Lord Lyons to Lord Clarendon.
Paris, Feb. 16, 1869.
Baron Beyens, the Belgian Minister, comes to me frequently about the Grand Luxemburg Railway affair, and is very naturally in great tribulation both for himself and his country.
M. de La Valette also loses no opportunity of speaking to me about it, and appears also to be very much disturbed. For my own part, I can only preach in general terms conciliation to both.
I have found M. de La Valette calm and moderate, but I am afraid there can be no doubt that the affair is extremely annoying to the Emperor, and that His Majesty is very angry. M. de La Valette asked me to call upon him to-day, and told me in the strictest confidence, though he did not pretend to have absolute proof of it, that the whole thing was instigated by Count Bismarck. He considered that there were three possible solutions of the question.
The first, that France should at her own risk and peril annex Belgium to herself. To this solution M. de La Valette was himself utterly opposed.
The second was the adoption of retaliatory financial and commercial measures. To this he was also opposed, considering it to be undignified, to be injurious to the interests of Frenchmen, and to constitute a punishment for all Belgians innocent as well as guilty.
The third course was to pursue the line already taken. To admit fully the right of the Belgian Government to act as it had done, but to declare in very distinct terms that it had been guilty of a very mauvais procédé towards France, and that the Government of the Emperor was deeply wounded and very seriously displeased. He said that he was about to prepare a despatch in the above sense.
I need not say that I did all in my power to strengthen his aversion to the two first courses, and to induce him to soften the tone of his communication to Belgium.
He seemed however to be afraid that the Emperor would be hardly satisfied with so little, and he declared it to be quite impossible that any friendship could hereafter exist between the French Government and the present Belgian Ministry. In fact, he was far from sure that his policy would be adopted.
He talks of Bismarck and his ways in a tone which is not comfortable, and the irritation in France against Prussia seems to increase rather than diminish. Certainly confidence in peace has not increased lately.
M. de La Valette may have been calm and moderate, but his Imperial Master was very much the reverse, and his conduct of the affair was a striking instance of his ineptitude. He had thoroughly frightened the Belgians, alienated public opinion in England, and aroused well-founded suspicions throughout Europe that he intended to fasten a quarrel upon Belgium in order to facilitate its eventual annexation. According to Lord Clarendon, the idea that Bismarck had prompted Belgian action was a complete mare's nest, but even if that were not so, it ought to have been plain to the Emperor that if there was one thing more than another which would gladden Prussia, it was a misunderstanding between France and England. The feeling in England at the time may be judged by Gladstone's language, who wrote to Lord Clarendon in March 12—
'That the day when this nation seriously suspects France of meaning ill to Belgian independence will be the last day of friendship with that country, and that then a future will open for which no man can answer.'
This apparently was what the Emperor was unable to see.
'Bismarck is biding his time quietly,' wrote Lord Clarendon. 'If France annexes Belgium and we take no part he will be delighted, as France could no longer complain of Prussian aggrandisement. If we do take part, he would be equally delighted at the rupture between England and France, and would come to our assistance. Either way he thinks Prussia would gain. Why should Napoleon and La Valette assist him? A quarrel between France and England or even a coolness is the great German desideratum.' 'I believe,' he adds in another letter, 'nothing would be more agreeable to Prussia than that the intimacy between the two countries should be disturbed by a territorial encroachment which would run on all fours with Prussian aggrandisement.'
For some reason, which was not clear, the Emperor persisted in making the question a personal one, announcing that he 'could not and would not take a soufflet from Belgium,' and the British Government became so apprehensive of his attitude that the somewhat unheroic course was adopted of sending a warning to the French Government, but leaving the responsibility of presenting, or of withholding it, to the Ambassador.