Events did not make it of much importance. In the Bundestag were concentrated not only all the efforts of the secondary States of the confederation, but there also were formed or conceived the projects, the preparations, and even the desires of the two principal German powers, the assistance of which Russia on the one side and France and England on the other, were equally concerned in obtaining. Prince Gortchakof could not complain of the turn affairs took in Germany. Frederick William IV. was faithful against every temptation. The czar could count in any case on "his brother-in-law, the poet;" and Alexander Mikhaïlovitch found an equally firm support in his colleague of Prussia, the young officer of the Landwehr. The cabinet of Berlin consented from time to time to join in the representations which the allies sent to St. Petersburg, to sign in concert with them the same note, or one analogous or concordant. But it did not take long to see that it only did this to retard their movements, and to deter them from any energetic resolution. At decisive moments it stopped short, hesitated, and pretended to preserve "la main libre" (free Hand). The other members of the Bund were much more sympathetic and more frankly won over to the Russian policy. They did not think the demands of the czar against Turkey at all exorbitant, and troubled themselves very little about the preservation of the "sick man." They likewise desired to preserve "la main libre," closed their ranks in the famous conferences of Bamberg, and were at times all ready to draw their swords. In truth, Alexander Mikhaïlovitch showed in the sequel, in the fatal year 1866, very little gratitude, very little distributive justice, for these poor secondary States, so devoted, so serviceable, so immovably attached at the time of the Oriental crisis.
While at London and at Paris vehement comments were made in the celebrated dispatches of Sir Hamilton Seymour, and the ambitious projects of Russia were denounced there, at Hanover, at Dresden, at Munich, at Stuttgart, at Cassel, nothing but censure was heard against the proceedings of the allies and their "usurpations." At Berlin they groaned all the more at seeing Christian monarchies undertake so ardently the defense of the Crescent. A single Germanic power, however, at that time the largest it is true, maintained a different attitude; a single one thought the cause of the allies just, seemed, indeed, at moments to be inclined to make common cause with them; and that power was Austria,—Austria, but lately succored by the Russian arms; saved by the strong and generous hand of the czar on the very brink of the abyss; "saved" by him from sudden dissolution. The astonishment, the stupefaction, the exasperation of the Emperor Nicholas knew no bounds. The entire Russian nation shared his sentiments,—Alexander Mikhaïlovitch like every patriotic Muscovite. "The immense ingratitude of Austria" became even then the unanimous cry,—the siboleth of every political faith in the vast empire of the North; and so it has remained even to our days.
It is necessary to lay stress upon this sentiment born in Russia in consequence of the Oriental conflict, and to discuss the real causes for it; for this sentiment has produced incalculable effects. It has contributed largely to the recent catastrophes; it has dictated more than one extreme resolution to the cabinet of St. Petersburg; it has made it abandon its venerable traditions,—its principles, consecrated by the experience of generations and seemingly immovable, having become, in a certain sense, the arcana imperii of the descendants of Peter the Great. To sum up, it has governed the general policy of the successor of Nesselrode during the last twenty years.
Assuredly Russia had the right to count on the recognition of Austria after the signal and incontestable service which it had rendered her in 1849. The armies which the czar then sent to the succor of the tottering empire of Hapsburg contributed powerfully to suppress a fatal, menacing insurrection there; and if it is true that in order to obtain this succor it was sufficient to recall to the Czar Nicholas a word given long before in a moment of confidential intimacy, the action does not become the less meritorious, and does so much the more honor to the heart of the autocrat.[7] It would be difficult to deny that this intervention in Hungary had not a generous and chivalric character which astonished the contemporaries and the clever. The clever ones, the statesmen, who, at this troubled epoch of Europe, had still preserved enough liberal spirit to cast their eyes toward the Danube,—Lord Palmerston among others,—remained for a long time incredulous, and endeavored to divine the reward paid for the aid that was lent. Should not the czar retain Galicia as a recompense for his assistance? Would he not procure some positive assurance from the side of the Principalities? was asked in the offices of Downing Street. Nothing of the sort happened, however. The Russians left Austria without a reward, as they had entered it without an arrière-pensée, and the troops of Paskévitch evacuated the country of the Carpathians unladen with booty. A young and ardent orator in the Prussian chambers, with the name (as yet but little known) de Bismarck,—the same who fifteen years later was to project striking a coup au cœur and arming the legions of Klapka,—admired at this moment the brilliant action of the czar, and only expressed the patriotic regret that this magnanimous rôle had not fallen to his own country, to Prussia. It was for Prussia to bring assistance to its elder brother in Germany, to "its former comrade in arms."[8] But it is allowable to suppose that, even with a king as loyal and poetic as Frederick William IV., affairs would have been conducted much less handsomely than with the barbarian of the North, and that similar aid from Prussia would have cost the empire of Hapsburg a part of Silesia or a part of its influence on the Main.
Shall we say, then, that in intervening in Hungary the Emperor of Russia acted from pure chivalry and platonic friendship, that he had no thought of personal interest and the good of his empire? Certainly not; and the czar had too much loyalty not to avow it frankly. He intervened in Hungary, not only as the friend of the Hapsburg, not only as the defender of the cause of order against cosmopolitan revolution; the most powerful motive in deciding him was the presence in the Hungarian army of Polish generals and officers, who intended to carry the war into the countries subjected to Russian rule. In his manifest of the 8th May, 1849, Nicholas expressed himself as follows: "The insurrection sustained by the influence of our traitors from Poland, of the year 1831, has given to the Hungarian revolt an extension more and more menacing.... His majesty, the Emperor of Austria, has invited us to assist against the common enemy.... We have ordered our army under way to quell the revolt, and to destroy the audacious anarchists, who equally menace the tranquillity of our provinces." The language was clear and frank, as was fitting for a sovereign preserving the consciousness of his dignity. This sovereign intended to render himself a service as well as his ally. He was going to stifle in his neighbors' territory an incendiary fire which threatened to harm his own domains; and in the act of intervening, let it be well understood, he at the same time acted in self-preservation.
Well! it seems according to all justice that the gratitude should correspond to the service rendered, and that the law of preservation, the supreme law of nature, should have equal force for the party under obligations as for the benefactor. There is no policy in the world, were it even taken from Holy Writ which could advise voluntary servitude; there is no doctrine, however sublime one wishes to imagine it, which, among the duties of the confession, recommends suicide. Now, it was nothing less than absolute subjection, the ruin of its personality as a great European State, which the Russians demanded of Austria in demanding its assent to their pretensions against the Orient. By geography, by the spirit of races, by religion, the Russian enterprises would strike a mortal blow at the empire of the Hapsburg, if this empire allowed them to triumph. A Danubian power, Austria should take care that the Lower Danube remained neutral, and that it should not fall into the hands of a powerful neighbor, who would then become master of this great river. A Sclavic power in its Oriental provinces, it ought to guard against being placed in immediate contact with an empire pan-Sclavic by tradition and by fatality, and it could not wish it to be planted in the Principalities, in Bosnia and Herzegovania. A Catholic power, it was forbidden to recognize the influence and the protectorate which the orthodox czar claimed over the Christians of the Grecian rite, of whom it counted several millions among its subjects. "My conduct in the question of the Orient! Why it is written on a map?" said Count Buol, to his brother-in-law, M. de Meyendorf, the Russian ambassador. He added that it was also written in history. "I have made no innovation. I have only inherited the political legacy of M. de Metternich."
In fact, in a previous crisis, at the time of the Hellenic insurrection and the war of 1828, the grand chancellor of the court and of the empire had defended this principle of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire with a firmness which nothing could disturb. During eight years he had defended it, braving the storm alone, not allowing himself to be discouraged either by the unpopularity then attaching to the Turkish cause or by the desertion of France. Why should the Russians hope that Austria would now desert this principle so vital for her, that she would desert it at the very moment when it commenced to triumph over the indifference of the Occident, and counted France and England among its most earnest champions?
Placed between a sentiment of gratitude very lively and real, as we have said, and a great political necessity, the government of Vienna has certainly done for gratitude all that it owed. It lavished warnings, prayers, good offices, offers of mediation on the Emperor Nicholas. Austria pardoned Russia more than one want of respect, more than one action of ill humor; it pardoned her the more than airy tone in which it had been disposed of in the effusions with Sir Hamilton Seymour,—the manner in which a certain autograph letter of the Emperor Francis Joseph had been received at St. Petersburg,—the haughty, almost insulting attitude of Count Orlof during his mission at Vienna. It did not cease till the end to calm the irritation of the allies, to modify and alter their programme, to assert the conciliating disposition of the czar, to hope against all hope. It pleaded only for the return in statu quo, repudiating any idea of humiliating or weakening Russia; it demanded nothing from her but the freedom of the Danube, the renunciation of the protectorate, and refused to follow the allies in their demands concerning the Black Sea. Unfortunately, as it happens too often to him who wishes to be equitable and just towards all parties, the Austrian government, by this conduct, ended by alienating France and England and exasperating the Russians. In the summer of 1854, at the very moment when Prince Gortchakof exchanged his post at Frankfort for that at Vienna, an eminent publicist, who was then, so to speak, the mouth-piece of the Occident, and of its generous spirits, almost despaired of Austria, and cried with bitterness that over there, in the Burg, "the Russian alliance was something as sacred as a religion, as fixed as propriety, and as popular as a fashion!" In the spring of the following year, the cabinets of Paris and of London resisted, as too favorable to Russia, a new plan of arrangement presented by Count Buol, and the French government on this occasion reproached Austria, in the "Moniteur Officiel," with offering an expedient rather than a solution.
The solution! The Emperor Francis Joseph certainly had it in his hands, and it perhaps depended only on him to render it as decisive and as radical as the most mortal enemies of Russia could wish. Why not confess it? To see the bitter fruit gathered by Austria in consequence of its honorable efforts during the Oriental crisis, and to see the implacable hatred and the cruel disasters which fell to its lot because of its attitude then, one surprises one's self sometimes in regretting that the cabinet of Vienna had so many scruples at this memorable epoch. One almost reproaches it for not having given proof of that independence of heart which seems, alas! the forced, indispensable condition for the independence of states. If Austria had wished to be a little less grateful and a little less politic during this war of the Orient, she would have resolutely joined herself to France and England, she would have taken part in the struggle, and instead of letting the allies rove for years around the borders of Russia, in the Black Sea and Baltic, she would have opened for them the fields of Poland, and have entered there with them. In place of "tickling the soul of the Colossus or of filing off a nail,"—as Russian publicists said later, and not without justice,—they should then have given him a coup au cœur,—one of those blows that the great recluse of Varzin knows how to plan and give. The cabinet of the Tuileries would not have refused to do this. In his dispatch of the 26th March, 1855, M. Drouyn de Lhuys laid down very skillfully the question of Poland; neither would the cabinet of St. James have raised serious objections. As to the probable success of such an enterprise, it suffices to remember that Russia was at the end of its resources, and that Prussia had not yet re-formed its military organization, was not yet in possession of its "instrument," and lastly that in place of William the Conqueror, Frederick the Romantic occupied the throne of the Hohenzollern. The mind is confounded before the contemplation of the consequences which such a decision on the part of the Emperor Francis Joseph might have caused. The face of the world would have been changed; Austria would certainly not have seen Sadowa[9] in 1866; Europe would not have seen the dismemberment of Denmark, nor the destruction of the Bund, nor the conquest of Alsace and Lorraine.
It was in the summer of 1854, as we have said above, that Prince Gortchakof was sent to Vienna. He replaced there, first provisionally, and in the following spring, definitely, Baron de Meyendorf, whose situation had become unpleasant in consequence of his ties of very near relationship with the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs. Alexander Mikhaïlovitch at last held that post at Vienna to which he had so long a time aspired, the post which, with that of London, was considered, under the reign of Nicholas, as the highest in Russian diplomacy, like the bâton of a marshal in his career. But now how full this honor was of bitterness, and what patriotic pangs accompanied a distinction formerly ardently wished for, to-day accepted through devotion to his sovereign and his country! On this ground, formerly so pleasant and smiling, the envoy of the czar could everywhere see nothing but briers and thorns. In this capital, renowned for its boisterous gayety and too frequent frivolity, he received nothing but disastrous and distracting news. And this "Austrian ingratitude," which he had only had glimpses of and combated from afar during his mission at Frankfort, he could now look in the face—and smile at it! There is a grief greater than the ricordare tempi felici nella miseria; it is to see a dream of happiness turn into a reality of misery, and one can easily understand what a treasure of gall this sojourn at Vienna must have heaped up in the wounded heart of the Russian patriot.[10]