Part 18

At the same time with the affair of Luxemburg, the events in Crete showed in their turn to the cabinets of Vienna and the Tuileries how far Prince Gortchakof was already pledged to M. de Bismarck, and how resolved to sacrifice to his friendship with Prussia the most brilliant prospects. Whoever reads attentively the curious exchange of notes which the troubles of Crete had caused, will see that, during the entire epoch from the month of November, 1866, to the month of March, 1867, the two governments of Austria and France had sought to sound the designs of the court of St. Petersburg, and to make very significant advances to it. The insurrection of the Candiots, one will remember, in the autumn of 1866, surprised and moved Europe, scarcely recovered from the violent shock of Sadowa. Immoderately exaggerated by the journalists, who were more or less interested, after having excited lively sympathy in Russia, the insurrection ended by seriously occupying the attention of the chancellors, and seemed for a moment destined to bring before the cabinets the whole question of the Orient in its appalling _ensemble_. Certain cabinets did not even seem greatly dismayed at the contingency: instead of conforming with the constant traditions of diplomacy in the Ottoman affairs, instead of quelling the disturbance and lessening as much as possible its proportions and bearings, M. de Moustier thought that he ought "to find means to pacify the Orient," and busied himself "in convoking a sort of _consultation of doctors_ to learn the opinion of each one concerning the remedy to be applied to the evil."[100] Still more astonishing was the language used by the government of Vienna, by the Power which up to that time and always had contented itself with sustaining Turkey _per fas et nefas_, without demanding anything from it, no more for the immediate subjects of the sultan than for the tributary provinces. Resolutely breaking with these habits of the past, M. de Beust, who had at this time just undertaken the direction of affairs in Austria, wrote on the 10th November, 1866, to his ambassador at Paris that, while desiring to preserve the throne of the sultan, "Austria could not refuse its sympathies and its support in a certain degree to the Christian peoples of Turkey who have at times just demands to make, and who are connected with some of the peoples of the Austrian empire by close ties of blood and religion." Questioned some days later (28th November) by the envoy of Russia at the court of Vienna, the Austrian minister did not hesitate to reply that he was disposed to favor amongst the Christians of the Orient "the development of their autonomy and the establishment of a limited self-government by a bond of vassalage." Lastly, in a remarkable dispatch addressed to Prince Metternich and dated the 1st January, 1867, M. de Beust proposed "a revision of the treaty of Paris of the 30th March, 1856, and subsequent acts," announcing in advance his desire to make over, in the arrangement to intervene, the greater part to Russia. He had no trouble in showing that "the remedies through which they had sought, in the course of the last few years, to maintain the _statu quo_ in the Orient, had shown themselves insufficient to subdue the difficulties which grew with each day." "The physiognomy of the Orient taken as a whole," continued the dispatch, "shows itself to-day under an essentially different aspect from that which it had in 1856, and the stipulations of that epoch, exceeded as they are on more than one important point by after events, no longer answer to the necessities of the actual situation." In a word, M. de Beust looked to nothing less than to a joint intervention of the European Powers in the affairs of Turkey, without concealing that in such a situation, "there would be an opportunity to take into consideration, in a fitting degree, the natural _rôle_ which the commonalty of religious institutions would secure for Russia in the Orient," and clearly showing the necessity of relieving the empire of the czars of the onerous conditions which were imposed upon it in the Black Sea, "in order to secure for himself by a conciliating attitude the sincere coöperation of this Power in the questions of the Levant."

It was truly a bold plan; it did not even fail to violently shock the French feelings. Was it not in truth to erase with a single stroke a past of ten years, to lose all the fruit of the Crimean war? They had some repugnance in avowing to themselves that the treaty of 1856 had not existed for a long time, alas! since the day when the French government had broken by its gratuitous kindness towards Russia this cluster of the three great Occidental Powers which alone could assure its efficacious execution. Since then the act had gradually become void, had been violated in the majority of the stipulations; and the conference of Paris, charged nominally with watching over the observance of the treaty, was always restricted, as the Austrian dispatch observed, "in giving its sanction to facts accomplished outside of its sphere of action, and which were not in harmony with the agreements placed under its protection." However, on the day after Sadowa, Prince Gortchakof did not fail to seize the first opportunity to begin to prepare the epitaph of the treaty of Paris. "Our august master," said the Russian chancellor in a document dated the 20th August, 1866, and marked by fine irony,--"our august master does not intend to insist on the general engagements of the treaties _which have no value except by reason of the accord existing between the great Powers in order to make them respected_, and which to-day have received, by _the want of this joint will_, too frequent and too severe blows not to be rendered _invalid_." It was exactly this _collective will_ which M. de Beust expected to revive and strengthen in projecting the revision of the act of 1856. According to his opinion, the treaty of Paris had not attained its purpose, which was to insure the entireness and the vitality of the Ottoman empire. On one side the Occidental Powers have imposed on Russia on the banks of the Euxine a restriction of its rights of sovereignty which a great empire could not definitely accept, and from which sooner or later it would seek to free itself. On the other side, and as regards the Christian population of the Levant, they contented themselves with promulgating a firman promising reforms, and leaving Turkey to itself, instead of reserving for Europe the right to watch over the Ottoman government with a gentle but continued vigilance, so that it should fulfill its duties toward the rajahs, and by a wise and honest administration become independent and strong. The treaty of Paris had only, thought the Austrian minister, given to Russia what the Crimean war ought to have refused it above all,--the monopoly of influence over the rajahs; this monopoly it continued to exercise as in the past, in a hidden manner, it is true, but so much the more dangerously as it recognized no competition. M. de Beust wished to reëstablish the competition, or rather he wished to establish a general agreement "to make the Christian populations of the sultan _the debtors of all Europe_, in giving them, by the care of all the guaranteeing courts, autonomous institutions according to the diversity of religions and races,"[101] and he hesitated the less to make to this vast conception the sacrifice of the article of the treaty of Paris touching the neutralization of the Black Sea which Austria had combated from the beginning, and to which it had only given its adherence at the last moment to humor the Occidental Powers and put an end to the Crimean war, the events of which had since demonstrated its complete inefficacy. It was under the influence of the disaster of Sinopa that France and England had hoped to restrain the naval forces of the czar in the Euxine. They had thus thought to shelter Constantinople from a blow from the Russian hand; but on this point, as on so many others, the physiognomy of the Orient had essentially changed. Russia no longer meditated a _coup de main_: it advanced more slowly, but much more surely, towards its goal. The pacification of the Caucasus[102] the irremediable weakness of the Porte and the daily increasing discontent of the rajahs, as impatient of the Turkish yoke as they were devoted to their sole protector, the czar, were worth to it all the vessels of the Black Sea. "However, have they really freed Constantinople from all danger on that side?" asked the Austrian minister. "Supposing that Russia decides to construct vessels in the Sea of Asoph, will war be declared to hinder it?" And the cabinet of Vienna concluded by these characteristic words: "The question of _amour-propre_ should not be decisive in view of the immense interests which are at stake to-day." In fact, they could not insist too much on this truth: the clause on the subject of the Euxine had been for a long time only a "question of _amour-propre_" between the Occidental Powers and Russia; nor could one deny that M. de Beust saw far and justly in his dispatch of the 1st January, 1867. On the day after Sadowa, he sought to reconstitute Europe, to regain it, if we are allowed to express ourselves thus, and he knew how to fix the price of it.

In a different direction, France exerted itself on its part to accede to the views of the cabinet of St. Petersburg in concentrating its efforts principally on the question of the hour, on this Candian insurrection, of which public opinion in Russia had so ardently espoused the cause. M. de Moustier proposed to Prince Gortchakof "an understanding on the eventualities which might arise in the Orient," and, after having already spoken of a "consultation of doctors," in a dispatch addressed to the ambassador of France at Constantinople (7th December, 1866) he even pronounced the words "heroic remedies." By this always medical euphemism, one understood, at Paris, the annexation of the isle of Crete to Greece, "the only possible issue," Prince Gortchakof had affirmed, the 16th November, 1866, "if the Powers will leave expedients and palliatives, which up to the present time have only increased for the future the present difficulties." The marriage of the young King of the Greeks, George I., with the Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna, was then a decided matter, and at the Tuileries one demanded nothing better than to make the isle of Crete the "dowry" of the Russian princess. In fact they would not have felt any inconvenience, it seems, in increasing this dowry with Epirus and Thessaly: that was going very far, much farther even than could be desired by Russia, which had no interest in "allowing such an extension of Greece that it might become a powerful state."[103] It was the reconciliation between France and Russia that gave birth to the plan of a common proceeding to demand of the Turkish government the realization of the internal reforms, and the cession of Crete, disguised under the proposition of a plebiscite, a proceeding which was effectively realized in the month of March, 1867, and to which Austria, Prussia, and Italy rallied. Without doubt there was still a great deal of vagueness, and above all of desultoriness in the situation which began to take a form at this moment, and it was to be regretted that France and Austria had not previously agreed to be of one mind on the nature of the offers which they intended to make to Russia; but the offers were very real and very great, we cannot deny that; and it only depended on the successor of Count Nesselrode to arrange, to adjust, and to turn them to the profit and the glory of his august master. England could not oppose serious obstacles to the joint will of France, Russia, and Austria, in the affairs of the Levant; it was already resigned, and certainly the fruit which Prince Gortchakof saw ripening in the spring of 1867, although not having all the attraction of forbidden fruit, was nevertheless good and savory, very different from that which, four years later, he was to pick up in the ashes of Sedan.

It is true that the governments of France and Austria did not mean to make a gratuitous gift; it was understood that, in exchange for these very large concessions in the Orient, they should obtain the support of the cabinet of St. Petersburg in the menacing complications of the Occident, and many circumstances seemed to plead in favor of such a combination. After all, and exclusive of the vengeance taken on "the ungrateful" empire of the Hapsburg, Russia could not greatly rejoice at the work of M. de Bismarck. Without mentioning several relations of the imperial family whom the Hohenzollern dethroned and despoiled with firmness tempered with a few tears, there was in general in the proceedings and principles inaugurated on the Elbe and the Main a strong revolutionary taint which could hardly please a court which did not cease to protect the shadow of Nicholas. The gravest, however, was that the victory of Sadowa had just brusquely disturbed and even threatened to ruin entirely the secular system of the Russian policy in regard to the affairs of Germany.

In fact, since Peter the Great, especially since Catherine II., Russia had always labored to obtain a preponderant influence among the different German courts: its czars have more than once acted with a high hand and used high words in the Teutonic troubles. "The Romanof enjoys with us a birthright acknowledged by his brothers, our sovereigns of the _Bund_," a celebrated publicist of the other side of the Rhine exclaimed with bitterness one day, and the attitude of the secondary States during the Crimean war truly did not weaken the justice of this expression. But it was this work of several reigns, and of a thought hitherto immutable, that Russia saw placed in question by the foreseen results of the campaign of Bohemia. The North of Germany was already escaping its influence, and the "_naïf_" ones alone could deceive themselves on the fortune reserved for the South in a very near future. "From the month of September, 1866, the cabinet of Berlin had, in a circular which was designedly made public, claimed for the confederation of the North and the States of the South alone, to the exclusion of all the other Powers, without excepting Austria, the right to bind their relations as closely as they wished, thus giving to Article IV. of the treaty of Prague, an interpretation of which it did not admit. In the speeches which he had delivered at the opening of the Prussian chambers and of the Northern parliament, the king himself, while addressing them _to Germany, to the brotherly peoples, to the country which the Alps and the Baltic bound_, had given utterance to allusions which made, according to the expression of the official journals, the hearts of all patriots tremble."[104] On his part, M. de Bismarck had cried out in the midst of the same parliament, using these gambling terms which are so common in his language and so characteristic of his temperament: "Our stake has become greater in consequence of our victories; we have now more to lose, but the game is still far from being completely won!" By means of a combined and resolute action of Europe; the absorption of all Germany by Prussia was only a question of time and of management; Russia, even less than France, would find its reward in it. France only saw uniting in a more compact and menacing body a confederation of kingdoms and principalities which already before had been either hostile, or at least opposed to it. Russia, on the contrary, lost an entire league of states, whose fidelity and devotion had never wavered, who formed for it a sort of continuous _enceinte_ on the side of an occasionally unsympathetic Occident; in their place was to arise a formidable Power, restless and invading from the very start, called sooner or later by the necessity of history, by the fatality of race, to represent and to oppose the Germanic to the Sclavic idea. At every other epoch of the empire of the czars, in the good old time of Count Nesselrode, for instance,--when, in place of a policy of spite and propaganda on the banks of the Neva, they maintained a policy of conservation and equilibrium,--the conduct of a Russian chancellor in such an occurrence would not have been doubtful: a coalition of Russia, of France, and of Austria would have been formed on the day after Sadowa for the safety of Europe, and it is not saying too much to affirm that, in the spring of the year 1867, Alexander Mikhaïlovitch held in his hands the destinies of the world.

Thus compelled to make his choice, Prince Gortchakof was unwilling to decline the French and Austrian advances in the question of the Orient; on the contrary, he hastened to echo them loudly, and sometimes even rose on this occasion to a lyricism not often heard in the chancellors' offices. He was charmed with the new minister of Austria, and filled all the country with a rather forced enthusiasm. "M. de Beust," he wrote to his ambassador in London, "inaugurates a new era in the policy of Austria, an era of large and elevated views; he is the first statesman of this country and of our epoch who courageously endeavors to leave the ground of petty rivalries." As regards France, he endeavored especially to indicate plainly that the initiative came from it, and "while begging the Emperor Napoleon III. to recall the interviews which the Emperor Alexander had had with him at Stuttgart" (in 1860), he seemed to wish to assign to the present conferences an extraordinary character of gravity and generality. "His imperial majesty," continued the Russian chancellor, in his dispatch of the 16th November, 1866, to M. de Budberg, "has received with satisfaction the overtures which M. le Marquis de Moustier has made us in view of an understanding between the French cabinet and ours on the eventualities which might arise in the Orient. The general principles which the French minister of foreign affairs has propounded, the assurances which he has given us, have in the eyes of our august master a very especial value, since they emanate from the direct thought of the Emperor Napoleon, and since it was by the express order of his majesty that M. le Marquis de Moustier has broached these questions." The animation and spirits of Alexander Mikhaïlovitch increase daily: he even ended by talking Latin and by confounding the poor Turkish envoy with a classical quotation. "Here," he wrote in the month of February, 1867, "is what I have said to Comnenos-Bey: the isle of Crete is lost to you; after six months of such a bitter struggle, reconciliation is no longer possible. Even admitting that you succeeded in reestablishing there for some time the authority of the sultan, it would only be on a heap of ruins and a mountain of corpses. Tacitus long ago told us of the danger there is in this reign of silence which succeeds devastation: _Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant_."

Unfortunately it did not take long to see that while holding out hopes to France and Austria for the success of their Oriental movement, and even endeavoring to compromise them in this direction as much as possible,[105] the Russian chancellor was extremely careful to maintain his intimate accord with his former colleague of Frankfort, and not to oppose him in his ideas in the affairs of the Occident. Very ardent for the cause of the plebiscite in Crete, he showed on the contrary an absolute indifference on the subject of an analogous cause on the Eider, otherwise legitimate, however, guaranteed by solemn treaties,[106] and which interested to such a high degree the noble and unfortunate country of the future empress. He preserved a not less significant silence as regarded the publication made in the month of March, 1867, by M. de Bismarck, of the conventions with the Southern States, conventions which bound to Prussia the military forces of Germany, and abolished, in fact, "the international independent situation" which the preliminaries of Nikolsburg had stipulated for Bavaria and Würtemberg.[107] Alexander Mikhaïlovitch held Würtemberg as cheaply as Denmark, the throne of Queen Olga, as the cradle of the Princess Dagmar. In the mean time the affair of Luxemburg arose, and the French government could measure the degree of benevolence with which it had succeeded in inspiring the cabinet of St. Petersburg by its "heroic remedies" as regards Turkey. The Russian chancellor was surely right and very sincere in his desire for peace, but he had not for the position of France the regards which England itself thought just to show it; he seemed, above all, engaged in not giving umbrage to his illustrious friend of Berlin. While also glorifying M. de Beust for his "courageous endeavor to have done with petty rivalries," the Russian government did not fail to encourage at the same time, in the most dangerous and provoking manner, the violent Sclavic opposition in the empire of the Hapsburg by means of that famous _congress_ of Moscow, of which we shall speak later. Other deceptions still, less known to the public, but not less sharp, probably added to all these disappointments, for Austria as well as France did not delay in making their retreat from this shifting ground of the Orient and joining in with England in thenceforward firmly maintaining the rights of the sultan. The "consultation of doctors" had a final end, and the legendary _sick man_ was none the worse for it; but all was then decided for the terrible eventualities of the future.

"There exists an understanding between St. Petersburg and Berlin," M. Benedetti again avowed in the year after (5th January, 1868), while speaking of the so often mentioned mission of General Manteuffel as the point of departure of this agreement which did not cease to harass him. "Was it not, in fact, from this moment," he asked, "that the two courts indicate more plainly their policy, Russia in the Orient and in the Sclavic Provinces of Austria, Prussia in Germany, without even a cloud arising between them? Firmly united on all questions, they have, each for itself, pursued their designs with a confidence which proves that they have stipulated mutual guarantees." And the ambassador adds that this conviction begins to impress itself on many minds, especially on Lord Loftus, his English colleague, for a long time very incredulous on this matter. "His manner of seeing is sensibly modified, and he is not less persuaded than other members of the diplomatic corps that final arrangements had been made between the two governments of King William and the Emperor Alexander. I have, for my part, found the permanent demonstration of it, if I may so express myself, in the firmly fixed resolution, which has never changed, of the cabinet of Berlin, to inaugurate German unity for its own especial benefit, without allowing itself to be moved for an instant by the possibility of a conflict with France. I have also seen the proof of it in the care with which M. de Bismarck avoids explaining himself on the question of the Orient. When one asks him, he replies that he never reads the correspondence of the ministers of the king at Constantinople; and your excellency will not have forgotten with what complaisance he has always lent himself to the views of Prince Gortchakof." M. Benedetti also notices "the new impulse given since last summer to the Pan-Sclavic propaganda;" he shows very clearly the vast designs and far-reaching hopes of the cabinet of St. Petersburg, in its connivance with Prussia, and gives a higher and juster idea in general of the Russian policy at this epoch than certain ill-advised panegyrists of our day, who, to prove that Prince Gortchakof has filled his _rôle_ as completely as possible, and with all desirable success, can devise nothing better than to lessen and depreciate this part.

II.