July 12th.—On Friday morning the world was electrified by reading in the 'Times' that an armistice had been agreed upon between the belligerent Emperors in Italy, and the subsequent announcement that they were to have a personal meeting yesterday morning, and the armistice to last for five weeks (till August 15), led to a pretty general conclusion that peace would be the result.[1] The Stock Exchange take the same view, for everywhere and in all securities there has been a great rise. I saw George Lewis on Sunday and asked him if the Government had any intelligence, when he told me that the only thing, besides what had appeared in the papers, was that France had proposed to us to interpose our mediation on the basis of Austria giving up everything, and Prussia had made the same proposal on the basis of Austria giving up nothing, both which proposals we had very naturally declined.
[1] [The battle of Solferino was fought on June 24, and an armistice between the Emperors of France and Austria was signed at Villafranca on July 7.]
THE ARMISTICE OF VILLAFRANCA.
July 13th.—We had scarcely had time to begin discussing and speculating on the probable results of the armistice, before the news of peace being actually concluded burst upon us. As yet we have only the great fact itself and the skeleton of the arrangement, and we shall probably be for some time without materials for judging as to the merits of the Treaty of Peace and its probable consequences, but the first impressions and the first ideas that present themselves may be worth recording. There is no denying that the Emperor Napoleon has played a magnificent part, and whatever we may think of his conduct, and the springs of his actions, he appears before the world as a very great character.[1] Though he can lay no claim to the genius and intellectual powers of the first Napoleon, he is a wiser and a soberer man, with a command over himself and a power of self-restraint, and consequently of moderation in pursuit of objects, which the other did not possess, and therefore while the towering genius of the uncle led him on through magnificent achievements and stupendous vicissitudes to his ruin, it appears highly probable that the better regulated mind and the habitual prudence of the nephew will preserve him from the commission of similar errors, and render his career somewhat less splendid, but more durable and infinitely more beneficial to his country.
With regard to the present affair, the first thing we must be struck with is the way in which the King of Sardinia has been treated. Napoleon, indeed, tosses him a large share of the spoils, but not only was he not admitted to the Conference which led to peace, but he does not appear to have been consulted upon it any more than any of the French generals; the only notice that was taken of the King (so far as we know) being that he was ordered, upon the conclusion of the armistice, to desist from the siege of Peschiera. I had heard before that the Emperor was extremely disgusted with his ally and Cavour, and at all that the latter had said and done, at the proclamations and other documents he had put forth, and at the audacious manner in which that Government had annexed every scrap of territory they could lay their hands on, and assumed the government of every State that they could manage to revolutionise, and all without the sanction and concurrence of the Emperor. Nothing is more likely than that the Italian War will not be closed without much bickering and heartburning between the two allies, and that the King and his Cavour will find, in spite of all they are to obtain, that they will have no bed of roses to repose upon after their fatigues and labours.[2]
Then, so far as we can judge of the settlement, it seems one that is likely to give more offence and disappointment than satisfaction to the bulk of the Italian people, and to imagine that affairs will relapse or resolve themselves into a peaceable and quiescent state is a mere delusion. What passed between the two Emperors we may perhaps never know, though the effects of their interview may one day become dangerously apparent; but it is not unreasonable to conjecture that Napoleon exerted all his arts and blandishments to make a friend of Francis Joseph, and to persuade him that a cordial alliance with France would be more advantageous to him than one with England, and he might with every appearance and much of the reality of truth tell him that England had done nothing for him; that neither the Government nor the nation had any sympathies with Austria, whom, so far from assisting, they had gladly seen defeated in Italy; and that the forbearance of the Emperor in leaving Austria in possession of any part of Italy would be unpalateable to Palmerston and John Russell, and generally unpopular. One cannot but suspect that an alliance was at least projected, if not formed, between the three great despotic Powers, France, Austria, and Russia, for the purpose of domineering over Europe, and dealing with the several States according to their pleasure, or the pleasure of France, and with the ultimate object of attacking, weakening, and humbling England.
THE CONFERENCE OF THE EMPERORS.
Of all the provisions of this Treaty that which regards the sovereignty of the Pope is the most curious and seems the most difficult to carry out; it is indicative of the necessity under which the Emperor thinks he is placed of disarming the hostility and consulting the prejudices of the Catholic party and the Church in France. Whether the Pope will accept the temporal office assigned to him may be doubted, but it can hardly be doubted that his supremacy will not be willingly accepted and acknowledged by the Italians generally, to whom the Papal rule is already odious.[3] One cannot but feel glad at the deep mortification and disappointment which will overtake the Republicans and Socialists, the Mazzinis, Garibaldis, Kossuths, et hoc genus omne, at a pacification so ruinous to all their hopes and designs. Clarendon told me he believed the account in the 'Times' of the compact between the Emperor and Kossuth, and nothing is more likely than that at the beginning of the contest he employed Kossuth in the way stated, and gave him all sorts of promises, and when he found he could do everything sine tali auxilio, and that he had a stronger interest in making friends with Austria, he threw Kossuth over without scruple or hesitation. This is exactly the course he would be likely to follow.[4]
[1] [The conclusion of the peace after the battle of Solferino was creditable to the Emperor Napoleon, but was no indication of a great character. His motives were that he had not the means of undertaking a siege of the great fortresses of the Quadrilateral, and that if the war had been prolonged it was not improbable that the forces of the Germanic Confederation, including Prussia, would have taken the field against France. He therefore acted wisely in terminating the war, and if the Austrians had withdrawn within the Quadrilateral and refused to treat, the Emperor Napoleon might have been placed in great difficulties. As it was, he broke his engagement to Cavour to liberate Italy from the Alps to the sea, and to Kossuth to support a Hungarian insurrection. Italy eventually owed the liberation of Venice, not to France, but to Prussia, as the reward for her combined action with that Power in the war of 1866. Cf. the account of the manner in which the peace was concluded in Lord Malmesbury's 'Autobiography,' vol. ii p. 200.]
[2] [M. de Cavour bitterly resented the prompt conclusion of peace, and for a time quitted the Ministry of which he was the head.]