under. Moreover, it was not the Italians that it was necessary to render favorable to theconnubio; they inclined to it naturally: the important part was to gain over the court of Berlin, to triumph over its scruples, to reassure it, above all, as to the intentions of France. "I think that I should announce to you," the Italian negotiator telegraphed on the 28th March to General La Marmora, "that the president (M. de Bismarck) keepsM. Benedetti exactly informed."[148]M. de Bismarck would certainly not have thought of keeping M. Benedetti so exactly informed, if he had credited him with an aversion or even a lukewarmness for the Italian marriage. Then, as since, in France as well as abroad, in the eyes of the publicists as well as in the eyes of his own chiefs (as we are going to prove immediately), the former ambassador of France to the court of Berlin has always passed for the agent of the imperial government who wished most ardently for the success of the Italo-Prussian combination, and the book, "My Mission in Prussia," has not succeeded at all in shaking a conviction which we do not fear to call general.We would never have thought of intruding in such an important debate our obscure person and our humble writings; but, since M. Benedetti has kindly wished to recognize in the works previously published by us in the "Revue des deux Mondes," "studies better prepared and more impartially written," we feel less hesitation in quoting one of those pages which we consecrated even here seven years ago to that pathetic episode of contemporaneous history. Speaking in our "Preliminaries of Sadowa," of the treaty negotiated between M. de Bismarck and General Govone in the spring of 1866, we expressed ourselves as follows: "There was only one strong mind like M. de Bismarck to enter into a compact with this secretary of the dreaded kingdom who assisted his colleague the Count de Barral; in the depths M. Benedetti appeared from time to time. In this respect, we involuntarily stretch our hand toward that volume of Machiavelli; we are seized with a desire to re-read a chapter from the "Legazioni." How happy he would have been, the great Florentine, to contemplate his three compatriots fighting with abarbarian! At Paris, oneonly saw (in this treaty) the single, prodigious fact of a pact concluded between a monarch by the grace of God, and a king of the national will, and one went into ecstacies over the skill of M. Benedetti. There was only one diplomat of the new school who could perform such a miracle!" Lastly, at the beginning of the same study, in relating the circumstances which in 1864 had brought on the political stage those formerly disgraced by the affair Durando, we said: "Without doubt it cost M. Drouyn de Lhuys something to accept as a colleague M. de La Valette, who made no secret of his desire to take his department from him; it cost him still more, probably, to allow such an open adversary as M. Benedetti to be imposed on him as principal agent. Two years later, after Sadowa, and on the day when he gave up his portfolio, the same minister was yet to countersign another decree which raised M. Benedetti to the dignity of the grand cross. Who knows, however, whether, in the mind of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, this second signature was not destined to avenge somewhat the first? In truth, perhaps that was a peculiar trait of mind, a Parthian trait, to distinguish so highly an agent for having only too well served a policy the responsibility of which he not the less repudiated."[149]Did the former chiefs of the ex-ambassador of France to the court of Berlin judge otherwise of it? M. Benedetti himself furnishes us on this point with valuable testimony, which we will take care not to neglect. He says ("My Mission," p. 148) that in January, 1870, M. Daru, then minister of foreign affairs, had made, in a letter, allusion to the events of 1866, in terms which could not but strongly affect the ambassador: "The territorial state of Prussia," M. Daru had written him,"results from events whichperhapsit has not depended on you to bring about." Thus, even four years after Sadowa, they did not cease to attribute to M. Benedetti, to the bureaux of the Quai d'Orsay, a notable part in these gloomy events. The ambassador found it opportune to enlighten his new chief on "therôlewhich he played in this circumstance," by a private letter dated the 27th January, 1870. "I am not ignorant," we read there, "of all that has been said on this point; but, by a feeling which you will appreciate, I do not doubt, I have never thought of declining the share of responsibility which has been cast on me, and, for this purpose, to set at right the errors too easily gathered by a badly informed public." He affirmed, therefore, that he was then "an active, correct, foreseeing informer," and he appeals to his correspondence deposited in the archives of foreign affairs. "I should add that I never,and in none of the missions which I have fulfilled, have undertaken other correspondences than those whose marks exist in the department, or in the hands of your predecessors, and that I never had,in all the epochs of my career, other orders to execute than those that have been given me directly through them." ("My Mission," pp. 148-149). Yet that is not sufficient for M. Benedetti, and in publishing this letter he accompanies it (p. 150) with a triumphant commentary: "I have affirmed a fixed and indubitable fact in mentioning, in my letter (to M. Daru), that I did not have the honor,on any occasion(these words are underlined by M. Benedetti himself), to sustain a direct and confidential correspondence with the emperor. He has deigned to grant me his confidence, and occasionally to testify to me his satisfaction; he has never ceased to transmit to me his orders by the mediation of his minister of foreign affairs, with whom I have exclusively corresponded. No onewill suppose, I think, that I would affirm this in such absolute terms as I have in writing to M. Daru, my immediate chief, if I had not been fully authorized."Unfortunately some pages beyond (p. 194), M. Benedetti is forced to acknowledge that, in his negotiation concerning the secret treaty on Belgium, he exchanged a correspondence which did not pass through the department for foreign affairs, and which the directing minister of this department did not know of. "I thought it fitting," we read there, "to address to the minister of state, M. Rouher, the letter in which I announced my interview with M. de Bismarck, and which accompanied the plan of the treaty relating to Belgium. M. Rouher did not lay before the ministry, not having then undertaken the direction of it, the correspondence which during several days I exchanged with him." It is true that, in order to palliate this very grave irregularity, M. Benedetti pretends that M. Drouyn de Lhuys had offered his resignation toward the middle of August: "At this moment there was no minister of foreign affairs;" but we have proved to him that M. Drouyn de Lhuys did not lose his portfolio until the 1st September, 1866. Up to that date, M. Drouyn de Lhuys had not ceased to direct the department, with the desire of remaining there, and of preventing the complete abandonment of the traditional French policy. The ambassador himself quotes in his book several dispatches exchanged with him on grave questions, up to the date of the 21st and 25th August (pages 204 and 223); but M. Benedetti thoughtproperto be silent to his immediate chief concerning the negotiation on the subject of the treaty on Belgium, and only to inform the minister of state. This negotiation not only had its beginning, but also its end (it was broken off by M. de Bismarck the 29th August),during the ministry of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, and without his knowledge. This was thenone occasionwhen M. Benedetti did not exclusively correspond with the minister of foreign affairs! There was thenone epoch in the careerof M. Benedetti when he received orders which did not pass through the Quai d'Orsay! And how suppose of the honorable M. Daru that what had happened in the month of August, 1866, could have also taken place in the months of March and April of the same year?M. Benedetti completely ignores in his protest this incident of the treaty concerning Belgium; it is, however, the culminating point, in fact the only grave point of the debate, and the only one concerning which we allowed ourselves to reproach him with having actedwithout the knowledge, not of his government, butof his minister. Would M. Benedetti perhaps find that this is an anecdotal incident, incompatible with the dignity of history? He had in fact first tried, in his letter published in the "Moniteur," the 29th July, 1870, to give to this deplorable event an entirely anecdotal turn, to assign to the compromising document a, so to say, spontaneous generation; he would have wished to give only an exact account of the ideas of M. de Bismarck, and "consented to transcribe them in a manner under his dictation." He could not long persist in such trifling; he had to avow in his book that he had entered on a veritable negotiation, and M. de Bismarck has since then taken malicious pleasure in casting light on the different phases of this negotiation, by different extracts taken from the papers of Cerçay and published in the "Moniteur prussien," in reply to the book of M. Benedetti. "During my long career," says M. Benedetti, in the preface of his book (p. 4), "I have been charged only on three different occasions with opening negotiations having a fixed object, and leaving me with an initiative part proportionate to the responsibility." He enumerates thesethree negotiations and proves that he conducted them all to a good end, but he takes good care not to include in the number his negotiations on Belgium, in which he was given an initiative part, and in which we will also give him his proportional part of the responsibility.We will also leave him the tone of his polemics; it is like his diplomacy,sui generis, and we can say with M. de Bismarck: "M. Benedetti is too clever for us."Julian Klaczko.

M. le Comte Benedetti confounds two very different negotiations which have been spoken of in our work, as well as the two very distinct estimations of which they have been the object on our part. It was only in the affair concerning the treaty on Belgium, in the month of August, 1866, that the conduct of M. Benedetti toward his minister seemed incorrect to us; we have not passed the same judgment on his attitude in the months of March and April of the same year, as regards the secret treaty negotiated between M. de Bismarck and General Govone; still less have we reproached him with having been the inspirer of this treatywithout the knowledge of his government. We have only affirmed that his dispatches at that time were of a nature to deter the French government from any attempt at a prior engagement with Prussia in view of the eventualities of the war.

M. Benedetti in truth did not cease to represent the court of Berlin as inaccessible to any overture of this sort. Even on the 8th June, 1866, on the eve of the war, he wrote: "The apprehensions which France inspires everywhere in Germany still exist, and they will reawaken unanimously and violently at the slightest indication which could reveal our intention to extend ourselves toward the East.... The king, like the most humble of his subjects, would not listen at this moment to the possibility of a sacrifice (on the Rhine). The crown prince, profoundly sensible of the dangers of the policy of which he is the witness, declared, not long ago, to one of my colleagues, with extreme vivacity, that he preferred war to the cession of the little county of Glatz." "My Mission in Prussia," pp. 171-172. In his other reports, as well as throughout his whole book, M. Benedetti always returns to this circumstance, that he never "encouraged hopes" on this side, and that he "sufficiently indicated that one would not obtain in any case, with the consent of Prussia, territorial concessions on the frontier of the East." ("My Mission," p. 176).

That was, however, not the sentiment of the Italian negotiators at the court of Berlin. M. de Barral, in a telegram addressed the 6th May to General La Marmora, thus expressed himself: "They are busily occupied with negotiations, we are assured, which are taking place between France and Austria to indemnify Italy, and which will have gone as far as the line of the Rhine to France. To the observation which I made on the danger of such an offer by a German Power, Bismarck replied to me by shrugging his shoulders, indicating very clearly that, should the case occur, he would not recoil from this means of aggrandizement!" On his side, General Govone, in his very minute report of the 7th May, relates the same incident in a fuller and much moreexplicit manner. "M. de Bismarck wishes to know the intentions and desires of the emperor; he has spoken of them to M. de Barral; he told him to try to learn something about them through M. Nigra; he has even given them cause to believe that he will be disposed to abandon to him the banks of the Rhine, having been informed by his agents that the emperor was negotiating with Austria, and that Austria would cede to him, so he believes, Venetia, and would even invite him to take possession of the left bank of the Rhine." M. de Barral, to whom he spoke, cried out: "But Austria should not thus compromise itself with Germany while sacrificing countries which belong to the confederation!" M. de Bismarck made a gesture which seemed to say: "I too would cede them." Lastly, in his report of the 3d June, five days before the dispatch of M. Benedetti concerning "the king and the most humble of his subjects," General Govone quotes the following reply of M. de Bismarck to his demand whether one could not find "some geographical line" to indemnify France? "There will be the Mosel (said M. de Bismarck). I am, he added, much less German than Prussian, and I would have no difficulty in conceding to France the cession of all the country between the Mosel and the Rhine: the Palatinate, Oldenburg, a part of the Prussian territory, etc. But the king will have great scruples, and can only decide in a supreme moment when it is a question of losing or winning all. At any rate, to bring the mind of the king to any arrangement with France, it will be necessary to know the minimum (il limite minimo) of the pretensions of this Power." La Marmora, "Un pó più di luce," p. 211, 221, 275.

Thus the Italian negotiators differed notably from M. Benedetti in their opinion on this very grave point; in all the confidential and evidently sincere relations which they had with their own government, they considered aterritorial and previous arrangement between France and Prussia as a very difficult thing, without doubt, but not impossible. We have not discussed in our work the question whether it was General Govone or M. Benedetti who had judged the situation best; we have not even mentioned this divergence of opinions: we have only asked how M. Benedetti could have believed that after Sadowa and Nikolsburg he would find Prussia accessible to arrangements which it had not wished to accept before its immense victories and in the midst of an extremely perilous crisis? How could he have undertaken on this 5th August[146]to demand of M. de Bismarck for France all the left bank of the Rhine without excepting the great fortress of Mayence, when on the 8th June he was persuaded that one could not obtain from Prussia even a territory of the value of the county of Glatz? We have given the only possible explanation of this contradiction, the only one, we dare affirm, which has presented itself to the minds of all those who have studied these events. Before the campaign of Bohemia, we said, M. Benedetti did not think it possible to obtain territorial concessions from Prussia, and had shown all the more plainly the difficulties of such a demand which he feared to see Prussia refuse and thus render itsconnubiowith Italy abortive, if they insisted prematurely, too firmly on the point of compensations. He desired rather to count on the military events to procure advantages for hiscountry, on "the necessities to which the war might reduce the Prussian government" ("My Mission," p. 172), for he did not expect any more than the most ordinary of mortals the startling blow of Sadowa. After Sadowa he was dismayed at the success of the Hohenzollern; patriotic anguish for France succeeded in his heart to the generous sympathies for Italy, and, as he himself says, "in view of the important acquisitions of Prussia he was of the opinion that a territorial remodeling was henceforward necessary for the security of France." ("My Mission," p. 177). This remodeling he hadat firsthoped to find on the Rhine, "provided that the language of his government was firm and its attitude resolute" (p. 178); he had then sought it on the Meuse and the Escaut, and had allowed himself to be drawn into that secret negotiation on Belgium which was to be so fatal to France.

It was probably not thepatriotic anguishattributed by us to M. Benedetti on the day after Sadowa, that could have wounded his feelings. Could it be the Italian sympathies with which we have credited him that awakened his susceptibilities? But the pronounced liking for the country and the cause of M. de Cavour has been the principal and marked characteristic of the political life of the former ambassador of France to the court of Berlin; in sight, and with the knowledge, of every one, M. Benedetti has always been reckoned among the most distinguished members of a party which had great influence in the councils of the second empire, a party which considered Italian unity as the most glorious work of the reign, the most useful for France, and, in its eyes, theconnubioof Italy and Prussia seemed an immense good fortune for the imperial policy, a brilliant victory gained over the old order of things, to the profit of the "new right" and Napoleonic ideas! The diplomatic career of M. Benedetti,even presents in this respect a character of unity and indivisibility which will arouse the eternal admiration of all Italian patriots. In 1860 he had negotiated and brought to a successful end the treaty on Savoy and Nice, in exchange for which the imperial government tore up the treaty of Zurich, and sanctioned implicitly the annexations of Tuscany and Emilia. In 1861 he was made minister plenipotentiary of France to Turin, as if to console Italy for the recent death of M. de Cavour, to reëstablish in any case beyond the Alps the friendly relations which the invasion of the kingdom of Naples had for a moment strongly compromised. In the summer of the following year (August, 1862), the harmony between France and Italy was again troubled in consequence of Aspromonte, and of the circular of General Durando, of the 10th September, which demanded the evacuation of Rome. M. Thouvenel was then obliged to leave the Hotel of the Quai d'Orsay, giving place to M. Drouyn de Lhuys; and M. Benedetti, as well as his colleague of Rome, M. de La Valette, hastened to give his resignation, in order to mark withéclathis disapprobation as regarded a system become less favorable to the aspirations of Italy. He did not reënter the career until two years later, the 7th October, 1864, after the convention of the 15th September had given satisfaction to the wishes of the cabinet of Turin concerning Rome, also after M. de Bismarck had passed by Paris and had placed there the first beacons of the great combination against Austria. The post at Berlin was then raised to an embassy, and M. Benedetti became the holder of it. His former colleague of Rome, M. de La Valette, did not delay to sit in the councils of the empire, and at the same moment General La Marmora, well known for hisPrussomania, undertook the direction of affairs at Turin. And from the beginning of the year 1865, M. de Bismarckengaged in his first campaign against Austria concerning the Duchies, and made his first proceedings at Florence to combine an understanding with Italy. Theconnubiowas not definitely consummated until April, 1866, under the eyes of M. Benedetti.

No one that we know (and we less than any one) has reproached M. Benedetti with having favored thisconnubio without the knowledge of his government; but M. Benedetti will doubtless not pretend that this understanding between Italy and Prussia did not have all his sympathies. General Govone had no confidences for him at Berlin, perhaps; it was M. Benedetti, on the contrary, who made the Italian negotiator precious confidences,—that one among others, "that M. de Bismarck was a sort ofmaniac, whom he (Benedetti) knew and hadfollowedfor nearly fifteen years."[147]He had advised him, also, "not to sign any treaty, but only to have a project thoroughly discussed and ready to sign when the mobilization of Prussia should be achieved." Would M. Benedetti seek to persuade that by this advice he had wished to hinder theconnubio? No, assuredly, by such advice M. Benedetti told General Govone to act only in earnest. It was good counsel that he gave him. Now one does not give good counsel for an affair which one wishes to see go under. Moreover, it was not the Italians that it was necessary to render favorable to theconnubio; they inclined to it naturally: the important part was to gain over the court of Berlin, to triumph over its scruples, to reassure it, above all, as to the intentions of France. "I think that I should announce to you," the Italian negotiator telegraphed on the 28th March to General La Marmora, "that the president (M. de Bismarck) keepsM. Benedetti exactly informed."[148]M. de Bismarck would certainly not have thought of keeping M. Benedetti so exactly informed, if he had credited him with an aversion or even a lukewarmness for the Italian marriage. Then, as since, in France as well as abroad, in the eyes of the publicists as well as in the eyes of his own chiefs (as we are going to prove immediately), the former ambassador of France to the court of Berlin has always passed for the agent of the imperial government who wished most ardently for the success of the Italo-Prussian combination, and the book, "My Mission in Prussia," has not succeeded at all in shaking a conviction which we do not fear to call general.

We would never have thought of intruding in such an important debate our obscure person and our humble writings; but, since M. Benedetti has kindly wished to recognize in the works previously published by us in the "Revue des deux Mondes," "studies better prepared and more impartially written," we feel less hesitation in quoting one of those pages which we consecrated even here seven years ago to that pathetic episode of contemporaneous history. Speaking in our "Preliminaries of Sadowa," of the treaty negotiated between M. de Bismarck and General Govone in the spring of 1866, we expressed ourselves as follows: "There was only one strong mind like M. de Bismarck to enter into a compact with this secretary of the dreaded kingdom who assisted his colleague the Count de Barral; in the depths M. Benedetti appeared from time to time. In this respect, we involuntarily stretch our hand toward that volume of Machiavelli; we are seized with a desire to re-read a chapter from the "Legazioni." How happy he would have been, the great Florentine, to contemplate his three compatriots fighting with abarbarian! At Paris, oneonly saw (in this treaty) the single, prodigious fact of a pact concluded between a monarch by the grace of God, and a king of the national will, and one went into ecstacies over the skill of M. Benedetti. There was only one diplomat of the new school who could perform such a miracle!" Lastly, at the beginning of the same study, in relating the circumstances which in 1864 had brought on the political stage those formerly disgraced by the affair Durando, we said: "Without doubt it cost M. Drouyn de Lhuys something to accept as a colleague M. de La Valette, who made no secret of his desire to take his department from him; it cost him still more, probably, to allow such an open adversary as M. Benedetti to be imposed on him as principal agent. Two years later, after Sadowa, and on the day when he gave up his portfolio, the same minister was yet to countersign another decree which raised M. Benedetti to the dignity of the grand cross. Who knows, however, whether, in the mind of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, this second signature was not destined to avenge somewhat the first? In truth, perhaps that was a peculiar trait of mind, a Parthian trait, to distinguish so highly an agent for having only too well served a policy the responsibility of which he not the less repudiated."[149]

Did the former chiefs of the ex-ambassador of France to the court of Berlin judge otherwise of it? M. Benedetti himself furnishes us on this point with valuable testimony, which we will take care not to neglect. He says ("My Mission," p. 148) that in January, 1870, M. Daru, then minister of foreign affairs, had made, in a letter, allusion to the events of 1866, in terms which could not but strongly affect the ambassador: "The territorial state of Prussia," M. Daru had written him,"results from events whichperhapsit has not depended on you to bring about." Thus, even four years after Sadowa, they did not cease to attribute to M. Benedetti, to the bureaux of the Quai d'Orsay, a notable part in these gloomy events. The ambassador found it opportune to enlighten his new chief on "therôlewhich he played in this circumstance," by a private letter dated the 27th January, 1870. "I am not ignorant," we read there, "of all that has been said on this point; but, by a feeling which you will appreciate, I do not doubt, I have never thought of declining the share of responsibility which has been cast on me, and, for this purpose, to set at right the errors too easily gathered by a badly informed public." He affirmed, therefore, that he was then "an active, correct, foreseeing informer," and he appeals to his correspondence deposited in the archives of foreign affairs. "I should add that I never,and in none of the missions which I have fulfilled, have undertaken other correspondences than those whose marks exist in the department, or in the hands of your predecessors, and that I never had,in all the epochs of my career, other orders to execute than those that have been given me directly through them." ("My Mission," pp. 148-149). Yet that is not sufficient for M. Benedetti, and in publishing this letter he accompanies it (p. 150) with a triumphant commentary: "I have affirmed a fixed and indubitable fact in mentioning, in my letter (to M. Daru), that I did not have the honor,on any occasion(these words are underlined by M. Benedetti himself), to sustain a direct and confidential correspondence with the emperor. He has deigned to grant me his confidence, and occasionally to testify to me his satisfaction; he has never ceased to transmit to me his orders by the mediation of his minister of foreign affairs, with whom I have exclusively corresponded. No onewill suppose, I think, that I would affirm this in such absolute terms as I have in writing to M. Daru, my immediate chief, if I had not been fully authorized."

Unfortunately some pages beyond (p. 194), M. Benedetti is forced to acknowledge that, in his negotiation concerning the secret treaty on Belgium, he exchanged a correspondence which did not pass through the department for foreign affairs, and which the directing minister of this department did not know of. "I thought it fitting," we read there, "to address to the minister of state, M. Rouher, the letter in which I announced my interview with M. de Bismarck, and which accompanied the plan of the treaty relating to Belgium. M. Rouher did not lay before the ministry, not having then undertaken the direction of it, the correspondence which during several days I exchanged with him." It is true that, in order to palliate this very grave irregularity, M. Benedetti pretends that M. Drouyn de Lhuys had offered his resignation toward the middle of August: "At this moment there was no minister of foreign affairs;" but we have proved to him that M. Drouyn de Lhuys did not lose his portfolio until the 1st September, 1866. Up to that date, M. Drouyn de Lhuys had not ceased to direct the department, with the desire of remaining there, and of preventing the complete abandonment of the traditional French policy. The ambassador himself quotes in his book several dispatches exchanged with him on grave questions, up to the date of the 21st and 25th August (pages 204 and 223); but M. Benedetti thoughtproperto be silent to his immediate chief concerning the negotiation on the subject of the treaty on Belgium, and only to inform the minister of state. This negotiation not only had its beginning, but also its end (it was broken off by M. de Bismarck the 29th August),during the ministry of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, and without his knowledge. This was thenone occasionwhen M. Benedetti did not exclusively correspond with the minister of foreign affairs! There was thenone epoch in the careerof M. Benedetti when he received orders which did not pass through the Quai d'Orsay! And how suppose of the honorable M. Daru that what had happened in the month of August, 1866, could have also taken place in the months of March and April of the same year?

M. Benedetti completely ignores in his protest this incident of the treaty concerning Belgium; it is, however, the culminating point, in fact the only grave point of the debate, and the only one concerning which we allowed ourselves to reproach him with having actedwithout the knowledge, not of his government, butof his minister. Would M. Benedetti perhaps find that this is an anecdotal incident, incompatible with the dignity of history? He had in fact first tried, in his letter published in the "Moniteur," the 29th July, 1870, to give to this deplorable event an entirely anecdotal turn, to assign to the compromising document a, so to say, spontaneous generation; he would have wished to give only an exact account of the ideas of M. de Bismarck, and "consented to transcribe them in a manner under his dictation." He could not long persist in such trifling; he had to avow in his book that he had entered on a veritable negotiation, and M. de Bismarck has since then taken malicious pleasure in casting light on the different phases of this negotiation, by different extracts taken from the papers of Cerçay and published in the "Moniteur prussien," in reply to the book of M. Benedetti. "During my long career," says M. Benedetti, in the preface of his book (p. 4), "I have been charged only on three different occasions with opening negotiations having a fixed object, and leaving me with an initiative part proportionate to the responsibility." He enumerates thesethree negotiations and proves that he conducted them all to a good end, but he takes good care not to include in the number his negotiations on Belgium, in which he was given an initiative part, and in which we will also give him his proportional part of the responsibility.

We will also leave him the tone of his polemics; it is like his diplomacy,sui generis, and we can say with M. de Bismarck: "M. Benedetti is too clever for us."

Julian Klaczko.

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