Two Chancellors: Prince Gortchakof and Prince Bismarck

by Julian Klaczko

VI.

TEN YEARS OF ASSOCIATION.

On the 9th January, 1873, Napoleon III. passed sadly away from the land of exile at Chiselhurst, and a short time after, the 27th March, William I. entered on the sixty-sixth year of a life in which assuredly the most extraordinary favors of fortune have not been wanting. Germany celebrated the fête of its new emperor with transports of joy, the more noisy and sincere since the monarch had waited for this anniversary to ratify a last convention with the government of Versailles, a convention which assured the anticipated payment of the fifth milliard of the French ransom, and the very early return of the troops of occupation from the other side of the Vosges. The great accounts with the hereditary enemy thus definitely settled, the conqueror of Sedan thought, on his part, of acquitting himself of a little debt of the heart: he resolved to carry to the Emperor Alexander II. the expression of his lively gratitude for the loyal aid which he had lent him during a memorable period of trials and combats. Long foreseen, from time to time announced and put off, the journey to St. Petersburg was at length undertaken at the beginning of pleasant weather, and M. de Bismarck took care to state precisely on this occasion the date as well as the character of the close association of interests established between Russia and Prussia, and which became so fatal to the Occident. "The commonalty of views,"—thus the official organ of the German chancellor expressed itself,[139]—"which brought about the alliance of Prussia and Russia in 1863, at the time of the Polish insurrection, was the point of departure for this present policy of the two states, which, on the occasion of the great events of the last years, has affirmed its power. Since the attitude of Russia in the question of Schleswig-Holstein, up to the important proofs of sympathy given to Germany by the Emperor Alexander during the last war, all has concurred to render this alliance still more firm."

By a sort of historical fiction which confounds the reason not a little, but which a sovereign will imposes on acts and even public monuments in Russia, the campaign of 1870 did not cease to be exalted in the official spheres of the empire of the czars as the continuation of the work of 1814, as the final episode of "that great epoch when the united armies of Russia and Prussia fought for a sacred cause which was common to them both."[140] At the Kremlin, in the splendid hall consecrated by the Emperor Nicholas to the military glories of the country, and which is the arc de l'Etoile of Holy Russia, the foreign tourist is astonished to see glittering now in letters of gold on the marble the names of Moltke, of Roon, and other captains of Germany who shone in the last war against France.[141] And the conqueror of Sedan might imagine that he was still in the midst of his subjects in traversing in 1873 the vast Muscovite plains: from the frontier to the Gulf of Finland the journey was an uninterrupted succession of triumphs and ovations. At each depot where the imperial train stopped a guard of honor was in waiting, and played the German national song; the czar came to meet his august guest to Gatchina, and the 27th April the two sovereigns entered the capital of Peter the Great. The skies were gloomy and cold, and the sun refused to lighten "the city of wet streets and dry hearts," as one of its poets has called it; but human industry did all that was possible to supply the place of nature, and make amends for the irreparable outrage of the climate. "All the green-houses of the capital, without excepting those of the imperial gardens," says an eye-witness,[142] "were literally devastated to improvise around the gates and windows a spring which, retarded in our North, only arrived with summer," and the rich carpets suspended from the ledges or stretched along the edifices gave to the boreal city the joyous aspect of the city of lagoons. "The perspective of Izmaïlovsky, the perspective of Voznessensky, the Grande-Morskaïa, formed a sort of continuous alley of draperies of the Russian, German, and Prussian colors. On a great number of balconies, one saw in the midst of the verdure and the flowers the busts of the two monarchs crowned with laurel. The façade of the great stable Préobrajensky was ornamented with a number of standards surrounding a colossal cross of that military order of Saint George of which his majesty the Emperor William is the oldest knight and the only grand ribbon." The crowd pressed close to the passage of the guests from Berlin; the unreserved Prince de Bismarck and the taciturn Count de Moltke especially attracted the eyes of the spectators.

For twelve days there was an endless succession of reviews, parades, tatoos, illuminations, balls, raouts, banquets, concerts, and gala representations. Among the latter, the chroniclers mention the two splendid ballets of the "Roi Candaule" and "Don Quixotte." The people had also their part in the rejoicings, especially on the evening of the 29th April, at the gigantic festival of the Place du Palais. The two sovereigns were present at the immense balcony concert above the piazza of the castle. "On their arrival, five electric suns all at once lighted the square with such intensity that one could distinguish the features of all the spectators, and the orchestra struck up the national Prussian hymn. The total number of musicians was 1,550, in addition to 600 trumpets and 350 drums. After the hymn the "March of King Frederick William III." was played; then came a whole series of military marches, the "March of Steinmetz," the "Watch on the Rhine," the "March of the Garde of 1808," to the music of which the Russian regiments returned to St. Petersburg after the campaign of Eylau, and the "March of Paris," which the allied armies heard in olden times at the time of their triumphal entry into the capital of France. The military prayer, "God is great in Zion," also produced an immense effect." One can hardly explain how, in the midst of music entirely consecrated to the gods Mars and Vulcan, the sweet romance of Weber, entitled "The Praise of Tears," could be introduced, unless it was a discreet homage rendered to the well known sensibility of the old Hohenzollern, and of which many speeches, letters, or telegrams bear in history authentic traces. This easily impressionable character of the sovereign of Germany was visible as far as was necessary at St. Petersburg; it showed itself especially at the moment when the two monarchs made their adieux in the imperial salons of the depot of Gatchina. In order not to succumb to his emotion, William I. had to leave the salon brusquely; his head bent forward, his features contracted, he went out with hasty steps and reached the car without turning round.

However, if during this sojourn of the Prussian guests on the banks of the Neva all the honors were for the uncle of the czar, the curiosity of the public, panting and almost feverish, willingly turned, one may be sure, to the extraordinary minister whose uniform of the white curassiers set off his imposing stature—to this chancellor of Germany who, in the short space of a lustrum, had founded an empire on the ruins of two others. One had not had time to forget at St. Petersburg the grumbling diplomat, who from 1859 to 1862 astonished and amused the Russian society by his slanders against his own court, by his pleasantries on the "old fogies of Potsdam" and the "Philistines of the Spree," and who occasionally repeated the famous mot of M. Prudhomme—the mot: "If I were the government!"—he who was to laugh at it the first. He was the government at this time, he was even the master of Europe; and his star had dimmed the star of a Hapsburg, of a Napoleon! The subject gave rise to more than one touching reconciliation, to many a piquant reminiscence, and there was room also for futile remarks for the plerisque vana mirantibus of which the immortal historian speaks in presence of any prodigious change of fortune. In presence of the man of the five milliards, the great ladies at the winter palace remembered a certain ambassadress ten years before, who one day boldly declared that she could not pay forty silver roubles for early asparagus, who another day avowed in all candor that she owed her new diamond ear-rings only to the exchange of a valuable snuff-box, an old gift of the Prince of Darmstadt.[143] The ambassadress was the wife of Prince de Bismarck, then baron, prince to-day, a good prince too, and having lost nothing of his former affability. He was easy, playful, earnest, as at the time of his mission in Russia; he inquired for friends, acquaintances, small or great people whom he had known formerly, and seemed to renew relations and conversations as if interrupted only yesterday. The statesman disappeared entirely, to show only the courtier and the man of the world, and it was only in his relations with Prince Gortchakof, a sagacious observer tells us, that he laid aside the foreign minister, and only appeared as the companion, almost as the compatriot. He showed him the deference of an affectionate friend towards his elder,—of a disciple towards the master, said the flatterers, without thinking of evil, without thinking, above all, on the discipulus supra magistrum of whom Alexander Mikhaïlovitch, a good Latinist himself, perhaps thought.

They often appeared thus in public, at numerous fêtes and receptions, side by side, the one towering above the crowd with his strongly-marked head, the other also easily recognizable by his fine, spirituel, and rather sharp features. According to that ingenious court etiquette of which the good Homer has given the first precept, in making Diomede and Glaucus exchange their brilliant armor, the Russian minister wore the insignia of the black Eagle of Prussia, and the Prussian minister the insignia of St. Andrew of Russia,—and this exchange of ribbons involuntarily recalled the commonalty of ties which had for so long united these illustrious diplomats. Such a cordial, unalterable understanding between two statesmen directing two different empires, was assuredly a rare phenomenon, well calculated to excite attention, and which, during the pompous solemnities of St. Petersburg, did not cease, in fact, to occupy reflective minds. They sought in vain in the past for the example of a harmony of action as constant and glowing: certain political friendships celebrated in history, those among others of Choiseul and Kaunitz, of Dubois and Stanhope, or yet of Mazarin and Cromwell, were only evoked an instant to be immediately recognized as deceptive souvenirs, apparent analogies only. No one, however, disregarded the considerable, decisive influence which the accord between the two chancellors has had on the recent destinies of Europe; nor did any one doubt the prodigious benefit which M. de Bismarck has been able to draw from this juncture in his bold enterprises: the opinions began to differ only when there was a question of settling the accounts of Russia, of fixing well the profits brought to the empire of the czars by this association of ten years, the most turbulent ten years which the Continent has known since the day of Waterloo.

According to the ideas of some, there was only advantage and gain for the people of Rourik, in the situation created by the immense events of Sadowa and Sedan. They showed the humiliating treaty of 1856 torn up, Austria punished for its "treason" at the time of the Crimean war, France sunken and weakened, England a resigned spectator of the progress of General Kaufman at Bokhara, and Russia recovering its ancient prestige, tasting in all quiet the vengeance, that pleasure of the gods and of the great favorites of the gods like Alexander Mikhaïlovitch. Is there not in truth, was said, a marvelous fortune, an imposing unity in the career of this minister who, at the conference of Vienna, had sworn to take revenge for the abasement of his country, and who has so well kept his word? Is there not a grand Nemesis in the successive chastisement of these proud "allies" who, in 1853, had undertaken the defense of the crescent against the cross of St. Andrew, who, ten years later, had dared to raise the question of Poland? At the present time Austria and France are rivals in flattering, obsequious conduct before the so decried "barbarian of the North," England solicits of him a modus vivendi in central Asia; and this enviable and glorious position Russia has obtained without conflict, without sacrifices, only by meditating, developing its interior prosperity, and letting its neighbor act alone, its secular, tried friend, whose devotion has never been doubted. It is only just that Prussia should reap the fruits of its valor and its fidelity, and the well known sentiments of the Emperor William towards the czar, the family ties which have so long united the two courts; lastly, the destinies, so distinct and yet so connected, of the two states, are certain gages of a future, permanent, and immovable understanding. How many times has Prussia solemnly declared that it has no interest in the Oriental question. The day when the question of the succession of the Osmanli arises, the Hohenzollern will prove his gratitude to the Romanof. The little jealousies and the little rivalries have had their day, like the little states and the little artifices of influence and of the balance of power: the future is for a rational policy based on the nature of things, the reality of geography, the homogeneity of races; and this policy assigns to Russia and Germany their respective rôles and corollaries. In point of view of general principles, we can only rejoice that the sceptre of the Occident has escaped a turbulent, volcanic nation now making Jacobin, now ultramontane propaganda, but always revolutionary, to pass into the hands of a well-ordered, hierarchical, and disciplined state, as it is. Lastly, Sadowa and Sedan were Protestant victories over the first two Catholic Powers, and the contest in which M. de Bismarck engaged against the Roman Curia is only the logical consequence of this great fact of history; but without even sharing certain ideas, widely spread however, of a possible fusion of the Protestant and Orthodox beliefs, it is not for the church of Photius, in any case, to take umbrage at the mortal blow given to the Vatican.

To such justifications, in which neither convincing arguments nor sharp touches were wanting, those dissenting opposed objections inspired by a patriotism equally sincere, but much less hopeful. Also admiring the facility and promptitude with which Russia has arisen from its great disaster of the Crimea, they pretended only that this great result had been obtained long before the advent of M. de Bismarck, long before any association with him, and that from the year 1860 the empire of the Rourik had retaken the great position which it deserved in Europe, when the sovereigns of Austria, Prussia, and so many of the princes of Germany had come to salute the czar at Warsaw, to recognize his moral supremity, and that Napoleon III. on his part sought his friendship and accepted his arbitration. The great ability with which Prince Gortchakof used the "French cordiality" for the good of Russia, without giving up any essential interests, and without compromising the conservative and traditional principles of his government, always remained one of his greatest claims to the gratitude of his country, and it would have been desirable had he preserved the same moderation, the same reserve, later in this intimacy with Prussia, which on the occasion of the Polish insurrection had replaced the former understanding with the Tuileries. The successor of Nesselrode exaggerated, without doubt, the bearing and the danger of the famous remonstrances on the subject of Poland, as well as the nature of the services, very selfish as a whole, which his friend of Berlin then rendered him; in any case, that was certainly not a reason to pout at Europe after the affair had turned out to the striking advantage of the Russian government, to pout at it during long years, to wish no other ally than Prussia, and to persist, in respect to this last Power, in the constant policy of let-go, let-do, and let-take.