Paris, Dec. 31, 1872.
Gramont's further revelations confirm what I told you in my letter of the 24th. The question is becoming tiresome. I conceive there is no doubt that Beust at Vienna, and Metternich here, fanned the flame of French discontent after Sadowa, with a view to avenging themselves when Austria and France should be ready, and circumstances favourable. I think also that Gramont came back from Vienna full of Beust's warlike ideas, and very well inclined to carry them out. What exchange of letters may have taken place between the two Emperors, or what record of any kind there may be of engagements between the two countries to help one another, it is more difficult to say.
The assertion is that after war had been declared, Austria engaged to move on the 15th September. Others say that she also required that France should have an army in Baden.
This is not inconsistent with her having dissuaded France from war in July, 1870, when she knew positively it would be premature for herself, and probably had some suspicion that France was also not really prepared.
Early in January, 1873, the Emperor Napoleon died at Chiselhurst. The view of Thiers was that this event would render the Bonapartists, for the time, more turbulent and less dangerous. He believed that the Emperor's personal influence had been used to quiet the impatience of his followers, while, on the other hand, his death removed the only member of the family who was popular enough in France to be a formidable candidate. Thiers's childish susceptibility with regard to the Bonapartists showed itself in his expressed hope that the Emperor's death would be followed by the disappearance of the public sympathy in England with the family in its misfortunes.
The opinions of Thiers seem to have been generally prevalent. The Emperor was remarkably kind and courteous to all who approached him; he was a firm friend; not, as a rule, an implacable enemy, and he inspired no small number of people with a warm attachment to him personally. He was also generally popular, and the glittering prosperity of the early part of his reign was attributed by a large part of the common people to his own genius and merits, while they were prone to consider that its disastrous close was due to treason. No other member of the family excited feelings of the same kind, and in France a cause was always so largely identified with an individual that there was no doubt that the hold of the Imperialists upon the country was largely weakened by the loss of their chief.
It is perhaps worth noting that Lord Lyons, although it was notoriously difficult to extract any such opinions from him, did in after years admit reluctantly to me, that although he liked Napoleon III. personally, he had always put a low estimate upon his capacity.
Lord Lyons to Lord Granville.
Jan. 31, 1873.
I cannot say that the political atmosphere grows clearer. The Right are in their hearts as anxious as ever to depose Thiers. They believe as firmly as ever that if he makes the new elections, he will have a Chamber, not only of Republicans, but of very advanced Republicans. They see that all their little endeavours to restrain him and to establish ministerial responsibility will have no political effect. The death of the Emperor has not strengthened Thiers's position with regard to the Right. On the contrary, they are less disposed to bear with him since the removal of the candidate for the Throne of whom they were most afraid, and from whom they justly thought that Thiers would make every effort to shield them. They are consequently, even more than they usually are, employed in casting about for something to put in Thiers's place. The Fusion is again 'almost' made, and MacMahon is again talked of as ready to take the Government during the transition from the Republic to the King.
Orloff, the Russian Ambassador, propounded to me to-day a plan of his own for preventing conflicts between Russia and England in Central Asia. So far as I understood it, it was that England and Russia should enter into a strict alliance, should encourage and protect, by force of arms, commerce between their Asiatic Dominions, and unite them at once by a railroad. He said there was a Russian company already formed which desired to connect the Russian railway system with the Anglo-Indian railways. He told me that Brünnow was always writing that war between England and Russia was imminent and that England was preparing for it. If Brünnow's vaticinations are believed, they may perhaps have a not unwholesome effect upon the Russian Government.
Prince Orloff seems to have had in contemplation that Trans-Persian Railway which has met with the approval of the Russian and British Governments at the present day. The Russian advance in Central Asia in 1872 and 1873 had been the subject of various perfectly futile representations on the part of Her Majesty's Government, but Baron Brünnow must have been a singularly credulous diplomatist if he really believed that we were making preparations for a war with Russia or any one else.