Lord Lyons to Lord Granville.
Paris, July 30, 1882.
Among the innumerable Ministerial crises which I have seen here, I do not recollect one in which there has been so much uncertainty as to who would be the new Prime Minister.
Grévy, in conformity with his own views, and with those of the great majority of the Chamber and indeed of the country, is trying to form an absolutely non-intervention Cabinet. But such a Cabinet might have difficulties with the Senate. Léon Say and Jules Ferry, the most able members of the late Ministry, were for full intervention and the English Alliance.
Freycinet very unwisely began with a perfectly idle dispute with Gambetta as to whether the English Government would, or would not, have consented to armed intervention with France only, if Gambetta had remained in power. Gambetta did not speak yesterday, but he and his followers voted against Freycinet.
Hohenlohe seemed, I hear, dreadfully put out by the result of the division yesterday. It was Bismarck's communication which gave Freycinet the coup de grâce. Hohenlohe had evidently hoped that it would save him, by giving him an excuse for withdrawing the Bill.
I was very much disappointed to hear from Freycinet that Russia had gone back to the Conference. I hoped her retirement would have given us a good opportunity of freeing ourselves from that cumbrous clog.
Lord Lyons to Lord Granville.
Paris, Aug. 1, 1882.
All is still uncertain as to who the new French Ministers will be. Grévy is doing his best to keep Freycinet, and Hohenlohe is working in the same direction, which is not wise. Hitherto Freycinet has positively declined, but he is a man who sometimes changes his mind. He will be in an extraordinarily false position if he does come back. Grévy may, perhaps, manage to appoint a warming-pan sort of Ministry, just to keep the offices warm during the recess and to make room for something more serious in October.
The French are in very good disposition towards us at this moment. The way to keep them so will be to endeavour to make their present position comfortable to them, without being humiliating, and, above all, not to crow over them, as part of our press seems too much inclined to do. Their fleet, next to our own, is the most important factor in the Mediterranean question. We can do as well or better, without any aid from France or other countries, but we ought to have the field to ourselves.
I wish we were well rid of that dangerous Conference. I had a sort of hope that just now it might have a sort of use, as a means of letting the other Powers talk while we were acting. But in fact, as worked by Bismarck and by the Turks under his direction, it seems merely to supply the machinery for formally placing us in opposition to the so-called European Concert, and for embarrassing France. I think the French would be glad to be delivered from it.
Public opinion in France is at this moment friendly to us, but it is in a very susceptible state.
A new Ministry was in course of time formed under M. Duclerc, one of the many uninteresting mediocrities who have governed France during the last forty years, and a sort of formula was agreed upon that there was no 'solution of continuity in the Entente,' which was not intended to commit the French to anything in particular.
A vast amount has been written respecting the events in Egypt in 1882; much of it by persons who occupied responsible and important positions at the time; but the reasons for the inaction and eventual retirement of the French have never been clearly explained. Probably the French themselves would be unable to give a satisfactory explanation, and would attribute their inglorious attitude to the Freycinet Government, which did not know its own mind. But it may be assumed that a variety of reasons were responsible for the French refusal of co-operation with England. Had the invitation been received some months earlier, it would probably have been accepted with enthusiasm; but the Tunis expedition, which had opened with so much success and enthusiasm, had proved a much more troublesome and unsatisfactory business than had been anticipated, and had created a decided disinclination for further enterprises in North Africa. In the second place, the difficulties of an Egyptian campaign were greatly over-estimated; the French calculation was that no less than 60,000 men would be necessary, and the ordinary French Minister would not venture to allow so many men to leave the country. Lastly, the French were quite unable, rightly or wrongly, to get it out of their minds that they were being deliberately led into a trap by Bismarck, and this by itself was sufficient to daunt a Government of the Freycinet type.