After all, the Tunis expedition turned out to be a rather more troublesome affair than had appeared probable at first. At the end of June insurrections broke out at Sfax and other places, necessitating the recall of French troops who had been sent back to France; bombardments, and other severe measures of repression. The insurrection spread into Algiers on the western side, and on the eastern side the disturbances created the possibility of a violation of the frontier of Tripoli by the French troops.
Lord Lyons to Lord Granville.
Paris, July 5, 1881.
Retribution has come quickly upon the French for their hypocritical seizure of Tunis. The Arabs seem to be upon them in all directions. Although this serves them right, it is, I think, much to be regretted for political reasons, independently of the suffering it causes to un-offending Europeans of various nationalities in Africa.
If the French have to send a large force to Tunis, they will very probably, formally as well as virtually, annex the Regency. Tripoli will then stand exactly in the same relation to them that Tunis did before the assumption of the Protectorate. After Tripoli would come Egypt; but happily there is, I believe, a very impracticable desert tract between them.
How great must be the complacency of those who desire to occupy French troops in distant countries, and to involve France in difficulties with other Powers.
If the action of the French in seizing Tunis was hypocritical, the contention that the case of Tripoli stood on an entirely different footing was equally unconvincing. The real truth, of course, was that, with the exception of the Italians, no one really objected to the French going to Tunis. They went there, under distinctly false professions, announcing that the expedition was intended solely to punish refractory tribes, and that the occupation was merely temporary. The disclosure of their real objects naturally caused irritation in England as well as in Italy, but all hostile criticism was met by the assertion of the Liberal Government that Lord Salisbury had himself invited the French to take Tunis at the time of the Berlin Congress. The French themselves were careful to represent that they had only followed Lord Salisbury's advice, and Lord Granville, in defence of his own policy, always maintained that the phrase attributed to Lord Salisbury, Carthage ne doit pas rester aux barbares, had cut the ground from beneath his feet, and rendered remonstrance useless. But to make Lord Salisbury responsible for this act of flagrant immorality seems, in the face of such evidence as is available, unjustifiable. All that he had done was to intimate that he had heard that the French were extremely anxious to go to Tunis; that if they did so, British interests would not be endangered, and that he should consequently look on with indifference. When M. Waddington, in 1878, construed this opinion as an invitation to France to appropriate Tunis, Lord Salisbury felt bound to remonstrate, and he wrote to Lord Lyons, as has been already shown. 'He (Waddington) makes me talk of Tunis and Carthage as if they had been my own personal property, and I was making him a liberal wedding present.' The real instigator of the Tunis expedition was not Lord Salisbury, but Bismarck. The latter, who was omnipotent in Europe at the time, could have stopped French action at any moment he pleased, but instead of doing so, he naturally encouraged an enterprise which was certain to lead eventually to difficulties between France, Italy, and England.
While, however, it was convenient to overlook any French illegality with reference to Tunis and to its connection with the Turkish Empire, it would have been, as has already been shown, manifestly imprudent to allow Tripoli, which stood in a precisely similar position, to be menaced with a similar fate: besides which, Italy had already marked Tripoli down as her own prey. Accordingly the French Government were informed that 'in view of the unquestioned incorporation of Tripoli in the Turkish Empire, as well as its proximity to Egypt, Her Majesty's Government could not regard interference of whatever description on the part of the French Government in that province in the same manner as they viewed the recent occurrences at Tunis. That Her Majesty's Government should take this view of the question of Tripoli cannot, they feel assured, be a source of surprise to that of France, since they have, on all occasions when the question of the extension of French influence in the direction of Egypt has been under discussion, been perfectly frank in their explanations with the French Government on the subject.' In his reply to this communication, M. B. St. Hilaire (who had previously announced that to annex Tunis would be a great mistake), effusively stated that the French Government looked upon Tripoli as an integral part of the Ottoman Empire, over which it did not pretend to exercise a predominant or exclusive influence, and gave a formal denial to all rumours which attributed to France any designs upon that country. The British Government professed itself quite satisfied with these assurances, and the Porte, for once in a way, showed sufficient intelligence to make its suzerainty quite clear, by despatching troops to garrison the country, and by other precautionary measures. In consequence of these steps Tripoli remained immune from attack for another thirty-two years, and when, in 1912, the Italians, following the French example of 1881, fell suddenly upon it without any serious attempt at justification, they did not allege that they were attacking a semi or wholly-independent State, but declared war upon Turkey itself, and incidentally brought about the destruction of Turkish power in Europe. The future of Tripoli under Italian rule is still obscure, while the numerous prophecies of failure which attended the seizure of Tunis by the French have not been fulfilled, but in either case it would be difficult to justify the morality of the enterprise or to defend the policy of these two Great Christian Powers.
The year 1881 witnessed the renewal of negotiations for a new Commercial Treaty between France and England, and in consequence of opinions expressed by M. Tirard, the French Minister of Commerce, it was determined to take the negotiations out of the hands of diplomatists. M. Tirard had declared that he believed that an understanding could be effected if the question could be freed from diplomatic dilatoriness, and that if he were brought face to face with a 'competent and well-disposed man,' the whole matter would be settled within a week by making a few mutual concessions. To meet these views, the late Sir Charles Dilke, M.P., was appointed principal British Commissioner with the late Sir Joseph Crowe, Sir Alfred Bateman, and other distinguished experts as his colleagues or assistants, but M. Tirard's prognostication turned out to be entirely incorrect. In spite of the great ability and indefatigable industry of Sir Charles Dilke and the other British Commissioners, the negotiations made a very unsatisfactory start, were constantly broken off, and were not even concluded by the end of the year, so that it must have been impressed upon M. Tirard that dilatoriness was not necessarily due to diplomacy. From the first, the negotiations were unpromising, for Free Trade had continually receded in France since the Empire, and the necessity of cultivating good political relations with England was evidently less in 1881 than it had been upon the last occasion.
The representatives of the two nations met in London in June, and an inauspicious beginning was made by the French Commissioners repudiating the bases signed in 1880 by Lord Granville and M. Léon Say. By the middle of the month the breaking off of the negotiations was already being considered.