Lord Lyons to Lord Granville.
Tours, Nov. 14, 1870.
Thiers has just paid me so long a visit that he has left me very little time to write. His notion is that England, Austria, Italy, Turkey and Spain should now unite with France to check the aggression of Prussia and Russia, and he thinks that without war this would lead to a Congress in which all Europe would settle the terms of peace. If England lets the occasion go by, it will, in his opinion, be she, not France, who will have sunk to the rank of a second-rate Power. I thought my prudent course was to listen and say nothing, which, as you know, is easy with him; for he talks too well for one to be bored with him, and is quite content to talk without interruption.
He had a violent argument with Chaudordy in the presence of Metternich and me on the subject of the elections. Chaudordy maintains the Government view that they are impossible without an armistice. Thiers took the other side, and at last cried out: 'They will at least be much more free under the Prussians than under Gambetta's Prefects!'
In 'Bismarck, his Reflections and Reminiscences,' there occurs the suggestive passage:—
'It was consequently a fortunate thing that the situation offered a possibility of doing Russia a service in respect to the Black Sea. Just as the sensibilities of the Russian Court, which owing to the Russian relationship of Queen Mary were enlisted by the loss of the Hanoverian Crown, found their counterpoise in the concessions which were made to the Oldenburg connexions of the Russian dynasty in territorial and financial directions in 1866; so did the possibility occur in 1870 of doing a service not only to the dynasty, but also to the Russian Empire.... We had in this an opportunity of improving our relations with Russia.'
There can hardly be a shadow of a doubt that the denunciation of the Black Sea clauses was what is vulgarly called a 'put up job' between Bismarck and the Russian Government, probably arranged at Ems in the spring; but when Mr. Odo Russell made his appearance at Versailles in order to discuss the question, Bismarck assured him that the Russian action had not met with his sanction and added that the circular was ill-timed and ill-advised. (In private, he subsequently expressed the opinion that the Russians had been much too modest in their demands and ought to have asked for more.) As, however, the face of the British Government had to be saved somehow, a Conference in London was suggested, and the efforts of Lord Granville were concentrated upon an attempt to persuade the Provisional Government of France to take part in it. This proved difficult, for the French made it clear that they were not anxious to do so unless they could get some advantage out of it, and intimated that they meant to accept aid from any quarter where it might be obtained—even from the 'Satanic Alliance,' as Thiers called it, of Russia. One of the difficulties encountered in dealing with the French Government arose from the discrepancy between language used in London by the French Ambassador and that used by Chaudordy at Tours. The latter was not a Minister and the Government consequently did not feel bound to support him. Chaudordy himself took advantage of his anomalous position to talk freely and to treat what he had said, according to circumstances, as pledging or not pledging the Government, and, besides this, the Government at Tours was liable to be disavowed by the Government at Paris.
How serious the situation was considered to be in London may be judged by the following two letters from Lord Granville to Lord Lyons.