IV. THE FOUNDING OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC
"[Greek: egigneto te logo men daemokratia, ergo de hupo tou protou andros archae]."
"Thus Athens, though still in name a democracy, was in fact ruled by her greatest man."--THUCYDIDES, book ii. chap. 65.
The aim of this work being to trace the outlines only of those outstanding events which made the chief States of the world what they are to-day, we can give only the briefest glance at the remaining events of the Franco-German War and the splendid though hopeless rally attempted by the newly-installed Government of National Defence. Few facts in recent history have a more thrilling interest than the details of the valiant efforts made by the young Republic against the invaders. The spirit in which they were made breathed through the words of M. Picard's proclamation on September 4: "The Republic saved us from the invasion of 1792. The Republic is proclaimed."
Inspiring as was this reference to the great and successful effort of the First Republic against the troops of Central Europe in 1792, it was misleading. At that time Prussia had lapsed into a state of weakness through the double evils of favouritism and a facing-both-ways policy. Now she felt the strength born of sturdy championship of a great principle--that of Nationality--which had ranged nearly the whole of the German race on her side. France, on the other hand, owing to the shocking blunders of her politicians and generals during the war, had but one army corps free, that of General Vinoy, which hastily retreated from the neighbourhood of Mézières towards Paris on September 2 to 4. She therefore had to count almost entirely on the Garde Mobile, the Garde Nationale, and Francs-tireurs; but bitter experience was to show that this raw material could not be organised in a few weeks to withstand the trained and triumphant legions of Germany.
Nevertheless there was no thought of making peace with the invaders. The last message of Count Palikao to the Chambers had been one of defiance to the enemy; and the Parisian deputies, nearly all of them Republicans, who formed the Government of National Defence, scouted all faint-hearted proposals. Their policy took form in the famous phrase of Jules Favre, Minister of Foreign Affairs: "We will give up neither an inch of our territory nor a stone of our fortresses." This being so, all hope of compromise with the Germans was vain. Favre had interviews with Bismarck at the Château de Ferrières (September 19); but his fine oratory, even his tears, made no impression on the Iron Chancellor, who declared that in no case would an armistice be granted, not even for the election of a National Assembly, unless France agreed to give up Alsace and a part of Lorraine, allowing the German troops also to hold, among other places, Strassburg and Toul.
Obviously, a self-constituted body like the provisional Government at Paris could not accept these terms, which most deeply concerned the nation at large. In the existing temper of Paris and France, the mention of such terms meant war to the knife, as Bismarck must have known. On their side, Frenchmen could not believe that their great capital, with its bulwarks and ring of outer forts, could be taken; while the Germans--so it seems from the Diary of General von Blumenthal--looked forward to its speedy capitulation. One man there was who saw the pressing need of foreign aid. M. Thiers (whose personality will concern us a little later) undertook to go on a mission to the chief Powers of Europe in the hope of urging one or more of them to intervene on behalf of France.
The details of that mission are, of course, not fully known. We can only state here that Russia now repaid Prussia's help in crushing the Polish rebellion of 1863 by neutrality, albeit tinged with a certain jealousy of German success. Bismarck had been careful to dull that feeling by suggesting that she (Russia) should take the present opportunity of annulling the provision, made after the Crimean War, which prevented her from sending war-ships on to the Black Sea; and this was subsequently done, under a thin diplomatic disguise, at the Congress of London (March 1871). Bismarck's astuteness in supporting Russia at this time therefore kept that Power quiet. As for Austria, she undoubtedly wished to intervene, but did not choose to risk a war with Russia, which would probably have brought another overthrow. Italy would not unsheathe her sword for France unless the latter recognised her right to Rome (which the Italian troops entered on September 20). To this the young French Republic demurred. Great Britain, of course, adhered to the policy of neutrality which she at first declared[54].
[Footnote 54: See Débidour, Histoire diplomatique de l'Europe, vol. ii. pp. 412-415. For Bismarck's fears of intervention, especially that of Austria, see his Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 109 (English edit.); Count Beust's Aus drei Viertel-Jahrhunderten, pt. ii. pp. 361, 395; for Thiers' efforts see his Notes on the years 1870-73 (Paris 1904).]
Accordingly, France had to rely on her own efforts. They were surprisingly great. Before the complete investment of Paris (September 20), a Delegation of the Government of National Defence had gone forth to Tours with the aim of stirring up the provinces to the succour of the besieged capital. Probably the whole of the Government ought to have gone there; for, shut up in the capital, it lost touch with the provinces, save when balloons and carrier-pigeons eluded the German sharpshooters and brought precious news[55]. The mistake was seen in time to enable a man of wondrous energy to leave Paris by balloon on October 7, to descend as a veritable deus ex machina on the faltering Delegation at Tours, and to stir the blood of France by his invective. There was a touch of the melodramatic not only in his apparition but in his speeches. Frenchmen, however, follow a leader all the better if he is a good stage-manager and a clever actor. The new leader was both; but he was something more.
[Footnote 55: M. Grégoire in his Histoire de France, vol. iv. p. 647, states that 64 balloons left Paris during the siege, 5 were captured and 2 lost in the sea; 363 carrier-pigeons left the city and 57 came in. For details of the French efforts see Les Responsabilités de la Défense rationale, by H. Génevois; also The People's War in France, 1870-1871, by Col. L. Hale (The Pall Mall Military Series, 1904), founded on Hönig's Der Volkskrieg an der Loire.]
Léon Gambetta had leaped to the front rank at the Bar in the closing days of 1868 by a passionate outburst against the coup d'état, uttered, to the astonishment of all, in a small Court of Correctional Police, over a petty case of State prosecution of a small Parisian paper. Rejecting the ordinary methods of defence, the young barrister flung defiance at Napoleon III. as the author of the coup d'état and of all the present degradation of France. The daring of the young barrister, who thus turned the tables on the authorities and impeached the head of the State, made a profound impression; it was redoubled by the Southern intensity of his thought and expression. Disdaining all forms of rhetoric, he poured forth a torrent of ideas, clothing them in the first words that came to his facile tongue, enforcing them by blows of the fist or the most violent gestures, and yet, again, modulating the roar of passion to the falsetto of satire or the whisper of emotion. His short, thick-set frame, vibrating with strength, doubled the force of all his utterances. Nor did they lack the glamour of poetry and romance that might be expected from his Italian ancestry. He came of a Genoese stock that had for some time settled in the South of France. Strange fate, that called him now to the front with the aim of repairing the ills wrought to France by another Italian House! In time of peace his power over men would have raised him to the highest positions had his Bohemian exuberance of thought and speech been tameable. It was not. He scorned prudence in moderation at all times, and his behaviour, when the wave of Revolution at last carried him to power, gave point to the taunt of Thiers--"c'est un fou furieux." Such was the man who now brought the quenchless ardour of his patriotism to the task of rousing France. As far as words and energy could call forth armies, he succeeded; but as he lacked all military knowledge, his blind self-confidence was to cost France dear.
Possibly the new levies of the Republic might at some point have pierced the immense circle of the German lines around Paris (for at first the besieging forces were less numerous than the besieged), had not the assailants been strengthened by the fall of Metz (Oct. 27). This is not the place to discuss the culpability of Bazaine for the softness shown in the defence. The voluminous evidence taken at his trial shows that he was very slack in the critical days at the close of August; it is also certain that Bismarck duped him under the pretence that, on certain conditions to be arranged with the Empress Eugénie, his army might be kept intact for the sake of re-establishing the Empire[56]. The whole scheme was merely a device to gain time and keep Bazaine idle, and the German Chancellor succeeded here as at all points in his great game. On October 27, then, 6000 officers, 173,000 rank and file, were constrained by famine to surrender, along with 541 field-pieces and 800 siege guns.
[Footnote 56: Bazaine gives the details from his point of view in his Episodes de la Guerre de 1870 et le Blocus de Metz (Madrid, 1883). One of the go-betweens was a man Regnier, who pretended to come from the Empress Eugénie, then at Hastings; but Bismarck seems to have distrusted him and to have dismissed him curtly. The adventuress, Mme. Humbert, recently claimed that she had her "millions" from this Regnier. A sharp criticism on Bazaine's conduct at Metz is given in a pamphlet, Réponse au Rapport sommaire sur les Opérations de l'Armée du Rhin, by one of his Staff Officers. See, too, M. Samuel Denis in his recent work, Histoire Contemporaine (de France).]
This capitulation, the greatest recorded in the history of civilised nations, dealt a death-blow to the hopes of France. Strassburg had hoisted the white flag a month earlier; and the besiegers of these fortresses were free to march westwards and overwhelm the new levies. After gaining a success at Coulmiers, near Orleans (Nov. 9), the French were speedily driven down the valley of the Loire and thence as far west as Le Mans. In the North, at St. Quentin, the Germans were equally successful, as also in Burgundy against that once effective free-lance, Garibaldi, who came with his sons to fight for the Republic. The last effort was made by Bourbaki and a large but ill-compacted army against the enemy's communications in Alsace. By a speedy concentration the Germans at Héricourt, near Belfort, defeated this daring move (imposed by the Government of National Defence on Bourbaki against his better judgment), and compelled him and his hard-pressed followers to pass over into Switzerland (January 30, 1871).
Meanwhile Paris had already surrendered. During 130 days, and that too in a winter of unusual severity, the great city had held out with a courage that neither defeats, schisms, dearth of food, nor the bombardment directed against its southern quarters could overcome. Towards the close of January famine stared the defenders in the face, and on the 28th an armistice was concluded, which put an end to the war except in the neighbourhood of Belfort. That exception was due to the determination of the Germans to press Bourbaki hard, while the French negotiators were not aware of his plight. The garrison of Paris, except 12,000 men charged with the duty of keeping order, surrendered; the forts were placed in the besiegers' hands. When that was done the city was to be revictualled and thereafter pay a war contribution of 200,000,000 francs (£8,000,000). A National Assembly was to be freely elected and meet at Bordeaux to discuss the question of peace. The National Guards retained their arms, Favre maintaining that it would be impossible to disarm them; for this mistaken weakness he afterwards expressed his profound sorrow[57].
[Footnote 57: It of course led up to the Communist revolt. Bismarck's relations to the disorderly elements in Paris are not fully known; but he warned Favre on Jan. 26 to "provoke an émeute while you have an army to suppress it with" (Bismarck in Franco-German War, vol. ii. p. 265).]
Despite the very natural protests of Gambetta and many others against the virtual ending of the war at the dictation of the Parisian authorities, the voice of France ratified their action. An overwhelming majority declared for peace. The young Republic had done wonders in reviving the national spirit: Frenchmen could once more feel the self-confidence which had been damped by the surrenders of Sedan and Metz; but the instinct of self-preservation now called imperiously for the ending of the hopeless struggle. In the hurried preparations for the elections held on February 8, few questions were asked of the candidates except that of peace or war; and it soon appeared that a great majority was in favour of peace, even at the cost of part of the eastern provinces.
Of the 630 deputies who met at Bordeaux on February 12, fully 400 were Monarchists, nearly evenly divided between the Legitimists and Orleanists; 200 were professed Republicans; but only 30 Bonapartists were returned. It is not surprising that the Assembly, which met in the middle of February, should soon have declared that the Napoleonic Empire had ceased to exist, as being "responsible for the ruin, invasion, and dismemberment of the country" (March 1). These rather exaggerated charges (against which Napoleon III. protested from his place of exile, Chislehurst) were natural in the then deplorable condition of France. What is surprising and needs a brief explanation here, is the fact that a monarchical Assembly should have allowed the Republic to be founded.
This paradoxical result sprang from several causes, some of them of a general nature, others due to party considerations, while the personal influence of one man perhaps turned the balance at this crisis in the history of France. We will consider them in the order here named.
Stating the matter broadly, we may say that the present Assembly was not competent to decide on the future constitution of France; and that vague but powerful instinct, which guides representative bodies in such cases, told against any avowedly partisan effort in that direction. The deputies were fully aware that they were elected to decide the urgent question of peace or war, either to rescue France from her long agony, or to pledge the last drops of her life-blood in an affair of honour. By an instinct of self-preservation, the electors, especially in the country districts, turned to the men of property and local influence as those who were most likely to save them from the frothy followers of Gambetta. Accordingly, local magnates were preferred to the barristers and pressmen, whose oratorical and literary gifts usually carry the day in France; and more than 200 noblemen were elected. They were chosen not on account of their nobility and royalism, but because they were certain to vote against the fou furieux.
Then, too, the Royalists knew very well that time would be required to accustom France to the idea of a King, and to adjust the keen rivalries between the older and the younger branches of the Bourbon House. Furthermore, they were anxious that the odium of signing a disastrous peace should fall on the young Republic, not on the monarch of the future. Just as the great Napoleon in 1814 was undoubtedly glad that the giving up of Belgium and the Rhine boundary should devolve on his successor, Louis XVIII., and counted on that as one of the causes undermining the restored monarchy, so now the Royalists intended to leave the disagreeable duty of ceding the eastern districts of France to the Republicans who had so persistently prolonged the struggle. The clamour of no small section of the Republican party for war à outrance still played into the hands of the royalists and partly justified this narrow partisanship. Events, however, were to prove here, as in so many cases, that the party which undertook a pressing duty and discharged it manfully, gained more in the end than those who shirked responsibility and left the conduct of affairs to their opponents. Men admire those who dauntlessly pluck the flower, safety, out of the nettle, danger.
Finally, the influence of one commanding personality was ultimately to be given to the cause of the Republic. That strange instinct which in times of crisis turns the gaze of a people towards the one necessary man, now singled out M. Thiers. The veteran statesman was elected in twenty-six Departments. Gambetta and General Trochu, Governor of Paris, were each elected nine times over. It was clear that the popular voice was for the policy of statesmanlike moderation which Thiers now summed up in his person; and Gambetta for a time retired to Spain.
The name of Thiers had not always stood for moderation. From the time of his youth, when his journalistic criticisms on the politics, literature, art and drama of the Restoration period set all tongues wagging, to the day when his many-sided gifts bore him to power under Louis Philippe, he stood for all that is most beloved by the vivacious sons of France. His early work, The History of the French Revolution, had endeared him to the survivors of the old Jacobin and Girondin parties, and his eager hostility to England during his term of office flattered the Chauvinist feelings that steadily grew in volume during the otherwise dull reign of Louis Philippe. In the main, Thiers was an upholder of the Orleans dynasty, yet his devotion to constitutional principles, the ardour of his Southern temperament,--he was a Marseillais by birth,--and the vivacious egotism that never brooked contradiction, often caused sharp friction with the King and the King's friends. He seemed born for opposition and criticism. Thereafter, his conduct of affairs helped to undermine the fabric of the Second Republic (1848-51). Flung into prison by the minions of Louis Napoleon at the time of the coup d'état, he emerged buoyant as ever, and took up again the rôle that he loved so well.
Nevertheless, amidst all the seeming vagaries of Thiers' conduct there emerge two governing principles--a passionate love of France, and a sincere attachment to reasoned liberty. The first was absolute and unchangeable; the second admitted of some variations if the ruler did not enhance the glory of France, and also (as some cynics said) recognise the greatness of M. Thiers. For the many gibes to which his lively talents and successful career exposed him, he had his revenge. His keen glance and incisive reasoning generally warned him of the probable fate of Dynasties and Ministries. Like Talleyrand, whom he somewhat resembled in versatility, opportunism, and undying love of France, he might have said that he never deserted a Government before it deserted itself. He foretold the fall of Louis Philippe under the reactionary Guizot Ministry as, later on, he foretold the fall of Napoleon III. He blamed the Emperor for not making war on Prussia in 1866 with the same unanswerable logic that marked his opposition to the mad rush for war in 1870. And yet the war spirit had been in some sense strengthened by his own writings. His great work, The History of the Consulate and Empire, which appeared from 1845 to 1862--the last eight volumes came out during the Second Empire--was in the main a glorification of the First Napoleon. Men therefore asked with some impatience why the panegyrist of the uncle should oppose the supremacy of the nephew; and the action of the crowd in smashing the historian's windows after his great speech against the war of 1870 cannot be called wholly illogical, even if it erred on the side of Gallic vivacity.
In the feverish drama of French politics Time sometimes brings an appropriate Nemesis. It was so now. The man who had divided the energies of his manhood between parliamentary opposition of a somewhat factious type and the literary cultivation of the Napoleonic legend, was now in the evening of his days called upon to bear a crushing load of responsibility in struggling to win the best possible terms of peace from the victorious Teuton, in mediating between contending factions at Bordeaux and Paris, and, finally, in founding a form of government which never enlisted his whole-hearted sympathy, save as the least objectionable expedient then open to France.
For the present, the great thing was to gain peace with the minimum of sacrifice for France. Who could drive a better bargain than Thiers, the man who knew France so well, and had recently felt the pulse of the Governments of Europe? Accordingly, on the 17th of February, the Assembly named him Head of the Executive Power "until it is based upon the French Constitution." He declined to accept this post until the words "of the French Republic" were substituted for the latter clause. He had every reason for urging this demand. Unlike the Republic of 1848, the strength of which was chiefly, or almost solely, in Paris, the Republic was proclaimed at Lyons, Marseilles, and Bordeaux, before any news came of the overthrow of the Napoleonic dynasty at the capital[58].
[Footnote 58: Seignobos, A Political History of Contemporary Europe, vol. i. p. 187 (Eng. edit.).]
He now entrusted three important portfolios, those for Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs, and Public Instruction, to pronounced Republicans--Jules Favre, Picard, and Jules Simon. Having pacified the monarchical majority by appealing to them to defer all questions respecting the future constitution until affairs were more settled, he set out to meet Bismarck at Versailles.
A disadvantage which almost necessarily besets parliamentary institutions had weakened the French case before the negotiations began. The composition of the Assembly implied a strong desire for peace--a fact which Thiers had needlessly emphasised before he left Bordeaux. On the other hand, Bismarck was anxious to end the war. He knew enough to be uneasy at the attitude of the neutral States; for public opinion was veering round in England, Austria, and Italy to a feeling of keen sympathy for France, and even Russia was restless at the sight of the great military Empire that had sprung into being on her flank. The recent proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles--an event that will be treated in a later chapter--opened up a vista of great developments for the Fatherland, not unmixed with difficulties and dangers. Above all, sharp differences had arisen between him and the military men at the German headquarters, who wished to "bleed France white" by taking a large portion of French Lorraine (including its capital Nancy), a few colonies, and part of her fleet. It is now known that Bismarck, with the same moderation that he displayed after Königgrätz, opposed these extreme claims, because he doubted the advisability of keeping Metz, with its large French population. The words in which he let fall these thoughts while at dinner with Busch on February 21 deserve to be quoted:--
If they (the French) gave us a milliard more (£40,000,000) we might perhaps let them have Metz. We would then take 800,000,000 francs, and build ourselves a fortress a few miles further back, somewhere about Falkenberg or Saarbrück--there must be some suitable spot thereabouts. We should thus make a clear profit of 200,000,000 francs. [N.B.--A milliard = 1,000,000,000 francs.] I do not like so many Frenchmen being in our house against their will. It is just the same with Belfort. It is all French there too. The military men, however, will not be willing to let Metz slip, and perhaps they are right[59].
[Footnote 59: Busch, Bismarck in the Franco-German War, vol. ii. p. 341.]
A sharp difference of opinion had arisen between Bismarck and Moltke on this question, and the Emperor Wilhelm intervened in favour of Moltke. That decided the question of Metz against Thiers despite his threat that this might lead to a renewal of war. For Belfort, however, the French statesman made a supreme effort. That fortress holds a most important position. Strong in itself, it stands as sentinel guarding the gap of nearly level ground between the spurs of the Vosges and those of the Jura. If that virgin stronghold were handed over to Germany, she would easily be able to pour her legions down the valley of the Doubs and dominate the rich districts of Burgundy and the Lyonnais. Besides, military honour required France to keep a fortress that had kept the tricolour flying. Metz the Germans held, and it was impossible to turn them out. Obviously the case of Belfort was on a different footing. In his conference of February 24, Thiers at last defied Bismarck in these words: "No; I will never yield Belfort and Metz in the same breath. You wish to ruin France in her finances, in her frontiers. Well! Take her. Conduct her administration, collect her revenues, and you will have to govern her in the face of Europe--if Europe permits[60]."
[Footnote 60: G. Hanotaux, Contemporary France, vol i. p. 124 (Eng. edit.). This work is the most detailed and authoritative that has yet appeared on these topics. See, too, M. Samuel Denis' work, Histoire Contemporaine.]
Probably this defiance had less weight with the Iron Chancellor than his conviction, noticed above, that to bring two entirely French towns within the German Empire would prove a source of weakness; beside which his own motto, Beati possidentes, told with effect in the case of Belfort. That stronghold was accordingly saved for France. Thiers also obtained a reduction of a milliard from the impossible sum of six milliards first named for the war indemnity due to Germany; in this matter Jules Favre states that British mediation had been of some avail. If so, it partly accounts for the hatred of England which Bismarck displayed in his later years. The Preliminaries of Peace were signed at Versailles on February 26.
One other matter remained. The Germans insisted that, if Belfort remained to France, part of their army should enter Paris. In vain did Thiers and Jules Favre point out the irritation that this would cause and the possible ensuing danger. The German Emperor and his Staff made it a point of honour, and 30,000 of their troops accordingly marched in and occupied for a brief space the district of the Champs Élysées. The terms of peace were finally ratified in the Treaty of Frankfurt (May 10, 1871), whereby France ceded Alsace and part of Lorraine, with a population of some 1,600,000 souls, and underwent the other losses noted above. Last but not least was the burden of supporting the German army of occupation that kept its grip on the north-east of France until, as the instalments came in, the foreign troops were proportionately drawn away eastwards. The magnitude of these losses and burdens had already aroused cries of anguish in France. The National Assembly at Bordeaux, on first hearing the terms, passionately confirmed the deposition of Napoleon III.; while the deputies from the ceded districts lodged a solemn protest against their expatriation (March 1). Some of the advanced Republican deputies, refusing to acknowledge the cession of territory, resigned their seats in the Assembly. Thus there began a schism between the Radicals, especially those of Paris, and the Assembly, which was destined to widen into an impassable gulf. Matters were made worse by the decision of the Assembly to sit, not at the capital, but at Versailles, where it would be free from the commotions of the great city. Thiers himself declared in favour of Versailles; there the Assembly met for the first time on March 20, 1871.
A conflict between this monarchical Assembly and the eager Radicals of Paris perhaps lay in the nature of things. The majority of the deputies looked forward to the return of the King (whether the Comte de Chambord of the elder Bourbons, or the Comte de Paris of the House of Orleans) as soon as France should be freed from the German armies of occupation and the spectre of the Red Terror. Some of their more impatient members openly showed their hand, and while at Bordeaux began to upbraid Thiers for his obstinate neutrality on this question. For his part, the wise old man had early seen the need of keeping the parties in check. On February 17 he begged them to defer questions as to the future form of government, working meanwhile solely for the present needs of France, and allowing future victory to be the meed of that party which showed itself most worthy of trust. "Can there be any man" (he exclaimed) "who would dare learnedly to discuss the articles of the Constitution, while our prisoners are dying of misery far away, or while our people, perishing of hunger, are obliged to give their last crust to the foreign soldiers?" A similar appeal on March led to the informal truce on constitutional questions known as the Compact of Bordeaux. It was at best an uncertain truce, certain to be broken at the first sign of activity on the Republican side.
That activity was now put forth by the "Reds" of Paris. It would take us far too long to describe the origins of the municipal socialism which took form in the Parisian Commune of 1871. The first seeds of that movement had been sown by its prototype of 1792-93, which summed up all the daring and vigour of the revolutionary socialism of that age. The idea had been kept alive by the "National Workshops" of 1848, whose institution and final suppression by the young Republic of that year had been its own undoing.
History shows, then, that Paris, as the head of France, was accustomed to think and act vigorously for herself in time of revolution. But experience proved no less plainly that the limbs, that is, the country districts, generally refused to follow the head in these fantastic movements. Hence, after a short spell of St. Vitus' activity, there always came a time of strife, followed only too often by torpor, when the body reduced the head to a state of benumbed subjection. The triumph of rural notions accounts for the reactions of 1831-47, and 1851-70. Paris having once more regained freedom of movement by the fall of the Second Empire on September 4, at once sought to begin her politico-social experiments, and, as we pointed out, only the promptitude of the "moderates," when face to face with the advancing Germans, averted the catastrophe of a socialistic regime in Paris during the siege. Even so, the Communists made two determined efforts to gain power; the former of these, on October 31, nearly succeeded. Other towns in the centre and south, notably Lyons, were also on the brink of revolutionary socialism, and the success of the movement in Paris might conceivably have led to a widespread trial of the communal experiment. The war helped to keep matters in the old lines.
But now, the feelings of rage at the surrender of Paris and the cession of the eastern districts of France, together with hatred of the monarchical assembly that flouted the capital by sitting at the abode of the old Kings of France, served to raise popular passion to fever heat. The Assembly undoubtedly made many mistakes: it authorised the payment of rents and all other obligations in the capital for the period of siege as if in ordinary times, and it appointed an unpopular man to command the National Guards of Paris. At the close of February the National Guards formed a Central Committee to look after their interests and those of the capital; and when the Executive of the State sent troops of the line to seize their guns parked on Montmartre, the Nationals and the rabble turned out in force. The troops refused to act against the National Guards, and these murdered two Generals, Lecomte and Thomas (March 18). Thiers and his Ministers thereupon rather tamely retired to Versailles, and the capital fell into the hands of the Communists. Greater firmness at the outset might have averted the horrors that followed.
The Communists speedily consulted the voice of the people by elections conducted in the most democratic spirit. In many respects their programme of municipal reforms marked a great improvement on the type of town-government prevalent during the Empire. That was, practically, under the control of the imperial préfets. The Communists now asserted the right of each town to complete self-government, with the control of its officials, magistrates, National Guards, and police, as well as of taxation, education, and many other spheres of activity. The more ambitious minds looked forward to a time when France would form a federation of self-governing Communes, whose delegates, deciding matters of national concern, would reduce the executive power to complete subservience. At bottom this Communal Federalism was the ideal of Rousseau and of his ideal Cantonal State.
By such means, they hoped, the brain of France would control the body, the rural population inevitably taking the position of hewers of wood and drawers of water, both in a political and material sense. Undoubtedly the Paris Commune made some intelligent changes which pointed the way to reforms of lasting benefit; but it is very questionable whether its aims could have achieved permanence in a land so very largely agricultural as France then was. Certainly it started its experiment in the worst possible way, namely, by defying the constituted authorities of the nation at large, and by adopting the old revolutionary calendar, and the red flag, the symbol of social revolution. Thenceforth it was an affair of war to the knife.
The National Government, sitting at Versailles, could not at first act with much vigour. Many of the line regiments sympathised with the National Guards of Paris: these were 200,000 strong, and had command of the walls and some of the posts to the south-west of Paris. The Germans still held the forts to the north and east of the capital, and refused to allow any attack on that side. It has even been stated that Bismarck favoured the Communists; but this is said to have resulted from their misreading of his promise to maintain a friedlich (peaceful) attitude, as if it were freundlich (friendly)[61]. The full truth as to Bismarck's relations to the Commune is not known. The Germans, however, sent back a force of French prisoners, and these with other troops, after beating back the Communist sortie of April 3, began to threaten the defences of the city. The strife at once took on a savage character, as was inevitable after the murder of two Generals in Paris. The Versailles troops, treating the Communists as mere rebels, shot their chief officers. Thereupon the Commune retaliated by ordering the capture of hostages, and by seizing the Archbishop of Paris, and several other ecclesiastics (April 5). It also decreed the abolition of the budget for Public Worship and the confiscation of clerical and monastic property throughout France--a proposal which aroused ridicule and contempt.
[Footnote 61: Débidour, Histoire diplomatique de l'Europe, vol. ii. p. 438-440.]
It would be tedious to dwell on the details of this terrible strife. Gradually the regular forces overpowered the National Guards of Paris, drove them from the southern forts, and finally (May 21) gained a lodgment within the walls of Paris at the Auteuil gate. Then followed a week of street-fighting and madness such as Europe had not seen since the Peninsular War. "Room for the people, for the bare-armed fighting men. The hour of the revolutionary war has struck." This was the placard posted throughout Paris on the 22nd, by order of the Communist chief, Delescluze. And again, "After the barricades, our houses; after our houses, our ruins." Preparations were made to burn down a part of Central Paris to delay the progress of the Versaillese. Rumour magnified this into a plan of wholesale incendiarism, and wild stories were told of pétroleuses flinging oil over buildings, and of Communist firemen ready to pump petroleum. A squad of infuriated "Reds" rushed off and massacred the Archbishop of Paris and six other hostages, while elsewhere Dominican friars, captured regulars, and police agents fell victims to the rage of the worsted party.
Madness seemed to have seized on the women of Paris. Even when the men were driven from barricades by weight of numbers or by the capture of houses on their flank, these creatures fought on with the fury of despair till they met the death which the enraged linesmen dealt out to all who fought, or seemed to have fought. Simpson, the British war correspondent, tells how he saw a brutal officer tear the red cross off the arm of a nurse who tended the Communist wounded, so that she might be done to death as a fighter[62]. Both sides, in truth, were maddened by the long and murderous struggle, which showed once again that no strife is so horrible as that of civil war. On Sunday, May 28, the last desperate band was cut down at the Cemetery Père-Lachaise, and fighting gave way to fusillades. Most of the chiefs perished without the pretence of trial, and the same fate befel thousands of National Guards, who were mown down in swathes and cast into trenches. In the last day of fighting, and the horrible time that followed, 17,000 Parisians are said to have perished[63]. Little by little, law reasserted her sway, but only to doom 9600 persons to heavy punishment. Not until 1879 did feelings of mercy prevail, and then, owing to Gambetta's powerful pleading, an amnesty was passed for the surviving Communist prisoners.
[Footnote 62: The Autobiography of William Simpson (London, 1903), p. 261.]
[Footnote 63: G. Hanotaux, Contemporary France, p. 225. For further details see Lissagaray's History of the Commune; also personal details in Washburne's Recollections of a Minister to France, 1869-1877, vol. ii. chaps, ii.-vii.]
The Paris Commune affords the last important instance of a determined rising in Europe against a civilised Government. From this statement we of course except the fitful efforts of the Carlists in Spain; and it is needless to say that the risings of the Bulgarians and other Slavs against Turkish rule have been directed against an uncivilised Government. The absence of revolts in the present age marks it off from all that have preceded, and seems to call for a brief explanation. Obviously, there is no lack of discontent, as the sequel will show. Finland, portions of Caucasia, and all the parts of the once mighty realm of Poland which have fallen to Russia and Prussia, now and again heave with anger and resentment. But these feelings are suppressed. They do not flame forth, as was the case in Poland as late as the year 1863. What is the reason for this? Mainly, it would seem, the enormous powers given to the modern organised State by the discoveries of mechanical science and the triumphs of the engineer. Telegraphy now flashes to the capital the news of a threatening revolt in the hundredth part of the time formerly taken by couriers with their relays of horses. Fully as great is the saving of time in the transport of large bodies of troops to the disaffected districts. Thus, the all-important factors that make for success--force, skill, and time--are all on the side of the central Governments[64].
[Footnote 64: See Turkey in Europe, by "Odysseus" (p. 130), for the parallel instance of the enhanced power of the Sultan Abdul Hamid owing to the same causes.]
The spread of constitutional rule has also helped to dispel discontent--or, at least, has altered its character. Representative government has tended to withdraw disaffection from the market-place, the purlieus of the poor, and the fastnesses of the forest, and to focus it noisily but peacefully in the columns of the Press and the arena of Parliament. The appeal now is not so much to arms as to argument; and in this new sphere a minority, provided that it is well organised and persistent, may generally hope to attain its ends. Revolt, even if it take the form of a refusal to pay taxes, is therefore an anachronism under a democracy; unless, as in the case of the American Civil War, two great sections of the country are irreconcilably opposed.
The fact, however, that there has been no widespread revolt in Russia since the year 1863, shows that democracy has not been the chief influence tending to dissolve or suppress discontent. As we shall see in a later chapter, Russia has defied constitutionalism and ground down alien races and creeds; yet (up to the year 1904) no great rising has shaken her autocratic system to its base. This seems to prove that the immunity of the present age in regard to insurrections is due rather to the triumphs of mechanical science than to the progress of democracy. The fact is not pleasing to contemplate; but it must be faced. So also must its natural corollary: that the minority, if rendered desperate, may be driven to arm itself with new and terrible engines of destruction in order to shatter that superiority of force with which science has endowed the centralised Governments of to-day.
Certain it is that desperation, perhaps brought about by a sense of helplessness in face of an armed nation, was one of the characteristics of the Paris Commune, as it was also of Nihilism in Russia. In fact the Communist effort of 1871 may be termed a belated attempt on the part of a daring minority to dominate France by seizing the machinery of government at Paris. The success of the Extremists of 1793 and 1848 in similar experiments--not to speak of the Communistic rising of Babeuf in 1797--was only temporary; but doubtless it encouraged the "Reds" of 1871 to make their mad bid for power. Now, however, the case was very different. France was no longer a lethargic mass, dominated solely by the eager brain of Paris. The whole country thrilled with political life. For the time, the provinces held the directing power, which had been necessarily removed from the capital; and--most powerful motive of all--they looked on the Parisian experiment as gross treason to la patrie, while she lay at the feet of the Germans. Thus, the very motives which for a space lent such prestige and power to the Communistic Jacobins of 1793 told against their imitators in 1871.
The inmost details of their attempt will perhaps never be fully known; for too many of the actors died under the ruins of the building they had so heedlessly reared. Nevertheless, it is clear that the Commune was far from being the causeless outburst that it has often been represented. In part it resulted from the determination of the capital to free herself from the control of the "rurals" who dominated the National Assembly; and in that respect it foreshadowed, however crudely, what will probably be the political future of all great States, wherein the urban population promises altogether to outweigh and control that of the country. Further, it should be remembered that the experimenters of 1871 believed the Assembly to have betrayed the cause of France by ceding her eastern districts, and to be on the point of handing over the Republic to the Monarchists. A fit of hysteria, or hypochondria, brought on by the exhausting siege and by exasperation at the triumphal entry of the Germans, added the touch of fury which enabled the Radicals of Paris to challenge the national authorities and thereafter to persist in their defiance with French logicality and ardour.
France, on the other hand, looked on the Communist movement at Paris and in the southern towns as treason to the cause of national unity, when there was the utmost need of concord. Thus on both sides there were deplorable misunderstandings. In ordinary times they might have been cleared away by frank explanations between the more moderate leaders; but the feverish state of the public mind forbade all thoughts of compromise, and the very weakness brought on by the war sharpened the fit of delirium which will render the spring months of the year 1871 for ever memorable even in the thrilling annals of Paris.
V. THE FOUNDING OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC (continued)
The seemingly suicidal energy shown in the civil strifes at Paris served still further to depress the fortunes of France. On the very day when the Versailles troops entered the walls of Paris, Thiers and Favre signed the treaty of peace at Frankfurt. The terms were substantially those agreed on in the preliminaries of February, but the terms of payment of the indemnity were harder than before. Resistance was hopeless. In truth, the Iron Chancellor had recently used very threatening language: he accused the French Government of bad faith in procuring the release of a large force of French prisoners, ostensibly for the overthrow of the Commune, but really in order to patch up matters with the "Reds" of Paris and renew the war with Germany. Misrepresentations and threats like these induced Thiers and Favre to agree to the German demands, which took form in the Treaty of Frankfurt (May 10, 1871).
Peace having been duly ratified on the hard terms[65], it remained to build up France almost de nova. Nearly everything was wanting. The treasury was nearly empty, and that too in face of the enormous demands made by Germany. It is said that in February 1871, the unhappy man who took up the Ministry of Finance, carried away all the funds of the national exchequer in his hat. As Thiers confessed to the Assembly, he had, for very patriotism, to close his eyes to the future and grapple with the problems of every day as they arose. But he had faith in France, and France had faith in him. The French people can perform wonders when they thoroughly trust their rulers. The inexhaustible wealth inherent in their soil, the thrift of the peasantry, and the self-sacrificing ardour shown by the nation when nerved by a high ideal, constituted an asset of unsuspected strength in face of the staggering blows dealt to French wealth and credit. The losses caused by the war, the Commune, and the cession of the eastern districts, involved losses that have been reckoned at more than £614,000,000. Apart from the 1,597,000 inhabitants transferred to German rule, the loss of population due to the war and the civil strifes has been put as high as 491,000 souls[66].
[Footnote 65: They included the right to hold four more Departments until the third half milliard (£20,000,000, that is, £60,000,000 in all) had been paid. A commercial treaty on favourable terms, those of the "most favoured nation," was arranged, as also an exchange of frontier strips near Luxemburg and Belfort. Germany acquired Elsass (Alsace) and part of Lorraine, free of all their debts.
We may note here that the Anglo-French Treaty of Commerce arranged in 1860 with Napoleon largely by the aid of Cobden, was not renewed by the French Republic, which thereafter began to exclude British goods. Bismarck forced France at Frankfurt to concede favourable terms to German products. England was helpless. For this subject, see Protection in France, by H.O. Meredith (1905).]
[Footnote 66: Quoted by M. Hanotaux, Contemporary France, vol. i. pp. 323-327.]
Yet France flung herself with triumphant energy into the task of paying off the invaders. At the close of June 1871, a loan for two milliards and a quarter (£90,000,000) was opened for subscription, and proved to be an immense success. The required amount was more than doubled. By means of the help of international banks, the first half milliard of the debt was paid off in July 1871, and Normandy was freed from the burden of German occupation. We need not detail the dates of the successive payments. They revealed the unsuspected vitality of France and the energy of her Government and financiers. In March 1873, the arrangements for the payment of the last instalment were made, and in the autumn of that year the last German troops left Verdun and Belfort. For his great services in bending all the powers of France to this great financial feat, Thiers was universally acclaimed as the Liberator of the Territory.
Yet that very same period saw him overthrown. To read this riddle aright, we must review the outlines of French internal politics. We have already referred to the causes that sent up a monarchical majority to the National Assembly, the schisms that weakened the action of that majority, and the peculiar position held by M. Thiers, an Orleanist in theory, but the chief magistrate of the French Republic. No more paradoxical situation has ever existed; and its oddity was enhanced by the usually clear-cut logicality of French political thought. Now, after the war and the Commune, the outlook was dim, even to the keenest sight. One thing alone was clear, the duty of all citizens to defer raising any burning question until law, order, and the national finances were re-established. It was the perception of this truth that led to the provisional truce between the parties known as the Compact of Bordeaux. Flagrantly broken by the "Reds" of Paris in the spring of 1871, that agreement seemed doomed. The Republic itself was in danger of perishing as it did after the socialistic extravagances of the Revolution of 1848. But Thiers at once disappointed the monarchists by stoutly declaring that he would not abet the overthrow of the Republic: "We found the Republic established, as a fact of which we are not the authors; but I will not destroy the form of government which I am now using to restore order. . . . When all is settled, the country will have the liberty to choose as it pleases in what concerns its future destinies[67]." Skilfully pointing the factions to the future as offering a final reward for their virtuous self-restraint, this masterly tactician gained time in which to heal the worst wounds dealt by the war.
[Footnote 67: Speech of March 27, 1871.]
But it was amidst unending difficulties. The Monarchists, eager to emphasise the political reaction set in motion by the extravagances of the Paris Commune, wished to rid themselves at the earliest possible time of this self-confident little bourgeois who seemed to stand alone between them and the realisation of their hopes. Their more unscrupulous members belittled his services and hinted that love of power alone led him to cling to the Republic, and thus belie his political past. Then, too, the Orleans princes, the Duc d'Aumale and the Prince de Joinville, the surviving sons of King Louis Philippe, took their seats as deputies for the Oise and Haute-Marne Departments, thus keeping the monarchical ideal steadily before the eye of France. True, the Duc d'Aumale had declared to the electorate that he was ready to bow before the will of France whether it decided for a Constitutional Monarchy or a Liberal Republic; and the loyalty with which he served his country was destined to set the seal of honesty on a singularly interesting career. But there was no guarantee that the Chamber would not take upon itself to interpret the will of France and call from his place of exile in London the Comte de Paris, son of the eldest descendant of Louis Philippe, around whom the hopes of the Orleanists centred.
Had Thiers followed his earlier convictions and declared for such a Restoration, it might quite conceivably have come about without very much resistance. But early in the year 1871, or perhaps after the fall of the Empire, he became convinced that France could not heal her grievous wounds except under a government that had its roots deep in the people's life. Now, the cause of monarchy in France was hopelessly weakened by schisms. Legitimists and Orleanists were at feud ever since, in 1830, Louis Philippe, so the former said, cozened the rightful heir out of his inheritance; and the efforts now made to fuse the claims of the two rival branches remained without result, owing to the stiff and dogmatic attitude of the Comte de Chambord, heir to the traditions of the elder branch. A Bonapartist Restoration was out of the question. Yet all three sections began more and more to urge their claims. Thiers met them with consummate skill. Occasionally they had reason to resent his tactics as showing unworthy finesse; but oftener they quailed before the startling boldness of his reminders that, as they constituted the majority of the deputies of France, they might at once undertake to restore the monarchy--if they could. "You do not, and you cannot, do so. There is only one throne and it cannot have three occupants[68]." Or, again, he cowed them by the sheer force of his personality: "If I were a weak man, I would flatter you," he once exclaimed. In the last resort he replied to their hints of his ambition and self-seeking by offering his resignation. Here again the logic of facts was with him. For many months he was the necessary man, and he and they knew it.
[Footnote 68: De Mazade, Thiers, p. 467. For a sharp criticism of Thiers, see Samuel Denis' Histoire Contemperaine (written from the royalist standpoint).]
But, as we have seen, there came a time when the last hard bargains with Bismarck as to the payment of the war debt neared their end; and the rapier-play between the Liberator of the Territory and the parties of the Assembly also drew to a close. In one matter he had given them just cause for complaint. As far back as November 13, 1872 (that is, before the financial problem was solved), he suddenly and without provocation declared from the tribune of the National Assembly that it was time to establish the Republic. The proposal was adjourned, but Thiers had damaged his influence. He had broken the "Compact of Bordeaux" and had shown his hand. The Assembly now knew that he was a Republican. Finally, he made a dignified speech to the Assembly, justifying his conduct in the past, appealing from the verdict of parties to the impartial tribunal of History, and prophesying that the welfare of France was bound up with the maintenance of the Conservative Republic. The Assembly by a majority of fourteen decided on a course of action that he disapproved, and he therefore resigned (May 24, 1873).
It seems that History will justify his appeal to her tribunal. Looking, not at the occasional shifts that he used in order to disunite his opponents, but rather at the underlying motives that prompted his resolve to maintain that form of government which least divided his countrymen, posterity has praised his conduct as evincing keen insight into the situation, a glowing love for France before which all his earliest predilections vanished, and a masterly skill in guiding her from the abyss of anarchy, civil war, and bankruptcy that had but recently yawned at her feet. Having set her upon the path of safety, he now betook himself once more to those historical and artistic studies which he loved better than power and office. It is given to few men not only to write history but also to make history; yet in both spheres Thiers achieved signal success. Some one has dubbed him "the greatest little man known to history." Granting even that the paradox is tenable, we may still assert that his influence on the life of France exceeded that of many of her so-called heroes.
In fact, it would be difficult to point out in any country during the Nineteenth Century, since the time of Bonaparte's Consulate, a work of political, economic, and social renovation greater than that which went on in the two years during which Thiers held the reins of power. Apart from the unparalleled feat of paying off the Germans, the Chief of the Executive breathed new vigour into the public service, revived national spirit in so noteworthy a way as to bring down threats of war from German military circles in 1872 (to be repeated more seriously in 1875), and placed on the Statute Book two measures of paramount importance. These were the reform of Local Government and the Army Bill.
These measures claim a brief notice. The former of them naturally falls into two parts, dealing severally with the Commune and the Department. These are the two all-important areas in French life. In rural districts the Commune corresponds to the English parish; it is the oldest and best-defined of all local areas. In urban districts it corresponds with the municipality or township. The Revolutionists of 1790 and 1848 had sought to apply the principle of manhood suffrage to communal government; but their plans were swept away by the ensuing reactions, and the dawn of the Third Republic found the Communes, both rural and urban, under the control of the préfets and their subordinates. We must note here that the office of préfet, instituted by Bonaparte in 1800, was designed to link the local government of the Departments closely to the central power: this magistrate, appointed by the Executive at Paris, having almost unlimited control over local affairs throughout the several Departments. Indeed, it was against the excessive centralisation of the prefectorial system that the Parisian Communists made their heedless and unmeasured protest. The question having thus been thrust to the front, the Assembly brought forward (April 1871) a measure authorising the election of Communal Councils elected by every adult man who had resided for a year in the Commune. A majority of the Assembly wished that the right of choosing mayors should rest with the Communal Councils, but Thiers, browbeating the deputies by his favourite device of threatening to resign, carried an amendment limiting this right to towns of less than 20,000 inhabitants. In the larger towns, and in all capitals of Departments, the mayors were to be appointed by the central power. Thus the Napoleonic tradition in favour of keeping local government under the oversight of officials nominated from Paris was to some extent perpetuated even in an avowedly democratic measure.
Paris was to have a Municipal Council composed of eighty members elected by manhood suffrage from each ward; but the mayors of the twenty arrondissements, into which Paris is divided, were, and still are, appointed by the State; and here again the control of the police and other extensive powers are vested in the Préfet of the Department of the Seine, not in the mayors of the arrondissements or the Municipal Council. The Municipal or Communal Act of 1871, then, is a compromise--on the whole a good working compromise--between the extreme demands for local self-government and the Napoleonic tradition, now become an instinct with most Frenchmen in favour of central control over matters affecting public order[69].
[Footnote 69: On the strength of this instinct see Mr. Bodley's excellent work, France, vol. i. pp. 32-42. etc. For the Act, see Hanotaux op. cit. pp. 236-238.]
The matter of Army Reform was equally pressing. Here, again, Thiers had the ground cleared before him by a great overturn, like that which enabled Bonaparte in his day to remodel France, and the builders of Modern Prussia--Stein, Scharnhorst, and Hardenberg--to build up their State from its ruins. In particular, the inefficiency of the National Guards and of the Garde Mobile made it easy to reconstruct the French Army on the system of universal conscription in a regular army, the efficiency of which Prussia had so startlingly displayed in the campaigns of Königgrätz (Sadowa) and Sedan. Thiers, however, had no belief in a short service system with its result of a huge force of imperfectly trained troops: he clung to the old professional army; and when that was shown to be inadequate to the needs of the new age, he pleaded that the period of compulsory service should be, not three, but five years. On the Assembly demurring to the expense and vital strain for the people which this implied, he declared with passionate emphasis that he would resign unless the five years were voted. They were voted (June 10, 1872). At the same time, the exemptions, so numerous during the Second Empire, were curtailed and the right of buying a substitute was swept away. After five years' service with the active army were to come four years with the reserve of the active army, followed by further terms in the territorial army. The favour of one year's service instead of five was to be accorded in certain well-defined cases, as, for instance, to those who had distinguished themselves at the Lycées, or highest grade public schools. Such was the law which was published on July 27, 1872[70].
[Footnote 70: Hanotaux, op. cit. pp. 452-465.]
The sight of a nation taking on itself this heavy blood-tax (heavier than that of Germany, where the time of service with the colours was only for three years) aroused universal surprise, which beyond the Rhine took the form of suspicion that France was planning a war of revenge. That feeling grew in intensity in military circles in Berlin three years later, as the sequel will show. Undaunted by the thinly-veiled threats that came from Germany, France proceeded with the tasks of paying off her conquerors and reorganising her own forces; so that Thiers on his retirement from office could proudly point to the recovery of French credit and prestige after an unexampled overthrow.
In feverish haste, the monarchical majority of the National Assembly appointed Marshal MacMahon to the Presidency (May 24, 1873). They soon found out, however, the impossibility of founding a monarchy. The Comte de Paris, in whom the hopes of the Orleanists centred, went to the extreme of self-sacrifice, by visiting the Comte de Chambord, the Legitimist "King" of France, and recognising the validity of his claims to the throne. But this amiable pliability, while angering very many of the Orleanists, failed to move the monarch-designate by one hair's-breadth from those principles of divine right against which the more liberal monarchists always protested. "Henri V." soon declared that he would neither accept any condition nor grant a single guarantee as to the character of his future rule. Above all, he declared that he would never give up the white flag of the ancien régime. In his eyes the tricolour, which, shortly after the fall of the Bastille, Louis XVI. had recognised as the flag of France, represented the spirit of the Great Revolution, and for that great event he had the deepest loathing. As if still further to ruin his cause, the Count announced his intention of striving with all his might for the restoration of the Temporal Power of the Pope. It is said that the able Bishop of Orleans, Mgr. Dupanloup, on reading one of the letters by which the Comte de Chambord nailed the white flag to the mast, was driven to exclaim, "There! That makes the Republic! Poor France! All is lost."
Thus the attempts at fusion of the two monarchical parties had only served to expose the weaknesses of their position and to warn France of the probable results of a monarchical restoration. That the country had well learnt the lesson appeared in the bye-elections, which in nearly every case went in favour of Republican candidates. Another event that happened early in 1873 further served to justify Thiers' contention that the Republic was the only possible form of government. On January 9, Napoleon III. died of the internal disease which for seven years past had been undermining his strength. His son, the Prince Imperial, was at present far too young to figure as a claimant to the throne.
It is also an open secret that Bismarck worked hard to prevent all possibility of a royalist Restoration; and when the German ambassador at Paris, Count Arnim, opposed his wishes in this matter, he procured his recall and subjected him to a State prosecution. In fact, Bismarck believed that under a Republic France would be powerless in war, and, further, that she could never form that alliance with Russia which was the bugbear of his later days. A Russian diplomatist once told the Duc de Broglie that the kind of Republic which Bismarck wanted to see in France was "une République dissolvante."
Everything therefore concurred to postpone the monarchical question, and to prolong the informal truce which Thiers had been the first to bring about. Accordingly, in the month of November, the Assembly extended the Presidency of Marshal MacMahon to seven years--a period therefore known as the Septennate.
Having now briefly shown the causes of the helplessness of the monarchical majority in the matter that it had most nearly at heart, we must pass over subsequent events save as they refer to that crowning paradox--the establishment of a Republican Constitution. This was due to the despair felt by many of the Orleanists of seeing a restoration during the lifetime of the Comte de Chambord, and to the alarm felt by all sections of the monarchists at the activity and partial success of the Bonapartists, who in the latter part of 1874 captured a few seats. Seeking above all things to keep out a Bonaparte, they did little to hinder the formation of a Constitution which all of them looked on as provisional. In fact, they adopted the policy of marking time until the death of the Comte de Chambord--whose hold on life proved to be no less tenacious than on his creed--should clear up the situation. Accordingly, after many diplomatic delays, the Committee which in 1873 had been charged to draw up the Constitution, presented its plan, which took form in the organic laws of February 25, 1875. They may be thus summarised:--
The Legislature consists of two Assemblies--the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, the former being elected by "universal" (or, more properly, manhood) suffrage. The composition of the Senate, as determined by a later law, lies with electoral bodies in each of the Departments; these bodies consist of the national deputies for that Department, the members of their General Councils and District Councils, and delegates from the Municipal Councils. Senators are elected for nine years; deputies to the Chamber of Deputies for four years. The President of the Republic is chosen by the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies sitting together for that purpose. He is chosen for seven years and is eligible for re-election; he is responsible to the Chambers only in case of high treason; he enjoys, conjointly with the members of the two Chambers, the right of proposing laws; he promulgates them when passed and supervises their execution; he disposes of the armed forces of France and has the right of pardon formerly vested in the Kings of France. Conformably to the advice of the Senate he may dissolve the Chamber of Deputies. Each Chamber may initiate proposals for laws, save that financial measures rest solely with the Chamber of Deputies.
The Chambers may decide that the Constitution shall be revised. In that case, they meet together, as a National Assembly, to carry out such revision, which is determined by the bare majority. Each arrondissement, or district of a Department, elects one deputy. From 1885 to 1889 the elections were decided by each Department on a list, but since that time the earlier plan has been revived. We may also add that the seat of government was fixed at Versailles; four years later this was altered in favour of Paris, but certain of the most important functions, such as the election of a new President, take place at Versailles.
Taken as a whole, this Constitution was a clever compromise between the democratic and autocratic principles of government. Having its roots in manhood suffrage, it delegated very extensive powers to the head of the State. These powers are especially noteworthy if we compare them with those of the Ministry. The President commissions such and such a senator or deputy to form a Ministry (not necessarily representing the opinions of the majority of the Chambers); and that Ministry is responsible to the Chambers for the execution of laws and the general policy of the Government; but the President is not responsible to the Chambers, save in the single and very exceptional case of high treason to the State. Obviously, the Assembly wished to keep up the autocratic traditions of the past as well as to leave open the door for a revision of the Constitution at any time favourable to the monarchical cause. That this Constitution did not pave the way for the monarchy was due to several causes. Some we have named above.
Another and perhaps a final cause was the unwillingness or inability of Marshal MacMahon to bring matters to the test of force. Actuated, perhaps, by motives similar to those which kept the Duke of Wellington from pushing matters to an extreme in England in 1831, the Marshal refused to carry out a coup d'état against the Republican majority sent up to the Chamber of Deputies by the General Election of January 1876. Once or twice he seemed on the point of using force. Thus, in May 1877, he ventured to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies; but the Republican party, led by the impetuous Gambetta, appealed to the country with decisive results. That orator's defiant challenge to the Marshal, either to submit or to resign (se soumettre ou se démettre) was taken up by France, with the result that nearly all the Republican deputies were re-elected. The President recognised the inevitable, and in December of that year charged M. Dufaure to form a Ministry that represented the Republican majority. In January 1879 even, some senatorial elections went against the President, and he accordingly resigned, January 30, 1879.
In the year 1887 the Republic seemed for a time to be in danger owing to the intrigues of the Minister for War, General Boulanger. Making capital out of the difficulties of France, the financial scandals brought home to President Grévy, and his own popularity with the army, the General seemed to be preparing a coup d'état. The danger increased when the Ministry had to resign office (May 1887). A "National party" was formed, consisting of monarchists, Bonapartists, clericals, and even some crotchety socialists--in fact, of all who hoped to make capital out of the fell of the Parliamentary regime. The malcontents called for a plebiscite as to the form of government, hoping by these means to thrust in Boulanger as dictator to pave the way for the Comte de Paris up to the throne of France. After a prolonged crisis, the scheme ignominiously collapsed at the first show of vigour on the Republican side. When the new Floquet Ministry summoned Boulanger to appear before the High Court of Justice, he fled to Belgium, and shortly afterwards committed suicide.
The chief feature of French political life, if one reviews it in its broad outlines, is the increase of stability. When we remember that that veteran opportunist, Talleyrand, on taking the oath of allegiance to the new Constitution of 1830, could say, "It is the thirteenth," and that no régime after that period lasted longer than eighteen years, we shall be chary of foretelling the speedy overthrow of the Third Republic at any and every period of Ministerial crisis or political ferment. Certainly the Republic has seen Ministries made and unmade in bewilderingly quick succession; but these are at most superficial changes--the real work of administration being done by the hierarchy of permanent officials first established by the great Napoleon. Even so terrible an event as the murder of President Sadi Carnot (June 1894) produced none of the fatal events that British alarmists confidently predicted. M. Casimir Périer was quietly elected and ruled firmly. The same may be said of his successors, MM. Faure and Loubet. Sensible, businesslike men of bourgeois origin, they typify the new France that has grown up since the age when military adventurers could keep their heels on her neck provided that they crowned her brow with laurels. That age would seem to have passed for ever away. A well-known adage says: "It is the unexpected that happens in French politics." To forecast their course is notoriously unsafe in that land of all lands. That careful and sagacious student of French life, Mr. Bodley, believes that the nation at heart dislikes the prudent tameness of Parliamentary rule, and that "the day will come when no power will prevent France from hailing a hero of her choice[71]."
[Footnote 71: Mr. Bodley, France, vol. i. ad fin.]
Doubtless the advent of a Napoleon the Great would severely test the qualities of prudence and patience that have gained strength under the shelter of democratic institutions. Yet it must always be remembered that Democracy has until now never had a fair chance in France. The bright hopes of 1789 faded away ten years later amidst the glamour of military glory. As for the Republic of 1848, it scarcely outlived the troubles of infancy. The Third Republic, on the other hand, has attained to manhood. It has met and overcome very many difficulties; at the outset parts of two valued provinces and a vast sum of treasure were torn away. In those early days of weakness it also crushed a serious revolt. The intrigues of Monarchists and Bonapartists were foiled. Hardest task of all, the natural irritation of Frenchmen at playing a far smaller part in the world was little by little allayed.
In spite of these difficulties, the Third Republic has now lasted a quarter of a century. That is to say, it rests on the support of a generation which has gradually become accustomed to representative institutions--an advantage which its two predecessors did not enjoy. The success of institutions depends in the last resort on the character of those who work them; and the testimony of all observers is that the character of Frenchmen has slowly but surely changed in the direction which Thiers pointed out in the dark days of February 1871 as offering the only means of a sound national revival--"Yes: I believe in the future of France: I believe in it, but on condition that we have good sense; that we no longer use mere words as the current coin of our speech, but that under words we shall place realities; that we have not only good sense, but good sense endowed with courage."
These are the qualities that have built up the France of to-day. The toil has been enormous, and it has been doubled by the worries and disappointments incident to Parliamentarism when grafted on to a semi-military bureaucracy; but the toil and the disappointments have played their part in purging the French nature of the frothy sensationalism and eager irresponsibility that naturally resulted from the Imperialism of the two Napoleons. France seems to be outgrowing the stage of hobble-de-hoyish ventures, military or communistic, and to have taken on the staid, sober, and self-respecting mien of manhood--a process helped on by the burdens of debt and conscription resulting from her juvenile escapades. In a word, she has attained to a full sense of responsibility. No longer are her constructive powers hopelessly outmatched by her critical powers. In the political sphere she has found a due balance between the brain and the hand. From analysis she has worked her way to synthesis.
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The following are the Ministries of the Republic in 1870-1900:--1870, Favre; 1871, Dufaure (1); 1873, De Broglie (1); 1874, Cissey; 1875, Buffet; 1876, Dufaure (2); 1876, Simon; 1877, De Broglie (2); 1877, De Rochebouet; 1877, Dufaure (3); 1879, Waddington; 1879, Freycinet (1); 1880, Ferry (1); 1881, Gambetta; 1882, Freycinet (2); 1882, Duclerc; 1883, Fallières; 1883, Ferry (2); 1885, Brisson; 1886, Freycinet (3); 1886, Goblet; 1887, Rouvier; 1887, Tirard (1); 1888, Floquet; 1889, Tirard (2); 1890, Freycinet (4); 1892, Loubet; 1892, Ribot (1); 1892, Dupuy (1); 1893, Casimir Périer; 1894, Dupuy (2); 1895, Ribot (2); 1895, Bourgeois; 1896, Méline; 1898, Brisson; 1898 Dupuy (3); 1899, Waldeck-Rousseau.
VI. THE GERMAN EMPIRE
"From the very beginning of my career my sole guiding-star has been how to unify Germany, and, that being achieved, how to strengthen, complete, and so constitute her unification that it may be preserved enduringly and with the goodwill of all concerned in it."--BISMARCK: Speech in the North German Reichstag, July 9, 1869.
On the 18th of January 1871, while the German cannon were still thundering against Paris, a ceremony of world-wide import occurred in the Palace of the Kings of France at Versailles. King William of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor. The scene lacked no element that could appeal to the historic imagination. It took place in the Mirror Hall, where all that was brilliant in the life of the old French monarchy used to encircle the person of Louis XIV. And now, long after that dynasty had passed away, and when the crown of the last of the Corsican adventurers had but recently fallen beneath the feet of the Parisians, the descendant of the Prussian Hohenzollerns celebrated the advent to the German people of that unity for which their patriots had vainly struggled for centuries.
The men who had won this long-deferred boon were of no common stamp. King William himself, as is now shown by the publication of many of his letters to Bismarck, had played a far larger share in the making of a united Germany than was formerly believed. His plain good sense and unswerving fortitude had many times marked out the path of safety and kept his country therein. The policy of the Army Bill of 1860, which brought salvation to Prussia in spite of her Parliament, was wholly his. Bismarck's masterful grip of the helm of State in and after 1862 helped to carry out that policy, just as von Roon's organising ability perfected the resulting military machine; but its prime author was the King, who now stood triumphant in the hall of his ancestral foes. Beside and behind him on the dais, in front of the colours of all the German States, were the chief princes of Germany--witnesses to the strength of the national sentiment which the wars against the First Napoleon had called forth, and the struggle with the nephew had now brought to maturity. Among their figures one might note the stalwart form of the Crown Prince, along with other members of the House of Prussia; the Grand Duke of Baden, son-in-law of the Prussian King; the Crown Prince of Saxony, and representatives of every reigning family of Germany. Still more remarkable were some of the men grouped before the King and princes. There was the thin war-worn face of Moltke; there, too, the sturdy figure of Bismarck: the latter, wrote Dr. Russell, "looking pale, but calm and self-possessed, elevated, as it were, by some internal force[72]."
[Footnote 72: Quoted by C. Lowe, Life of Bismarck, vol. i. p. 615.]
The King announced the re-establishment of the German Empire; and those around must have remembered that that venerable institution (which differed so widely from the present one that the word "re-establishment" was really misleading) had vanished but sixty-four years before at the behests of the First Napoleon. Next, Bismarck read the Kaiser's proclamation, stating his sense of duty to the German nation and his hope that, within new and stronger boundaries, which would guarantee them against attacks from France, they would enjoy peace and prosperity. The Grand Duke of Baden then called for three cheers for the Emperor, which were given with wild enthusiasm, and were taken up by the troops far round the iron ring that encircled Paris.
Few events in history so much impress one, at first sight, with a sense of strength, spontaneity, and inevitableness. And yet, as more is known of the steps that led up to the closer union of the German States, that feeling is disagreeably warped. Even then it was known that Bavaria and Würtemberg strongly objected to the closer form of union desired by the northern patriots, which would have reduced the secondary States to complete dependence on the federal Government. Owing to the great reluctance of the Bavarian Government and people to give up the control of their railways, posts and telegraphs, these were left at their disposal, the two other Southern States keeping the direction of the postal and telegraphic services in time of peace. Bavaria and Würtemberg likewise reserved the control of their armed forces, though in case of war they were to be placed at the disposal of the Emperor--arrangements which also hold good for the Saxon forces. In certain legal and fiscal matters Bavaria also bargained for freedom of action.
What was not known then, and has leaked out in more or less authentic ways, was the dislike, not only of most of the Bavarian people, but also of its Government, to the whole scheme of imperial union. It is certain that the letter which King Louis finally wrote to his brother princes to propose that union was originally drafted by Bismarck; and rumour asserts, on grounds not to be lightly dismissed, that the opposition of King Louis was not withdrawn until the Bavarian Court favourite, Count Holstein, came to Versailles and left it, not only with Bismarck's letter, but also with a considerable sum of money for his royal master and himself. Probably, however, the assent of the Bavarian monarch, who not many years after became insane, was helped by the knowledge that if he did not take the initiative, it would pass to the Grand Duke of Baden, an ardent champion of German unity.
Whatever may be the truth as to this, there can be no doubt as to the annoyance felt by Roman Catholic Bavaria and Protestant democratic Würtemberg at accepting the supremacy of the Prussian bureaucracy. This doubtless explains why Bismarck was so anxious to hurry through the negotiations, first, for the imperial union, and thereafter for the conclusion of peace with France.
Even in a seemingly small matter he had met with much opposition, this time from his master. The aged monarch clung to the title King of Prussia; but if the title of Emperor was a political necessity, he preferred the title "Emperor of Germany"; nevertheless, the Chancellor tactfully but firmly pointed out that this would imply a kind of feudal over-lordship of all German lands, and that the title "German Emperor", as that of chief of the nation, was far preferable. In the end the King yielded, but he retained a sore feeling against his trusted servant for some time on this matter. It seems that at one time he even thought of abdicating in favour of his son rather than "see the Prussian title supplanted[73]." However, he soon showed his gratitude for the immense services rendered by Bismarck to the Fatherland. On his next birthday (March 22) he raised the Chancellor to the rank of Prince and appointed him Chancellor of the Empire.
[Footnote 73: E. Marcks, Kaiser Wilhelm I. (Leipzig, 1900), pp. 337-343.]
It will be well to give here an outline of the Imperial Constitution. In all essentials it was an extension, with few changes, of the North German federal compact of the year 1866. It applied to the twenty-five States of Germany--inclusive, that is, of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck, but exclusive, for the present, of Elsass-Lothringen (Alsace-Lorraine). In those areas imperial law takes precedence of local law (save in a few specially reserved cases for Bavaria and the Free Cities). The same laws of citizenship hold good in all parts of the Empire. The Empire controls these laws, the issuing of passports, surveillance of foreigners and of manufactures, likewise matters relating to emigration and colonisation. Commerce, customs dues, weights and measures, coinage, banking regulations, patents, the consular service abroad, and matters relating to navigation also fall under its control. Railways, posts and telegraphs (with the exceptions noted above) are subject to imperial supervision, the importance of which during the war had been so abundantly manifested.
The King of Prussia is ipso facto German Emperor. He represents the Empire among foreign nations; he has the right to declare war, conclude peace, and frame alliances; but the consent of the Federal Council (Bundesrath) is needed for the declaration of war in the name of the Empire. The Emperor convenes, adjourns, and closes the sessions of the Federal Council and the Imperial Diet (Reichstag). They are convened every year. The Chancellor of the Empire presides in the Federal Council and supervises the conduct of its business. Proposals of laws are laid before the Reichstag in accordance with the resolutions of the Federal Council, and are supported by members of that Council. To the Emperor belongs the right of preparing and publishing the laws of the Empire: they must be passed by the Bundesrath and Reichstag, and then receive the assent of the Kaiser. They are then countersigned by the Chancellor, who thereby becomes responsible for their due execution.
The members of the Bundesrath are appointed by the Federal Governments: they are sixty-two in number, and now include those from the Reichstand of Elsass-Lothringen (Alsace-Lorraine)[74]
[Footnote 74: Up to 1874 the government of Alsace-Lorraine was vested solely in the Emperor and Chancellor. In 1874 the conquered lands returned deputies to the Reichstag. In October 1879 they gained local representative institutions, but under the strict control of the Governor, Marshal von Manteuffel. This control has since been relaxed, the present administration being quasi-constitutional.]
The Prussian Government nominates seventeen members; Bavaria six; Saxony and Würtemburg and Alsace-Lorraine four each; and so on. The Bundesrath is presided over by the Imperial Chancellor. At the beginning of each yearly session it appoints eleven standing committees to deal with the following matters: (1) Army and fortifications; (2) the Navy; (3) tariff, excise, and taxes; (4) commerce and trade; (5) railways, posts and telegraphs; (6) civil and criminal law; (7) financial accounts; (8) foreign affairs; (9) Alsace-Lorraine; (10) the Imperial Constitution; (11) Standing Orders. Each committee is presided over by a chairman. In each committee at least four States of the Empire must be represented, and each State is entitled only to one vote. To this rule there are two modifications in the case of the committees on the army and on foreign affairs. In the former of these Bavaria has a permanent seat, while the Emperor appoints the other three members from as many States: in the latter case, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Würtemberg only are represented. The Bundesrath takes action on the measures to be proposed to the Reichstag and the resolutions passed by that body; it also supervises the execution of laws, and may point out any defects in the laws or in their execution.
The members of the Reichstag, or Diet, are elected by universal (more properly manhood) suffrage and by direct secret ballot, in proportion to the population of the several States[75]. On the average, each of the 397 members represents rather more than 100,000 of the population. The proceedings of the Reichstag are public; it has the right (concurrently with those wielded by the Emperor and the Bundesrath) to propose laws for the Empire. It sits for three years, but may be dissolved by a resolution of the Bundesrath, with the consent of the Emperor. Deputies may not be bound by orders and instructions issued by their constituents. They are not paid.
[Footnote 75: Bismarck said in a speech to the Reichstag, on September 16, 1878: "I accepted universal suffrage, but with repugnance, as a Frankfurt tradition."]
As has been noted above, important matters such as railway management, so far as it relates to the harmonious and effective working of the existing systems, and the construction of new lines needful for the welfare and the defence of Germany, are under the Control of the Empire--except in the case of Bavaria. The same holds good of posts and telegraphs except in the Southern States. Railway companies are bound to convey troops and warlike stores at uniform reduced rates. In fact, the Imperial Government controls the fares of all lines subject to its supervision, and has ordered the reduction of freightage for coal, coke, minerals, wood, stone, manure, etc., for long distances, "as demanded by the interests of agriculture and industry." In case of dearth, the railway companies can be compelled to forward food supplies at specially low rates.
Further, with respect to military affairs, the central authority exercises a very large measure of control over the federated States. All German troops swear the oath of allegiance to the Emperor. He appoints all commanders of fortresses; the power of building fortresses within the Empire is also vested in him; he determines the strength of the contingents of the federated States, and in the last case may appoint their commanding officers; he may even proclaim martial law in any portion of the Empire, if public security demands it. The Prussian military code applies to all parts of the Empire (save to Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Saxony in time of peace); and the military organisation is everywhere of the same general description, especially as regards length of service, character of the drill, and organisation in corps and regiments. Every German, unless physically unfit, is subject to military duty and cannot shift the burden on a substitute. He must serve for seven years in the standing army: that is, three years in the field army and four in the reserve; thereafter he takes his place in the Landwehr[76].
[Footnote 76: The three years are shortened to one year for those who have taken a high place in the Gymnasia (highest of the public schools); they feed and equip themselves and are termed "volunteers." Conscription is the rule on the coasts for service in the German Navy. For the text of the Imperial Constitution, see Lowe, Life of Bismarck, vol. ii. App. F.]
The secondary States are protected in one important respect. The last proviso of the Imperial Constitution stipulates that any proposal to modify it shall fail if fourteen, or more, votes are cast against it in the Federal Council. This implies that Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Saxony, if they vote together, can prevent any change detrimental to their interests. On the whole, the new system is less centralised than that of the North German Confederation had been; and many of the Prussian Liberals, with whom the Crown Prince of Prussia very decidedly ranged himself on this question, complained that the government was more federal than ever, and that far too much had been granted to the particularist prejudices of the Southern States[77]. To all these objections Bismarck could unanswerably reply that it was far better to gain this great end without bitterness, even if the resulting compact were in some respects faulty, than to force on the Southern States a more logically perfect system that would perpetuate the sore feeling of the past.
[Footnote 77: J.W. Headlam, Bismarck, p. 367.]
Such in its main outlines is the new Constitution of Germany. On the whole, it has worked well. That it has fulfilled all the expectations aroused in that year of triumph and jubilation will surprise no one who knows that absolute and lasting success is attained only in Utopias, never in practical politics. In truth, the suddenness with which German unity was finally achieved was in itself a danger.
The English reader will perhaps find it hard to realise this until he remembers that the whole course of recorded history shows us the Germans politically disunited, or for the most part engaged in fratricidal strifes. When they first came within the ken of the historians of Ancient Rome, they were a set of warring tribes who banded together only under the pressure of overwhelming danger; and such was to be their fate for well-nigh two thousand years. Their union under the vigorous rule of the great Frankish chief whom the French call Charlemagne, was at best nominal and partial. The Holy Roman Empire, which he founded in the year 800 by a mystically vague compact with the Pope, was never a close bond of union, even in his stern and able hands. Under his weak successors that imposing league rarely promoted peace among its peoples, while the splendour of its chief elective dignity not seldom conduced to war. Next, feudalism came in as a strong political solvent, and thus for centuries Germany crumbled and mouldered away, until disunion seemed to be the fate of her richest lands, and particularism became a rooted instinct of her princes, burghers, and peasants. Then again South was arrayed against North during and long after the time of the Reformation; when the strife of creeds was stayed, the rivalry of the Houses of Hapsburg and Hohenzollern added another cause of hatred.
As a matter of fact, it was reserved for the two Napoleons, uncle and nephew, to force those divided peoples to comradeship in arms. The close of the campaign of 1813 and that of 1814 saw North and South, Prussians and Austrians, for the first time fighting heartily shoulder to shoulder in a great war--for that of 1792-94 had only served to show their rooted suspicion and inner hostility. Owing to reasons that cannot be stated here, the peace of 1814-15 led up to no effective union: it even perpetuated the old dualism of interests. But once more the hostility of France under a Napoleon strengthened the impulse to German consolidation, and on this occasion there was at hand a man who had carefully prepared the way for an abiding form of political union; his diplomatic campaign of the last seven years had secured Russia's friendship and consequently Austria's reluctant neutrality; as for the dislike of the Southern States to unite with the North, that feeling waned for a few weeks amidst the enthusiasm caused by the German triumphs. The opportunity was unexampled: it had not occurred even in 1814; it might never occur again; and it was certain to pass away when the war fever passed by. How wise, then, to strike while the iron was hot! The smaller details of the welding process were infinitely less important than the welding itself.
One last consideration remains. If the opportunity was unexampled, so also were the statesmanlike qualities of the man who seized it. The more that we know concerning the narrowly Prussian feelings of King William, the centralising pedantry of the Crown Prince of Prussia, and the petty particularism of the Governments of Bavaria and Würtemberg, the more does the figure of Bismarck stand out as that of the one great statesman of his country and era. However censurable much of his conduct may be, his action in working up to and finally consummating German unity at the right psychological moment stands out as one of the greatest feats of statesmanship which history records.
But obviously a wedded life which had been preceded by no wooing, over whose nuptials Mars shed more influence than Venus, could not be expected to run a wholly smooth course. In fact, this latest instance in ethnical lore of marriage by capture has on the whole led to a more harmonious result than was to be expected. Possibly, if we could lift the veil of secrecy which is wisely kept drawn over the weightiest proceedings of the Bundesrath and its committees, the scene would appear somewhat different. As it is, we can refer here only to some questions of outstanding importance the details of which are fairly well known.
The first of these which subjected the new Empire to any serious strain was a sharp religious struggle against the new claims of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Without detailing the many causes of friction that sprang up between the new Empire and the Roman Catholic Church, we may state that most of them had their roots in the activity shown by that Church among the Poles of Prussian Poland (Posen), and also in the dogma of Papal infallibility. Decreed by the Oecumenical Council at Rome on the very eve of the outbreak of the Franco-German War, it seemed to be part and parcel of that forward Jesuit policy which was working for the overthrow of the chief Protestant States. Many persons--among them Bismarck[78]--claimed that the Empress Eugénie's hatred of Prussia and the warlike influence which she is said to have exerted on Napoleon III. on that critical day, July 14, 1870, were prompted by Jesuitical intrigues. However that may be (and it is a matter on which no fair-minded man will dogmatise until her confidential papers see the light) there is little doubt that the Pope at Rome and the Roman hierarchy among the Catholics of Central and Eastern Europe did their best to prevent German unity and to introduce elements of discord. The dogma of the infallibility of the Pope in matters of faith and doctrine was itself a cause of strife. Many of the more learned and moderate of the German Catholics had protested against the new dogma, and some of these "Old Catholics", as they were called, tried to avoid teaching it in the Universities and schools. Their bishops, however, insisted that it should be taught, placed some recalcitrants under the lesser ban, and deprived them of their posts.
[Footnote 78: Busch, Our Chancellor, vol i. p. 139, where he quotes a conversation of Bismarck of Nov. 1883. On the Roman Catholic policy in Posen, see ibid. pp. 143-145.]
When these high-handed proceedings were extended even to the schools, the Prussian Government intervened, and early in 1872 passed a law ordaining that all school inspectors should be appointed by the King's Government at Berlin. This greatly irritated the Roman Catholic hierarchy and led up to aggressive acts on both sides, the German Reichstag taking up the matter and decreeing the exclusion of the Jesuits from all priestly and scholastic duties of whatever kind within the Empire (July 1872). The strife waxed ever fiercer. When the Roman Catholic bishops of Germany persisted in depriving "Old Catholics" of professorial and other charges, the central Government retorted by the famous "May Laws" of 1873. The first of these forbade the Roman Catholic Church to intervene in civil affairs in any way, or to coerce officials and citizens of the Empire. The second required of all ministers of religion that they should have passed the final examination at a High School, and also should have studied theology for three years at a German University: it further subjected all seminaries to State inspection. The third accorded fuller legal protection to dissidents from the various creeds.
This anti-clerical policy is known as the "Kultur-Kampf", a term that denotes a struggle for civilisation against the forces of reaction. For some years the strife was of the sharpest kind. The Roman Catholic bishops continued to ban the "Old Catholics", while the State refused to recognise any act of marriage or christening performed by clerics who disobeyed the new laws. The logical sequel to this was obvious, namely, that the State should insist on the religious ceremony of marriage being supplemented by a civil contract[79]. Acts to render this compulsory were first passed by the Prussian Landtag late in 1873 and by the German Reichstag in 1875.
[Footnote 79: Lowe, Life of Bismarck, vol. ii. p. 336, note.]
It would be alike needless and tedious to detail the further stages of this bitter controversy, especially as several of the later "May Laws" have been repealed. We may, however, note its significance in the development of parties. Many of the Prussian nobles and squires (Junkers the latter were called) joined issue with Bismarck on the Civil Marriage Act, and this schism weakened Bismarck's long alliance with the Conservative party. He enjoyed, however, the enthusiastic support of the powerful National Liberal party, as well as the Imperialist and Progressive groups. Differing on many points of detail, these parties aimed at strengthening the fabric of the central power, and it was with their aid in the Reichstag that the new institutions of Germany were planted and took root. The General Election of 1874 sent up as many as 155 National Liberals, and they, with the other groups just named, gave the Government a force of 240 votes--a good working majority as long as Bismarck's aims were of a moderately Liberal character. This, however, was not always the case even in 1874-79, when he needed their alliance. His demand for a permanently large military establishment alienated his allies in 1874, and they found it hard to satisfy the requirements of his exacting and rigorous nature.
The harshness of the "May Laws" also caused endless friction. Out of some 10,000 Roman Catholic priests in Prussia (to which kingdom alone the severest of these laws applied) only about thirty bowed the knee to the State. In 800 parishes the strife went so far that all religious services came to an end. In the year 1875, fines amounting to 28,000 marks (£2800) were imposed, and 103 clerics or their supporters were expelled from the Empire[80]. Clearly this state of things could not continue without grave danger to the Empire; for the Church held on her way with her usual doggedness, strengthened by the "protesting" deputies from the Reichsland on the south-west, from Hanover (where the Guelph feeling was still uppermost), as well as those from Polish Posen and Danish Schleswig. Bismarck and the anti-clerical majority of the Reichstag scorned any thoughts of surrender. Yet, slowly but surely, events at the Vatican and in Germany alike made for compromise. In February 1878, Pope Pius IX. passed away. That unfortunate pontiff had never ceased to work against the interests of Prussia and Germany, while his encyclicals since 1873 mingled threats of defiance of the May Laws with insults against Prince Bismarck. His successor, Leo XIII. (1878-1903), showed rather more disposition to come to a compromise, and that, too, at a time when Bismarck's new commercial policy made the support of the Clerical Centre in the Reichstag peculiarly acceptable.
[Footnote 80: Busch, Our Chancellor, vol. i. p. 122, quotes speeches of his hero to prove that Bismarck himself disliked this Civil Marriage Law. "From the political point of view I have convinced myself that the State . . . is constrained by the dictates of self-defence to enact this law in order to avert from a portion of His Majesty's subjects the evils with which they are menaced by the Bishops' rebellion against the laws and the State" (Speech of Jan. 17, 1873). In 1849 he had opposed civil marriage.]
Bismarck's resolve to give up the system of Free Trade, or rather of light customs dues, adopted by Prussia and the German Zollverein in 1865, is so momentous a fact in the economic history of the modern world, that we must here give a few facts which will enable the reader to understand the conditions attending German commerce up to the years 1878-79, when the great change came. The old order of things in Prussia, as in all German States, was strongly protective--in fact, to such an extent as often to prevent the passing of the necessaries of life from one little State to its Lilliputian neighbours. The rise of the national idea in Germany during the wars against the great Napoleon led to a more enlightened system, especially for Prussia. The Prussian law of 1818 asserted the principle of imposing customs dues for revenue purposes, but taxed foreign products to a moderate extent. On this basis she induced neighbouring small German States to join her in a Customs Union (Zollverein), which gradually extended, until by 1836 it included all the States of the present Empire except the two Mecklenburgs, the Elbe Duchies, and the three Free Cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck. That is to say, the attractive force of the highly developed Prussian State practically unified Germany for purposes of trade and commerce, and that, too, thirty-eight years before political union was achieved.
This, be it observed, was on condition of internal Free Trade, but of moderate duties being levied on foreign products. Up to 1840 these import duties were on the whole reduced; after that date a protectionist reaction set in; it was checked, however, by the strong wave of Free Trade feeling which swept over Europe after the victory of that principle in England in 1846-49. Of the new champions of Free Trade on the Continent, the foremost in point of time was Cavour, for that kingdom of Sardinia on which he built the foundations of a regenerated and united Italy. Far more important, however, was the victory which Cobden won in 1859-60 by inducing Napoleon III. to depart from the almost prohibitive system then in vogue in France. The Anglo-French Commercial Treaty of January 1860 seemed to betoken the speedy conversion of the world to the enlightened policy of unfettered exchange of all its products. In 1862 and 1865 the German Zollverein followed suit, relaxing duties on imported articles and manufactured goods--a process which was continued in its commercial treaties and tariff changes of the years 1868 and 1869.
At this time Bismarck's opinions on fiscal matters were somewhat vague. He afterwards declared that he held Free Trade to be altogether false. But in this as in other matters he certainly let his convictions be shaped by expediency. Just before the conclusion of peace with France he so far approximated to Free Trade as to insist that the Franco-German Commercial Treaty of 1862, which the war had of course abrogated--- war puts an end to all treaties between the States directly engaged--should now be again regarded as in force and as holding good up to the year 1887[81]. He even stated that he "would rather begin again the war of cannon-balls than expose himself to a war of tariffs." France and Germany, therefore, agreed to place one another permanently on "the most favoured nation" footing. Yet this same man, who so much desired to keep down the Franco-German tariff, was destined eight years later to initiate a protectionist policy which set back the cause of Free Trade for at least a generation.
[Footnote 81: For that treaty, and Austria's desire in 1862 to enter the German Zollverein, see _The Diplomatic Reminiscences of Lord A. Loftus, _vol. ii. pp. 250-251.]
What brought about this momentous change? To answer this fully would take up a long chapter. We can only glance at the chief forces then at work. Firstly, Germany, after the year 1873, passed through a severe and prolonged economic crisis. It was largely due to the fever of speculation induced by the incoming of the French milliards into a land where gold had been none too plentiful. Despite the efforts of the German Government to hold back a large part of the war indemnity for purposes of military defence and substantial enterprises, the people imagined themselves to be suddenly rich. Prices rapidly rose, extravagant habits spread in all directions, and in the years 1872-73 company-promoting attained to the rank of a fine art, with the result that sober, hard-working Germany seemed to be almost another England at the time of the South Sea Bubble. Alluding to this time, Busch said to Bismarck early in 1887: "In the long-run the [French] milliards were no blessing, at least not for our manufacturers, as they led to over-production. It was merely the bankers who benefited, and of these only the big ones[82]."
[Footnote 82: _Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of his History, _by M. Busch, vol. iii. p. 161 (English edition).]
The result happened that always happens when a nation mistakes money, the means of commercial exchange, for the ultimate source of wealth. After a time of inflation came the inevitable collapse. The unsound companies went by the board; even sound ventures were in some cases overturned. How grievously public credit suffered may be seen by the later official admission, that liquidations and bankruptcies of public companies in the following ten years inflicted on shareholders a total loss of more than 345,000,000 marks (£17,250,000)[83].
[Footnote 83: German State Paper of June 28, 1884, quoted by Dawson, Bismarck and State Socialism, App. B.]
Now, it was in the years 1876-77, while the nation lay deep in the trough of economic depression, that the demand for "protection for home industries" grew loud and persistent. Whether it would not have been raised even if German finance and industry had held on its way in a straight course and on an even keel, cannot of course be determined, for the protectionist movement had been growing since the year 1872, owing to the propaganda of the "Verein für Sozialpolitik" (Union for Social Politics) founded in that year. But it is safe to say that the collapse of speculation due to inflowing of the French milliards greatly strengthened the forces of economic reaction.
Bismarck himself put it in this way: that the introduction of Free Trade in 1865 soon produced a state of atrophy in Germany; this was checked for a time by the French war indemnity; but Germany needed a permanent cure, namely, Protection. It is true that his ideal of national life had always been strict and narrow--in fact, that of the average German official; but we may doubt whether he had in view solely the shelter of the presumedly tender flora of German industry from the supposed deadly blasts of British, Austrian, and Russian competition. He certainly hoped to strengthen the fabric of his Empire by extending the customs system and making its revenue depend more largely on that source and less on the contributions of the federated States. But there was probably a still wider consideration. He doubtless wished to bring prominently before the public gaze another great subject that would distract it from the religious feuds described above and bring about a rearrangement of political parties. The British people has good reason to know that the discussion of fiscal questions that vitally touch every trade and every consumer, does act like the turning of a kaleidoscope upon party groupings; and we may fairly well assume that so far-seeing a statesman as Bismarck must have forecast the course of events.
Reasons of statecraft also warned him to build up the Empire four-square while yet there was time. The rapid recovery of France, whose milliards had proved somewhat of a "Greek gift" to Germany, had led to threats on the part of the war party at Berlin, which brought from Queen Victoria, as also from the Czar Alexander, private but pressing intimations to Kaiser Wilhelm that no war of extermination must take place. This affair and its results in Germany's foreign policy will occupy us in Chapter XII. Here we may note that Bismarck saw in it a reason for suspecting Russia, hating England, and jealously watching every movement in France. Germany's future, it seemed, would have to be safeguarded by all the peaceable means available. How natural, then, to tone down her internal religious strifes by bringing forward another topic of still more absorbing interest, and to aim at building up a self-contained commercial life in the midst of uncertain, or possibly hostile, neighbours. In truth, if we view the question in its broad issues in the life of nations, we must grant that Free Trade could scarcely be expected to thrive amidst the jealousies and fears entailed by the war of 1870. That principle presupposes trust and good-will between nations; whereas the wars of 1859, 1864, and 1870 left behind bitter memories and rankling ills. Viewed in this light, Germany's abandonment of Free Trade in 1878 was but the natural result of that forceful policy by which she had cut the Gordian knot of her national problem.
The economic change was decided on in the year 1879, when the federated States returned to "the time-honoured ways of 1823-65." Bismarck appealed to the Reichstag to preserve at least the German market to German industry. The chances of having a large export trade were on every ground precarious; but Germany could, at the worst, support herself. All interests were mollified by having moderate duties imposed to check imports. Small customs dues were placed on corn and other food supplies so as to please the agrarian party; imports of manufactured goods were taxed for the benefit of German industries, and even raw materials underwent small imposts. The Reichstag approved the change and on July 7 passed the Government's proposals by 217 to 117: the majority comprised the Conservatives, Clericals, the Alsace-Lorrainers, and a few National Liberals; while the bulk of the last-named, hitherto Bismarck's supporters on most topics, along with Radicals and Social Democrats, opposed it. The new tariff came into force on January 1, 1880.
On the whole, much may be said in favour of the immediate results of the new policy. By the year 1885 the number of men employed in iron and steel works had increased by 35 per cent over the numbers of 1879; wages also had increased, and the returns of shipping and of the export trade showed a considerable rise. Of course, it is impossible to say whether this would not have happened in any case owing to the natural tendency to recovery from the deep depression of the years 1875-79. The duties on corn did not raise its price, which appears strange until we know that the foreign imports of corn were less than 8 per cent of the whole amount consumed. In 1885, therefore, Bismarck gave way to the demands of the agrarians that the corn duties should be raised still further, in order to make agriculture lucrative and to prevent the streaming of rural population to the towns. Again the docile Reichstag followed his lead. But, two years later, it seemed that the new corn duties had failed to check the fall of prices and keep landlords and farmers from ruin; once more, then, the duties were raised, being even doubled on certain food products. This time they undoubtedly had one important result, that of making the urban population, especially that of the great industrial centres, more and more hostile to the agrarians and to the Government which seemed to be legislating in their interests. From this time forward the Social Democrats began to be a power in the land.
And yet, if we except the very important item of rent, which in Berlin presses with cruel weight on the labouring classes, the general trend of the prices of the necessaries of life in Germany has been downwards, in spite of all the protectionist duties. The evidence compiled in the British official Blue-book on "British and Foreign Trade and Industry" (1903. Cd. 1761, p. 226) yields the following results. By comparing the necessary expenditure on food of a workman's family of the same size and living under the same conditions, it appears that if we take that expenditure for the period 1897-1901 to represent the number 100 we have these results:--
+-----------+-----------+-----------------+ | Period. | Germany. | United Kingdom. | +-----------+-----------+-----------------+ | 1877-1881 | 112 | 140 | | 1882-1886 | 101 | 125 | | 1887-1891 | 103 | 106 | | 1892-1896 | 99 | 98 | | 1897-1901 | 100 | 100 | +-----------+-----------+-----------------+
Thus the fall in the cost of living of a British working man's family has been 40 points, while that of the German working man shows a decline of only 12 points. It is, on the whole, surprising that there has not been more difference between the two countries[84].
[Footnote 84: In a recent work, England and the English (London, 1904), Dr. Carl Peters says: "Considering that wages in England average 20 per cent higher in England than in Germany, that the week has only 54 working hours, and that all articles of food are cheaper, the fundamental conditions of prosperous home-life are all round more favourable in England than in Germany. And yet he [the British working-man] does not derive greater comfort from them, for the simple reason that a German labourer's wife is more economical and more industrious than the English wife."] Before dealing with the new social problems that resulted, at least in part, from the new duties on food, we may point out that Bismarck and his successors at the German Chancellory have used the new tariff as a means of extorting better terms from the surrounding countries. The Iron Chancellor has always acted on the diplomatic principle do ut des--"I give that you may give"--with its still more cynical corollary--"Those who have nothing to give will get nothing." The new German tariff on agricultural products was stiffly applied against Austria for many years, to compel her to grant more favourable terms to German manufactured goods. For eleven years Austria-Hungary maintained their protective barriers; but in 1891 German persistence was rewarded in the form of a treaty by which the Dual Monarchy let in German goods on easier terms provided that the corn duties of the northern Power were relaxed. The fiscal strife with Russia was keener and longer, but had the same result (1894). Of a friendlier kind were the negotiations with Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland, which led to treaties with those States in 1891. It is needless to say that in each of these cases the lowering of the corn duties was sharply resisted by the German agrarians. We may here add that the Anglo-German commercial treaty which expired in 1903 has been extended for two years; and that Germany's other commercial treaties were at the same time continued.
It is hazardous at present to venture on any definite judgment as to the measure of success attained by the German protectionist policy. Protectionists always point to the prosperity of Germany as the crowning proof of its efficacy. In one respect they are, perhaps, fully justified in so doing. The persistent pressure which Germany brought to bear on the even more protectionist systems of Russia and Austria undoubtedly induced those Powers to grant easier terms to German goods than they would have done had Germany lost her bargaining power by persisting in her former Free Trade tendencies. Her success in this matter is the best instance in recent economic history of the desirability of holding back something in reserve so as to be able to bargain effectively with a Power that keeps up hostile tariffs. In this jealously competitive age the State that has nothing more to offer is as badly off in economic negotiations as one that, in affairs of general policy, has no armaments wherewith to face a well-equipped foe. This consideration is of course scouted as heretical by orthodox economists; but it counts for much in the workaday world, where tariff wars and commercial treaty bargainings unfortunately still distract the energies of mankind.
On the other hand, it would be risky to point to the internal prosperity of Germany and the vast growth of her exports as proofs of the soundness of protectionist theories. The marvellous growth of that prosperity is very largely due to the natural richness of a great part of the country, to the intelligence, energy, and foresight of her people and their rulers, and to the comparatively backward state of German industry and commerce up to the year 1870. Far on into the Nineteenth Century, Germany was suffering from the havoc wrought by the Napoleonic wars and still earlier struggles. Even after the year 1850, the political uncertainties of the time prevented her enjoying the prosperity that then visited England and France. Therefore, only since 1870 (or rather since 1877-78, when the results of the mad speculation of 1873 began to wear away) has she entered on the normal development of a modern industrial State; and he would be an eager partisan who would put down her prosperity mainly to the credit of the protectionist régime. In truth, no one can correctly gauge the value of the complex causes--economic, political, educational, scientific and engineering--that make for the prosperity of a vast industrial community. So closely are they intertwined in the nature of things, that dogmatic arguments laying stress on one of them alone must speedily be seen to be the merest juggling with facts and figures.
As regards the wider influences exerted by Germany's new protective policy, we can here allude only to one; and that will be treated more fully in the chapter dealing with the Partition of Africa. That policy gave a great stimulus to the colonial movement in Germany, and, through her, in all European States. As happened in the time of the old Mercantile System, Powers which limited their trade with their neighbours, felt an imperious need for absorbing new lands in the tropics to serve as close preserves for the mother-country. Other circumstances helped to impel Germany on the path of colonial expansion; but probably the most important, though the least obvious, was the recrudescence of that "Mercantilism" which Adam Smith had exploded. Thus, the triumph of the national principle in and after 1870 was consolidated by means which tended to segregate the human race in masses, regarding each other more or less as enemies or rivals, alike in the spheres of politics, commerce, and colonial expansion.
We may conclude our brief survey of German constructive policy by glancing at the chief of the experiments which may be classed as akin to State Socialism.
In 1882 the German Government introduced the Sickness Insurance Bill and the Accident Insurance Bill, but they were not passed till 1884, and did not take effect till 1885. For the relief of sickness the Government relied on existing institutions organised for that object. This was very wise, seeing that the great difficulty is how to find out whether a man really is ill or is merely shamming illness. Obviously a local club can find that out far better than a great imperial agency can. The local club has every reason for looking sharply after doubtful cases as a State Insurance Fund cannot do. As regards sickness, then, the Imperial Government merely compelled all the labouring classes, with few exceptions, to belong to some sick fund. They were obliged to pay in a sum of not less than about fourpence in the pound of their weekly wages; and this payment of the workman has to be supplemented by half as much, paid by his employer--or rather, the employer pays the whole of the premium and deducts the share payable by the workman from his wages.
Closely linked with this is the Accident Insurance Law. Here the brunt of the payment falls wholly on the employer. He alone pays the premiums for all his work-people; the amount varies according to (1) the man's wage, (2) the risk incidental to the employment. The latter is determined by the actuaries of the Government. If a man is injured (even if it be by his own carelessness) he receives payments during the first thirteen weeks from the ordinary Sick Fund. If his accident keeps him a prisoner any longer, he is paid from the Accident Fund of the employers of that particular trade, or from the Imperial Accident Fund. Here of course the chance of shamming increases, particularly if the man knows that he is being supported out of a general fund made up entirely by the employers' payments. The burden on the employers is certainly very heavy, seeing that for all kinds of accidents relief may be claimed; the only exception is in cases where the injury can be shown to be wilfully committed[85]. A British Blue-book issued on March 31, 1905, shows that the enormous sum of £5,372,150 was paid in Germany in the year 1902 as compensation to workmen for injuries sustained while at work.
[Footnote 85: For the account given above, as also that of the Old Age Insurance Law, I am indebted to Mr. Dawson's excellent little work, Bismarck and State Socialism (Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1890). See also the Appendix to The German Empire of To-day, by "Veritas" (1902).]
The burden of the employers does not end here. They have to bear their share of Old Age Insurance. This law was passed in 1889, at the close of the first year of the present Kaiser's reign. His father, the Emperor Frederick, during his brief reign had not favoured the principles of State Socialism; but the young Emperor William in November 1888 announced that he would further the work begun by his grandfather, and though the difficulties of insurance for old age were very great, yet, with God's help, they would prove not to be insuperable.
Certainly the effort was by far the greatest that had yet been made by any State. The young Emperor and his Chancellor sought to build up a fund whereby 12,000,000 of work-people might be guarded against the ills of a penniless old age. Their law provided for all workmen (even men in domestic service) whose yearly income did not exceed 2000 marks (£100). Like the preceding laws, it was compulsory. Every youth who is physically and mentally sound, and who earns more than a minimum wage, must begin to put by a fixed proportion of that wage as soon as he completes his sixteenth year. His employer is also compelled to contribute the same amount for him. Mr. Dawson, in the work already referred to, gives some figures showing what the joint payment of employer and employed amount to on this score. If the workman earns £15 a year (i.e. about 6s. a week), the sum of 3s. 3-1/2d. is put by for him yearly into the State Fund. If he earns £36 a year, the joint annual payment will be 5s. 7-1/2d.; if he earns £78, it will be 7s. a year, and so on. These payments are reckoned up in various classes, according to the amounts; and according to the total amount is the final annuity payable to the worker in the evening of his days. That evening is very slow in coming for the German worker. For old age merely, he cannot begin to draw his full pension until he has attained the ripe age of seventy-one years. Then he will draw the full amount. He may anticipate that if he be incapacitated; but in that case the pension will be on a lower scale, proportioned to the amounts paid in and the length of time of the payments.
The details of the measure are so complex as to cause a good deal of friction and discontent. The calculation of the various payments alone employs an army of clerks: the need of safeguarding against personation and other kinds of fraud makes a great number of precautions necessary; and thus the whole system becomes tied up with red tape in a way that even the more patient workman of the Continent cannot endure.
In a large measure, then, the German Government has failed in its efforts to cure the industrial classes of their socialistic ideas. But its determination to attach them to the new German Empire, and to make that Empire the leading industrial State of the Continent, has had a complete triumph. So far as education, technical training, research, and enlightened laws can make a nation great, Germany is surely on the high road to national and industrial supremacy.
It is a strange contrast that meets our eyes if we look back to the years before the advent of King William and Bismarck to power. In the dark days of the previous reign Germany was weak, divided, and helpless. In regard to political life and industry she was still almost in swaddling-clothes; and her struggles to escape from the irksome restraints of the old Confederation seemed likely to be as futile as they had been since the year 1815. But the advent of the King and his sturdy helper to power speedily changed the situation. The political problems were grappled with one by one, and were trenchantly solved. Union was won by Bismarck's diplomacy and Prussia's sword; and when the longed-for goal was reached in seven momentous years, the same qualities were brought to bear on the difficult task of consolidating that union. Those qualities were the courage and honesty of purpose that the House of Hohenzollern has always displayed since the days of the Great Elector; added to these were rarer gifts, namely, the width of view, the eagle foresight, the strength of will, the skill in the choice of means, that made up the imposing personality of Bismarck. It was with an eye to him, and to the astonishing triumphs wrought by his diplomacy over France, that a diplomatist thus summed up the results of the year 1870: "Europe has lost a mistress, but she has got a master."
After the lapse of a generation that has been weighted with the cuirass of Militarism, we are able to appreciate the force of that remark. Equally true is it that the formation of the German Empire has not added to the culture and the inner happiness of the German people. The days of quiet culture and happiness are gone; and in their place has come a straining after ambitious aims which is a heavy drag even on the vitality of the Teutonic race. Still, whether for good or for evil, the unification of Germany must stand out as the greatest event in the history of the Nineteenth Century.
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The statement on page 135 that service in the German army is compulsory for seven years, three in the field army and four in the reserve, applies to the cavalry and artillery only. In the infantry the time of service is two years with the colours and five years in the reserve.
VII. THE EASTERN QUESTION
"Perhaps one fact which lies at the root of all the actions of the Turks, small and great, is that they are by nature nomads. . . . Hence it is that when the Turk retires from a country he leaves no more sign of himself than does a Tartar camp on the upland pastures where it has passed the summer."--Turkey in Europe, by "Odysseus."
The remark was once made that the Eastern Question was destined to perplex mankind up to the Day of Judgment. Certainly that problem is extraordinarily complex in its details. For a century and a half it has distracted the statesmen and philanthropists of Europe; for it concerns not only the ownership of lands of great intrinsic and strategic importance, but also the welfare of many peoples. It is a question, therefore, which no intelligent man ought to overlook.
For the benefit of the tiresome person who insists on having a definition of every term, the Eastern Question may be briefly described as the problem of finding a modus vivendi between the Turks and their Christian subjects and the neighbouring States. This may serve as a general working statement. No one who is acquainted with the rules of Logic will accept it as a definition. Definitions can properly apply only to terms and facts that have a clear outline; and they can therefore very rarely apply to the facts of history, which are of necessity as many-sided as human life itself. The statement given above is incomplete, inasmuch as it neither hints at the great difficulty of reconciling the civic ideas of Christian and Turkish peoples, nor describes the political problems arising out of the decay of the Ottoman Power and the ambitions of its neighbours.
It will be well briefly to see what are the difficulties that arise out of the presence of Christians under the rule of a great Moslem State. They are chiefly these. First, the Koran, though far from enjoining persecution of Christians, yet distinctly asserts the superiority of the true believer and the inferiority of "the people of the book" (Christians). The latter therefore are excluded from participation in public affairs, and in practice are refused a hearing in the law courts. Consequently they tend to sink to the position of hewers of wood and drawers of water to the Moslems, these on their side inevitably developing the defects of an exclusive dominant caste. This is so especially with the Turks. They are one of the least gifted of the Mongolian family of nations; brave in war and patient under suffering and reverses, they nevertheless are hopelessly narrow-minded and bigoted; and the Christians in their midst have fared perhaps worse than anywhere else among the Mohammedan peoples.
M. de Lavelaye, who studied the condition of things in Turkey not long after the war of 1877-78, thus summed up the causes of the social and political decline of the Turks:--
The true Mussulman loves neither progress, novelty, nor education; the Koran is enough for him. He is satisfied with his lot, therefore cares little for its improvement, somewhat like a Catholic monk; but at the same time he hates and despises the Christian raya, who is the labourer. He pitilessly despoils, fleeces, and ill-treats him to the extent of completely ruining and destroying those families, which are the only ones who cultivate the ground; it was a state of war continued in time of peace, and transformed into a regime of permanent spoliation and murder. The wife, even when she is the only one, is always an inferior being, a kind of slave, destitute of any intellectual culture; and as it is she who trains the children--boys and girls--the bad results are plainly seen.
Matters were not always and in all parts of Turkey so bad as this; but they frequently became so under cruel or corrupt governors, or in times when Moslem fanaticism ran riot. In truth, the underlying cause of Turkey's troubles is the ignorance and fanaticism of her people. These evils result largely from the utter absorption of all devout Moslems in their creed and ritual. Texts from the Koran guide their conduct; and all else is decided by fatalism, which is very often a mere excuse for doing nothing[86]. Consequently all movements for reform are mere ripples on the surface of Turkish life; they never touch its dull depths; and the Sultan and officials, knowing this, cling to the old ways with full confidence. The protests of Christian nations on behalf of their co-religionists are therefore met with a polite compliance which means nothing. Time after time the Sublime Porte has most solemnly promised to grant religious liberty to its Christian subjects; but the promises were but empty air, and those who made them knew it. In fact, the firmans of reform now and again issued with so much ostentation have never been looked on by good Moslems as binding, because the chief spiritual functionary, the Sheikh-ul-Islam, whose assent is needed to give validity to laws, has withheld it from those very ordinances. As he has power to depose the Sultan for a lapse of orthodoxy, the result may be imagined. The many attempts of the Christian Powers to enforce their notions of religious toleration on the Porte have in the end merely led to further displays of Oriental politeness.
[Footnote 86: "Islam continues to be, as it has been for twelve centuries, the most inflexible adversary to the Western spirit" (History of Serbia and the Slav Provinces of Turkey, by L. von Ranke, Eng. edit. p. 296).]
It may be asked: Why have not the Christians of Turkey united in order to gain civic rights? The answer is that they are profoundly divided in race and sentiment. In the north-east are the Roumanians, a Romano-Slavonic race long ago Latinised in speech and habit of mind by contact with Roman soldiers and settlers on the Lower Danube. South of that river there dwell the Bulgars, who, strictly speaking, are not Slavs but Mongolians. After long sojourn on the Volga they took to themselves the name of that river, lost their Tartar speech, and became Slav in sentiment and language. This change took place before the ninth century, when they migrated to the south and conquered the districts which they now inhabit. Their neighbours on the west, the Servians, are Slavs in every sense, and look back with pride to the time of the great Servian Kingdom, carved out by Stephen Dushan, which stretched southwards to the Ægean and the Gulf of Corinth (about 1350).
To the west of the present Kingdom of Servia dwell other Servians and Slavs, who have been partitioned and ground down by various conquerors and have kept fewer traditions than the Servians who won their freedom. But from this statement we must except the Montenegrins, who in their mountain fastnesses have ever defied the Turks. To the south of them is the large but little-known Province of Albania, inhabited by the descendants of the ancient Illyrians, with admixtures of Greeks in the south, Bulgarians in the east, and Servians in the north-east. Most of the Albanians forsook Christianity and are among the most fanatical and warlike upholders of Islam; but in their turbulent clan-life they often defy the authority of the Sultan, and uphold it only in order to keep their supremacy over the hated and despised Greeks and Bulgars on their outskirts. Last among the non-Turkish races of the Balkan Peninsula are a few Wallachs in Central Macedonia, and Greeks; these last inhabit Thessaly and the seaboard of Macedonia and of part of Roumelia. It is well said that Greek influence in the Balkans extends no further inland than that of the sea breezes.
Such is the medley of races that complicates the Eastern Question. It may be said that Turkish rule in Europe survives owing to the racial divisions and jealousies of the Christians. The Sultan puts in force the old Roman motto, Divide et impera, and has hitherto done so, in the main, with success. That is the reason why Islam dominates Christianity in the south-east of Europe.
This brief explanation will show what are the evils that affect Turkey as a whole and her Christian subjects in particular. They are due to the collision of two irreconcilable creeds and civilisations, the Christian and the Mohammedan. Both of them are gifted with vitality and propagandist power (witness the spread of the latter in Africa and Central Asia in our own day); and, while no comparison can be made between them on ideal grounds and in their ethical and civic results, it still remains true that Islam inspires its votaries with fanatical bravery in war. There is the weakness of the Christians of south-eastern Europe. Superior in all that makes for home life, civilisation, and civic excellence, they have in time past generally failed as soldiers when pitted against an equal number of Moslems. But the latter show no constructive powers in time of peace, and have very rarely assimilated the conquered races. Putting the matter baldly, we may say that it is a question of the survival of the fittest between beavers and bears. And in the Nineteenth Century the advantage has been increasingly with the former.
These facts will appear if we take a brief glance at the salient features of the European history of Turkey. After capturing Constantinople, the capital of the old Eastern Empire, in the year 1453, the Turks for a time rapidly extended their power over the neighbouring Christian States, Bulgaria, Servia, and Hungary. In the year 1683 they laid siege to Vienna; but after being beaten back from that city by the valiant Sobieski, King of Poland, they gradually lost ground. Little by little Hungary, Transylvania, the Crimea, and parts of the Ukraine (South Russia) were wrenched from their grasp; and the close of the eighteenth century saw their frontiers limited to the River Dniester and the Carpathians[87]. Further losses were staved off only by the jealousies of the Great Powers. Joseph II. of Austria came near to effecting further conquests, but his schemes of partition fell through amidst the wholesale collapse of his too ambitious policy. Napoleon Bonaparte seized Egypt in 1798, but was forced by Great Britain to give it back to Turkey (1801-2). In 1807-12 Alexander I. of Russia resumed the conquering march of the Czars southward, captured Bessarabia, and forced the Sultan to grant certain privileges to the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. In 1815 the Servians revolted against Turkish rule: they had always remembered the days of their early fame, and in 1817 wrested from the Porte large rights of local self-government.
[Footnote 87: The story that Peter the Great of Russia left a clause in his will, bidding Russia to go on with her southern conquests until she gained Constantinople, is an impudent fiction of French publicists in the year 1812, when Napoleon wished to keep Russia and Turkey at war. Of course, Peter the Great gave a mighty impulse to Russian movements towards Constantinople.]
Ten years later the intervention of England and France in favour of the Greek patriots led to the battle of Navarino, which destroyed the Turco-Egyptian fleet and practically secured the independence of Greece. An even worse blow was dealt by the Czar Nicholas I. of Russia. In 1829, at the close of a war in which his troops drove the Turks over the Balkans and away from Adrianople, he compelled the Porte to sign a peace at that city, whereby they acknowledged the almost complete independence of Moldavia and Wallachia. These Danubian Principalities owned the suzerainty of the Sultan and paid him a yearly tribute, but in other respects were practically free from his control, while the Czar gained for the time the right of protecting the Christians of the Eastern, or Greek, Church in the Ottoman Empire. The Sultan also recognised the independence of Greece. Further troubles ensued which laid Turkey for a time at the feet of Russia. England and France, however, intervened to raise her up; and they also thwarted the efforts of Mehemet Ali, the rebellious Pacha of Egypt, to seize Syria from his nominal lord, the Sultan.
Even this bare summary will serve to illustrate three important facts: first, that Turkey never consolidated her triumph over the neighbouring Christians, simply because she could not assimilate them, alien as they were, in race, and in the enjoyment of a higher creed and civilisation; second, that the Christians gained more and more support from kindred peoples (especially the Russians) as these last developed their energies; third, that the liberating process was generally (though not in 1827) delayed by the action of the Western Powers (England and France), which, on grounds of policy, sought to stop the aggrandisement of Austria, or Russia, by supporting the Sultan's authority.
The policy of supporting the Sultan against the aggression of Russia reached its climax in the Crimean War (1854-55), which was due mainly to the efforts of the Czar Nicholas to extend his protection over the Greek Christians in Turkey. France, England, and later on the Kingdom of Sardinia made war on Russia--France, chiefly because her new ruler, Napoleon III., wished to play a great part in the world, and avenge the disasters of the Moscow campaign of 1812; England, because her Government and people resented the encroachments of Russia in the East, and sincerely believed that Turkey was about to become a civilised State; and Sardinia, because her statesman Cavour saw in this action a means of securing the alliance of the two western States in his projected campaign against Austria. The war closed with the Treaty of Paris, of 1856, whereby the signatory Powers formally admitted Turkey "to participate in the advantages of the public law and system of Europe."
This, however, merely signified that the signatory Powers would resist encroachments on the territorial integrity of Turkey. It did not limit the rights of the Powers, as specified in various "Capitulations," to safeguard their own subjects residing in Turkey against Turkish misrule. The Sultan raised great hopes by issuing a firman granting religious liberty to his Christian subjects; this was inserted in the Treaty of Paris, and thereby became part of the public law of Europe. The Powers also became collectively the guarantors of the local privileges of the Danubian Principalities. Another article of the Treaty provided for the exclusion of war-ships from the Black Sea. This of course applied specially to Russia and Turkey[88].
[Footnote 88: For the treaty and the firman of 1856, see _The European Concert in the Eastern Question, _by T.E. Holland; also Débidour, _Histoire diplomatique de l'Europe _(1814-1878), vol. ii. pp. 150-152; _The Eastern Question, _by the late Duke of Argyll, vol. i. chap. i.]
The chief diplomatic result of the Crimean War, then, was to substitute a European recognition of religious toleration in Turkey for the control over her subjects of the Greek Church which Russia had claimed. The Sublime Porte was now placed in a stronger position than it had held since the year 1770; and the due performance of its promises would probably have led to the building up of a strong State. But the promises proved to be mere waste-paper. The Sultan, believing that England and France would always take his part, let matters go on in the old bad way. The natural results came to pass. The Christians showed increasing restiveness under Turkish rule. In 1860 numbers of them were massacred in the Lebanon, and Napoleon III. occupied part of Syria with French troops. The vassal States in Europe also displayed increasing vitality, while that of Turkey waned. In 1861, largely owing to the diplomatic help of Napoleon III., Moldavia and Wallachia united and formed the Principality of Roumania. In 1862, after a short but terrible struggle, the Servians rid themselves of the Turkish garrisons and framed a constitution of the Western type. But the worst blow came in 1870. During the course of the Franco-German War the Czar's Government (with the good-will and perhaps the active connivance of the Court of Berlin) announced that it would no longer be bound by the article of the Treaty of Paris excluding Russian war-ships from the Black Sea. The Gladstone Ministry sent a protest against this act, but took no steps to enforce its protest. Our young diplomatist, Sir Horace Rumbold, then at St. Petersburg, believed that she would have drawn back at a threat of war[89]. Finally, the Russian declaration was agreed to by the Powers in a Treaty signed at London on March 31, 1871.
[Footnote 89: Sir Horace Rumbold, Recollections of a Diplomatist (First Series), vol. ii. p. 295.]
These warnings were all thrown away on the Porte. Its promises of toleration to Christians were ignored; the wheels of government clanked on in the traditional rusty way; governors of provinces and districts continued, as of yore, to pocket the grants that were made for local improvements; in defiance of the promises given in 1856, taxes continued to be "farmed" out to contractors; the evidence of Christians against Moslems was persistently refused a hearing in courts of justice[90]; and the collectors of taxes gave further turns of the financial screw in order to wring from the cultivators, especially from the Christians, the means of satisfying the needs of the State and the ever-increasing extravagance of the Sultan. Incidents which were observed in Bosnia by an Oxford scholar of high repute, in the summer of 1875, will be found quoted in an Appendix at the end of this volume.
[Footnote 90: As to this, see Reports: Condition of Christians in Turkey (1860). Presented to Parliament in 1861. Also Parliamentary Papers, Turkey, No. 16 (1877).]
Matters came to a climax in the autumn of 1875 in Herzegovina, the southern part of Bosnia. There after a bad harvest the farmers of taxes and the Mohammedan landlords insisted on having their full quota; for many years the peasants had suffered under agrarian wrongs, which cannot be described here; and now this long-suffering peasantry, mostly Christians, fled to the mountains, or into Montenegro, whose sturdy mountaineers had never bent beneath the Turkish yoke[91]. Thence they made forays against their oppressors until the whole of that part of the Balkans was aflame with the old religious and racial feuds. The Slavs of Servia, Bulgaria, and of Austrian Dalmatia also gave secret aid to their kith and kin in the struggle against their Moslem overlords. These peoples had been aroused by the sight of the triumph of the national cause in Italy, and felt that the time had come to strike for freedom in the Balkans. Turkey therefore failed to stamp out the revolt in Herzegovina, fed as it was by the neighbouring Slav peoples; and it was clear to all the politicians of Europe that the Eastern Question was entering once more on an acute phase.
[Footnote 91: Efforts were made by the British Consul, Holmes, and other pro-Turks, to assign this revolt to Panslavonic intrigues. That there were some Slavonic emissaries at work is undeniable; but it is equally certain that their efforts would have had no result but for the existence of unbearable ills. It is time, surely, to give up the notion that peoples rise in revolt merely owing to outside agitators. To revolt against the warlike Turks has never been child's play.]
These events aroused varied feelings in the European States. The Russian people, being in the main of Slavonic descent, sympathised deeply with the struggles of their kith and kin, who were rendered doubly dear by their membership in the Greek Church. The Panslavonic Movement, for bringing the scattered branches of the Slav race into some form of political union, was already gaining ground in Russia; but it found little favour with the St. Petersburg Government owing to the revolutionary aims of its partisans. Sympathy with the revolt in the Balkans was therefore confined to nationalist enthusiasts in the towns of Russia. Austria was still more anxious to prevent the spread of the Balkan rising to the millions of her own Slavs. Accordingly, the Austrian Chancellor, Count Andrassy, in concert with Prince Bismarck and the Russian statesman, Prince Gortchakoff, began to prepare a scheme of reforms which was to be pressed on the Sultan as a means of conciliating the insurgents of Herzegovina. They comprised (1) the improvement of the lot of the peasantry; (2) complete religious liberty; (3) the abolition of the farming of taxes; (4) the application of the local taxation to local needs; (5) the appointment of a Commission, half of Moslems, half of Christians, to supervise the execution of these reforms and of others recently promised by the Porte[92].
[Footnote 92: For the full text, see Hertslet, The Map of Europe by Treaty, iv. pp. 2418-2429.]
These proposals would probably have been sent to the Porte before the close of 1875 but for the diplomatic intervention of the British Cabinet. Affairs at London were then in the hands of that skilful and determined statesman, Disraeli, soon to become Lord Beaconsfield. It is impossible to discuss fully the causes of that bias in his nature which prejudiced him against supporting the Christians of Turkey. Those causes were due in part to the Semitic instincts of his Jewish ancestry,--the Jews having consistently received better treatment from the Turks than from the Russians,--and in part to his staunch Imperialism, which saw in Muscovite expansion the chief danger to British communications with India. Mr. Bryce has recently pointed out in a suggestive survey of Disraeli's character that tradition had great weight with him[93]. It is known to have been a potent influence on the mind of Queen Victoria; and, as the traditional policy at Whitehall was to support Turkey against Russia, all the personal leanings, which count for so much, told in favour of a continuance in the old lines, even though the circumstances had utterly changed since the time of the Crimean War.
[Footnote 93: Bryce, Studies in Contemporary Biography (1904).]
When, therefore, Disraeli became aware that pressure was about to be applied to the Porte by the three Powers above named, he warned them that he considered any such action to be inopportune, seeing that Turkey ought to be allowed time to carry out a programme of reforms of recent date. By an iradé of October 2, 1875, the Sultan had promised to all his Christian subjects a remission of taxation and the right of choosing not only the controllers of taxes, but also delegates to supervise their rights at Constantinople.
In taking these promises seriously, Disraeli stood almost alone. But his speech of November 9, 1875, at the Lord Mayor's banquet, showed that he viewed the Eastern Question solely from the standpoint of British interests. His acts spoke even more forcibly than his words. That was the time when the dawn of Imperialism flushed all the eastern sky. H.R.H. the Prince of Wales had just begun his Indian tour amidst splendid festivities at Bombay; and the repetition of these in the native States undoubtedly did much to awaken interest in our Eastern Empire and cement the loyalty of its Princes and peoples. Next, at the close of the month of November, came the news that the British Government had bought the shares in the Suez Canal, previously owned by the Khedive of Egypt, for the sum of £4,500,000[94]. The transaction is now acknowledged by every thinking man to have been a master-stroke of policy, justified on all grounds, financial and Imperial. In those days it met with sharp censure from Disraeli's opponents. In a sense this was natural; for it seemed to be part of a scheme for securing British influence in the Levant and riding roughshod over the susceptibilities of the French (the constructors of the canal) and the plans of Russia. Everything pointed to the beginning of a period of spirited foreign policy which would lead to war with Russia.
[Footnote 94: For details of this affair, see Chapter XV. of this work.]
Meanwhile the three Empires delayed the presentation of their scheme of reforms for Turkey, and, as it would seem, out of deference to British representations. The troubles in Herzegovina therefore went on unchecked through the winter, the insurgents refusing to pay any heed to the Sultan's promises, even though these were extended by the iradé of December 12, offering religious liberty and the institution of electoral bodies throughout the whole of European Turkey. The statesmen of the Continent were equally sceptical as to the bona fides of these offers, and on January 31, 1876, presented to the Porte their scheme of reforms already described. Disraeli and our Foreign Minister, Lord Derby, gave a cold and guarded assent to the "Andrassy Note," though they were known to regard it as "inopportune." To the surprise of the world, the Porte accepted the Note on February 11, with one reservation.
This act of acceptance, however, failed to satisfy the insurgents. They decided to continue the struggle. Their irreconcilable attitude doubtless arose from their knowledge of the worthlessness of Turkish promises when not backed by pressure from the Powers; and it should be observed that the "Note" gave no hint of any such pressure[95]. But it was also prompted by the hope that Servia and Montenegro would soon draw the sword on their behalf--as indeed happened later on. Those warlike peoples longed to join in the struggle against their ancestral foes; and their rulers were nothing loth to do so. Servia was then ruled by Prince Milan (1868-89), of that House of Obrenovitch which has been extinguished by the cowardly murders of June 1903 at Belgrade. He had recently married Nathalie Kechko, a noble Russian lady, whose connections strengthened the hopes that he naturally entertained of armed Muscovite help in case of a war with Turkey. Prince Nikita of Montenegro had married his second daughter to a Russian Grand Duke, cousin of the Czar Alexander II., and therefore cherished the same hopes. It was clear that unless energetic steps were taken by the Powers to stop the spread of the conflagration it would soon wrap the whole of the Balkan Peninsula in flames. An outbreak of Moslem fanaticism at Salonica (May 6), which led to the murder of the French and German Consuls at that port, shed a lurid light on the whole situation and convinced the Continental Powers that sterner measures must be adopted towards the Porte.
[Footnote 95: See Parliamentary Papers, Turkey, No. 5 (1877), for Consul Freeman's report of March 17, 1877, of the outrages by the Turks in Bosnia. The refugees declared they would "sooner drown themselves in the Unna than again subject themselves to Turkish oppression." The Porte denied all the outrages.]
Such was the position, and such the considerations, that led the three Empires to adopt more drastic proposals. Having found, meanwhile, by informal conferences with the Herzegovinian leaders, what were the essentials to a lasting settlement, they prepared to embody them in a second Note, the Berlin Memorandum, issued on May 13. It was drawn up by the three Imperial Chancellors at Berlin, but Andrassy is known to have given a somewhat doubtful consent. T his "Berlin Memorandum" demanded the adoption of an armistice for two months; the repatriation of the Bosnian exiles and fugitives; the establishment of a mixed Commission for that purpose; the removal of Turkish troops from the rural districts of Bosnia; the right of the Consuls of the European Powers to see to the carrying out of all the promised reforms. Lastly, the Memorandum stated that if within two months the three Imperial Courts did not attain the end they had in view (viz. the carrying out of the needed reforms), it would become necessary to take "efficacious measures" for that purpose[96]. Bismarck is known to have favoured the policy of Gortchakoff in this affair.
[Footnote 96: Hertslet, iv. pp. 2459-2463.]
The proposals of the Memorandum were at once sent to the British, French, and Italian Governments for their assent. The two last immediately gave it. After a brief delay the Disraeli Ministry sent a decisive refusal and made no alternative proposal, though one of its members, Sir Stafford Northcote, is known to have formulated a scheme[97]. The Cabinet took a still more serious step: on May 24, it ordered the British fleet in the Mediterranean to steam to Besika Bay, near the entrance to the Dardanelles--the very position it had taken before the Crimean War[98]. It is needless to say that this act not only broke up the "European Concert," but ended all hopes of compelling Turkey at once to grant the much-needed reforms. That compulsion would have been irresistible had the British fleet joined the Powers in preventing the landing of troops from Asia Minor in the Balkan Peninsula. As it was, the Turks could draw those reinforcements without hindrance.
[Footnote 97: Sir Stafford Northcote, Earl of Iddesleigh, by Andrew Lang, vol. ii. p. 181.]
[Footnote 98: Our ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Henry Elliott, asked (May 9) that a squadron should be sent there to reassure the British subjects in Turkey; but as the fleet was not ordered to proceed thither until after a long interval, and was kept there in great strength and for many months, it is fair to assume that the aim of our Government was to encourage Turkey.] The Berlin Memorandum was, of course, not presented to Turkey, and partly owing to the rapid changes which then took place at Constantinople. To these we must now advert.
The Sultan, Abdul Aziz, during his fifteen years of rule had increasingly shown himself to be apathetic, wasteful, and indifferent to the claims of duty. In the month of April, when the State repudiated its debts, and officials and soldiers were left unpaid, his life of luxurious retirement went on unchanged. It has been reckoned that of the total Turkish debt of £T200,000,000, as much as £T53,000,000 was due to his private extravagance[99]. Discontent therefore became rife, especially among the fanatical bands of theological students at Constantinople. These Softas, as they are termed, numbering some 20,000 or more, determined to breathe new life into the Porte--an aim which the patriotic "Young Turkey" party already had in view. On May 11 large bands of Softas surrounded the buildings of the Grand Vizier and the Sheik-ul-Islam, and with wild cries compelled them to give up their powers in favour of more determined men. On the night of May 29-30 they struck at the Sultan himself. The new Ministers were on their side: the Sheik-ul-Islam, the chief of the Ulemas, who interpret Mohammedan theology and law, now gave sentence that the Sultan might be dethroned for mis-government; and this was done without the least show of resistance. His nephew, Murad Effendi, was at once proclaimed Sultan as Murad V.; a few days later the dethroned Sultan was secretly murdered, though possibly his death may have been due to suicide[100].
[Footnote 99: Gallenga, The Eastern Question, vol. ii. p. 99.]
[Footnote 100: For the aims of the Young Turkey party, see the Life of Midhat Pasha, by his son; also an article by Midhat in the Nineteenth Century for June 1878.]
We may add here that Murad soon showed himself to be a friend to reform; and this, rather than any incapacity for ruling, was probably the cause of the second palace revolution, which led to his deposition on August 31. Thereupon his brother, the present ruler, Abdul Hamid, ascended the throne. His appearance was thus described by one who saw him at his first State progress through his capital: "A somewhat heavy and stern countenance . . . narrow at the temples, with a long gloomy cast of features, large ears, and dingy complexion. . . . It seemed to me the countenance of a ruler capable of good or evil, but knowing his own mind and determined to have his own way[101]." This forecast has been fulfilled in the most sinister manner.
[Footnote 101: Gallenga, The Eastern Question, vol. ii. p. 126. Murad died in the year 1904.]
If any persons believed in the official promise of June 1, that there should be "liberty for all" in the Turkish dominions, they might have been undeceived by the events that had just transpired to the south of the Balkan Mountains. The outbreak of Moslem fanaticism, which at Constantinople led to the dethronement of two Sultans in order to place on the throne a stern devotee, had already deluged with blood the Bulgarian districts near Philippopolis. In the first days of May, the Christians of those parts, angered by the increase of misrule and fired with hope by the example of the Herzegovinians, had been guilty of acts of insubordination; and at Tatar Bazardjik a few Turkish officials were killed. The movement was of no importance, as the Christians were nearly all unarmed. Nevertheless, the authorities poured into the disaffected districts some 18,000 regulars, along with hordes of irregulars, or Bashi-Bazouks; and these, especially the last, proceeded to glut their hatred and lust in a wild orgy which desolated the whole region with a thoroughness that the Huns of Attila could scarcely have excelled (May 9-16). In the upper valley of the Maritza out of eighty villages, all but fifteen were practically wiped out. Batak, a flourishing town of some 7000 inhabitants, underwent a systematic massacre, culminating in the butchery of all who had taken refuge in the largest church; of the whole population only 2000 managed to escape[102].
[Footnote 102: Mr. Baring, a secretary of the British Legation at Constantinople, after a careful examination of the evidence, gave the number of Bulgarians slain as "not fewer than 12,000"; he opined that 163 Mussulmans were perhaps killed early in May. He admitted the Batak horrors. Achmet Agha, their chief perpetrator, was at first condemned to death by a Turkish commission of inquiry, but he was finally pardoned. Shefket Pasha, whose punishment was also promised, was afterwards promoted to a high command. Parl. Papers, Turkey, No. 2 (1877), pp. 248-249; ibid. No. 15 (1877), No. 77, p. 58. Mr. Layard, successor to Sir Henry Elliott at Constantinople, afterwards sought to reduce the numbers slain to 3500. Turkey, No. 26 (1877), p. 54.]
It is painful to have to add that the British Government was indirectly responsible for these events. Not only had it let the Turks know that it deprecated the intervention of the European Powers in Turkey (which was equivalent to giving the Turks carte blanche in dealing with their Christian subjects), but on hearing of the Herzegovina revolt, it pressed on the Porte the need of taking speedy measures to suppress them. The despatches of Sir Henry Elliott, our ambassador at Constantinople, also show that he had favoured the use of active measures towards the disaffected districts north of Philippopolis[103].
[Footnote 103: Parl. Papers, Turkey, No. 3 (1876), pp. 144, 173, 198-199.]
Of course, neither the British Government nor its ambassador foresaw the awful results of this advice; but their knowledge of Turkish methods should have warned them against giving it without adding the cautions so obviously needed. Sir Henry Elliott speedily protested against the measures adopted by the Turks, but then it was too late[104]. Furthermore, the contemptuous way in which Disraeli dismissed the first reports of the Bulgarian massacres as "coffee-house babble" revealed his whole attitude of mind on Turkish affairs; and the painful impression aroused by this utterance was increased by his declaration of July 30 that the British fleet then at Besika Bay was kept there solely in defence of British interests. He made a similar but more general statement in the House of Commons on August 11. On the next morning the world heard that Queen Victoria had been pleased to confer on him the title of Earl of Beaconsfield. It is well known, on his own admission, that he could no longer endure the strain of the late sittings in the House of Commons and had besought Her Majesty for leave to retire. She, however, suggested the gracious alternative that he should continue in office with a seat in the House of Lords. None the less, the conferring of this honour was felt by very many to be singularly inopportune.
[Footnote 104: See, inter alia, his letter of May 26, 1876, quoted in Life and Correspondence of William White (1902), pp. 99-100.]
For at this time tidings of the massacres at Batak and elsewhere began to be fully known. Despite the efforts of Ministers to discredit them, they aroused growing excitement; and when the whole truth was known, a storm of indignation swept over the country as over the whole of Europe. Efforts were made by the Turcophil Press to represent the new trend of popular feeling as a mere party move and an insidious attempt of the Liberal Opposition to exploit humanitarian sentiment; but this charge will not bear examination. Mr. Gladstone had retired from the Liberal Leadership early in 1875 and was deeply occupied in literary work; and Lords Granville and Hartington, on whom devolved the duty of leading the Opposition, had been very sparing of criticisms on the foreign policy of the Cabinet. They, as well as Mr. Gladstone, had merely stated that the Government, on refusing to join in the Berlin Memorandum, ought to have formulated an alternative policy. We now know that Mr. Gladstone left his literary work doubtfully and reluctantly[105].
[Footnote 105: J. Morley, Life of Gladstone, vol. ii. pp. 548-549.]
Now, however, the events in Bulgaria shed a ghastly light on the whole situation, and showed the consequences of giving the "moral support" of Britain to the Turks. The whole question ceased to rest on the high and dry levels of diplomacy, and became one of life or death for many thousands of men and women. The conscience of the country was touched to the quick by the thought that the presence of the British Mediterranean fleet at Besika Bay was giving the same encouragement to the Turks as it had done before the Crimean War, and that, too, when they had belied the promises so solemnly given in 1856, and were now proved to be guilty of unspeakable barbarities. In such a case, the British nation would have been disgraced had it not demanded that no further alliance should be formed. It was equally the duty of the leaders of the Opposition to voice what was undoubtedly the national sentiment. To have kept silence would have been to stultify our Parliamentary institutions. The parrot cry that British interests were endangered by Russia's supposed designs on Turkey, was met by the unanswerable reply that, if those designs existed, the best way to check them was to maintain the European Concert, and especially to keep in close touch with Austria, seeing that that Power had as much cause as England to dread any southward extension of the Czar's power. Russia might conceivably fight Turkey and Great Britain; but she would not wage war against Austria as well. Therefore, the dictates of humanity as well as those of common sense alike condemned the British policy, which from the outset had encouraged the Turks to resist European intervention, had made us in some measure responsible for the Bulgarian massacres, and, finally, had broken up the Concert of the Powers, from which alone a peaceful solution of the Eastern Question could be expected.
The union of the Powers having been dissolved by British action, it was but natural that Russia and Austria should come to a private understanding. This came about at Reichstadt in Bohemia on July 8. No definitive treaty was signed, but the two Emperors and their Chancellors framed an agreement defining their spheres of influence in the Balkans in case war should break out between Russia and Turkey. Francis Joseph of Austria covenanted to observe a neutrality friendly to the Czar under certain conditions that will be noticed later on. Some of those conditions were distasteful to the Russian Government, which sounded Bismarck as to his attitude in case war broke out between the Czar and the Hapsburg ruler. Apparently the reply of the German Chancellor was unfavourable to Russia[106], for it thereafter renewed the negotiations with the Court of Vienna. On the whole, the ensuing agreement was a great diplomatic triumph; for the Czar thereby secured the neutrality of Austria--a Power that might readily have remained in close touch with Great Britain had British diplomacy displayed more foresight.
[Footnote 106: Bismarck, Reflections and Reminiscences vol. ii. chap, xxviii.]
The prospects of a great war, meanwhile, had increased owing to the action of Servia and Montenegro. The rulers of those States, unable any longer to hold in their peoples, and hoping for support from their Muscovite kinsfolk, declared war on Turkey at the end of June. Russian volunteers thronged to the Servian forces by thousands; but, despite the leadership of the Russian General, Tchernayeff, they were soon overborne by the numbers and fanatical valour of the Turks. Early in September, Servia appealed to the Powers for their mediation; and, owing chiefly to the efforts of Great Britain, terms for an armistice were proposed by the new Sultan, Abdul Hamid, but of so hard a nature that the Servians rejected them.
On the fortune of war still inclining against the Slavonic cause, the Russian people became intensely excited; and it was clear that they would speedily join in the war unless the Turks moderated their claims. There is reason to believe that the Czar Alexander II. dreaded the outbreak of hostilities with Turkey in which he might become embroiled with Great Britain. The Panslavonic party in Russia was then permeated by revolutionary elements that might threaten the stability of the dynasty at the end of a long and exhausting struggle. But, feeling himself in honour bound to rescue Servia and Montenegro from the results of their ill-judged enterprise, he assembled large forces in South Russia and sent General Ignatieff to Constantinople with the demand, urged in the most imperious manner (Oct. 30), that the Porte should immediately grant an armistice to those States. At once Abdul Hamid gave way.
Even so, Alexander II. showed every desire of averting the horrors of war. Speaking to the British ambassador at St. Petersburg on November 2, he said that the present state of affairs in Turkey "was intolerable, and unless Europe was prepared to act with firmness and energy, he should be obliged to act alone." But he pledged his word that he desired no aggrandisement, and that "he had not the smallest wish or intention to be possessed of Constantinople[107]." At this time proposals for a Conference of the Powers at Constantinople were being mooted: they had been put forth by the British Government on October 5. There seemed, therefore, to be some hope of a compromise if the Powers reunited so as to bring pressure to bear on Turkey; for, a week later, the Sultan announced his intention of granting a constitution, with an elected Assembly to supervise the administration. But hopes of peace as well as of effective reform in Turkey were damped by the warlike speech of Lord Beaconsfield at the Lord Mayor's banquet on November 9. He then used these words. If Britain draws the sword "in a righteous cause; if the contest is one which concerns her liberty, her independence, or her Empire, her resources, I feel, are inexhaustible. She is not a country that, when she enters into a campaign, has to ask herself whether she can support a second or a third campaign." On the next day the Czar replied in a speech at Moscow to the effect that if the forthcoming Conference at Constantinople did not lead to practical results, Russia would be forced to take up arms; and he counted on the support of his people. A week later 160,000 Russian troops were mobilised.
[Footnote 107: Hertslet, iv. p. 2508.]
The issue was thus clear as far as concerned Russia. It was not so clear for Great Britain. Even now, we are in ignorance as to the real intent of Lord Beaconsfield's speech at the Guildhall. It seems probable that, as there were divisions in his Cabinet, he may have wished to bring about such a demonstration of public feeling as would strengthen his hands in proposing naval and military preparations. The duties of a Prime Minister are so complex that his words may be viewed either in an international sense, or as prompted by administrative needs, or by his relations to his colleagues, or, again, they may be due merely to electioneering considerations. Whatever their real intent on this occasion, they were interpreted by Russia as a defiance and by Turkey as a promise of armed help.
On the other hand, if Lord Beaconsfield hoped to strengthen the pro-Turkish feeling in the Cabinet and the country, he failed. The resentment aroused by Turkish methods of rule and repression was too deep to be eradicated even by his skilful appeals to Imperialist sentiment. The Bulgarian atrocities had at least brought this much of good: they rendered a Turco-British alliance absolutely impossible.
Lord Derby had written to this effect on August 29 to Sir Henry Elliott: "The impression produced here by events in Bulgaria has completely destroyed sympathy with Turkey. The feeling is universal and so strong that even if Russia were to declare war against the Porte, Her Majesty's Government would find it practically impossible to interfere[108]."
[Footnote 108: Parliamentary Papers, Turkey, No. 6 (1877).]
The assembly of a Conference of the envoys of the Powers at Constantinople was claimed to be a decisive triumph for British diplomacy. There were indeed some grounds for hoping that Turkey would give way before a reunited Europe. The pressure brought to bear on the British Cabinet by public opinion resulted in instructions being given to Lord Salisbury (our representative, along with Sir H. Elliott, at the Conference) which did not differ much from the avowed aims of Russia and of the other Powers. Those instructions stated that the Powers could not accept mere promises of reform, for "the whole history of the Ottoman Empire, since it was admitted into the European Concert under the engagements of the Treaty of Paris [1856], has proved that the Porte is unable to guarantee the execution of reforms in the provinces by Turkish officials, who accept them with reluctance and neglect them with impunity." The Cabinet, therefore, insisted that there must be "external guarantees," but stipulated that no foreign armies must be introduced into Turkey[109]. Here alone British Ministers were at variance with the other Powers; and when, in the preliminary meetings of the Conference, a proposal was made to bring Belgian troops in order to guarantee the thorough execution of the proposed reforms, Lord Salisbury did not oppose it. In pursuance of instructions from London, he even warned the Porte that Britain would not give any help in case war resulted from its refusal of the European proposals.
[Footnote 109: Parliamentary Papers, Turkey, ii. (1877), No. 1; also, in part, in Hertslet, iv. p. 2517.]
It is well known that Lord Salisbury was far less pro-Turkish than the Prime Minister or the members of the British embassy at Constantinople. During a diplomatic tour that he had made to the chief capitals he convinced himself "that no Power was disposed to shield Turkey--not even Austria--if blood had to be shed for the status quo." (The words are those used by his assistant, Mr., afterwards Sir, William White.) He had had little or no difficulty in coming to an understanding with the Russian plenipotentiary, General Ignatieff, despite the intrigues of Sir Henry Elliott and his Staff to hinder it[110]. Indeed, the situation shows what might have been effected in May 1876, had not the Turks then received the support of the British Government.
[Footnote 110: Sir William White: Life and Correspondence, p. 117.]
Now, however, there were signs that the Turks declined to take the good advice of the Powers seriously; and on December 23, when the "full" meetings of the Conference began, the Sultan and his Ministers treated the plenipotentiaries to a display of injured virtue and reforming zeal that raised the situation to the level of the choicest comedy. In the midst of the proceedings, after the Turkish Foreign Minister, Safvet Pacha, had explained away the Bulgarian massacres as a myth woven by the Western imagination, salvoes of cannon were heard, that proclaimed the birth of a new and most democratic constitution for the whole of the Turkish Empire. Safvet did justice to the solemnity of the occasion; the envoys of the Powers suppressed their laughter; and before long, Lord Salisbury showed his resentment at this display of oriental irony and stubbornness by ordering the British Fleet to withdraw from Besika Bay[111].
[Footnote 111: See Gallenga (The Eastern Question, vol. ii. pp. 255-258) as to the scepticism regarding the new constitution, felt alike by foreigners and natives at Constantinople.]
But deeds and words were alike wasted on the Sultan and his Ministers. To all the proposals and warnings of the Powers they replied by pointing to the superior benefits about to be conferred by the new constitution. The Conference therefore speedily came to an end (Jan. 20). It had served its purpose. It had fooled Europe[112].
[Footnote 112: See Parl. Papers (1878), Turkey, No. 2, p. 114, for the constitution; and p. 302 for Lord Salisbury's criticisms on it; also ibid, pp. 344-345, for Turkey's final rejection of the proposals of the Powers.]
The responsibility for this act of cynical defiance must be assigned to one man. The Sultan had never before manifested a desire for any reform whatsoever; and it was not until December 19, 1876, that he named as Grand Vizier Midhat Pasha, who was known to have long been weaving constitutional schemes. This Turkish Siéyès was thrust to the front in time to promulgate that fundamental reform. His tenure of power, like that of the French constitution-monger in 1799, ended when the scheme had served the purpose of the real controller of events. Midhat obviously did not see whither things were tending. On January 24, 1877, he wrote to Saïd Pasha, stating that, according to the Turkish ambassador at London (Musurus Pasha), Lord Derby congratulated the Sublime Porte on the dissolution of the Conference, "which he considers a success for Turkey[113]."
[Footnote 113: Life of Midhat Pasha, by Midhat Ali (1903), p. 142. Musurus must have deliberately misrepresented Lord Derby.]
It therefore only remained to set the constitution in motion. After six days, when no sign of action was forthcoming, Midhat wrote to the Sultan in urgent terms, reminding him that their object in promulgating the constitution "was certainly not merely to find a solution of the so-called Eastern Question, nor to seek thereby to make a demonstration that should conciliate the sympathies of Europe, which had been estranged from us." This Note seems to have irritated the Sultan. Abdul Hamid, with his small, nervous, exacting nature, has always valued Ministers in proportion to their obedience, not to their power of giving timely advice. In every independent suggestion he sees the germ of opposition, and perhaps of a palace plot. He did so now. By way of reply, he bade Midhat come to the Palace. Midhat, fearing a trap, deferred his visit, until he received the assurance that the order for the reforms had been issued. Then he obeyed the summons; at once he was apprehended, and was hurried to the Sultan's yacht, which forthwith steamed away for the Aegean (Feb. 5). The fact that he remained above its waters, and was allowed to proceed to Italy, may be taken as proof that his zeal for reform had been not without its uses in the game which the Sultan had played against the Powers. The Turkish Parliament, which assembled on March 1, acted with the subservience that might have been expected after this lesson. The Sultan dissolved it on the outbreak of war, and thereafter gave up all pretence of constitutional forms. As for Midhat, he was finally lured back to Turkey and done to death. Such was the end of the Turkish constitution, of the Turkish Parliament, and of their contriver[114].
[Footnote 114: Life of Midhat Pasha, chaps. v.-vii. For the Sultan's character and habits, see an article in the Contemporary Review for December 1896, by D. Kelekian.]
Even the dissolution of the Conference of the Powers did not bring about war at once. It seems probable that the Czar hoped much from the statesmanlike conduct of Lord Salisbury at Constantinople, or perhaps he expected to secure the carrying out of the needed reforms by means of pressure from the Three Emperors' League (see Chapter XII.). But, unless the Russians gave up all interest in the fate of her kinsmen and co-religionists in Turkey, war was now the more probable outcome of events. Alexander had already applied to Germany for help, either diplomatic or military; but these overtures, of whatever kind, were declined by Bismarck--so he declared in his great speech of February 6, 1888. Accordingly, the Czar drew closer to Austria, with the result that the Reichstadt agreement of July 8, 1876, now assumed the form of a definitive treaty signed at Vienna between the two Powers on January 15, 1877.
The full truth on this subject is not known. M. Élie de Cyon, who claims to have seen the document, states that Austria undertook to remain neutral during the Russo-Turkish War, that she stipulated for a large addition of territory if the Turks were forced to quit Europe; also that a great Bulgaria should be formed, and that Servia and Montenegro should be extended so as to become conterminous. To the present writer this account appears suspect. It is inconceivable that Austria should have assented to an expansion of these principalities which would bar her road southward to Salonica[115].
[Footnote 115: Élie de Cyon, Histoire de l'Entente franco-russe, chap, i.; and in Nouvelle Revue for June 1, 1887. His account bears obvious signs of malice against Germany and Austria.]
Another and more probable version was given by the Hungarian Minister, M. Tisza, during the course of debates in the Hungarian Delegations in the spring of 1887, to this effect:--(1) No Power should claim an exclusive right of protecting the Christians of Turkey, and the Great Powers should pronounce on the results of the war; (2) Russia would annex no land on the right (south) bank of the Danube, would respect the integrity of Roumania, and refrain from touching Constantinople; (3) if Russia formed a new Slavonic State in the Balkans, it should not be at the expense of non-Slavonic peoples; and she would not claim special rights over Bulgaria, which was to be governed by a prince who was neither Russian nor Austrian; (4) Russia would not extend her military operations to the districts west of Bulgaria. These were the terms on which Austria agreed to remain neutral; and in certain cases she claimed to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina[116].
[Footnote 116: Débidour, Hist. diplomatique de l'Europe (1814-1878), vol. ii. p. 502.] Doubtless these, or indeed any, concessions to Austria were repugnant to Alexander II. and Prince Gortchakoff; but her neutrality was essential to Russia's success in case war broke out; and the Czar's Government certainly acted with much skill in securing the friendly neutrality of the Power which in 1854 had exerted so paralysing a pressure on the Russian operations on the Lower Danube.
Nevertheless, Alexander II. still sought to maintain the European Concert with a view to the exerting of pacific pressure upon Turkey. Early in March he despatched General Ignatieff on a mission to the capitals of the Great Powers; except at Westminster, that envoy found opinion favourable to the adoption of some form of coercion against Turkey, in case the Sultan still hardened his heart against good advice. Even the Beaconsfield Ministry finally agreed to sign a Protocol, that of March 31, 1877, which recounted the efforts of the six Great Powers for the improvement of the lot of the Christians in Turkey, and expressed their approval of the promises of reform made by that State on February 13, 1876. Passing over without notice the new Turkish Constitution, the Powers declared that they would carefully watch the carrying out of the promised reforms, and that, if no improvement in the lot of the Christians should take place, "they [the Powers] reserve to themselves to consider in common as to the means which they may deem best fitted to secure the wellbeing of the Christian populations, and the interests of the general peace[117]." This final clause contained a suggestion scarcely less threatening than that with which the Berlin Memorandum had closed; and it is difficult to see why the British Cabinet, which now signed the London Protocol, should have wrecked that earlier effort of the Powers. In this as in other matters it is clear that the Cabinet was swayed by a "dual control."
[Footnote 117: Parl. Papers, Turkey, No. 9 (1877), p. 2.]
But now it was all one whether the British Government signed the Protocol or not. Turkey would have none of it. Despite Lord Derby's warning that "the Sultan would be very unwise if he would not endeavour to avail himself of the opportunity afforded him to arrange a mutual disarmament," that potentate refused to move a hair's-breadth from his former position. On the 12th of April the Turkish ambassador announced to Lord Derby the final decision of his Government: "Turkey, as an independent State, cannot submit to be placed under any surveillance, whether collective or not. . . . No consideration can arrest the Imperial Government in their determination to protest against the Protocol of the 31st March, and to consider it, as regards Turkey, as devoid of all equity, and consequently of all binding character." Lord Derby thereupon expressed his deep regret at this decision, and declared that he "did not see what further steps Her Majesty's Government could take to avert a war which appeared to have become inevitable[118]."
[Footnote 118: Parl. Papers, Turkey, No. 15 (1877), pp. 354-355.]
The Russian Government took the same view of the case, and on April 7-19, 1877, stated in a despatch that, as a pacific solution of the Eastern Question was now impossible, the Czar had ordered his armies to cross the frontiers of Turkey. The official declaration of war followed on April 12-24. From the point of view of Lord Derby this seemed "inevitable." Nevertheless, on May 1 he put his name to an official document which reveals the curious dualism which then prevailed in the Beaconsfield Cabinet. This reply to the Russian despatch contained the assertion that the last answer of the Porte did not remove all hope of deference on its part to the wishes and advice of Europe, and "that the decision of the Russian Government is not one which can have their concurrence or approval." We shall not be far wrong in assuming that, while the hand that signed this document was the hand of Derby, the spirit behind it was that of Beaconsfield.
In many quarters the action of Russia was stigmatised as the outcome of ambition and greed, rendered all the more odious by the cloak of philanthropy which she had hitherto worn. The time has not come when an exhaustive and decisive verdict can be given on this charge. Few movements have been free from all taint of meanness; but it is clearly unjust to rail against a great Power, because, at the end of a war which entailed frightful losses and a serious though temporary loss of prestige, it determined to exact from the enemy the only form of indemnity which was forthcoming, namely, a territorial indemnity. Russia's final claims, as will be seen, were open to criticism at several points; but the censure just referred to is puerile. It accords, however, with most of the criticisms passed in London "club-land," which were remarkable for their purblind cynicism.
No one who has studied the mass of correspondence contained in the Blue-books relating to Turkey in 1875-77 can doubt that the Emperor Alexander II. displayed marvellous patience in face of a series of brutal provocations by Moslem fanatics and the clamour of his own people for a liberating crusade. Bismarck, who did not like the Czar, stated that he did not want war, but waged it "under stress of Panslavist influence[119]." That some of his Ministers and Generals had less lofty aims is doubtless true; but practically all authorities are now agreed that the maintenance of the European Concert would have been the best means of curbing those aims. Yet, despite the irritating conduct of the Beaconsfield Cabinet, the Emperor Alexander sought to re-unite Europe with a view to the execution of the needed reforms in Turkey. Even after the successive rebuffs of the rejection of the Berlin Memorandum by Great Britain and of the suggestions of the Powers at Constantinople by Turkey, he succeeded in restoring the semblance of accord between the Powers, and of leaving to Turkey the responsibility of finally and insolently defying their recommendations. A more complete diplomatic triumph has rarely been won. It was the reward of consistency and patience, qualities in which the Beaconsfield Cabinet was signally lacking.
[Footnote 119: Bismarck: his Reflections and Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 259 (Eng. ed.).] We may notice one other criticism: that Russia's agreement with Austria implied the pre-existence of aggressive designs. This is by no means conclusive. That the Czar should have taken the precaution of coming to the arrangement of January 1877 with Austria does not prove that he was desirous of war. The attitude of Turkey during the Conference at Constantinople left but the slightest hope of peace. To prepare for war in such a case is not a proof of a desire for war, but only of common prudence.
Certain writers in France and Germany have declared that Bismarck was the real author of the Russo-Turkish War. The dogmatism of their assertions is in signal contrast with the thinness of their evidence[120]. It rests mainly on the statement that the Three Emperors' League (see Chapter XII.) was still in force; that Bismarck had come to some arrangement for securing gains to Austria in the south-east as a set-off to her losses in 1859 and 1866; that Austrian agents in Dalmatia had stirred up the Herzegovina revolt of 1875; and that Bismarck and Andrassy did nothing to avert the war of 1877. Possibly he had a hand in these events--he had in most events of the time; and there is a suspicious passage in his Memoirs as to the overtures made to Berlin in the autumn of 1876. The Czar's Ministers wished to know whether, in the event of a war with Austria, they would have the support of Germany. To this the Chancellor replied, that Germany could not allow the present equilibrium of the monarchical Powers to be disturbed: "The result . . . was that the Russian storm passed from Eastern Galicia to the Balkans[121]." Thereafter Russia came to terms with Austria as described above.
[Footnote 120: Élie de Cyon, op. cit. chap. i.; also in Nouvelle Revue for 1880.]
[Footnote 121: Bismarck, Recollections and Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 231 (Eng. ed.).]
But the passage just cited only proves that Russia might have gone to war with Austria over the Eastern Question. In point of fact, she went to war with Turkey, after coming to a friendly arrangement with Austria. Bismarck therefore acted as "honest-broker" between his two allies; and it has yet to be proved that Bismarck did not sincerely work with the two other Empires to make the coercion of Turkey by the civilised Powers irresistibly strong. In his speech of December 6, 1876, to the Reichstag, the Chancellor made a plain and straightforward declaration of his policy, namely, that of neutrality, but inclining towards friendship with Austria. That, surely, did not drive Russia into war with Turkey, still less entice her into it. As for the statement that Austrian intrigues were the sole cause of the Bosnian revolt, it must appear childish to all who bear in mind the exceptional hardships and grievances of the peasants of that province. Finally, the assertion of a newspaper, the Czas, that Queen Victoria wrote to Bismarck in April 1877 urging him to protest against an attack by Russia on Turkey, may be dismissed as an impudent fabrication[122]. It was altogether opposed to the habits of her late Majesty to write letters of that kind to the Foreign Ministers of other Powers.
[Footnote 122: Busch, Our Chancellor, vol. ii. p. 126.]
Until documents of a contrary tenor come to light, we may say with some approach to certainty that the responsibility for the war of 1877-78 rests with the Sultan of Turkey and with those who indirectly encouraged him to set at naught the counsels of the Powers. Lord Derby and Lord Salisbury had of late plainly warned him of the consequences of his stubbornness; but the influence of the British embassy at Constantinople and of the Turkish ambassador in London seems greatly to have weakened the force of those warnings.
It must always be remembered that the Turk will concede religious freedom and civic equality to the "Giaours" only under overwhelming pressure. In such a case he mutters "Kismet" ("It is fate"), and gives way; but the least sign of weakness or wavering on the part of the Powers awakens his fanatical scruples. Then his devotion to the Koran forbids any surrender. History has afforded several proofs of this, from the time of the Battle of Navarino (1827) to that of the intervention of the Western Powers on behalf of the slaughtered and harried Christians of the Lebanon (1860). Unfortunately Abdul Hamid had now come to regard the Concert of the Powers as a "loud-sounding nothing." With the usual bent of a mean and narrow nature he detected nothing but hypocrisy in its lofty professions, and self-seeking in its philanthropic aims, together with a treacherous desire among influential persons to make the whole scheme miscarry. Accordingly he fell back on the boundless fund of inertia, with which a devout Moslem ruler blocks the way to western reforms. A competent observer has finely remarked that the Turk never changes; his neighbours, his frontiers, his statute-books may change, but his ideas and his practice remain always the same. He will not be interfered with; he will not improve[123]. To this statement we must add that only under dire necessity will he allow his Christian subjects to improve. The history of the Eastern Question may be summed up in these assertions.
[Footnote 123: Turkey in Europe, by Odysseus, p. 139.]
Abdul Hamid II. is the incarnation of the reactionary forces which have brought ruin to Turkey and misery to her Christian subjects. He owed his crown to a recrudescence of Moslem fanaticism; and his reign has illustrated the unsuspected strength and ferocity of his race and creed in face of the uncertain tones in which Christendom has spoken since the spring of the year 1876. The reasons which prompted his defiance a year later were revealed by his former Grand Vizier, Midhat Pasha, in an article in the Nineteenth Century for June 1877. The following passage is especially illuminating:--
Turkey was not unaware of the attitude of the English Government towards her; the British Cabinet had declared in clear terms that it would not interfere in our dispute. This decision of the English Cabinet was perfectly well known to us, but we knew still better that the general interests of Europe and the particular interests of England were so bound up in our dispute with Russia that, in spite of all the Declarations of the English Cabinet, it appeared to us to be absolutely impossible for her to avoid interfering sooner or later in this Eastern dispute. This profound belief, added to the reasons we have mentioned, was one of the principal factors of our contest with Russia[124].
[Footnote 124: See, too, the official report of our pro-Turkish Ambassador at Constantinople, Mr. Layard (May 30, 1877), as to the difficulty of our keeping out of the war in its final stages (Parl. Papers, Turkey, No. 26 (1877), p. 52).]
It appears, then, that the action of the British Government in the spring and summer of 1876, and the well-known desire of the Prime Minister to intervene in favour of Turkey, must have contributed to the Sultan's decision to court the risks of war rather than allow any intervention of the Powers on behalf of his Christian subjects.
The information that has come to light from various quarters serves to strengthen the case against Lord Beaconsfield's policy in the years 1875-77. The letter written by Mr. White to Sir Robert Morier on January 16, 1877, and referred to above, shows that his diplomatic experience had convinced him of the futility of supporting Turkey against the Powers. In that letter he made use of these significant words:--"You know me well enough. I did not come here (Constantinople) to deceive Lord Salisbury or to defend an untenable Russophobe or pro-Turkish policy. There will probably be a difference of opinion in the Cabinet as to our future line of policy, and I shall not wonder if Lord Salisbury should upset Dizzy and take his place or leave the Government on this question. If he does the latter, the coach is indeed upset." Mr. White also referred to the personnel of the British Embassy at Constantinople in terms which show how mischievous must have been its influence on the counsels of the Porte.
A letter from Sir Robert Morier of about the same date proves that that experienced diplomatist also saw the evil results certain to accrue from the Beaconsfield policy:--"I have not ceased to din that into the ears of the F.O. (Foreign Office), to make ourselves the point d'appui of the Christians in the Turkish Empire, and thus take all the wind out of the sails of Russia; and after the population had seen the difference between an English and a Russian occupation [of the disturbed parts of Turkey] it would jump to the eyes even of the blind, and we should débuter into a new policy at Constantinople with an immense advantage[125]." This advice was surely statesmanlike. To support the young and growing nationalities in Turkey would serve, not only to checkmate the supposed aggressive designs of Russia, but also to array on the side of Britain the progressive forces of the East. To rely on the Turk was to rely on a moribund creature. It was even worse. It implied an indirect encouragement to the "sick man" to enter on a strife for which he was manifestly unequal, and in which we did not mean to help him. But these considerations failed to move Lord Beaconsfield and the Foreign Office from the paths of tradition and routine[126].
[Footnote 125: Sir William White: Life and Correspondence, pp. 115-117.]
[Footnote 126: For the power of tradition in the Foreign Office, see Sir William White: Life and Correspondence, p. 119.]
Finally, in looking at the events of 1875-76 in their broad outlines, we may note the verdict of a veteran diplomatist, whose conduct before the Crimean War proved him to be as friendly to the interests of Turkey as he was hostile to those of Russia, but who now saw that the situation differed utterly from that which was brought about by the aggressive action of Czar Nicholas I. in 1854. In a series of letters to the Times he pointed out the supreme need of joint action by all the Powers who signed the Treaty of Paris; that that treaty by no means prohibited their intervention in the affairs of Turkey; that wise and timely intervention would be to the advantage of that State; that the Turks had always yielded to coercion if it were of overwhelming strength, but only on those terms; and that therefore the severance of England from the European Concert was greatly to be deplored[127]. In private this former champion of Turkey went even farther, and declared on Sept. 10, 1876, that the crisis in the East would not have become acute had Great Britain acted conjointly with the Powers[128]. There is every reason to believe that posterity will endorse this judgment of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.
[Footnote 127: Letters of Dec. 31, 1875, May 16, 1876, and Sept. 9, 1876, republished with others in The Eastern Question, by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe (1881).]
[Footnote 128: J. Morley, Life of Gladstone, vol. ii. p. 555.]