It is superfluous to lay stress upon the activity which the new envoy of the czar displayed in this unhappy mission; to mention the infinite variety of means which he placed at the service of his cause, especially during the conferences of Vienna, which were opened after the death of Nicholas and the accession of the Emperor Alexander II. That was a moving sight and one which was truly not wanting in grandeur, that of the two Gortchakof, one behind the ramparts of Sebastopol, the other before the council board of Vienna, both defending their country with an equal tenacity, only yielding each inch of ground after a desperate combat, forced into their last intrenchments, but honored even to the end by loyal and chivalrous adversaries. To-day an epoch "of iron and of blood" has accustomed us to the summary proceedings—we had almost said executions—of Nikolsburg, of Ferrières, of Versailles, and of Frankfort, and a martial law used by the diplomats in helmets has replaced that which a former Europe, full of prejudices, loved to call the right of nations. To-day it is difficult to resist a sentiment of astonishment, almost of incredulity, in re-reading the protocols of these conferences of Vienna, where everything breathes decorum, politeness, urbanity, and mutual respect. One thinks himself carried back to an idyllic age, one far from us, to a world of ancient gentlemen. M. Drouyn de Lhuys, Minister of Foreign Affairs in France, Lord John Russell, until lately President of the Privy Council of England, did not think it beneath their dignity to go in person to Vienna to discuss there with Prince Gortchakof the possible conditions of a peace. Russia had lost several great battles, the allied fleets had blockaded all its seas and even menaced its capital. That did not prevent the French and English plenipotentiaries from treating it with all deference, with all the respect which the diplomacy of this good old time could employ. They displayed a veritable art in the invention of euphemisms; they gave themselves pains to find the mildest mediums, the most acceptable terms for the representative of a vanquished power. Indeed, that excellent Lord John Russell forced kindness so far as to recall, and that in the face of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, that England had made Louis XIV. submit to conditions much harder and more humiliating.[11] That was, perhaps, the only instance of want of tact which one can find in the conferences of Vienna, and yet what was it but a courteousness from an ally to an ally? As for Austria, it exhausted itself in finding means to spare the susceptibilities of Russia, and ended by presenting a plan of arrangement which was judged inacceptable by the cabinets of London and Paris, and drew on it the reproach of the "Moniteur Officiel," of which we have already spoken.
Negotiations were broken off, and nothing could be done but to await the issue of the supreme combat under the walls of Sebastopol. The Russian plenipotentiary awaited it at his post in Vienna in the twofold anguish of a patriot and a relation. The bulwark of the Crimea fell, and Russia found itself in the most critical situation. It was exhausted,—indeed much more exhausted than Europe then thought,—and the prolongation of the war would have infallibly transported the hostilities to the plains of Poland. At this moment Austria intervened anew. It agreed to the demands made by the allies at the conference of Vienna,—even that clause concerning the neutralization of the Black Sea, which it had hitherto resisted as too wounding to Russia. It was not possible to refuse this satisfaction to the allies after the capture of Sebastopol. In reality, these were the easiest conditions which have ever been imposed on a power at the close of a war so long, so bloody, and of such incontestable victories. Austria did more; it sent these conditions under form of an ultimatum, declaring that it would make common cause with the allies if they were not accepted; and Russia accepted them. To look at it plainly, this was a service rendered to a young sovereign, who, having inherited a disastrous war, thus found the means to spare at the same time the memory of his predecessor and the pride of his people. He could say now that he had only made peace because of a new adversary, who had arisen at the side of the old ones, and whom his father did not count on. In fact, it was said in Russia,—it was believed, indeed, so much was it in their interest to believe it. The Russian people were quickly reconciled with the conquerors of Alma and of Malakof. A single power remained in their eyes responsible for their disasters,—the power which during the whole war had rested on its arms. Even at this hour every Russian heart boils with indignation at the thought of Austria, of its immense ingratitude and its great treason.
Alexander Mikhaïlovitch shared these bitternesses, these popular rancors, and became the most energetic and openly avowed representative of them. In this respect he allowed his sentiments to burst forth with a frankness which approached very nearly to ostentation. A remark uttered by him during the session of the Congress at Paris, is still cited at Vienna: "Austria is not a state, it is only a government." These words preceded him to St. Petersburg and made his fortune there. The popular voice designated him as the future avenger, as the man destined to prepare for his nation a brilliant revenge; and the acute diplomat did not trouble himself to controvert such an opinion. Already, however, at this Congress of Paris certain tendencies, certain desires were revealed, which gave hope, which even opened horizons entirely new. The name of Italy was pronounced there. Roumania itself found there an unexpected support. At this strange Congress, which definitely regulated the conditions of a peace that France, England, and Austria had imposed on Russia, Austria appeared gloomy and morose, England irritated and nervous. France and Russia alone exchanged between one another the most exquisite politeness and surprising cordialities. The sword of Napoleon III. became the lance of Achilles, healing where it had just wounded, wounding where it had healed. "There was balm of Gilead in it," and support in the sovereign of the Tuileries. The day after the Congress, in the month of April, 1856, the old Count Nesselrode asked to be retired on account of his age, and Prince Alexander Gortchakof became Minister of Foreign Affairs.
II.
During the four years which he had passed at Frankfort as representative of his government to the German Confederation, Prince Gortchakof, as we have already seen, had made the acquaintance of, and maintained the most intimate relations with a colleague, whose rare qualities of mind, as probably also those of the heart, he appreciated as no one else did. The two friends were separated in the summer of 1854, when the Russian plenipotentiary went to fulfill his painful mission at Vienna. But they did not delay in meeting anew, and found as before that perfect congeniality of ideas and of sentiments, which, established since their first meeting in Frankfort, has never been interrupted, and has lasted for twenty-five years: grande mortalis ævi spatium. This friend of Prince Gortchakof on the smiling banks of the Main, was no other than M. de Bismarck, the future chancellor of Germany.
Otto-Edward-Leopold de Bismarck-Schoenhausen, born the 1st of April, 1815, at Schoenhausen, hereditary estate of his family in the old Mark of Brandenburg, could not flatter himself with having, like his friend Alexander Mikhaïlovitch, blood of the Saints in his veins. His biographers even observe with visible satisfaction, that at least two of his ancestors were excommunicated by the Church and died in final impenitence. What is more serious is that the most authorized historians of the Mark of Brandenburg, M. de Riedel among others, call into question the noble origin of the family. They show that the first of the line, of whom authentic documents of the fourteenth century speak, Rulo Bismarck, was a member and on several occasions even provost of "the guild of master tailors in cloth" at Stendal, a small market town of the old Mark. The fact does not seem doubtful. But could not the citizens of Stendal, just as well as those of certain cities in Tuscany, have forced every country noble, who wished to inhabit the city, to subscribe himself in one of those guilds? This is the opinion of the tories in this curious genealogical dispute. To hear them, the good citizens of Stendal must have been on a par, in the fourteenth century, with the great citizens of Florence and of Pisa, and Rulo Bismarck must have been master tailor in cloth about as much as Dante, his contemporary, was an apothecary. The whigs, on the contrary, the biographers in national-liberal colors, take their part gayly, and one of them ingeniously concludes, that in any case the ancestor Rulo ought "to contemplate with satisfaction and pride from the high heavens the splendid imperial mantle which his descendant has made for King William out of the cloth of Europe."
In times relatively more modern, the House of Bismarck presents, like many a noble country family of Brandenburg, an unbroken succession of modest and faithful servants of the state, some soldiers, some employed in civil duties. The eighteenth century offers us two rather more curious specimens, the grandfather and great uncle of the chancellor. One was surnamed the poet, the other the adventurer. The poet, this painful avowal must be made, composed his verses in the French language. We have notably by him an "Eloge ou Monument érigé à la Mémoire de Christine de Bismarck, née de Schoenfeld, par Charles-Alexandre de Bismarck," Berlin, 1774. It was to his dead wife that the retired captain of cavalry thought necessary to elevate this mausoleum of words and of Welche rhymes, full of the insipid sentimentality of the time. The adventurer (Ludolf-August) is more deserving of his name. He killed his servant in a fit of anger or drunkenness, was pardoned, took service in Russia, became involved in political intrigues in Courland, and was forced to go to Siberia in exile. Pardoned again, he entered into Russian diplomacy, filled several missions, and died commanding general at Poltava. Let us say in passing, that this Ludolf was not the only one of his family to serve under the Russian flag, and thus the name of Bismarck has long been well known at St. Petersburg.
The whig biographers lay much stress on the fact, that the mother of the young Otto, "an intelligent, ambitious, and rather cold woman," was a bourgeoise, a Miss Menken, of a family of savans well known at Leipsic. They love to prove in this manner that the restorer of the empire was connected by his mother with the bourgeoisie, that studious and cultivated bourgeoisie which is the great strength of Germany,—while claiming his right to the nobility and the army by his father, retired captain of cavalry, and by his grandfather the poet. Those profound Germans have a weakness, it is known, for all symbolism. They dignify very often with this name that which is nothing but a jeu d'esprit, in reality a play of words, and it is thus that they attach a certain signification to the futile circumstance that the young Otto was confirmed[12] at Berlin at the hands of Schleiermacher, the celebrated Doctor of Divinity, whose learning was much more respectable than his life; "in a manner and for a fleeting moment, it is true, but solemnly, the young man called to a life of action par excellence, was brought in contact with our learned theology and our romantic philosophy." Nor has it been forgotten to exalt the name of the "gray cloister" (Grauer Kloster), which the lyceum at Berlin bore, where the future destroyer of convents studied, or to note the French origin of one of his principal professors, Doctor Bonnet, descendant of a Huguenot family which sought refuge in Brandenburg in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
After having finished his studies at the lyceum of the gray cloister, Otto de Bismarck went to the University of Goettingen, to the celebrated Georgia Augusta, in order to study. In reality, he did nothing but lead the life of the sons of the muse, who have the good or bad fortune to be at the same time sons of family, cavalieri; he cultivated nothing but hunting, riding, swimming, gymnastic exercises, and fencing. He had more than twenty duels, and fully justified the glorious name of Bursche, which clung to him for a long time afterwards, even when he was ambassador and minister. One easily understands that the Institutes and Pandects cannot be very thoroughly studied in the midst of so many corporal exercises, and even the attempt to change the noisy Georgia Augusta for the most quiet and sedate University of Berlin, was a remedy heroic rather than efficacious. Has M. de Bismarck ever regularly passed this "state examination" (Staatsexamen) which in Prussia is the indispensable condition for an appointment to any public function? A grave question, which was discussed for a long time in Germany, and out of which a weapon has shaped itself for twenty years against the man, the deputy, the ambassador, the president of the council. A fact worthy of notice, and one which well characterizes the formal and regulative mind of the nation: M. de Bismarck had already defied all Europe, and dismembered the Danish monarchy, when in the opposition journals of Germany, there appeared from time to time, like belated rockets, malignant allusions to this problematical state examination! Since the epoch of Sadowa only have these malicious jibes entirely ceased: Sadowa caused many other irregularities to pass unnoticed, and assuredly much graver ones.
It is perhaps proper to inquire here what benefits M. de Bismarck reaped from his academic life, and to estimate, if but briefly, the cultivation and the peculiarities of his mind. It seems certain that M. de Bismarck is not a man of science and study, and that his liberal education shows more than one gap. A pleasing contrast, the two chancellors, Russian and German, of whom one knew but a single lyceum and that one of very doubtful merit, while the other attended the most renowned college (gymnasium) and alma mater of learned Germany. Certainly the pupil of Zarkoe-Zeloe, as regards classical knowledge and true humaniora, is far in advance of the lucky foster child of Georgia Augusta. Nevertheless it is well to observe that M. de Bismarck fills and more than fills a certain programme laid down one day by the spirituel and regretted Saint-Marc Giradin for the well educated men of the world. "I do not require, said he, that they know Latin; I only ask that they have forgotten it." From his academic youth, there has always remained to the chancellor of Germany a fund of culture of which he well knows the use on occasion, and he understands in a sufficient degree, his Bible, his Shakspere, his Goethe, and his Schiller, those four elements of all education, even the most common one, in German countries,—precious and enviable quadrivium of the children of Arminius! Prince Gortchakof has the refinements as well as the weaknesses of the man of letters; he takes care of his "mot," he corrects his phrase, he looks at and admires himself in his compositions; it is known that he was one day surnamed the Narcissus of the inkstand. By his tastes, by his exquisite sensibility, by his artistic instinct, he has a marked superiority over his former colleague of Frankfort. But the latter regains all this advantage as soon as one considers the original and personal stamp which he knows how to give to his thoughts and to his speech, as soon as one seeks the individuality, the breathing creator, the mens agitans molem, that something mysterious and powerful which antique sculpture rendered so ingeniously by placing a flame on the forehead of certain of its statues.