Part 25

It was probably not the _patriotic anguish_ attributed by us to M. Benedetti on the day after Sadowa, that could have wounded his feelings. Could it be the Italian sympathies with which we have credited him that awakened his susceptibilities? But the pronounced liking for the country and the cause of M. de Cavour has been the principal and marked characteristic of the political life of the former ambassador of France to the court of Berlin; in sight, and with the knowledge, of every one, M. Benedetti has always been reckoned among the most distinguished members of a party which had great influence in the councils of the second empire, a party which considered Italian unity as the most glorious work of the reign, the most useful for France, and, in its eyes, the _connubio_ of Italy and Prussia seemed an immense good fortune for the imperial policy, a brilliant victory gained over the old order of things, to the profit of the "new right" and Napoleonic ideas! The diplomatic career of M. Benedetti, even presents in this respect a character of unity and indivisibility which will arouse the eternal admiration of all Italian patriots. In 1860 he had negotiated and brought to a successful end the treaty on Savoy and Nice, in exchange for which the imperial government tore up the treaty of Zurich, and sanctioned implicitly the annexations of Tuscany and Emilia. In 1861 he was made minister plenipotentiary of France to Turin, as if to console Italy for the recent death of M. de Cavour, to reëstablish in any case beyond the Alps the friendly relations which the invasion of the kingdom of Naples had for a moment strongly compromised. In the summer of the following year (August, 1862), the harmony between France and Italy was again troubled in consequence of Aspromonte, and of the circular of General Durando, of the 10th September, which demanded the evacuation of Rome. M. Thouvenel was then obliged to leave the Hotel of the Quai d'Orsay, giving place to M. Drouyn de Lhuys; and M. Benedetti, as well as his colleague of Rome, M. de La Valette, hastened to give his resignation, in order to mark with _éclat_ his disapprobation as regarded a system become less favorable to the aspirations of Italy. He did not reënter the career until two years later, the 7th October, 1864, after the convention of the 15th September had given satisfaction to the wishes of the cabinet of Turin concerning Rome, also after M. de Bismarck had passed by Paris and had placed there the first beacons of the great combination against Austria. The post at Berlin was then raised to an embassy, and M. Benedetti became the holder of it. His former colleague of Rome, M. de La Valette, did not delay to sit in the councils of the empire, and at the same moment General La Marmora, well known for his _Prussomania_, undertook the direction of affairs at Turin. And from the beginning of the year 1865, M. de Bismarck engaged in his first campaign against Austria concerning the Duchies, and made his first proceedings at Florence to combine an understanding with Italy. The _connubio_ was not definitely consummated until April, 1866, under the eyes of M. Benedetti.

No one that we know (and we less than any one) has reproached M. Benedetti with having favored this _connubio without the knowledge of his government_; but M. Benedetti will doubtless not pretend that this understanding between Italy and Prussia did not have all his sympathies. General Govone had no confidences for him at Berlin, perhaps; it was M. Benedetti, on the contrary, who made the Italian negotiator precious confidences,--that one among others, "that M. de Bismarck was a sort of _maniac_, whom he (Benedetti) knew and had _followed_ for nearly fifteen years."[147] He had advised him, also, "not to sign any treaty, but only to have a project thoroughly discussed and ready to sign when the mobilization of Prussia should be achieved." Would M. Benedetti seek to persuade that by this advice he had wished to hinder the _connubio_? No, assuredly, by such advice M. Benedetti told General Govone to act only in earnest. It was good counsel that he gave him. Now one does not give good counsel for an affair which one wishes to see go under. Moreover, it was not the Italians that it was necessary to render favorable to the _connubio_; they inclined to it naturally: the important part was to gain over the court of Berlin, to triumph over its scruples, to reassure it, above all, as to the intentions of France. "I think that I should announce to you," the Italian negotiator telegraphed on the 28th March to General La Marmora, "that the president (M. de Bismarck) keeps M. Benedetti exactly informed."[148] M. de Bismarck would certainly not have thought of keeping M. Benedetti so exactly informed, if he had credited him with an aversion or even a lukewarmness for the Italian marriage. Then, as since, in France as well as abroad, in the eyes of the publicists as well as in the eyes of his own chiefs (as we are going to prove immediately), the former ambassador of France to the court of Berlin has always passed for the agent of the imperial government who wished most ardently for the success of the Italo-Prussian combination, and the book, "My Mission in Prussia," has not succeeded at all in shaking a conviction which we do not fear to call general.

We would never have thought of intruding in such an important debate our obscure person and our humble writings; but, since M. Benedetti has kindly wished to recognize in the works previously published by us in the "Revue des deux Mondes," "studies better prepared and more impartially written," we feel less hesitation in quoting one of those pages which we consecrated even here seven years ago to that pathetic episode of contemporaneous history. Speaking in our "Preliminaries of Sadowa," of the treaty negotiated between M. de Bismarck and General Govone in the spring of 1866, we expressed ourselves as follows: "There was only one strong mind like M. de Bismarck to enter into a compact with this secretary of the dreaded kingdom who assisted his colleague the Count de Barral; in the depths M. Benedetti appeared from time to time. In this respect, we involuntarily stretch our hand toward that volume of Machiavelli; we are seized with a desire to re-read a chapter from the "Legazioni." How happy he would have been, the great Florentine, to contemplate his three compatriots fighting with a _barbarian_! At Paris, one only saw (in this treaty) the single, prodigious fact of a pact concluded between a monarch by the grace of God, and a king of the national will, and one went into ecstacies over the skill of M. Benedetti. There was only one diplomat of the new school who could perform such a miracle!" Lastly, at the beginning of the same study, in relating the circumstances which in 1864 had brought on the political stage those formerly disgraced by the affair Durando, we said: "Without doubt it cost M. Drouyn de Lhuys something to accept as a colleague M. de La Valette, who made no secret of his desire to take his department from him; it cost him still more, probably, to allow such an open adversary as M. Benedetti to be imposed on him as principal agent. Two years later, after Sadowa, and on the day when he gave up his portfolio, the same minister was yet to countersign another decree which raised M. Benedetti to the dignity of the grand cross. Who knows, however, whether, in the mind of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, this second signature was not destined to avenge somewhat the first? In truth, perhaps that was a peculiar trait of mind, a Parthian trait, to distinguish so highly an agent for having only too well served a policy the responsibility of which he not the less repudiated."[149]

Did the former chiefs of the ex-ambassador of France to the court of Berlin judge otherwise of it? M. Benedetti himself furnishes us on this point with valuable testimony, which we will take care not to neglect. He says ("My Mission," p. 148) that in January, 1870, M. Daru, then minister of foreign affairs, had made, in a letter, allusion to the events of 1866, in terms which could not but strongly affect the ambassador: "The territorial state of Prussia," M. Daru had written him, "results from events which _perhaps_ it has not depended on you to bring about." Thus, even four years after Sadowa, they did not cease to attribute to M. Benedetti, to the bureaux of the Quai d'Orsay, a notable part in these gloomy events. The ambassador found it opportune to enlighten his new chief on "the _rôle_ which he played in this circumstance," by a private letter dated the 27th January, 1870. "I am not ignorant," we read there, "of all that has been said on this point; but, by a feeling which you will appreciate, I do not doubt, I have never thought of declining the share of responsibility which has been cast on me, and, for this purpose, to set at right the errors too easily gathered by a badly informed public." He affirmed, therefore, that he was then "an active, correct, foreseeing informer," and he appeals to his correspondence deposited in the archives of foreign affairs. "I should add that I never, _and in none of the missions which I have fulfilled_, have undertaken other correspondences than those whose marks exist in the department, or in the hands of your predecessors, and that I never had, _in all the epochs of my career_, other orders to execute than those that have been given me directly through them." ("My Mission," pp. 148-149). Yet that is not sufficient for M. Benedetti, and in publishing this letter he accompanies it (p. 150) with a triumphant commentary: "I have affirmed a fixed and indubitable fact in mentioning, in my letter (to M. Daru), that I did not have the honor, _on any occasion_ (these words are underlined by M. Benedetti himself), to sustain a direct and confidential correspondence with the emperor. He has deigned to grant me his confidence, and occasionally to testify to me his satisfaction; he has never ceased to transmit to me his orders by the mediation of his minister of foreign affairs, with whom I have exclusively corresponded. No one will suppose, I think, that I would affirm this in such absolute terms as I have in writing to M. Daru, my immediate chief, if I had not been fully authorized."

Unfortunately some pages beyond (p. 194), M. Benedetti is forced to acknowledge that, in his negotiation concerning the secret treaty on Belgium, he exchanged a correspondence which did not pass through the department for foreign affairs, and which the directing minister of this department did not know of. "I thought it fitting," we read there, "to address to the minister of state, M. Rouher, the letter in which I announced my interview with M. de Bismarck, and which accompanied the plan of the treaty relating to Belgium. M. Rouher did not lay before the ministry, not having then undertaken the direction of it, the correspondence which during several days I exchanged with him." It is true that, in order to palliate this very grave irregularity, M. Benedetti pretends that M. Drouyn de Lhuys had offered his resignation toward the middle of August: "At this moment there was no minister of foreign affairs;" but we have proved to him that M. Drouyn de Lhuys did not lose his portfolio until the 1st September, 1866. Up to that date, M. Drouyn de Lhuys had not ceased to direct the department, with the desire of remaining there, and of preventing the complete abandonment of the traditional French policy. The ambassador himself quotes in his book several dispatches exchanged with him on grave questions, up to the date of the 21st and 25th August (pages 204 and 223); but M. Benedetti thought _proper_ to be silent to his immediate chief concerning the negotiation on the subject of the treaty on Belgium, and only to inform the minister of state. This negotiation not only had its beginning, but also its end (it was broken off by M. de Bismarck the 29th August), _during the ministry of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, and without his knowledge_. This was then _one occasion_ when M. Benedetti did not exclusively correspond with the minister of foreign affairs! There was then _one epoch in the career_ of M. Benedetti when he received orders which did not pass through the Quai d'Orsay! And how suppose of the honorable M. Daru that what had happened in the month of August, 1866, could have also taken place in the months of March and April of the same year?

M. Benedetti completely ignores in his protest this incident of the treaty concerning Belgium; it is, however, the culminating point, in fact the only grave point of the debate, and the only one concerning which we allowed ourselves to reproach him with having acted _without the knowledge_, not of his government, but _of his minister_. Would M. Benedetti perhaps find that this is an anecdotal incident, incompatible with the dignity of history? He had in fact first tried, in his letter published in the "Moniteur," the 29th July, 1870, to give to this deplorable event an entirely anecdotal turn, to assign to the compromising document a, so to say, spontaneous generation; he would have wished to give only an exact account of the ideas of M. de Bismarck, and "consented to transcribe them in a manner under his dictation." He could not long persist in such trifling; he had to avow in his book that he had entered on a veritable negotiation, and M. de Bismarck has since then taken malicious pleasure in casting light on the different phases of this negotiation, by different extracts taken from the papers of Cerçay and published in the "Moniteur prussien," in reply to the book of M. Benedetti. "During my long career," says M. Benedetti, in the preface of his book (p. 4), "I have been charged only on three different occasions with opening negotiations having a fixed object, and leaving me with an initiative part proportionate to the responsibility." He enumerates these three negotiations and proves that he conducted them all to a good end, but he takes good care not to include in the number his negotiations on Belgium, in which he was given an initiative part, and in which we will also give him his proportional part of the responsibility.

We will also leave him the tone of his polemics; it is like his diplomacy, _sui generis_, and we can say with M. de Bismarck: "M. Benedetti is too clever for us."

JULIAN KLACZKO.

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THE MISSION EXTRAORDINARY OF MR. FOX.

On Monday, the 16th April (according to the Russian calendar, the 4th), 1866, an attempt was made on the life of Alexander II., Emperor of Russia. The would-be assassin was a Russian named Dmitry Karakozoff, a member of the order of the Nihilists. The rescuer of the Czar was a newly-emancipated serf, Ossip Ivanovitch Komissaroff by name. The facts of the attempted assassination are as follows: In the morning of that day Komissaroff started for the chapel built by Peter the Great on an island in the Neva. The bridge between the main bank and the island had, however, been removed, and he therefore turned toward the palace quay. On approaching the Summer Garden he joined the crowd of people waiting to see the Emperor pass. While trying to secure a favorable position, Komissaroff was attracted by a stranger who was attempting to force his way to the front, and who kept his right hand constantly in his coat pocket.

When the Emperor appeared, the man beside Komissaroff drew a pistol and aimed it at his Majesty. He stood so near that the shot would undoubtedly have proved fatal, had not Komissaroff struck up his arm and caused the weapon to be discharged in the air. Karakozoff was seized, and after trial, was executed on the 15th September. Komissaroff was made a nobleman, and had gifts and orders showered on him by the score. Mr. Clay, our minister to Russia, delivered a congratulatory address to the Emperor at a special audience, and the Emperor returned his thanks to the President and the people of the United States.

In the mean time, Congress, remembering that Russia had given our nation its warmest sympathies and aid in our hour of peril, introduced a joint resolution, relative to the attempted assassination of the Emperor of Russia. The resolution was approved by President Johnson, and it was then resolved to send a special envoy in a national vessel to carry to the Emperor of Russia the congratulations at his providential escape. For this delicate mission the Hon. Gustavus Vasa Fox, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, was chosen. At his own request it was determined to send him in a monitor, a class of vessel which had never crossed the Atlantic, but in whose seaworthiness Mr. Fox trusted implicitly. For this purpose the _Miantonomoh_, a two-turret monitor, to be accompanied by two wooden men-of-war, was selected. On June 5, 1866, Mr. Fox left St. John, N. B., for Queenstown, arriving there on June 16th. Mr. Fox then left the _Miantonomoh_, and made short trips through England, Ireland, and France. He rejoined the squadron at Copenhagen on Saturday, July 21st, and after having been hospitably entertained by the king, left on August 1st for Cronstadt. He arrived there on August 5th, and on the following day he went to St. Petersburg and paid his respects to Mr. Clay, the United States Minister there. On the 8th the mission was received at Peterhof by the Emperor, assisted by Prince Gortchakof. Mr. Fox addressed the Emperor, who replied to him through Prince Gortchakof. On August 9th his Majesty visited the ships at Cronstadt.

For more than a month a series of dinners and balls were given in honor of the mission, and Mr. Fox's progress throughout the country was a perfect ovation. He was made honorary citizen of all the large cities; he received delegations of peasants, and was honored with rich presents from the Emperor. The tact and eminent social qualities which he displayed, made this altogether unique mission successful, and greatly strengthened the warm ties which exist between the two countries. It will be seen that M. Klaczko erroneously calls Mr. Fox "assistant secretary of state."

FOOTNOTES:

[146] We have said: "How could he undertake to present to M. de Bismarck the _demands of the cabinet of the Tuileries_?" and M. Benedetti sees in the word undertake the insinuation of an initiative. We have, however, very explicitly said, _The demands of the cabinet of the Tuileries_, and we immediately added M. Benedetti's own expressions: "_I have provoked nothing_, still less have I guaranteed the success; I have only allowed myself to _hope_ for it." None of our readers could mistake the meaning of our words, nor, above all, see therein the insinuation which M. Benedetti gratuitously credits us with.

[147] "_Del Conte Bismarck dice (M. de Benedetti) che è un diplomatico per così dire_ MANIACO; _che da quindici anni che to conosce e lo_ SEGUE."--Report of General Govone, 6th April, 1866. La Marmora, p. 139.

[148] La Marmora, p. 110.

[149] See the _Revue_ of the 15th September, and the 1st October, 1868.

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Transcriber's note:

Obvious spelling and punctuation errors have been corrected.

Both clear-sighted and clearsighted, re-formed and reformed, Lauenberg and Lauenburg, and Leipsic and Leipzig, were used equally in this text and were retained. Herzegovania and Herzegovina were also retained.

Changes were made to the original as follows:

"Wurtemberg" to "Würtemberg."

"Hôtel" to more frequent "Hotel."

"Moskova" to more frequent "Moscova."

"Over-excited" to more frequent unhyphenated uses, "overexcited."

P. 122, Chapter III, Section heading "I." which is implied but not present in the original was added.

P. 181, "hotbed" to more frequent "hot-bed."

P. 243, single occurrence of "Slavic" changed to much more frequent "Sclavic"(22).

P. 258, "Obrénovitch" standardized to "Obrenovitch."