It was then that the conditions of a defensive alliance between both countries came under serious discussion. The new Emperor showed himself unusually gracious to all the members of the mission, and when General Boisdeffre timidly remarked that the President of the Republic would be envious of the honour he had experienced of being brought into personal contact with His Majesty, Nicholas replied, half jokingly and half earnestly, that perhaps he would pay a visit to the President in Paris, which city he had a great desire to see.
These words raised roseate anticipations at the time, and later on were seized upon by the French Government and construed into a promise made by the Emperor Nicholas II. to visit M. Félix Faure, then President of France. Nor was the Emperor allowed to forget. General Boisdeffre returned to Russia some sixteen months later for the Coronation of the Tsar, and there, together with Comte de Montebello, had many serious conversations with Prince Lobanoff, the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, and with General Obroutscheff, then head of the Russian General Staff, who, being married to a Frenchwoman, was one of the staunchest supporters of an alliance with France. At a direct result of these interviews, Nicholas II. was induced to promise that his visits to European Courts on the occasion of his accession to the throne would include one to Paris.
When the news became official, the enthusiasm it excited among all classes in France was absolutely indescribable. I remember that one morning, as I was walking down the Champs Elysées, I saw two workmen, who were mending one of the lanterns of the Avenue, eagerly scanning a newspaper with a portrait of the Tsar, and heard one say to the other, “C’est celui-là qui va nous débarrasser des Prussiens” (“He is the man who will rid us of the Prussians”). The whole nation saw itself once more in possession of Alsace and Lorraine, and never thought about the impending Imperial visit as anything else than the first step towards that consummation.
In Russia, however, we did not care for it at all. It seemed humiliating to our national pride that our Sovereign should make the first advances to a country the government of which represented everything that was antipathetic to an autocracy like ours. When I say “we,” I am talking of the saner elements of our country. In Russia, as well as in France, the anti-German elements hailed the situation with joy, and hoped great things from a closer union of the two nations.
The Emperor on his side could not but feel flattered at the shower of praise and compliments that fell from the French nation and the French press. It tickled his fancy to be received in triumph in the capital of a Republican country, and to find prostrate at his feet its most rabid Radicals. He did not see, or did not care to see, the undercurrents that actuated this enthusiasm; besides, Russia wanted a loan, and wanted it under favourable conditions. The presence of the Tsar in Paris ensured the success of such an operation, and, as Henri IV. said, “Paris vaut bien une messe.”
It is to be questioned which of the two countries indulged most in platitudes on this memorable occasion. France, at least, was actuated by the legitimate desire to recover her lost provinces, and she may well be forgiven if she allowed herself to be carried away beyond the limits of that courtesy which a great nation is bound to show to any foreign Sovereign who honours it with a visit. But Russia—— Was it worthy of her, was it dignified on the part of the Monarch so to stoop in order to get the money she wanted without the least intention to hold to the other side of the bargain, or to run into a war with Germany in order to gratify the feelings of revenge which animated the French nation?
Paris had turned out en masse to see the royal entry. It was a little after ten o’clock when the report of the guns of Mont Valérien announced the arrival of the Imperial train at the Ranelagh station. Immediately the crowd began to cheer, long before they caught sight of the troops which escorted the carriage in which the Emperor and Empress, with the President, were driving. The French Government had chosen these troops with great care, and given the preference to the Spahis and Arabs from Algeria, whose picturesque costumes and white burnouses added to the general splendour of the brilliant scene.
It was an event without precedent, this recognition by the only autocratic Monarch left in Europe, of a Republic from which hitherto foreign Sovereigns had more or less held aloof. It was bound to create a deep sensation, not only in France, but throughout the world; and its consequences promised at that moment to become stupendous. In reality they were absolutely insignificant, and France certainly played the part of the dupe in this queer comedy.
But it was not of this that Paris was thinking as it welcomed its Russian ally. When the mob saw the Empress, pale and lovely, in her white dress, with an immense bouquet of flowers reposing in her lap, as she sat beside her Consort, who wore the dark green tunic of the Preobragensky Regiment, with the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour across his breast, its joy overstepped all bounds; it was more like a delirium of mad enthusiasm than anything else. But it was in the Place de la Concorde that the manifestations became quite grandiose. And I must say that of all the popular demonstrations I have ever witnessed it was the most imposing. Row upon row of human beings were massed like shots in a cartridge, which seemed suddenly on the passage of the Imperial carriage to explode into one single shout, whilst opposite, under the waving flags and banners on the terrace of the Tuileries, long lines of officers in uniform stood looking on the scene over the heads of the crowd. The statues were covered with human beings, boys and men who had climbed upon them to have a better view of the procession.
Only one, that of the town of Strasburg, was undecorated, and its bareness seemed more than suggestive to the impartial spectator. When M. Félix Faure pointed it out to the Emperor the acclamations of the mob became deafening. It was a triumph indeed, and if you had asked any one of these people why they were howling away their enthusiasm and joy, they would each and all have replied that it meant “Une Alsace Française,” and that by his visit to Paris Nicholas II. was tacitly promising it to the French people.