VERSAILLES, 1871: PROCLAIMING KING WILLIAM GERMAN EMPEROR.
completely invested. But, thanks to M. Gambetta’s fiery genius and practical organising power, France, after the surrender of the regular troops of the Third Empire, with their trained officers at their head, had actually more troops in the field than she possessed when Napoleon III. advanced to Saarbrück. These improvised armies of the infant Republic consisted of the rawest recruits. But they freed Normandy and Picardy, and all accounts showed that on the whole they fought with more pluck than the Imperial legions who surrendered at Metz and Sedan.
The effect of the war on English public opinion was curious. At the outset Englishmen of the better sort without distinction of class seemed to sympathise with Prussia. But the Roman Catholics both in Ireland and England became partisans of France. After Sedan a change took place. The enthusiasm of the Roman Catholic party rather cooled, whereas the working-classes and the advanced democrats in England transferred their moral support from Prussia to France. The Queen, though she felt the deepest personal sympathy for the fallen Emperor and his consort, was naturally drawn to the German cause. It was freighted with those high aspirations after German unity, which had been the central idea of her husband’s foreign policy. The brilliant victories of the South German armies had been won under the leadership of her favourite son-in-law, in whom the romance and chivalry of mediæval Teutonic Knighthood seemed to live again. The husband of her favourite daughter and constant correspondent (the Princess Louis) was a Divisional commander in the great host, whose iron grasp held Bazaine in Metz. Writing in July to the Queen, the Princess says, “How much I feel for you now, for I know how truly you must feel for Germany; and all know that every good thing England does for Germany, and every evil she wards off her, is owing to your wisdom and experience, and to your true and just feelings. You would, I am sure, be pleased to hear how universally this is recognised and appreciated. What would beloved papa have thought of this war? The unity of Germany, which it has brought about, would please him, but not the shocking means.”[334] Unfortunately the personal relations of friendliness which often bind Courts have in these days but slight influence on the relations that subsist between Governments. The Prussian Government was not contented with English sympathy. England, said the Prussians, might by timely diplomatic action have prevented the outbreak of the war.[335] But she had a selfish motive in eliminating Imperial France from Europe as a dominating force. Prussia, in crushing France, was incidentally doing the work of England in defending Belgium, and hence England made no effort to keep the peace. Then there had been some trivial exports of arms from England to France, and the Prussian Minister—forgetting how Prussia had supplied Russia during the Crimean War—pretended to consider these exports a breach of neutrality. Oddly enough, though the Americans had engaged much more extensively in this traffic, Prussia made no complaint against them. The German case, as argued by Count Bernstoff, was obviously weak. So long as a country carries on its trade with belligerents, not as a partisan but as a neutral, it is impossible for diplomacy to stop that trade. Count Bernstoff, however, argued that as Prussia did not need to buy arms from England, whereas France did, the English trade in arms with France must be necessarily one-sided or partisan. His despatches laying down his eccentric doctrine of “benevolent neutrality” simply amounted to the assertion of a new principle. The usage had been that the neutral was free, subject to the usual risks, to trade with either of two belligerents just as if there were no war at all. The new principle asserted by Count Bernstoff was that the neutral, before selling a belligerent anything, must consider carefully whether the transaction will confer a benefit on him which it is beyond anybody’s power to confer on the other belligerent on the same terms. Neutral traffic must, according to the Prussian Foreign Office, cease whenever its results give one belligerent certain advantages direct and indirect over the other. Lord Granville had little difficulty in disposing of a chimerical doctrine which would have cast on a neutral the burden of weighing his lawful trade with belligerents to see that each got exactly the same fair share of it. But the absurd paradox was advanced merely to give Von Bismarck an excuse for conniving at an act of diplomatic hostility to England, on the part of Russia, his connivance being the price he had to pay the Czar, who held back Austria, for “benevolent neutrality” in 1870-71.
In the middle of November the Russian Government suddenly issued a Circular repudiating the clause in the Treaty of Paris which prevented Russia from keeping a fleet in the Black Sea. Lord Granville protested with high spirit against the claim of Russia to repudiate any clause in a Treaty she had signed, save with the consent of the cosignatories. Austria, Turkey, and Italy supported England, but Bismarck told Mr. Odo Russell, who was sent on a diplomatic mission to the King of Prussia at Versailles, that Prussia had always thought the Treaty needlessly harsh to Russia, and that, as German interests were not involved, he had no intention of taking any notice of the Russian Circular. “Resolved, as Bismarck therefore was,” says Mr. Lowe, “to let the Russians have their own way, and even help them to attain it, his only care was how to do this in the manner least objectionable to England. The Black Sea Clause had been knocked on the head, and was already as dead as a door-nail; but there was no reason why it should be flung into a ditch like a dog, and not interred with the decent ceremony of undertakers’ woe.... Thus too, doubtless, thought Bismarck when he proposed that the Powers should meet and wail a doleful dirge over the lamented body of their lifeless offspring. Ingenious idea! A coroner’s inquest in the shape of a diplomatic Conference to sit on the murdered body of the Black Sea Clause!”[336] Lord Granville’s position was an embarrassing one. It has already been pointed out that the Black Sea Clause was in many respects indefensible, and it was not possible to offer the English people any adequate return for the money and blood that must be spent in waging a futile war with Russia to maintain the Treaty. Yet the manner in which Russia had “denounced” it was meant to be humiliating to England, and it needed some adroit manœuvring to extricate the country from the situation which had been created for it by the foolish diplomacy of 1856. When the Conference met on the 17th of January, 1871, the representatives of the Powers kept their gravity when the President (Lord Granville) said that it met without any foregone conclusions. To save the honour of England and put on record a formal avowal of theoretical belief in the sanctity of Treaties, the Conference unanimously agreed to declare that no State could recede from its engagements with other States, save with the consent of these States. Then Russia was released from the obligations of the Black Sea Clause, which she had already declared she had no intention of respecting.
For a time the revolutionary forces in Spain were stilled by the election of the Prince Amadeus of Italy (the Duke of Aosta), second son of Victor Emmanuel, to the throne of the Cortes. The collapse of the French Empire naturally led to the annexation of Rome by Italy, and it was a strange coincidence that the year which saw the extinction of the temporal power of the Pope, saw his spiritual power asserted more firmly and extensively than ever. The Assembly of Roman Catholic prelates at Rome known as the Œcumenical Council, met at the beginning of the year to proclaim the dogma of Papal Infallibility. The opposition to this proclamation was organised by the most eminent of the English, American, German, and Hungarian bishops, and at one time it was feared they would triumph. The Pope had, however, secured a majority of votes by the somewhat sublunary method of creating new bishops governing mythical sees. The doctrine of Infallibility was accordingly proclaimed a few days after the declaration of war by France against Germany, a war which had been vigorously promoted by the secret agents of the Vatican, who had acquired a controlling spiritual influence over the French Empress. After the annexation of Rome by Victor Emmanuel on the 20th of September, the Pope refused to hold any intercourse with the Italian Government. Immuring himself in the Leonine City as a voluntary prisoner, he pathetically appealed for sympathy to the blunted sensibilities of a wicked world.
As the year wore on, and the German armies strengthened their hold on France, it became clear that German unity under Prussian leadership was an accomplished fact. The autumnal negotiations for the absorption of the South German States in the North German Confederation ended well, mainly because Bismarck made generous concessions, reserving the sovereign rights of Bavaria and Wurtemberg, and abandoning on the part of Prussia an exclusive right to declare war. The King of Bavaria, the Grand Duke of Baden, and the other Sovereign Princes, then invited King William of Prussia to assume the Imperial Crown, and on the 18th of January, 1871, he was proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of Kings at Versailles.[337]
During 1870 the Queen emerged from her seclusion on the 11th of May to open the splendid hall and offices of the University of London in Burlington Gardens. The ceremonial was conducted with a pomp and dignity worthy of the occasion. The senate and graduates wore their academic costume, Mr. Lowe being the only dignitary who appeared in any other garb. He, however, had donned for the occasion the official robes of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a sumptuous garment for which it was whispered he had been so extravagant as to pay £130. The Queen was accompanied by the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Princess Louise, and a brilliant train of distinguished persons. The Chancellor (Lord Granville) read an address to the Queen. Her Majesty handed him a reply, and having declared the building open the silver bugles blew a blast of joy. When the Queen retired, Lord Granville, in distributing the prizes, referred felicitously to Queen Elizabeth’s visits to Oxford and Cambridge—those visits during which she is described as “questioning and answering and scolding not only in Latin but also in Greek.”
In the autumn of the year the Queen in Council gave her consent to the marriage of the Princess Louise and the Marquess of Lorne, the eldest son of the Duke of Argyll. When it became known that the Queen had violated the exclusive traditions of the House of Brunswick, and reverted to old precedents set by the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts, who all contracted marriages with subjects, society was greatly excited. The marriage was regarded as a triumph of aristocratic and democratic ideas over the monarchical principle—that is to say, of the triumph of the two ideas that have ever been most popular in England. The Queen with great tact had consciously or unconsciously responded to the instinctive feeling that had silently grown among her people. They had always disliked, though they had never dared to repeal, the Royal Marriage Act. It was felt to be a sacrifice to expediency—and it was passed mainly because Englishmen did not desire to see Mrs. FitzHerbert crowned as Queen of England. The Act bound all the descendants of George III. who wished to marry to obtain the written consent of the Sovereign,[338] and it was felt that as Princes and Princesses were very apt to form mésalliances, it would be difficult to maintain the prestige of the monarchy, save under some such restrictions as the Act imposed.[339] But when the Royal Family increased and multiplied, so that the Princess Louise only stood twentieth in the line of succession to the Queen, it was time to relax the usage. No State interest could, in such a case, be practically endangered, by permitting a daughter of England to indulge her personal preferences in the selection of a husband.