The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville

by Alexis de Tocqueville

While giving a lesson to Falloux, I was none the less anxious and embarrassed as to the part I was called upon to play. I cared little for what would happen at Vienna; for in this business I credited Austria merely with the position of a satellite. But what would the Tsar do, who had involved himself so rashly and, apparently, so irrevocably in his relations towards the Sultan, and whose pride had been put to so severe a test by our threats? Fortunately I had two able agents at St Petersburg and Vienna, to whom I could explain myself without reserve.

"Take up the business very gently," I recommended them,[34] "be careful not to set our adversaries' self-esteem against us, avoid too great and too ostensible an intimacy with the English Ambassadors, whose Government is detested by the Court at which you are, although nevertheless maintaining good relations with those ambassadors. In order to attain success, adopt a friendly tone, and do not try to frighten people. Show our position as it is; we do not want war; we detest it; we dread it; but we cannot act dishonourably. We cannot advise the Porte, when it comes to us for our opinion, to commit an act of cowardice; and should the courage which it has displayed, and which we have approved of, bring it into danger, we cannot, either, refuse it the assistance it asks of us. A way must therefore be found out of the difficulty. Is Kossuth's skin worth a general war? Is it to the interest of the Powers that the Eastern Question should be opened at this moment and in this fashion? Cannot a way be found by which everybody's honour will be saved? What do they want, after all? Do they only want to have a few poor devils handed over to them? That is assuredly not worth so great a quarrel; but if it were a pretext, if at the bottom of this business lurked the desire, as a matter of fact, to lay hands upon the Ottoman Empire, then it would certainly be a general war that they wanted; for ultra-pacific though we are, we should never allow Constantinople to fall without striking a blow."

The affair was happily over by the time these instructions reached St Petersburg. Lamoricière had conformed to them before he received them. He had acted in this circumstance with an amount of prudence and discretion which surprised those who did not know him, but which did not astonish me in the least. I knew that he was impetuous by temperament, but that his mind, formed in the school of Arabian diplomacy, the wisest of all diplomacies, was circumspect and acute to the pitch of artifice.

Lamoricière, so soon as he had heard rumours of the quarrel direct from Russia, hastened to express, very vividly, though in an amicable tone, that he disapproved of what had happened at Constantinople; but he took care to make no official, and, above all, no threatening, representations. Although acting in concert with the British Minister, he carefully avoided compromising himself with him in any joint steps; and when Fuad Effendi, bearing Abdul Medjid's letter, arrived, he let him know secretly that he would not go to see him, in order not to imperil the success of the negociation, but that Turkey could rely upon France.

He was admirably assisted by this envoy from the Grand Seignior, who concealed a very quick and cunning intelligence beneath his Turkish skin. Although the Sultan had appealed for the support of France and England, Fuad, on arriving at St. Petersburg, showed no inclination even to call upon the representatives of these two Powers. He refused to see anybody before his audience of the Tsar, to whose free will alone, he said, he looked for the success of his mission.

The Emperor must have experienced a feeling of bitter displeasure on beholding the want of success attending his threats, and the unexpected turn that things had taken; but he had the strength to restrain himself. In his heart he was not desirous to open the Eastern Question, even though, not long before, he had gone so far as to say, "The Ottoman Empire is dead; we have only to arrange for its funeral."

To go to war in order to force the Sultan to violate the Law of Nations was a very difficult matter. He would have been aided in this by the barbaric passions of his people, but reproved by the opinion of the whole civilized world. He knew what was happening in England and France. He resolved to yield before he was threatened. The great Emperor therefore drew back, to the immeasurable surprise of his subjects and even of foreigners. He received Fuad in audience, and withdrew the demand he had made upon the Sultan. Austria hastened to follow his example. When Lord Palmerston's note arrived at St Petersburg, all was over. The best would have been to say nothing; but while we, in this business, had only aimed at success, the British Cabinet had also sought for noise. It required it to make a response to the irritation of the country. Lord Bloomfield, the British Minister, presented himself at Count Nesselrode's the day after the Emperor's decision became known; and was very coldly received.[35] He read him the note in which Lord Palmerston asked, in polite but peremptory phrases, that the Sultan should not be forced to hand over the refugees. The Russian replied that he neither understood the aim nor the object of this demand; that the affair to which he doubtless referred was arranged; and that, in any case, England had nothing to say in the matter. Lord Bloomfield asked how things stood. Count Nesselrode haughtily refused to give him any explanation; it would be equivalent, he said, to recognizing England's right to interfere in an affair that did not concern it. And when the British Envoy insisted upon at any rate leaving a copy of the note in Count Nesselrode's hands, the latter, after first refusing, at last accepted the document with an ill grace and dismissed his visitor, saying carelessly that he would reply to the note, that it was a terribly long one, and that it would be very tiresome. "France," added the Chancellor, "has already made me say the same thing; but she made me say it earlier and better."

At this moment when we learnt the end of the dangerous quarrel, the Cabinet, after thus witnessing a happy conclusion to the two great pieces of foreign business that still kept the peace of the world in suspense, the Piedmont War and the Hungarian War—at that moment, the Cabinet fell.