Studies in Literature and History
before Leopold had withdrawn his candidature, the king had been
pressed to advise or order him to do so, and that this requisition
included by implication the demand for a guarantee against its
renewal. When Leopold had retired without the king's intervention, the
royal order became unnecessary; but the implied demand still remained
in force, and was merely repeated in subsequent telegrams.[51] On this
we must remark that both Benedetti and the Prussian king entirely
missed the alleged implication; that the question of guarantees was
never raised by the telegrams interchanged between Gramont and
Benedetti before Leopold's retirement had become public, when both the
king and the ambassador treated it as entirely new; and that at any
rate such an important and highly contentious demand should obviously
have been stated with unequivocal distinctness, since any other course
was quite certain to produce misunderstandings and recriminations. And
it is no matter for surprise that various French writers have since
accused the Duc de Gramont of misstating the facts upon which the
committee reported to the Chamber that the papers laid before them
amply sustained the ministerial request for the grant of an urgent
war-subsidy, which was thereupon voted by an immense majority. In the
Senate, where the money was granted with even more promptitude and
with zealous unanimity, the proceedings were expedited by a report
from Marshal Le Boeuf that the enemy had already crossed the French
frontier, and M. Rouher, a thorough Imperialist, headed a deputation
of senators to congratulate the emperor, in the name of the Senate, on
having drawn the sword when the Prussian king rejected the demand for
guarantees. M. Ollivier reasonably complains that this unauthorised
demonstration was awkward and mischievous; for while the Senate was
thus made to attribute the rupture to the king's refusal, the ministry
was declaring war on account of the 'soufflet de Bismarck'--the insult
embodied in the Prussian telegram. Yet M. Ollivier, looking back in
the calm evening of life on these stormy days, might have brought
himself by reflection to admit that between these two pretexts there
was little to choose--that neither of them justified a government in
staking the fortunes of the nation and the empire on the hazard of a
great war. When Rouher had read his address, the sovereigns conversed
with the senators, and it was remarked that while the empress was
lively and confident of success, the emperor spoke sadly of the long
and difficult task, requiring a most violent effort, that lay before
them.
Having brought his narrative up to the moment when the Chamber by
voting the subsidy had practically determined upon war, M. Ollivier
stops to comment upon and explain the strenuous opposition made to the
vote by M. Thiers and by the small section of deputies who represented
the Radical Left. He is convinced that this latter party were mainly
actuated in their ardent protests by a desire to embarrass and, if
possible, to overthrow his Government, of which they had been
consistent adversaries. They had calculated, he explains, on the
probability that the ministry would flinch from the rupture with
Prussia, would adopt some pacific compromise that would be rejected
with indignation by the Chamber, and would be contemptuously expelled
from office. When this calculation had been foiled by the resolutely
courageous attitude of the Cabinet, they foresaw (he believes) that a
triumphant campaign would greatly strengthen the Government and would
utterly discredit the Opposition, so they changed their tactics and
fought against the ministerial proposals with accusations of criminal
recklessness and prophecies of disaster. It is hardly possible, after
so long an interval of time, to form any opinion upon these somewhat
invidious suggestions. The action of those who opposed the war,
whatever may have been their motives, was outwardly consistent enough,
and the construction placed upon it by M. Ollivier may seem rather
subtle and far-fetched. At the present day, however, this question
does not particularly concern any one, though we may agree that at
that moment no one in France contemplated the possibility of defeat in
the field. The French army was assumed by all parties to be
invincible, and the minority in opposition did undoubtedly believe and
fear that the empire would be consolidated by victories. M. Thiers in
his speech only touched generally upon the chances and perils of war,
and even Gambetta voted with the Government upon the conviction that
success was beyond doubt; while not only in Paris, but in all the
great towns, the determination to fight was acclaimed because a
triumphant campaign was supposed to be certain. It was to be
anticipated, indeed, that a brave and high-spirited nation, very
sensitive on the point of honour, and confident in its military
superiority, would respond enthusiastically to the signal of war
against a rival whose ill-will was notorious, who was accused of
plotting the injury of their country and of deliberately insulting
their Government.
A public declaration of hostilities was sent to Berlin, though M.
Ollivier tells us that his ministry regarded it as a superfluous
formality which they would have preferred leaving to Prussia.
'La declaration fut libellee d'une maniere assez maladroite par les
commis des Affaires etrangeres, et elle ne fut pas meme lue au
Conseil. Elle fut communiquee uniquement par la forme et sans
discussion aux Assemblees, et envoyee a la Prusse le 19 juillet.'
This perfunctory method of composition is characteristic of the
prevailing official atmosphere.
The document was delivered by the French charge d'affaires to
Bismarck, and in the dialogue that followed between the two
diplomatists, which M. Ollivier relates in full, we have an excellent
sample of the Prussian Chancellor's sardonic and incisive manner.
Bismarck asserted that if he had been present at the interviews with
Benedetti he might have prevented the war, whereas the king's
conciliatory tone at Ems had misled the French ministers into the
blunder of using threats and making intolerable demands, until at last
they found themselves confronted by a strong Government, backed by the
Prussian nation in the firm resolution to defend itself. In reporting
this conversation to the Foreign Office the charge d'affaires said
that Bismarck appeared to be sincerely afflicted with regret for the
rupture between the two countries, that he evidently saw, too late,
his error in having secretly encouraged the Hohenzollern candidature,
and that the result of all these unhappy complications had left the
well-meaning chancellor inconsolable. Such a candid confession of
remorse and regret moved the Frenchman's compassion to a degree that
profoundly irritates M. Ollivier:
'Un tel exces de credulite finit par exasperer. Et la plupart des
diplomates de ce temps-la etaient de cette force. Bien pietre
serait l'histoire qui se modelerait sur leurs appreciations.'
We may agree that the sympathy of the charge d'affaires with
Bismarck's ingenuous contrition was ill-bestowed. But the tendency to
fix upon French diplomacy a responsibility for national calamities
that is much more justly chargeable to the account of the Imperial
Government, is somewhat unduly prominent in certain parts of M.
Ollivier's otherwise fair and conscientious narrative of the
transactions that culminated in the war.
When Bismarck announced to the Prussian Reichstag that war had been
declared, he was interrupted by an outburst of long and enthusiastic
cheering. He said, briefly, that he had no papers to lay before them,
because the single official document received from the French
Government was the declaration of war; and the only motive for
hostilities he understood to be his own circular _telegramme de
journal_ addressed to Prussian envoys abroad and to other friendly
Powers for the purpose of explaining what had occurred. This, he
observed, was not at all an official document. He added that a demand
for a letter of excuses had been made through Werther to the king; and
the real origin of the war he alleged to be the hatred and jealousy
with which the independence and prosperity of Germany were regarded in
France. Upon this adroit but incomplete exposition of causes and
circumstances M. Ollivier comments with intelligible severity, laying
stress on the fact that afterwards Bismarck threw off his disguise,
and openly took to himself the credit of having deliberately contrived
to bring on the war at his own time. In fact, the later German
historians have confirmed this statement by their critical examination
of the records and other evidence; though instead of concluding that
his conduct was immoral they unite, according to M. Ollivier, in
applauding his political genius. Almost the whole story of the
connected machinations by which France was led step by step into war
have since been disclosed, and the only part which is still unrevealed
relates to the original devices by which Bismarck and Marshal Prim
concerted the preliminaries to the offer of the Spanish throne to
Leopold.[52]
It is cheerfully admitted by the German historians who are cited in
this volume that the train of incidents which produced so well-timed
an explosion was scientifically laid by the Prussian chancellor. But
they maintain that he was only countermining the underground
combinations of the French, who were known to be organising a triple
alliance with Italy and Austria for a combined assault upon Prussia;
and that the journey of the Austrian Archduke Albert to Paris in
March 1870 convinced Bismarck that he had no time to lose, because war
must be provoked before these alliances were consummated. And they
cite the example of Frederick the Great, who disconcerted the secret
preparations of his enemies by the sudden dash upon Dresden which
opened the Seven Years' War. This defence of his own very skilful and
not less astute manoeuvres was endorsed by Bismarck in a speech
before the Chamber in 1876; nor does it appear to us so untenable as
M. Ollivier holds it to be. He argues that the fear of being attacked
by France, if it had really influenced Bismarck's conduct in 1870,
must have been a wild hallucination, for the chancellor must have been
well aware that the emperor's policy at that time was decidedly
pacific, and that his own (Ollivier's) views were still more so. He
assures us that the project of a triple alliance was intended to be
exclusively defensive, that it never passed beyond the 'academic'
stage, or reached any practical form. The confidential negotiations of
1869 with Austria and Italy had been left, he says, in the stage of
unfinished outline, nor was it even suspected either by the French or
by the Italian ministry that they had been carried further. On the
other hand, it cannot be denied that in 1869 these negotiations had
been carried quite far enough to inspire the Prussian chancellor with
serious disquietude, if, as is very probable, he had good information
of them. We know, from M. Ollivier's very interesting account of what
passed at the first meeting of the Cabinet on July 6, when the
ministers resolved to announce to the Chamber their determination to
resent and resist the Hohenzollern candidature, that the emperor and
M. de Gramont regarded the understanding with Italy and Austria as
being much more than academic. It is there stated that when Ollivier
hesitated to accept Gramont's assurance that the assistance of these
two Powers, in the event of hostilities with Prussia, had been
virtually secured, the Emperor Napoleon took from a drawer in his
bureau certain letters written in 1869 by the Austrian emperor and the