France from Behind the Veil: Fifty Years of Social and Political Life

by Princess Catherine Radziwill

Emmanuel d’Harcourt was the man who best understood that honest, feeble, and in some parts enigmatical character of Marshal MacMahon. Apart from him it is to be doubted whether anyone save the Marquis d’Abzac, who was attached to his person during long years, ever guessed what went on in that narrow but well-intentioned mind. The Marquis d’Abzac was at one time a leading figure in Paris society, and I think that no one who has ever known him has forgotten the charming, amiable man he was, the perfect gentleman he always showed himself, and the true friend he remained to all those who had treated him as such. He was the leading spirit of the little Court of the Elysée, where he organised all the balls and receptions that gave it such brilliancy during the tenure of office of the Duc de Magenta, when all that was illustrious in France, even the most confirmed Royalists, considered it an honour to pay their respects to the Head of the State and to his amiable wife. He had the entire confidence of the President, who, perhaps, was more inclined to give it to a soldier like the General d’Abzac than to a civilian with whom his military soul had but little in common, and whose subtleties of reasoning appeared too complicated for his simple mind. The Marquis had married a Russian, Mlle. Lazareff, whose mother had been a Princess of Courland, related to the famous Duchesse de Sagan. His wife had vast estates in Silesia, and though he did not live with her yet he visited there often, and always made an appearance at the German Court, where he was essentially a persona grata, ever since he had accompanied Marshal MacMahon when the latter had been sent to Berlin as an Ambassador of Napoleon III. to represent that Sovereign at the coronation of William I. as King of Prussia.

Very often his visits to the German Court allowed him to clear up misunderstandings between the French Government and the Prussian Foreign Office; misunderstandings that were often provoked by the state of antagonism which existed between Prince Bismarck and the French Ambassador, the Vicomte de Gontaut Biron, about whom I shall have more to say presently. The German Chancellor liked the Marquis d’Abzac, and frequently took him into his confidence, well aware of his tact and discretion. I have heard from a person very much au courant of what was going on in the Wilhelmstrasse, that Bismarck once expressed himself to the aide-de-camp of the President of the French Republic, concerning the monarchical intrigues that were going on in Paris. He spoke with a mixture of contempt and regret of the woeful way they were conducted, and of what small chances they had of being successful. D’Abzac replied that of course it was not for him to venture an opinion on a subject that did not enter at all into his activities, but that he had always imagined that Prussia was very much adverse to the re-establishment of a Monarchy in France. The Prince immediately replied: “You are entirely mistaken, we have nothing against it, our objection is to the people who would inevitably come into power and prominence with it. If we could see in Paris a King without those who want at the present moment to proclaim him, we should, on the contrary, feel far more reassured than we do now at the immediate future both of France and of Germany. Neither the Comte de Paris nor the Prince Imperial would, nor could, risk position by declaring a war against us, the price of which might be the loss of the newly recovered throne. But we greatly dread all the councillors and advisers who would be eager to prove before the country who had sent them to represent it, that they had been right in changing the form of the government, because the one whom they had helped to call into existence was ready to win back for the nation the provinces as well as the prestige that it had lost.”

Later on, when speaking of this remarkable conversation with one of his intimate friends, the Marquis d’Abzac had been obliged to own that the German Chancellor had been right in his appreciation of a situation he understood better than did many Frenchmen.

I have already spoken of the obstinacy that was one of the characteristics of MacMahon. Those who induced him so unnecessarily to assert himself in regard to Jules Simon, played on that chord when they persuaded him that it was his duty to check the growing tide of Radicalism, and to attempt to save the Republic from those who were leading it into a path which would alienate from it the sympathy of Europe, at a time when France sorely needed this support. He imagined that by dismissing his Cabinet he was doing a great thing for his country, but being the faithful slave of his convictions, i.e. that the nation ought to be free to express its opinions and its wishes as to the form of government it liked, he did not pursue what he had begun so well, and refused to allow the Cabinet whom he had called together to fight the battle to the bitter end. For thus he might have ensured, with the help of some moral pressure, the triumph of the step which he had taken more violently than wisely. The result is well known, and though the death of M. Thiers, which happened on the very eve of the elections, carried away one of his greatest and most powerful adversaries, yet the Radical party secured a complete victory. One of the greatest mistakes that Marshal MacMahon ever made in his life was in failing to resign when the result of the elections became known. He sacrificed his ministers, he allowed those who had borne the brunt of the battle to be ousted out of the field and almost out of political life, which for some of them remained fast closed after that experience, and he himself, instead of following them in their retreat, remained still Head of the State, and continued to occupy the Elysée, losing the esteem of those who had considered him, until that time at any rate, a respectable nonentity. He received the new ministers whom his own stupidity had brought into power, he still discussed with them, and he went on trying to push forward his own opinions and his own wishes, unobservant of all the slights that were continually poured upon him. The only time that his Cabinet seriously tried to assure itself of his help in a matter of international politics—the advisability of making some advances to Russia in view of a possible rapprochement in the future—he violently opposed the idea, invoking the remembrances of the Crimean War, which, as someone wittily remarked, “he had gone through, but not outlived.” After that no one attempted even to keep him in the current of the affairs of the government, and after the elections which took place in the Senate, and which resulted in a majority holding the same ideas as those which already existed in the Chamber, the Marshal himself saw that nothing was left to him but to resign, and, bereft of the prestige which would have attached to his name had he done so after the 16th of May had been condemned by the nation, he retired into private life, and also into obscurity, which is far worse.

By a strange coincidence he died just when that Russian alliance to which he had been so opposed was very near to becoming an accomplished fact. Also, he was followed to his grave by a deputation of Russian sailors, headed by Admiral Avellan, who came to Paris from Toulon during the memorable visit paid to that town by the Russian squadron which had been sent to return the visit paid to Cronstadt by the French fleet a few months before. It was one of those freaks of destiny which occur so often in life, that at his funeral, too, should be represented the nation against whom he had fought in the Crimean fields and at Sebastopol, and whose soldiers he had never expected would, together with those he had commanded, fire the last volleys over his grave. The old warrior, who, in spite of his mistakes and errors, still represented something of the glory of his country, and was one of the remnants of an epoch and of a regime that had given to the world the illusion of a strong and powerful France, was accompanied to his last resting-place by the sincere regrets of all those who had loved the man, while they distrusted and condemned the statesman, and perhaps even despised his capacity as a politician. But his personal honesty had come out unimpaired from the trials of his public career, his honour had never been questioned, his courage had never been the subject of the slightest doubt. He deserved fully the honours which were paid to him at his death, and the homage that France rendered to him at his funeral.

CHAPTER XIV
Two Great Ministers

I have mentioned the Duc de Broglie and the Duc Decazes. They were the last two ministers of the old school of which the Third French Republic could boast. After them came mostly self-made men, who were perhaps cleverer than they had been but who did not possess the traditions of old France, and who brought along with them not only a change of policy but a change in political manners and customs. After the two great ministers of whom I am about to speak, the Republic became democratic, far removed from the aristocratic country it had been whilst they were ruling it.

The Duc de Broglie was the son of remarkable parents. His father, the old Duke Victor, had been a writer, a thinker, a politician and an orator of no mean talent; one, moreover, who, amidst the corruption which had prevailed at the time of the first restoration of the Bourbons, had succeeded in keeping his hands clean from every suspicion. He showed the great independence of his noble, straightforward character when almost alone among his colleagues in the House of Peers he refused to vote for the condemnation of Marshal Ney.

The old Duc’s wife was the lovely Duchesse de Broglie, Albertine de Stael, the daughter of the celebrated Madame de Stael, and the granddaughter of Necker. Madame de Broglie was one of those figures who leave their impress on posterity, and whose influence survives them for a long time. She had, allied to considerable beauty, a noble soul, a great intelligence, and strict Protestant principles, which had communicated a tinge of austerity to all that she said, did or wrote.

Her son Albert inherited much of this Calvinistic severity, which gave him sometimes a harsh appearance and harsh manners. He was one of those men who never will accept a compromise, or resort to diplomacy of whatever kind, to achieve anything they have made up their minds to do. He was unusually well read, a man of considerable erudition, who was more at his ease at his writing-table than in a drawing-room. He had never been frivolous, as one of his friends once said, and had but seldom shown himself amiable. This absence of human passions made him sometimes unjust towards those who had felt their influence, or allowed themselves to be carried away by them. One could not imagine a time when the Duc de Broglie had been young, nor a moment when he had not been absorbed by his duties or his studies. He was a living encyclopædia, and was continually improving his own mind by devoting his attention to some serious subject or other. When he was elected a member of the Academy no one was surprised at it, the contrary would have seemed wonderful because he appeared to have been born an Academician, and to be out of place anywhere else but among the ranks of that select company known as the Institut de France.