Lord Lyons to Lord Derby.
Paris, Oct. 26, 1877.
The prospect does not grow clearer, though I see, or at all events like to fancy I see, a cooling down of the fury which prevailed a week ago.
The Marshal is supposed to be a man of one idea, and his one idea at the present moment is said to be that he is bound to remain at his post.
This idea might lead him to name a Ministry from the majority, but then he would have to dismiss all the Fourtou prefects, whom he solemnly promised to stand by.
On the other hand, the idea might carry him on to a coup d'état.
The plan devised by his opponents, and indeed by some of his friends, for getting him out of the scrape, is that the Senate should refuse to support him in extreme measures, and that he should then declare (which would indeed be true) that he had never promised to stay in opposition to both branches of the Legislature.
Communications which have been going on between the Elysée and the Duc d'Audiffret Pasquier, the President of the Senate, are said to have shown that the Senate cannot be depended upon either to vote a second dissolution, or to carry on the Government in conjunction with the Marshal, and without the Chamber of Deputies.
I register as rumours, strongly requiring confirmation, that the Marshal has summoned the Chasseurs d'Afrique to reinforce the garrison of Paris; that in consequence of disagreements between Grévy and Gambetta, the Republicans offer the Presidency of the Republic to General Chanzy, the Governor-General of Algeria; that the more moderate Liberals have hopes of bringing in the Duc d'Aumale as President, if MacMahon should actually retire.
As the population is disarmed and there is no National Guard, there can be no need to increase the numbers of the garrison of Paris. If any fresh troops were really brought up, it would be from mistrust of the spirit of those already here.
Gambetta must have departed very far from his usual political tact, if he has set up claims in opposition to Grévy. Grévy would be quite alarming enough, and to establish the doctrine that the President must be a general would bring France to the level of a South American Republic.
It would be a curious result of an election, in which the Orleans or Right Centre Party has met with a signal defeat, that an Orleans Prince should be placed at the head of the State.
The proper course for the Marshal to have adopted was to have accepted the position of a Constitutional President; to have appointed a Ministry which would have obtained a majority in the Chamber; and to have restrained it from excesses by the exercise of his legitimate authority, and by means of the power of the Senate. Instead of this, however, he first attempted to form a Ministry of the same colour as the old one; then tried to meet the Chamber with his old Ministers, and finally fell back upon perfectly unknown people who carried no weight at all, and who professed to represent no party. To this Ministry the Chamber refused to pay any attention, and after many threats in the Elysée organs to violate all laws; to collect and spend money without the sanction of Parliament, to suppress newspapers, and to proclaim a state of siege, the Marshal surrendered ignominiously in December, and accepted a Ministry in which M. Dufaure was President of the Council, and M. Waddington, Minister for Foreign Affairs. Thus, what should have been a natural and proper consequence of the elections was converted into an humiliating defeat, and there had been such a series of solemn declarations, none of them adhered to, that all confidence in the Marshal had disappeared. Of the more important members of the new Government, M. Dufaure was a lawyer with Conservative leanings. M. Waddington, who had been educated at Rugby and Cambridge, was intimate with Lord Lyons and the Embassy generally, but it was doubtful whether his connection with England would prove an advantage, as he might find it necessary to demonstrate that he was not too English. M. Léon Say, the Minister of Finance, was supposed to be a Free Trader; and M. de Freycinet, who was destined to take part in many subsequent administrations, had been Gambetta's Under-Secretary of State for War, and was looked upon as Gambetta's representative in the Cabinet.
On December 17, MacMahon gave Lord Lyons his version of the history of the crisis.
Lord Lyons to Lord Derby.
Dec. 18, 1877.
I went to the weekly evening party at the Elysée last Saturday. The Marshal took me aside, saying: 'I want to tell you why I did it.' He proceeded to tell me that he had been led to remain in office and make a Parliamentary Ministry, by a warning he had received from abroad that if he retired, or if he established a clerical Ministry, war would be the inevitable consequence.
So far the Marshal: what follows may be mere gossip.
On the afternoon of December 12, the Marshal had quite determined d'aller jusqu'au bout; either to obtain from the Senate a dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies, or to give in his resignation. He was in consultation with General Rochebouet, who was at the time Prime Minister, about drawing up a message in this sense, when a letter was brought in, the bearer of which sent in a message begging that the Marshal would receive him at once. The letter was either written by the German Emperor, or at all events it convinced the Marshal that the bearer was sent to give him a message direct from His Imperial Majesty. The Marshal accordingly received him alone, and he said he was a Prussian officer who had been sent by the Emperor to entreat the Marshal to remain at the head of the Republic, at all risks, and on any conditions; and not to establish a Government which could be represented as being clerical. The message is said to have represented that the Emperor himself was most anxious for peace, but that he should not be able to restrain 'other people,' if a clerical or a radical Government were allowed to be established in France.
This sounds so like gossip that I should hardly have thought it worth while to repeat it, if it had not tallied rather curiously with the statement the Marshal himself volunteered to make to me about his motives.
The 'other people' are supposed to be neither more nor less than one other person—Prince Bismarck—and the message is represented as having been sent by the Emperor William without the knowledge of the Chancellor, or of the German Ambassador here.
Prince Bismarck's enemies, and they are of course numerous enough here, like to argue from appearances that he has quite lost the confidence of the Emperor, and some of them, who profess to have peculiar means of obtaining information, say that he made three conditions with the Emperor, as those on which alone he could continue to serve him. 1st, that he should have carte blanche in the Government; 2nd, that the Empress should reside at Coblentz or Baden rather than at Berlin; and 3rd, that certain people, of whom he gave a list, should be removed from Court. As a natural consequence, Bismarck's illness is attributed to his not having obtained the consent of his Imperial Master to his conditions; and it is said that he will not recover until his terms are complied with. This story of the conditions appears to me to be a very outrageous one, and I am quite unable to say whether there is any admixture of truth in it. Those who recount it, love to draw from it prognostications of the fall of the Great Chancellor.
Whether the story of the Marshal's mysterious visitor was true or not, his defeat marked a decisive epoch in French internal politics; the Republic was now firmly established and cannot be said to have been in any dangers since, unless the vagaries of the impostor Boulanger be excepted.