The Hohenzollern Candidature.
One week later, not only M. Ollivier and Lord Granville, but Europe, nay, the whole world, saw plainly enough the signs and portents of discord and convulsion. On the 3rd of July the Duc de Gramont learned from the French Minister at Madrid that Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, with his own full consent, had been selected as a candidate for the vacant throne of Spain, and that, at no distant date, the Cortes would be formally requested to elect him. The French Government quivered with indignation, and the political atmosphere of Paris became hot with rage. Not that the former were unfamiliar with the suggestion. It had been made in 1869, considered, and apparently abandoned. Indeed, the Emperor himself had, at one time, when he failed to obtain the Rhenish provinces, proposed that they should be formed into a State to be ruled by the King of Saxony, and at another, that the Sovereign should be the Hereditary Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen; the very Prince put forward by Marshal Prim. He had been grievously hampered and perplexed in the choice of a Sovereign of Spain by some Powers, especially by France; but now the Imperial Government turned the whole tide of its resentment, not upon Madrid, but Berlin, which, it was assumed, aimed at establishing an enemy to France beyond the Pyrenees. Explanations were demanded directly from the Prussian Government, but M. Le Sourd, the chargé d’affaires, could extract no other answer than this—that the Prussian Government knew nothing about the matter. The Duc de Gramont, who had succeeded Lavalette, in May, as Minister for Foreign Affairs, regarded the statement as a subterfuge, and forthwith determined to fasten on the King a responsibility which he could not fasten on the Government. The Duc de Gramont was not a wise counsellor; he was deep in negotiations having for their object an offensive and defensive alliance against Prussia, and he was hardly less moved by a noisy external opinion than by his own political passions. He ordered M. Benedetti, who had only just sought repose at Wildbad, to betake himself at once to Ems, whither King William, according to custom, had repaired to drink the waters. The French Ambassador reached the pleasant village on the Lahn late at night on the 8th of July, and the next day began a series of interviews with the King, which take rank among the most curious examples of diplomacy recorded in history.
Before the ambassador could commence his singular task, an event had occurred in Paris which seemed to render a war unavoidable. The politicians of the French capital had become feverish with excitement. Not only did a species of delirium afflict the immediate advisers of the Emperor, but the band of expectants, who, more ardent Imperialists than he was, still believed that nothing could withstand the French army; while the opposition, loving France not less, but what they called liberty more, were eager to take advantage of an incident which seemed likely to throw discredit on the Bonapartes. Wisdom would have prevented, but party tactics demanded a movement in the Chamber which took the innocent-looking form of an inquiry. The Government dreaded, yet could not evade, the ordeal, and M. Cochery put his question on the 6th of July. Had the Duc de Gramont been a clever Minister, or had he represented a Government strongly rooted in the national respect and affection, he would have been able to deliver a colourless response, if he could not have based a refusal to answer upon public grounds. The truth is, he was carried off his feet by the sudden storm which raged through the journals and society, and it may be surmised that, even then, despite the plébiscite, fears for the stability of the dynasty had no small share in determining his conduct. Yet, it must be stated, that he was only one of the Council of Ministers who sanctioned the use of language which read, and still reads, like an indirect declaration of war. After expressing sympathy with Spain, and asserting, what was not true, that the Imperial Government had observed a strict neutrality with regard to the several candidates for the crown, he struck a note of defiance: “We do not believe,” he exclaimed, “that respect for the rights of a neighbouring people obliges us to endure that a foreign State, by placing one of its princes on the throne of Charles V., should be able to derange, to our injury, the balance of power in Europe, and to imperil the interests and honour of France.” The pacific sentences uttered by M. Ollivier on this memorable occasion were forgotten; the trumpet-blast of the Duc de Gramont rang through the world, and still rings in the memory. Prussia was not named by the Minister, but everyone beyond the Rhine knew who was meant by the “German people,” and a “foreign Power;” while, as Benedetti has stated in a private despatch to Gramont, the King deeply felt it as a “provocation.”
Not the least impressive characteristic of these proceedings is the hot haste in which they hurried along. M. Benedetti neither in that respect nor in the swiftness and doggedness which he imparted to the negotiations, is to blame. The impulse and the orders came from Paris; he somewhat tempered the first, but he obeyed the second with zeal, and, without overstepping the limits of propriety in the form, he did not spare the King in the substance of his demands. Nor, in the first instance, were they other than those permitted by diplomatic precedent; afterwards they certainly exceeded these limits. The first was that the King himself should press Prince Leopold to withdraw his consent: indeed, direct him so to do. The answer was that, as King, he had nothing to do with the business; that as head of the Hohenzollern family he had been consulted, and had not encouraged or opposed the wish of the Prince to accept the proffered crown; that he would still leave him entire freedom to act as he pleased, but that his Majesty would communicate with Prince Antoine, the father of Prince Leopold, and learn his opinion. With this reply, unable to resist the plea for delay, the ambassador had perforce to be content. Not so the Imperial Government. The Duc de Gramont sent telegram on telegram to Ems, urging Benedetti to transmit an explicit answer from the King, saying that he had ordered Prince Leopold to give up the project, and alleging, as a reason for haste, that the French could not wait longer, since Prussia might anticipate them by calling out the army. The ambassador, to check this hurry, prudently warned his principals, saying, that if they ostentatiously prepared for war, then the calamity would be inevitable. “If the King,” wrote De Gramont, on the 10th of July, “will not advise the Prince to renounce his design—well, it is war at once, and in a few days we shall be on the Rhine.” And so on from hour to hour. A little wearied, perhaps, by the pertinacity of the ambassador, and nettled by the attempt to fix on him the responsibility for the Spanish scheme, the King at length said that he looked every moment for an answer from Sigmaringen, which he would transmit without delay. It is impossible, in a few sentences, to give the least idea of the terrier-like obstinacy displayed by M. Benedetti in attacking the King. Indeed, it grew to be almost a persecution, so thoroughly did he obey his importunate instructions. At length the King was able to say that Prince Antoine’s answer would arrive on the 13th, and the ambassador felt sure of a qualified success, inasmuch as he would obtain the Prince’s renunciation, sanctioned by King William. But, while he was writing his despatch, a new source of vexation sprang up in Paris—the Spanish Ambassador, Señor Olozaga, announced to the Duc de Gramont the fact that Prince Antoine, on behalf of his son, had notified at Madrid the withdrawal of his pretensions to the crown. It was reasonably assumed that, having attained the object ostensibly sought, the French Government would be well content with a diplomatic victory so decisive, and would allow M. Benedetti to rest once more at Wildbad. He himself held stoutly that the “satisfaction” accorded to the wounded interests and honour of France was not insufficient. The Emperor and the Duc de Gramont thought otherwise, because, as yet, no positive defeat had been inflicted, personally, upon King William. The Foreign Minister, therefore, obeying precise instructions from St. Cloud, directed Benedetti to see the King at once, and demand from him a plain declaration that he would not, at any future time, sanction any similar proposal coming from Prince Leopold. The Duc de Gramont’s mind was so constructed that, at least a year afterwards, he did not regard this demand as an ultimatum! Yet how could the King, and still more Bismarck, take it in any other light? Early on the 13th the King, who saw the ambassador in the public garden, advanced to meet him, and it was there that he refused, point blank, Louis Napoleon’s preposterous and uncalled-for request, saying that he neither could nor would bind himself in an engagement without limit of time, and applying to every case; but that he should reserve his right to act according to circumstances. King William brought this interview to a speedy close, and M. Benedetti saw him no more except at the railway station when he started for Coblenz. Persistency had reached and stepped over the limits of the endurable, and King William could not do more than send an aide-de-camp with a courteous message, giving M. Benedetti authority to say officially that Prince Leopold’s recent resolution had his Majesty’s approval. During the day the ambassador repeated, unsuccessfully, his request for another audience; and this dramatic episode ended on the 13th with the departure of the King, who had pushed courtesy to its utmost bounds.
During that eventful 13th of July Count Bismarck, recently arrived in Berlin from Pomerania, had seen and had spoken to Lord Augustus Loftus in language which plainly showed how steadfastly he kept his grip on the real question, which was that France sought to gain an advantage over “Prussia,” as some kind of compensation for Königgrätz. The Duc de Gramont also conversed with Lord Lyons in Paris, and induced him to set in motion Lord Granville, from whose ingenious brain came forth a plausible compromise wholly unsuitable to the exigency, and promptly rejected at Berlin, but having an air of fairness which made it look well in the pages of a Blue Book. It was a last effort on the part of diplomacy, and served well enough to represent statesmanship as it was understood by the Cabinet to which Lord Granville belonged. On the evening of that day Count Bismarck entertained at dinner General von Moltke and General von Roon; and the host read aloud to them a telegram from Ems, giving an account of what had occurred, and the royal authority to make the story public. “Both Generals,” writes Dr. Moritz Busch, “regarded the situation as still peaceful. The Chancellor observed—that would depend a good deal upon the tone and contents of the publication he had just been authorized to make. In the presence of his two guests he then put together some extracts from the telegram, which were forthwith despatched to all the Prussian Legations abroad, and to the Berlin newspapers in the following form:—‘Telegram from Ems, July 13th, 1870. When the intelligence of the Hereditary Prince of Hohenzollern’s renunciation was communicated by the Spanish to the French Government, the French Ambassador demanded of His Majesty the King, at Ems, that the latter should authorize him to telegraph to Paris that His Majesty would pledge himself for all time to come never again to give his consent, should the Hohenzollerns hark back to their candidature. Upon this His Majesty refused to receive the French Ambassador again, and sent the aide-de-camp in attendance to tell him that His Majesty had nothing further to communicate to the Ambassador.’”
Substantially, it was the grotesque pile of misrepresentation built up on this blunt telegram—M. Benedetti read it next morning in the “Cologne Gazette,” and took no exception whatever to the brief and exact narrative it contained—which set the Parisians on fire. Travestied in many ways by calculating politicians, as well as gossips, the message became a “Note,” or a “despatch,” imputing the extreme of intentional rudeness to King William, and imposing the depth of humiliation, publicly inflicted, upon France through her representative, who, all the time, was not only unconscious of any insult, but emphatic in his acknowledgments of the King’s courtesy, kindness, and patience. Probably Count Bismarck wrote his telegram for Germany, but its effect in satisfying the Fatherland, was not greater than its influence upon the fiery French, who never read the text until months afterwards, and in July, 1870, were set a-flame by the distorted versions freely supplied by rumour’s forked tongue.