Part 8

Not less circumspect and skillful did the Russian vice-chancellor show himself in not compromising too far in his connivances with the Emperor Napoleon III. during these years 1856-1860, certain general principles of preservation which had made the greatness and strength of the reign of Nicholas. Without doubt, in Servia, in the Danubian Principalities, Alexander Mikhaïlovitch was not of a vigorous orthodoxy, and allowed popular votes to annul there the arrangements stipulated by the treaties; but in comparison with those countries of the Orient Russia has always allowed itself many political licenses. In the affairs of the Occident, on the contrary, Prince Gortchakof took care to remain as far as possible in the traditions and not to overturn too much in the "new right." He let the journals and periodicals of Moscow and St. Petersburg plume themselves at their ease on what Russia boldly contributed to the deliverance of the peoples and to the triumph of nationalities; for himself, in the documents dated at his office, he refrained carefully from all these neologisms and persevered in the terminology consecrated by the old diplomatic language. In these documents he had not spoken at all of the national aspirations nor of the popular votes, when Milan and Savoy changed masters; in the eyes of the Russian vice-chancellor, all these were simply facts of war, "regular transactions." Still less did he care to make the revolutionary propaganda abroad and to associate himself in the commerce of exportation which, according to a malicious remark of those days, Napoleon III. had undertaken with liberal ideas. He declined categorically all participation in the remonstrances addressed to the King of Naples, and declared in his circular of the 22d September, 1856, "that to wish to obtain from a sovereign concessions as to the internal government of his states in a comminatory manner or by menacing demonstrations, was to substitute one's self violently on one's own authority, to govern in his place, and to proclaim without disguise the right of the strong over the weak." Lastly, in his famous note to Prince Gagarine of the 10th October, 1860, he took up the Sardinian government roundly for its conduct in Emilia, Tuscany, the Duchies of Parma and Modena, and strongly opposed the deposal of these princes and the annexations of those provinces, which six years later he was to tolerate, even favor in Germany. "It is no longer," he said in the dispatch to Prince Gagarine, "a question of Italian interests, but of general interests, common to all governments, it is a question which is directly connected with those eternal laws without which, neither order, peace, nor security can exist in Europe." Finally, he sneered at those Jenners of politics who recommend the vaccination of anarchy to remove from it its pernicious character, and who pretend to remove the arms from the demagogy in appropriating to themselves its baggage; "the necessity in which the Sardinian government pretends to be situated in combating anarchy does not justify it, since _it only moves with the revolution to recover by it its heritage_." In a word, the Russian vice-chancellor profited with prodigious dexterity by the good disposition of France and still more by its errors, without ever sacrificing the will, the decorum, and the principles of his own government to it. He made use of the Emperor Napoleon III. without using him too much, and above all without ever subjecting himself to an order of ideas in which Russia could find any deception. For the good of Russia, for the happiness of Europe, it would have been desirable for Prince Gortchakof to have observed later, in his intimacy with Prussia, a little of that care and that intelligent egotism which he gave proof of in such a superior manner in his intimacy with France. "To love, there must be two," said the great theologian of the Middle Ages on the subject that those centuries of faith called divine love, the relations of the human soul with its heavenly Creator. The precept is assuredly much more to be recommended in the much less mystical relations between the powers of the earth, and the Russian vice-chancellor did not forget it during that first period of his ministry, during those years of "cordiality" with the cabinet of the Tuileries. It was only during the second period that the heart of Alexander Mikhaïlovitch began to control the right of the state, and that the love for M. de Bismarck proved to be stronger than the world, stronger even than Russia and its interests.

II.

While Prince Gortchakof thus reaped the fruits of his "French" policy, among which that of vengeance on Austria was surely not the least sweet or pleasant, his former colleague of Frankfort, having become representative of Prussia at the court of Russia, was consumed at his side by the languishing fever of a man of action trammeled by foolish probity. He had arrived at St. Petersburg in the spring of the year 1859, three months after the famous birthday reception given to M. de Hübner by the Emperor Napoleon III.; the Italian complications were about to break out, and the Russian vice-chancellor lent himself to all those diplomatic tricks which, according to the desire of the cabinet of the Tuileries, would drive the Emperor Francis Joseph to a declaration of war. The new plenipotentiary of Prussia at the court of St. Petersburg had not a moment of doubt concerning the bearing which his government should observe in circumstances so propitious. It was from this time (12th May, 1859) that his confidential dispatch to M. de Schleinitz dates, in which he recommends the rupture with the _Bund_, the radical proceeding by sword and fire, _ferro et igne_. In the preceding year, during a journey to Paris, he had occasion to have an interview with the Emperor of the French, and to recognize his good will toward Prussia, and the unqualified wishes which were expressed in the Tuileries for the greatness and the prosperity of the country of Frederick II. and of Blücher. In the month of November of that same year 1858, Napoleon III. had charged the Marquis Pepoli, then _en route_ for Berlin, to represent to the Hohenzollern all the advantages which he would find in a rupture with Austria: "In Germany," the Emperor of the French had said, "Austria represents the past, Prussia represents the future; in linking itself to Austria, Prussia condemns itself to immobility; it cannot be thus contented; it is called to a higher fortune; it should accomplish in Germany the great destinies which await it, and which Germany awaits from it."[31] Thus thought the future prisoner of Wilhelmshoehe on the eve of Magenta and Solferino, and "his excellency the lieutenant" certainly found no objections in such a magnificent programme. But those good ministers of the _new era_ at Berlin unfortunately had not the slightest notion of the "new right," and up to the prince regent himself, they did not cease to speak of conquests purely _moral_. They even asked one another at Potsdam if they should not assist Austria, and whether they did not have federal obligations towards the Emperor Francis Joseph! The Samson of the Mark strove in vain against the ties which the "Philistines of the Spree" imposed on him, and the war in Italy became his Dalila: in fact, it was from this epoch that the renowned boldness of the present chancellor of Germany dates.

It is interesting to study, in the confidential letters to Malvina, the state of mind of M. de Bismarck during these years 1859-1860. At the commencement of hostilities, and evidently despairing of seeing his government adopt the line of conduct which he had not ceased to recommend, he left his post, went to Moscow to visit the Kremlin, passed an agreeable day in a villa, so much more agreeable "when one has the feeling of being sheltered from the telegraph." The news of a great battle fought in Lombardy (Magenta) caused him, nevertheless, to return to St. Petersburg. "Perhaps there will be something for the diplomats to do." At St. Petersburg, he learns of the strange desire at Berlin of interceding for Austria, of mobilizing the federal armies, and from it he conceived the greatest apprehensions for his country. He became ill. A very grave case of hepatitis endangered his life seriously. "They covered my body with innumerable cupping glasses large as saucers, with mustard poultices and quantities of blisters, and I was already half way to a better world when I began to convince my doctors that my nerves were disordered by eight years of griefs and excitement without intermission (the eight years of Frankfort!), and that by continuing to weaken me, they would lead me into typhoid fever or imbecility. My good constitution ended by conquering, thanks, above all, to several dozen bottles of good wine."

His good disposition did not the less remain dull and morose, and two months later he avowed that he would not have been sorry to have ended his life then. Austria was vanquished, it is true; she had lost two great battles and one of the richest provinces; but Prussia had not drawn any material, palpable advantage from this disaster of the Hapsburg, and the cavalier of the Mark was not the man to cherish, like his friend Alexander Mikhaïlovitch, a purely Platonic hatred. He consoled himself, however, by the thought that the peace of Villafranca was only a truce: "to wish in the present state of affairs to seriously reconcile Austria with France, is to labor at the squaring of the circle." "I shall endeavor," he wrote at the approach of autumn, 1859, "to cower in my bear-skin, and to bury myself in the snow; in the thaw of next May, I will see what remains of me and our affairs; if too little I shall definitely settle with politics." The following month of May brought grave events; the annexation of Savoy became the signal for the greatest distrust in Europe, of which we have spoken above: but the cabinet of Berlin persisted in its ancient course, and the prince regent had, in July, an interview with the Emperor Francis Joseph at Toeplitz. "I learn," wrote the representative of Prussia at the court of St. Petersburg with undisguised spite, "that we have been shaved at Toeplitz, splendidly shaved; we have let ourselves be taken in by the Viennese good nature. And all that for nothing, not even the smallest plate of lentils." At last, in the month of October, after Castelfidardo and the conquest of the kingdom of Naples, the cabinet of Berlin addressed an energetic note to M. de Cavour, on the bearing of the House of Savoy on the Italian peninsula. The note established that "it is solely in the legal manner of reforms, and in respecting the existing rights, that a regular government is allowed to realize the legitimate wishes of nations," and closes by the following passage: "Called to express ourselves on the acts and principles of the Sardinian government, we can only deplore them profoundly, and we believe that we are fulfilling a rigorous duty by expressing in the most explicit and formal manner our disapprobation, both of those principles and of the application which has been thought could be made of them." One can imagine what bad humor such _naïvetés_ would cause to the future destroyer of the _Bund_, to the future spoliator of Denmark, of Hanover, and so many other states. He again thought of leaving the career; he resolved in any case to "cling to the situation of an observer," as regards the monstrous policy which was pursued at Berlin. He is perfectly astonished at the scandal which is caused on the banks of the Spree by the publication of the posthumous journal of M. de Varnhagen, a journal full of piquant revelations concerning the court of Prussia. "Why be so indignant. Is it not taken from life? Varnhagen is vain and _méchant_, but who is not? Does it not all depend on the manner in which nature has ripened our lives? According to what we have suffered from the bites of worms, from dampness, or from the sun, behold us sweet, sour, or rotten."

That did not hinder him, however, from carefully cultivating, during these years 1859-1860, his relations with the political world of St. Petersburg from taking root there, and from attaching by a thousand ties the fortune of his country to this friendship of Russia, of which he understood all the value. The position of the representatives of Prussia has always been exceptional at St. Petersburg; thanks to the near relationship of the two courts, they enjoyed in the winter palace a confidence and intimacy which the envoys of other states scarcely ever obtained there. M. de Bismarck was able to add to these favorable conditions the influence of his personal merit, and the good reputation which he had acquired, in a Russian point of view, during his long sojourn at Frankfort. His former journeys in Courland had made him known and liked by the German nobility of the Baltic Provinces, by the Keyserlingk, the Uxküll, the Nolde, the Bruvern, etc., always so influential at court, in the chancellor's office, and in Russian diplomacy. "The first prophets of the future greatness of M. de Bismarck," says an author very _au fait_ in the society of St. Petersburg, "the first who predicted the providential mission which was reserved for him in Germany, were perhaps those barons of Courland and Livonia with whom the present chancellor of Germany had so often passed the hunting season, shared their amusements, their banquets, and their political conversations."[32] The representative of Prussia at the court of St. Petersburg took care, however, not to give himself up too much to this liking for the Courlanders and Livonians; he was careful to place in his affections, or at least in his demonstrations, the greatest part in Russian Russia, autochthonal Muscovy (_nastaïastchaïa_). This enthusiasm for the customs and genius of the "Scythians," this love for the "bear-skin and caviare," was it very sincere? We may perhaps doubt it; it is allowable to suppose that the man who, in the name of his Germanic superiority, has so often and boldly expressed his disdain for the _Welches_ and Latins, feels at bottom a still greater contempt for that Sclavic race which every good German makes rhyme with slave (_slave-esclave_).[33] However that may be, never did foreign ambassador on the banks of the Neva have so much devotion as the cavalier of the Mark for the polar stars, or pushed as far as he did the passion of local color. He pushed it so far as to introduce into his house several little bears which (as formerly the foxes at Kniephof) came, at the dinner hour, bounding into the dining hall, agreeably deranging the _convives_, licking the hand of their master, and "biting the calves of the servants' legs."[34] A worthy Nimrod, he never missed an expedition against the black king of the boreal forests; he did not fail to don on these occasions the Muscovite hunting costume, and the team of horses _à la Russe_ has remained dear to him up to the present, and even in the streets of Berlin. He also affected to interest himself greatly in the literary movement of the country; he had a Russian professor in his house, and he learned enough of it to be able to give his orders to those people in their native idiom, even to delightfully surprise one day the Emperor Alexander with some phrases pronounced in the language of Pouchkine.

The Russians could not help giving a most cordial reception to a diplomat who showed himself so taken with their usages and customs, with their pleasures and their "peculiarities," and who, moreover, had the advantage of succeeding to that good M. de Werther, whose reputation, neither there nor anywhere else, was exactly that of a too hilarious character. On the contrary, they had never known on the banks of the Neva a Prussian as gay as this excellent M. de Bismarck, as good a fellow, as good a liver, having a loud laugh, coarse jests, and a witty speech. He indulged in all sorts of pleasantries at the expense of the "Philistines of the Spree," the "old fogies of Potsdam," which gave him no small success: a minister plenipotentiary slandering his own government, a grumbling, fault-finding diplomat in the very political sphere which he had the mission to represent and to second, that was an originality which could be appreciated by a world always on the watch for the _piquant_ and pleasing. He knew how to please the empress-mother Helen, whose influence at court was considerable, and whose warm support never failed him in consequence, in the most grave moments of his career as minister. The emperor had conceived a great affection for him, invited him regularly to his bear hunts, and did him the honor of admitting him in his _cortége_ during his journeys to Warsaw and Breslau to meet the Prince Regent of Prussia. As for Prince Gortchakof, he enjoyed more than ever the society of his former colleague of Frankfort, and the _salons_ often repeated a malicious _mot, a méchant_ insinuation of which Austria generally had to bear the brunt, and the paternity of which they indifferently attributed first to one then to the other of these two friends, grown inseparable, and whom spiteful intrigues nevertheless wished to separate! At the end of 1859, M. de Bismarck wrote in a confidential letter: "Austria and its dear confederates are intriguing at Berlin to have me recalled from here: I am, however, very amiable. God's will be done!"

At Berlin, in the mean time, they began little by little to glide down a declivity, which would have caused Prussian politics to descend rapidly from the cloudy regions of the _new era_ upon that ground of realities and of action to which the tried friend of Alexander Mikhaïlovitch had so long invited them, and, curiously enough, it was precisely the mobilization of the Prussian army in 1859, the mobilization so condemned by M. de Bismarck, which was the immediate cause of this sudden revival fraught with incalculable consequences. It is fashionable now in France to represent the Prussian government as having meditated for half a century a war of revenge and conquest, slowly brightening their arms, and training a succession of generations for the decisive hour of combat. There is nothing more false, however. Neither the government of Frederick William III., nor that of Frederick William IV. ever cherished warlike projects, and even the humiliation of Olmütz was not an incentive to the minister of war at Berlin. The two predecessors of William I. only sacrificed to the military spirit just that which was necessary to insure them a stand among the great Powers, to hold reviews, and to be able to speak of their faithful troops, and of their always valiant swords; at bottom, they were not far from thinking like the Grand Duke Constantine, the brother of the Emperor Nicholas, who one day said naïvely: "I detest war, it spoils the armies!" The swords of Blücher and Scharnhorst were sheathed since 1815; even the adoption of the needle gun in 1847 was only an accident, rather a scientific experiment; in 1848 and 1849, the Prussian troops did not shine with marvelous _éclat_ in the war of the Duchies, and were even miserably held in check by the undisciplined bands of the insurrection of Posen and Baden. The brother of the king, who had commanded the troops in Baden, was grievously moved at the sight which his soldiers then presented, and, having become regent of the kingdom (October, 1858), he immediately turned his attention to military reform. Nevertheless it was only the mobilization attempted during the Italian complications (in the summer of 1859) which opened their eyes to all the grave inconveniences and incoherencies of the organization till then in force. Two superior men, MM. de Moltke and de Roon, joined with the prince regent in remodeling the system from the very bottom. They displayed in it an intelligence, an energy, and a rapidity without equal in history; they knew how to profit by all the discoveries of science, and above all did not let the great lesson escape them which a formidable civil war in North America soon taught, a war so rich in experiments and inventions of every kind. In spite of the obstacles which were thrown in their way without cessation from all sides, these two men, at the end of six years, produced an armed force, entirely new, powerful, invincible; and "the instrument," still rough and rudimentary in 1860, proved its ill omened "perfection" on the calamitous day of Sadowa! Not less erroneous is the opinion, very generally spread, however, that the Prussian people had demanded of its government victories and aggrandizement; to refute these perfectly gratuitous suppositions, it suffices to remember that the different parliaments of Berlin did not cease to oppose military reform, and that they had on their side the almost unanimous voice of the people. The ideas of German greatness, of German power, of the German mission, haunt the imagination of professors and authors much more than that of the people; they were academic themes, choice morsels of rhetoric and opposition, still they are much more in vogue south of the Main than north of this river,--and precisely there appears the astounding art of M. de Bismarck in having known how, to speak with Münchausen, "to condense mists into stones of size for a gigantic edifice," and to make of a dream of _savans_ a popular passion. The force of will, the force of character, and in one word the genius, can still, even in a century of democratic leveling and uniform mediocrity play a _rôle_, of which our poor philosophy of history scarcely had a suspicion, which drowns so skillfully all responsibility and initiative in the blind fatality of the "masses," and, as a Teutonic proverb says, cannot distinguish the trees on account of looking at the forest. Take from the most recent history of Prussia three or four men who answer to the names of William I., Moltke, Roon, and Bismarck, and the old Barbarossa would very probably up to the present time have continued his secular sleep in the cave of the Kyffhäuser.