"Russia has done us much harm," said the Duke de Gramont, in regard to this interdicting command to Austria.[126] It weighed equally on the court of Copenhagen and forced it to neutrality, in spite of all the enthusiasm of the unfortunate Scandinavian people for an alliance with which was connected a French plan of a landing in the North, an enterprise of the greatest strategical interest, General Trochu said, who was to have taken part in it. "Russia," thought with an official journal of the country, the ambassador of the United States at St. Petersburg, "has contributed more to the neutrality than any other nation; by its menaces it has forced Austria not to move, and it has succeeded, by the influence of the emperor and the hereditary prince, in hindering Denmark from taking part with France."[127] England, it is just to add, powerfully seconded in all this the Russian chancellor. It was more prejudiced than ever against France, thanks to the recent and terrible revelations of M. de Bismarck concerning the dilatory negotiations in August, 1866, on the subject of Belgium. It was evident that for the pleasure of Prince Gortchakof the conflagration came much too soon. The military preparations of Russia were not made; even the perfectly "moral" action on the Sclavic world had undergone a rest since the conference on the subject of Greece. M. de Bismarck had not exactly consulted the convenience of his colleague on the Neva. As M. Benedetti had predicted, he had taken care not to invert the rôles and thought only of his own convenience and opportunities; but Alexander Mikhaïlovitch did not the less apply himself to play his rôle according to his strength. A sagacious observer, the ambassador of the United States, already mentioned, wrote about this time from St. Petersburg to his government: "The general opinion here seems to be that, if Russia were ready, it would declare war and try to gain certain advantages from it.... The government is making great efforts to prepare for future events. The cartridge factories work night and day. An order for a hundred Gattling cannon has just been sent to America." They armed, they deterred or intimidated the probable allies of France, thinking thus to equalize for the moment the chances between the two belligerents,[128] and they still hoped to find more than one favorable opportunity in the midst of the numerous events of a war which Napoleon III. himself proclaimed must be "long and difficult."
The terrible disasters of France in the beginning of the campaign suddenly arrested the imaginations in their flight and dissipated the sublime vision of a "new Græco-Sclavic world," which since 1867 had haunted the minds of those on the banks of the Moscova and the Neva. With the marvelous political and realistic aptitude which distinguishes it, the Russian nation soon understood that for the moment any crusade in the Orient was impossible, that the destiny of the world was being decided at the foot of the Vosges, and that it must attend to the most urgent and reasonable claims. A curious phenomenon, the peninsula of the Balkan was never as relatively quiet, as little tormented by the "great idea" as during these years 1870-1871, during this "intestine dissension in Europe" which Fuad-Pacha when dying had so feared for the empire of the Osmanlis. Towards the end of the month of August, still before the catastrophe of Sedan, public opinion in Russia cared only for the displeasing article of the treaty of Paris on the subject of the Euxine. "Russia," said an influential journal of St. Petersburg,[129] "has not hindered the forced unification of Germany, and, in its turn, it does not dream of the forced unification of the Sclavians; but it has the right to demand that its position on the Black Sea and the banks of the Danube be ameliorated. We hope that its legitimate demands will be taken into consideration in the European congress which will probably follow the present war." A European congress! that was in truth the only logical issue, however unreassuring in such grave events, disturbers of the equilibrium of the world; and it must render this justice to the greater part of the Russias, that they have the true appreciation of the situation, and aspire to a rôle as legitimate as honorable. They wish to attain a satisfaction of amour-propre; but they did not wish to sacrifice France and the general interests of the Continent to it; the little question was in their eyes only the corollary of the great. At Constantinople one did not augur otherwise from the line of conduct which the cabinet of St. Petersburg undoubtedly pursued, although dreading it. On the 2d September, Mr. Joy Morris, minister of the United States to the Porte, wrote to his government that the general conviction on the Bosphorus was that Russia would profit by the crisis to bring about the revision of the treaty of 1856. "It would be strange if it did not succeed in it," added the "Yankee" diplomat, "seeking, as it will, to obtain honorable conditions of peace for France, and exercising a dominating influence on the regulations of the terms of peace." Unfortunately, and for the first time in his long and popular reign at the chancellor's palace, the "national minister" divorced himself on this occasion from the sentiment of the nation, and in place of acting as "a good European," according to the favorite expression of M. de Talleyrand, he sought above all to show himself the good friend of his former colleague of Frankfort. He took care to renounce the question of the Black Sea,—he owed his country this little consolation after such great mistakes,—but he resolved to separate two causes which public opinion in Russia demanded to have united; and it demanded it with an idea much more politic than generous, in an instinct much more sensible for the vital interests of the future than for the satisfaction more or less lively of the present moment. He thought that he could not better serve the Russian cause on the Euxine, than in injuring as much as possible the cause of Europe in Alsace and Lorraine, and he endeavored above all to let France and Prussia fight out their quarrel in single combat. Immediately after the first French disasters, he seized with empressement the ingeniously perfidious idea of the league of neutrals, originally an Italian idea, naturalized in England by Earl Granville, and soon became in the hands of the Russian chancellor, as was very acutely remarked, the most efficacious means to "organize impotence in Europe." M. de Beust had vainly essayed, while adopting the principle of the English proposition (19th August) to change the character of it, to make it the point of departure of a concerted intervention; he demanded "efforts not separated, but common in view of a mediation," in place of a ridiculous conception which only "leagued" the states to prevent any collective proceeding. "The combination which the minister of Austria then suggested," wrote on this subject a judicious historian, "was repeated again and again by him during the whole duration of the war. If it had been adopted, it would have changed the course of things. One can say that it is for this reason that Europe did not adopt it."[130]
It is for this reason that Prince Gortchakof especially opposed it from the first day to the last. There was a moment when England itself felt some qualms of conscience and showed a wish for mediation. That was at the beginning of the month of October, after a circular of M. de Bismarck had announced to Europe the conditions of peace of Germany, which were Alsace and Lorraine. "The ambassador of Prussia communicated this circular to the Russian government, and Prince Gortchakof abstained from making his impressions known. Sir A. Buchanan said to him then, that at London they were disposed to be governed in a certain measure by what was done at St. Petersburg. The chancellor replied simply that Prussia, not having asked of him his opinion, he had not given it.[131] Earl Granville had the, for him, extraordinary courage to return again to the charge, and Sir A. Buchanan read to the Russian chancellor a memorandum timidly asking "if it would not be possible for England and Russia to arrive at an agreement concerning the conditions under which peace could be concluded, and then to make, with the other neutral Powers, an appeal to the humanity of the King of Prussia, also recommending moderation to the French government." Prince Gortchakof gave to those overtures a dry and disdainful reception. Prussia, said he, has indicated its conditions of peace; a victory alone can modify them, and this victory is not probable. Confidential conversations between England and Russia will be then without object; common representations would always have a more or less menacing character. Isolated action of each of the neutral Powers before the King of Prussia is preferable.[132] Isolated action! Alexander Mikhaïlovitch was not moved, and for Russia this action was summed up in several personal letters addressed by the august nephew to his royal uncle, very charming letters, which recommended peace, justice, humanity, and moderation, and to which the conqueror of Sedan always replied affectionately, with a moved heart and with tears in his eyes, pleading his duties to his allies, his armies, his people, and his frontiers.[133] It was this "policy of euphemism," as the historian has so well called it, which they did not cease to practice, during the entire war, on the banks of the Neva, towards General Fleury as well as towards M. Thiers and M. de Gabriac, and the last word as well as the first thought of "action" of Prince Gortchakof was to leave France alone with its conqueror, alone till exhaustion, usque ad finem. It is known in what terms this end was announced at St. Petersburg. "It is with inexpressible feeling and returning thanks to God," the Emperor of Germany telegraphed from Versailles to the Emperor of Russia, on the 26th February, 1871, "that I announce to you that the preliminaries of peace have just been signed. Prussia will never forget that it owes to you that the war has not taken extreme dimensions. May God bless you for it. Your grateful friend for life."
"Long and disastrous" was this war, alas! as the unhappy Cæsar had well predicted, long enough at least to let Europe measure all the depth of its abasement, and "to give it all the time to blush at nothing," according to the strong expression of the poet. Still more humiliating, perhaps, than this abasement, is the thought of the perfect similarity of the two terrible catastrophes which succeeded one another in the interval of scarcely four years; in producing its second tragedy so soon after the first, destiny was sufficiently disdainful to our generation not to even change the procedure or bestow any care on the imagination. The work of 1870 was only the exact copy of that of 1866. You will take the Orient, M. de Bismarck said at St. Petersburg, through General Manteuffel, as on the shore of Biarritz he had told the Emperor Napoleon III. to take Belgium, always making the same gift of the property which did not belong to him, the same gracious gift of the fruit defended by the dragon. The dreamers of Moscow believed in a new era, in a new "Græco-Sclavic-Roumanian world," as Napoleon III. had thought of a Europe remodeled after the principle of nationalities. "Russia will not feel any alarm at the power of Prussia," Prince Gortchakof declared at the beginning of the Hohenzollern affair, exactly as the zealots of the new right had affirmed of France on the eve of the campaign of Bohemia. In both of the terrible years they had counted on the events and opportunities of a war, slow and of divers fortunes; they had even made it a study to derisively equalize the chances of the belligerents, and the surprise and the fright were not less great at St. Petersburg after Reichshoffen and Sedan than it had been at Paris after Nahod and Sadowa. The military preparations were wanting in Russia in 1870, as in France in 1866, and after the one as after the other of the calamities which desolated and overturned the world, they had only egotistical and petty thoughts; they prevented designedly any collective intervention, they aided Prussia in freeing itself from all European control; in a word they sacrificed the policy of justice, preservation, and equilibrium to a calculation as false as sordid, and which the great humorist of Varzin had one day called the politique de pour-boire.
The Russian chancellor, it is just to acknowledge, was happier after Sedan than Napoleon III. had been after Sadowa: he had his Luxemburg, he could proclaim the abrogation of Article II. of the treaty of Paris, "the abrogation of a theoretical principle without immediate application," as he himself said in an official document.[134] One knows the judgment which at that time the cabinets gave on this "conquest" purely nominal in reality, and extremely small in any case in proportion to all those which Alexander Mikhaïlovitch had allowed to his former colleague of Frankfort. He succeeded, but not by legitimate means, by that action of éclat and equity which one had hoped for in Russia, dreaded at Constantinople; he did not provoke the revision of the treaty of 1856, in "seeking to obtain honorable conditions of peace for France and in exercising a dominating influence on the regulation of the terms of peace."[135] He chose precisely "the psychological moment" of the defeats of France, of the disorder of Europe and of the gloomy shock to public right, to give it in his turn a humiliating blow, a telum imbelle, but not sine ictu. He freed himself and his own chief from an engagement contracted with the Powers, as he had freed his friend of Berlin from any control of Europe. "The procedure of Russia," said Earl Granville, in his remarkable dispatch of the 10th November to Sir A. Buchanan, "breaks all the treaties: the object of a treaty is to bind the contracting parties one to the other; according to the Russian doctrine, each party submits all to his own authority, and holds himself bound only to himself."
At the beginning of the year 1868, an eminent man whom the disasters of his country were soon to restore to the political life which the second empire closed to him, rose even here[136] with passionate eloquence against "the growing mistrust of this elementary right which honor and good public sense have called the faith of treaties." "We see," said he, "creating itself every day under our eyes, a fruitful jurisprudence whose rapid development does not astonish those who know what force false principles borrow from and lend in turn to the passions which they favor. Only a few years ago they imposed on this unilateral resilition of reciprocal treaties some conditions which made the usage of them more legitimate, or at least more rare and less perilous. They still wished greatly to admit that, in case one state should want to repudiate a treaty signed by representatives regularly accredited, it should be necessary that in its interior one of those great overturnings of institutions, persons, and things should be effected which is called a revolution. A revolution was a sheriff's summons by which a nation made known to whom it should concern its intention to put itself into bankruptcy and to no longer pay its debts. This was, it seems to me, a sufficiently great facility, but the last form of new right does not find it sufficient to its taste. The formality of a revolution is embarrassing and costly to carry out. A change of ministry, or, better still, a vote of parliament causes less inconvenience. Nothing more will be necessary henceforward in order that a convention in which God, honor, and conscience have been taken to witness the past year be trampled under foot the following year."
Well! we have lived through enough, since the time when an honest conscience uttered this cry of alarm, to see foreign jurisprudence arise without even the formality of a revolution, of a change of ministry or a vote of parliament, to hear it proclaimed by the minister of a regular absolute monarchy, by a Russian chancellor. It is true that the Italians also then hastened to profit by the misfortunes of France, to break in their turn a solemn engagement made with it in a public document, that in 1870 they had even anticipated Prince Gortchakof in a proceeding well known to them; but it was not from a government born yesterday that the successor of Count Nesselrode should have borrowed the procedures. There was a day when Alexander Mikhaïlovitch reproached this very government with moving with the revolution to reap the heritage of it.[137] Since then he has also moved with the revolution,—with one of the most audacious, most violent revolutions which has ever overturned thrones and kingdoms; he has reaped no heritage from it, it is true (it is only too often so in life, as one knows), he only accepted from it a gracious legacy, a legitimate donation, a modest gift in fact, and out of proportion to services rendered, but which was not the less sullied with undue influences, and which injured the right of the third parties, the right of nations.
How otherwise great and glorious might have been the "conquests" of Alexander Mikhaïlovitch, if, inspiring himself, in the month of October, 1870, with the legitimate ambition of the Russian people, the "national minister" had brought about a concerted action of Europe in order to produce peace between France and Germany, and to regulate the troubled affairs of the Continent! "We have always been of the opinion," wrote M. de Beust, on the 10th September, to St. Petersburg, "that it is for Russia to take the initiative." Its great influence abroad, its security in the interior, its good relations with the conqueror, assigned to it in truth such an initiative, and certainly neither Austria, Italy, nor England would have hesitated to range themselves under its banner. There was no necessity for a menacing intervention, nor even for that armed neutrality which M. Disraeli recommended:[138] the wish firmly expressed by all the Powers of the Continent would have fully sufficed. They could have thus limited the losses of France, given to Germany a less formidable organization, more in harmony with the aspirations and liberal occupations of our century,—the great vassals of the new emperor would not have failed to lend their aid to it,—a general disarmament would have given to a generation cruelly tried, and which now cannot even rest in its sterility, a reparative and a fruitful work. And who would dare to doubt that after such services Russia would not have obtained of Europe the grateful abrogation of that onerous article of the treaty of 1856? France would certainly not have thought of opposing it; Austria would not have maintained a clause which it had combated from the beginning, and which, four years before, it had solemnly declared to be "only a question of amour-propre," whose gravest interests demanded the sacrifice; as to England, it is well known that in course of time it accommodates itself to everything. How much such a benefit procured for humanity by a monarchical government, absolute indeed, would have given force to the cause of order and preservation, of rejuvenation of monarchical principles! with what prestige it would have surrounded the Russian people; what imperishable splendor it would have attached to the name of Alexander II! The call of destiny was very manifest; the rôle as plain as easy: the successor of Count Nesselrode shrunk from it. It was only a sin of omission, if you will, but of that sort which the sublime lover of justice Alighieri did not pardon when they were committed against his ideal of justitia et pax. On such a sin he inflicted the name of il gran rifiuto.