Studies in Literature and History
'On va vous accuser d'avoir premedite la guerre et de n'avoir vu
dans l'incident Hohenzollern qu'un pretexte de la provocation.
N'accentuez pas votre premiere depeche comme vous le prescrit
l'Empereur, attenuez la. Benedetti aura deja accompli sa mission
lorsque cette attenuation lui parviendra, mais devant la Chambre
vous y trouverez un argument pour etablir vos intentions
pacifiques.'[49]
And he at once drafted a telegram instructing Benedetti to require
from the king no more than that he should agree not to permit Leopold
to retract the particular renunciation which his father had obtained
from him; instead of requiring a general assurance against _any
future_ retractation. Gramont telegraphed accordingly, but in
continuation, not in correction, of his earlier message, so that the
latter part of the instructions to Benedetti was inconsistent with the
former part. But this second telegram reached Ems, as M. Ollivier had
foreseen, too late, for Benedetti had already seen the king, and had
been urging him persistently to satisfy the French Government by
conceding the general assurance.
M. Ollivier's description of the distress and perplexity that kept him
without sleep during the rest of that eventful night will be read with
a feeling of sincere commiseration. This, then, he reflected, was the
first fruit of imperial liberalism, that the chief minister was
slighted by his sovereign, ill-served and even betrayed by his
colleagues, and committed, behind his back, to a most hazardous
policy. He had been too soft-hearted to insist on making a clean sweep
of the old official class in forming his Cabinet; he had thought to
replace the decrepit absolutism by a young and liberal empire; and
here was the personal power reappearing at the first crisis. The idea
of having given the signal for war was abhorrent to him; he felt
violently tempted to resign and retire. Yet, on reflection, to tender
his resignation at such a moment would be, he felt, an act of culpable
egoism, it would inevitably bring on the war; for the government would
pass into the hands of a rash and impetuous war-party, manifestly bent
on marching against Prussia if the king persisted in refusing, as on
hearing of Ollivier's resignation he would assuredly refuse, the
guarantees that had been demanded by the Council held at St. Cloud. On
the other hand, by remaining in the ministry he might still command a
majority in the Cabinet; nor did he despair of a majority in the
Chamber to support him in cancelling, at some future stage of the
negotiations, this demand for guarantees if he could recover the
emperor's confidence. He might fail, but then he would fall
honourably, having subordinated personal susceptibilities to
considerations of his country's interest; so he finally determined not
to resign office.
Our sympathies are unquestionably due to a minister who, finding
himself placed, by no act of his own, in a situation of the utmost
perplexity, resolves to take no account of his political reputation
and personal interests, and to choose the course that he believes to
be necessary, in arduous circumstances, for the honour and safety of
his country. To a British prime minister his duty would have been
clear, he would have tendered his resignation immediately; but under
the Liberal Empire the ultimate decision upon questions before the
Cabinet still lay with the sovereign, and thus the responsibilities of
his principal minister remained ambiguous and indefinite.
Nevertheless, though it is easy to be wise after the event, our
opinion must be that M. Ollivier would have done his country better
service by resigning office; for though it is very probable that war
could not have been thereby averted, yet unqualified disapproval of
the demand for guarantees might have rallied to his side all those
who, in the Cabinet, the Chamber, and the country, were undoubtedly
opposed to incurring terrible risks in order to obtain pledges against
future contingencies. Among the late Lord Acton's _Historical Essays_
there is a remarkable paper on 'The Causes of the Franco-Prussian
War,' in which the considerations that may justify Gramont's demand
for guarantees are fairly stated. It is there argued that the Prussian
king, who had first 'sanctioned' Prince Leopold's candidature, and
afterwards its withdrawal, had left the initiative in both cases to
Prince Leopold. He had thus kept himself quite free to sanction a
second acceptance as he had done the first--'he held in his hands a
convenient _casus belli_, to be used or dropped at pleasure';
remembering that the Hohenzollern candidature had been 'a meditated
offence, long and carefully prepared, insolently denied, which
demanded reparation.'[50] But one might reply that the best way of
foiling these deep and deliberate designs, manifestly contrived to
provoke war, was to give the adversary no such plausible pretext for
driving France into hostilities as was furnished to Bismarck by
Gramont's demand. It is evident, however, that in July 1870 all Paris
was in a state of irrepressible agitation, that the Imperialists in
the Chamber were determined to push the Government into a defiant and
warlike policy, and that they were acting in the foolhardy conviction
that the French army could beat the Prussians, and that a victorious
campaign would consolidate the Napoleonic dynasty.
The next day, July 13, is an evil date in the history of France, when
she was hurried into war by a swift succession and very unlucky
conjunction of incidents. The Council met early, and decided by a
majority not to call out the army reserves, although Marshal Le
Boeuf energetically declared that if there were any prospect of war,
not an hour should be lost in preparation. M. de la Gorce relates that
four of the councillors passed grave censure on the irregular
proceedings of the previous evening, and condemned Gramont's telegram.
M. Ollivier says that it was resolved not to insist further if the
guarantees were refused by the king, and for the moment to keep the
demand for them secret, merely informing the Chamber that negotiations
with Prussia were in progress. Ollivier took his _dejeuner_ at the
palace, where the household staff greeted him very coldly, and the
empress, by whom he sat, turned her back on him. In the Chamber
Duvernois asked in a surly tone when the debate on his interpellation
would come on, and July 15 was fixed for it. Everything now depended
on the issue of Benedetti's interview with the king at Ems, which took
place early on the morning of the 13th, when they met as the king was
returning by the public promenade from taking the waters. What
followed is well known. The king was surprised and disappointed at
learning from the ambassador that Prince Leopold's resignation had not
settled everything; Benedetti pressed on him Gramont's new demand for
ulterior guarantees; the king positively refused to give them, and
parted from him coldly though courteously, promising, however, to see
him again after receiving the letter expected from Prince Antoine. But
in the course of that day came Werther's report of his conversation
with the two French ministers, which the king's private secretary
opened and carried, in some trepidation, to his majesty. The king was
grievously offended; he wrote to Queen Augusta that to require him to
stand before the world as a repentant sinner was nothing less than
impertinence, and he sent his aide-de-camp, Prince Radziwill (one of
the highest Prussian nobles), to inform Benedetti that Leopold's
letter of resignation had arrived, and that, as the affair was thus
completely ended, no further audience was necessary. The ambassador
replied that he was particularly instructed to obtain the king's
specific approbation of Leopold's action, and was therefore obliged to
solicit another interview. The king replied by his aide-de-camp that
so far as he had approved Leopold's acceptance of the crown he
approved the retractation; but the request for another interview,
though it was twice repeated during the day, was civilly and firmly
refused.
M. Ollivier argues that Werther's report in no way affected the king's
behaviour to Benedetti; he affirms that it made no difference at all,
and that the king's determination to hold no further intercourse with
him was entirely due to Benedetti's indiscreet importunity at the
morning's meeting, which was witnessed, it may be noted, by a crowd
of observant bystanders. We may assume that the king had at no time
the slightest intention of acceding to the demand for guarantees; but
it seems to us impossible to maintain that Werther's report, which was
put into his majesty's hand at such a critical moment, and which
undeniably gave serious offence, did not exacerbate relations which
had already been strained, or induce the king to break off abruptly
the personal negotiations with the French minister. And we may add
that if Benedetti had been cognisant of this report, he might have
understood the king's sudden change of temper, and might have spared
himself some rebuffs. When the matter came afterwards to his
knowledge, he declared that the effect on the king of Werther's report
had been deplorable.
Bismarck had been telegraphing from Berlin to Ems that if the king
accorded to Benedetti any more interviews he must resign office; and
the news of Prince Leopold's renunciation seemed to cut away the
ground upon which he had been manoeuvring for a quarrel with France.
But his spirits revived on receiving by telegraph from the king a
brief summary of the Ems incidents, stating that Benedetti's
importunate requisition for guarantees had been rejected by his
majesty, who had subsequently resolved
'de ne plus recevoir le comte Benedetti a cause de sa pretention,
et de lui faire dire simplement par un aide de camp ... que sa
Majeste avait recu du prince Leopold confirmation de la nouvelle
mandee de Paris, et qu'elle n'avait plus rien a dire a
l'ambassadeur.'
The telegram also authorised Bismarck to communicate this statement to
the foreign courts and to the press, whereupon Bismarck gave it
immediate publication, having made (to use his own phrase) 'some
suppressions'; having, in fact, maliciously tampered with the text and
falsified the tone, according to M. Ollivier and other French writers.
His official organ, the _North German Gazette_, was directed to print
off a supplement and to paste it up all over Berlin, and copies of
this supplement were distributed gratis in the streets. A thrill of
patriotic enthusiasm electrified the nation, who were unanimous in
applauding the king in defying the French, and mocking at their
ambassador's humiliation.
'Dans toutes les langues, dans tous les pays, courait la
falsification offensee lancee par Bismarck. L'effet de cette
publicite effroyable se produisit d'abord en Allemagne avec autant
d'intensite qu'a Berlin. Les journaux faisaient rage.'
This is what M. Ollivier has called 'Le soufflet de Bismarck'; and
never was the art of changing the tone and import of words without
altering their substance more effectively employed; for it must be
acknowledged that the communication to the press was an accurate
rendering of the facts contained in the king's telegram, which was
stiff but not actually discourteous; whereas Bismarck put the sting
into it by little more than adroit condensation. We are told that when
the king received this revised edition of his message he read it
twice, was much moved, and said, 'This means war'; and that it rang
throughout Europe like an alarm-bell. At the same time, and before
Bismarck's action had been known in Paris, M. Ollivier, as he tells
us, was struggling vigorously against the torrent of reproaches and