Two Chancellors: Prince Gortchakof and Prince Bismarck
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Title: Two Chancellors: Prince Gortchakof and Prince Bismarck
Author: Julian Klaczko
Translator: Frank P. Ward
Release date: April 28, 2012 [eBook #39559]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39559
Credits: E-text prepared by Charlene Taylor, JoAnn Greenwood, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/americana)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO CHANCELLORS: PRINCE GORTCHAKOF AND PRINCE BISMARCK ***
E-text prepared by Charlene Taylor, JoAnn Greenwood, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images
generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)
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Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
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TWO CHANCELLORS:
Prince Gortchakof and Prince Bismarck.
by
JULIAN KLACZKO.
Translated from the Revue des Deux Mondes by
Frank P. Ward.
[Illustration]
New York:
Published by Hurd and Houghton.
Cambridge: The Riverside Press.
1876.
Copyright,
by Frank P. Ward.
1876.
Riverside, Cambridge:
Stereotyped and Printed by
H. O. Houghton and Company.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
In the year 1866 Carlyle said: "The only man appointed by God to be His
viceregent here on earth in these days, and knowing he was so appointed
and bent with his whole soul on doing, and able to do God's work," is M.
de Bismarck. If this be true, then M. de Bismarck has found a most
valuable ally and colleague in the present Premier of Russia. It is of
these two men, Prince Bismarck, and Prince Gortchakof, the Chancellor of
Germany, and the Chancellor of all the Russias, that this book treats.
The author is M. Julian Klaczko, a Polish refugee, a man of cosmopolitan
habits, an accomplished and able writer, thoroughly acquainted with the
contemporaneous history of Europe, prejudiced against Prussia, an ardent
friend of Austria, and devoted to a conservative and monarchical form of
government. He was always the friend of Poland. In 1863 he defended
Denmark in a series of able papers, which came out in the "Revue des
deux Mondes," under the title of "Studies of Contemporaneous Diplomacy."
After the battle of Sadowa, he appeared as the friend of Austria in a
work entitled, "The Preliminaries of Sadowa." Count de Beust summoned
him to Vienna, and attached him to the Foreign Office. Klaczko was then
elected Deputy in the Polish province of Galicia. After 1870 he resigned
his posts and returned to France.
In the "Two Chancellors" he has given a condensed but graphic review of
the diplomatic history of Europe from 1855 to 1871, and a sketch of the
lives of Prince Bismarck and Prince Gortchakof, the two most eminent men
of the day. He also seeks to prove that the "disaster" of Sadowa,
followed by the still greater one of Sedan, was brought about by the
blind devotion of Prince Gortchakof to Prince Bismarck, aided largely,
it is true, by the "inconceivable vacillations and hallucinations of
Napoleon III., the Dreamer of Ham." In a word, he seeks to establish
that the prodigious events of the last ten years are due to a conspiracy
between Russia and Prussia. This is a one-sided, partial view, but is
presented with such power as will almost persuade the reader that such
may have been the case. According to Klaczko's theories, Prussia has
grasped the substance and Russia the shadow, and the old chancellor of
the great empire of the North has been the dupe of his pupil of Berlin.
The great changes which will undoubtedly soon take place in the East,
make M. Klaczko's views as to the past and present relations between
Germany and Russia of marked interest, and the student of
contemporaneous history will find in the "Two Chancellors,"
notwithstanding the peculiar views and strong prejudices of the writer,
one of the most instructive as well as interesting works that have
appeared for many years. It has been issued in book form in Paris, and
widely circulated in Russia, where it has caused a profound sensation.
In the translation I have endeavored to reproduce as justly as possible
the words of M. Klaczko, whose style, though strong and forcible, is at
times somewhat involved. With these few words in regard to the
importance of the subject and the character of the author, I leave to
the judgment of the reader the account of the momentous events which may
be truly said to have changed the political face of Europe.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I.
THE MISSIONS OF PRINCE GORTCHAKOF AND THE DEBUTS
OF M. DE BISMARCK 1
II.
A NATIONAL MINISTER AND A FAULT-FINDING DIPLOMAT
AT ST. PETERSBURG 75
III.
UNITED ACTION 122
IV.
THE ECLIPSE OF EUROPE 188
V.
ORIENT AND OCCIDENT 227
VI.
TEN YEARS OF ASSOCIATION 287
APPENDIX 311
TWO CHANCELLORS.
I.
THE MISSIONS OF PRINCE GORTCHAKOF AND THE DEBUTS OF M. DE BISMARCK.
The good old Plutarch, in commencing his long and charming series of
Parallels with the account of the lives of Theseus and Romulus,
experiences some difficulty in justifying such an association of the two
heroes; he can find in them only very vague traits of resemblance, and
these by no means striking. "To strength they both joined great powers
of mind, both carried off women by violence, and the one as well as the
other was not exempted from domestic miseries; indeed, toward the end of
their lives they both aroused the hatred of their fellow-citizens."[1]
Without doubt a writer of our day, wishing to give a comparative study
of the two most prominent figures of contemporaneous politics, the
chancellors of Russia and Germany, would only mislead in giving
prominence to such points of resemblance. The association in this case
is justifiable, for it suggests itself to every contemplative mind, to
whoever has meditated on the events of the last fifteen or twenty years.
The modern Plutarch who would undertake to write the lives of these two
illustrious men, could, as it seems to us, easily resist the temptation
of searching too deeply for, or forcing analogies in a subject where
similarities abound and are so striking. Perhaps he would rather have to
guard against necessary and tiresome repetitions in presence of a
commonalty of ideas and of a harmony of action such as history has
rarely known in two ministers guiding two different empires.
It is not, the reader may be well assured, a work of this sort which the
author has undertaken in the following pages. We have only given the
mere sketch of a picture which, to be even in a slight degree full and
satisfactory, would have required much larger proportions, and above all
a much more skillful hand. Without pretending to present here new and
unpublished materials, or indeed to reunite all those which are already
known, we have simply chosen a few, and tried to assort and arrange them
so as to afford a better perspective. We have been obliged to renounce
the wish to give to the different parts an equality of design and depth
of coloring, and we have not even bound ourselves to follow a very
regular and methodical course in this narration. Before a subject so
vast and presenting so many shades and shadows, we have thought that it
was permissible, that it was indeed occasionally useful, to vary the
points of observation and to present it in different aspects.
I.
Like the Odoiefski, the Obolenski, the Dolgorouki, and many aristocratic
families on the banks of the Moscova and the Neva, the Gortchakof also
pride themselves on their descent from the Rourik; to speak more
plainly, they claim to trace their origin from one of the sons of
Michael, Grand Duke of Tchernigof, put to death towards the middle of
the thirteenth century by the Mongolians of Batou Khan, since proclaimed
martyr of the faith, exalted, indeed, among the saints of the Orthodox
Church. One meets, nevertheless, with but few illustrious bearers of the
name of Gortchakof in the gloomy and exciting annals of old Russia. In
the epoch which preceded the accession of the Romanof, there lived a
certain Peter Ivanovitch Gortchakof, the unfortunate commander of
Smolenski, who surrendered this celebrated place to the Poles after two
years of energetic and desperate resistance. He was taken to Warsaw, and
there, in 1611, with the Czar Vassili, the two princes Schouyski,
Sehine, and a number of powerful _boiars_, he was forced to take part in
the famous "_cortege_ of captives" which the grand constable Zolkiweski
presented one day--_honorificentissime_, says the chronicle of the
times--to the king and the senate of the most serene republic. It was
only in the second half of the last century, under the reign of
Catherine II., that a Prince Ivan Gortchakof succeeded (thanks
especially to his marriage with a sister of the opulent and courageous
Souvorof) in again raising the glory of his old house, which has never
since ceased to distinguish itself in the different branches of state
service, principally in the career of arms. The France of to-day has
preserved the memory of two Princes Gortchakof, two old soldiers of
Borodino who distinguished themselves during the war of the Orient. The
one commanded the left wing of the Russian troops at the battles of
Alma and Inkermann; the other, Prince Michael, was the generalissimo of
the armies of the czar in the Crimea, and rendered his name imperishable
by the heroic defense of Sebastopol. Afterwards he governed the Kingdom
of Poland as lieutenant of the emperor, and became therefore (strange
example of the vicissitudes of history!) the supreme representative of a
harsh, foreign government in this same city of Warsaw, where one of his
ancestors had formerly figured in a memorable procession of the
vanquished. However, if this circumstance ever occurred to Prince
Michael, he drew therefrom none but suggestions worthy of his character;
he governed the conquered country with moderation and benevolence, and
left behind him the fame of a man as just in civil administration as he
was intrepid in war.
The cousin of Prince Michael and present chancellor of the empire,
Alexander Mikhailovitch Gortchakof, was born in 1798, and was educated
in that lyceum of Zarkoe-Zeloe which has its distinct place in the
pedagogic history of Russia. Founded by Catherine II. as a model
educational establishment for the aristocratic youth of the empire, the
lyceum shone with great _eclat_ under the reign of Alexander I.,
although the Rollin and the Pestalozzi would certainly have had more
than one reservation to make with respect to a college which only
moulded its scholars for the world, and thought the vigorous classical
studies a burden too heavy to carry into the ethereal spheres of
pleasures and elegance. Almost all the professors of the establishment
were foreigners, men marked with the stamp of the eighteenth century,
acute minds, slightly frivolous, and above all disciples of Voltaire.
The most eminent among them, the professor of French literature, he who
initiated the future chancellor into the language of Voltaire, of which
he so well knew the subtleties, was a Genevese, who, under the
inoffensive name of M. de Boudry, concealed another of a terrible
significance. M. de Boudry was the brother of Marat, that "_sinistre
conventionnel_."[2] The Empress Catherine, in order "to end a scandal,"
had forced this patronymic change on M. Marat, without, however,
succeeding in making him change his opinions, which always remained
"Jacobin." He died in final impenitence, cherishing an openly avowed
admiration for _the friend of the people_, unjustly calumniated. From
this education of very doubtful value, the young Gortchakof succeeded in
extracting a strong and useful substance. He left Zarkoe-Zeloe with
various and solid acquirements; a surprising matter, he was even a good
Latinist, and this last fact has remained a cause of amazement to his
fellow-scholars as well as to the generations who followed. It is
certain, however, that the chancellor could quote Horace with about the
same appropriateness as Louis XVIII. of sainted memory. One of his best
known dispatches ingeniously borrows from Suetonius an eloquent passage
on the distinction to be established between liberty and anarchy.
Next to his classical attainments, that part of his youth which the
chancellor loves especially to recall is that he was the fellow-scholar,
and that he remained the friend, of the great national poet, Pouchkine,
a fact more to his honor inasmuch as this friendship has brought with
it embarrassments at certain times. When, by the order of the Emperor
Alexander I., in consequence of an offensive ode, which one is not now
known, the young singer of "Rouslan" and "Loudmila" was confined in an
obscure village in the far interior of Russia, only two of his former
comrades at the lyceum had the courage to go to see and offer him their
condolence, and one of these intrepid youths was Prince Gortchakof. One
finds in the work of Pouchkine some verses written in a lively and
playful style, and which only derive their interest from the name of
Alexander Mikhailovitch, to whom they are addressed. In one of these
juvenile pieces, Pouchkine wishes his friend "to have Cupid as an
inseparable companion as far as the banks of the Styx, and to go to
sleep on the bosom of Helen in the very boat of Charon." Thoughtless
wishes, which human malignity would surely not have failed to carry out
in the end, if very fortunately the chancellor had not been able to
preserve his old days from every deceitful seduction, and to avoid even
the appearance of an arctic Ruy Gomez. The inspiration of the poet was
happier another time, when, speaking of their different vocations, he
predicts for Alexander Mikhailovitch a splendid destiny, and calls him
"the beloved child of fortune."
Fortune was nevertheless slow to recognize its child, and to give him
the lot which he merited. Having early entered the department of foreign
affairs, being attached to the _suite_ of M. de Nesselrode at the time
of the Congresses of Laybach and Verona, Prince Gortchakof had already
long passed that period which Dante calls the _mezzo del cammin di
vita_; and even when very near his fiftieth year, was still only a
minister plenipotentiary at a little court in Germany. A fortunate event
at last came to commend him to the kindness of his master, and to render
him distinguished in those diplomatic circles, in those regions "free
from tears, but filled with sighs," which in the language of diplomacy
are called the secondary posts.
In a moment of paternal weakness, the Emperor Nicholas had one day
consented to the union of his daughter, the Grand Duchess Marie, with
the Duke of Leuchtenberg, "the son of a Beauharnais, a Catholic officer
in the service of the King of Bavaria," as was whispered with sadness in
the intimate circles of the winter palace. Nicholas was not the man to
retract his given word, but not the less did he feel the sting of what
his surrounding court did not cease to call a _mesalliance_; and the
bitterness increased when none of the foreign members of the imperial
family came to take part in the brilliant festivities which preceded or
followed the nuptial ceremony. Ill-luck would have it that soon
afterwards a first cousin of the new imperial son-in-law and daughter of
the ex-King Jerome married a Russian grown rich in trade, a prince in
the valley of the Arno but scarcely a gentleman on the banks of the
Neva,--a disagreeable accident, and which, according to the amazed
courtiers, made the autocrat of all the Russias _the relation of one of
his subjects_! It became necessary to efface all these unpleasant
impressions, and to take, by a brilliant alliance, an incontestable
revenge for so many vexations. It was hoped for a moment to be able to
marry the Grand Duchess Alexandra to an arch-duke of Austria, but it was
necessary to fall back on a prince of Darmstadt; for the Grand Duchess
Olga, the most beautiful and the most beloved of the emperor's
daughters, had been chosen by the only prince royal then unengaged, the
presumptive heir to the throne of Wuertemberg, of the old and illustrious
house of Suabia.
The plan was not easily executed. The good Suabian people had little
liking for it. A Russian marriage made it tremble for its constitutional
liberties; and what was a graver matter, the old King William of
Wuertemberg, a good, liberal sovereign, but obstinate in all things,
showed himself rather reluctant, and at his own pleasure retarded the
negotiation. Other objections came from other sides still; but the
Russian minister plenipotentiary at Stuttgart, the old fellow-scholar of
Pouchkine, knew how to overcome them all with consummate skill. By aid
of art and address, he was able to establish the Grand Duchess Olga in
the royal family of Wuertemberg. The joy of the Emperor Nicholas was
great and unreserved, and the winter palace sang the panegyrics of the
wonderful diplomat. After such a success, Prince Gortchakof could well
demand to be promoted in his career, having approached nearer by several
strides towards that embassy of Vienna which was considered as the
supreme goal of ambition. He did nothing of this sort, however, and
showed an admirable patience,--the patience of the patriarch Jacob with
Laban, son of Nahor. To the four years which he had already passed at
Stuttgart, Alexander Mikhailovitch declared himself ready to add another
term more prolonged if it were necessary. He promised the empress-mother
to remain indefinitely by the side of the Grand Duchess Olga, to aid her
as a guide and counselor in a foreign country and in the midst of
surroundings entirely new to her. Barren as the soil might be, he did
not despair of growing there under this ray of beauty and of grace,
which came directly from the great boreal sun; and in truth he kept this
post at Stuttgart for eight more long years. _Tenues grandia conamur!_
However, any point of observation is good for one who understands how to
adjust his glass and question the stars. The resident minister at
Stuttgart had extensive information and found means of informing his
government of many things quite outside the limits of the horizon of the
little kingdom of Wuertemberg. Soon the year 1848 came with its terrible
catastrophes, with its great revolutionary earthquakes which added to
the experience of the most experienced, which lightened with a sudden
glimmer the ignorant depths of human nature, and, in the words of
Milton, lightened the darkness. Such a lesson of history was not without
profit, one can well believe, to the former scholar of Zarkoe-Zeloe. The
_salons_ and the cabinets for a long time had had no secrets from him;
he now knew those of the forum and of the cross-roads. The vicinity of
Frankfort, seat of the famous parliament, permitted him to study closely
and fully the German agitation of this memorable epoch; he understood
beforehand the phases, by turns _naive_, burlesque, and odious, and was
able to predict in good time the unfailing miscarriage of a revolution,
the subdued billows of which foamed for a day even in the streets of
Stuttgart, ordinarily so peaceful.
It was in the month of April, 1849. Preceding by twenty years the great
work of 1870, the parliament of Frankfort had just formed a German
Empire to the exclusion of Austria, and offered the crown to the King of
Prussia, Frederick William IV. The King of Prussia hesitated, and ended
by declining; the other German princes were still less willing to assent
to a decree which implied their abdication; but this was by no means the
plan of the German demagogy. It suddenly fell enthusiastically in love
with this constitution, which on the very eve before it had denounced as
reactionary, fatal to the liberties of the people, and designed to
impose by force the Prussian vassalage decreed at Frankfort on different
sovereigns of Germany. In Wuertemberg, the chamber of deputies voted a
pressing, imperious address in order to draw from the king the
recognition of the Emperor Frederick William IV. The monarch replied by
a refusal. The riot thundered on the public square, and the members of
the court were forced to seek refuge at Ludwigsburg, fleeing from an
enraged capital. "I will not submit to the House of Hohenzollern," the
old King William of Wuertemberg had said to the deputation of the
chamber. "I owe it to my people and to myself. It is not for myself that
I speak thus; I have but very few years to live. My duty to my country,
my House, my family, forces this course of action on me." Alexander
Mikhailovitch, touched by these agitating scenes, by this pathetic
protestation of the father-in-law of Olga, "for the House, for the
family of Wuertemberg," assuredly had then but little expectation that
one day, as Chancellor of the Russian Empire, he would become the most
useful auxiliary, the firmest aid of an aggressive, audacious policy,
destined to realize in every particular the plan of the rioters of
Stuttgart, and to make Queen Olga the vassal of Hohenzollern.
This was, however, nothing but the noisy prologue of a drama yet far
distant, and the year 1850 could indeed rejoice at seeing disappear in
Germany the very last traces of an agitation which had done nothing but
astonish Europe, instead of illuminating and warning it. Towards the end
of this year, 1850, the German Confederacy was established anew under
the terms of the ancient treaty of Vienna. The _Bundestag_ again
commenced its peaceable deliberations, and Prince Gortchakof was quite
naturally appointed to represent the Russian Government at the Diet of
Frankfort. Alexander Mikhailovitch henceforth had his marked place in a
great centre of political affairs, where the personal merit of the
minister borrowed a peculiar _eclat_ from the extraordinary fortune
which the latest events had created for his august master. Russian
influence, at all times very considerable with the ruling houses of
Germany, had grown prodigiously, having reached its zenith, one will
remember, after the disorders of February. Alone remaining sheltered
from the revolutionary tempest which had swept over almost all the
States of the Continent, the empire of the czars appeared to be at that
time the firmest stronghold of the principles of order and conservatism.
"Humiliate yourselves, nations, God is with us!" said the Emperor
Nicholas in a celebrated proclamation; and without being too much
offended at language which made God in a manner the accessory to a great
human boast, monarchical Europe had only acclamations for a prince who,
after all, worked with a remarkable disinterestedness for the
reestablishment of the legitimate authorities, and for the maintenance
of the equilibrium of the world.
In fact, it is just to acknowledge that in these troubled years of
1848-50, the autocrat of the North used his influence, as also his
sword, only to strengthen the tottering thrones and to enforce respect
for the treaties. He effectively protected Denmark, towards which from
this epoch the rapacious hand of Germany was stretched, and he was the
most ardent in calling a meeting of the Powers, which ended by snatching
from the Germans the coveted prey. He interposed directly in Hungary,
and with his military forces helped put down a formidable insurrection
there, which had shaken to its foundations the ancient empire of
Hapsburg, undermined at the same time by intestine troubles and an
aggressive war which the kingdom of Piedmont had twice stirred up
against it. Little favoring by his principles and interests this united
Germany, "of which the first thought was a thought of unjust extension,
the first cry a cry of war,"[3] he later used all his power in bringing
about the reestablishment pure and simple, of the German Confederation
on the same basis as prior to 1848. The bonds of relationship and of
friendship which united him to the court of Berlin were never strong
enough to make him abandon for a single instant the cause of the
sovereignty of princes, and of the independence of the States; and in
spite of the sincere affection which he bore "his brother-in-law, the
poet," he neither spared the King of Prussia, Frederick William IV., the
evacuation of the Duchies, nor the hard conditions of Olmuetz. Defender
of European right on the Eider and the Main, of monarchical right on the
Theiss and Danube, peacemaker for Germany, and, so to say, wholesale
dealer in justice for Europe, Nicholas had at this moment a true
greatness, an immense _prestige_, well merited on the whole, and which
allowed no reflection on the agents charged with representing away from
home a policy of which no one dared contest the immovable firmness and
the perfect justice.
The Emperor Nicholas, in accrediting Prince Gortchakof to the German
Confederation, in an autograph letter dated 11th November, 1850,
recognized in the reunion of the Diet of Frankfort "a pledge for the
maintenance of the general peace," and thus characterized by an able and
judicious act, the honorable and salutary mission of this Diet in
ordering matters created by the treaties of 1815. However legitimate the
grievances of the liberal Germans were against the internal policy of
the _Bund_[4] and its tendencies, little favorable to the development
of the constitutional _regime_, yet one cannot deny that, according to
the European point of view, and with regard to the equilibrium and the
general peace of the world, this was a marvelous conception, well fitted
to preserve the independence of the States and to hinder any deep
perturbation in the bosom of the Christian family. The chimerical and
mercantile minds of the times, the leading men of Manchester and the
rich publicists, with at least "one idea a day," imagined that this was
the moment to declare "war to war," to force a universal disarmament, to
abolish military slavery; and to this effect they convoked noisy
congresses of peace in different parts of the world. They had, indeed,
in a day of _naivete_, convoked one at Frankfort, without suspecting
that by their side, and in this very _Bundestag_ of such modest
appearance, had sat for a long time a true and permanent congress of
peace,--a congress which would do as much good as possible, and which,
moreover, would have the advantage of not being ridiculous.
Placed in the very centre of Europe, separating by its large and
immovable body the great military powers which form the border, so to
speak, of our old continent,--a power neutral by necessity and almost by
law over those great plains, where in former times the destinies of
empires were decided,--the German Confederation formed an _ensemble_ of
States sufficiently coherent and compact to repulse any shock from
abroad, yet not strong enough to become aggressive itself and to menace
the security of its neighbors. Many years later, and when chancellor of
the empire, Prince Gortchakof, in a celebrated circular, rendered homage
to this beneficial combination of the _Bund_, "a combination purely and
exclusively defensive," which permitted the localization of a war,
become inevitable, "instead of generalizing it and of giving to the
struggle a character and proportions beyond all human calculation, and
which in any case would pile up ruins and cause torrents of blood to
flow."[5]
In truth, if in this long half century which intervened between the
Congress of Vienna and the ill-omened battle of Sadowa, the frontiers of
the States have changed so little in spite of so many and so great
changes in their political complexion; if the revolution of July, the
campaign of Belgium, and even the wars of the Crimea and Italy have been
carried on without noticeably disturbing the balance of the nations, or
injuring them in their independence, we are specially indebted to this
_Bundestag_ so unappreciated, which by its very existence, by its
position, and the wheelwork of its completed mechanism, prevented any
conflict from becoming a general conflagration. It is doubtful whether
the cause of humanity and civilization, or the very cause which the
chancellor of Russia more specially represents with such facility and
_eclat_, have gained in any considerable degree in seeing this old
"combination" replaced in our time by another, more simple, it is true,
but, perhaps, also much less calculated to restore confidence.
While acquitting himself zealously of the duties of his office in
connection with the Germanic Confederation, Alexander Mikhailovitch
continued to occupy the post of minister plenipotentiary at Stuttgart.
He held it to be a matter of honor to fulfill to the end his
confidential and intimate mission by the side of the Grand Duchess Olga.
He divided his time between the free city on the Main, the seat of the
_Bund_, and the little capital on the banks of the Neckar, where a warm
and kind interest always greeted him. At Frankfort he took especial
pleasure in the society of his Prussian colleague, a young lieutenant in
the _Landwehr_,[6] an entire novice in the diplomatic career, although
marked out for such a prodigious destiny. There had been settled here
for many years a great Russian celebrity, a poet, who was at the same
time an influential courtier, and who could not be overlooked by a
diplomat with a love for intellectual enjoyments, and who had been a
school-fellow of Pouchkine. The good and mild Vassili Joukofski had
certainly none of the genius of Pouchkine, nor his independent and
ardent character. More properly a facile versifier and an ingenious
translator than a creative and original mind, with a nature rather
effeminate and contemplative, the formerly renowned author of "Ondine"
had early made his peace with the official society which the despotic
will of Nicholas had created, and had always sunned himself in the rays
of imperial favor.
During his long and pleasant career as poet at the court, he had not
been without dignities and honors. He, however, had a mission much more
important and honorable; he was charged with directing the education of
the heir-presumptive, Alexander, the present emperor, and of his brother
the Grand Duke Constantine. Joukofski devoted himself to this task with
intelligence and ardor, and retained the affection of his two august
pupils to the end of his life. A proof of this fact is the
correspondence which ensued and which he still maintained with them
while at Frankfort. These letters were published quite recently. After
having finished the education of the grand dukes, he made a voyage of
pleasure in Germany. At Duesseldorf he found a companion for life, much
younger than himself, but sharing all his tastes, even his charming
weaknesses. He finally selected a home on the banks of the Main, at
Frankfort.
Thus, as it happens to more than one of his compatriots, Joukofski,
living entirely in a foreign country, and being indeed manifestly
unwilling to return to his native land, considered the Occident
miserably sunken and corrupted, and hoped only in "holy Russia" for the
renovation and safety of a world overrun and possessed by the demon of
revolution. The events of February only served to confirm him in these
gloomy visions and to plunge him more and more into an uneasy mysticism,
at times even irritating, but more often inoffensive and not devoid of a
certain unhealthy charm. The campaign of Hungary caused a momentary
diversion in his sad thoughts, and filled him with joy. It was not so
much the glory with which the Russian army covered itself which pleased
his mind; it was not even the triumph attained by the Russian sword, the
sword of St. Michael, over "the impure beast:" his prayers, his hopes
went far beyond. He hoped--thus he wrote to his imperial pupil that the
great czar would profit by the power which God had given him and would
"solve a problem on which the crusades had stranded;" that is to say,
that he should drive the infidel from Byzantium, and liberate the holy
land. Mme. Joukofski, although born a Protestant, felt in unison with
her melancholy husband. Her soul had need of a "principle of authority,"
which failed her in the reformed confession, and which she sought one
day in the Orthodox Church, to the great joy of the poet, without,
however, being able to find there perfect rest.
Sometimes in the _salon_ of the Joukofski the conversations were
strangely varied and _bizarre_, on literature, politics, the glorious
destinies of holy Russia, the inanity of modern civilization, the
necessity of "a new eruption of Christianity," and on many matters
invisible and "ineffable." Occasionally there fell into the midst of
this _salon_, like a fantastic apparition, like a ghost from the world
of spirits, a genius original and powerful in a very different way, but
also tormented and troubled differently from the good court poet and
former preceptor of the grand dukes. After having unveiled the hideous
sores of Russian society with a vigorous, implacable hand, after having
presented to his nation, in "Les Ames Mortes" and in "L'Inspecteur," a
picture whose vices were appalling with truth and life, Nicholas Gogol
suddenly gave up in despair civilization, progress, and liberty, and
betaking himself to adore that which he had burned, valued nothing but
barbarian Muscovy, saw no salvation but in despotism, thought himself in
a state of "unpardonable" sin, and went in search of divine pity which
always fled from him. Shortly afterwards he went from St. Petersburg to
Rome, then to Jerusalem, then to Paris, everywhere seeking appeasement
for his lacerated soul. Then he came from time to time to Joukofski, and
passed whole weeks in his house, exhorting his friends to prayer, to
repentance, and to contemplation of the divine mysteries. There were
discussions without end, without a truce, on the "heathens of the
Occident," on "a crusade," which was drawing near, on the redemption of
sinful humanity by a race not yet defiled, and which had kept its faith.
At several revivals the physicians were forced to interfere to put an
end to a connection not without peril. One day Gogol was found, having
died of inanition, prostrate before the holy images, in the adoration of
which he had lost all thought of himself.... May we be pardoned for this
short digression. It makes us acquainted with the state of the minds of
a certain Russian society towards the end of the reign of Nicholas, and
adds a curious stroke to the picture of the origins of the war in the
Orient. One delights, however, to think of Alexander Mikhailovitch in
this _salon_ of the Joukofski, on an evening for instance, during such
an intellectual conflict with the poor Gogol. The diplomat, equally
cultivated and skeptical, was certainly made to recognize the bright and
brilliant flashes which furrowed those driving clouds in a great,
disordered mind; and he was made to unravel more than one strong and
thrilling thought from the midst of those strange ramblings concerning
an imminent crusade and the near deliverance of Zion.
Who would have thought it? It was these mystics, these men laboring
under hallucinations, who had the true presentiment and saw the signs of
the times! While Joukofski composed his "Commentary on Holy Russia," and
Gogol mortified himself before the _icones_, the Emperor Nicholas
revolved in his mind the great thought of a crusade, and prepared in the
most profound secrecy the mission of Prince Menchikof. The fact that the
monarch who had done so much for preserving the peace and equilibrium of
Europe had suddenly decided to throw such a fire-brand of war in the
midst of the continent scarcely consolidated, while on the other hand
the autocrat had awaited precisely this epoch of relative calm and of
the reestablishment of general order to announce his designs, in place
of executing them boldly some years before during the revolutionary
tempest which paralyzed almost all the Powers, his armies being already
in the very heart of Hungary and commanding the banks of the
Danube,--these facts will be for the impartial historian an evident
proof of the good faith with which the czar undertook his fatal
campaign, of the mystical blindness which guided his spirit at this
time, and of the profound conviction which he had of the justice of his
cause. Did Prince Gortchakof partake in the same measure of the
illusions of his master? We doubt whether he did. We believe that, like
the Kisselef, the Meyendorf, the Brunnow, and all the distinguished
diplomats of Russia, without excepting the chancellor of the empire, the
old Count Nesselrode, he was conscious of the great error toward which a
proud prince, who allowed no objections and understood being "his own
minister of foreign affairs," was tending. That naturally did not
prevent the Russian representative to the German Confederation from
fulfilling his duty with all the zeal which circumstances so critical
made necessary, and from placing the various resources of his mind at
the service of his country in the sphere of action which was reserved
for him.
Events did not make it of much importance. In the _Bundestag_ were
concentrated not only all the efforts of the secondary States of the
confederation, but there also were formed or conceived the projects,
the preparations, and even the desires of the two principal German
powers, the assistance of which Russia on the one side and France and
England on the other, were equally concerned in obtaining. Prince
Gortchakof could not complain of the turn affairs took in Germany.
Frederick William IV. was faithful against every temptation. The czar
could count in any case on "his brother-in-law, the poet;" and Alexander
Mikhailovitch found an equally firm support in his colleague of Prussia,
the young officer of the _Landwehr_. The cabinet of Berlin consented
from time to time to join in the representations which the allies sent
to St. Petersburg, to sign in concert with them the same note, or one
analogous or concordant. But it did not take long to see that it only
did this to retard their movements, and to deter them from any energetic
resolution. At decisive moments it stopped short, hesitated, and
pretended to preserve "_la main libre_" (_free Hand_). The other members
of the _Bund_ were much more sympathetic and more frankly won over to
the Russian policy. They did not think the demands of the czar against
Turkey at all exorbitant, and troubled themselves very little about the
preservation of the "sick man." They likewise desired to preserve "_la
main libre_," closed their ranks in the famous conferences of Bamberg,
and were at times all ready to draw their swords. In truth, Alexander
Mikhailovitch showed in the sequel, in the fatal year 1866, very little
gratitude, very little distributive justice, for these poor secondary
States, so devoted, so serviceable, so immovably attached at the time of
the Oriental crisis.
While at London and at Paris vehement comments were made in the
celebrated dispatches of Sir Hamilton Seymour, and the ambitious
projects of Russia were denounced there, at Hanover, at Dresden, at
Munich, at Stuttgart, at Cassel, nothing but censure was heard against
the proceedings of the allies and their "usurpations." At Berlin they
groaned all the more at seeing Christian monarchies undertake so
ardently the defense of the Crescent. A single Germanic power, however,
at that time the largest it is true, maintained a different attitude; a
single one thought the cause of the allies just, seemed, indeed, at
moments to be inclined to make common cause with them; and that power
was Austria,--Austria, but lately succored by the Russian arms; saved by
the strong and generous hand of the czar on the very brink of the abyss;
"saved" by him from sudden dissolution. The astonishment, the
stupefaction, the exasperation of the Emperor Nicholas knew no bounds.
The entire Russian nation shared his sentiments,--Alexander
Mikhailovitch like every patriotic Muscovite. "The immense ingratitude
of Austria" became even then the unanimous cry,--the _siboleth_ of every
political faith in the vast empire of the North; and so it has remained
even to our days.
It is necessary to lay stress upon this sentiment born in Russia in
consequence of the Oriental conflict, and to discuss the real causes for
it; for this sentiment has produced incalculable effects. It has
contributed largely to the recent catastrophes; it has dictated more
than one extreme resolution to the cabinet of St. Petersburg; it has
made it abandon its venerable traditions,--its principles, consecrated
by the experience of generations and seemingly immovable, having become,
in a certain sense, the _arcana imperii_ of the descendants of Peter the
Great. To sum up, it has governed the general policy of the successor of
Nesselrode during the last twenty years.
Assuredly Russia had the right to count on the recognition of Austria
after the signal and incontestable service which it had rendered her in
1849. The armies which the czar then sent to the succor of the tottering
empire of Hapsburg contributed powerfully to suppress a fatal, menacing
insurrection there; and if it is true that in order to obtain this
succor it was sufficient to recall to the Czar Nicholas a word given
long before in a moment of confidential intimacy, the action does not
become the less meritorious, and does so much the more honor to the
heart of the autocrat.[7] It would be difficult to deny that this
intervention in Hungary had not a generous and chivalric character which
astonished the contemporaries and the clever. The clever ones, the
statesmen, who, at this troubled epoch of Europe, had still preserved
enough liberal spirit to cast their eyes toward the Danube,--Lord
Palmerston among others,--remained for a long time incredulous, and
endeavored to divine the reward paid for the aid that was lent. Should
not the czar retain Galicia as a recompense for his assistance? Would he
not procure some positive assurance from the side of the Principalities?
was asked in the offices of Downing Street. Nothing of the sort
happened, however. The Russians left Austria without a reward, as they
had entered it without an _arriere-pensee_, and the troops of Paskevitch
evacuated the country of the Carpathians unladen with booty. A young and
ardent orator in the Prussian chambers, with the name (as yet but little
known) de Bismarck,--the same who fifteen years later was to project
striking a _coup au coeur_ and arming the legions of Klapka,--admired at
this moment the brilliant action of the czar, and only expressed the
patriotic regret that this magnanimous _role_ had not fallen to his own
country, to Prussia. It was for Prussia to bring assistance to its elder
brother in Germany, to "its former comrade in arms."[8] But it is
allowable to suppose that, even with a king as loyal and poetic as
Frederick William IV., affairs would have been conducted much less
handsomely than with the barbarian of the North, and that similar aid
from Prussia would have cost the empire of Hapsburg a part of Silesia or
a part of its influence on the Main.
Shall we say, then, that in intervening in Hungary the Emperor of Russia
acted from pure chivalry and platonic friendship, that he had no thought
of personal interest and the good of his empire? Certainly not; and the
czar had too much loyalty not to avow it frankly. He intervened in
Hungary, not only as the friend of the Hapsburg, not only as the
defender of the cause of order against cosmopolitan revolution; the most
powerful motive in deciding him was the presence in the Hungarian army
of Polish generals and officers, who intended to carry the war into the
countries subjected to Russian rule. In his manifest of the 8th May,
1849, Nicholas expressed himself as follows: "The insurrection sustained
by the influence of _our traitors from Poland_, of the year 1831, has
given to the Hungarian revolt an extension more and more _menacing_....
His majesty, the Emperor of Austria, has invited us to assist against
_the common enemy_.... We have ordered our army under way to quell the
revolt, and to destroy the audacious anarchists, _who equally menace the
tranquillity of our provinces_." The language was clear and frank, as
was fitting for a sovereign preserving the consciousness of his dignity.
This sovereign intended to render himself a service as well as his ally.
He was going to stifle in his neighbors' territory an incendiary fire
which threatened to harm his own domains; and in the act of intervening,
let it be well understood, he at the same time acted in
self-preservation.
Well! it seems according to all justice that the gratitude should
correspond to the service rendered, and that the law of preservation,
the supreme law of nature, should have equal force for the party under
obligations as for the benefactor. There is no policy in the world, were
it even taken from Holy Writ which could advise voluntary servitude;
there is no doctrine, however sublime one wishes to imagine it, which,
among the duties of the confession, recommends suicide. Now, it was
nothing less than absolute subjection, the ruin of its personality as a
great European State, which the Russians demanded of Austria in
demanding its assent to their pretensions against the Orient. By
geography, by the spirit of races, by religion, the Russian enterprises
would strike a mortal blow at the empire of the Hapsburg, if this empire
allowed them to triumph. A Danubian power, Austria should take care that
the Lower Danube remained neutral, and that it should not fall into the
hands of a powerful neighbor, who would then become master of this great
river. A Sclavic power in its Oriental provinces, it ought to guard
against being placed in immediate contact with an empire pan-Sclavic by
tradition and by fatality, and it could not wish it to be planted in the
Principalities, in Bosnia and Herzegovania. A Catholic power, it was
forbidden to recognize the influence and the protectorate which the
orthodox czar claimed over the Christians of the Grecian rite, of whom
it counted several millions among its subjects. "My conduct in the
question of the Orient! Why it is written on a map?" said Count Buol, to
his brother-in-law, M. de Meyendorf, the Russian ambassador. He added
that it was also written in history. "I have made no innovation. I have
only inherited the political legacy of M. de Metternich."
In fact, in a previous crisis, at the time of the Hellenic insurrection
and the war of 1828, the grand chancellor of the court and of the empire
had defended this principle of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire with
a firmness which nothing could disturb. During eight years he had
defended it, braving the storm alone, not allowing himself to be
discouraged either by the unpopularity then attaching to the Turkish
cause or by the desertion of France. Why should the Russians hope that
Austria would now desert this principle so vital for her, that she would
desert it at the very moment when it commenced to triumph over the
indifference of the Occident, and counted France and England among its
most earnest champions?
Placed between a sentiment of gratitude very lively and real, as we have
said, and a great political necessity, the government of Vienna has
certainly done for gratitude all that it owed. It lavished warnings,
prayers, good offices, offers of mediation on the Emperor Nicholas.
Austria pardoned Russia more than one want of respect, more than one
action of ill humor; it pardoned her the more than airy tone in which it
had been disposed of in the effusions with Sir Hamilton Seymour,--the
manner in which a certain autograph letter of the Emperor Francis
Joseph had been received at St. Petersburg,--the haughty, almost
insulting attitude of Count Orlof during his mission at Vienna. It did
not cease till the end to calm the irritation of the allies, to modify
and alter their programme, to assert the conciliating disposition of the
czar, to hope against all hope. It pleaded only for the return _in statu
quo_, repudiating any idea of humiliating or weakening Russia; it
demanded nothing from her but the freedom of the Danube, the
renunciation of the protectorate, and refused to follow the allies in
their demands concerning the Black Sea. Unfortunately, as it happens too
often to him who wishes to be equitable and just towards all parties,
the Austrian government, by this conduct, ended by alienating France and
England and exasperating the Russians. In the summer of 1854, at the
very moment when Prince Gortchakof exchanged his post at Frankfort for
that at Vienna, an eminent publicist, who was then, so to speak, the
mouth-piece of the Occident, and of its generous spirits, almost
despaired of Austria, and cried with bitterness that over there, in the
_Burg_, "the Russian alliance was something as sacred as a religion, as
fixed as propriety, and as popular as a fashion!" In the spring of the
following year, the cabinets of Paris and of London resisted, as too
favorable to Russia, a new plan of arrangement presented by Count Buol,
and the French government on this occasion reproached Austria, in the
"Moniteur Officiel," with offering an expedient rather than a solution.
The solution! The Emperor Francis Joseph certainly had it in his hands,
and it perhaps depended only on him to render it as decisive and as
radical as the most mortal enemies of Russia could wish. Why not
confess it? To see the bitter fruit _gathered_ by Austria in consequence
of its honorable efforts during the Oriental crisis, and to see the
implacable hatred and the cruel disasters which fell to its lot because
of its attitude then, one surprises one's self sometimes in regretting
that the cabinet of Vienna had so many scruples at this memorable epoch.
One almost reproaches it for not having given proof of that independence
of heart which seems, alas! the forced, indispensable condition for the
independence of states. If Austria had wished to be a little less
grateful and a little less politic during this war of the Orient, she
would have resolutely joined herself to France and England, she would
have taken part in the struggle, and instead of letting the allies rove
for years around the borders of Russia, in the Black Sea and Baltic, she
would have opened for them the fields of Poland, and have entered there
with them. In place of "tickling the soul of the Colossus or of filing
off a nail,"--as Russian publicists said later, and not without
justice,--they should then have given him a _coup au coeur_,--one of
those blows that the great recluse of Varzin knows how to plan and give.
The cabinet of the Tuileries would not have refused to do this. In his
dispatch of the 26th March, 1855, M. Drouyn de Lhuys laid down very
skillfully the question of Poland; neither would the cabinet of St.
James have raised serious objections. As to the probable success of such
an enterprise, it suffices to remember that Russia was at the end of its
resources, and that Prussia had not yet re-formed its military
organization, was not yet in possession of its "instrument," and lastly
that in place of William the Conqueror, Frederick the Romantic occupied
the throne of the Hohenzollern. The mind is confounded before the
contemplation of the consequences which such a decision on the part of
the Emperor Francis Joseph might have caused. The face of the world
would have been changed; Austria would certainly not have seen Sadowa[9]
in 1866; Europe would not have seen the dismemberment of Denmark, nor
the destruction of the _Bund_, nor the conquest of Alsace and Lorraine.
It was in the summer of 1854, as we have said above, that Prince
Gortchakof was sent to Vienna. He replaced there, first provisionally,
and in the following spring, definitely, Baron de Meyendorf, whose
situation had become unpleasant in consequence of his ties of very near
relationship with the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs. Alexander
Mikhailovitch at last held that post at Vienna to which he had so long a
time aspired, the post which, with that of London, was considered, under
the reign of Nicholas, as the highest in Russian diplomacy, like the
_baton_ of a marshal in his career. But now how full this honor was of
bitterness, and what patriotic pangs accompanied a distinction formerly
ardently wished for, to-day accepted through devotion to his sovereign
and his country! On this ground, formerly so pleasant and smiling, the
envoy of the czar could everywhere see nothing but briers and thorns.
In this capital, renowned for its boisterous gayety and too frequent
frivolity, he received nothing but disastrous and distracting news. And
this "Austrian ingratitude," which he had only had glimpses of and
combated from afar during his mission at Frankfort, he could now look in
the face--and smile at it! There is a grief greater than the _ricordare
tempi felici nella miseria_; it is to see a dream of happiness turn into
a reality of misery, and one can easily understand what a treasure of
gall this sojourn at Vienna must have heaped up in the wounded heart of
the Russian patriot.[10]
It is superfluous to lay stress upon the activity which the new envoy of
the czar displayed in this unhappy mission; to mention the infinite
variety of means which he placed at the service of his cause,
especially during the conferences of Vienna, which were opened after
the death of Nicholas and the accession of the Emperor Alexander II.
That was a moving sight and one which was truly not wanting in grandeur,
that of the two Gortchakof, one behind the ramparts of Sebastopol, the
other before the council board of Vienna, both defending their country
with an equal tenacity, only yielding each inch of ground after a
desperate combat, forced into their last intrenchments, but honored even
to the end by loyal and chivalrous adversaries. To-day an epoch "of iron
and of blood" has accustomed us to the summary proceedings--we had
almost said executions--of Nikolsburg, of Ferrieres, of Versailles, and
of Frankfort, and a martial law used by the diplomats in helmets has
replaced that which a former Europe, full of prejudices, loved to call
the right of nations. To-day it is difficult to resist a sentiment of
astonishment, almost of incredulity, in re-reading the protocols of
these conferences of Vienna, where everything breathes decorum,
politeness, urbanity, and mutual respect. One thinks himself carried
back to an idyllic age, one far from us, to a world of ancient
gentlemen. M. Drouyn de Lhuys, Minister of Foreign Affairs in France,
Lord John Russell, until lately President of the Privy Council of
England, did not think it beneath their dignity to go in person to
Vienna to discuss there with Prince Gortchakof the possible conditions
of a peace. Russia had lost several great battles, the allied fleets had
blockaded all its seas and even menaced its capital. That did not
prevent the French and English plenipotentiaries from treating it with
all deference, with all the respect which the diplomacy of this good
old time could employ. They displayed a veritable art in the invention
of euphemisms; they gave themselves pains to find the mildest mediums,
the most acceptable terms for the representative of a vanquished power.
Indeed, that excellent Lord John Russell forced kindness so far as to
recall, and that in the face of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, that England had
made Louis XIV. submit to conditions much harder and more
humiliating.[11] That was, perhaps, the only instance of want of tact
which one can find in the conferences of Vienna, and yet what was it but
a courteousness from an ally to an ally? As for Austria, it exhausted
itself in finding means to spare the susceptibilities of Russia, and
ended by presenting a plan of arrangement which was judged inacceptable
by the cabinets of London and Paris, and drew on it the reproach of the
"Moniteur Officiel," of which we have already spoken.
Negotiations were broken off, and nothing could be done but to await the
issue of the supreme combat under the walls of Sebastopol. The Russian
plenipotentiary awaited it at his post in Vienna in the twofold anguish
of a patriot and a relation. The bulwark of the Crimea fell, and Russia
found itself in the most critical situation. It was exhausted,--indeed
much more exhausted than Europe then thought,--and the prolongation of
the war would have infallibly transported the hostilities to the plains
of Poland. At this moment Austria intervened anew. It agreed to the
demands made by the allies at the conference of Vienna,--even that
clause concerning the neutralization of the Black Sea, which it had
hitherto resisted as too wounding to Russia. It was not possible to
refuse this satisfaction to the allies after the capture of Sebastopol.
In reality, these were the easiest conditions which have ever been
imposed on a power at the close of a war so long, so bloody, and of such
incontestable victories. Austria did more; it sent these conditions
under form of an ultimatum, declaring that it would make common cause
with the allies if they were not accepted; and Russia accepted them. To
look at it plainly, this was a service rendered to a young sovereign,
who, having inherited a disastrous war, thus found the means to spare at
the same time the memory of his predecessor and the pride of his people.
He could say now that he had only made peace because of a new adversary,
who had arisen at the side of the old ones, and whom his father did not
count on. In fact, it was said in Russia,--it was believed, indeed, so
much was it in their interest to believe it. The Russian people were
quickly reconciled with the conquerors of Alma and of Malakof. A single
power remained in their eyes responsible for their disasters,--the power
which during the whole war had rested on its arms. Even at this hour
every Russian heart boils with indignation at the thought of Austria, of
its immense ingratitude and its great treason.
Alexander Mikhailovitch shared these bitternesses, these popular
rancors, and became the most energetic and openly avowed representative
of them. In this respect he allowed his sentiments to burst forth with a
frankness which approached very nearly to ostentation. A remark uttered
by him during the session of the Congress at Paris, is still cited at
Vienna: "Austria is not a state, it is only a government." These words
preceded him to St. Petersburg and made his fortune there. The popular
voice designated him as the future avenger, as the man destined to
prepare for his nation a brilliant revenge; and the acute diplomat did
not trouble himself to controvert such an opinion. Already, however, at
this Congress of Paris certain tendencies, certain desires were
revealed, which gave hope, which even opened horizons entirely new. The
name of Italy was pronounced there. Roumania itself found there an
unexpected support. At this strange Congress, which definitely regulated
the conditions of a peace that France, England, and Austria had imposed
on Russia, Austria appeared gloomy and morose, England irritated and
nervous. France and Russia alone exchanged between one another the most
exquisite politeness and surprising cordialities. The sword of Napoleon
III. became the lance of Achilles, healing where it had just wounded,
wounding where it had healed. "There was balm of Gilead in it," and
support in the sovereign of the Tuileries. The day after the Congress,
in the month of April, 1856, the old Count Nesselrode asked to be
retired on account of his age, and Prince Alexander Gortchakof became
Minister of Foreign Affairs.
II.
During the four years which he had passed at Frankfort as representative
of his government to the German Confederation, Prince Gortchakof, as we
have already seen, had made the acquaintance of, and maintained the
most intimate relations with a colleague, whose rare qualities of mind,
as probably also those of the heart, he appreciated as no one else did.
The two friends were separated in the summer of 1854, when the Russian
plenipotentiary went to fulfill his painful mission at Vienna. But they
did not delay in meeting anew, and found as before that perfect
congeniality of ideas and of sentiments, which, established since their
first meeting in Frankfort, has never been interrupted, and has lasted
for twenty-five years: _grande mortalis aevi spatium_. This friend of
Prince Gortchakof on the smiling banks of the Main, was no other than M.
de Bismarck, the future chancellor of Germany.
Otto-Edward-Leopold de Bismarck-Schoenhausen, born the 1st of April,
1815, at Schoenhausen, hereditary estate of his family in the old Mark
of Brandenburg, could not flatter himself with having, like his friend
Alexander Mikhailovitch, blood of the Saints in his veins. His
biographers even observe with visible satisfaction, that at least two of
his ancestors were excommunicated by the Church and died in final
impenitence. What is more serious is that the most authorized historians
of the Mark of Brandenburg, M. de Riedel among others, call into
question the noble origin of the family. They show that the first of the
line, of whom authentic documents of the fourteenth century speak, Rulo
Bismarck, was a member and on several occasions even provost of "the
guild of master tailors in cloth" at Stendal, a small market town of the
old Mark. The fact does not seem doubtful. But could not the citizens of
Stendal, just as well as those of certain cities in Tuscany, have
forced every country noble, who wished to inhabit the city, to subscribe
himself in one of those guilds? This is the opinion of the tories in
this curious genealogical dispute. To hear them, the good citizens of
Stendal must have been on a par, in the fourteenth century, with the
great citizens of Florence and of Pisa, and Rulo Bismarck must have been
master tailor in cloth about as much as Dante, his contemporary, was an
apothecary. The whigs, on the contrary, the biographers in
national-liberal colors, take their part gayly, and one of them
ingeniously concludes, that in any case the ancestor Rulo ought "to
contemplate with satisfaction and pride from the high heavens the
splendid imperial mantle which his descendant has made for King William
out of the cloth of Europe."
In times relatively more modern, the House of Bismarck presents, like
many a noble country family of Brandenburg, an unbroken succession of
modest and faithful servants of the state, some soldiers, some employed
in civil duties. The eighteenth century offers us two rather more
curious specimens, the grandfather and great uncle of the chancellor.
One was surnamed the _poet_, the other the _adventurer_. The _poet_,
this painful avowal must be made, composed his verses in the French
language. We have notably by him an "_Eloge ou Monument erige
a la Memoire de Christine de Bismarck, nee de Schoenfeld, par
Charles-Alexandre de Bismarck_," Berlin, 1774. It was to his dead wife
that the retired captain of cavalry thought necessary to elevate this
mausoleum of words and of _Welche_ rhymes, full of the insipid
sentimentality of the time. The _adventurer_ (Ludolf-August) is more
deserving of his name. He killed his servant in a fit of anger or
drunkenness, was pardoned, took service in Russia, became involved in
political intrigues in Courland, and was forced to go to Siberia in
exile. Pardoned again, he entered into Russian diplomacy, filled several
missions, and died commanding general at Poltava. Let us say in passing,
that this Ludolf was not the only one of his family to serve under the
Russian flag, and thus the name of Bismarck has long been well known at
St. Petersburg.
The whig biographers lay much stress on the fact, that the mother of the
young Otto, "an intelligent, ambitious, and rather cold woman," was a
_bourgeoise_, a Miss Menken, of a family of _savans_ well known at
Leipsic. They love to prove in this manner that the restorer of the
empire was connected by his mother with the _bourgeoisie_, that studious
and cultivated _bourgeoisie_ which is the great strength of
Germany,--while claiming his right to the nobility and the army by his
father, retired captain of cavalry, and by his grandfather the _poet_.
Those profound Germans have a weakness, it is known, for all symbolism.
They dignify very often with this name that which is nothing but a _jeu
d'esprit_, in reality a play of words, and it is thus that they attach a
certain signification to the futile circumstance that the young Otto was
confirmed[12] at Berlin at the hands of Schleiermacher, the celebrated
Doctor of Divinity, whose learning was much more respectable than his
life; "in a manner and for a fleeting moment, it is true, but solemnly,
the young man called to a life of action _par excellence_, was brought
in contact with our learned theology and our romantic philosophy." Nor
has it been forgotten to exalt the name of the "gray cloister" (_Grauer
Kloster_), which the lyceum at Berlin bore, where the future destroyer
of convents studied, or to note the French origin of one of his
principal professors, Doctor Bonnet, descendant of a Huguenot family
which sought refuge in Brandenburg in consequence of the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes.
After having finished his studies at the lyceum of the gray cloister,
Otto de Bismarck went to the University of Goettingen, to the celebrated
_Georgia Augusta_, in order to study. In reality, he did nothing but
lead the life of the sons of the muse, who have the good or bad fortune
to be at the same time sons of family, _cavalieri_; he cultivated
nothing but hunting, riding, swimming, gymnastic exercises, and fencing.
He had more than twenty duels, and fully justified the glorious name of
_Bursche_, which clung to him for a long time afterwards, even when he
was ambassador and minister. One easily understands that the Institutes
and Pandects cannot be very thoroughly studied in the midst of so many
corporal exercises, and even the attempt to change the noisy _Georgia
Augusta_ for the most quiet and sedate University of Berlin, was a
remedy heroic rather than efficacious. Has M. de Bismarck ever regularly
passed this "state examination" (_Staatsexamen_) which in Prussia is the
indispensable condition for an appointment to any public function? A
grave question, which was discussed for a long time in Germany, and out
of which a weapon has shaped itself for twenty years against the man,
the deputy, the ambassador, the president of the council. A fact worthy
of notice, and one which well characterizes the formal and regulative
mind of the nation: M. de Bismarck had already defied all Europe, and
dismembered the Danish monarchy, when in the opposition journals of
Germany, there appeared from time to time, like belated rockets,
malignant allusions to this problematical state examination! Since the
epoch of Sadowa only have these malicious jibes entirely ceased: Sadowa
caused many other irregularities to pass unnoticed, and assuredly much
graver ones.
It is perhaps proper to inquire here what benefits M. de Bismarck reaped
from his academic life, and to estimate, if but briefly, the cultivation
and the peculiarities of his mind. It seems certain that M. de Bismarck
is not a man of science and study, and that his liberal education shows
more than one gap. A pleasing contrast, the two chancellors, Russian and
German, of whom one knew but a single lyceum and that one of very
doubtful merit, while the other attended the most renowned college
(_gymnasium_) and _alma mater_ of learned Germany. Certainly the pupil
of Zarkoe-Zeloe, as regards classical knowledge and true _humaniora_, is
far in advance of the lucky foster child of _Georgia Augusta_.
Nevertheless it is well to observe that M. de Bismarck fills and more
than fills a certain programme laid down one day by the _spirituel_ and
regretted Saint-Marc Giradin for the well educated men of the world. "I
do not require, said he, that they know Latin; I only ask that they have
forgotten it." From his academic youth, there has always remained to
the chancellor of Germany a fund of culture of which he well knows the
use on occasion, and he understands in a sufficient degree, his Bible,
his Shakspere, his Goethe, and his Schiller, those four elements of all
education, even the most common one, in German countries,--precious and
enviable quadrivium of the children of Arminius! Prince Gortchakof has
the refinements as well as the weaknesses of the man of letters; he
takes care of his "_mot_," he corrects his phrase, he looks at and
admires himself in his compositions; it is known that he was one day
surnamed the _Narcissus of the inkstand_. By his tastes, by his
exquisite sensibility, by his artistic instinct, he has a marked
superiority over his former colleague of Frankfort. But the latter
regains all this advantage as soon as one considers the original and
personal stamp which he knows how to give to his thoughts and to his
speech, as soon as one seeks the individuality, the breathing creator,
the _mens agitans molem_, that something mysterious and powerful which
antique sculpture rendered so ingeniously by placing a flame on the
forehead of certain of its statues.
The chancellor of Germany is not a lettered man in the strict and
somewhat vulgar acceptation of the world. He is, to speak correctly,
neither an orator nor a writer. He does not understand developing a
theme well, graduating its arguments, arranging its transitions. He does
not construct his period and does not trouble himself about it. He has
difficulty in expressing himself, both on the tribune and also with the
pen. His style is harsh, occasionally very incorrect, as unacademical as
possible. It is intricate, embarrassed, even trivial at moments. Every
part guarded, and all reserve made, there is something of Cromwell in
his manner of expressing himself. But in an entirely different manner
than in Cromwell one is forced to admire in him those flashes of
thought, those strong and unforeseen images, those penetrating words
which strike, which impress themselves, and which are not forgotten.
When quite lately in the midst of an argument, disconnected and
embarrassed, concerning his conflict with Rome, he suddenly cried out:
"Be sure of one thing, gentlemen, _we will not go to Canossa_!"[13] one
should remember that he knew how to comprise there, in a sort of
menacing _caeterum censeo_,[14] a whole world of memories and of
passions. In a very different spirit, also in a time already far
distant, it is true, speaking one day--about twenty years have since
flown--of the principles of revolution and contra-revolution, he said
that a parliamentary debate could never decide between these two
principles: "The decision will only come from God, from the God of
battles, _when he lets fall from his hand the iron dice of destiny_!"
One thinks that he hears De Maistre in this last part of the phrase, and
like M. de Maistre the chancellor of Germany has had his passage decried
by the _hangsman_; we wish to speak of this invocation to _iron_ and to
_blood_, which must be replaced in its frame and put in its true
light,--to settle its date,--to appreciate all the relief by the side
of the incontestable brutality. The invocation was made when those
national-liberals, to-day of such great servility towards him and with
the _obedience of a corpse_, wished to prevent him from reforming the
army, at the same time demanding him to complete the unity of Germany.
The man who felt the distant thunder of Sadowa and Sedan rumble in his
soul, launched at this moment to the orators the _defi_ which he has
only too well justified since, saying that it was not by speeches that
Germany could be united: "to consummate this unity, iron and blood are
necessary!" This orator does not breathe at ease in the uniform which
never leaves him, and he advances only by fits and starts. He collects
laboriously the clouds of his rhetoric, but the spark ends by flashing
and by illuminating the whole situation. To make himself understood he
employs the greatest or most familiar images, without choice, just as
they come; he borrows a quotation from Shakspere and from Goethe just as
well as from the Wasps of M. Alphonse Karr, or from a couplet of the
vaudeville. One of his most happy, most memorable inspirations, he
suddenly drew one day from the libretto of the "Freischuetz."
The reader will kindly permit us to recall this last episode, even at
the risk of delaying somewhat in some preliminary explanations of which
a German auditory, full of souvenirs of its "Freischuetz," would have no
need. In this opera of Weber, Max, the good and unfortunate hunter,
borrows a cartridge from Robin, the evil spirit, and immediately kills
an eagle, one of whose feathers he proudly sticks in his cap. He then
asks for some more cartridges, but Robin tells him that they are
"enchanted balls," and that in order to obtain them he must surrender
himself to the infernal spirits, and deliver his soul to them. Max draws
back, and then Robin, sneering, tells him that he hesitates in vain,
that the bargain is made, and that he has already committed himself by
the ball he made use of: "Do you think, then, that this eagle was a free
gift?" Well! when in 1849 the young orator of the Mark of Brandenburg
had to implore the Prussian chamber not to accept for the King of
Prussia the imperial crown which the parliament of Frankfort offered
him, he ended by crying out: "It is radicalism which offers this gift to
the king. Sooner or later this radicalism will stand upright before the
king, will demand of him its recompense, and pointing to the emblem of
the eagle on that new imperial flag, it will say: _Did you think, then,
that this eagle was a free gift?_" A striking image and equally deep and
ingenious! Yes, one cannot use with impunity the "enchanted balls" of
revolution, and one does not make a bargain with the popular demon,
without leaving it some of his soul. Sooner or later there will stand
upright before you the bad genius whose aid you have accepted, Robin of
the woods and the streets. He will come to receive your salute, and tell
you that he did not intend to have worked for the King of Prussia. This
magnificent oratorical burst of the young deputy of the Mark, the
chancellor of Germany might have considered with benefit in more than
one decisive circumstance, for instance on the day when he overthrew the
secular throne, also the day when he gave the signal for the _combat of
civilization_.
The writer does not differ much from the orator, and, in speaking of the
writer, we think above all of those intimate and familiar letters which
have been published in the well known book of George Hesekiel, and which
have had a merited success in Germany. There is always the same
obscurity, the same embarrassment of elocution, the same disorder, from
time to time passages of lively and original expressions, of astonishing
figures, of a bitter, harsh _humor_, which grinds and bites you with
cruel pleasure. These letters are for the great part addressed to his
sister, to "dear Malvina" (married to an Arnim), and we will borrow from
them more than once during the course of this study. One notices in them
certain descriptions of nature, of the brightness of the moon, of the
North Sea, of the view of the Danube from the heights of Buda-Pesth,
which are not wanting in coloring effect, and make up a picture. There
is something of Heinrich Heine in these private _Reisebilder_, and it
has been remarked of them, that there is perhaps something of Hamlet
(and what a Hamlet!) in the following passage, the only melancholy one
which we have met with in the midst of so many sanguine and robust
sallies. "At the mercy of God! Everything is in reality but a question
of time, peoples and individuals, wisdom and folly, peace and war. To
the living, everything upon earth is but hypocrisy and jugglery, and
this _mask of flesh having once fallen off_, the wise man and the fool
resemble each other greatly, and it would be hard to distinguish between
the Prussian and the Austrian, _their skeletons being very carefully
prepared_." These lines fell from the same hand, however, which, since
then, and assuredly by a very specific patriotism, has furnished so many
thousand subjects to the preparers of skeletons!
One sees by these letters that M. de Bismarck handled at an early hour
and with predilection this irony, in which he is without a master; a
cold, crafty irony, and which too often approaches sneering. He used it
later in his speeches, in his conversations with ministers and
ambassadors, and even in diplomatic negotiations, in the most important,
most decisive moments of history. At such moments this irony sometimes
affects a great frankness, sometimes a great politeness, but a frankness
to make you fall on your knees before the first lie, however brazen, a
politeness to make you implore an incivility without forms as a
veritable charity. One day, on the very eve of the war of 1866, Count
Karolyi, ambassador of Austria, and acting in the name of his
government, summoned M. de Bismarck to declare categorically if he
expected to break the treaty of peace, the treaty of Gastein.[15] "No,"
was the reply, "I have not that expectation; _but, if I had, would I
answer you differently_?" There is an example of that frankness which
disconcerts, which confounds, and seems to cry in your ear with that
devil from the "Inferno":
"Tu non pensavi ch'io loico fossi!"
As to the murderous politeness, which sometimes clothes the sarcasm of
M. de Bismarck, let us recall here the _mot_ which he launched later at
the negotiators of Versailles, coming to treat with him concerning the
surrender of famished Paris, and to offer him two hundred millions in
contributions. "Oh," said he, "_Paris is too great a personage_ that we
should treat it in such a shabby manner; let us do it the honor of a
milliard." That is truly an original turn which the rival of Heine
thought to give to the _maxima reverentia_ which one owes to misfortune!
When one is destined in a ripe age to exercise his _humor_ with such
ease at the cost of princes and of peoples, how is it possible when
young not to jest pleasantly about that poor fellow of a peasant in
Pomerania who drank too much water? In one of his letters to his dear
Malvina, the young country gentleman describes with a hilarious spirit
an inundation which swept over his domain which is divided by a little
branch of the narrow river Hampel. This inundation severed him from all
his neighbors, carried off so and so many casks of _eau-de-vie_,
"introduced an anarchical interregnum from Schievelbein to Damm," and he
ends by this stroke: "_I am proud to be able to say_, that in my little
branch of the Hampel a wagoner was drowned with his horse and his whole
load of tar!" How proud in a different degree was this gentleman one day
when, Europe having become his domain, he saw disappearing in the midst
of the billows, billows of blood this time, a whole army and its chief,
a whole empire and its emperor,--_currus Galliae et auriga ejus!_ That
did not prevent, at another time, the young country gentleman from
jumping bravely into the water to rescue his groom and gaining the medal
for saving life. During many years this medal was the only one to
decorate the broad chest of the Prussian minister at Frankfort. Asked
one day by a colleague to the _Bund_ about a decoration to which the
diplomatic corps is but little accustomed, he replied in the tone which
he alone possesses, that he sometimes happened to rescue a man,--in his
leisure moments, be it understood. Probably, if he had been further
pressed, he was capable of adding that he only did it for exercise.
Thus, to resume, from the epoch of his apprenticeship at the gray
cloister and _Georgia Augusta_, Otto de Bismarck carried a literary
burden, which, without being either too heavy or too full, has
nevertheless enabled him to make his tour of the political world with
ease and honor. And also since this epoch his mind disclosed the
precious qualities which still distinguish it; a vivid and powerful
imagination, a rare happiness in his choice of expressions occasionally
grandiose, occasionally vulgar, but always striking; and lastly, a
_humor_ which has no equal, and which, to speak with Jean Paul, is a
true _sirocco_ to the soul. With all this no grace, no charm, no
distinction or delicacy,--not a generous accent, no sweet and
sympathetic cord, a complete absence of that milk of human kindness of
which the poet speaks, an absolute want of that charity which, according
to the great Christian moralist, is like the heavenly perfume of the
soul. As to the art or rather handicraft, as to the work which consists
in arranging his phrases, in connecting and disposing them so as to
introduce harmony and clearness in the different parts of speech, in
effacing its asperities and inequalities, in one word as to the _style_,
M. de Bismarck never learned it or always disdained it. If we dared to
apply to this style one of those trivial but expressive images of which
he himself offers us more than one example, we would willingly compare
it to a certain strange drink, hardly credible, and which, according to
his biographers, the German chancellor has always liked: it consists of
a mixture of champagne and _porter_! The language is in imitation of the
drink: one finds in it the _piquant_, the sparkling, the exhilarating of
the _Ay_ together with the heaviness, the blackness, and above all the
bitterness of the _stout_.
It is a curious fact, that the man who one day was to impose on all the
States of Germany the severe bureaucratic and military laws of Prussia,
"to place Germany in the saddle," to use one of his _mots_, to press it
into the straight jacket of obligatory service,--even to indirectly
train all Europe to new exercises, and to make it leave the plow for the
sword, liberal occupations for the autumn and summer manoeuvres,--this
man, for his part, has never been able to bind himself down to academic
duties, neither to the regular work of the bureau, nor to the severe
discipline of the soldier. He himself has acknowledged having heard but
_two_ hours of lecture during his whole stay at _Georgia Augusta_. The
university course being ended, he tried several times the administrative
or judiciary career; he tried it at Aix-la-Chapelle, at Potsdam, at
Greifswalde, then again at Potsdam, and had to give it up every time,
disgusted by the monotonous labor of the bureau, or by quarrels with his
superiors. On this subject is told the _piquant_ reply of the young
_referendarius_ to a principal who had made him wait an hour in an
antechamber: "I came to request a short leave of absence; but during
this long hour I have had time to reflect, and I demand my dismission."
Thrice he made a trial of the military service, without arriving at a
higher grade than that of lieutenant in the _Landwehr_, a rank which he
appreciated, however, and of which he loved to don the uniform on solemn
occasions, even at the very time when he was already minister at
Frankfort. The reader knows that the day of Sadowa brought him the
insignia of a general. Those ten or twelve years which had passed for M.
de Bismarck since his disputed state examination to his entrance into
the Prussian chamber, the German biographers call by the fine name
"years of storm and trouble," which recalls one of the most brilliant
epochs of their literature.[16] In truth they were stormy, filled with
miscarriages of more than one kind, with travels, financial
embarrassments, perhaps also with an unrequited love. At least that is
the meaning one is inclined to give to the following passage from a
letter addressed to his sister Malvina: "I struggle in vain, I shall end
by marrying ----; the world wishes it thus, and nothing seems more
natural, and then we will both be killed on the spot. She left me
coldly, it is true, but they all do that. It would not be so bad,
however, if one could throw off his feelings with his shirts, no matter
how rarely one changes the latter."
He seems to have had a very sincere affection for this sister; he
overwhelms her with the most tender names. Thus he calls her his little
dear, his Malvina, his _Maldewinchen_, his good little Arnim; he even
calls her once (pardon him, O divinities of Walhalla) simply _and in
French_, "_ma soeur_." In all the letters of this epoch, dated for the
most part from the estates of Kniephof or Schoenhausen (it was not until
later that M. de Bismarck acquired the famous Varzin[17]), by the side
of an always biting and harsh _humor_, one can perceive a certain
disenchantment; by the side of the cares of fortune appear from time to
time projects for the future, very modest, truly, and which seldom aim
at politics. In 1846 he attached a certain importance at being made
surveyor of dikes in the district (_Deichhauptmann_). "The position is
not remunerative, but it offers some interest in regard to Schoenhausen
and other estates, for we would depend on it in a great measure if we
were again without water as in the past year.... Bernard (a friend)
insists on my going to Prussia (to Berlin). I would like to know what he
expects there. He affirms that by my disposition and my inclinations, I
am made for the service of the state, and that sooner or later I will
end by entering it." Suddenly, and on the very eve of the reunion of the
first Prussian parliament, one is surprised by the plan of a voyage to
the Indias,--probably to make his fortune and establish himself
there,--and one thinks involuntarily of Cromwell wishing to embark for
America on the eve of the long parliament. Do not think, however, that
the days passed sadly and morosely at Kniephof and at Schoenhausen: one
lives there, one overlives the life of _Juncker_ (country squire) and
the officers of the neighboring garrison are good and stout fellows, in
whose company one hunts and dances, "one empties great bowls half filled
with champagne, half with porter;" the guests are awakened in the
morning by pistols fired off close to their pillows; on entering the
_salon_ the female cousins are frightened with four foxes, and honor is
paid to the name given by the whole country to the proprietor of the
domain, the name of "mad Bismarck" (_der tolle Bismarck_). They are
madcaps, and blusterers, prompt to draw their swords, to fight with
pistol or steel, and they do not even avoid a pugilistic scene. One day
in a smoking room at Berlin, the former pupil of _Georgia Augusta_ broke
his beer mug on the skull of a stranger disrespectful in his language
towards a member of the royal family; not, however, without having first
addressed a charitable warning to the insolent speaker, nor without
having afterwards, very sedately, very politely, asked of the waiter the
cost of the damage.[18] This happened in 1850; M. de Bismarck had
already been deputy several years, and was on the point of becoming
minister plenipotentiary to the Germanic Confederation.
_Der tolle Bismarck_; it was not only at Kniephof and at Schoenhausen
that the future chancellor of Germany was thus called. The Berlinese
themselves had no other name for him for a long time, during all the
parliamentary period of the young deputy of the Mark, since his maiden
speech and his first appearance on the tribune,--when having provoked
an indescribable tumult by a violent attack against the liberals he
drew from his pocket a newspaper, and quietly commenced reading, while
waiting for the storm to calm,--up to his last speech on December 3,
1850, which completed the exasperation of the chamber, but was worth a
diplomatic post to the orator. Success advances a little like the
aristocratic law of the Chinese: it is necessary to supply glory from
the rear and to throw lustre on the obscure antecedents of the favorite
of fortune. This was, however, more to mistake the time and to misplace
the historical perspective, than to wish to assign to M. de Bismarck in
those years (1847-50) any important _role_ which he did not fill until
fifteen years later. The truth is that this _role_ was not in this first
period either of such eminence, or, above all, sufficiently respected to
be tempted to arrange itself in an abstract, inductive method. An active
and restless member of the group of _Juncker_ in 1847, and of the great
_party of the cross_ which was formed after the revolution of February,
the country gentleman of Schoenhausen was far from having in the bosom
of this party the authority of a Gerlach and a Stahl, or the great
position of a similar feudal lord of Silesia or Pomerania. In spite of
his audacity, his impetuosity, and his _sang-froid_; in spite of his
exceedingly happy sallies with an eloquence unequal and embarrassed in a
very different manner from to-day, M. de Bismarck was at this epoch
nothing but the Hotspur, and the _enfant terrible_ of the sacred phalanx
which defended the throne, the altar, and the conservative principles.
He was in a measure the General Temple of the ill-tempered
light-horsemen, a General Temple joined with the Marquis of Pire. At
any rate he only passed for a successful Thadden-Triglaff, that brave M.
Thadden-Triglaff who declared that he desired the liberty of the press,
on condition, however, "that there was a power by the side of each
journal to hang up the pamphleteers." The speeches of M. de Bismarck,
friend and neighbor of this ingenious legislator of the press, were
often not more reasonable. Did he not say one day, word for word, "that
all the great cities ought to be destroyed and razed to the ground, as
the eternal homes of revolution?"
The Athenians of the Spree[19] laughed at these jests, repeated those
words full of _humor_, and above all admired a certain argument _ad
hominem_ by means of a mug of beer. Occasionally also they criticised
with malice the advances made to the innocent, to the democrats, and
diverted themselves especially over the famous little branch of olive
which the country squire of Schoenhausen showed one day to his colleague
of the chamber, the very radical Doctor d'Ester. This branch, he told
him, he had cut in a recent excursion to Vaucluse, from the tomb of
Laura and Petrarch. He put it carefully in his cigar case and thought of
presenting it one day to the red gentlemen "as a sign of
reconciliation." It was in the strange destiny of this extraordinary man
not to be thought in earnest until the day when he became terrible. _Der
tolle Bismarck_, the Germans said in 1850; at Frankfort the good Count
Rechberg called him scoffingly a _Bursche_, and he was considered a
personage worthy of laughter in the eyes of the French minister, a man
of mind, however, even in 1864. The year after the legendary coast of
Biarritz, he pursued with his projects the Emperor Napoleon III., who,
resting on the arm of the author of "Colomba," whispered from time to
time into the ear of the academician senator those words: "He is crazy!"
Five years later the dreamer of Ham gave up his sword to the crazy man
of the Mark.
"I belong,"--such was the defiant declaration of M. de Bismarck in one
of his first speeches in the chamber,--"I belong to an opinion which
glories in the reproaches of obscurantism, and of tendencies of the
Middle Age; I belong to that great multitude which is compared with
disdain to the most intelligent party of the nation." He wanted a
_Christian State_. "Without a religious basis," said he, "a state is
nothing but a fortuitous aggregation of interests, a sort of bastion in
a war of all against all; without this religious basis, all legislation,
instead of regenerating itself at the living sources of eternal truth,
is only tossed about by human ideas as vague as changeable." It is for
this reason that he pronounced against the emancipation of the Jews, and
repulsed, above all, with horror the institution of civil marriage, a
degrading institution, and one which "made the church the train-bearer
(_Schleppentraeger_) of a subaltern bureaucracy."[20] He was as
_intransigeant_ for the throne as for the altar: he set at defiance the
principle of the sovereignty of the people; universal suffrage (which he
himself was to introduce one day into the whole German empire!) seemed
to him a social danger and an outrage to good sense. He denied the
rights of the nation; the crown alone had rights: the old Prussian
spirit knew but that,--"and this old Prussian spirit is a Bucephalus who
willingly allows his legitimate master to mount him, but who will throw
to the ground every Sunday rider (_Sonntagsreiter_)!"
A resolute adversary of modern ideas, of constitutional theories, and of
all that then formed the programme of the liberal party in Prussia, the
deputy of the Mark combated with the same energy the two great national
passions of this party: the "deliverance" of Schleswig-Holstein and the
unity of Germany. He deplored that "the royal Prussian troops had gone
to defend the revolution in Schleswig against the legitimate sovereign
of that country, the King of Denmark;" he asserted that they were making
a groundless quarrel with this king, that they sought a quarrel with him
"for no cause" (_um des Kaisers Bart_), and he did not hesitate to
declare before an angry chamber, that the war provoked in the Duchies of
the Elbe was "an undertaking eminently iniquitous, frivolous,
disastrous, and revolutionary."[21] As to the unity of Germany, the
young orator of the ultras repulsed it in the name of Right, of the
sovereignty and of the independence of princes, as well as in the name
of patriotism, be it understood. He was Prussian, a _specific_ Prussian,
a hardened Prussian (_stockpreusse_), and cared very little to unite
the good and firm substance "with the dissolved elements (_das
zerfahrene Wesen_) of the South." He called on the army: Does this army
wish to exchange the old national colors, black and white, for this
German tricolor, which was only known to it as the emblem of revolution?
Does it wish to exchange its old Dessauer march for the song of a
Professor Arndt on the _German fatherland_?
We have already spoken of his speech against the imperial crown offered
by the parliament of Frankfort, of the ingenious allusion borrowed from
the libretto of the "Freischuetz." While refusing the imperial crown,
Frederick William IV. did not the less endeavor, during the years 1849
and 1850, to rescue some waifs from this wreck of unitarian ideas; he
tried to group around himself, and with the aid of the liberals, a
notable part of the Germanic body, to create a sort of northern
confederation: "restricted union" became for a moment the _mot d'ordre_
of a programme which General Radowitz was charged to place on the stage
of the parliament of Erfurt. M. de Bismarck condemned without pity or
weakness all these vain attempts; with the great theorician of his
party, the celebrated Professor Stahl, he pleaded for the return to the
_statu quo_ prior to 1848. Like him he demanded "that the overturned
column of right be replaced in Germany," that the _Bund_ be restored on
legal bases, according to the terms of the treaty of Vienna, and that no
cessation should be made in placing Prussian politics on its guard
against any "course of Phaeton" in a region of clouds and thunder.
The thunderbolt did not in truth delay in striking, and the "course of
Phaeton" was brusquely arrested by the hand of that great Austrian
minister, who himself only traversed, like a luminous meteor, the most
elevated regions of power to disappear suddenly and to leave behind him
eternal regrets. Prince Felix de Schwarzenberg recalls in some respects
those statesmen of whom England lately offered the astounding example,
those Peterboroughs, those Bentincks, and those like them, who knew how
to interrupt, almost suddenly, a life given up to pleasures and to the
frivolous follies of the world, to reveal themselves in a trice like
veritable political geniuses, and to die before their time, after having
exhausted the intoxication of easy good fortune and of glory, arduous in
a very different degree. It is known with what a firm and steady hand
the prince seized the helm of affairs in Austria, and in how short a
time he succeeded in lifting up a monarchy placed on the brink of an
abyss. Was his conduct in every particular irreproachable; was it even
provident to the end? That is not the question for us. Let us limit
ourselves in saying that rarely has a minister met with more good luck
in his short career, found so much assurance in success, and spoken in a
loftier or prouder tone in vexatious necessities. This time Prince
Schwarzenberg spoke with all the authority which right gave him. Perhaps
he spoke even too harshly, and Prussia seemed for a moment ready to pick
up the glove. Frederick William IV. demanded of the chambers a credit of
fourteen million thalers for the armament, and made a warlike speech.
Europe became attentive, the national assembly of France was on the
point of ordering a new levy of troops, and, fatidical prelude of a
tragedy which was not to be played till fifteen years later, in 1850 as
in 1866, Louis Napoleon thought that he ought to encourage the cabinet
of Berlin, encourage it with aid, and in direct opposition to the
general sentiment of the country! While the national assembly in France
pronounced itself very plainly for neutrality and the minister of
foreign affairs was even inclined in favor of Austria, the president of
the republic sent an intimate friend to Berlin, M. de Persigny, with the
mission to engage the King of Prussia as much as possible in the war.
War appeared inevitable. The troops were already disposed in two parts;
there had already been encounters between the advanced guards. All of a
sudden, and before a menacing ultimatum from Vienna, strengthened by a
friendly notice from St. Petersburg, M. de Manteuffel, president of the
Prussian council, proposed to that of Austria to hold an interview at
Oderberg, on the frontier of the two States. Some hours after having
sent this proposition, he announced by telegraph (a proceeding then very
rare), that, on positive orders from the king, he should go as far as
Olmuetz, without waiting for the reply. He went there, and signed (29
November, 1850) the preliminaries of peace, the famous "punctuations" by
which Prussia yielded to the demands of Austria on every point.
It is not astonishing that such a profound humiliation,--preceded by a
measure of distress up to that time unheard of in the annals of
diplomacy, and immediately followed by an Austrian dispatch which very
uselessly did nothing but irritate the wound,[22]--filled liberal
Prussia with grief and indignation. It was in vain that M. de Manteuffel
endeavored to justify his conduct before the national mind. He affirmed
that he would rather be placed "in front of conical balls than pointed
speeches" (_lieber Spitzkugeln als spitze Reden_); the chamber of Berlin
expressed with passion the griefs of the country, and M. de Vincke
closed one of the most vehement philippics with these words: "Down with
the ministry!" A single orator dared to undertake the defense of the
ministry, and to make in the same moment the apotheosis of Austria.
Already in the preceding year M. de Bismarck had desired for his country
the _role_ of the Emperor Nicholas in Hungary. Since then he had never
neglected an occasion to resent in behalf of the empire of the Hapsburg
the insults which German liberalism had heaped on him, and he remained
true to this policy even in the most extraordinary circumstances, and in
the midst of the indescribable clamors of the assembly. He maintained
that there could be no possible or legitimate federation in Germany
without Austria. One of the greatest griefs of the Teutons against
Austria has been in all times its not forming a state purely German, its
containing in its bosom different populations and of an "inferior" race.
This was the principal argument of the parliament of Frankfort in favor
of the constitution of a Germany without the empire of the Hapsburg, and
M. de Bismarck did not fail to reproduce it in 1866, in a memorable
circular. In 1850 the deputy of the Mark did not share this opinion; he
was convinced that "Austria was a German power in the full force of the
term, although it also had the good fortune to exercise its dominion
over foreign nationalities," and he boldly concluded that "_Prussia
should subordinate itself to Austria_ to the end that they might combat
in concert the menacing democracy." Truly, in recalling that session of
the Prussian chamber on the 3d December, 1850, one can, in the words of
Montesquieu, observe the spectacle of the astounding vicissitudes of
history; but the irony of fate commences to take its truly fantastic
proportions, when one remembers that it was precisely this speech of the
3d December, 1850, which decided the vocation of M. de Bismarck and
opened to him the career of foreign affairs. Forced to consent to the
restoration of the _Bund_, and resigned to the preponderance of the
empire of the Hapsburg, the Prussian government thought in truth that it
could give no better pledges of its disposition than in choosing for its
plenipotentiary to the Germanic Confederation the ardent orator whose
devotion to the cause of the Hapsburg was even able to resist the proof
of the humiliation of Olmuetz. And it was as the most decided partisan of
Austria that the future conqueror of Sadowa made his entrance into the
arena of diplomacy!
The chamber was prorogued in consequence of this stormy discussion. The
rupture with the national party was consummated, and M. de Manteuffel,
whose cold and bureaucratic mind sympathized in reality but very
slightly with the ultras, thought it nevertheless useful to strengthen
the government by making them some advances. Several prominent posts in
the civil service were conferred on members of the extreme right: M. de
Kleist-Retzow, among others, held the presidency of the Rhenish
provinces. One could hardly dream of utilizing in the same manner the
talents of the former _referendarius_ of Potsdam and Greifswalde, who
had shown so little disposition and taste for the administrative career:
on account of the considerations already mentioned, it was first thought
of sending him to Frankfort as first secretary of the legation, but with
the assurance of being made real representative at the end of some time.
This choice produced some surprise. It was an entirely new proceeding
(they have become accustomed to it there and in other places since) to
reward a deputy with a diplomatic mission for his attitude or his vote
in the chamber. It was asked if the eccentric and impetuous cavalier of
the Mark would be the right man in the right place in the midst of such
delicate circumstances. The timid and overscrupulous M. de Manteuffel
was not without apprehension on this head, and the very ardor with which
M. de Bismarck accepted the position only augmented the uneasiness of
the president of the council. King Frederick William IV., who personally
had a very high regard for the ardent "Percy" of the _party of the
cross_, had nevertheless some doubts. "Your majesty can try me," said
the aspirant for diplomacy; "if matters go wrong, your majesty will be
at perfect liberty to recall me at the end of six months or even
before."
It was only, however, at the end of eight years that he was recalled by
the successor of Frederick William IV. And still, after the first days
of his mission (June, 1851) he expressed himself thus in a confidential
letter concerning the men and the affairs he was charged to deal with:
"Our relations here consist in distrust and mutual _espionage_. If we
only had something to spy out or to hide! But these are merely silly
trifles, for which these people torment their minds. These diplomats who
retail with an air of importance their _bric-a-brac_, seem to me much
more ridiculous than a deputy of the second chamber draping himself in
the feeling of his dignity. If exterior events do not unexpectedly
arise, I know from to-day exactly what we shall have done in two, three,
or five years, and what we can dispatch in twenty-four hours, if we wish
to be sincere and reasonable for one day. I never doubted that all these
gentlemen did their cooking in water; but a soup so watery and insipid
that it is impossible to find in it a trace of fat does not cease to
astonish me.... I have made very rapid progress in the art of saying
nothing with many words; I write several sheets of reports, plain and
round, like the leading articles, and if, after having read them,
Manteuffel understands a jot, he is cleverer than I am. No one, not even
the most malicious of democrats can have any idea what nonsense and
charlatanisms diplomacy hides."
Some years later, during the complications of the Orient, he wrote to
his sister Malvina: "I am at a session of the _Bund_; a very highly
honored colleague is reading a very stupid speech on the anarchical
situation in Upper Lippe, and I think that I cannot better improve this
opportunity than in pouring out before you my fraternal sentiments.
These knights of the _round table_ who surround me in this ground floor
of the Taxis palace are very honorable men, but not at all amusing. The
table, twenty feet in diameter, is covered with a green cloth. Think of
X---- and of Z---- in Berlin; they are entirely of the calibre of these
gentlemen of the _Bundestag_. I have the habit of approaching all things
with a feeling of innocence which gapes. My disposition of mind is that
of a careless lassitude after I have succeeded in bringing little by
little the _Bund_ to the desolating consciousness of its profound
nothingness. Do you remember the _Lied_ of Heine: _O Bund, o chien tu
n'es pas sain_, etc.? Well! that _Lied_ will soon, and by a unanimous
vote, be raised to the rank of national hymn of Germany."
The lassitude, the disgust as well as the contempt for the _Bund_
increased from year to year. In 1858 he thought of leaving the career
forever. He had enough of "this _regime_ of truffles, of dispatches and
of grand crosses." He spoke of withdrawing "under the guns of
Schoenhausen," or still better of "growing young by ten years, and once
more taking the offensive position of 1848 and 1849." He wished to
fight, without being hindered by relations and official courtesies, to
throw off the uniform, and to "go into politics in swimming drawers (_in
politischen Schwimmhosen_)."
What is there astonishing in it? Of all imaginable political men, M. de
Bismarck was certainly the least fitted to have a regard and liking for
a deliberative body essentially moderated and moderating, where
everything was discussed in private, in elaborated speeches, thought
over at length and still more freely discussed, and where the gashes and
thrusts actually amounted to nothing. A great congress of peace could
scarcely have any attraction for the ardent Percys whom the smallest
conference of Bangor[23] caused, enraged, to jump out of their skins;
and the _Bundestag_, as we have said, was a permanent congress of peace
called to maintain the _statu quo_ and to remove every cause for
conflict. The little incidents, the little manoeuvres and the little
struggles for influence were not wanting, it is true, in this company,
more than in any other; they served to maintain the good humor of the
ordinary diplomats, and were generally considered as useful stimulants
for the good management of affairs and good digestion of dinners. But
they must have seemed paltry in the eyes of a man of action and of
combat; they must have irritated, at times even exasperated him! To
observe the affairs of the world from this post on the Main, which
allowed them to be grasped in their _ensemble_; to profit by abundant
information, to compose therefrom brilliant dispatches, fit to instruct
and above all to amuse an august master; to utter occasionally a very
_spirituel_, very malicious _mot_, and to rejoice at it; to make others
enjoy it, even to carry it perfectly warm to Stuttgart, and to confide
its further expedition to a gracious Grand Duchess,--that was an
occupation which might content Prince Gortchakof, even charm the leisure
hours of a man educated in the school of Count Nesselrode and grown old
in the career. But how was it possible to make such an existence
agreeable to a cavalier of the Mark, improvised into a minister
plenipotentiary, or to shut up in such a narrow circle, though a
pleasant one, a "_fiance_ of Bellona," still foaming from battles
delivered without cessation for four years on a resounding stage! In
order to find a fitting compensation in the new circle in which he was
placed, he needed at least some great European combination, some great
negotiation capable of exercising his faculties, and of making them
known,--and they talked to him of _bric-a-brac_, of Upper Lippe! A
negotiation as insignificant as that with the poor Augustenburg, brought
to a happy end in 1852, could certainly not be counted among the
triumphs worthy of a Bismarck,[24] and this was nevertheless the single
and pitiful "bubble of fat" which he was able to discover in the soup
cooked during several years at Frankfort!
It is true that the question of the Orient did not delay in breaking
out, and that at first it even seemed to open vast perspectives. Prussia
was well disposed towards Russia. The secondary States of Germany showed
themselves still more ardent, and sometimes even went so far as to have
the appearance of being willing to draw their swords; so much the worse
for Austria if she persisted in making common cause with the allies;
that might bring about important territorial modifications, and all to
the advantage of the House of Hohenzollern! And the representative of
Prussia to the Germanic Confederation ("his excellency the lieutenant,"
as he was then called on account of the Landwehr uniform which he liked
to wear) gave a warm and firm support in this crisis to his colleague of
Russia, who had become his most intimate friend. He was not, however,
long in seeing that the Germanic Confederation would not desert its
neutrality; that the secondary States, in spite of all the agitations in
the conferences of Bamberg, would not take an active part either in one
sense or in the other, and that the war would be localized in the Black
Sea and the Baltic. He conceived a profound disdain for the _Bund_, was
"conscious of its unfathomable nothingness," and hummed over the green
cloth of the Taxis palace the _Lied_ of Heine on the Diet of Frankfort.
In addition, he experienced on this occasion a grief, which he never
forgot, which he recalled many years afterwards in a confidential
dispatch which has become celebrated. During the Oriental complications,
he wrote in 1859 to M. de Schleinitz, "Austria overcame us at Frankfort
in spite of all the commonalty of ideas and desires which we then had
with the secondary States. These States, after each oscillation, always
indicate with the activity of the magnetized needle, the same point of
attraction." Nothing more natural, however; it was not from the empire
of the Hapsburg that Hanover and Saxony had to dread certain annexation,
as events have since proved only too clearly. But the man who can one
day desire the destruction of great cities, as the hot-beds of
revolutionary spirit, did not hesitate to condemn in his soul and
conscience the small States as the inextinguishable hearths of the
"Austrian spirit."
Austria, in truth, was not slow in taking in the thoughts and the
resentments of the cavalier of the Mark the place which the revolution
had lately held there, and the ardent champion of Hapsburg in the
chambers of Berlin became little by little their most bitter, most
implacable enemy in the _Bundestag_. Moreover, all the great men of
Prussia, commencing with the great elector and Frederick II., and
without excepting William I., have always had, as regards Austria, "two
souls in their breasts" like Faust, or, like Rebecca, "two children
conflicting with one another in her bosom;" in a word, two principles,
one of which imbued them with an almost religious respect for the
antique and illustrious imperial house, while the other urged them to
conquest and spoliation at the cost of this very house. In the month of
May, 1849, the honest and poetical King Frederick William IV. declared
to a deputation of ministers from the Germanic States,[25] "that he
should consider that day as the most happy one of his life when he
should hold the wash basin (_Waschbecken_) at the coronation of a
Hapsburg as Emperor of Germany;" that did not prevent him later from
smiling from time to time at the work of the parliament of Frankfort,
and from working for the "restricted union" under the auspices of
General de Radowitz. And even M. de Bismarck was certainly very sincere
as deputy of the Prussian parliament in his "Austrian religion," when in
the name of conservative principles he undertook the energetic defense
of the Hapsburg against the attacks of German liberalism; but he was now
the representative of his government in the Taxis palace, encountered
Austria on its way to a struggle for influence with the secondary
States, to a struggle of interests concerning the affairs of the Orient,
and he began to engage in an order of ideas, at the end of which he was
to take up the policy of "heart blow." It was thus that on the occasion
of the war in the Orient and in the very city of Frankfort there arose
in the hearts of the two future chancellors of Russia and of Germany
that hatred of Austria which was to have such fatal consequences, for,
that the reader may not be deceived, it was the connivance of these two
political men,--the fatal ideology of the Emperor Napoleon III. aiding
them largely, it is just to add,--which rendered possible the
catastrophes of which our days have been the witnesses: the calamity of
Sadowa, and the destruction of the _Bund_, and the dismemberment of
Denmark as well as of France! With Prince Gortchakof, this sentiment of
hostility burst forth suddenly in consequence of an erroneous
appreciation of events, but which his whole nation shared with him. With
M. de Bismarck, the hatred of Austria had not an origin so spontaneous;
it had not, for instance, as an origin, the grievances of Olmuetz, which
the deputy of the Mark had on the contrary been able to easily overcome;
it was slow in forming, it developed, consolidated itself in consequence
of a long and daily struggle in the heart of the _Bund_, in consequence
of an experience acquired at the end of several years of vain attempts,
and from the definite conviction that Hapsburg would never of its free
will, abandon the secondary States, and he defended them against every
effort at absorption. Resuming the instruction which his sojourn of
eight years at Frankfort had given him, the representative of Prussia to
the Germanic Confederation wrote in 1859, in his often quoted dispatch
to M. de Schleinitz, those remarkable words: "I see in our federal
relations a fault which sooner or later we must cure _ferro et igne_."
_Ferro et igne!_ that is the first version of the received text "iron
and blood," which one day the president of the council laid down in an
official manner in a speech to the chamber.
At the same time that the ancient "Austrian religion" underwent with its
former ardent confessor a transformation so radical, a no less curious
change was wrought in his mind in regard to several other articles of
the _credo_ of his party. Removed from the _melee_ and participating no
longer in the parliamentary struggles, he began to observe more coldly
certain questions important in those times, and to temper more than one
antipathy of past days. Since 1852, on returning from a trip to Berlin,
he writes: "There is something demoralizing in the air of the chamber;
the best men of the world become vain there and cling to the Tribune as
a woman to her toilet.... I find parliamentary intrigues hollow and
unworthy of any notice. While one lives in their midst, one has
illusions concerning them, and attaches to them I do not know how much
importance.... Every time that I arrive there from Frankfort, I
experience the feelings of a temperate man who falls among drunken
people." Many things in old times disgraceful and abhorred, take now a
less repulsive aspect to the eyes of the statesmen maturing great
projects for the future. "The chamber and the press can become the most
powerful instruments of our external policy," wrote in 1856 the former
despiser of parliamentarism and friend of M. Thadden-Triglaff, and it is
thus that one finds in the correspondence of these times the vague idea
of a national representation of the _Zollverein_, even a pronounced
desire for universal suffrage itself, provided that these means could
become the _instrumenta regni_. The example of the second empire
exercised then an influence which the historian should carefully bear in
mind. This system of absolutism tinged with popular passions, "spotted
with red," to employ a characteristic expression of M. de Bismarck,
seduced the imagination of more than one aspirant for _coups d'etat_ and
_coups d'eclat_, and the former colleague of the Doctor d'Ester must
have opened his cigar case more than once and contemplated there the
little sprig of olive plucked from the tomb of Petrarch and Laura.
Yet the goal seemed distant, and how veiled was the future, still
indistinctly seen! It was not under King Frederick William IV., whose
mind became more and more clouded, that he was permitted to think of
action; even the accession of the regent, the present King William,
seemed at first to make no change in the exterior situation. The new
ministers of the regent, the ministers of the _new era_, as was said
then, were honest doctrinarians who spoke of the development of conceded
liberties and of the strengthening of the representative _regime_. The
good and _naif_, they even allowed William I. to proclaim solemnly one
day that "Prussia need only make _moral conquests_ in Germany!"
Evidently the _new era_ was not yet the era of M. de Bismarck. During
the years which passed after the war of the Orient until his embassy in
Russia, one sees the representative of Prussia to the Germanic
Confederation in constant motion, on continual journeys across Germany,
France, Denmark, Sweden, Courland, and Upper Italy, seeking subjects for
distraction, or perhaps also subjects for observation, and each time
returning to Frankfort only to raise a difficulty, break some
_bric-a-brac_, and to press to the utmost the nervous and bilious Count
Rechberg, Austrian representative and president of the _Bundestag_. His
frequent excursions to Paris caused him to have a presentiment of the
events which were preparing in Italy; he only became more aggressive,
and there was a time when his recall was considered at Frankfort as
indispensable for the maintenance of peace. It was at this moment that
he thought of definitely abandoning this career, of throwing off the
uniform, and of going into politics in his "swimming drawers." He
consented, however, to do it in "a bear-skin and with caviar," as he
expressed himself in one of his letters; in other words called to
exchange his post at Frankfort for that at St. Petersburg. One hoped
thus to remove him from the burning ground, to "put him on ice" (another
expression of M. de Bismarck); as for himself, he perhaps attached other
hopes to this removal, and in any case found consolation in seeing his
former colleague of Frankfort become principal minister of a great
empire, and with whom he was always on such good terms. The 1st of
April, 1859, "the anniversary of his birth," M. de Bismarck arrived in
the capital of Russia.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Plutarch, Theseus, _initio._
[2] _Aus der Petersburger Gesellschaft_, vol. ii. p. 156.
[3] Expressions from the Russian circular of the 6th July, 1848,
addressed by Count Nesselrode to his agents in Germany.
[4] The Germanic Confederation was formed in 1816. Frankfort was chosen
as its seat, whither delegates were sent from all the States of Germany
retaining sovereign rights. These delegates formed the assembly called
the Diet.
The assembly was composed of seventeen envoys, presided over by the
representative of Austria. There were however thirty-one States
exclusive of the free cities, represented in the last period of the
Diet's existence. The Diet was so constituted that each of the following
States or combination of States had one representative: Austria;
Prussia; Bavaria; Kingdom of Saxony; Hanover; Wuertemberg; Grand Duchy of
Baden; Electorate of Hesse; Grand Ducal Hesse; Denmark, for the Duchies
of Holstein and Lauenburg; The Netherlands, for Limburg and Luxemburg;
The Duchies of Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Saxe-Altenburg;
Brunswick and Nassau; The two Mecklenburgs (Schwerin and Strelitz);
Oldenburg, Anhalt and two Schwarzburgs (Rudolstadt and Sonderhausen);
Lichtenstein, Reuss, Schaumburg Lippe, Lippe Detmold, Waldeck and Hesse
Homburg; The free cities, Lubeck, Frankfort, Bremen and Hamburg.
The votes were equal. Sittings were secret.
On important occasions the assembly was resolved into what was called
the _plenum_, in which a greater number of votes were assigned to the
chief States, and the total number of voices was then increased to
seventy. In these cases a majority of three fourths was necessary for
any question to be carried.
The leading idea with the founders of the Diet was the preservation of
internal tranquillity, the next, the formation of a league which should
inspire other nations with respect.
Ambassadors were accredited to the Diet.--TRANSLATOR.
[5] Russian circular of the 27th May, 1859, concerning the war in Italy.
[6] This young lieutenant was M. de Bismarck. The _Landwehr_ is divided
into two levies. The soldier belongs to the first levy seven years, to
the second levy for a like period.--TRANSLATOR.
[7] A writer in a position to be well informed, a former under secretary
of state in the ministry of Prince Schwarzenberg, thus narrates the
origin of Russian intervention in Hungary, tracing it back to 1833, to
the celebrated interview of Munchengraetz between the Emperor Francis I.
of Austria and the Czar Nicholas. In one of the confidential
conversations, Francis spoke with sadness and apprehensions of the
sickly and nervous state of his son and prospective successor, and
begged the czar to maintain towards that son the friendship which he had
always had for the father. "Nicholas fell on his knees, and raising his
right hand to heaven, swore to give to the successor of Francis all aid
and succor he should ever need. The old Emperor of Austria was
profoundly touched, and placed his hands on the head of the kneeling
czar as a token of benediction." This strange scene had no witness, but
each of the two sovereigns narrated it some months later to a superior
officer who then commanded the division of the army stationed at
Munchengraetz. This superior officer was no other than the Prince of
Windischgraetz, who, later, in 1848, nominated and made generalissimo of
the Austrian army at the critical moment of the Hungarian insurrection,
took upon himself to recall to Nicholas, in a letter, the pledge
formerly given at Munchengraetz. The czar replied by placing his whole
army at the disposition of his imperial and apostolic majesty.--Cf.
Hefter, _Geschichte Oesterreichs_, Prague, 1869, vol. i. pp. 68-69.
[8] Session of the Prussian chamber of the 6th September, 1849. This
speech is not reproduced in the official collection of the _speeches_ of
M. de Bismarck published at Berlin.
[9] The battle of Sadowa, or as it is more commonly called in Germany, the
battle of Koenigsgraetz, was fought on the 3d of July, 1866, and decided the
result of the conflict between Prussia and Austria.--TRANSLATOR.
[10] We take the liberty of citing on this subject a piquante _scene
d'antichambre_ which has its instructive side. There was then at Vienna,
in the ministry of foreign affairs, a very original figure, an usher,
the memory of whom is not effaced at the Ballplatz. He bore the uncouth
name of Kadernoschka; placed in the large waiting room before the
cabinet of the minister, it was his duty to introduce the different
visitors to the chief. This M. Kadernoschka was an usher of great style:
he had been trained by the old Prince Metternich himself and loved to
recall that he had "exercised his functions" from the time of the famous
congress of 1815! One day, after a long interview with Prince
Gortchakof, Count Buol sees this good Kadernoschka entering with a more
than usually solemn air. He had a communication to make to his
Excellency "in the interest of the service!" And Count Buol learns that
the Russian envoy, after having left his Excellency, had appeared
entirely overcome and suffocating with anger,--that he had asked for a
glass of water; that for half an hour he had walked up and down in the
waiting room, gesticulating with violence, talking to himself, and
crying from time to time in French: "Oh! some day they shall pay me well
for that, they shall pay me for that!"
[11] Protocol of the conference of the 17th April, 1855.
[12] A religious ceremony which, in the Protestant Church, corresponds
in a certain degree to the first communion in the Catholic Church.
[13] Referring to Henry IV., Emperor of Germany from 1056 to 1106, who
humbled himself before Pope Gregory VII. at Canossa in 1077.--TRANSLATOR.
[14] Referring to the closing words of Cato's speeches: _Caeterum censeo
Carthaginem esse delendam_.--TRANSLATOR.
[15] Treaty of Gastein, 14th August, 1865, between Austria and Prussia
on the one side and Denmark on the other.--TRANSLATOR.
[16] _Sturm and Drang-Periode_, first period of Goethe and Schiller.
[17] Varzin, the Tusculum of the German chancellor, is situated in
Pomerania, to the right of the Stettin-Danzig road, and about ten miles
from Schlawe. The comfortable dwelling-house is almost surrounded by a
magnificent park of beech and oak trees. Varzin has been in M. de
Bismarck's possession since 1867.--TRANSLATOR.
[18] In the popular edition of the book of M. Hesekiel, this scene is
_illustrated_ by a vignette.
[19] Berlin is situated on the river Spree.--TRANSLATOR.
[20] Session of the chamber of the 15th November, 1849. One knows that
the chancellor of Germany has lately enacted a law which institutes
civil marriage in Prussia. However, none of the speeches which have been
cited is found in the official collection of the _speeches_ of M. de
Bismarck published at Berlin.
[21] Session of the chamber of the 21st April, 1849. See also the
interpellation of M. Temme in the session of the 17th April, 1863.
[22] A circular of Prince Schwarzenberg, made public by a calculated
indiscretion, after having related the incident of the telegraph, and
the desperate course of M. de Manteuffel as regards the Austrian
minister, added: "His majesty the Emperor thinks it his duty to comply
with the desire of the King of Prussia, _so modestly expressed_."
[23] Shakspere, _Henry IV._ part I. act iii. scene I.
[24] It does not, however, fail to be interesting, and to even have a
very piquant side. Still full of the conviction that they had made on
Denmark a war "eminently iniquitous, frivolous, and revolutionary," the
Prussian plenipotentiary to the _Bund_ labored, in 1852, very actively
in dissipating for the future a possible cause of perturbation, and
negotiated an Esau bargain with the Duke Christian-August Augustenburg,
the former upholder of _Schleswig-Holsteinism_, and eventual pretender
to the Duchies. Thanks to the intervention of M. de Bismarck, the old
duke signed for the sum of one million and a half rixdalers given by the
government of Copenhagen, a solemn act, by which he bound "_himself and
his family_, on his princely word and honor, to undertake nothing which
could disturb the tranquillity of the Danish monarchy." That did not
prevent the son of Christian from impudently insisting on his pretended
rights in 1863, nor even M. de Bismarck from supporting them for a
certain time, up to the moment when the famous syndics of the crown cast
the doubt in the soul of the first minister at Berlin and proved to him
that the Duchies, belonging by right to no one, belonged to King William
by the fact of conquest.
[25] The minister of Nassau, Baron Max de Gagern was at the head of this
deputation.
II.
A NATIONAL MINISTER AND A FAULT-FINDING DIPLOMAT AT ST. PETERSBURG.
I.
In the prodigious development which advanced the empire of the czars
after the impulse which the genius of Peter the Great had given it, one
can certainly signalize more than one Russian minister of foreign
affairs whose name has a right to be commemorated by history. For
instance, the mind of Count Panine was not an ordinary one, who
conceived and caused to be accepted by different states the idea of
_armed neutrality_ at sea, and this at an epoch when Russia scarcely
began to be reckoned among the maritime powers of the second or third
class. If in this bold conception, as well as in the still more
interesting attempts of Panine to limit the absolute power of the czars
by aristocratic institutions, the remote influence of an Italian origin
could be seen (the Panine descended from the Pagnini of Lucca), one
cannot, however, overlook the perfectly indigenous, largely,
autochthonal character of another famous minister of the same century,
that of the Chancellor Bestoujef, whose figure Rulhiere has drawn so
very originally. Bestoujef, who spoke perfectly, feigned stammering, and
had the courage to simulate this defect for seventeen years. In his
conversations with foreign ambassadors he stammered in such a manner as
not to be understood. He also complained of being deaf, of not
understanding all the _finesses_ of the French language, and had the
same thing repeated a thousand times. He was in the habit of writing
diplomatic notes with his own hand in a manner perfectly illegible. They
were sent back to him and sometimes he could decipher their meaning.
Having fallen into disgrace, Bestoujef immediately recovered his speech,
hearing, and all the senses.
Very different is the type which was presented during all of the first
half of this century by the immediate predecessor of Prince Gortchakof,
the chancellor of the emperors Alexander I. and Nicholas. Connected with
Germany by origin and the interests of his family, never even having
learned to speak the language of the country whose relations with other
powers he watched over, Count Charles Robert de Nesselrode did not the
less complete a long and laborious career to the satisfaction of his two
august masters, and figured with honor in congresses and conferences at
the side of Talleyrand and Metternich. Without having recourse to the
too Asiatic subterfuges of a Bestoujef, Count Nesselrode knew and
practiced all the allowable tricks of the profession, and few men
equaled him in the art of preserving an air of dignity and ease in the
midst of the most embarrassing situations. He knew how to change his
conduct without too great a change of language, and among other things
managed in a very delicate manner the transition between the policy of
the czar Alexander I. (unfavorable to the Greeks) and the frankly
philhellenic sympathies of his successor. During the last Oriental
crisis he placed all the resources of a shrewd and subtle mind at the
service of a cause in which he saw nothing but grave dangers, and of
which he ignored the national and religious side completely. Differing
from Bestoujef, and much more European in this sense than in many
others, M. de Nesselrode lost in his disgrace or rather in his retreat,
the greater part of his faculties and his virtues, and above all caused
an immense deception by his posthumous memoirs, composed in the decline
of life and of a hopeless insignificance. But perhaps this was nothing
but a last trait of cleverness and diplomatic malice in order to deceive
on this point profane curiosity, and to leave behind him a work as empty
and uninstructive as possible of a life so well filled.
Not one, however, of the Russian statesmen who have just been named was
a great minister in the Occidental acceptation of the word. No one of
them (in order to make comparisons in absolute monarchies only) had the
position of a Duke de Choiseul in France during the last century, the
authority of a Prince Clement de Metternich in Austria in the present
century, or even the notoriety and popularity which Prince Gortchakof
actually enjoys in Russia itself. Bestoujef, Panine, Nesselrode were,
one may say, much better known abroad than in their own country, and
their contemporaries were far from attributing to them the merit which
posterity later saw in them, thanks to the posthumous revelations of the
archives. No one of them was raised to power by a current of opinion,
nor sustained in his position by public favor; not one of them
pretended to show an individuality, to impress a personal direction on
the affairs, which he conducted. This is because since Peter the Great
to the present government, the _eclat_ of the imperial name in Russia
cast into the shade every other name, and instead of being a favorite or
a great captain, every state servant was only the subaltern executor of
a single and absolute will. The external policy, above all, was then
considered as the exclusive domain of the sovereign, and the very fixity
of the system rendered in some degree secondary and unimportant the
question of the persons charged with fulfilling it. In fact, from the
time of Peter the Great, the Russian government has always had in its
relations with Europe certain traditions approved by experience, and
certain sacred principles, from which it never deviated even in a small
degree. The minister of foreign affairs at St. Petersburg, whatever his
name might be, always had to labor to augment Russian _prestige_ among
the Christian populations of the Orient, to guard the maintenance of the
equilibrium of power between Austria and Prussia, and to extend the
influence of his government among the secondary States of Germany. To
these rules, so to speak, elementary and invariable, of the external
Russian policy, there was added from the year 1815 an international
principle of preservation, a superior idea of solidarity between the
governments for the defense of established order, the feeling of the
duties and of the common interests created in the representatives of the
monarchical authority in opposition to subversive passions sprung from
the revolution, and it was this _ensemble_ of the views and convictions
of the two emperors Alexander I. and Nicholas which Count Nesselrode
had, during almost half a century, to enforce, in all the acts and
documents emanating from the chancellor's office at St. Petersburg.
It has been the destiny of the successor of Count Nesselrode to break
little by little with all this _ensemble_ of traditions and principles,
and to inaugurate for the empire of the czars, in its external
relations, an entirely new policy. One may dispute the merit of this
policy, and dispute it the more widely as it is still far from having
borne all its fruit. What is indisputable and astonishes at first sight,
is that Prince Gortchakof has been able to attach his name to a change
of system which is marked in the diplomatic annals of his country, and
to create for himself, as minister of foreign affairs in Russia, a
situation entirely personal, an important position, such as none of his
predecessors ever had. Alexander Mikhailovitch is not only the faithful
servant of his august master, he is the veritable chief of his
department, the directing minister; he accepts boldly his part of the
responsibility, and above all his share of the _eclat_ in the different
transactions of Europe. An equally new phenomenon in Russia, this
minister not only retains the favor of his sovereign, but also that of
the nation. He manages the public opinion of his country, he watches
over it, sometimes he even flatters it, and it repays him. It has had
some moments of infatuation for Alexander Mikhailovitch, even some
moments of enthusiasm,--after the affairs of Poland; more than that, it
has in a measure brought forward and created him. This elevation of the
plenipotentiary of Vienna to the high position left vacant by Count
Nesselrode in the month of April, 1856, was not without its results.
In 1815, on his triumphal return from the congress of Vienna, Alexander
could select as he wished from the celebrated men who then formed the
_etat-major_ of Russian diplomacy, the least known and the most humble
of this illustrious body. Passing over Capo d'Istria, Pozzo di Borgo,
Ribeaupierre, Razoumovsky, Stakelberg, d'Anstett, it was lawful for him
to confide the direction of the external policy to a German gentleman of
Westphalian origin, born at Lisbon, and Russian only by naturalization.
In 1856, after the congress of Paris, the choice of Prince Gortchakof
for the same position was, we will not say imposed, but certainly
indicated to the Emperor Alexander II. by the voice of the people, or,
if one likes it better, by that voice of the _salons_ which did not
delay at this moment in taking more and more a popular tone. And since
his _debut_ at the Hotel of the Place du Palais the former pupil of
Zarkoe-Zeloe distinguished himself by liberal ways and advances made in
a public spirit, which must have occasionally astonished his
predecessor, still living and in possession of the honored title of
chancellor. For the first time, a Russian minister had _mots_, not only
for the _salons_, but also for the lecture halls and the bureaux of
journalists, words which went straight to the heart of the great lady
and country gentleman, the humble student and proud officer of the
_gardes_. His aphorism on Austria[26] went the rounds of all the
Russias. Another aphorism, taken from a circular, soon transported the
nation: the celebrated phrase, "Russia does not sulk, but meditates,"
seemed to be dictated by the very soul of the people, and drew from it a
cry of enthusiasm. It was then that one remembered the awakening of the
Russian spirit after a long period of compression; the journals, the
thoughtful periodicals, inaugurated their joyful _ebats_, the authors,
the literary men, began to have an importance hitherto unknown;
Alexander Mikhailovitch, who always displayed a liking and sympathy for
Russian literature, the former fellow scholar of Pouchkine, passed for a
patriotic statesman in the eyes of Pogodine, Axakof, Katkof, etc. One
perceived that he had a great hatred for Austria, a pronounced desire
for the French alliance, and the nation, which also shared equally and
even in an exaggerated manner, these two sentiments, saluted in him the
national minister _par excellence_. A strange comparison, well made to
demonstrate the inanity of words and the instability of things on earth,
is the manner in which the most decided partisan of the empire of the
Hapsburg, M. de Bismarck, the future conqueror of Sadowa, entered into
the _caenaculum_ of diplomats; and at the same time it was the implacable
enemy of the Germans and the warm friend of the French whom, in 1856,
the Russians exalted above all in the person of their vice-chancellor,
the statesman who, later, by a policy of omission and commission, was to
favor as no one else did, the dismemberment of France and the
constitution of a Germany greater, more powerful, and more formidable
than the history of past centuries has ever known! It is true that by
the "Germans" the Russia of 1856 meant principally the Austrians,[27]
and that in the France of that day it admired above all a certain
absolutism in the democratic instincts which showed itself touched with
the misfortunes of Italy, which professed to sympathize with Roumania,
Servia, Montenegro, and which had not yet pronounced the fatal name of
Poland.
"Calm yourself," the emperor of the French said to M. de Cavour, in the
month of April, 1856, after the closing of the congress of Paris,--"Calm
yourself; I have a presentiment that the present peace will not last
long."[28] Prince Gortchakof had without doubt the same presentiment,
and perhaps others more positive in this respect. The thought of "making
war for an idea," the thought of freeing Italy, had long been fixed in
the mind of Napoleon III.; at the moment of signing the treaty of Paris
"with an eagle's feather," he let his hidden and dreaming glance fall on
the classic plains of Lombardy. Now, for the enterprise which France
meditated against Austria, and in which it could scarcely count on an
angry neutrality of England, it was thought useful to secure in good
season the friendship of Russia and Prussia. Prussia had emerged from
the Oriental crisis very much weakened with its policy "of the free
hand;" England, Austria, and Turkey had even had little desire to admit
it to the honors of the congress. The president of the council at
Berlin, M. de Manteuffel, was obliged to wait long in the antechamber,
while the plenipotentiaries of Europe were in full deliberation, and it
was only at the instance of the emperor of the French that the Prussian
envoy was at last admitted. Napoleon III. insisted absolutely, in 1856,
on allowing _that_ Prussia to retake its position in Europe which
fourteen years later was to dethrone him! As for Russia, we have already
spoken of the politenesses and cordialities of which Count Orlof was the
recipient from France during all the time of the congress. Since then,
in the successive arrangements of the various difficulties which the
execution of some of the clauses of the treaty of Paris caused to arise
(Belgrade, Isle of Serpents, navigation of the Danube, etc.), one saw
the arguments or interpretations of the Russian plenipotentiary
sustained almost constantly by the plenipotentiary of France. In the
different and numerous conferences and commissions which followed in
these years, 1856-1859, for regulating the pending questions, the
distribution of the votes was almost invariably thus: England and
Austria on one side, on the other France, Russia, and Prussia.[29]
Although Prince Gortchakof acknowledged with good grace all these
attentions of the cabinet of the Tuileries, he was not sufficiently
complaisant to follow it in a campaign of remonstrances against the
government of Naples, a campaign undertaken in concert with the cabinet
of Saint James, in consequence of the famous letters addressed to Lord
Aberdeen by M. Gladstone on the _regime_ of King Ferdinand II. A similar
intermeddling in the internal affairs of an independent state did not
seem very correct in the eyes of the successor of Count Nesselrode; but
he was the more forward in seconding the Emperor Napoleon III. in his
generous designs every time that there was a question of ameliorating
the lot of the Christian populations in the Ottoman empire, of
augmenting their autonomy, and, as was said then, of _reforming the
Turk_. "To reform the Turk," maliciously thought M. Thouvenel,
ambassador of France at Constantinople, "it is necessary to begin by
first impaling him;" one commenced, however, by applying to him the
question of _hatt-houmayoum_, by interrogating him concerning his
intentions in favor of the rajahs of Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Herzegovina,
and by thus annoying in a certain degree the cabinets of Vienna and
London. Much greater was naturally the solicitude for the vassal States
of the good padishah, for Moldavia, Wallachia, Servia, and Montenegro;
these States already had a demi-independence, they made it possible to
render it entire.
The little Prince of Montenegro, former _protege_ and servitor of the
Emperor Nicholas, had come to visit the sovereign of France after the
peace of Paris, and since his return had quarreled with the sultan, in
consequence of which the _Algesiras_ and _L'Impetueuse_ appeared before
Ragusa. French vessels in the waters of the Orient to menace Turkey, to
the great mortification of England and Austria, to the great rejoicings
of Russia, all this scarcely two years after the war in the Crimea! The
sight was surely not wanting in originality, and prepared the world for
a series of surprises. At about the same time, Servia expelled Prince
Alexander Kara Georgevitch, and recalled to the throne the old Miloch
Obrenovitch. The Porte protested, England and Austria joined in this
protest; but, thanks to the combined efforts of Russia and France, they
ended by acknowledging the right of the national Servian assembly, whose
principal grievance against the dethroned prince was his having shown
too much sympathy for the allies in the war of 1853! The question of the
Danubian Principalities presented an aspect serious, and also _piquant_.
France and Russia had begged at the congress of Paris for the complete
union of Moldavia and Wallachia; the other Powers were opposed to it,
and, weary of war, they had agreed to accept a combination which
completely assimilated the administration in the two countries, while
maintaining their separation. It was, as later in Italy, the project of
confederation opposed to that of unity; but then there was also given on
the banks of the Danube the first example of that national strategy,
which was soon to show itself on a larger scale in Tuscany and Emelia.
The twofold election of Prince Couza was in truth the first trial of
that popular diplomacy, which later, in Italian affairs, took pleasure
in so often confounding the combinations of high plenipotentiaries and
high contracting parties, and proclaimed in the face of the world a deed
accomplished by the suffrage of the nation. The popular votes annulling
the arrangements of diplomacy, and the understanding of France and
Russia to respect these votes, these are the two salient traits of the
policy in the years 1856-1859, a policy which the liberal opinion of
Europe received with favor without being too much astonished at such a
concordance of views between the cabinets of the Tuileries and St.
Petersburg on this very ground of the Orient, still warm with the
bullets of the war; on this ground, from which Russia should have been,
in the opinion of the allies of 1853, completely shut out, and where she
now regained influence and a footing, modestly it is true, and under the
protecting shadow of France.
At last the Italian complications came, and the government of the czar
increased the testimonials of his good relations with the cabinet of the
Tuileries. "Our relations with France are _cordial_," replied Prince
Gortchakof to Lord Napier, charged by his government with sounding the
disposition of Russia in such grave matters. England then made earnest
efforts to prevent the war in Italy from breaking out. Lord Cowley, sent
with a certain flourish on a mission to Vienna, exerted himself to
discover the possible bases of an accommodation, and the cabinet of St.
James already flattered itself with the hope of having quelled the
tempest, when Prince Gortchakof suddenly proposed a _congress_, and
pronounced that fatal word which then, as so often since, was only the
signal for a rupture. A congress! A treaty of peace before any
hostility, the glory of the triumph without the peril of victory,--that
was the eternal _hysteron-proteron_ of the Napoleonic ideology, that was
the chimera pursued by the dreamer of Ham in the question of the Papacy,
in the question of Poland, and of Denmark; and up to the catastrophe of
1870, after the declaration of war, it is curious to see Prince
Gortchakof first suggest a remedy which imperial France was yet to
recommend so often for all the chronic evils of Europe.[30] The chief of
the English government, the old Earl of Derby, complained bitterly of
the horrible trick which the proposition emanating from St. Petersburg
had played him, and there has never been any doubt in England but that
it was brought about by a telegram sent from Paris. Not less serviceable
for France did the Russian vice-chancellor show himself in his circular
of the 27th May, 1859, when he endeavored to calm the warlike ardor of
the secondary States of Germany, and it was in this celebrated dispatch
that he made the judicious demonstration as well as the merited praise
of the "combination purely and exclusively defensive" of the _Bund_, a
salutary combination which permitted the localization of a war become
inevitable, "in place of generalizing it and giving to the struggle a
character and proportions which escape all human foresight."
Napoleon III. descended to the plains of Lombardy; Austria was
vanquished at Magenta and Solferino, and Russia could enjoy its first
revenge on the ungrateful Hapsburg, who had "betrayed" it before
Sebastopol. The year after, in consequence of the annexation of Savoy,
Lord Russell made the solemn declaration to the parliament that his
country "should not separate itself from the rest of the nations of
Europe; that it should always be ready to act with the different states,
if it did not wish to dread to-day such an annexation, and to-morrow to
hear another spoken of." That was the funeral oration of the
Anglo-French alliance: four years after the war of the Crimea, France
had lost one and then the other of its two great allies in the crisis of
the Orient, and Russia did not care to complain. It did not protest
against the annexation of Savoy; it even declared that it only saw in it
a "regular transaction;" but it profited by the moment to make its
reentry into European politics, and bring back on the tapis the question
... of the Ottoman empire! The 4th May, 1860, Prince Gortchakof
convoked in his cabinet the ambassadors of the great Powers in order to
examine with them the "dolorous and precarious" position of the
Christians in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Bulgaria, and soon a circular of
the vice-chancellor (20th May) insisted on the reunion of a conference
in order to alter the stipulations established by the treaty of Paris.
"The time of illusions is passed," Alexander Mikhailovitch wrote in this
circular; "all hesitation every adjournment will bring grave
inconvenience," and he even seized upon the recent liberation of Italy
as an argument for the future independence of the populations who
awakened all his solicitude: "the events accomplished in the east of
Europe have resounded in all the Orient _like an encouragement and like
a hope_!" Thus, scarcely four years after the treaty of Paris, Russia
began anew to speak to the world of the "sick man," and to do it, it did
not shelter itself, as in the conferences and commissions of 1856-1859,
under the protection and language of France; it went all alone, and took
the initiative in the debate!
This was not enough: in that year alone, 1860, the cabinet of St.
Petersburg regained almost all the ground lost since the war of the
Crimea; that was a year of peculiar fortune for Russia, for it was a
year of universal distrust of France. The acquisition of Savoy, the
strange and profoundly immoral spectacle which the negotiations of this
treaty of Zurich offered, torn up even before being signed, the
Piedmontese annexations in Italy, the expedition of Garibaldi to Sicily,
the "new right" of which the official journals in France spoke, and the
famous pamphlet on the "Pope and Congress," had caused the alarm and
awakened in the highest degree the uneasiness of Europe. Lord Palmerston
declared "that he would only be willing to give his hand to a former
ally in holding the other on the buckler of defense," and he armed his
_volunteers_. Switzerland was violently agitated; the _National-Verein_
swore to die for the defense of the Rhine, and even those honest and
peaceful Belgians affirmed in an address to the king that "if their
independence was menaced, they would submit to the most severe trials."
Above these popular frights the cabals of the sovereigns were agitated;
the German princes united at Baden, and the emperor of the French
thought it opportune to surprise them in a measure in the midst of their
deliberations by making that "rapid voyage" from which the "Moniteur"
promised "very happy results." "Nothing was wanting but the spontaneity
of a proceeding so significant," added the official journal, "to put an
end to this unanimous concert of malicious rumors and false estimations.
In truth, the emperor, in explaining frankly to the sovereigns united at
Baden how his policy never conflicted with right and justice, carried to
minds equally distinguished and equally exempt from prejudices, the
conviction which does not fail to be inspired by a true sentiment
expressed with loyalty." It appeared, however, that the conviction had
not worked completely on the prejudices, for, at the close of the
reunion of Baden, there was another at Toeplitz, between the Emperor of
Austria and the Prince Regent of Prussia, where they agreed on a third
which was to be held at Warsaw with the Emperor of Russia,--and the
czar accepted the _rendezvous_.
"It is not a coalition, it is a reconciliation which I am going to make
at Warsaw," declared the Emperor Alexander II. to the French ambassador,
the Duke of Montebello, whose government was naturally much agitated by
the turn affairs were taking. In truth, conciliating expressions were
not wanting in the dispatch by which Prince Gortchakof "invited the
French government to let him know in what measure it thought that it
would be able to second the efforts which Russia was making to prevent
_the crisis with which Europe was menaced_;" but, however polite these
forms were, they did not hide a necessity for explanation. The cabinet
of the Tuileries replied by a memorandum in which it gave, above all,
"the categoric engagement not to give any support to Piedmont in case
that Austria should be attacked in Venetia." The cabinets of Vienna and
Berlin made their remarks on several points of the French memorandum,
and addressed them ... to the Russian vice-chancellor, who transmitted
them to Paris, with the request for new explanations more explicit and
more reassuring. Sum total, no positive result came from this meeting of
the three sovereigns of the North, who had for a moment caused very
grave apprehensions in France. This was because the Emperor Alexander
had gone to Warsaw only in a particular interest; he did not wish to
make a coalition nor a reconciliation there; he simply wished to show
his influence: to give a demonstration of his power. He was flattered at
seeing these sovereigns, these German princes, coming to the former
capital of Poland to deliberate there on the general situation, and to
receive the word of command: that recalled the good days of the Emperor
Nicholas. On the other side, Russia was very much pleased at making
France feel the whole price of its friendship, at making it understand
that its services had now a much greater value, perhaps even their
tariff. The clever productions which emanated successively in these
years 1856-1860 from the chancellor's office at St. Petersburg,
indicated in a very plastic manner the continually ascending advance of
Russia since the peace of Paris. In the first of these celebrated
circulars, it declared "that it did not sulk, but meditated;" in the
second, on the occasion of the Italian complications, it already emerged
"from the reserve which it had imposed on itself since the war of the
Crimea." After the annexation of Savoy "its conscience warned it of
being any longer silent on the unhappy state of the Christians in the
Orient, etc." At last, in the month of October, 1860, it was the
mouth-piece of the general interests of Europe, the intermediary which
demanded explanations from the cabinets of the Tuileries. A modest
_protege_ of France, and full of "reserves" until the war in Italy, it
ascends in 1859 to the rank of a "precious friend," to become after the
interview of Warsaw the important and almost indispensable ally,--an
ally very resolute in not accepting a secondary _role_, in guarding its
position of marked influence, in taking for itself a large part in the
great combinations of the future.
Assuredly the desultory, undecisive, and eternally contradictory policy
of the Emperor Napoleon III. played into the hands of Russia. But it is
just to acknowledge that Prince Gortchakof allowed no chance of fortune
to escape, and that without creating the events, he understood admirably
how to profit by them. The superiority of the statesman always reveals
itself by the measure which he preserves in his "cordiality" and even in
his vengeance, by the foreseeing mind which he does not cease to
preserve even in the midst of the allurements of success. It is not
doubtful for instance that the warnings of Russia after the battle of
Solferino, the fears which it then suddenly expressed of not being able
longer to restrain Germany in its ardor to go to the rescue of Austria,
contributed greatly to the hasty peace of Villafranca, and, however
fatal this event was as regards the interests of France and even of
Austria, one cannot deny that Russia accomplished its purpose perfectly.
In fact, the complete execution of the programme "of the Alps to the
Adriatic" would have probably given an entirely different turn to the
Italian affairs, would certainly have rendered possible in the future a
sincere reconciliation between France and Austria, while the half drawn
solution by the peace of Villafranca, leaving all the questions in
suspense, could only embitter the relations of the two belligerents, and
render the friendship of Russia more precious to France. On the other
side, this campaign of Lombardy, while giving satisfaction to the
Muscovite hatred sprung from the war of the Orient, was still far from
destroying one of the fundamental elements of the traditional policy of
the czars as regards Germany. In spite of the loss of Milan, Austria
preserved its position intact in the centre of Europe, was a balance for
Prussia, and the interview of Warsaw proved that the Russian influence
among the Germanic States had certainly not decreased.
Not less circumspect and skillful did the Russian vice-chancellor show
himself in not compromising too far in his connivances with the Emperor
Napoleon III. during these years 1856-1860, certain general principles
of preservation which had made the greatness and strength of the reign
of Nicholas. Without doubt, in Servia, in the Danubian Principalities,
Alexander Mikhailovitch was not of a vigorous orthodoxy, and allowed
popular votes to annul there the arrangements stipulated by the
treaties; but in comparison with those countries of the Orient Russia
has always allowed itself many political licenses. In the affairs of the
Occident, on the contrary, Prince Gortchakof took care to remain as far
as possible in the traditions and not to overturn too much in the "new
right." He let the journals and periodicals of Moscow and St. Petersburg
plume themselves at their ease on what Russia boldly contributed to the
deliverance of the peoples and to the triumph of nationalities; for
himself, in the documents dated at his office, he refrained carefully
from all these neologisms and persevered in the terminology consecrated
by the old diplomatic language. In these documents he had not spoken at
all of the national aspirations nor of the popular votes, when Milan and
Savoy changed masters; in the eyes of the Russian vice-chancellor, all
these were simply facts of war, "regular transactions." Still less did
he care to make the revolutionary propaganda abroad and to associate
himself in the commerce of exportation which, according to a malicious
remark of those days, Napoleon III. had undertaken with liberal ideas.
He declined categorically all participation in the remonstrances
addressed to the King of Naples, and declared in his circular of the 22d
September, 1856, "that to wish to obtain from a sovereign concessions as
to the internal government of his states in a comminatory manner or by
menacing demonstrations, was to substitute one's self violently on one's
own authority, to govern in his place, and to proclaim without disguise
the right of the strong over the weak." Lastly, in his famous note to
Prince Gagarine of the 10th October, 1860, he took up the Sardinian
government roundly for its conduct in Emilia, Tuscany, the Duchies of
Parma and Modena, and strongly opposed the deposal of these princes and
the annexations of those provinces, which six years later he was to
tolerate, even favor in Germany. "It is no longer," he said in the
dispatch to Prince Gagarine, "a question of Italian interests, but of
general interests, common to all governments, it is a question which is
directly connected with those eternal laws without which, neither order,
peace, nor security can exist in Europe." Finally, he sneered at those
Jenners of politics who recommend the vaccination of anarchy to remove
from it its pernicious character, and who pretend to remove the arms
from the demagogy in appropriating to themselves its baggage; "the
necessity in which the Sardinian government pretends to be situated in
combating anarchy does not justify it, since _it only moves with the
revolution to recover by it its heritage_." In a word, the Russian
vice-chancellor profited with prodigious dexterity by the good
disposition of France and still more by its errors, without ever
sacrificing the will, the decorum, and the principles of his own
government to it. He made use of the Emperor Napoleon III. without using
him too much, and above all without ever subjecting himself to an order
of ideas in which Russia could find any deception. For the good of
Russia, for the happiness of Europe, it would have been desirable for
Prince Gortchakof to have observed later, in his intimacy with Prussia,
a little of that care and that intelligent egotism which he gave proof
of in such a superior manner in his intimacy with France. "To love,
there must be two," said the great theologian of the Middle Ages on the
subject that those centuries of faith called divine love, the relations
of the human soul with its heavenly Creator. The precept is assuredly
much more to be recommended in the much less mystical relations between
the powers of the earth, and the Russian vice-chancellor did not forget
it during that first period of his ministry, during those years of
"cordiality" with the cabinet of the Tuileries. It was only during the
second period that the heart of Alexander Mikhailovitch began to control
the right of the state, and that the love for M. de Bismarck proved to
be stronger than the world, stronger even than Russia and its interests.
II.
While Prince Gortchakof thus reaped the fruits of his "French" policy,
among which that of vengeance on Austria was surely not the least sweet
or pleasant, his former colleague of Frankfort, having become
representative of Prussia at the court of Russia, was consumed at his
side by the languishing fever of a man of action trammeled by foolish
probity. He had arrived at St. Petersburg in the spring of the year
1859, three months after the famous birthday reception given to M. de
Huebner by the Emperor Napoleon III.; the Italian complications were
about to break out, and the Russian vice-chancellor lent himself to all
those diplomatic tricks which, according to the desire of the cabinet of
the Tuileries, would drive the Emperor Francis Joseph to a declaration
of war. The new plenipotentiary of Prussia at the court of St.
Petersburg had not a moment of doubt concerning the bearing which his
government should observe in circumstances so propitious. It was from
this time (12th May, 1859) that his confidential dispatch to M. de
Schleinitz dates, in which he recommends the rupture with the _Bund_,
the radical proceeding by sword and fire, _ferro et igne_. In the
preceding year, during a journey to Paris, he had occasion to have an
interview with the Emperor of the French, and to recognize his good will
toward Prussia, and the unqualified wishes which were expressed in the
Tuileries for the greatness and the prosperity of the country of
Frederick II. and of Bluecher. In the month of November of that same year
1858, Napoleon III. had charged the Marquis Pepoli, then _en route_ for
Berlin, to represent to the Hohenzollern all the advantages which he
would find in a rupture with Austria: "In Germany," the Emperor of the
French had said, "Austria represents the past, Prussia represents the
future; in linking itself to Austria, Prussia condemns itself to
immobility; it cannot be thus contented; it is called to a higher
fortune; it should accomplish in Germany the great destinies which await
it, and which Germany awaits from it."[31] Thus thought the future
prisoner of Wilhelmshoehe on the eve of Magenta and Solferino, and "his
excellency the lieutenant" certainly found no objections in such a
magnificent programme. But those good ministers of the _new era_ at
Berlin unfortunately had not the slightest notion of the "new right,"
and up to the prince regent himself, they did not cease to speak of
conquests purely _moral_. They even asked one another at Potsdam if they
should not assist Austria, and whether they did not have federal
obligations towards the Emperor Francis Joseph! The Samson of the Mark
strove in vain against the ties which the "Philistines of the Spree"
imposed on him, and the war in Italy became his Dalila: in fact, it was
from this epoch that the renowned boldness of the present chancellor of
Germany dates.
It is interesting to study, in the confidential letters to Malvina, the
state of mind of M. de Bismarck during these years 1859-1860. At the
commencement of hostilities, and evidently despairing of seeing his
government adopt the line of conduct which he had not ceased to
recommend, he left his post, went to Moscow to visit the Kremlin, passed
an agreeable day in a villa, so much more agreeable "when one has the
feeling of being sheltered from the telegraph." The news of a great
battle fought in Lombardy (Magenta) caused him, nevertheless, to return
to St. Petersburg. "Perhaps there will be something for the diplomats to
do." At St. Petersburg, he learns of the strange desire at Berlin of
interceding for Austria, of mobilizing the federal armies, and from it
he conceived the greatest apprehensions for his country. He became ill.
A very grave case of hepatitis endangered his life seriously. "They
covered my body with innumerable cupping glasses large as saucers, with
mustard poultices and quantities of blisters, and I was already half way
to a better world when I began to convince my doctors that my nerves
were disordered by eight years of griefs and excitement without
intermission (the eight years of Frankfort!), and that by continuing to
weaken me, they would lead me into typhoid fever or imbecility. My good
constitution ended by conquering, thanks, above all, to several dozen
bottles of good wine."
His good disposition did not the less remain dull and morose, and two
months later he avowed that he would not have been sorry to have ended
his life then. Austria was vanquished, it is true; she had lost two
great battles and one of the richest provinces; but Prussia had not
drawn any material, palpable advantage from this disaster of the
Hapsburg, and the cavalier of the Mark was not the man to cherish, like
his friend Alexander Mikhailovitch, a purely Platonic hatred. He
consoled himself, however, by the thought that the peace of Villafranca
was only a truce: "to wish in the present state of affairs to seriously
reconcile Austria with France, is to labor at the squaring of the
circle." "I shall endeavor," he wrote at the approach of autumn, 1859,
"to cower in my bear-skin, and to bury myself in the snow; in the thaw
of next May, I will see what remains of me and our affairs; if too
little I shall definitely settle with politics." The following month of
May brought grave events; the annexation of Savoy became the signal for
the greatest distrust in Europe, of which we have spoken above: but the
cabinet of Berlin persisted in its ancient course, and the prince regent
had, in July, an interview with the Emperor Francis Joseph at Toeplitz.
"I learn," wrote the representative of Prussia at the court of St.
Petersburg with undisguised spite, "that we have been shaved at
Toeplitz, splendidly shaved; we have let ourselves be taken in by the
Viennese good nature. And all that for nothing, not even the smallest
plate of lentils." At last, in the month of October, after Castelfidardo
and the conquest of the kingdom of Naples, the cabinet of Berlin
addressed an energetic note to M. de Cavour, on the bearing of the House
of Savoy on the Italian peninsula. The note established that "it is
solely in the legal manner of reforms, and in respecting the existing
rights, that a regular government is allowed to realize the legitimate
wishes of nations," and closes by the following passage: "Called to
express ourselves on the acts and principles of the Sardinian
government, we can only deplore them profoundly, and we believe that we
are fulfilling a rigorous duty by expressing in the most explicit and
formal manner our disapprobation, both of those principles and of the
application which has been thought could be made of them." One can
imagine what bad humor such _naivetes_ would cause to the future
destroyer of the _Bund_, to the future spoliator of Denmark, of Hanover,
and so many other states. He again thought of leaving the career; he
resolved in any case to "cling to the situation of an observer," as
regards the monstrous policy which was pursued at Berlin. He is
perfectly astonished at the scandal which is caused on the banks of the
Spree by the publication of the posthumous journal of M. de Varnhagen, a
journal full of piquant revelations concerning the court of Prussia.
"Why be so indignant. Is it not taken from life? Varnhagen is vain and
_mechant_, but who is not? Does it not all depend on the manner in which
nature has ripened our lives? According to what we have suffered from
the bites of worms, from dampness, or from the sun, behold us sweet,
sour, or rotten."
That did not hinder him, however, from carefully cultivating, during
these years 1859-1860, his relations with the political world of St.
Petersburg from taking root there, and from attaching by a thousand ties
the fortune of his country to this friendship of Russia, of which he
understood all the value. The position of the representatives of Prussia
has always been exceptional at St. Petersburg; thanks to the near
relationship of the two courts, they enjoyed in the winter palace a
confidence and intimacy which the envoys of other states scarcely ever
obtained there. M. de Bismarck was able to add to these favorable
conditions the influence of his personal merit, and the good reputation
which he had acquired, in a Russian point of view, during his long
sojourn at Frankfort. His former journeys in Courland had made him
known and liked by the German nobility of the Baltic Provinces, by the
Keyserlingk, the Uxkuell, the Nolde, the Bruvern, etc., always so
influential at court, in the chancellor's office, and in Russian
diplomacy. "The first prophets of the future greatness of M. de
Bismarck," says an author very _au fait_ in the society of St.
Petersburg, "the first who predicted the providential mission which was
reserved for him in Germany, were perhaps those barons of Courland and
Livonia with whom the present chancellor of Germany had so often passed
the hunting season, shared their amusements, their banquets, and their
political conversations."[32] The representative of Prussia at the court
of St. Petersburg took care, however, not to give himself up too much to
this liking for the Courlanders and Livonians; he was careful to place
in his affections, or at least in his demonstrations, the greatest part
in Russian Russia, autochthonal Muscovy (_nastaiastchaia_). This
enthusiasm for the customs and genius of the "Scythians," this love for
the "bear-skin and caviare," was it very sincere? We may perhaps doubt
it; it is allowable to suppose that the man who, in the name of his
Germanic superiority, has so often and boldly expressed his disdain for
the _Welches_ and Latins, feels at bottom a still greater contempt for
that Sclavic race which every good German makes rhyme with slave
(_slave-esclave_).[33] However that may be, never did foreign
ambassador on the banks of the Neva have so much devotion as the
cavalier of the Mark for the polar stars, or pushed as far as he did the
passion of local color. He pushed it so far as to introduce into his
house several little bears which (as formerly the foxes at Kniephof)
came, at the dinner hour, bounding into the dining hall, agreeably
deranging the _convives_, licking the hand of their master, and "biting
the calves of the servants' legs."[34] A worthy Nimrod, he never missed
an expedition against the black king of the boreal forests; he did not
fail to don on these occasions the Muscovite hunting costume, and the
team of horses _a la Russe_ has remained dear to him up to the present,
and even in the streets of Berlin. He also affected to interest himself
greatly in the literary movement of the country; he had a Russian
professor in his house, and he learned enough of it to be able to give
his orders to those people in their native idiom, even to delightfully
surprise one day the Emperor Alexander with some phrases pronounced in
the language of Pouchkine.
The Russians could not help giving a most cordial reception to a
diplomat who showed himself so taken with their usages and customs, with
their pleasures and their "peculiarities," and who, moreover, had the
advantage of succeeding to that good M. de Werther, whose reputation,
neither there nor anywhere else, was exactly that of a too hilarious
character. On the contrary, they had never known on the banks of the
Neva a Prussian as gay as this excellent M. de Bismarck, as good a
fellow, as good a liver, having a loud laugh, coarse jests, and a witty
speech. He indulged in all sorts of pleasantries at the expense of the
"Philistines of the Spree," the "old fogies of Potsdam," which gave him
no small success: a minister plenipotentiary slandering his own
government, a grumbling, fault-finding diplomat in the very political
sphere which he had the mission to represent and to second, that was an
originality which could be appreciated by a world always on the watch
for the _piquant_ and pleasing. He knew how to please the empress-mother
Helen, whose influence at court was considerable, and whose warm support
never failed him in consequence, in the most grave moments of his career
as minister. The emperor had conceived a great affection for him,
invited him regularly to his bear hunts, and did him the honor of
admitting him in his _cortege_ during his journeys to Warsaw and Breslau
to meet the Prince Regent of Prussia. As for Prince Gortchakof, he
enjoyed more than ever the society of his former colleague of Frankfort,
and the _salons_ often repeated a malicious _mot, a mechant_ insinuation
of which Austria generally had to bear the brunt, and the paternity of
which they indifferently attributed first to one then to the other of
these two friends, grown inseparable, and whom spiteful intrigues
nevertheless wished to separate! At the end of 1859, M. de Bismarck
wrote in a confidential letter: "Austria and its dear confederates are
intriguing at Berlin to have me recalled from here: I am, however, very
amiable. God's will be done!"
At Berlin, in the mean time, they began little by little to glide down a
declivity, which would have caused Prussian politics to descend rapidly
from the cloudy regions of the _new era_ upon that ground of realities
and of action to which the tried friend of Alexander Mikhailovitch had
so long invited them, and, curiously enough, it was precisely the
mobilization of the Prussian army in 1859, the mobilization so condemned
by M. de Bismarck, which was the immediate cause of this sudden revival
fraught with incalculable consequences. It is fashionable now in France
to represent the Prussian government as having meditated for half a
century a war of revenge and conquest, slowly brightening their arms,
and training a succession of generations for the decisive hour of
combat. There is nothing more false, however. Neither the government of
Frederick William III., nor that of Frederick William IV. ever cherished
warlike projects, and even the humiliation of Olmuetz was not an
incentive to the minister of war at Berlin. The two predecessors of
William I. only sacrificed to the military spirit just that which was
necessary to insure them a stand among the great Powers, to hold
reviews, and to be able to speak of their faithful troops, and of their
always valiant swords; at bottom, they were not far from thinking like
the Grand Duke Constantine, the brother of the Emperor Nicholas, who one
day said naively: "I detest war, it spoils the armies!" The swords of
Bluecher and Scharnhorst were sheathed since 1815; even the adoption of
the needle gun in 1847 was only an accident, rather a scientific
experiment; in 1848 and 1849, the Prussian troops did not shine with
marvelous _eclat_ in the war of the Duchies, and were even miserably
held in check by the undisciplined bands of the insurrection of Posen
and Baden. The brother of the king, who had commanded the troops in
Baden, was grievously moved at the sight which his soldiers then
presented, and, having become regent of the kingdom (October, 1858), he
immediately turned his attention to military reform. Nevertheless it was
only the mobilization attempted during the Italian complications (in the
summer of 1859) which opened their eyes to all the grave inconveniences
and incoherencies of the organization till then in force. Two superior
men, MM. de Moltke and de Roon, joined with the prince regent in
remodeling the system from the very bottom. They displayed in it an
intelligence, an energy, and a rapidity without equal in history; they
knew how to profit by all the discoveries of science, and above all did
not let the great lesson escape them which a formidable civil war in
North America soon taught, a war so rich in experiments and inventions
of every kind. In spite of the obstacles which were thrown in their way
without cessation from all sides, these two men, at the end of six
years, produced an armed force, entirely new, powerful, invincible; and
"the instrument," still rough and rudimentary in 1860, proved its ill
omened "perfection" on the calamitous day of Sadowa! Not less erroneous
is the opinion, very generally spread, however, that the Prussian people
had demanded of its government victories and aggrandizement; to refute
these perfectly gratuitous suppositions, it suffices to remember that
the different parliaments of Berlin did not cease to oppose military
reform, and that they had on their side the almost unanimous voice of
the people. The ideas of German greatness, of German power, of the
German mission, haunt the imagination of professors and authors much
more than that of the people; they were academic themes, choice morsels
of rhetoric and opposition, still they are much more in vogue south of
the Main than north of this river,--and precisely there appears the
astounding art of M. de Bismarck in having known how, to speak with
Muenchausen, "to condense mists into stones of size for a gigantic
edifice," and to make of a dream of _savans_ a popular passion. The
force of will, the force of character, and in one word the genius, can
still, even in a century of democratic leveling and uniform mediocrity
play a _role_, of which our poor philosophy of history scarcely had a
suspicion, which drowns so skillfully all responsibility and initiative
in the blind fatality of the "masses," and, as a Teutonic proverb says,
cannot distinguish the trees on account of looking at the forest. Take
from the most recent history of Prussia three or four men who answer to
the names of William I., Moltke, Roon, and Bismarck, and the old
Barbarossa would very probably up to the present time have continued his
secular sleep in the cave of the Kyffhaeuser.
Nature delights as well in analogies as in contrasts, and it is thus
that the antecedents of this prince regent, who to-day bears the name of
William I., Emperor of Germany, does not fail to present some similarity
with the past of the extraordinary man, who, at the destined hour, was
to forge for him, _ferro et igne_, the imperial crown of Barbarossa. In
order to be enlightened concerning these antecedents, it is necessary
to turn to the posthumous "Journal" of M. Varnhagen von Ense,--the
liberal, crabbed Dangeau, compromising in the highest degree, amiable as
a whole, of the court of Berlin,--the same "Journal" whose defense we
have seen M. de Bismarck undertake in a confidential letter, against the
clamors which this publication had awakened in the capital of Prussia.
There is no doubt that Prince William made an energetic opposition to
the liberal desires which had signaled the _debuts_ of the reign of his
brother, King Frederick William IV. He had begun to work out at this
epoch _memoirs for consulting_ which established his right of _veto_ in
every amendment of the fundamental laws of the state. The rumor of a
formal protest in his name and in that of his descendants against every
project of constitution, found credit for a moment even in the heart of
the ministry; and under no conditions would he give his consent to the
feudal "charter" granted by his brother the 3d of February, 1847, except
on the express reservation that the States should not decide on the
budget, and should never occupy themselves with foreign affairs. And the
unpopularity of the heir presumptive was great before the revolution of
1848; during the fatal month of March of that year, it was against him
especially that the fury of the inhabitants of Berlin was let loose, who
attributed to him (and wrongly) the order given to the troops to fire on
the people. He was then forced to leave the country on a "mission" to
London, and the multitude did not forego the satisfaction of inscribing
on the palace of the fugitive the words of _national property_. Returned
from England after the appeasement of the revolutionary effervescence,
he placed himself, in 1849, at the head of the troops to stifle in Baden
a ridiculous insurrection, and feigned "important military operations,"
which kept him in the south of Germany, so as not to be present at the
solemn session of the 6th February, 1850, when King Frederick William
IV. took his oath to the definite statute.
Afterwards, however, especially towards the last years of the
disenchanted and morose reign of his brother, the Prince of Prussia
commenced to relax in his "reactionary" vigor, and especially made a
sufficiently marked opposition to the "pietist" influences at the court
of Potsdam. Affections and family considerations contributed also in
creating for the prince a peculiar situation. The esteem and tenderness
with which Frederick William IV. surrounded his wife did not always
console her for the sterility with which she was afflicted, and the
sight of a sister-in-law a happy mother of children destined for the
throne, probably to be called some day to occupy the throne, produced
coolness and irritation which the wife of the heir presumptive sharply
resented. The Princess Augusta was not of a disposition to bear certain
thrusts. Sprung from that House of Weimar which was always distinguished
by its taste for arts and pleasure, she early had her own acquaintances,
friendships, and a bearing sufficiently different from the ordinary way
of the court to resemble occasionally a divergence sought after with
intention. The wishes of the Princess Augusta did not fail to finally
exercise their influence on her husband, and the project, long nursed
by the august couple, realized at last in 1857, of uniting their eldest
son with the daughter of Queen Victoria, was regarded as the first
concession made to popular opinion. In fact, courtiers were not wanting
at Potsdam, the terrible M. de Varnhagen tells us, who asked in their
soul and conscience if it were quite worthy of the House of Hohenzollern
to ally itself by blood with a dynasty which was only half sovereign,
and held in dependence by a house of commons! How the times and customs
have changed at this court of Potsdam which last year saw the heiress
presumptive of the throne of Prussia and Germany, this same daughter of
Queen Victoria, send affectionate telegrams to Doctor Strauss when
dying, and render to the author of the "Life of Jesus" an homage _in
extremis_ which transported with enthusiasm all the valiant cavaliers of
the _combat of civilization_!
Habituated in a manner, and for several years already, to consider the
brother of the king as reconciled to modern ideas and favorable to the
cause of progress, the nation was much less astonished than charmed to
hear him, on his accepting the regency, use liberal and constitutional
language. A "new era" was to commence for Prussia; that word was almost
officially adopted to designate the change of system, and in a memorable
address, delivered on the 8th November, 1858, to the cabinet which he
had formed, the prince regent sketched the programme of a reparative
policy. He besought his councilors to bring about ameliorations in that
which was arbitrary or contrary to the wants of the epoch. While
defending himself against a dangerous _laisser aller_ towards liberal
ideas, and expressing the will "to courageously hinder that which has
not been promised," he did not the less proclaim the duty of keeping
with loyalty the contracted engagements, and of not hindering useful
reforms. The address ended with the phrase become celebrated, and since
then so frequently cited, "that Prussia should make '_moral conquests in
Germany_.'"
The harmony between the regent and the nation was not, however, of long
duration; the relations were not slow in cooling and proceeding towards
a complete rupture, thanks especially to the projected reform of the
army. The prince had this reform at heart: the wants of 1859 had only
convinced him of the absolute urgency of a measure with which his mind
had been occupied for many years; but the deputies of the nation refused
to follow him in this road, and opposed him tenaciously and firmly. They
did not understand the obstinacy which the prince displayed in a project
which answered neither to the wants nor to the aspirations of the
country, and they laughed at those who pretended that once in possession
of his new "instrument," the Hohenzollern, would _do great things_! They
had resisted judiciously, says a German author, the temptation of the
parliament of Frankfort in 1849, and the provocation of Olmuetz in 1850;
they had let pass the opportunities which the wars of 1854 and 1859
presented. The love of peace was absolute, there was a complete absence
of ambition, they were perfectly resigned to the political situation
which they occupied, and on the other side no one wished to admit that
a kingdom so peaceable could be menaced by neighbors. In such a state of
affairs, every aggrandizement of the army drawing after it an increase
of military and financial charges, already heavy enough for the
citizens, only seemed to the country an inconceivable caprice of its
rulers.[35] The chambers refused the demanded credit; the government
went its way and continued its expenditures. The military question thus
became a question of budget, and soon transformed itself into an
irremediable constitutional conflict. Towards the end of 1861, no other
remedy could be seen for the situation but a _coup d'etat_.
Not less profound and irresistible was soon the change in the ideas of
the court of Potsdam, as regarded the external policy. In proportion as
the "instrument" perfected itself (and it perfected itself rapidly), one
began to ask one's self about the most practical and fruitful employment
for it. One did not yet distinctly know what one wished, but one wished
it with strength, with the strength which one drew from the battalions
increasing without cessation. Assuredly one always saw nothing but moral
conquests in Germany, but one thought that a moral in action, aided
somewhat by needle guns, would give excellent results. The atmosphere
was charged with electricity and with the principles of nationality, and
it was not only the professors and orators of the _National Verein_ who
recommended a "united Germany with a Prussian point (_mit preussischer
Spitze_)." When, in the month of October, 1860, the envoy of Prussia,
Count Brassier de Saint-Simon, read to Count Cavour the famous note of
M. de Schleinitz against the Italian annexations, the president of the
Sardinian council listened in silence to the harangue, then expressed
his great regret at having displeased the government of Berlin on this
point, but declared that he consoled himself with the thought that
"Prussia would one day, thanks to Piedmont, profit by the example which
he had given it." In France, the journals of the democratic authority,
the devoted organs of the "new right," did not cease to praise the
"Piedmontese mission" of the House of Hohenzollern, and we have recalled
above the encouragements which Napoleon III. sent to Berlin after 1858.
The visit made by King William I.[36] to the Emperor of the French at
Compiegne in the month of October, 1861, was in this respect a symptom
more significant, since none of the sovereigns of the North had till
then given this mark of courtesy to the choice of universal suffrage.
Strange rumors began to spread concerning the alliance of the three
courts of the Tuileries, of St. Petersburg, and of Berlin, and they
continued up to the month of March, 1863. Publications of mysterious
origin, but which denoted a very specious knowledge of political
affairs, spoke of the "_great combination of states_ summing up in three
races,--the Roman, Germanic, and Sclavic,--to which corresponded three
centres of gravity, France, Prussia, and Russia, and of the definite
establishment of the peace of the world by means of a _triple alliance
of universal monarchies_, in which their full expression (_Abschluss_)
would not only find the three principal races of the European system,
but also the three great Christian churches!"[37] Lord Palmerston
declared at this very epoch in parliament, with his Britannic
_desinvolture_, "that the situation seemed pregnant with at least half a
dozen respectable wars;" and in spite of the obscurity which still
covers the transactions of the years 1861-1862, it is not doubtful that
Napoleon III. had then occasionally brought up in his scheming mind a
combination embracing at once the Orient and the Occident, a combination
as vague as gigantic, and of which Prince Gortchakof prepared to profit
with his tried dexterity. Whatever these shadowy projects were, the
Hohenzollern had only to be satisfied with his sojourn at Compiegne,
which he was to recall with a certain tenderness two years later in his
polite reply to the invitation of the Congress. In October, 1861,
Napoleon III., at Compiegne, probably made use of no other language than
that which he had used in 1858 at Berlin by the mediation of the Marquis
Pepoli, the fatidical language, "on the great destinies which awaited
Prussia in Germany, and which Germany expected from it."
It was thus that the difficulties from within and the facilities from
without, the parliamentary conflicts in the interior and the political
constellations in the exterior united, towards the end of 1861, in
equally urging the King of Prussia to energetic resolutions. A man of
vigor was wanted for the vigorous actions which were projected, and the
glances naturally fell on that grumbling diplomat at St. Petersburg,
who, for so many years already, had not ceased to criticise the
ministers of the _new era_, and to blame their conduct from without as
well as from within. In spite of the promise which he had given "to
confine himself to his situation as an observer," M. de Bismarck had not
failed from time to time to give a thrust during those years 1860 and
1861, and to repeat without cessation the precept of Strafford, the
precept of thorough (_a outrance!_). We see him during these years
making very frequent journeys to Germany, seeking opportunities of
meeting the head of the state, of conversing with him on his ideas and
presenting him various memoirs. In October, 1861, on the very eve of the
journey to Compiegne, he submitted to him a little project, from which
he expected some success, and of which it is not so difficult in fact to
imagine the tenor, when, above all, one takes care to study a
confidential letter written by him a few days before (18th September,
1861), and directed entirely against a political programme which the
conservative party in Prussia had published. In this curious letter he
rises with violence against the _Bund_, "the hot-bed of particularism,"
demands "a (_straffer_) firmer concentration of the armed forces of
Germany, and a more natural configuration of the frontiers of the
States;" but, above all, he puts his party on guard against _the
dangerous fiction of a solidarity which would exist between all the
conservative interests_. To triumph over this "dangerous fiction"
strongly rooted in certain minds, there was in truth the great
difficulty for the future minister of William I., his _omne tulit
punctum_, for it is not so easy in this order of things to well
distinguish between reality and fiction; it is perhaps even perilous to
discuss them, and a Retz would certainly have said of the conservative
interests what he so finely remarked of the right of peoples and of that
of kings, "that they never agree so well together as in silence." M. de
Bismarck was once more obliged to combat this "fiction" at Berlin as at
St. Petersburg, and if the mind as open as subtle of his friend
Alexander Mikhailovitch allowed itself most often to be convinced
without too much assistance, it was not the same with the Hohenzollern,
who, afterwards, on many an occasion, and in decisive moments, was to
feel the scruples, the shudders, and what Falstaff calls the "tertian
fevers of conscience."
On the return of William I. from Compiegne, the nomination of the
cavalier of the Mark to the direction of affairs was already a
well-arranged and fixed matter. M. de Bismarck soon afterwards came to
assist at the coronation of the king at Koenigsberg, and he only
returned to St. Petersburg to take leave definitely. At the beginning of
the month of May, 1862, he was again at Berlin; at the great military
parade which was held in the capital on the occasion of the unveiling of
the statue of Count de Brandenburg (17th May), the political men, the
deputies, and the high functionaries of state looked upon him already as
the future "Polignac" of Prussia. The fears and the hopes which such a
provision excited were not, however, so soon to be realized, and the
world was somewhat perplexed in suddenly learning that M. de Bismarck
was to be appointed to the post in Paris. Did he still hesitate to take
charge of the burden of power, and did he in any case prefer to await
the result of the new elections which were to be held in Prussia? It is
more probable that before inaugurating his government of combat he
wished to add some new conversations to those which were held at
Compiegne, to take once again the measure of the man on whom a then
universal belief made the destinies of Europe depend, and to prepare in
general the minds in France for the new policy which he was to
inaugurate.
He only remained at Paris two months, during the two delightful months
of May and June, but this short stay sufficed for him both to complete
his studies and to throw light on his religion. He had more than one
conversation with the sovereign of France, whose profound ideas every
one exalted at this time, commented _ad infinitum_ on the smallest
words, admired even his silence, and whom he, however, the future
conqueror of Sedan, did not hesitate in his confidential effusions to
define even then as "a great unrecognized incapacity." He saw also the
influential men in the government, and in society, and strove to rally
them to his ideas and his projects. He did not conceal that his
sovereign would not delay to appeal to him, and he exposed without a
_detour_ the line of conduct which he would adopt on such an occurrence.
What history will perhaps most admire in the present chancellor of
Germany, will be the supreme art with which he sometimes handled the
truth: this man of genius has understood how to give to frankness
itself all the political virtues of knavishness. Very artful and very
cunning as to the means, he has nevertheless always been, as regards the
goal which he pursued, of a _desinvolture_, of an indiscretion without
equal, and it was thus that he had at Paris in 1862 those astonishing
and confidential conferences which only amused and which should have
made them reflect.[38]
France,--said M. de Bismarck then and since, in 1862 as in 1864 and
1865, every time that he conversed with any of the political men from
the banks of the Seine,--France would be wrong in taking umbrage at the
increase in Prussian influence, and, the case occurring, at its
territorial aggrandizement at the cost of the small States. Of what
utility, of what help are then those small States, without a will,
without strength, without an army? However far the designs and wants of
Prussia could reach, they would necessarily stop at the Main; the line
of the Main is its natural frontier; beyond that river, Austria will
guard it, even its preponderance will increase, and there will thus
always be in Germany two powers balancing one another. Good order will
gain, and certainly France will lose nothing there, it will even draw
immense advantages for its politics, for its movement in the world. In
fact Prussia has an unfortunate, impossible configuration; _it wants a
stomach_ on the side of Cassel and Nassau, _it has a dislocated
shoulder_ on the side of Hanover, it is in the air, and this painful
situation necessarily condemns it to follow entirely the policy of
Vienna and St. Petersburg, to turn without rest in the orbit of the holy
alliance. Better outlined, planted more solidly, having its members
complete, it would be itself again, would have freedom of movements, the
_freedom of alliances_, and what alliance more desirable for it than
that with the French Empire? More than one q
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