M. Mignet has given us a curious instance, extracted from the French archives, of the comprehensive views of the minister of foreign affairs at this period.[49] Immediately after the victory of Ulm, M. de Talleyrand wrote to Napoleon in something like these terms:
“While your Majesty is gaining the victories which will lead to a glorious peace, I am considering how that peace can best be established. There are four great States in Europe—France, Russia, England, and Austria. England and France, from their juxtaposition, their spirit, and consequent rivality, may be considered natural enemies; that is to say, no great war will take place in Europe without these powers coming into collision. In such case, Russia cannot cordially be with France as long as she retains her projects over the Ottoman empire, which it would be madness in us to encourage. Austria, on the other hand, is sure to side with England as long as her frontiers join ours, and her natural objects of ambition are the same. A great policy, therefore, would be to deprive Russia of her Turkish dreams, and Austria of the possessions neighbouring to those states which we protect, and which, in fact, are ours. I would take from Austria, then, Suabia, in Southern Germany, the Tyrol, adjoining Switzerland; and I would make Venice an independent Republic, and thus a barrier to both parties in Italy. To this plan, however, Austria herself must consent with satisfaction, or it cannot be permanent; and I would obtain that consent by giving her, in exchange for what we take, Wallachia, Moldavia, Bessarabia, and the northern portion of Bulgaria. By this plan, your Majesty will remark, the Germans are for ever shut out of Italy, Austria made the rival of Russia and guardian of the Ottoman empire, and the Russians excluded from Europe, and thus directed upon the kingdoms of Central Asia, where they will naturally come into conflict with the rulers of Hindostan.”
“This project,” says M. Mignet, “being conceived at a time when nothing was impossible, might, after the battle of Austerlitz, have been accomplished, and would doubtless have given another destiny to Europe, and established the grandeur of France on solid foundations.”
Napoleon, however, was not inclined to adopt so great a plan on the suggestion of another; nor, indeed, is it impossible but that the secret instinct of his peculiar genius, which was for war, opposed itself to a permanent system of tranquillity. He advanced, then, in the false policy which ultimately proved his ruin; neither gaining the affection nor utterly destroying the power of the vanquished: and the cabinet of Vienna, subdued in Italy, humbled, by the confederation of the Rhine and the elevation of the secondary states, in Germany, but with its power not annihilated, and its goodwill not conciliated, signed the treaty of Presburg. This treaty, which severed the relations between the Russian and Austrian empires, and a change which now took place in the British councils, afforded another chance of giving to the new empire a peaceful and durable existence.
VII.
Mr. Fox had succeeded to Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Fox was an advocate of peace and an admirer of the warrior who guided the destinies of France. He was also a personal friend of M. de Talleyrand. The Emperor Alexander shared in some degree Mr. Fox’s admiration. The hopes which he had founded on an alliance with Austria were now, moreover, at an end, and no one at that time relied on the shuffling, grasping, and timid policy of Prussia. Both the Russian and English cabinets were willing then to treat. M. d’Oubril was sent to Paris by the cabinet of St. Petersburg, and negotiations begun through Lord Yarmouth, the late Marquis of Hertford (then a “détenu”[50]), between the cabinets of St. James and the Tuileries.
M. de Talleyrand, in these double negotiations, succeeded in getting the Russian negotiator to sign a separate treaty, which, however, the Russian government disavowed; and acquired such an influence over Lord Yarmouth, that the English government deemed it necessary to replace him by Lord Lauderdale, who was empowered to negotiate for the two allied governments. It is but just to observe that M. de Talleyrand, though thwarted by a variety of intrigues, laboured with the utmost assiduity in favour of a peaceful termination of this negotiation; for he already saw, and at this time almost alone saw, that without peace all was yet a problem, and that, to use the words of a contemporary, “a succession of battles was a series of figures, of which the first might be ‘A,’ and the last ‘zero.’”[51]
The position of Malta and Sicily, both at this time in our hands, the natural reluctance that we felt at resigning them without solid guarantees for European tranquillity; and the impossibility of getting such guarantees from the pride and ambition of an aspirant to universal empire, were nevertheless difficulties too great for diplomacy to overcome; and when Prussia, which had lost the golden opportunity of fighting France with Austria by her side, had become so involved by secret engagements with Russia and by public engagements with France—and so restless in the dishonourable and dangerous position in which she found herself, as to be determined on the desperate experiment of escaping from her diplomacy by her arms, another great European struggle commenced.
Throughout the new campaigns to which this new coalition led—campaigns beginning with the victory of Jena and closing with the peace of Tilsit—M. de Talleyrand accompanied his imperial master; and though he could hardly be said to exercise a predominant influence over those events, which a more violent character and a more military genius decided, his calmness and good sense (qualities rarely, if ever, abdicated by him) produced a moderating effect upon the imperious warrior, that tended generally to consolidate his successes. The sort of cool way in which he brought to ground many of this extraordinary man’s flights, testing them by their practical results, is well enough displayed in a reply which he made to Savary, who, after the battle of Friedland, said, “If peace is not signed in a fortnight, Napoleon will cross the Niemen.”