It is neither one nor the other, and this has been carefully proclaimed. It is not an European congress, since England and France were not present at it, the one having been left aside, and the other naturally excluded. It is not a congress, since no treaty will sanction its views and results. But, besides, Prince von Bismarck wants neither congress nor treaty. He attached great importance to signing the treaty of Prague alone with Austria and the treaty of Frankfort alone with France; he refused, with a certain hauteur, to allow any interference of the other European powers in those treaties, although they brought about a fundamental change in the status and equilibrium of Europe.
In times past, after a great war, Europe has always intervened through a solemn congress in which it dictated the terms of a general peace, thereby securing for it solidity and duration. Thus the treaty of Westphalia brought with it its consequent peace, the treaty of Vienna the peace of 1815, and more recently the treaty of the Congress of Paris in 1856 followed upon the war in the Crimea. Heretofore Europe has been subject to a system of equilibrium: Bismarck has done away with the latter, and broken up the former.
But he perceived the danger of this attitude and this situation. Germany had vanquished Austria, crushed France, and had won European supremacy, but she stood alone. Austria, forced out first from Italy, afterwards from Germany, could not, without feeling a deep and natural jealousy, see the German Empire rise to the first rank while she sank to the second. Russia cannot see the German [pg 476] Empire extend from the Danube to the Baltic, and overtop the Slavic Empire, without becoming also jealous. England cannot look upon this state of things, which leaves her nothing to do but to keep quiet and silent, without feeling somewhat as Austria and Russia do. There is felt, then, at St. Petersburg, as at Vienna, and perhaps at London, an invincible distrust of the predominance of Germany and of the rupture, for her benefit, of the equilibrium of Europe. There are deep and opposing interests which are incompatible with a true alliance between the three emperors, and, albeit they have at Berlin shaken hands, toasted, and fraternally embraced one another and exchanged certain general ideas, they have not allied themselves on settled political views.
M. von Bismarck has himself pretty accurately defined the meeting at Berlin: “It is of importance that no one should suppose that the meeting of the three emperors has for its object any special political projects. Beyond a doubt, this meeting amounts to a signal recognition of the new German Empire, but no political design has directed it.”
It amounts to this or very nearly this: M. von Bismarck wanted neither a congress nor a treaty, nor did he seek an alliance which was impossible of attainment just now; but he was determined to put an end to his present isolation, and he sought in particular to cut short the dream of retaliation in which France might indulge from a hoped-for alliance with Russia or with Austria.
The government of Berlin has in the meeting of the three emperors sought two and perhaps three ends: I. To bring about the recognition of the German Empire by the two great military powers of the North, and in that way deprive France of all hope of finding an ally, with a view to war, either at St. Petersburg or at Vienna. II. To discourage at the same time the particularism[190] of Bavaria and of South Germany, which has always looked for a support in the direction of Vienna. The third end may be to disarm the resistance of Catholics to the absurd and odious persecutions organized against them, by intimating to them that their cause has been abandoned by the Apostolic Emperor, the head of the House of Hapsburg.
The remarkable letter published in Der Wanderer of Vienna, under the heading of “The Order of Battle,” sets forth very cleverly each of these two hopes aforesaid of the Berlin diplomats.
“Those diplomats,” says Der Wanderer, “are rather barefacedly making game of Austria's good-nature. They calculate that this good-nature will have the effect of paralyzing two (as M. von Bismarck considers them) implacable enemies of the empire, but heretofore friends of the Hapsburg dynasty; I mean the particularism of the minor states and the Catholic opposition. ‘Thanks to the house of Austria,’ say they, ‘we are going to disarm those reptiles, and pull out their venomous fangs.’ At the same time, those diplomats do not conceal their joy (premature, I hope) at what they call the Canossa[191] of Berlin and the retaliation of Olmutz. ‘We will get the old seal of the empire’ (I quote their words textually) ‘affixed to our heritage by the House of Austria.’ ”
It would seem, then, that the Emperor of Austria, by appearing at Berlin, [pg 477] meant to say to particularism and perhaps to the Catholic body: You need no longer count on me. And the Emperor of Russia went there to offer a toast to the German army and to signify to France: Do not count on any alliance with me for a war hereafter.
This would indeed be the crowning of M. von Bismarck's policy. Since the two great wars against Austria and against France which by their prodigious results assuredly far surpassed his hopes and previsions, he has but one solicitude and one thought—to isolate France, to secure her military and political impotence, to file down the old lion's teeth and to muzzle him.