Two days after this, i.e. on Tuesday, the 31st October, Lord A. Loftus “met” Prince Gortchakoff, who, in answer to the question whether there was any news from Constantinople, replied that there was, but “that he preferred that the Emperor should communicate it.” Lord A. Loftus’s audience with the Czar had been arranged for the next day, 1st November, but was subsequently postponed till the 2nd. Between the accidental meeting with the Chancellor and this audience, Lord A. Loftus received the Journal de St Petersbourg of the 31st October, in which he read that General Ignatieff had presented that day an ultimatum to the Porte to conclude an armistice with Servia, and had required an answer within forty‐eight hours. So that the English Ambassador, having traversed the whole length of Europe in a four days’ journey with a secretary of his Embassy attached to him, in order to be near the fountain of official information, would have received the news two days sooner if he had stayed at home!
We will let Lord A. Loftus describe his audience on the 2nd at Livadia, himself: “I had an audience with the Emperor of Russia to‐day at Livadia, when His Majesty was pleased to receive me with his customary kindness and cordiality (sic). After some gracious enquiries after my family, His Majesty at once opened on the Eastern question. His Majesty stated that he had that morning received a telegram from Constantinople announcing the probable acceptance of the armistice, and he read to me another telegram reporting that orders had been already sent by the Porte to their commanders to suspend military operations. This, His Majesty observed, was very satisfactory. On my observing on the sudden change which had taken place between the Sunday when I had seen the Chancellor and the following day when the ultimatum was despatched, His Majesty said that this had been caused by the intelligence he had received of the complete discomfiture of the Servian army, and his fear that it might be followed by similar atrocities to those which had occurred in Bulgaria....”[51]
It would indeed be a pity to spoil the uniqueness of this tableau by any superfluous commentary, but a despatch from Sir H. Elliot at Constantinople, dated on the same day as this audience (2nd November), throws some further light on this already luminous incident. “In the course of conversation this morning with General Ignatieff, I remarked that I understood that he had returned from Livadia with instructions to present his ultimatum. He answered that he had brought it with him with a discretionary authority to withhold it if he thought desirable. This is a rather different version from that which he had previously given to my colleagues and myself, when he told us on Tuesday (31st October) that he had received the ultimatum two days before, and that he had taken on himself the responsibility of withholding it, but had now imperative orders to execute his instructions. It is impossible to doubt that he had kept his Government fully informed of the progress of his negotiations with the Porte, or that they were perfectly well aware that his own proposals had been accepted with very trifling modifications, upon which an understanding could very easily be arrived at. It is evident enough that the sudden sending in of the ultimatum was decided upon in the hope that by an immediate cessation of hostilities, and the acceptance of an armistice, the fall of Alexinatz would be averted. The capture of the Servian positions at Junis made it certain that “the occupation of Alexinatz and Deligrad would soon follow, and the only hope of saving the Servians and the Russian Auxiliary troops from this mortification lay in the chance of stopping the Turks before they had time to reap the fruits of their success.”[52]
But, independently of the object lesson in veracity that this narrative inculcates, it gives the measure of the value attached by the Emperor of Russia to the European concert, and the degree to which it was likely to hamper his own liberty of action whenever he thought proper to liberate himself from it. The procédé with regard to the British Ambassador only concerns the British Government.
The Porte had yielded to the ultimatum.
In the meantime negotiations for assembling a Conference continued. The Czar had expressed to the English Ambassador “a very earnest wish that the Conference should meet with the least possible delay, and that instructions should even be immediately sent by the several Governments to enable the Ambassadors at Constantinople to deliberate at once on the necessary preliminaries of peace.”[53] Prince Gortchakoff, too, expressed his anxious wish that on the arrangement of the armistice no time should be lost in organising a Conference.[54]
But Austria was coy. The term “local autonomy” accompanied by no matter what gloss, seriously perturbed her; and yet this was the very point on which Russia insisted the most. In reporting his conversation with Prince Gortchakoff at Orianda, Lord A. Loftus said: “It is evident to me that Prince Gortchakoff does not wish to make the question of the armistice the ground for a rupture with the Porte, and that he looks to the question of the ‘autonomy of the three Provinces’ as being the important deciding point of peace or war.”[55]
Until Count Andrassy received guarantees that no kind of political autonomy was meant, he would have nothing to do with a Conference, and it was only when, after a good deal of fencing, this guarantee was at last accorded him, that he gave his consent to the proposal.
Although there had been a serious proposal to exclude Turkey from the Conference to be held in her own capital to decide on the administration of her provinces, the cynical incongruity of the proposition had procured its rejection, and now the Porte was asked to adhere to it. Without any illusion, since Russia’s ultimatum, as to whither the Conference would lead, the Porte, on the 18th November, with the sanction of a Grand Council, gave her assent to a proposal, the rejection of which would have meant immediate war.