To avoid a struggle with England was well-nigh impossible; but what France might have done, and did not, was to remain faithful to the alliance with Prussia, instead of plunging into one absolutely contrary to every tradition of its foreign policy, the Austrian alliance. What the diplomacy of Louis XV. lacked was consecutiveness. The versatile monarch did not know what he wanted. Sometimes Prussian, sometimes Austrian, he fluctuated between two contradictory systems. The see-saw policy creates only a momentary illusion. It succeeds for a while, but it nearly always leads to ruin. The secret of strong diplomatists is to persevere in one idea, pursue one end, choose one good alliance, and stick to it. Feeble diplomatists, on the contrary, undo to-day what they did yesterday. It is like the web of Penelope. Whoever studies seriously the causes of our reverses, under Napoleonic France as well as under the France of the Bourbons, will easily convince himself that nearly all of them are due to incoherent principles and inconsistent ideas. To preserve a system and follow a tradition gives a real strength. The strength of Prince Bismarck is to have persevered in one idea, that of German unity, and in one alliance, that of Russia.
The policy of the Versailles treaty of 1756, which established an intimate accord between Louis XV. and Maria Theresa, was not in itself a more objectionable policy than another. But if it was desired to adopt it, it ought not to have been necessary to make war with Austria beforehand. Nothing is more dangerous than to place one’s self in a self-contradictory attitude. No confidence is inspired by such variable conduct; one is at the mercy of every incident.
In politics, as in religion and literature, the prime essential is unity. It is the same thing in diplomacy as in style.
“Ce que l’on conçoit bien s’énonce clairement,
Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément.”[49]
What is required is a true spirit of method, a clear, precise, definite object, straight lines, an absence of tortuous proceedings.
The old maxim, “divide to reign,” the presence in the same ministry of men warring against each other, of secret agents who undo the work of official agents, underhand ways, countermines, politics by double entry,—all this is no sign of strength; it is the expedient of weakness. Occult diplomacy, like that of Louis XV., is suitable to none but governments in extremity. Woe to a sovereign who suspects his own ambassadors! If he has not full confidence in them, let him change them!
What lay at the root of the character of Louis XV. was the habit of dissimulation, the vanity of being considered impenetrable. It was he, not Madame de Pompadour, who had created a government at constant war with the principal agents it made use of. Nor was the Austrian alliance a conception of the favorite’s. Louis XV. did not like Frederick the Great, and he was not less taken with the flatteries of the Empress Maria Theresa than Madame de Pompadour herself. If the adroit sovereign wrote the Marquise a letter in which she treated her as a dear friend, she was careful at the same time to display a passionate admiration, a sort of cult, for Louis XV. Moreover, there was an Austrian party at Versailles. The Marquis d’Argenson wrote in January, 1756: “There is a large party in our court for the court of Vienna. Austria has always had emissaries at our court. I hear these emissaries saying that the house of Austria is no longer what it was, that it has need of us, that we ought to march in close accord with it. I know these insinuations, and it was to opposing them that I owe my disgrace in 1747. They preach to us against the King of Prussia, they say he is all English, and they excite us against him in view of despoiling him, if we are able. Hence we sulk at Spain, we are irritated against Prussia, our veritable and sincere ally, and all this exasperates at court femineo ululatu.”
The partisans of the treaty of Versailles (May 1, 1756), by which France and Austria promised each other mutual aid against their enemies, have a right to extenuating circumstances. This passage from Duclos must not be forgotten: “As soon as the treaty was known, there was a sort of inebriation which was increased by the chagrin displayed by the English; every one imagined that the union of the two first powers would make all Europe respectful. Ideas have greatly changed since then.”
The Abbé de Bernis, who had quitted the Venetian embassy to take the portfolio of foreign affairs, and who was one of Madame de Pompadour’s favorites, was charged with drawing up the treaty. “Notwithstanding his first objections as a man of sense, he did not long resist the general movement which carried away all who surrounded him; he was dazzled, and thought he was contributing to the greatest political operation that had been attempted since Richelieu. At first everything seemed to succeed as well as could be desired, and the new alliance so highly vaunted at court seemed to be taken even better still by the public.”[50] The Marquise triumphed. She amused herself by engraving on an agate in onyx an allegory, which represented France and Austria joining hands above the altar of Fidelity, and trampling under foot the mask of Hypocrisy and the torch of Discord.