It was just then, in 1859, on the eve of the war in Italy, that I wrote my first work on Le Second Empire, in which I did not hesitate to predict that this war, no matter how much glory it might make for the emperor, would nevertheless amount to a political defeat which would lead to the fall of the Empire. “The heads of even the wisest men,” I said, “are liable to turn when they have reached such an elevation as he has arrived at.” And I selected as the epigraph of my work, the words which old Prince von Metternich had uttered when speaking of the extreme good-fortune of the Emperor of the French: “He is successful,” said the prince to me; “he has excellent cards in his hands, and he plays his game well, but he will be lost as a revolutionary emperor on the Italian reef.” This remarkable prediction, made long before the war in Italy, has been verified to the letter, and my book, written in 1859, was merely a commentary upon it which subsequent events have confirmed.
M. von Bismarck is also at the acme of his triumph; he is presiding at his Congress of Paris. Behold Prussia, which but a few years ago had hardly any voice in the councils of Europe, now become the German Empire, and behold the Emperor of Germany getting the czar and the Emperor Francis Joseph to sanction [pg 484] at Berlin his victories, his conquests, and his political supremacy, by leaving France isolated, and making of no account England, which had kept herself aloof in her policy of forbearance.
Well, I do not hesitate to select this hour of triumph, when M. von Bismarck's policy has been crowned at Berlin, in the midst of festivities the splendor of which is talked of far and wide, to predict its failure in the end if he does not change it. My reason for asserting this in presence of a state of things so contrary to my prediction is that M. von Bismarck is committing one of those blunders, I dare not say one of those political follies, which astonish reason, and which form the premises of a syllogism having for its conclusion an inevitable failure. The blunder is precisely similar to that perpetrated by Napoleon III., who, in consequence of having allied himself with revolutionary Italy, was led from Mexico to Sadowa, and from Sedan to Chiselhurst. This blunder on the part of M. von Bismarck, and of which he will yet repent, is his alliance with revolutionary Italy, which drags him into a war against the Catholic Church, which has always proved fatal to those who have attempted it, and which destroys the work of German unity which he had associated with his name. The epigraph of my work on Le Second Empire, borrowed from Prince von Metternich, might serve for this letter as well, if applied to the Emperor of Germany and his chancellor; if the head of the dynasty of the Hohenzollerns continues in the path of revolution in which M. von Bismarck has led him, “he will also perish, like the revolutionary emperor on the Italian reef.”
Is it rashness on my part to point out to Prince von Bismarck and to the German Emperor the Tarpeian rock so nigh to the capitol to which they have ascended? Am I unjust towards the prince chancellor?
No one had a higher opinion of his political merit than I, and in appreciating, as I have done in this letter, his astounding successes, I have not been sparing of praise nor indeed of admiration. If, then, I am compelled to draw a comparison between Napoleon III. and him, and to measure by the blunder committed by the Emperor of the French in 1859 that which he is now committing, I must ask his pardon, for I make a great difference between those two contemporary personages. In the same degree that Napoleon III. was irresolute, beset by somnolent indolence and continual hesitation, so does, on the other hand, Prince von Bismarck know how to show a tenacious persistence and audacity in the carrying out of his designs; but this very tenacity may be a source of additional danger, if he enters upon a road which leads to an abyss; he will go forward in it quicker and more irremediably than another would, because he knows neither how to stop nor to draw back.
Let us, then, study the policy of M. von Bismarck.
And, in the first place, without wishing in the least to belittle the share which evidently belongs to him in the triumphs of Prussia, we must, nevertheless, admit that another important share falls to Count von Moltke, the greatest warrior of our day; and an equally considerable part is due to the blunders of his adversaries, Austria and Imperial France.
If, for example, Napoleon III. had not betrayed Austria in 1866 by allowing and favoring the alliance between Prussia and Italy, a war against Austria would have been impossible, and the victory of Sadowa [pg 485] would not have taken place; the senseless war of 1870, which grew out of the victory of Sadowa, would have been without either cause or pretext; France would be now erect, Austria would have maintained its influential position in Germany, and the German Empire would not have been established for the profit of Prussian unitarisme.
With the foundation of German unity, of the German Empire, Napoleon has had almost as much to do as M. von Bismarck. The great chancellor has found ready for him two instruments which he did not invent: the military genius of von Moltke, and the folly of Napoleon. To complete the expression of my thought, I will add that the German Emperor has only been, as he himself proclaimed after his victories, a mere instrument in the hands of Divine Providence for the chastisement of France. France has been unfaithful to her past history, from which she has severed herself; she has been unfaithful to the monarchical form of government which has rendered her glorious, and to the church which has made her great; she has lost, by a twofold apostasy, her political faith and her Catholic faith; she no longer possesses her institutions, which have been, one after the other, destroyed either by the old régime or by the Revolution; she no longer knows how to restore the monarchy, the elements of which have been scattered in the tempests of revolution; she knows not how to keep up a republic of which she has neither the habits, the historical conditions, nor the conditions social and political; she is in that state through which nations, condemned to perish, fall and decay, and out of which those nations which God wishes to save can get, only through punishment by fire or by the sword. M. von Bismarck has been, and may become again, that fire and that sword; which may perhaps be an honor, but does not justify pride.
The political work, then, which has produced the German Empire undoubtedly deserves praise, and assuredly does honor to the political merits of Prince von Bismarck, but does not facilitate the forming of a definitive judgment in his regard. It is in the work of peace that the statesman shows himself, and I must say it, that in this respect I do not find M. von Bismarck as great as events seemed to have made him out to be; just as he has been seen to be intelligent, fortunate, almost great during the period of warfare, so in like degree do I incline to consider him, in the period of present organization, improvident and blind.