If France must needs emerge from her isolation and form an alliance with some European Power, Gambetta would have preferred that Power to be England rather than Russia. Mme. Adam, animated by her Picard dislike of England, unable to forgive us for standing aloof in 1870, would not hear of an English Alliance. There came a time, however, when Gambetta began to see that both an English and a Russian alliance might be necessary to protect France against German aggression. Dimly foreshadowing the Triple Entente of a quarter of a century later, he began to overcome his dislike of Russia. Writing to Mme. Adam in January 1877,[366] he says in reference to Russia’s alarm at Bismarck’s designs on the Baltic Provinces: “Le ressentiment est flagrant chez les Russes, il s’agit de l’exploiter.” Gambetta, however, does not take to himself the credit of originating the idea of the Franco-Russo-British Entente. In his recently published letters to his friend and supporter Ranc,[367] he ascribes this idea to the Prince of Wales (afterwards Edward VII), whom, in February 1878, he met more than once at the Café Anglais. By the Prince’s insight into European politics Gambetta was deeply impressed. In this matter he was far from sharing the views of a recent English writer on King Edward.[368] Was that growing passion for luxury, that love of fashionable life, which Mme. Adam so frequently deplores, casting a spell over Gambetta and warping his judgment so far as to make him attribute to his royal acquaintance opinions which were really his own? We cannot say. But at any rate, in this letter to Ranc, Gambetta describes His Royal Highness as predicting that Russia would find her political aspirations in the Near East thwarted by Austria, that Austria would influence Roumania, that together Austria, Roumania and Turkey would ally themselves against Russia. “What a conflict!” exclaims Gambetta. “Nevertheless, this is what the Prince of Wales foresees. He does not share that hostility to Russia which animates part of his nation. With all his young authority he opposes any measures likely to injure Russia. He has in him the stuff of a great statesman.”
That Gambetta over-rated the Prince’s “young authority” (jeune autorité) will be obvious to all acquainted with the British constitution, and to those who know what was the position accorded to the Prince of Wales during his mother’s reign.
The enthusiasm of the Prince of Wales for Russia ought to have pleased Mme. Adam. But she does not record that Gambetta confided it to her, although he spoke to her frequently of his meetings with the Prince.[369] Gambetta protested to her that the Prince was far from being what rumour represented him, a mere festoyeur. “He loves France seriously as well as gaily,” said Gambetta. “His great dream of the future is an understanding (une entente) with us.”
Thereupon Mme. Adam rejoined bitterly: “We know what an understanding with England brings to any country, which is so simple as to enter into it.”
In those days, when Disraeli was Prime Minister, Mme. Adam regarded what she described as “the insatiableness of Great Britain” with an apprehension almost as grave as that inspired by her fear of Germany. While for our liberal statesmen, for Mr. Gladstone and John Bright notably, she had a profound admiration; Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury she regarded as hand and glove with Bismarck.
It was with this triumvirate, she believed, and not without reason,[370] that had originated at Berlin an idea, which, realised three years later, was to prove disastrous not to France alone, but to the peace of Europe. This idea was the French occupation of Tunis. The colonisation of Tunis had long been an Italian dream. To northern Africa Mazzini had directed the ambitions of his countrymen as early as 1838.[371] Probably British statesmen, by suggesting Tunis to France merely intended to give her something which should atone to her for the British occupation of Cyprus. But Bismarck had other designs: he wished above all things to distract French attention from the north-eastern frontier. As later he was to say to a French diplomatist: “Go to Morocco, it will help you to forget Alsace-Lorraine,” so now for the same reason he encouraged France to go to Tunis. But there is little doubt that when he gave this encouragement the wily fox at Varzin was entertaining a yet subtler design: already he had come to an understanding with Austria, and to the German-Austrian Entente he was eager to add Italy. By embroiling Italy with France he hoped to achieve this object, and he succeeded. The year after the French occupation of Tunis, Italy joined Germany and Austria; and on the 20th of May, 1882, the Triple Alliance was concluded. Its formation and its periodic renewal[372] rendered yet more imperative the conclusion of the Triple Entente. And it will generally be admitted that one of the causes of the present conflict lies in this unfortunate, though possibly inevitable, arrayal of the great European Powers in two hostile camps.
Here, therefore, in the French colonisation of Tunis, we have an event fraught with momentous consequences. How did Mme. Adam regard it? In the last volume of her Souvenirs, which we must remember were compiled nearly twenty years later, she sees in it one of Bismarck’s designs for the ruin of France. But, in her articles contributed at the time to La Nouvelle Revue, it is interesting to find her refusing at first to believe in the possibility of any alliance between Italy and Austria. Bismarck may plot if he likes; but in that direction, not even such an arch-schemer as the German Chancellor could possibly succeed. Mme. Adam, herself an irreconcilable Revancharde, felt confident that her Latin brethren in Italy could never so far forget their unredeemed territory as to ally themselves with the Austrian plunderer, “and to consent to be dragged behind the chariot of Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns.” But alas! that swift Gallic intuition, which had often led her to see into the future of European politics, had for the moment forsaken her. Italy was not true to la Revanche. She came to terms with the conqueror. When the Triple Alliance was formed Mme. Adam saw one of her brightest dreams vanish. She had hoped to substitute for Gambetta’s Triple Entente between France, England and Russia another three-cornered understanding, one between France, Italy and Russia.
Now that Italy had joined the enemy Mme. Adam turned with more enthusiasm than ever to Russia. Writing[373] of her articles on foreign politics in La Nouvelle Revue, she announces that she will give Russia a prominent part. “Pour mes lettres sur la politique extérieure,” she writes, “mon siège est fait, la lutte à plume armée contre Bismarck et pour l’alliance russe.”[374] Already her friendship with Tourguénieff had taught her something of the Russian soul. She studied Russian history, especially the history of the revolutionary movement. She was in constant correspondence with General Chanzy, the French Ambassador at Petrograd. Finally, in 1882, she visited Russia.
She stayed at the Hôtel de l’Europe. There she was visited by numerous persons of distinction. No one impressed her so much as General Skobeleff, the heroic defender of Plevna. They were well matched, these two passionate patriots—this handsome Western woman, la grande Française, and this typical Cossack, this fervent Slav. He was called “the white General,” because it was his custom to wear, in battle, a white coat, which challenged the enemy’s bullets to defile its spotless purity with blood-stains. Alike for the Russian Pan-Slavist and the French Revancharde there was but one device, “the German is the enemy.” No one in Russia did Mme. Adam long more to see than this hero of the Russo-Turkish War. Their meeting, which occurred in the vast yellow drawing-room of the Hôtel de l’Europe in January 1882, she has vividly described in her little book on Skobeleff, first published in 1886, and reprinted in a revised edition in 1916.
“We looked at one another,” she writes, “not wishing to make any trivial remarks.... It was of his cause I spoke to him before my own. And this is what he said to me about the Balkan peoples: ‘I assure you they are tyrannised over. They must fill you with pity. For example, in Bosnia, in Herzegovina, the oppressor forces the children to serve in the very army which has slain their fathers and brothers. Into their hands is put a gun all dripping with the blood of Slavs. This thought drives me mad, as it must you when you think of the people of Alsace-Lorraine serving in the Prussian army.’