XI. NIHILISM AND ABSOLUTISM IN RUSSIA…

XI. NIHILISM AND ABSOLUTISM IN RUSSIA

THE HOUSE OF ROMANOFF

Catharine II. (1762-1796.) | | Paul. (1796-1801.) | ___________________ | | Alexander I. Nicholas I. (1801-1825.) (1825-1855.) | ________________________________________ | | | | Alexander II. Constantine. Nicholas. Michael. (1855-1881.) | ___________________________________________________________ | | | | | | Nicholas. Alexander III. Alexis. Marie. Sergius. Paul. (Died in (1881-1894.) (Duchess of (Assassinated 1865.) | Edinburgh.) Feb. 17, 1905.) | Nicholas II. (1894--.)

The Whig statesman, Charles James Fox, once made the profound though seemingly paradoxical assertion that the most dangerous part of a Revolution was the Restoration that ended it. In a similar way we may hazard the statement that the greatest danger brought about by war lies in the period of peace immediately following. Just as the strain involved by any physical effort is most felt when the muscles and nerves resume their normal action, so, too, the body politic is liable to depression when once the time of excitement is over and the artificial activities of war give place to the tiresome work of paying the bill. England after Waterloo, France and Germany after the war of 1870, afford examples of this truth; but never perhaps has it been more signally illustrated than in the Russia of 1878-82.

There were several reasons why the reaction should be especially sharp in Russia. The Slav peoples that form the great bulk of her population are notoriously sensitive. Shut up for nearly half the year by the rigours of winter, they naturally develop habits of brooding introspection or coarse animalism--witness the plaintive strains of their folk-songs, the pessimism that haunts their literature, and the dram-drinking habits of the peasantry. The Muscovite temperament and the Muscovite climate naturally lead to idealist strivings against the hardships of life or a dull grovelling amongst them. Melancholy or vodka is the outcome of it all.

The giant of the East was first aroused to a consciousness of his strength by the invasion of Napoleon the Great. The comparative ease with which the Grand Army was engulfed left on the national mind of Russia a consciousness of pride never to be lost even amidst the cruel disappointments of the Crimean War. Holy Russia had once beaten back the forces of Europe marshalled by the greatest captain of all time. She was therefore a match for the rest of the Continent. Such was the belief of every patriotic Muscovite. As for the Turks, they were not worthy of entering the lists against the soldiers of the Czar. Did not every decade bring further proofs of the decline of the Ottomans in governing capacity and military prowess? They might harry Bulgarian peasants and win laurels over the Servian militia. But how could that bankrupt State and its undisciplined hordes hold up against the might of Russia and the fervour of her liberating legions?

After the indulgence of these day dreams the disillusionment caused by the events at Plevna came the more cruelly. One general after another became the scapegoat for the popular indignation. Then the General Staff was freely censured, and whispers went round that the Grand Duke Nicholas, brother of the Czar, was not only incompetent to conduct a great war, but guilty of underhand dealings with the contractors who defrauded the troops and battened on the public funds. Letters from the rank and file showed that the bread was bad, the shoes were rotten, the rifles outclassed by those of the Turks, and that trenching-tools were lacking for many precious weeks[222]. Then, too, the Bulgarian peasants were found to be in a state of comfort superior to that of the bulk of their liberators--a discovery which aroused in the Russian soldiery feelings like those of the troops of the old French monarchy when they fought side by side with the soldiers of Washington for the triumph of democracy in the New World. In both cases the lessons were stored up, to be used when the champions of liberty returned home and found the old order of things clanking on as slowly and rustily as ever.

[Footnote 222: Russia Before and After the War, translated by E.F. Taylor (London, 1880), chap. xvi.: "We have been cheated by blockheads, robbed by people whose incapacity was even greater than their villainy."]

Finally, there came the crushing blow of the Treaty of Berlin. The Russian people had fought for an ideal: they longed to see the cross take the place of the crescent which for five centuries had flashed defiance to Christendom from the summit of St. Sofia at Constantinople. But Britain's ironclads, Austria's legions, and German diplomacy barred the way in the very hour of triumph; and Russia drew back. To the Slav enthusiasts of Moscow even the Treaty of San Stefano had seemed a dereliction of a sacred duty; that of Berlin seemed the most cowardly of betrayals. As the Princess Radziwill confesses in her Recollections--that event made Nihilism possible.

As usual, the populace, whether reactionary Slavophils or Liberals of the type of Western Europe, vented its spleen on the Government. For a time the strongest bureaucracy in Europe was driven to act on the defensive. The Czar returned stricken with asthma and prematurely aged by the privations and cares of the campaign. The Grand Duke Nicholas was recalled from his command, and, after bearing the signs of studied hostility of the Czarevitch, was exiled to his estates in February 1879. The Government inspired contempt rather than fear; and a new spirit of independence pervaded all classes. This was seen even as far back as February 1878, in the acquittal of Vera Zazulich, a lady who had shot the Chief of the Police at St. Petersburg, by a jury consisting of nobles and high officials; and the verdict, given in the face of damning evidence, was generally approved. Similar crimes occurred nearly every week[223]. Everything therefore, favoured the designs of those who sought to overthrow all government. In a word, the outcome of the war was Nihilism.

[Footnote 223: Ibid. chap. xvii. The Government thereafter dispensed with the ordinary forms of justice for political crimes and judged them by special Commissions.]

The father of this sombre creed was a wealthy Russian landlord named Bakunin; or rather, he shares this doubtful honour with the Frenchman Prudhon. Bakunin, who was born in 1814, entered on active life in the time of soulless repression inaugurated by the Czar Nicholas I. (1825-1855). Disgusted by Russian bureaucracy, the youth eagerly drank in the philosophy of Western Europe, especially that of Hegel. During a residence at Paris, he embraced and developed Prudhon's creed that "property is theft," and sought to prepare the way for a crusade against all Governments by forming the Alliance of Social Democracy (1869), which speedily became merged in the famous "Internationale." Driven successively from France and Central Europe, he was finally handed over to the Russians and sent to Siberia; thence he escaped to Japan and came to England, finally settling in Switzerland. His writings and speeches did much to rouse the Slavs of Austria, Poland, and Russia to a sense of their national importance, and of the duty of overthrowing the Governments that cramped their energies.

As in the case of Prudhon his zeal for the non-existent and hatred of the actual bordered on madness, as when he included most of the results of art, literature, and science in his comprehensive anathemas. Nevertheless his crusade for destruction appealed to no small part of the sensitive peoples of the Slavonic race, who, differing in many details, yet all have a dislike of repression and a longing to have their "fling[224]." A union in a Panslavonic League for the overthrow of the Houses of Romanoff, Hapsburg, and Hohenzollern promised to satisfy the vague longings of that much-baffled race, whose name, denoting "glorious," had become the synonym for servitude of the lowest type. Such was the creed that disturbed Eastern and Central Europe throughout the period 1847-78, now and again developing a kind of iconoclastic frenzy among its votaries.

[Footnote 224: For this peculiarity and a consequent tendency to extremes, see Prof. G. Brandes Impressions of Russia, p. 22.]

This revolutionary creed absorbed another of a different kind. The second creed was scientific and self-centred; it had its origin in the Liberal movement of the sixties, when reforms set in, even in governmental circles. The Czar, Alexander II., in 1861 freed the serfs from the control of their lords, and allotted to them part of the plots which they had hitherto worked on a servile tenure. For various reasons, which we cannot here detail, the peasants were far from satisfied with this change, weighted, as it was, by somewhat onerous terms, irksome restrictions, and warped sometimes by dishonest or hostile officials. Limited powers of local government were also granted in 1864 to the local Zemstvos or land-organisations; but these again failed to satisfy the new cravings for a real system of self-government; and the Czar, seeing that his work produced more ferment than gratitude, began at the close of the sixties to fall back into the old absolutist ways[225].

[Footnote 225: See Wallace's Russia, 2 vols.; Russia under the Tzars, by "Stepniak," vol. ii. chap. xxix.; also two lectures on Russian affairs by Prof. Vinogradoff, in Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century (Camb. 1902).]

At that time, too, a band of writers, of whom the novelist Turgenieff is the best known, were extolling the triumphs of scientific research and the benefits of Western democracy. He it was who adapted to scientific or ethical use the word "Nihilism" (already in use in France to designate Prudhon's theories), so as to represent the revolt of the individual against the religious creed and patriarchal customs of old Russia. "The fundamental principle of Nihilism," says "Stepniak," "was absolute individualism. It was the negation, in the name of individual liberty, of all the obligations imposed upon the individual by society, by family life, and by religion[226]."

[Footnote 226: Underground Russia, by "Stepniak," Introduction, p. 4. Or, as Turgenieff phrased it in one of his novels: "a Nihilist is a man who submits to no authority, who accepts not a single principle upon faith merely, however high such a principle may stand in the eyes of men." In short, a Nihilist was an extreme individualist and rationalist.]

For a time these disciples of Darwin and Herbert Spencer were satisfied with academic protests against autocracy; but the uselessness of such methods soon became manifest; the influence of professors and philosophic Epicureans could never permeate the masses of Russia and stir them to their dull depths. What "the intellectuals" needed was a creed which would appeal to the many.

This they gained mainly from Bakunin. He had pointed the way to what seemed a practical policy, the ownership of the soil of Russia by the Mirs, the communes of her myriad villages. As to methods, he advocated a propaganda of violence. "Go among the people," he said, and convert them to your aims. The example of the Paris Communists in 1871 enforced his pleas; and in the subsequent years thousands of students, many of them of the highest families, quietly left their homes, donned the peasants' garb, smirched their faces, tarred their hands, and went into the villages or the factories in the hope of stirring up the thick sedimentary deposit of the Russian system[227]. In many cases their utmost efforts ended in failure, the tragi-comedy of which is finely set forth in Turgenieff's Virgin Soil. Still more frequently their goal proved to be--Siberia. But these young men and women did not toil for nought. Their efforts hastened the absorption of philosophic Nihilism in the creed of Prudhon and Bakunin. The Nihilist of Turgenieff's day had been a hedonist of the clubs, or a harmless weaver of scientific Utopias; the Nihilist of the new age was that most dangerous of men, a desperado girt with a fighting creed.

[Footnote 227: Russia in Revolution, by G.H. Perriss, pp. 204-206, 210-214; Arnaudo, I Nihilismo (Turin, 1879). See, too, the chapters added by Sir D.M. Wallace to the new edition of his work Russia (1905).]

The fusing of these two diverse elements was powerfully helped on by the white heat of indignation that glowed throughout Russia when details of the official peculation and mismanagement of the war with Turkey became known. Everything combined to discredit the Government; and enthusiasts of all kinds felt that the days for scientific propaganda and stealthy agitation were past. Voltaire must give way to Marat. It was time for the bomb and the dagger to do their work.

The new Nihilists organised an executive committee for the removal of the most obnoxious officials. Its success was startling. To name only a few of their chief deeds: on August 15, 1878, a Chief of the Police was slain near one of the Imperial Palaces at the capital; and, in February 1879, the Governor of Kharkov was shot, the Nihilists succeeding in announcing his condemnation by placards mysteriously posted up in every large town. In vain did the Government intervene and substitute a military Commission in place of trial by jury. Exile and hanging only made the Nihilists more daring, and on more than one occasion the Czar nearly fell a victim to their desperadoes.

The most astounding of these attempts was the explosion of a mine under the banqueting-hall of the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg on the evening of February 17, 1880, when the Imperial family escaped owing to a delay in the arrival of the Grand Duke of Hesse. Ten soldiers were killed and forty-eight wounded in and near the guard-room.

The Czar answered outrage by terrorism. A week after this outrage he issued a ukase suspending the few remaining rights of local self-government hitherto spared by the reaction, and vesting practically all executive powers in a special Commission, presided over by General Loris Melikoff. This man was an Armenian by descent, and had distinguished himself as commander in the recent war in Asia, the capture of Kars being largely due to his dispositions. To these warlike gifts, uncommon in the Armenians of to-day, he added administrative abilities of a high order. Enjoying in a peculiar degree the confidence of Alexander II., he was charged with the supervision of all political trials and a virtual control of all the Governors-General of the Empire. Thereupon the central committee of the Nihilists proclaimed war à outrance until the Czar conceded to a popularly elected National Assembly the right to reform the life of Russia.

Here was the strength of the Nihilist party. By violent means it sought to extort what a large proportion of the townsfolk wished for and found no means of demanding in a lawful manner. Loris Melikoff, gifted with the shrewdness of his race, saw that the Government would effect little by terrorism alone. Wholesale arrests, banishment, and hangings only added to the number of the disaffected, especially as the condemned went to their doom with a calm heroism that inspired the desire of imitation or revenge. Repression must clearly be accompanied by reforms that would bridge over the gulf ever widening between the Government and the thinking classes of the people. He began by persuading the Emperor to release several hundreds of suspects and to relax the severe measures adopted against the students of the Universities. Lastly, he sought to induce the Czar to establish representative institutions, for which even the nobles were beginning to petition. Little by little he familiarised him with the plan of extending the system of the Zemstvos, so that there should be elective councils for towns and provinces, as well as delegations from the provincial noblesse. He did not propose to democratise the central Government. In his scheme the deputies of nobles and representatives of provinces and towns were to send delegates to the Council of State, a purely consultative body which Alexander I. had founded in 1802.

Despite the tentative nature of these proposals, and the favourable reception accorded to them by the Council of State, the Czar for several days withheld his assent. On March 9 he signed the ukase, only to postpone its publication until March 12. Not until the morning of March 13 did he give the final order for its publication in the Messager Officiel. It was his last act as lawgiver. On that day (March 1, and Sunday, in the Russian calendar) he went to the usual military parade, despite the earnest warnings of the Czarevitch and Loris Melikoff as to a rumoured Nihilist plot. To their pleadings he returned the answer, "Only Providence can protect me, and when it ceases to do so, these Cossacks cannot possibly help." On his return, alongside of the Catharine Canal, a bomb was thrown under his carriage; the explosion tore the back off the carriage, injuring some of his Cossack escort, but leaving the Emperor unhurt. True to his usual feelings of compassion, he at once alighted to inquire after the wounded. This act cost him his life. Another Nihilist quickly approached and flung a bomb right at his feet. As soon as the smoke cleared away, Alexander was seen to be frightfully mangled and lying in his blood. He could only murmur, "Quick, home; carry to the Palace; there die." There, surrounded by his dearest ones, Alexander II. breathed his last.

In striking down the liberator of the serfs when on the point of recurring to earlier and better methods of rule, the Nihilists had dealt the death-blow to their own cause. As soon as the details of the outrage were known, the old love for the Czar welled forth: his imperfections in public and private life, the seeming weakness of his foreign policy, and his recent use of terrorism against the party of progress were forgotten; and to the sensitive Russian nature, ever prone to extremes, his figure stood forth as the friend of peace, and the would-be reformer, hindered in his efforts by unwise advisers and an untoward destiny.

* * * * *

His successor was a man cast in a different mould. It is one of the peculiarities of the recent history of Russia that her rulers have broken away from the policy of their immediate predecessors, to recur to that which they had discarded. The vague and generous Liberalism of Alexander I. gave way in 1825 to the stern autocracy of his brother, Nicholas I. This being shattered by the Crimean War, Alexander II. harked back to the ideals of his uncle, and that, too, in the wavering and unsatisfactory way which had brought woe to that ruler and unrest to the people. Alexander III., raised to the throne by the bombs of the revolutionaries, determined to mould his policy on the principles of autocracy and orthodoxy. To pose as a reformer would have betokened fear of the Nihilists; and the new ruler, gifted with a magnificent physique, a narrow mind, and a stern will, ever based his conduct on elementary notions that appealed to the peasant and the common soldier. In 1825 Nicholas I. had cowed the would-be rebels at his capital by a display of defiant animal courage. Alexander III. resolved to do the like. He had always been noted for a quiet persistence on which arguments fell in vain. The nickname, "bullock," which his father early gave him (shortened by his future subjects to "bull"), sufficiently summed up the supremacy of the material over the mental that characterised the new ruler. Bismarck, who knew him, had a poor idea of his abilities, and summed up his character by saying that he looked at things from the point of view of a Russian peasant[228]. That remark supplies a key to Russian politics during the years 1881-94.

[Footnote 228: Reminiscences of Bismarck, by S. Whitman, p. 114; Bismarck: some Secret Pages of his History, by M. Busch, vol. iii. p. 150.]

At first, when informed by Melikoff that the late Czar was on the point of making the constitutional experiment described above, Alexander III. exclaimed, "Change nothing in the orders of my father. This shall count as his will and testament." If he had held to this generous resolve the world's history would perhaps have been very different. Had he published his father's last orders; had he appealed to the people, like another Antony over the corpse of Cæar, the enthusiastic Slav temperament would have eagerly responded to this mark of Imperial confidence. Loyalty to the throne and fury against the Nihilists would have been the dominant feelings of the age, impelling all men to make the wisest use of the thenceforth sacred bequest of constitutional freedom.

The man who is believed to have blighted these hopes was Pobyedonosteff, the Procureur of the highest Ecclesiastical Court of the Empire. To him had been confided the education of the present Czar; and the fervour of his orthodoxy, as well as the clear-cut simplicity of his belief in old Muscovite customs, had gained complete ascendancy over the mind of his pupil. Different estimates have been formed as to the character of Pobyedonosteff. In the eyes of some he is a conscientious zealot who believes in the mission of Holy Russia to vivify an age corrupted by democracy and unbelief; others regard him as the Russian Macchiavelli, straining his beliefs to an extent which his reason rejects, in order to gain power through the mechanism of the autocracy and the Greek Church. The thin face, passionless gaze, and coldly logical utterance bespeak the politician rather than the zealot; yet there seems to be good reason for believing that he is a "fanatic by reflection," not by temperament[229]. A volume of Reflections which he has given to the world contains some entertaining judgments on the civilisation of the West. It may be worth while to select a few, as showing the views of the man who, through his pupil, influenced the fate of Russia and of the world.

[Footnote 229: Russia under Alexander III., by H. von Samson-Himmelstierna, Eng. ed. ch. vii.]

Parliament is an institution serving for the satisfaction of the personal ambition, vanity, and self-interest of its members. The institution of Parliament is indeed one of the greatest illustrations of human delusion. . . . On the pediment of this edifice is inscribed, "All for the public good." This is no more than a lying formula: Parliamentarism is the triumph of egoism--its highest expression. . . .

From the day that man first fell, falsehood has ruled the world--ruled it in human speech, in the practical business of life, in all its relations and institutions. But never did the Father of Lies spin such webs of falsehood of every kind as in this restless age. . . . The press is one of the falsest institutions of our time.

In the chapter "Power and Authority" the author holds up to the gaze of a weary world a refreshing vision of a benevolent despotism which will save men in spite of themselves.

Power is the depository of truth, and needs, above all things, men of truth, of clear intellects, of strong understandings, and of sincere speech, who know the limits of "yes" and "no," and never transcend them, etc[230].

[Footnote 230: Pobyedonosteff; his Reflections, Eng. ed.]

To this Muscovite Laud was now entrusted the task of drafting a manifesto in the interests of "power" and "truth."

Meanwhile the Nihilists themselves had helped on the cause of reaction. Even before the funeral of Alexander II. their executive committee had forwarded to his successor a document beseeching him to give up arbitrary power and to take the people into his confidence. While purporting to impose no conditions, the Nihilist chiefs urged him to remember that two measures were needful preliminaries to any general pacification, namely, a general amnesty of all political offenders, as being merely "executors of a hard civic duty"; and "the convocation of representatives of all the Russian people for a revision and reform of all the private laws of the State, according to the will of the nation." In order that the election of this Assembly might be a reality, the Czar was pressed to grant freedom of speech and of public meetings[231].

[Footnote 231: The whole document is printed in the Appendix to "Stepniak's" Underground Russia.]

It is difficult to say whether the Nihilists meant this document as an appeal, or whether the addition of the demand of a general amnesty was intended to anger the Czar and drive him into the arms of the reactionaries. In either case, to press for the immediate pardon of his father's murderers appeared to Alexander III. an unpardonable insult. Thenceforth between him and the revolutionaries there could be no truce. As a sop to quiet the more moderate reformers, he ordered the appointment of a Commission, including a few members of Zemstvos, and even one peasant, to inquire into the condition of public-houses and the excessive consumption of vodka. Beyond this humdrum though useful question the imperial reformer did not deign to move.

After a short truce, the revolutionaries speedily renewed their efforts against the chief officials who were told off to crush them; but it soon became clear that they had lost the good-will of the middle class. The Liberals looked on them, not merely as the murderers of the liberating Czar, but as the destroyers of the nascent constitution; and the masses looked on unmoved while five of the accomplices in the outrage of March 13 were slowly done to death. In the next year twenty-two more suspects were arrested on the same count; ten were hanged and the rest exiled to Siberia. Despite these inroads into the little band of desperadoes, the survivors compassed the murder of the Public Prosecutor as he sat in a café at Odessa (March 30, 1882). On the other hand, the official police were helped for a time by zealous loyalists, who formed a "Holy Band" for secretly countermining the Nihilist organisation. These amateur detectives, however, did little except appropriate large donations, arrest a few harmless travellers and no small number of the secret police force. The professionals thereupon complained to the Czar, who suppressed the "Holy Band."

The events of the years 1883 and 1884 showed that even the army, on which the Czar was bestowing every care, was permeated with Nihilism, women having by their arts won over many officers to the revolutionary cause. Poland, also, writhing with discontent under the Czar's stern despotism, was worked on with success by their emissaries; and the ardour of the Poles made the recruits especially dangerous to the authorities, ever fearful of another revolt in that unhappy land. Finally, the Czar was fain to shut himself up in nearly complete seclusion in his palace at Gatchina, near St. Petersburg, or in his winter retreat at Livadia, on the southern shores of the Crimea.

These facts are of more than personal and local importance. They powerfully affected the European polity. These were the years which saw the Bulgarian Question come to a climax; and the impotence of Russia enabled that people and their later champions to press on to a solution which would have been impossible had the Czar been free to strike as he undoubtedly willed. For the present he favoured the cause of peace upheld by his chancellor, de Giers; and in the autumn of the year 1884, as will be shown in the following chapter, he entered into a compact at Skiernewice, which virtually allotted to Bismarck the arbitration on all urgent questions in the Balkans. As late as November 1885, we find Sir Robert Morier, British ambassador at the Russian Court, writing privately and in very homely phrase to his colleague at Constantinople, Sir William White: "I am convinced Russia does not want a general war in Europe about Turkey now, and that she is really suffering from a gigantic Katzenjammer (surfeit) caused by the last war[232]." It is safe to say that Bulgaria largely owes her freedom from Russian control to the Nihilists.

[Footnote 232: Memoirs and Correspondence of Sir William White, edited by H.S. Edwards, ch. xviii.]

For the Czar the strain of prolonged warfare against unseen and desperate foes was terrible. Surrounded by sentries, shadowed by secret police, the lonely man yet persisted in governing with the assiduity and thoroughness of the great Napoleon. He tried to pry into all the affairs of his vast empire; and, as he held aloof even from his chief Ministers, he insisted that they should send to him detailed reports on all the affairs of State, foreign and domestic, military and naval, religious and agrarian. What wonder that the Nihilists persisted in their efforts, in the hope that even his giant strength must break down under the crushing burdens of toil and isolation. That he held up so long shows him to have been one of the strongest men and most persistent workers known to history. He had but one source of inspiration, religious zeal, and but one form of relaxation, the love of his devoted Empress.

It is needless to refer to the later phases of the revolutionary movement. Despite their well-laid plans, the revolutionaries gradually lost ground; and in 1892 even Stepniak confessed that they alone could not hope to overthrow the autocracy. About that time, too, their party began to split in twain, a younger group claiming that the old terrorist methods must be replaced by economic propaganda of an advanced socialistic type among the workers of the towns. For this new departure and its results we must refer our readers to the new materials brought to light by Sir D. Mackenzie Wallace in the new edition of his work Russia (1905).

Here we can point out only a few of the more general causes that contributed to the triumph of the Czar. In the first place, the difficulties in the way of common action among the proletariat of Russia are very great. Millions of peasants, scattered over vast plains, where the great struggle is ever against the forces of nature, cannot effectively combine. Students of history will observe that even where the grievances are mainly agrarian, as in the France of 1789, the first definite outbreak is wont to occur in great towns. Russia has no Paris, eager to voice the needs of the many.

Then again, the Russian peasants are rooted in customs and superstitions which cling about the Czar with strange tenacity and are proof against the reasoning of strangers. Their rising could, therefore, be very partial; besides which, the land is for the most part unsuited to the guerilla tactics that so often have favoured the cause of liberty in mountainous lands. The Czar and his officials know that the strength of their system lies in the ignorance of the peasants, in the soldierly instincts of their immense army, and in the spread of railways and telegraphs, which enables the central power to crush the beginnings of revolt. Thus the Czar's authority, resting incongruously on a faith dumb and grovelling as that of the Dark Ages, and on the latest developments of mechanical science, has been able to defy the tendencies of the age and the strivings of Russian reformers.

* * * * *

The aim of this work prescribes a survey of those events alone which have made modern States what they are to-day; but the victory of absolutism in Russia has had so enormous an influence on the modern world--not least in the warping of democracy in France--that it will be well to examine the operation of other forces which contributed to the set back of reform in that Empire, especially as they involved a change in the relations of the central power to alien races in general, and to the Grand Duchy of Finland in particular.

These forces, or ideals, may be summed up in the old Slavophil motto, "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality." These old Muscovite ideals had lent strength to Nicholas I. in his day; and his grandson now determined to appeal to the feeling of Nationality in its narrowest and strongest form. That instinct, which Mazzini looked on as the means of raising in turn all the peoples of the world to the loftier plane of Humanity, was now to be the chief motive in the propulsion of the Juggernaut car of the Russian autocracy.

The first to feel the weight of the governmental machine were the Jews. Rightly or wrongly, they were thought to be concerned in the peculations that disgraced the campaign of 1877 and in the plot for the murder of Alexander II. In quick succession the officials and the populace found out that outrages on the Jews would not be displeasing at headquarters. The secret once known, the rabble of several towns took the law into their own hands. In scores of places throughout the years 1881 and 1882, the mob plundered and fired their shops and houses, beat the wretched inmates, and in some cases killed them outright. At Elisabetgrad and Kiev the Jewish quarters were systematically pillaged and then given over to the flames. The fury reached its climax at the small town of Balta; the rabble pillaged 976 Jewish houses, and, not content with seizing all the wealth that came to hand, killed eight of the traders, besides wounding 211 others.

Doubtless these outrages were largely due to race-hatred as well as to spite on the part of the heedless, slovenly natives against the keen and grasping Hebrews. The same feelings have at times swept over Roumania, Austria, Germany, and France. Jew-baiting has appealed even to nominally enlightened peoples as a novel and profitable kind of sport; and few of its votaries have had the hypocritical effrontery to cloak their conduct under the plea of religious zeal. The movement has at bottom everywhere been a hunt after Jewish treasure, embittered by the hatred of the clown for the successful trader, of the individualist native for an alien, clannish, and successful community. In Russia religious motives may possibly have weighed with the Czar and the more ignorant and bigoted of the peasantry; but levelling and communistic ideas certainly accounted for the widespread plundering--witness the words often on the lips of the rioters: "We are breakfasting on the Jews; we shall dine on the landlords, and sup on the priests." In 1890 there appeared a ukase ordering the return of the Jews to those provinces and districts where they had been formerly allowed to settle--that is, chiefly in the South and West; and all foreign Jews were expelled from the Empire. It is believed that as many as 225,000 Jewish families left Russia in the sixteen months following[233].

[Footnote 233: Rambaud, Histoire de la Russie, ch. xxxviii.; Lowe, Alexander III. of Russia, ch. viii.; H. Frederic, The New Exodus; Professor Errera, The Russian Jews.]

The next onslaught was made against a body of Christian dissenters, the humble community known as Stundists. These God-fearing peasants had taken a German name because the founder of their sect had been converted at the Stunden, or hour-long services, of German Lutherans long settled in the south of Russia; they held a simple evangelical faith; their conduct was admittedly far better than that of the peasants, who held to the mass of customs and superstitions dignified by the name of the orthodox Greek creed; and their piety and zeal served to spread the evangelical faith, especially among the more emotional people of South Russia, known as Little Russians.

Up to the year 1878, Alexander II. refrained from persecuting them, possibly because he felt some sympathy with men who were fast raising themselves and their fellows above the old level of brutish ignorance. But in that year the Greek Church pressed him to take action. If he chastised them with whips, his son lashed them with scorpions. He saw that they were sapping the base of one of the three pillars that supported the imperial fabric--Orthodoxy, in the Russian sense. Orders went forth to stamp out the heretic pest. At once all the strength of the governmental machine was brought to bear on these non-resisting peasants. Imprisonment, exile, execution--such was their lot. Their communities, perhaps the happiest then to be found in rural Russia, were broken up, to be flung into remote corners of Transcaucasia or Siberia, and there doomed to the régime of the knout or the darkness of the mines[234]. According to present appearances the persecutors have succeeded. The evangelical faith seems to have been almost stamped out even in South Russia; and the Greek Church has regained its hold on the allegiance, if not on the beliefs and affections, of the masses.

[Footnote 234: See an article by Count Leo Tolstoy in the Contemporary Review for November 1895; also a pamphlet on "The Stundists," with Preface by Rev. J. Brown, D.D.]

To account for this fact, we must remember the immense force of tradition and custom among a simple rural folk, also that very many Russians sincerely believe that their institutions and their national creed were destined to regenerate Europe. See, they said in effect, Western Europe oscillates between papal control and free thought; its industries, with their laissez faire methods, raise the few to enormous wealth and crush the many into a new serfdom worse than the old. For all these evils Russia has a cure; her autocracy saves her from the profitless wrangling of Parliaments; her national Church sums up the beliefs and traditions of nobles and peasants; and at the base of her social system she possesses in the "Mir" a patriarchal communism against which the forces of the West will beat in vain. Looking on the Greek Church as a necessary part of the national life, they sought to wield its powers for nationalising all the races of that motley Empire. "Russia for the Russians," cried the Slavophils. "Let us be one people, with one creed. Let us reverence the Czar as head of the Church and of the State. In this unity lies our strength." However defective the argument logically, yet in the realm of sentiment, in which the Slavs live, move, and have their being, the plea passed muster. National pride was pressed into the service of the persecutors; and all dissenters, whether Roman Catholics of Poland, Lutherans of the Baltic Provinces, or Stundists of the Ukraine, felt the remorseless grinding of the State machine, while the Greek Church exalted its horn as it had not done for a century past.

Other sides of this narrowly nationalising policy were seen in the determined repression of Polish feelings, of the Germans in the Baltic provinces, and of the Armenians of Transcaucasia. Finally, remorseless pressure was brought to bear on that interesting people, the Finns. We can here refer only to the last of these topics. The Germans in the Provinces of Livonia, Courland, and Esthonia formed the majority only among the land-holding and merchant classes; and the curbing of their semi-feudal privileges wore the look of a democratic reform.

* * * * *

The case was far different with the Finns. They are a non-Aryan people, and therefore differ widely from the Swedes and Russians. For centuries they formed part of the Swedish monarchy, deriving thence in large measure their literature, civilisation, and institutions. To this day the Swedish tongue is used by about one-half of their gentry and burghers. On the annexation of Finland by Alexander I., in consequence of the Franco-Russian compact framed at Tilsit in 1807, he made to their Estates a solemn promise to respect their constitution and laws. Similar engagements have been made by his successors. Despite some attempts by Nicholas I. to shelve the constitution of the Grand Duchy, local liberties remained almost intact up to a comparatively recent time. In the year 1869 the Finns gained further guarantees of their rights. Alexander II. then ratified the laws of Finland, and caused a statement of the relations between Finland and Russia to be drawn up.

In view of the recent struggle between the Czar and the Finnish people, it may be well to give a sketch of their constitution. The sovereign governs, not as Emperor of Russia, but as Grand Duke of Finland. He delegates his administrative powers to a Senate, which is presided over by a Governor-General. This important official, as a matter of fact, has always been a Russian; his powers are, or rather were[235], shared by two sections of the Finnish Senate, each composed of ten members nominated by the Grand Duke. The Senate prepares laws and ordinances which the Grand Duke then submits to the Diet. This body consists of four Orders--nobles, clergy, burghers, and peasants. Since 1886 it has enjoyed to a limited extent the right of initiating laws. The Orders sit and vote separately. In most cases a resolution that is passed by three of them becomes law, when it has received the assent of the Grand Duke. But the assent of a majority in each of the four Orders is needed in the case of a proposal that affects the constitution of the Grand Duchy and the privileges of the Orders. In case a Bill is accepted by two Orders and is rejected by the other two, a deadlock is averted by each of the Orders appointing fifteen delegates; these sixty delegates, meeting without discussion, vote by ballot, and a bare majority carries the day. Measures are then referred to the Grand Duke, who, after consulting the Senate, gives or witholds his assent[236].

[Footnote 235: A law of the autumn of 1902 altered this. It delegated the administration to the Governor-General, assisted by the Senate.]

[Footnote 236: For the constitution of Finland and its relation to Russia, see A Précis of the Public Law of Finland, by L. Mechelin, translated by C.J. Cooke (1889); Pour la Finlande, par Jean Deck; Pour la Finlande, La Constitution du Grand Duché de Finlande (Paris, 1900). J.R. Danielsson, Finland's Union with the Russian Empire (Borga, 1891).]

A very important clause of the law of 1869 declares that "Fundamental laws can be made, altered, explained, or repealed, only on the representation of the Emperor and Grand Duke, and with the consent of all the Estates." This clause sharply marked off Finland from Russia, where the power of the Czar is theoretically unlimited. New taxes may not be imposed nor old taxes altered without the consent of the Finnish Diet; but, strange to say, the customs dues are fixed by the Government (that is, by the Grand Duke and the Senate) without the co-operation of the Diet. Despite the archaic form of its representation, the Finnish constitution (an offshoot of that of Sweden) has worked extremely well; and in regard to civil freedom and religious toleration, the Finns take their place among the most progressive communities of the world. Moreover, the constitution is no recent and artificial creation; it represents customs and beliefs that are deeply ingrained in a people who, like their Magyar kinsmen, cling firmly to the old, even while they hopefully confront the facts of the present. There was every ground for hope. Between the years 1812 and 1886 the population grew from 900,000 to 2,300,000, and the revenue from less than 7,000,000 marks (a Finnish mark = about ten pence) to 40,000,000 marks.

Possibly this prosperity prompted in the Russian bureaucracy the desire to bring the Grand Duchy closely into line with the rest of the Empire. On grounds other than constitutional, the bureaucrats had a case. They argued that while the revenue of Finland was increasing faster than that of Russia Proper, yet the Grand Duchy bore no share of the added military burdens. It voted only 17 per cent of its revenue for military defence as against 28 per cent set apart in the Russian Budget. The fact that the Swedish and Finnish languages, as well as Finnish money, were alone used on the railways of the Grand Duchy, even within a few miles of St. Petersburg, also formed a cause of complaint. When, therefore, the Slavophils began to raise a hue and cry against everything that marred the symmetry of the Empire, an anti-Finnish campaign lay in the nature of things. Historical students discovered that the constitution was the gift of the Czars, and that their goodwill had been grossly misused by the Finns. Others, who could not deny the validity of the Finnish constitution, claimed that even constitutions and laws must change with changing circumstances; that a narrow particularism was out of place in an age of railways and telegraphs; and that Finland must take its fair share in the work of national defence[237].

[Footnote 237: See for the Russian case d'Elenew, Les Prétentions des Séparatistes finlandais (1895); also La Conquête de la Finlande, by K. Ordine (1889)--answered by J.R. Danielsson, op. cit.; also Russland und Finland vom russischen Standpunkte aus betrachtet, by "Sarmatus" (1903).]

Little by little Alexander III. put in force this Slavophil creed against Finland. His position as Grand Duke gave him the right of initiating laws; but he overstepped his constitutional powers by imposing various changes. In January 1890 he appointed three committees, sitting at St. Petersburg, to bring the coinage, the customs system, and the postal service of Finland into harmony with those of Russia. In June there appeared an imperial ukase assimilating the postal service of Finland to that of Russia--an illegal act which led to the resignation of the Finnish Ministers. In May 1891 the "Committee for Finnish Affairs," sitting at St. Petersburg, was abolished; and that year saw other efforts curbing the liberty of the Press, and extending the use of the Russian language in the government of the Grand Duchy.

The trenches having now been pushed forward against the outworks of Finnish freedom, an assault was prepared against the ramparts--the constitution itself. The assailants discovered in it a weak point, a lack of clearness in the clauses specifying the procedure to be followed in matters where common action had to be taken in Finland and in Russia. They saw here a chance of setting up an independent authority, which, under the guise of interpreting the constitution, could be used for its suspension and overthrow. A committee, consisting of six Russians and four Finns, was appointed at the close of the year 1892 to codify laws and take the necessary action. It sat at St. Petersburg; but the opposition of the Finnish members, backed up by the public opinion of the whole Duchy, sufficed to postpone any definite decision. Probably this time of respite was due to the reluctance felt by Alexander III. in his closing days to push matters to an extreme.

The alternating tendencies so well marked in the generations of the Romanoff rulers made themselves felt at the accession of Nicholas II. (Nov. 1, 1894). Lacking the almost animal force which carried Alexander III. so far in certain grooves, he resembles the earlier sovereigns of that name in the generous cosmopolitanism and dreamy good nature which shed an autumnal haze over their careers. Unfortunately the reforming Czars have been without the grit of the crowned Boyars, who trusted in Cossack, priest, and knout; and too often they have bent before the reactionary influences always strong at the Russian Court. To this peculiarity in the nature of Nicholas II. we may probably refer the oscillations in his Finnish policy. In the first years of his reign he gradually abated the rigour of his father's regime, and allowed greater liberty of the Press in Finland. The number of articles suppressed sank from 216 in the year 1893 to 40 in 1897[238].

[Footnote 238: Pour la Finlande, par Jean Deck, p. 36.]

The hopes aroused by this display of moderation soon vanished. Early in 1898 the appointment of General Kuropatkin to the Ministry for War for Russia foreboded evil to the Grand Duchy. The new Minister speedily counselled the exploitation of the resources of Finland for the benefit of the Empire. Already the Russian General Staff had made efforts in this direction; and now Kuropatkin, supported by the whole weight of the Slavophil party, sought to convince the Czar of the danger of leaving the Finns with a separate military organisation. A military committee, in which there was only one Finn, the Minister Procope, had for some time been sitting at St. Petersburg, and finally gained over Nicholas II. to its views. He is said to have formed his final decision during his winter stay at Livadia in the Crimea, owing to the personal intervention of Kuropatkin, and that too in face of a protest from the Finnish Minister, Procope, against the suspension by imperial ukase of a fundamental law of the Grand Duchy. The Czar must have known of the unlawfulness of the present procedure, for on November 6/18, 1894, shortly after his accession, he signed the following declaration:--

. . . We have hereby desired to confirm and ratify the religion, the fundamental laws, the rights and privileges of every class in the said Grand Duchy, in particular, and all its inhabitants high and low in general, which they, according to the constitution of this country, had enjoyed, promising to preserve the same steadfastly and in full force[239].

[Footnote 239: The Rights of Finland, p. 4 (Stockholm 1899). See too for the whole question Finland and the Tsars, 1809-1899, by J.R. Fisher (London, 2nd Edit. 1900).]

The military system of Finland having been definitely organised by the Finnish law of 1878, that statute clearly came within the scope of those "fundamental laws" which Nicholas II. had promised to uphold in full force. We can imagine, then, the astonishment which fell on the Finnish Diet and people on the presentation of the famous Imperial Manifesto of February 3/15, 1899. While expressing a desire to leave purely Finnish affairs to the consideration of the Government and Diet of the Grand Duchy, the Czar warned his Finnish subjects that there were others that could not be so treated, seeing that they were "closely bound up with the needs of the whole Empire." As the Finnish constitution pointed out no way of treating such subjects, it was needful now to complete the existing institutions of the Duchy. The Manifesto proceded as follows:--

Whilst maintaining in full force the now prevailing statutes which concern the promulgation of local laws touching exclusively the internal affairs of Finland, We have found it necessary to reserve to Ourselves the ultimate decision as to which laws come within the scope of the general legislation of the Empire. With this in view, We have with Our Royal Hand established and confirmed the fundamental statutes for the working out, revision, and promulgation of laws issued for the Empire, including the Grand Duchy of Finland, which are proclaimed simultaneously herewith[240].

[Footnote 240: The Rights of Finland, pp. 6-7 also in Pour la Finlande, par J. Deck, p. 43.]

The accompanying enactments made it clear that the Finnish Diet would thenceforth have only consultative duties in respect to any measure which seemed to the Czar to involve the interests of Russia as well as of Finland. In fact, the proposals of February 15 struck at the root of the constitution, subjecting it in all important matters to the will of the autocrat at St. Petersburg. At once the Finns saw the full extent of the calamity. They observed the following Sunday as a day of mourning; the people of Helsingfors, the capital, gathered around the statue of Alexander II., the organiser of their liberties, as a mute appeal to the generous instincts of his grandson. Everywhere, even in remote villages, solemn meetings of protest were held; but no violent act marred the impressiveness of these demonstrations attesting the surprise and grief of a loyal people.

By an almost spontaneous impulse a petition was set on foot begging the Czar to reconsider his decision. If ever a petition deserved the name "national," it was that of Finland. Towns and villages signed almost en masse. Ski-runners braved the hardships of a severe winter in the effort to reach remote villages within the Arctic Circle; and within five days (March 10-14) 529,931 names were signed, the marks of illiterates being rejected. All was in vain. The Czar refused to receive the petition, and ordered the bearers of it to return home[241].

[Footnote 241: The Rights of Finland, pp. 23-30.]

The Russian Governor-General of Finland then began a brisk campaign against the Finnish newspapers. Four were promptly suppressed, while there were forty-three cases of "suspension" in the year 1899 alone. The public administration also underwent a drastic process of russification, Finnish officials and policemen being in very many cases ousted by Muscovites. Early in the year 1901 local postage stamps gave place to those of the Empire. Above all, General Kuropatkin was able almost completely to carry out his designs against the Finnish army, the law of 1901 practically abolishing the old constitutional force and compelling Finns to serve in any part of the Empire--in defiance of the old statutes which limited their services to the Grand Duchy itself.

The later developments of this interesting question fall without the scope of this volume. We can therefore only state that the steadfast opposition of the Finns to these illegal proceedings led to still harsher treatment, and that the few concessions granted since the outbreak of the Japanese War have apparently failed to soothe the resentment aroused by the former unprovoked attacks upon the liberties of Finland.

* * * * *

One fact, which cannot fail to elicit the attention of thoughtful students of contemporary history, is the absence of able leaders in the popular struggles of the age. Whether we look at the orderly resistance of the Finns, the efforts of the Russian revolutionaries, or the fitful efforts now and again put forth by the Poles, the same discouraging symptom is everywhere apparent. More than once the hour seemed to have struck for the overthrow of the old order, but no man appeared. Other instances might of course be cited to show that the adage about the hour and the man is more picturesque than true. The democratic movements of 1848-49 went to pieces largely owing to the coyness of the requisite hero. Or rather, perhaps, we ought to say that the heroes were there, in the persons of Cavour and Garibaldi, Bismarck and Moltke; but no one was at hand to set them in the places which they filled so ably in 1858-70. Will the future see the hapless, unguided efforts of to-day championed in an equally masterful way? If so, the next generation may see strange things happen in Russia, as also elsewhere.

Two suggestions may be advanced, with all diffidence, as to the reasons for the absence of great leaders in the movements of to-day. As we noted in the chapter dealing with the suppression of the Paris Commune of 1871, the centralised Governments now have a great material advantage in dealing with local disaffection owing to their control of telegraphs, railways, and machine-guns. This fact tells with crushing force, not only at the time of popular rising, but also on the men who work to that end. Little assurance was needed in the old days to compass the overthrow of Italian Dukes and German Translucencies. To-day he would be a man of boundlessly inspiring power who could hopefully challenge Czar or Kaiser to a conflict. The other advantage which Governments possess is in the intellectual sphere. There can be no doubt that the mere size of the States and Governments of the present age exercises a deadening effect on the minds of individuals. As the vastness of London produces inertia in civic affairs, so, too, the great Empires tend to deaden the initiative and boldness of their subjects. Those priceless qualities are always seen to greatest advantage in small States like the Athens of Pericles, the England of Elizabeth, or the Geneva of Rousseau; they are stifled under the pyramidal mass of the Empire of the Czars; and as a result there is seen a respectable mediocrity, equal only to the task of organising street demonstrations and abortive mutinies. It may be that in the future some commanding genius will arise, able to free himself from the paralysing incubus, to fire the dull masses with hope, and to turn the very vastness of the governmental machine into a means of destruction. But, for that achievement, he will need the magnetism of a Mirabeau, the savagery of a Marat, and the organising powers of a Bonaparte.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XII. THE TRIPLE AND DUAL ALLIANCES

"International policy is a fluid element which, under certain conditions, will solidify, but, on a change of atmosphere, reverts to its original condition."--Bismarck's Reflections and Reminiscences.

It is one thing to build up a system of States: it is quite another thing to guarantee their existence. As in the life of individuals, so in that of nations, longevity is generally the result of a sound constitution, a healthy environment, and prudent conduct. That the new States of Europe possessed the first two of these requisites will be obvious to all who remember that they are co-extensive with those great limbs of Humanity, nations. Yet even so they needed protection from the intrigues of jealous dynasties and of dispossessed princes or priests, which have so often doomed promising experiments to failure. It is therefore essential to our present study to observe the means which endowed the European system with stability.

Here again the master-builder was Bismarck. As he had concentrated all the powers of his mind on the completion of German unity (with its natural counterpart in Italy), so, too, he kept them on the stretch for its preservation. For two decades his policy bestrode the continent like a Colossus. It rested on two supporting ideas. The one was the maintenance of alliance with Russia, which had brought the events of the years 1863-70 within the bounds of possibility; the other aim was the isolation of France. Subsidiary notions now and again influenced him, as in 1884 when he sought to make bad blood between Russia and England in Central Asian affairs (see Chapter XIV.), or to busy all the Powers in colonial undertakings: but these considerations were secondary to the two main motives, which at one point converged and begot a haunting fear (the realisation of which overclouded his last years) that Russia and France would unite against Germany.

In order, as he thought, to obviate for ever a renewal of the "policy of Tilsit" of the year 1807, he sought to favour the establishment of the Republic in France. In his eyes, the more Radical it was the better: and when Count von Arnim, the German ambassador at Paris, ventured to contravene his instructions in this matter, he subjected him to severe reproof and finally to disgrace. However harsh in his methods, Bismarck was undoubtedly right in substance. The main consideration was that which he set forth in his letter of December 20, 1872, to the Count:--"We want France to leave us in peace, and we have to prevent France finding an ally if she does not keep the peace. As long as France has no allies she is not dangerous to Germany." A monarchical reaction, he thought, might lead France to accord with Russia or Austria. A Republic of the type sought for by Gambetta could never achieve that task. Better, then, the red flag waving at Paris than the fleur-de-lys.

Still more important was it to bring about complete accord between the three empires. Here again the red spectre proved to be useful. Various signs seemed to point to socialism as the common enemy of them all. The doctrines of Bakunin, Herzen, and Lassalle had already begun to work threateningly in their midst, and Bismarck discreetly used this community of interest in one particular to bring about an agreement on matters purely political. In the month of September 1872 he realised one of his dearest hopes. The Czar, Alexander II., and the Austrian Emperor, Francis Joseph, visited Berlin, where they were most cordially received. At that city the chancellors of the three empires exchanged official memoranda--there seems to have been no formal treaty[242]--whereby they agreed to work together for the following purposes: the maintenance of the boundaries recently laid down, the settlement of problems arising from the Eastern Question, and the repression of revolutionary movements in Europe.

[Footnote 242: In his speech of February 19, 1878, Bismarck said, "The liaison of the three Emperors, which is habitually designated an alliance, rests on no written agreement and does not compel any one of the three Emperors to submit to the decisions of the two others."]

Such was the purport of the Three Emperors' League of 1872. There is little doubt that Bismarck had worked on the Czar, always nervous as to the growth of the Nihilist movement in Russia, in order to secure his adhesion to the first two provisions of the new compact, which certainly did not benefit Russia. The German Chancellor has since told us that, as early as the month of September 1870, he sought to form such a league, with the addition of the newly-united Italian realm, in order to safeguard the interests of monarchy against republicans and revolutionaries[243]. After the lapse of two years his wish took effect, though Italy as yet did not join the cause of order. The new league stood forth as the embodiment of autocracy and a terror to the dissatisfied, whether revengeful Gauls, Danes, or Poles, intriguing cardinals--it was the time of the "May Laws"--or excited men who waved the red flag. It was a new version of the Holy Alliance formed after Waterloo by the monarchs of the very same Powers, which, under the plea of watching against French enterprises, succeeded in bolstering up despotism on the Continent for a whole generation.

[Footnote 243: Débidour, Histoire diplomatique de l'Europe, vol. ii. pp. 458-59; Bismarck, Reflections and Reminiscences, vol. ii. ch. xxix.]

Fortunately for the cause of liberty, the new league had little of the solidity of its predecessor. Either because the dangers against which it guarded were less serious, or owing to the jealousies which strained its structure from within, signs of weakness soon appeared, and the imposing fabric was disfigured by cracks which all the plastering of diplomatists failed to conceal. An eminent Russian historian, M. Tatischeff, has recently discovered the hidden divulsive agency. It seems that, not long after the formation of the Three Emperors' League, Germany and Austria secretly formed a separate compact, whereby the former agreed eventually to secure to the latter due compensation in the Balkan Peninsula for her losses in the wars of 1859 and 1866 (Lombardy, Venetia, and the control of the German Confederation, along with Holstein)[244].

[Footnote 244: The Emperor Alexander II.: His Life and Reign, by S.S. Tatischeff (St. Petersburg, 1903), Appendix to vol. ii.]

That is, the two Central Powers in 1872 secretly agreed to take action in the way in which Austria advanced in 1877-78, when she secured Herzegovina. When and to what extent Russian diplomatists became aware of this separate agreement is not known, but their suspicion or their resentment appears to have prompted them to the unfriendly action towards Germany which they took in the year 1875. According to the Bismarck Reflections and Reminiscences, the Russian Chancellor, Prince Gortchakoff, felt so keenly jealous of the rapid rise of the German Chancellor to fame and pre-eminence as to spread "the lie" that Germany was about to fall upon France. Even the uninitiated reader might feel some surprise that the Russian Chancellor should have endangered the peace of Europe and his own credit as a statesman for so slight a motive; but it now seems that Bismarck's assertion must be looked on as a "reflection," not as a "reminiscence."

The same remark may perhaps apply to his treatment of the "affair of 1875," which largely determined the future groupings of the Powers. At that time the recovery of France from the wounds of 1870 was well nigh complete; her military and constitutional systems were taking concrete form; and in the early part of the year 1875 the Chambers decreed a large increase to the armed forces in the form of "the fourth battalions." At once the military party at Berlin took alarm, and through their chief, Moltke, pressed on the Emperor William the need of striking promptly at France. The Republic, so they argued, could not endure the strain which it now voluntarily underwent; the outcome must be war; and war at once would be the most statesmanlike and merciful course. Whether the Emperor in any way acceded to these views is not known. He is said to have more than once expressed a keen desire to end his reign in peace.

The part which Bismarck played at this crisis is also somewhat obscure. If the German Government wished to attack France, the natural plan would have been to keep that design secret until the time for action arrived. But it did not do so. Early in the month of April, von Radowitz, a man of high standing at the Court of Berlin, took occasion to speak to the French ambassador, de Gontaut-Biron, at a ball, and warned him in the most significant manner of the danger of war owing to the increase of French armaments. According to de Blowitz, the Paris correspondent of the Times (who had his information direct from the French Premier, the Duc Decazes), Germany intended to "bleed France white" by compelling her finally to pay ten milliards of francs in twenty instalments, and by keeping an army of occupation in her Eastern Departments until the last half-milliard was paid. The French ambassador also states in his account of these stirring weeks that Bismarck had mentioned to the Belgian envoy the impossibility of France keeping up armaments, the outcome of which must be war[245].

[Footnote 245: De Blowitz, Memoirs, ch. v.; An Ambassador of the Vanquished (ed. by the Duc de Broglie), pp. 180 et seq. Probably the article "Krieg in Sicht," published in the Berlin Post of April 15, 1875, was "inspired."]

As Radowitz continued in favour with Bismarck, his disclosure of German intentions seems to have been made with the Chancellor's approval; and we may explain his action as either a threat to compel France to reduce her army, a provocation to lead her to commit some indiscretion, or a means of undermining the plans of the German military party. Leaving these questions on one side, we may note that Gontaut-Biron's report to the Duc Decazes produced the utmost anxiety in official circles at Paris. The Duke took the unusual step of confiding the secret to Blowitz, showed him the document, along with other proofs of German preparations for war, and requested him to publish the chief facts in the Times. Delane, the editor of the Times, having investigated the affair, published the information on May 4. It produced an immense sensation. The Continental Press denounced it as an impudent fabrication designed to bring on war. We now know that it was substantially correct. Meanwhile Marshal MacMahon and the Duc Decazes had taken steps to solicit the help of the Czar if need arose. They despatched to St. Petersburg General Leflô, armed with proofs of the hostile designs of the German military chiefs. A perusal of them convinced Alexander II. of the seriousness of the situation; and he assured Leflô of his resolve to prevent an unprovoked attack on France. He was then about to visit his uncle, the German Emperor; and there is little doubt that his influence at Berlin helped to end the crisis.

Other influences were also at work, emanating from Queen Victoria and the British Government. It is well known that Her late Majesty wrote to the Emperor William stating that it would be "easy to prove that her fears [of a Franco-German war] were not exaggerated[246]." The source of her information is now known to have been unexceptionable. It reached our Foreign Office through the medium of German ambassadors. Such is the story imparted by Lord Odo Russell, our Ambassador at Berlin, to his brother, and by him communicated to Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff. It concerns an interview between Gortchakoff and Bismarck in which the German Chancellor inveighed against the Russian Prince for blurting out, at a State banquet held the day before, the news that he had received a letter from Queen Victoria, begging him to work in the interests of peace. Bismarck thereafter sharply upbraided Gortchakoff for this amazing indiscretion. Lord Odo Russell was present at their interview in order to support the Russian Chancellor, who parried Bismarck's attack by affecting a paternal interest in his health:--

"Come, come, my dear Bismarck, be calm. You know that I am very fond of you. I have known you since your childhood. But I do not like you when you are hysterical. Come, you are going to be hysterical. Pray be calm: come, come, my dear fellow." A short time after this interview Bismarck complained to Odo of "the preposterous folly and ignorance of the English and all other Cabinets, who had mistaken stories got up for speculations on the Bourse for the true policy of the German Government." "Then will you," asked Odo, "censure your four ambassadors who have misled us and the other Powers?" Bismarck made no reply[247].

[Footnote 246: Bismarck: his Reflections, etc., vol. ii. pp. 191-193, 249-153 (Eng. ed.); the Bismarck Jahrbuch, vol. iv. p. 35.]

[Footnote 247: Sir M. Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1886-88, vol. i. p. 129. See, too, other proofs of the probability of an attack by Germany on France in Professor Geffcken's Frankreich, Russland, und der Dreibund, pp. 90 et seq.]

It seems, then, that the German Chancellor had no ground for suspicion against the Crown Princess as having informed Queen Victoria of the suggested attack on France; but thenceforth he had an intense dislike of these august ladies, and lost no opportunity of maligning them in diplomatic circles and through the medium of the Press. Yet, while nursing resentful thoughts against Queen Victoria, her daughter, and the British Ministry, the German Chancellor reserved his wrath mainly for his personal rival at St. Petersburg. The publication of Gortchakoff's circular despatch of May 10, 1875, beginning with the words, "Maintenant la paix est assurée," was in his eyes the crowning offence.

The result was the beginning of a good understanding between Russia and France, and the weakening of the Three Emperors' League[248]. That league went to pieces for a time amidst the disputes at the Berlin Congress on the Eastern Question, where Germany's support of Austria's resolve to limit the sphere of Muscovite influence robbed the Czar of prospective spoils and placed a rival Power as "sentinel on the Balkans." Further, when Germany favoured Austrian interests in the many matters of detail that came up for settlement in those States, the rage in Russian official circles knew no bounds. Newspapers like the Journal de St. Pétersbourg, the Russki Mir, and the Golos, daily poured out the vials of their wrath against everything German; and that prince of publicists, Katkoff, with his coadjutor, Élie de Cyon, moved heaven and earth in the endeavour to prove that Bismarck alone had pushed Russia on to war with Turkey, and then had intervened to rob her of the fruits of victory. Amidst these clouds of invective, friendly hands were thrust forth from Paris and Moscow, and the effusive salutations of would-be statesmen marked the first beginnings of the present alliance. A Russian General--Obretchoff--went to Paris and "sounded the leading personages in Paris respecting a Franco-Russian alliance[249]."

[Footnote 248: Histoire de l'Entente franco-russe, by Élie de Cyon, ch. i. (1895).]

[Footnote 249: Our Chancellor, by M. Busch, vol. ii. pp. 137-138.]

Clearly, it was high time for the two Central Powers to draw together. There was little to hinder their rapprochement. Bismarck's clemency to the Hapsburg Power in the hour of Prussia's triumph in 1866 now bore fruit; for when Russia sent a specific demand that the Court of Berlin must cease to support Austrian interests or forfeit the friendship of Russia, the German Chancellor speedily came to an understanding with Count Andrassy in an interview at Gastein on August 27-28, 1879. At first it had reference only to a defensive alliance against an attack by Russia, Count Andrassy, then about to retire from his arduous duties, declining to extend the arrangement to an attack by another Power--obviously France. The plan of the Austro-German alliance was secretly submitted by Bismarck to the King of Bavaria, who signified his complete approval[250]. It received a warm welcome from the Hapsburg Court; and, when the secret leaked out, Bismarck had enthusiastic greetings on his journey to Vienna and thence northwards to Berlin. The reason is obvious. For the first time in modern history the centre of Europe seemed about to form a lasting compact, strong enough to impose respect on the restless extremities. That of 1813 and 1814 had aimed only at the driving of Napoleon I. from Germany. The present alliance had its roots in more abiding needs.

[Footnote 250: Bismarck: Reflections and Reminiscences, vol. ii. pp. 251-289.]

Strange to say, the chief obstacle was Kaiser Wilhelm himself. The old sovereign had very many claims on the gratitude of the German race, for his staunchness of character, singleness of aim, and homely good sense had made the triumphs of his reign possible. But the newer light of to-day reveals the limitations of his character. He never saw far ahead, and even in his survey of the present situation Prussian interests and family considerations held far too large a space. It was so now. Against the wishes of his Chancellor, he went to meet the Czar at Alexandrovo; and while the Austro-German compact took form at Gastein and Vienna, Czar and Kaiser were assuring each other of their unchanging friendship. Doubtless Alexander II. was sincere in these professions of affection for his august uncle; but Bismarck paid more heed to the fact that Russia had recently made large additions to her army, while dense clouds of her horsemen hung about the Polish border, ready to flood the Prussian plains. He saw safety only by opposing force to force. As he said to his secretary, Busch: "When we [Germany and Austria] are united, with our two million soldiers back to back, they [the Russians], with their Nihilism, will doubtless think twice before disturbing the peace." Finally the Emperor William agreed to the Austro-German compact, provided that the Czar should be informed that if he attacked Austria he would be opposed by both Powers[251].

[Footnote 251: Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of his History, by M. Busch, vol. ii. p. 404; Bismarck: Reflections and Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 268.]

It was not until November 5, 1887, that the terms of the treaty were made known, and then through the medium of the Times. The official publication did not take place until February 3, 1888, at Berlin, Vienna, and Buda-Pesth. The compact provides that if either Germany or Austria shall be attacked by Russia, each Power must assist its neighbour with all its forces. If, however, the attack shall come from any other Power, the ally is pledged merely to observe neutrality; and not until Russia enters the field is the ally bound to set its armies in motion. Obviously the second case implies an attack by France on Germany; in that case Austria would remain neutral, carefully watching the conduct of Russia. As far as is known, the treaty does not provide for joint action, or mutual support, in regard to the Eastern Question, still less in matters further afield.

In order to give pause to Russia, Bismarck even indulged in a passing flirtation with England. At the close of 1879, Lord Dufferin, then British ambassador at St. Petersburg, was passing through Berlin, and the Chancellor invited him to his estate at Varzin, and informed him that Russian overtures had been made to France through General Obretcheff, "but Chanzy [French ambassador at St. Petersburg], having reported that Russia was not ready, the French Government became less disposed than ever to embark on an adventurous policy[252]."

[Footnote 252: The Life of the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, by Sir A. Lyall (1905), vol. i. p. 304.]

To the end of his days Bismarck maintained that the Austro-German alliance did not imply the lapse of the Three Emperors' League, but that the new compact, by making a Russian attack on Austria highly dangerous, if not impossible, helped to prolong the life of the old alliance. Obviously, however, the League was a mere "loud-sounding nothing" (to use a phrase of Metternich's) when two of its members had to unite to guard the weakest of the trio against the most aggressive. In the spirit of that statesmanlike utterance of Prince Bismarck, quoted as motto at the head of this chapter, we may say that the old Triple Alliance slowly dissolved under the influence of new atmospheric conditions. The three Emperors met for friendly intercourse in 1881, 1884, and 1885; and at or after the meeting of 1884, a Russo-German agreement was formed, by which the two Powers promised to observe a friendly neutrality in case either was attacked by a third Power. Probably the Afghan question, or Nihilism, brought Russia to accept Bismarck's advances; but when the fear of an Anglo-Russian war passed away, and the revolutionists were curbed, this agreement fell to the ground; and after the fall of Bismarck the compact was not renewed[253].

[Footnote 253: On October 24, 1896, the Hamburger Nachrichten, a paper often inspired by Bismarck, gave some information (all that is known) about this shadowy agreement.]

* * * * *

It will be well now to turn to the events which brought Italy into line with the Central Powers and thus laid the foundation of the Triple Alliance of to-day.

The complex and uninteresting annals of Italy after the completion of her unity do not concern us here. The men whose achievements had ennobled the struggle for independence passed away in quick succession after the capture of Rome for the national cause. Mazzini died in March 1872 at Pisa, mourning that united Italy was so largely the outcome of foreign help and monarchical bargainings. Garibaldi spent his last years in fulminating against the Government of Victor Emmanuel. The soldier-king himself passed away in January 1878, and his relentless opponent, Pius IX., expired a month later. The accession of Umberto I. and the election of Leo XIII. promised at first to assuage the feud between the Vatican and the Quirinal, but neither the tact of the new sovereign nor the personal suavity of the Pope brought about any real change. Italy remained a prey to the schism between Church and State. A further cause of weakness was the unfitness of many parts of the Peninsula for constitutional rule. Naples and the South were a century behind the North in all that made for civic efficiency, the taint of favouritism and corruption having spread from the governing circles to all classes of society. Clearly the time of wooing had been too short and feverish to lead up to a placid married life.

During this period of debt and disenchantment came news of a slight inflicted by the Latin sister of the North. France had seized Tunis, a land on which Italian patriots looked as theirs by reversion, whereas the exigencies of statecraft assigned it to the French. It seems that during the Congress of Berlin (June-July 1878) Bismarck and Lord Salisbury unofficially dropped suggestions that their Governments would raise no objections to the occupation of Tunis by France. According to de Blowitz, Bismarck there took an early opportunity of seeing Lord Beaconsfield and of pointing out the folly of England quarrelling with Russia, when she might arrange matters more peaceably and profitably with her. England, said he, should let Russia have Constantinople and take Egypt in exchange; "France would not prove inexorable--besides, one might give her Tunis or Syria[254]." Another Congress story is to the effect that Lord Salisbury, on hearing of the annoyance felt in France at England's control over Cyprus, said to M. Waddington at Berlin: "Do what you like with Tunis; England will raise no objections." A little later, the two Governments came to a written understanding that France might occupy Tunis at a convenient opportunity.

[Footnote 254: De Blowitz, Memoirs, ch. vi., also Busch, Our Chancellor, vol. ii. pp. 92-93.]

The seizure of Tunis by France aroused all the more annoyance in Italy owing to the manner of its accomplishment. On May 11, 1881, when a large expedition was being prepared in her southern ports, M. Barthélémy de St. Hilaire disclaimed all idea of annexation, and asserted that the sole aim of France was the chastisement of a troublesome border tribe, the Kroumirs; but on the entry of the "red breeches" into Kairwan and the collapse of the Moslem resistance, the official assurance proved to be as unsubstantial as the inroads of the Kroumirs. Despite the protests that came from Rome and Constantinople, France virtually annexed that land, though the Sultan's representative, the Bey, still retains the shadow of authority[255].

[Footnote 255: It transpired later on that Barthélémy de St. Hilaire did not know of the extent of the aims of the French military party, and that these subsequently gained the day; but this does not absolve the Cabinet and him of bad faith. Later on France fortified Bizerta, in contravention (so it is said) of an understanding with the British Government that no part of that coast should be fortified.]

In vain did King Umberto's ministers appeal to Berlin for help against France. They received the reply that the affair had been virtually settled at the time of the Berlin Congress[256]. The resentment produced by these events in Italy led to the fall of the Cairoli Ministry, which had been too credulous of French assurances; and Depretis took the helm of State. Seeing that Bismarck had confessed his share in encouraging France to take Tunis, Italy's rapprochement to Germany might seem to be unnatural. It was so. In truth, her alliance with the Central Powers was based, not on good-will to them, but on resentment against France. The Italian Nationalists saw in Austria the former oppressor, and still raised the cry of _Italia irredenta _for the recovery of the Italian districts of Tyrol, Istria, and Dalmatia. In January 1880, we find Bismarck writing: "Italy must not be numbered to-day among the peace-loving and conservative Powers, who must reckon with this fact. . . . We have much more ground to fear that Italy will join our adversaries than to hope that she will unite with us, seeing that we have no more inducements to offer her[257]."

[Footnote 256: Politische Geschichte der Gegenwart, for 1881, p. 176; quoted by Lowe, Life of Bismarck, vol. ii. p. 133.]

[Footnote 257: Bismarck: Some Secret Pages, etc., vol. iii. p. 291.]

This frame of mind changed after the French acquisition of Tunis.

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes

should have been the feeling of MM. Waddington and Ferry when Bismarck encouraged them to undertake that easiest but most expensive of conquests. The nineteenth century offers, perhaps, no more successful example of Macchiavellian statecraft. The estrangement of France and Italy postponed at any rate for a whole generation, possibly for the present age, that war of revenge in which up to the spring of 1881 the French might easily have gained the help of Italy. Thenceforth they had to reckon on her hostility. The irony of the situation was enhanced by the fact that the Tunis affair, with the recriminations to which it led, served to bring to power at Paris the very man who could best have marshalled the French people against Germany.

Gambetta was the incarnation of the spirit of revenge. On more than one occasion he had abstained from taking high office in the shifting Ministries of the seventies; and it seems likely that by this calculating coyness he sought to keep his influence intact, not for the petty personal ends which have often been alleged, but rather with a view to the more effective embattling of all the national energies against Germany. Good-will to England and to the Latin peoples, hostility to the Power which had torn Elsass-Lothringen from France--such was the policy of Gambetta. He had therefore protested, though in vain, against the expedition to Tunis; and now, on his accession to power (November 9, 1881), he found Italy sullenly defiant, while he and his Radical friends could expect no help from the new autocrat of all the Russias. All hope of a war of revenge proved to be futile; and he himself fell from power on January 26, 1882[258]. The year to which he looked forward with high hopes proved to be singularly fatal to the foes of Germany. The armed intervention of Britain in Egypt turned the thoughts of Frenchmen from the Rhine to the Nile. Skobeleff, the arch enemy of all things Teutonic, passed away in the autumn; and its closing days witnessed the death of Gambetta at the hands of his mistress.

[Footnote 258: Seignobos, A Political History of Contemporary Europe, vol. i. p. 210 (Eng. Ed.).]

The resignation of Gambetta having slackened the tension between Germany and France, Bismarck displayed less desire for the alliance of Italy. Latterly, as a move in the German parliamentary game, he had coquetted with the Vatican; and as a result of this off-hand behaviour, Italy was slow in coming to accord with the Central Powers. Nevertheless, her resentment respecting Tunis overcame her annoyance at Bismarck's procedure; and on May 20, 1882, treaties were signed which bound Italy to the Central Powers for a term of five years. Their conditions have not been published, but there are good grounds for thinking that the three allies reciprocally guaranteed the possession of their present territories, agreed to resist attack on the lands of any one of them, and stipulated the amount of aid to be rendered by each in case of hostilities with France or Russia, or both Powers combined. Subsequent events would seem to show that the Roman Government gained from its northern allies no guarantee whatever for its colonial policy, or for the maintenance of the balance of power in the Mediterranean[259].

[Footnote 259: For the Triple Alliance see the Rev. des deux Mondes, May 1, 1883; also Chiala, Storia contemporanea--La Triplice e la Duplice Alleanza (1898).]

Very many Italians have sharply questioned the value of the Triple Alliance to their country. Probably, when the truth comes fully to light, it will be found that the King and his Ministers needed some solid guarantee against the schemes of the Vatican to drive the monarchy from Rome. The relations between the Vatican and the Quirinal were very strained in the year 1882; and the alliance of Italy with Austria removed all fear of the Hapsburgs acting on behalf of the Jesuits and other clerical intriguers. The annoyance with which the clerical party in Italy received the news of the alliance shows that it must have interfered with their schemes. Another explanation is that Italy actually feared an attack from France in 1882 and sought protection from the Central Powers. We may add that on the renewal of the Triple Alliance in 1891, Italy pledged herself to send two corps through Tyrol to fight the French on their eastern frontier if they attacked Germany. But it is said that that clause was omitted from the treaty on its last renewal, in 1902.

The accession of Italy to the Austro-German Alliance gave pause to Russia. The troubles with the Nihilists also indisposed Alexander III. from attempting any rash adventures, especially in concert with a democratic Republic which changed its Ministers every few months. His hatred of the Republic as the symbol of democracy equalled his distrust of it as a political kaleidoscope; and more than once he rejected the idea of a rapprochement to the western Proteus because of "the absence of any personage authorised to assume the responsibility for a treaty of alliance[260]." These were the considerations, doubtless, which led him to dismiss the warlike Ignatieff, and to entrust the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to a hard-headed diplomatist, de Giers (June 12, 1882). His policy was peaceful and decidedly opposed to the Slavophil propaganda of Katkoff, who now for a time lost favour.

[Footnote 260: Élie de Cyon, op. cit. p. 38.]

For the present, then, Germany was safe. Russia turned her energies against England and achieved the easy and profitable triumphs in Central Asia which nearly brought her to war with the British Government (see Chapter xiv.).

In the year 1884 Bismarck gained another success in bringing about the signature of a treaty of alliance between the three Empires. It was signed on March 24, 1884, at Berlin, but was not ratified until September, during a meeting of the three Emperors at Skiernewice. M. Élie de Cyon gives its terms as follows:

(1) If one of the three contracting parties makes war on a fourth Power, the other two will maintain a benevolent neutrality. (To this Bismarck sought to add a corollary, that if two of them made war on a fourth Power, the third would equally remain neutral; but the Czar is said to have rejected this, in the interests of France.) (2) In case of a conflict in the Balkan Peninsula, the three Powers shall consult their own interests; and in the case of disagreement the third Power shall give a casting vote. (A protocol added here that Austria might annex Bosnia and Herzegovina, and occupy Novi-Bazar.) (3) The former special treaties between Russia and Germany, or Russia and Austria, are annulled. (4) The three Powers will supervise the execution of the terms of the Treaty of Berlin respecting Turkey; and if the Porte allows a fourth Power (evidently England) to enter the Dardanelles, it will incur the hostility of one of the three Powers (Russia). (5) They will not oppose the union of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia "if it comes about by the force of circumstances"; and will not allow Turkey to fortify the Balkan Passes. Finally, by Article 6, they forbid any one of the contracting Powers to occupy the Balkan Principalities. The compact held good only for three years.

If these terms are correctly stated, the treaty was a great triumph for Austria and Germany at the expense of Russia. It is not surprising that the Czar finally broke away from the constraint imposed by the Skiernewice compact. As we have seen, his conduct towards Bulgaria in 1885-86 brought him very near to a conflict with the Central Powers. The mystery is why he ever joined them on terms so disadvantageous. The explanation would seem to be that, like the King of Italy, he felt an alliance with the "conservative" Powers of Central Europe to be some safeguard against the revolutionary elements then so strong in Russia.

In the years 1886-87 that danger became less acute, and the dictates of self-interest in foreign affairs resumed their normal sway. At the beginning of the year 1887 Katkoff regained his influence over the mind of the Czar by convincing him that the troubles in the Balkan Peninsula were fomented by the statesmen of Berlin and Vienna in order to distract his attention from Franco-German affairs. Let Russia and France join hands, said Katkoff in effect, and then Russia would have a free hand in Balkan politics and could lay down the law in European matters generally.

In France the advantage of a Russian alliance was being loudly asserted by General Boulanger--then nearing the zenith of his popularity--as also by that brilliant leader of society, Mme. Adam, and a cluster of satellites in the Press. Even de Giers bowed before the idea of the hour, and allowed the newspaper which he inspired, Le Nord, to use these remarkable words (February 20, 1887):

Henceforth Russia will watch the events on the Rhine, and relegates the Eastern Question to the second place. The interests of Russia forbid her, in case of another Franco-German war, observing the same benevolent neutrality which she previously observed. The Cabinet of St. Petersburg will in no case permit a further weakening of France. In order to keep her freedom of action for this case, Russia will avoid all conflict with Austria and England, and will allow events to take their course in Bulgaria.

Thus, early in the year 1887, the tendency towards that equilibrium of the Powers, which is the great fact of recent European history, began to exercise a sedative effect on Russian policy in Bulgaria and in Central Asia. That year saw the delimitation of the Russo-Afghan border, and the adjustment in Central Asian affairs of a balance corresponding to the equilibrium soon to be reached in European politics. That, too, was the time when Bulgaria began firmly and successfully to assert her independence and to crush every attempt at a rising on the part of her Russophil officers. This was seen after an attempt which they made at Rustchuk, when Stambuloff condemned nine of them to death. The Russian Government having recalled all its agents from Bulgaria, the task of saving these rebels devolved on the German Consuls, who were then doing duty for Russia. Their efforts were futile, and Katkoff used their failure as a means of poisoning the Czar's mind not only against Germany, but also against de Giers, who had suggested the supervision of Russian interests by German Consuls[261].

[Footnote 261: Élie de Cyon, op. cit. p. 274.]

Another incident of the spring-tide of 1887 kindled the Czar's anger against the Teutons more fiercely and with more reason. On April 20, a French police commissioner, Schnaebele, was arrested by two German agents or spies on the Alsacian border in a suspiciously brutal manner, and thrown into prison. Far from soothing the profound irritation which this affair produced in France, Bismarck poured oil upon the flames a few days later by a speech which seemed designed to extort from France a declaration of war. That, at least, was the impression produced on the mind of Alexander III., who took the unusual step of sending an autograph letter to the Emperor William I. He, in his turn, without referring the matter to Bismarck, gave orders for the instant release of Schnaebele[262]. Thus the incident closed; but the disagreeable impression which it created ended all chance of renewing the Three Emperors' League. The Skiernewice compact, which had been formed for three years, therefore came to an end.

[Footnote 262: See the Nouvelle Revue for April 15, 1890, for Cyon's version of the whole affair, which is treated with prudent brevity by Oncken, Blum, and Delbrück.]

Already, if we may trust the imperfect information yet available, France and Russia had sought to break up the Triple Alliance. In the closing weeks of 1886 de Giers sought to entice Italy into a compact with Russia with a view to an attack on the Central States (her treaty with them expired in the month of May following), and pointed to Trieste and the Italian districts of Istria as a reward for this treachery. The French Government is also believed to have made similar overtures, holding out the Trentino (the southern part of Tyrol) as the bait. Signor Depretis, true to the policy of the Triple Alliance, repelled these offers--an act of constancy all the more creditable seeing that Bismarck had on more than one occasion shown scant regard for the interests of Italy.

Even now he did little to encourage the King's Government to renew the alliance framed in 1882. Events, however, again brought the Roman Cabinet to seek for support. The Italian enterprise in Abyssinia had long been a drain on the treasury, and the annihilation of a force by those warlike mountaineers on January 26, 1887, sent a thrill of horror through the Peninsula. The internal situation was also far from promising. The breakdown of attempts at a compromise between the monarchy and Pope Leo XIII. revealed the adamantine hostility of the Vatican to the King's Government in Rome. A prey to these discouragements, King Umberto and his advisers were willing to renew the Triple Alliance (March 1887), though on terms no more advantageous than before. Signor Depretis, the chief champion of the alliance, died in July; but Signor Crispi, who thereafter held office, proved to be no less firm in its support. After a visit to Prince Bismarck at his abode of Friedrichsruh, near Hamburg, the Italian Prime Minister came back a convinced Teutophil, and announced that Italy adhered to the Central Powers in order to assure peace to Europe.

Crispi also hinted that the naval support of England might be forthcoming if Italy were seriously threatened; and when the naval preparations at Toulon seemed to portend a raid on the ill-protected dockyard of Spezzia, British warships took up positions at Genoa in order to render help if it were needed. This incident led to a discussion in the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna, owing to a speech made by Signor Chiala at Rome. Mr. Labouchere also, on February 10, 1888, sharply questioned Sir James Fergusson in the House of Commons on the alleged understanding between England and Italy. All information, however, was refused[263].

[Footnote 263: Hansard, vol. cccxii. pp. 1180 et seq.; Chiala, La Triplice e la Duplice Alleanza, app. ii.; Mr. Stillman, Francesco Crispi (p. 177), believes in the danger to Spezzia.]

Next to nothing, then, is known on the interesting question how far the British Government went in framing an agreement with Italy, and through her, with the Triple Alliance. We can only conjecture the motives which induced the Salisbury Cabinet to make a strategic turn towards that "conservative" alliance, and yet not definitely join it. The isolation of England proved, in the sequel, to be not only a source of annoyance to the Continental Powers but of weakness to herself, because her statesmen failed to use to the full the potential advantages of their position at the middle of the see-saw. Bismarck's dislike of England was not incurable; he was never a thorough-going "colonial"; and it is probable that the adhesion of England to his league would have inaugurated a period of mutual good-will in politics, colonial policy, and commerce. The abstention of England has in the sequel led German statesmen to show all possible deference to Russia, generally at the expense of British interests.

The importance of this consideration becomes obvious when the dangers of the year 1887 are remembered. The excitement caused in Russia and France by the Rustchuk and Schnaebele affairs, the tension in Germany produced by the drastic proposals of a new Army Bill, and, above all, the prospect of the triumph of Boulangist militarism in France, kept the Continent in a state of tension for many months. In May, Katkoff nearly succeeded in persuading the Czar to dismiss de Giers and adopt a warlike policy, in the belief that a strong Cabinet was about to be formed at Paris with Boulanger as the real motive power. After a long ministerial crisis the proposed ministerial combination broke down; Boulanger was shelved, and the Czar is believed to have sharply rebuked Katkoff for his presumption[264]. This disappointment of his dearest hopes preyed on the health of that brilliant publicist and hastened his end, which occurred on August 1, 1887.

[Footnote 264: This version (the usual one) is contested by Cyon, who says that Katkoff's influence over the Czar was undermined by a mean German intrigue.]

The seed which Katkoff had sown was, however, to bring forth fruit. Despite the temporary discomfiture of the Slavophils, events tended to draw France and Russia more closely together. The formal statement of Signor Crispi that the Triple Alliance was a great and solid fact would alone have led to some counter move; and all the proofs of the instability of French politics furnished by the Grévy-Wilson scandals could not blind Russian statesmen to the need of some understanding with a great Power[265].

[Footnote 265: See the Chauvinist pamphlets, Échec et Mat à la Politique de l'Ennemi de la France, by "un Russe" (Paris, 1887); and Nécessité de l'Alliance franco-russe, by P. Pader (Toulouse, 1888).]

Bismarck sought to give the needed hand-grip. In November 1887, during an interview with the Czar at Berlin, he succeeded in exposing the forgery of some documents concerning Bulgaria which had prejudiced Alexander against him. He followed up this advantage by secretly offering the Cabinet of St. Petersburg a guarantee of German support in case of an attack from Austria; but it does not appear that the Czar placed much trust in the assurance, especially when Bismarck made his rhetorical fanfare of February 6, 1888, in order to ensure the raising of a loan of 28,000,000 marks for buying munitions of war.

That speech stands forth as a landmark in European politics. In a simple, unadorned style the German Chancellor set forth the salient facts of the recent history of his land, showing how often its peace had been disturbed, and deducing the need for constant preparation in a State bordered, as Germany was, by powerful neighbours:--"The pike in the European pool prevent us from becoming carp; but we must fulfil the designs of Providence by making ourselves so strong that the pike can do no more than amuse us." He also traced the course of events which led to the treaties with Austria and Italy, and asserted that by their formation and by the recent publication of the treaty of 1882 with Austria the German Government had not sought in any way to threaten Russia. The present misunderstandings with that Power would doubtless pass away; but seeing that the Russian Press had "shown the door to an old, powerful, and effective friend, which we were, we shall not knock at it again."

Bismarck's closing words--"We Germans fear God and nothing else in the world; and it is the fear of God which makes us seek peace and ensue it"--carried the Reichstag with him, with the result that the proposals of the Government were adopted almost unanimously, and Bismarck received an overwhelming ovation from the crowd outside. These days marked the climax of the Chancellor's career and the triumph of the policy which led to the Triple Alliance.

The question, which of the two great hostile groups was the more sincere in its championship of peace principles, must remain one of the riddles of the age. Bismarck had certainly given much provocation to France in the Schnaebele affair; but in the year 1888 the chief danger to the cause of peace came from Boulanger and the Slavophils of Russia. The Chancellor, having carried through his army proposals, posed as a peacemaker; and Germany for some weeks bent all her thoughts on the struggle between life and death which made up the ninety days' reign of the Emperor Frederick III. Cyon and other French writers have laboured to prove that Bismarck's efforts to prevent his accession to the throne, on the ground that he was the victim of an incurable disease, betokened a desire for immediate war with France.

It appears, however, that the contention of the Chancellor was strictly in accord with one of the fundamental laws of the Empire. His attitude towards France throughout the later phases of the Boulanger affair was coldly "correct," while he manifested the greatest deference towards the private prejudices of the Czar when the Empress Frederick allowed the proposals of marriage between her daughter and Prince Alexander of Battenberg to be renewed. Knowing the unchangeable hatred of the Czar for the ex-Prince of Bulgaria, Bismarck used all his influence to thwart the proposal, which was defeated by the personal intervention of the present Kaiser[266]. According to our present information, then, German policy was sincerely peaceful, alike in aim and in tone, during the first six months of the year; and the piling up of armaments which then went on from the Urals to the Pyrenees may be regarded as an unconsciously ironical tribute paid by the Continental Powers to the cause of peace.

[Footnote 266: Bismarck: Some Secret Pages, etc. vol. iii. p. 335.]

* * * * *

A change came over the scene when William II. ascended the throne of Germany (June 15, 1888). At once he signalised the event by issuing a proclamation to the army, in which occurred the words: "I swear ever to remember that the eyes of my ancestors look down upon me from the other world, and that I shall one day have to render account to them of the glory and honour of the army." The navy received his salutation on that same day; and not until three days later did a proclamation go forth to his people. Men everywhere remembered that "Frederick the Noble" had first addressed his people, and then his army and navy. The inference was unavoidable that the young Kaiser meant to be a Frederick the Great rather than a "citizen Emperor," as his father had longed to be known. The world has now learnt to discount the utterances of the most impulsive of Hohenzollern rulers; but in those days, when it knew not his complex character, such an army order seemed to portend the advent of another Napoleon.

Not only France but Russia felt some alarm. True, the young Kaiser speedily paid a visit to his relative at St. Petersburg; but it soon appeared that the stolid and very reserved Alexander III. knew not what to make of the versatile personality that now controlled the policy of Central Europe. It was therefore natural that France and Russia should take precautionary measures; and we now know that these were begun in the autumn of that year.

In the first instance, they took the form of loans. A Parisian financier, M. Hoskier, Danish by descent, but French by naturalisation and sympathy, had long desired to use the resources of Paris as a means of cementing friendship, and, if possible, alliance with Russia. For some time he made financial overtures at St. Petersburg, only to find all doors closed against him by German capitalists. But in the spring of the year 1888 the Berlin Bourse had been seized by a panic at the excessive amount of Russian securities held by German houses; large sales took place, and thenceforth it seemed impossible for Russia to raise money at Berlin or Frankfurt except on very hard terms.

Now was the opportunity for which the French houses had been waiting and working. In October 1888, Hoskier received an invitation to repair to St. Petersburg secretly, in order to consider the taking up of a loan of 500,000,000 francs at 4 per cent, to replace war loans contracted in 1877 at 5 per cent. At once he assured the Russian authorities that his syndicate would accept the offer, and though the German financiers raged and plotted against him, the loan went to Paris. This was the beginning of a series of loans launched by Russia at Paris, and so successfully that by the year 1894 as much as four milliards of francs (£160,000,000) is said to have been subscribed in that way[267]. Thus the wealth of France enabled Russia to consolidate her debt on easier terms, to undertake strategic railways, to build a new navy, and arm her immense forces with new and improved weapons. It is well known that Russia could not otherwise have ventured on these and other costly enterprises; and one cannot but admire the skill which she showed in making so timely a use of Gallic enthusiasm, as well as the statesmanlike foresight of the French in piling up these armaments on the weakest flank of Germany.

[Footnote 267: E. Daudet, Histoire diplomatique de l'Alliance franco-russe, pp. 270-279.]

Meanwhile the Boulangist bubble had burst. After his removal from the army on the score of insubordination, "le brav' général" entered into politics, and, to the surprise of all, gained an enormous majority in the election for a district of Paris (January 1889). It is believed that, had he rallied his supporters and marched against the Elysée, he might have overthrown the parliamentary Republic. But, like Robespierre at the crisis of his career, he did not strike--he discoursed of reason and moderation. For once the authorities took the initiative; and when the new Premier, Tirard, took action against him for treason, he fled to Brussels on the appropriate date of the 1st of April. Thenceforth, the Royalist-Bonapartist-Radical hybrid, known as Boulangism, ceased to scare the world; and its challenging snorts died away in sounds which were finally recognised as convulsive brayings. How far the Slavophils of Russia had a hand in goading on the creature is not known. Élie de Cyon, writing at a later date, declared that he all along saw through and distrusted Boulanger. Disclaimers of this kind were plentiful in the following years[268].

[Footnote 268: De Cyon, op. cit. pp. 394 et seq.]

After the exposure of that hero of the Boulevards, it was natural that the Czar should decline to make a binding compact with France; and he signalised the isolation of Russia by proposing a toast to the Prince of Montenegro as "the only sincere and faithful friend of Russia." Nevertheless, the dismissal of Bismarck by William II., in March 1890, brought about a time of strain and friction between Russia and Germany which furthered the prospects of a Franco-Russian entente. Thenceforth peace depended on the will of a young autocrat who now and again gave the impression that he was about to draw the sword for the satisfaction of his ancestral manes. A sharp and long-continued tariff war between Germany and Russia also embittered the relations between the two Powers.

Rumours of war were widespread in the year 1891. Wild tales were told as to a secret treaty between Germany and Belgium for procuring a passage to the Teutonic hosts through that neutralised kingdom, and thus turning the new eastern fortresses which France had constructed at enormous cost[269]. Parts of Northern France were to be the reward of King Leopold's complaisance, and the help of England and Turkey was to be secured by substantial bribes[270]. The whole scheme wears a look of amateurish grandiosity; but, on the principle that there is no smoke without fire (which does not always hold good for diplomatic smoke), much alarm was felt at Paris. The renewal of the Triple Alliance in June 1891, for a term of six years, was followed up a month later by a visit of the Emperor William to England, during which he took occasion at the Guildhall to state his desire "to maintain the historical friendship between these our two nations" (July 10). Balanced though this assertion was by an expression of a hope in the peaceful progress of all peoples, the words sent an imaginative thrill to the banks of the Seine and the Neva.

[Footnote 269: In the French Chamber of Deputies it was officially stated in 1893, that in two decades France had spent the sum of £614,000,000 on her army and the new fortresses, apart from that on strategic railways and the fleet.]

[Footnote 270: Notovich, L'Empereur Alexandre III. ch. viii.]

The outcome of it all was the visit of the French Channel Fleet to Cronstadt at the close of July; and the French statesman M. Flourens asserts that the Czar himself took the initiative in this matter[271]. The fleet received an effusive welcome, and, to the surprise of all Europe, the Emperor visited the flagship of Admiral Gervais and remained uncovered while the band played the national airs of the two nations. Few persons ever expected the autocrat of the East to pay that tribute to the Marseillaise. But, in truth, French democracy was then entering on a new phase at home. Politicians of many shades of opinion had begun to cloak themselves with "opportunism"--a conveniently vague term, first employed by Gambetta, but finally used to designate any serviceable compromise between parliamentary rule, autocracy, and flamboyant militarism. The Cronstadt fêtes helped on the warping process.

[Footnote 271: L.E. Flourens, Alexandre III.: sa Vie, son Oeuvre, p. 319.]

Whether any definite compact was there signed is open to doubt. The Times correspondent, writing on July 31 from St. Petersburg, stated that Admiral Gervais had brought with him from Paris a draft of a convention, which was to be considered and thereafter signed by the Russian Ministers for Foreign Affairs, War, and the Navy, but not by the Czar himself until the need for it arose. Probably, then, no alliance was formed, but military and naval conventions were drawn up to serve as bases for common action if an emergency should arise. These agreements were elaborated in conferences held by the Russian generals, Vanoffski and Obrucheff, with the French generals, Saussier, Miribel, and Boisdeffre. A Russian loan was soon afterwards floated at Paris amidst great enthusiasm.

For the present the French had to be satisfied with this exchange of secret assurances and hard cash. The Czar refused to move further, mainly because the scandals connected with the Panama affair once more aroused his fears and disgust. De Cyon states that the degrading revelations which came to light, at the close of 1891 and early in 1892, did more than anything to delay the advent of a definite alliance. The return visit of a Russian squadron to French waters was therefore postponed to the month of October 1893, when there were wild rejoicings at Toulon. The Czar and President exchanged telegrams, the former referring to "the bonds which unite the two countries."

It appeared for a time that Russia meant to keep her squadron in the Mediterranean; and representations on this subject are known to have been made by England and Italy, which once again drew close together. A British squadron visited Italian ports--an event which seemed to foreshadow the entrance of the Island Power to the Triple Alliance. The Russian fleet, however, left the Mediterranean, and the diplomatic situation remained unchanged. Despite all the passionate wooing of the Gallic race, no contract of marriage took place during the life of Alexander III. He died on November 1, 1894, and his memory was extolled in many quarters as that of the great peacemaker of the age.

How far he deserved this praise, to which every statesman of the first rank laid claim, is matter for doubt. It is certain that he disliked war on account of the evil results accruing from the Russo-Turkish conflict; but whether his love of peace rested on grounds other than prudential will be questioned by those who remember his savage repression of non-Russian peoples in his Empire, his brutal treatment of the Bulgarians and of their Prince, his underhand intrigues against Servia and Roumania, and the favour which he showed to the commander who violated international law at Panjdeh. That the French should enshrine his memory in phrases to which their literary skill gives a world-wide vogue is natural, seeing that he ended their days of isolation and saved them from the consequences of Boulangism; but it still has to be proved that, apart from the Schnaebele affair, Germany ever sought a quarrel with France during the reign of Alexander III.; and it may finally appear that the Triple Alliance was the genuinely conservative league which saved Europe from the designs of the restless Republic and the exacting egotism of Alexander III.

Another explanation of the Franco-Russian entente is fully as tenable as the theory that the Czar based his policy on the seventh beatitude. A careful survey of the whole of that policy in Asia, as well as in Europe, seems to show that he drew near to the Republic in order to bring about an equilibrium in Europe which would enable him to throw his whole weight into the affairs of the Far East. Russian policy has oscillated now towards the West, now towards the East; but old-fashioned Russians have always deplored entanglement in European affairs, and have pointed to the more hopeful Orient. Even during the pursuit of Napoleon's shattered forces in their retreat from Moscow in 1812, the Russian Commander, Kutusoff, told Sir Robert Wilson that Napoleon's overthrow would benefit, not the world at large, but only England[272]. He failed to do his utmost, largely because he looked forward to peace with France and a renewal of the Russian advance on India.

[Footnote 272: The French Invasion of Russia, by Sir R. Wilson, p. 234.]

The belief that England was the enemy came to be increasingly held by leading Russians, especially, of course, after the Crimean War and the Berlin Congress. Russia's true mission, they said, lay in Asia. There, among those ill-compacted races, she could easily build up an Empire that never could be firmly founded on tough, recalcitrant Bulgars or warlike Turks. The Triple Alliance having closed the door to Russia on the West, there was the greater temptation to take the other alternative course--that line of least resistance which led towards Afghanistan and Manchuria. The value of an understanding with France was now clear to all. As we have seen, it guarded Russia's exposed frontier in Poland, and poured into the exchequer treasures which speedily took visible form in the Siberian railway, as well as the extensions of the lines leading to Merv and Tashkend.

But this eastern trend of Russian policy can scarcely be called peaceful. The Panjdeh incident (March 29, 1885) would have led any other Government than that of Mr. Gladstone to declare war on the aggressor. Events soon turned the gaze of the Russians towards Manchuria, and the Franco-Russian agreement enabled them to throw their undivided energies in that direction (see Chapter XX.). It was French money which enabled Russia to dominate Manchuria, and, for the time, to overawe Japan. In short, the Dual Alliance peacefully conducted the Muscovites to Port Arthur.

* * * * *

The death of Alexander III. in November 1894 brought to power a very different personality, kindlier and more generous, but lacking the strength and prudence of the deceased ruler. Nicholas II. had none of that dislike of Western institutions which haunted his father. The way was therefore open for a more binding compact with France, the need for which was emphasised by the events of the years 1894-95 in the Far East. But the manner in which it came about is still but dimly known. Members of the House of Orleans are said to have taken part in the overtures, perhaps with the view of helping on the hypnotising influence which alliance with the autocracy of the East exerts on the democracy of the West.

The Franco-Russian entente ripened into an alliance in the year 1895. So, at least, we may judge from the reference to Russia as "notre allié" by the Prime Minister, M. Ribot, in the debate of June 10, 1895. Nicholas II., at the time of his visit to Paris in 1896, proclaimed his close friendship with the Republic; and during the return visit of President Faure to Cronstadt and St. Petersburg he gave an even more significant sign that the two nations were united by something more than sentiment and what Carlyle would have called the cash-nexus. On board the French warship Pothuau he referred in his farewell speech to the "nations amies et alliées" (August 26, 1897).

The treaty has never been made public, but a version of it appeared in the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung of September 21, 1901, and in the Paris paper, La Liberté five days later. Mr. Henry Norman gives the following summary of the information there unofficially communicated. After stating that the treaty contains no direct reference to Germany, he proceeds: "It declares that if either nation is attacked, the other will come to its assistance with the whole of its military and naval forces, and that peace shall only be concluded in concert and by agreement between the two. No other casus belli is mentioned, no term is fixed to the duration of the treaty, and the whole instrument consists of only a few clauses[273]."

[Footnote 273: H. Norman, M.P., All the Russias, p. 390 (Heinemann, 1902). See the articles on the alliance as it affects Anglo-French relations by M. de Pressensé in the Nineteenth Century for February and November 1896; also Mr. Spenser Wilkinson's The Nation's Awakening, ch. v.]

Obviously France and Russia cannot help one another with all their forces unless the common foe were Germany, or the Triple Alliance as a whole. In that case alone would such a clause be operative. The pressure of France and Russia on the flanks of the German Empire would be terrible; and it is inconceivable that Germany would attack France, knowing that such action would bring the weight of Russia upon her weakest frontier. It is, however, conceivable that the three central allies might deem the strain of an armed peace to be unendurable and attack France or Russia. To such an attack the Dual Alliance would oppose about equal forces, though now hampered by the weakening of the Empire in the Far East.

Another account, also unofficial and discreetly vague, was given to the world by a diplomatist at the time when the Armenian outrages had for a time quickened the dull conscience of Christendom[274]. Assuming that the Sick Man of the East was at the point of death, the anonymous writer hinted at the profitable results obtainable by the Continental States if, leaving England out of count, they arranged the Eastern Question à l'aimable among themselves. The Dual Alliance, he averred, would not meet the needs of the situation; for it did not contemplate the partition of Turkey or a general war in the East.

[Footnote 274: L'Alliance Franco-russe devant la Crise Orientale, par un Diplomate étranger. (Paris, Plon. 1897).]

Both parties [France and Russia] have examined the course to be taken in the case of aggression by one or more members of the Triple Alliance; an understanding has been arrived at on the great lines of general policy; but of necessity they did not go further. If the Russian Government could not undertake to place its sword at the service of France with a view to a revision of the Treaty of Frankfurt--a demand, moreover, which France did not make--it cannot claim that France should mobilise her forces to permit it to extend its territory in Europe or in Asia. They know that very well on the banks of the Neva.

To this interesting statement we may add that France and Russia have been at variance on the Eastern Question. Thus, when, in order to press her rightful claims on the Sultan, France determined to coerce him by the seizure of Mitylene, if need be, the Czar's Government is known to have discountenanced this drastic proceeding. Speaking generally, it is open to conjecture whether the Dual Alliance refers to other than European questions. This may be inferred from the following fact. On the announcement of the Anglo-Japanese compact early in 1902, by which England agreed to intervene in the Far Eastern Question if another Power helped Russia against Japan, the Governments of St. Petersburg and Paris framed a somewhat similar convention whereby France definitely agreed to take action if Russia were confronted by Japan and a European or American Power in these quarters. No such compact would have been needed if the Franco-Russian alliance had referred to the problems of the Far East.

Another "disclosure" of the early part of 1904 is also noteworthy. The Paris Figaro published official documents purporting to prove that the Czar Nicholas II., on being sounded by the French Government at the time of the Fashoda incident, declared his readiness to abide by his engagements in case France took action against Great Britain. The Figaro used this as an argument in favour of France actively supporting Russia against Japan, if an appeal came from St. Petersburg. This contention would now meet with little support in France. The events of the Russo-Japanese War and the massacre of workmen in St. Petersburg on January 22, 1905, have visibly strained Franco-Russian relations. This is seen in the following speech of M. Anatole France on February 1, 1905, with respect to his interview with the Premier, M. Combes:--

At the beginning of this war I had heard it said very vaguely that there existed between France and Russia firm and fast engagements, and that, if Russia came to blows with a second Power, France would have to intervene. I asked M. Combes, then Prime Minister, whether anything of the kind existed. M. Combes thought it due to his position not to give a precise answer; but he declared to me in the clearest way that so long as he was Minister we need not fear that our sailors and our soldiers would be sent to Japan. My own opinion is that this folly is not to be apprehended under any Ministry. (The Times. February 3.)

At present, then, everything tends to show that the Franco-Russian alliance refers solely to European questions and is merely a defensive agreement in view of a possible attack from one or more members of the Triple Alliance. Seeing that the purely defensive character of the latter has always been emphasised, doubts are very naturally expressed in many quarters as to the use of these alliances. The only tangible advantage gained by any one of the five Powers is that Russia has had greater facilities for raising loans in France and in securing her hold on Manchuria. On the other hand, Frenchmen complain that the alliance has entailed an immense financial responsibility, which is dearly bought by the cessation of those irritating frontier incidents of the Schnaebele type which they had to put up with from Bismarck in the days of their isolation[275].

[Footnote 275: See an article by Jules Simon in the Contemporary Review, May 1894.]

Italy also questions the wisdom of her alliance with the Central Powers which brings no obvious return except in the form of slightly enhanced consideration from her Latin sister. In cultured circles on both sides of the Maritime Alps there is a strong feeling that the present international situation violates racial instincts and tradition; and, as we have already seen, Italy's attitude towards France is far different now from what it was in 1882. It is now practically certain that Italians would not allow the King's Government to fight France in the interests of the Central Powers. Their feelings are quite natural. What have Italians in common with Austrians and Prussians? Little more, we may reply, than French republicans with the subjects of the Czar. In truth both of these alliances rest, not on whole-hearted regard or affection, but on fear and on the compulsion which it exerts.

To this fact we may, perhaps, largely attribute the malaise of Europe. The Greek philosopher Empedocles looked on the world as the product of two all-pervading forces, love and hate, acting on blind matter: love brought cognate particles together and held them in union; hate or repulsion kept asunder the unlike or hostile elements. We may use the terms of this old cosmogony in reference to existing political conditions, and assert that these two elemental principles have drawn Europe apart into two hostile masses; with this difference, that the allies for the most part are held together, not so much by mutual regard as by hatred of their opposites. From this somewhat sweeping statement we must mark off one exception. There were two allies who came together with the ease which betokens a certain amount of affinity. Thanks to the statesmanlike moderation of Bismarck after Königgrätz, Austria willingly entered into a close compact with her former rival. At least that was the feeling among the Germans and Magyars of the Dual Monarchy. The Austro-German alliance, it may be predicted, will hold good while the Dual Monarchy exists in its present form; but even in that case fear of Russia is the one great binding force where so much else is centrifugal. If ever the Empire of the Czar should lose its prestige, possibly the two Central Powers would drift apart.

Although there are signs of weakness in both alliances, they will doubtless remain standing as long as the need which called them into being remains. Despite all the efforts made on both sides, the military and naval resources of the two great leagues are approximately equal. In one respect, and in one alone, Europe has benefited from these well-matched efforts. The uneasy truce that has been dignified by the name of peace since the year 1878 results ultimately from the fact that war will involve the conflict of enormous citizen armies of nearly equal strength.

So it has come to this, that in an age when the very conception of Christendom has vanished, and ideal principles have been well-nigh crushed out of life by the pressure of material needs, peace again depends on the once-derided principle of the balance of power. That it should be so is distressing to all who looked to see mankind win its way to a higher level of thought on international affairs. The level of thought in these matters could scarcely be lower than it has been since the Armenian massacres. The collective conscience of Europe is as torpid as it was in the eighteenth century, when weak States were crushed or partitioned, and armed strength came to be the only guarantee of safety.

At the close of this volume we shall glance at some of the influences which the Tantalus toil of the European nations has exerted on the life of our age. It is not for nothing that hundreds of millions of men are ever striving to provide the sinews of war, and that rulers keep those sinews in a state of tension. The result is felt in all the other organs of the body politic. Certainly the governing classes of the Continent must be suffering from atrophy of the humorous instinct if they fail to note the practical nullity of the efforts which they and their subjects have long put forth. Perhaps some statistical satirist of the twentieth century will assess the economy of the process which requires nearly twelve millions of soldiers for the maintenance of peace in the most enlightened quarter of the globe.

NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION

In the Echo de Paris of July 3, 1905, the Comte de Nion published documents which further prove the importance of the services rendered by Great Britain to France at the time of the war scare of May 1875. They confirm the account as given in this chapter, but add a few more details. See, too, corroborative evidence in the Times for July 4, 1905.

NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION

It has been stated, apparently on good authority, that the informal conversations which went on during the Congress of Berlin between the plenipotentiaries of the Powers (see ante, p. 328) furnished Italy with an assurance that, in the event of France expanding in North Africa, Italy should find "compensation" in Tripoli. Apparently this explains her recent action there (October 1911).

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XIII. THE CENTRAL ASIAN QUESTION

"The Germans have reached their day, the English their mid-day, the French their afternoon, the Italians their evening, the Spanish their night; but the Slavs stand on the threshold of the morning."--MADAME NOVIKOFF ("O.K.")--The Friends and Foes of Russia.

The years 1879-85 which witnessed the conclusion of the various questions opened up by the Treaty of Berlin and the formation of the Triple Alliance mark the end of a momentous period in European history. The quarter of a century which followed the Franco-Austrian War of 1859 in Northern Italy will always stand out as one of the most momentous epochs in State-building that the world has ever seen. Italy, Denmark, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Turkey, assumed their present form. The Christians of the Balkan Peninsula made greater strides towards liberty than they had taken in the previous century. Finally, the new diplomatic grouping of the Powers helped to endow these changes with a permanence which was altogether wanting to the fitful efforts of the period 1815-59. That earlier period was one of feverish impulse and picturesque failure; the two later decades were characterised by stern organisation and prosaic success.

It generally happens to nations as to individuals that a period devoted to recovery from internal disorders is followed by a time of great productive and expansive power. The introspective epoch gives place to one of practical achievement. Faust gives up his barren speculations and feels his way from thought to action. From "In the beginning was the Word" he wins his way onward through "the Thought" and "the Might," until he rewrites the dictum "In the beginning was the Deed." That is the change which came over Germany and Europe in the years 1850-80. The age of the theorisers of the Vor-Parlament at Frankfurt gave place to the age of Bismarck. The ideals of Mazzini paled in the garish noonday of the monarchical triumph at Rome.

Alas! too, the age of great achievement, that of the years 1859-85, makes way for a period characterised by satiety, torpor, and an indefinable malaise. Europe rests from the generous struggles of the past, and settles down uneasily into a time of veiled hostility and armed peace. Having framed their State systems and covering alliances, the nations no longer give heed to constitutions, rights of man, or duties of man; they plunge into commercialism, and search for new markets. Their attitude now is that of Ancient Pistol when he exclaims

"The world's mine oyster, Which I with sword will open."

In Europe itself there is little to chronicle in the years 1885-1900, which are singularly dull in regard to political achievement. No popular movement (not even those of the distressed Cretans and Armenians) has aroused enough sympathy to bring it to the goal. The reason for this fact seems to be that the human race, like the individual, is subject to certain alternating moods which may be termed the enthusiastic and the practical; and that, during the latter phase, the material needs of life are so far exalted at the expense of the higher impulses that small struggling communities receive not a tithe of the sympathy which they would have aroused in more generous times.

The fact need not beget despair. On the contrary, it should inspire the belief that, when the fit passes away, the healthier, nobler mood will once more come; and then the world will pulsate with new life, making wholesome use of the wealth previously stored up but not assimilated. It is significant that Gervinus, writing in 1853, spoke of that epoch as showing signs of disenchantment and exhaustion in the political sphere. In reality he was but six years removed from the beginning of an age of constructive activity the like of which has never been seen.

Further, we may point out that the ebb in the tide of human affairs which set in about the year 1885 was due to specific causes operating with varied force on different peoples. First in point of time, at the close of the year 1879, came the decision of Bismarck and of the German Reichstag to abandon the cause of Free Trade in favour of a narrow commercial nationalism. Next came the murder of the Czar Alexander II. (March 1881), and the grinding down of the reformers and of all alien elements by his stern successor. Thus, the national impulse, which had helped on that of democracy in the previous generation, now lent its strength to the cause of economic, religious, and political reaction in the two greatest of European States.

In other lands that vital force frittered itself away in the frothy rhetoric of Déroulède and the futile prancings of Boulanger, in the gibberings of Italia Irredenta, or in the noisy obstruction of Czechs and Parnellites in the Parliaments of Vienna and London. Everything proclaimed that the national principle had spent its force and could now merely turn and wobble until it came to rest.

A curious series of events also served to discredit the party of progress in the constitutional States. Italian politics during the ascendancy of Depretis, Mancini, and Crispi became on the one side a mere scramble for power, on the other a nervous edging away from the gulf of bankruptcy ever yawning in front. France, too, was slow to habituate herself to parliamentary institutions, and her history in the years 1887 to 1893 is largely that of a succession of political scandals and screechy recriminations, from the time of the Grévy-Wilson affair to the loathsome end of the Panama Company. In the United Kingdom the wheels of progress lurched along heavily after the year 1886, when Gladstone made his sudden strategic turn towards the following of Parnell. Thus it came about that the parties of progress found themselves almost helpless or even discredited; and the young giant of Democracy suddenly stooped and shrivelled as if with premature decay.

The causes of this seeming paralysis were not merely political and dynamic: they were also ethical. The fervour of religious faith was waning under the breath of a remorseless criticism and dogmatic materialism. Already, under their influence, the teachers of the earlier age, Carlyle, Tennyson, and Browning, had lost their joyousness and spontaneity; and the characteristic thinkers of the new age were chiefly remarkable for the arid formalism with which they preached the gospel of salvation for the strong and damnation to the weak. The results of the new creed were not long in showing themselves in the political sphere. If the survival of the fittest were the last word of philosophy, where was the need to struggle on behalf of the weak and oppressed? In that case, it might be better to leave them to the following clutch of the new scientific devil; while those who had charged through to the head of the rout enjoyed themselves with utmost abandon. Such was, and is, the deduction from the new gospel (crude enough, doubtless, in many respects), which has finally petrified in the lordly egotism of Nietzche and in the unlovely outlines of one or two up-to-date Utopias.

These fashions will have their day. Meanwhile it is the duty of the historian to note that self-sacrifice and heroism have a hard struggle for life in an age which for a time exalted Herbert Spencer to the highest pinnacle of greatness, which still riots in the calculating selfishness of Nietzsche and raves about Omar Khayyám.

Seeing, then, that the last fifteen years of the nineteenth century in Europe were almost barren of great formative movements such as had ennobled the previous decades, we may well leave that over-governed, over-drilled continent weltering in its riches and discontent, its militarism and moral weakness, in order to survey events further afield which carried on the State-building process to lands as yet chaotic or ill-organised. There, at least, we may chronicle some advance, hampered though it has been by the moral languor or laxity that has warped the action of Europeans in their new spheres.

The transference of human interest from European history to that of Asia and Africa is certainly one of the distinguishing features of the years in question. The scene of great events shifts from the Rhine and the Danube to the Oxus and the Nile. The affairs of Rome, Alsace, and Bulgaria being settled for the present, the passions of great nations centre on Herat and Candahar, Alexandria and Khartum, the Cameroons, Zanzibar, and Johannesburg, Port Arthur and Korea. The United States, after recovering from the Civil War and completing their work of internal development, enter the lists as a colonising Power, and drive forth Spain from two of her historic possessions. Strife becomes keen over the islands of the Pacific. Australia seeks to lay hands on New Guinea, and the European Powers enter into hot discussions over Madagascar, the Carolines, Samoa, and many other isles.

In short, these years saw a repetition of the colonial strifes that marked the latter half of the eighteenth century. Just as Europe, after solving the questions arising out of the religious wars, betook itself to marketing in the waste lands over the seas, so too, when the impulses arising from the incoming of the principles of democracy and nationality had worn themselves out, the commercial and colonial motive again came uppermost. And, as in the eighteenth century, so too after 1880 there was at hand an economic incentive spurring on the Powers to annexation of new lands. France had recurred to protective tariffs in 1870. Germany, under Bismarck, followed suit ten years later; and all the continental Powers in turn, oppressed by armaments and girt around with hostile tariffs, turned instinctively to the unclaimed territories oversea as life-saving annexes for their own overstocked industrial centres.

* * * * *

It will be convenient to begin the recital of extra-European events by considering the expansion of Russia and Great Britain in Central Asia. There, it is true, the commercial motive is less prominent than that of political rivalry; and the foregoing remarks apply rather to the recent history of Africa than to that of Central Asia. But, as the plan of this work is to some extent chronological, it seems better to deal first with events which had their beginning further back than those which relate to the partition of Africa.

The two great colonising and conquering movements of recent times are those which have proceeded from London and Moscow as starting-points. In comparison with them the story of the enterprise of the Portuguese and Dutch has little more than the interest that clings around an almost vanished past. The halo of romance that hovers over the exploits of Spaniards in the New World has all but faded away. Even the more solid achievements of the gallant sons of France in a later age are of small account when compared with the five mighty commonwealths that bear witness to the strength of the English stock and the adaptability of its institutions, or with the portentous growth of the Russian Empire in Asia.

The methods of expansion of these two great colonial Empires are curiously different; and students of Ancient History will recall a similar contrast in the story of the expansion of the Greek and Latin races. The colonial Empire of England has been sown broadcast over the seas by adventurous sailors, the freshness and spontaneity of whose actions recall corresponding traits in the maritime life of Athens. Nursed by the sea, and filled with the love of enterprise and freedom which that element inspires, both peoples sought wider spheres for their commerce, and homes more spacious and wealthy than their narrow cradles offered; but, above all, they longed to found a microcosm of Athens or England, with as little control from the mother-land as might be.

The Russian Empire, on the other hand, somewhat resembles that of Rome in its steady, persistent extension of land boundaries by military and governmental methods. The Czars, like the Consuls and Emperors of Rome, set to work with a definite purpose, and brought to bear on the shifting, restless tribes beyond their borders the pressure of an unchanging policy and of a well-organised administration. Both States relied on discipline and civilisation to overcome animal strength and barbarism; and what they won by the sword, they kept by means of a good system of roads and by military colonies. In brief, while Ancient Greece and Modern England worked through sailors and traders, Rome and Russia worked through soldiers, road-makers, and proconsuls. The Sea Powers trusted mainly to individual initiative and civic freedom; the Land Powers founded their empires on organisation and order. The dominion of the former was sporadic and easily dissolvable; that of the latter was solid, and liable to be destroyed only by some mighty cataclysm. The contrast between them is as old and ineffaceable as that which subsists between the restless sea and the unchanging plain.

While the comparison between England and Athens is incomplete, and at some points fallacious, that between the Czars and the Cæsars is in many ways curiously close and suggestive. As soon as the Roman eagles soared beyond the mighty ring of the Alps and perched securely on the slopes of Gaul and Rhætia, the great Republic had the military advantage of holding the central position as against the mutually hostile tribes of Western, Central, and Eastern Europe. Thanks to that advantage, to her organisation, and to her military colonies, she pushed forward an ever-widening girdle of empire, finally conferring the blessings of the pax Romana on districts as far remote as the Tyne, the Lower Rhine and Danube, the Caucasus, and the Pillars of Hercules.

Russia also has used to the full the advantages conferred by a central position, an inflexible policy, and a military-agrarian system well adapted to the needs of the nomadic peoples on her borders. In the fifteenth century, her polity emerged victorious from the long struggle with the Golden Horde of Tartars [I keep the usual spelling, though "Tatars" is the correct form]; and, as the barbarous Mongolians lost their hold on the districts of the middle Volga, the power of the Czars began its forward march, pressing back Asiatics on the East and Poles on the West. In 1556, Ivan the Terrible seized Astrakan at the mouth of the Volga, and victoriously held Russia's natural frontiers on the East, the Ural Mountains, and the northern shore of the Caspian Sea. We shall deal in a later chapter with her conquest of Siberia, and need only note here that Muscovite pioneers reached the shores of the Northern Pacific as early as the year 1636.

Russia's conquests at the expense of Turks, Circassians, and Persians is a subject alien to this narrative; and the tragic story of the overthrow of Poland at the hand of the three partitioning Powers, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, does not concern us here.

It is, however, needful to observe the means by which she was able to survive the dire perils of her early youth and to develop the colonising and conquering agencies of her maturer years. They may be summed up in the single word, "Cossacks."

The Cossacks are often spoken of as though they were a race. They are not; they are bands or communities, partly military, partly nomadic or agricultural, as the case may be. They can be traced back to bands of outlaws who in the time of Russia's weakness roamed about on the verge of her settlements, plundering indifferently their Slavonic kinsmen, or the Tartars and Turks farther south. They were the "men of the plain," who had fled from the villages of the Slavs, or (in fewer cases) from the caravans of the Tartars, owing to private feuds, or from love of a freer and more lucrative life than that of the village or the encampment. In this debatable land their numbers increased until, Slavs though they mainly were, they became a menace to the growing power of the Czars. Ivan the Terrible sent expeditions against them, transplanted many of their number, and compelled those who remained in the space between the rivers Don and Ural to submit to his authority, and to give military service in time of war in return for rights of pasturage and tillage in the districts thenceforth recognised as their own. Some of them transferred their energies to Asia; and it was a Cossack outlaw, Jermak, who conquered a great part of Siberia. The Russian pioneers, who early penetrated into Siberia or Turkestan, found it possible at a later time to use these children of the plain as a kind of protective belt against the warlike natives. The same use was made of them in the South against Turks. Catharine II. broke the power of the "Zaporoghians" (Cossacks of the Dnieper), and settled large numbers of them on the River Kuban to fight the Circassians.

In short, out of the driftwood and wreckage of their primitive social system the Russians framed a bulwark against the swirling currents of the nomad world outside. In some respects the Cossacks resemble the roving bands of Saxons and Franks who pushed forward roughly but ceaselessly the boundaries of the Teutonic race[276]. But, whereas those offshoots soon came to have a life of their own, apart from the parent stems, Russia, on the other hand, has known how to keep a hold on her boisterous youth, turning their predatory instincts against her worst neighbours, and using them as hardy irregulars in her wars.

[Footnote 276: See Cæsar, Gallic War, bk. vi., for an account of the formation, at the tribal meeting, of a roving band.]

Considering the number of times that the Russian Government crushed the Cossack revolts, broke up their self-made organisation, and transplanted unruly bands to distant parts, their almost invariable loyalty to the central authority is very remarkable. It may be ascribed either to the veneration which they felt for the Czar, to the racial sentiment which dwells within the breast of nearly every Slav, or to their proximity to alien peoples whom they hated as Mohammedans or despised as godless pagans. In any case, the Russian autocracy gained untold advantages from the Cossack fringe on the confines of the Empire.

Some faint conception of the magnitude of that gain may be formed, if, by way of contrast, we try to picture the Teutonic peoples always acting together, even through their distant offshoots; or, again, if by a flight of fancy we can imagine the British Government making a wise use of its old soldiers and the flotsam and jetsam of our cities for the formation of semi-military colonies on the most exposed frontiers of the Empire. That which our senators have done only in the case of the Grahamstown experiment of 1819, Russia has done persistently and successfully with materials far less promising--a triumph of organisation for which she has received scant credit.

The roving Cossacks have become practically a mounted militia, highly mobile in peace and in war. Free from taxes, and enjoying certain agrarian or pastoral rights in the district which they protect, their position in the State is fully assured. At times the ordinary Russian settlers are turned into Cossacks. Either by that means, or by migration from Russia, or by a process of accretion from among the conquered nomads, their ranks are easily recruited; and the readiness with which Tartars and Turkomans are absorbed into this cheap and effective militia has helped to strengthen Russia alike in peace and war. The source of strength open to her on this side of her social system did not escape the notice of Napoleon--witness his famous remark that within fifty years Europe would be either Republican or Cossack[277].

[Footnote 277: For the Cossacks, see D.M. Wallace's Russia, vol. ii. pp. 80-95; and Vladimir's Russia on the Pacific, pp. 46-49. The former points out that their once democratic organisation has vanished under the autocracy; and that their officers, appointed by the Czar, own most of the land, formerly held in common.]

The firm organisation which Central Europe gained under the French Emperor's hammer-like blows served to falsify the prophecy; and the stream of Russian conquest, dammed up on the west by the newly-consolidated strength of Prussia and Austria, set strongly towards Asia. Pride at her overthrow of the great conqueror in 1812 had quickened the national consciousness of Russia; and besides this praiseworthy motive there was another perhaps equally potent, namely, the covetousness of her ruling class. The Memoirs written by her bureaucrats and generals reveal the extravagance, dissipation, and luxury of the Court circles. Fashionable society had as its main characteristic a barbaric and ostentatious extravagance, alike in gambling and feasting, in the festivals of the Court or in the scarcely veiled debauchery of its devotees. Baron Löwenstern, who moved in its higher ranks, tells of cases of a license almost incredible to those who have not pried among the garbage of the Court of Catharine II. This recklessness, resulting from the tendency of the Muscovite nature, as of the Muscovite climate, to indulge in extremes, begot an imperious need of large supplies of money; and, ground down as were the serfs on the broad domains of the nobles, the resulting revenues were all too scanty to fill up the financial void created by the urgent needs of St. Petersburg, Gatchina, or Monte Carlo. Larger domains had to be won in order to outvie rivals or stave off bankruptcy; and these new domains could most easily come by foreign conquest.

For an analogous reason, the State itself suffered from land hunger. Its public service was no less corrupt than inefficient. Large sums frequently vanished, no one knew whither; but one infallible cure for bankruptcy was always at hand, namely, conquests over Poles, Turks, Circassians, or Tartars. To this Catharine II. had looked when she instituted the vicious practice of paying the nobles for their services at Court; and during her long career of conquest she greatly developed the old Muscovite system of meeting the costs of war out of the domains of the vanquished, besides richly dowering the Crown, and her generals and favoured courtiers. One of the Russian Ministers, referring to the notorious fact that his Government made war for the sake of booty as well as glory, said to a Frenchman, "We have remained somewhat Asiatic in that respect[278]." It is not always that a Minister reveals so frankly the motives that help to mould the policy of a great State.

[Footnote 278: Quoted by Vandal, Napoléon I. et Alexandre, vol. i. p. 136.]

The predatory instinct, once acquired, does not readily pass away. Alexander I. gratified it by forays in Circassia, even at the time when he was face to face with the might of the great Napoleon; and after the fall of the latter, Russia pushed on her confines in Georgia until they touched those of Persia. Under Nicholas I. little territory was added except the Kuban coast on the Black Sea, Erivan to the south of Georgia, and part of the Kirghiz lands in Turkestan.

The reason for this quiescence was that almost up to the verge of the Crimean War Nicholas hoped to come to an understanding with England respecting an eventual partition of the Turkish Empire, Austria also gaining a share of the spoils. With the aim of baiting these proposals, he offered, during his visit to London in 1844, to refrain from any movement against the Khanates of Central Asia, concerning which British susceptibilities were becoming keen. His Chancellor, Count Nesselrode, embodied these proposals in an important Memorandum, containing a promise that Russia would leave the Khanates of Turkestan as a neutral zone in order to keep the Russian and British possessions in Asia "from dangerous contact[279]."

[Footnote 279: Quoted on p. 14 of A Diplomatic Study on the Crimean War, issued by the Russian Foreign Office, and attributed to Baron Jomini (Russian edition, 1879; English edition, 1882).]

For reasons which we need not detail, British Ministers rejected these overtures, and by degrees England entered upon the task of defending the Sultan's dominions, largely on the assumption that they formed a necessary bulwark of her Indian Empire. It is not our purpose to criticise British policy at that time. We merely call attention to the fact that there seemed to be a prospect of a friendly understanding with Russia respecting Turkey, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Central Asia; and that the British Government decided to maintain the integrity of Turkey by attacking the Power which seemed about to impugn it. As a result, Turkey secured a new lease of life by the Crimean War, while Alexander II. deemed himself entirely free to press on Asiatic conquests from which his father had refrained. Thus, the two great expanding Powers entered anew on that course of rivalry in Asia which has never ceased, and which forms to-day the sole barrier to a good understanding between them.

After the Crimean War circumstances favoured the advance of the Russian arms. England, busied with the Sepoy Mutiny in India, cared little what became of the rival Khans of Turkestan; and Lord Lawrence, Governor-General of India in 1863-69, enunciated the soothing doctrine that "Russia might prove a safer neighbour than the wild tribes of Central Asia." The Czar's emissaries therefore had easy work in fomenting the strifes that constantly arose in Bokhara, Khiva, and Tashkend, with the result that in 1864 the last-named was easily acquired by Russia. We may add here that Tashkend is now an important railway centre in the Russian Central Asian line, and that large stores of food and material are there accumulated, which may be utilised in case Russia makes a move against Afghanistan or Northern India.

In 1868 an outbreak of Mohammedan fanaticism in Bokhara brought the Ameer of that town into collision with the Russians, who thereupon succeeded in taking Samarcand. The capital of the empire of Tamerlane, "the scourge of Asia," now sank to the level of an outpost of Russian power, and ultimately to that of a mart for cotton. The Khan of Bokhara fell into a position of complete subservience, and ceded to the conquerors the whole of his province of Samarcand[280].

[Footnote 280: For an account of Samarcand and Bokhara, see Russia in Central Asia, by Hon. G. (Lord) Curzon (1889); A. Vambéry's Travels in Central Asia (1867-68); Rev. H. Lansdell, Russian Central Asia, 2 vols. (1885); E. Schuyler, Journey in Russian Turkestan, etc., 2 vols. (1876); E. O'Donovan, The Merv Oasis, 2 vols. (1883).]

It is believed that the annexation of Samarcand was contrary to the intentions of the Czar. Alexander II. was a friend of peace; and he had no desire to push forward his frontiers to the verge of Afghanistan, where friction would probably ensue with the British Government. Already he had sought to allay the irritation prevalent in Russophobe circles in England. In November 1864, his Chancellor, Prince Gortchakoff, issued a circular setting forth the causes that impelled the Russians on their forward march. It was impossible, he said, to keep peace with uncivilised and predatory tribes on their frontiers. Russia must press on until she came into touch with a State whose authority would guarantee order on the boundaries. The argument was a strong one; and it may readily be granted that good government, civilisation, and commerce have benefited by the extension of the pax Russica over the slave-hunting Turkomans and the inert tribes of Siberia.

Nevertheless, as Gortchakoff's circular expressed the intention of refraining from conquest for the sake of conquest, the irritation in England became very great when the conquest of Tashkend, and thereafter of Samarcand, was ascribed, apparently on good grounds, to the ambition of the Russian commanders, Tchernaieff and Kaufmann respectively. On the news of the capture of Samarcand reaching London, the Russian ambassador hastened to assure the British Cabinet that his master did not intend to retain his conquest. Nevertheless, it was retained. The doctrine of political necessity proved to be as expansive as Russia's boundaries; and, after the rapid growth of the Indian Empire under Lord Dalhousie, the British Government could not deny the force of the plea.

This mighty stride forward brought Russia to the northern bounds of Afghanistan, a land which was thenceforth to be the central knot of diplomatic problems of vast magnitude. It will therefore be well, in beginning our survey of a question which was to test the efficacy of autocracy and democracy in international affairs, to gain some notion of the physical and political conditions of the life of that people.

As generally happens in a mountainous region in the midst of a great continent, their country exhibits various strata of conquest and settlement. The northern district, sloping towards Turkestan, is inhabited mainly by Turkomans who have not yet given up their roving habits. The rugged hill country bordering on the Punjab is held by Pathans and Ghilzais, who are said by some to be of the same stock as the Afghans. On the other hand, a well-marked local legend identifies the Afghans proper with the lost ten tribes of Israel; and those who love to speculate on that elusive and delusive subject may long use their ingenuity in speculating whether the oft-quoted text as to the chosen people possessing the gates of their enemies is more applicable to the sea-faring and sea-holding Anglo-Saxons or to the pass-holding Afghans.

That elevated plateau, ridged with lofty mountains and furrowed with long clefts, has seen Turkomans, Persians, and many other races sweep over it; and the mixture of these and other races, perhaps including errant Hebrews, has there acquired the sturdiness, tenacity, and clannishness that mark the fragments of three nations clustering together in the Alpine valleys; while it retains the turbulence and fierceness of a full-blooded Asiatic stock. The Afghan problem is complicated by these local differences and rivalries; the north cohering with the Turkomans, Herat and the west having many affinities and interests in common with Persia, Candahar being influenced by Baluchistan, while the hill tribes of the north-east bristle with local peculiarities and aboriginal savagery. These districts can be welded together only by the will of a great ruler or in the white heat of religious fanaticism; and while Moslem fury sometimes unites all the Afghan clans, the Moslem marriage customs result fully as often in a superfluity of royal heirs, which gives rein to all the forces that make for disruption. Afghanistan is a hornet's nest; and yet, as we shall see presently, owing to geographical and strategical reasons, it cannot be left severely alone. The people are to the last degree clannish; and nothing but the grinding pressure of two mighty Empires has endowed them with political solidarity.

It is not surprising that British statesmen long sought to avoid all responsibility for the internal affairs of such a land. As we have seen, the theory which found favour with Lord Lawrence was that of intervening as little as possible in the affairs of States bordering on India, a policy which was termed "masterly inactivity" by the late Mr. J.W.S. Wyllie. It was the outcome of the experience gained in the years 1839-42, when, after alienating Dost Mohammed, the Ameer of Afghanistan, by its coolness, the Indian Government rushed to the other extreme and invaded the country in order to tear him from the arms of the more effusive Russians.

The results are well known. Overweening confidence and military incapacity finally led to the worst disaster that befell a British army during the nineteenth century, only one officer escaping from among the 4500 troops and 12,000 camp followers who sought to cut their way back through the Khyber Pass[281]. A policy of non-intervention in the affairs of so fickle and savage a people naturally ensued, and was stoutly maintained by Lords Canning, Elgin, and Lawrence, who held sway during and after the great storm of the Indian Mutiny. The worth of that theory of conduct came to be tested in 1863, on the occasion of the death of Dost Mohammed, who had latterly recovered Herat from Persia, and brought nearly the whole of the Afghan clans under his sway. He had been our friend during the Mutiny, when his hostility might readily have turned the wavering scales of war; and he looked for some tangible return for his loyal behaviour in preventing the attempt of some of his restless tribesmen to recover the once Afghan city of Peshawur.

[Footnote 281: Sir J.W. Kaye, History of the War in Afghanistan, 5 vols. (1851-78).]

To his surprise and disgust he met with no return whatever, even in a matter which most nearly concerned his dynasty and the future of Afghanistan. As generally happens with Moslem rulers, the aged Ameer occupied his declining days with seeking to provide against the troubles that naturally resulted from the oriental profusion of his marriages. Dost Mohammed's quiver was blessed with the patriarchal equipment of sixteen sons--most of them stalwart, warlike, and ambitious. Eleven of them limited their desires to parts of Afghanistan, but five of them aspired to rule over all the tribes that go to make up that seething medley. Of these, Shere Ali was the third in age but the first in capacity, if not in prowess. Moreover, he was the favourite son of Dost Mohammed; but where rival mothers and rival tribes were concerned, none could foresee the issue of the pending conflict[282].

[Footnote 282: G.B. Malleson, History of Afghanistan, p. 421.]

Dost Mohammed sought to avert it by gaining the effective support of the Indian Government for his Benjamin. He pleaded in vain. Lord Canning, Governor-General of India at the time of the Mutiny, recognised Shere Ali as heir-apparent, but declined to give any promise of support either in arms or money. Even after the Mutiny was crushed, Lord Canning and his successor, Lord Elgin, adhered to the former decision, refusing even a grant of money and rifles for which father and son pleaded.

As we have said, Dost Mohammed died in 1863; but even when Shere Ali was face to face with formidable family schisms and a widespread revolt, Lord Lawrence clung to the policy of recognising only "de facto Powers," that is, Powers which actually existed and could assert their authority. All that he offered was to receive Shere Ali in conference, and give him good advice; but he would only recognise him as Ameer of Afghanistan if he could prevail over his brothers and their tribesmen. He summed it up in this official letter of April 17, 1866, sent to the Governor of the Punjab:--

It should be our policy to show clearly that we will not interfere in the struggle, that we will not aid either party, that we will leave the Afghans to settle their own quarrels, and that we are willing to be on terms of amity and good-will with the nation and with their rulers de facto. Suitable opportunities can be taken to declare that these are the principles which will guide our policy; and it is the belief of the Governor-General that such a policy will in the end be appreciated[283].

[Footnote 283: Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 1 (1878), p. 10. For a defence of this policy of "masterly inactivity," see Mr. Bosworth Smith's Life of Lord Lawrence, vol. ii. pp. 570-590; also Mr. J.W.S. Wyllie's Essays on the External Policy of India.]

The Afghans did not appreciate it. Shere All protested that it placed a premium on revolt; he also complained that the Viceroy not only gave him no help, but even recognised his rival, Ufzul, when the latter captured Cabul. After the death of Ufzul and the assumption of authority at Cabul by a third brother, Azam, Shere Ali by a sudden and desperate attempt drove his rival from Cabul (September 8, 1868) and practically ended the schisms and strifes which for five years had rent Afghanistan in twain. Then, but then only, did Lord Lawrence consent to recognise him as Ameer of the whole land, and furnish him with £60,000 and a supply of arms. An act which, five years before, would probably have ensured the speedy triumph of Shere Ali and his lasting gratitude to Great Britain, now laid him under no sense of obligation[284]. He might have replied to Lord Lawrence with the ironical question with which Dr. Johnson declined Lord Chesterfield's belated offer of patronage: "Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?"

[Footnote 284: The late Duke of Argyll in his Eastern Question (vol. ii. p. 42) cited the fact of this offer of money and arms as a proof that Lord Lawrence was not wedded to the theory of "masterly inactivity," and stated that the gift helped Shere Ali to complete his success. It is clear, however, that Lord Lawrence waited to see whether that success was well assured before the offer was made.

The Duke of Argyll proves one thing, that the action of Lord Lawrence in September 1868 was not due to Sir Henry Rawlinson's despatch from London (dated July 20, 1868) in favour of more vigorous action. It was due to Lawrence's perception of the change brought about by Russian action in the Khanate of Bokhara, near the Afghan border.]

Moreover, there is every reason to think that Shere Ali, with the proneness of orientals to refer all actions to the most elemental motives, attributed the change of front at Calcutta solely to fear. That was the time when the Russian capture of Samarcand cowed the Khan of Bokhara and sent a thrill through Central Asia. In the political psychology of the Afghans, the tardy arrival at Cabul of presents from India argued little friendship for Shere Ali, but great dread of the conquering Muscovites.

Such, then, was the policy of "masterly inactivity" in 1863-68, cheap for India, but excessively costly for Afghanistan. Lord Lawrence rendered incalculable services to India before and during the course of the Mutiny, but his conduct towards Shere Ali is certainly open to criticism. The late Duke of Argyll, Secretary of State for India in the Gladstone Ministry (1868-74), supported it in his work, The Eastern Question, on the ground that the Anglo-Afghan treaty of 1855 pledged the British not to interfere in the affairs of Afghanistan[285]. But uncalled for interference is one thing; to refuse even a slight measure of help to an ally, who begs it as a return for most valuable services, is quite another thing.

[Footnote 285: The Duke of Argyll, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 226 (London, 1879). For the treaty, see Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 1 (1878), p. 1.]

Moreover, the Viceroy himself was brought by the stern logic of events implicitly to give up his policy. In one of his last official despatches, written on January 4, 1869, he recognised the gain to Russia that must accrue from our adherence to a merely passive policy in Central Asian affairs. He suggested that we should come to a "clear understanding with the Court of St. Petersburg as to its projects and designs in Central Asia, and that it might be given to understand in firm but courteous language, that it cannot be permitted to interfere in the affairs of Afghanistan, or in those of any State which lies contiguous to our frontier."

This sentence tacitly implied a change of front; for any prohibition to Russia to interfere in the affairs of Afghanistan virtually involved Britain's claim to exercise some degree of suzerainty in that land. The way therefore seemed open for a new departure, especially as the new Governor-General, Lord Mayo, was thought to favour the more vigorous ideas latterly prevalent at Westminster. But when Shere Ali met the new Viceroy in a splendid Durbar at Umballa (March 1869) and formulated his requests for effective British support, in case of need, they were, in the main, refused[286].

[Footnote 286: Sir W.W. Hunter, The Earl of Mayo, p. 125 (Oxford, 1891); the Duke of Argyll, op. cit. vol. ii, p. 252.]

We may here use the words in which the late Duke of Argyll summed up the wishes of the Ameer and the replies of Lord Mayo:--

He (the Ameer) wanted to have an unconditional treaty, offensive and defensive. He wanted to have a fixed subsidy. He wanted to have a dynastic guarantee. He would have liked sometimes to get the loan of English officers to drill his troops, or to construct his forts--provided they retired the moment they had done this work for him. On the other hand, officers "resident" in his country as political agents of the British Government were his abhorrence.

Lord Mayo's replies, or pledges, were virtually as follows:--

The first pledge (says the Duke of Argyll) was that of non-interference in his (the Ameer's) affairs. The second pledge was that "we would support his independence." The third pledge was "that we would not force European officers, or residents, upon him against his wish[287]."

[Footnote 287: Argyll, op. cit. vol. i. Preface, pp. xxiii.-xxvi.]

There seems to have been no hopeless contrariety between the views of the Ameer and the Viceroy save in one matter that will be noted presently. It is also of interest to learn from the Duke's narrative, which claims to be official in substance, however partisan it may be in form, that there was no difference of opinion on this important subject between Lord Mayo and the Gladstone Ministry, which came to power shortly after his departure for India. The new Viceroy summed up his views in the following sentence, written to the Duke of Argyll: "The safe course lies in watchfulness, and friendly intercourse with neighbouring tribes."

Apparently, then, there was a fair chance of arriving at an agreement with the Ameer. But the understanding broke down on the question of the amount of support to be accorded to Shere Ali's dynasty. That ruler wished for an important modification of the Anglo-Afghan treaty of 1855, which had bound his father to close friendship with the old Company without binding the Company to intervene in his favour. That, said Shere Ali, was a "dry friendship." He wanted a friendship more fruitful than that of the years 1863-67, and a direct support to his dynasty whenever he claimed it. The utmost concession that Lord Mayo would grant was that the British Government would "view with severe displeasure any attempt to disturb your position as Ruler of Cabul, and rekindle civil war[288]."

[Footnote 288: Argyll, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 263.]

It seems that Shere Ali thought lightly of Britain's "displeasure," for he departed ill at ease. Not even the occasional presents of money and weapons that found their way from Calcutta to Cabul could thenceforth keep his thoughts from turning northwards towards Russia. At Umballa he had said little about that Power; and the Viceroy had very wisely repressed any feelings of anxiety that he may have had on that score. Possibly the strength and cheeriness of Lord Mayo's personality would have helped to assuage the Ameer's wounded feelings; but that genial Irishman fell under the dagger of a fanatic during a tour in the Andaman Islands (February 1872). His death was a serious event. Shere Ali cherished towards him feelings which he did not extend to his successor, Lord Northbrook (1872-76).

Yet, during that vice-royalty, the diplomatic action of Great Britain secured for the Ameer the recognition of his claims over the northern part of Afghanistan, as far as the banks of the Upper Oxus. In the years 1870-72 Russia stoutly contested those claims, but finally withdrew them, the Emperor declaring at the close of the latter year "that such a question should not be a cause of difference between the two countries, and he was determined it should not be so." It is further noteworthy that Russian official communications more than once referred to the Ameer of Afghanistan as being "under the protection of the Indian Government[289]".

[Footnote 289: Argyll, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 289, 292. For the Czar's assurance that "extension of territory" was "extension of weakness," see Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 1 (1878), p. 101.]

These signal services of British diplomacy counted for little at Cabul in comparison with the question of the dynastic guarantee which we persistently withheld. In the spring of 1873, when matters relating to the Afghan-Persian frontier had to be adjusted, the Ameer sent his Prime Minister to Simla with the intention of using every diplomatic means for the extortion of that long-delayed boon.

The time seemed to favour his design. Apart from the Persian boundary questions (which were settled in a manner displeasing to the Ameer), trouble loomed ahead in Central Asia. The Russians were advancing on Khiva; and the Afghan statesman, during his stay at Simla, sought to intimidate Lord Northbrook by parading this fact. He pointed out that Russia would easily conquer Khiva and then would capture Merv, near the western frontier of Afghanistan, "either in the current year or the next." Equally obvious was his aim in insisting that "the interests of the Afghan and English Governments are identical," and that "the border of Afghanistan is in truth the border of India." These were ingenious ways of working his intrenchments up to the hitherto inaccessible citadel of Indian border policy. The news of the Russian advance on Khiva lent strength to his argument.

Yet, when he came to the question of the guarantee of Shere Ali's dynasty, he again met with a rebuff. In truth, Lord Northbrook and his advisers saw that the Ameer was seeking to frighten them about Russia in order to improve his own family prospects in Afghanistan; and, paying too much attention, perhaps, to the oriental artfulness of the method of request, and too little to the importance of the questions then at stake, he decided to meet the Ameer in regard to non-essentials, though he failed to satisfy him on the one thing held to be needful at the palace of Cabul.

Anxious, however, to consult the Home Government on a matter of such importance, now that the Russians were known to be at Khiva, Lord Northbrook telegraphed to the Duke of Argyll on July 24, 1873:--

Ameer of Cabul alarmed at Russian progress, dissatisfied with general assurance, and anxious to know how far he may rely on our help if invaded. I propose assuring him that if he unreservedly accepts and acts on our advice in all external relations, we will help him with money, arms, and troops, if necessary, to expel unprovoked aggression. We to be the judge of the necessity. Answer by telegraph quickly.

The Gladstone Ministry was here at the parting of the ways. The Ameer asked them to form an alliance on equal terms. They refused, believing, as it seems, that they could keep to the old one-sided arrangement of 1855, whereby the Ameer promised effective help to the Indian Government, if need be, and gained only friendly assurance in return. The Duke of Argyll telegraphed in reply on July 26:--

Cabinet thinks you should inform Ameer that we do not at all share his alarm, and consider there is no cause for it; but you may assure him we shall maintain our settled policy in favour of Afghanistan if he abides by our advice in external affairs[290].

[Footnote 290: Argyll, op. cit. vol. ii. 331. The Gladstone Cabinet clearly weakened Lord Northbrook's original proposal, and must therefore bear a large share of responsibility for the alienation of the Ameer which soon ensued. The Duke succeeded in showing up many inaccuracies in the versions of these events afterwards given by Lord Lytton and Lord Cranbrook; but he was seemingly quite unconscious of the consequences resulting from adherence to an outworn theory.]

This answer, together with a present of £100,000 and 20,000 rifles, was all that the Ameer gained; his own shrewd sense had shown him long before that Britain must in any case defend Afghanistan against Russia. What he wanted was an official recognition of his own personal position as ruler, while he acted, so to speak, as the "Count of the Marches" of India. The Gladstone Government held out no hopes of assuring the future of their Mark-graf or of his children after him. The remembrance of the disaster in the Khyber Pass in 1841 haunted them, as it had done their predecessors, like a ghost, and scared them from the course of action which might probably have led to the conclusion of a close offensive and defensive alliance between India and Afghanistan.

Such a consummation was devoutly to be hoped for in view of events which had transpired in Central Asia. Khiva had been captured by the Russians. This Khanate intervened between Bokhara and the Caspian Sea, which the Russians used as their base of operations on the west. The plea of necessity was again put forward, and it might have been urged as forcibly on geographical and strategic grounds as on the causes that were alleged for the rupture. They consisted mainly of the frontier incidents that are wont to occur with restless, uncivilised neighbours. The Czar's Government also accused the Khivans of holding some Russian subjects in captivity, and of breaking their treaty of 1842 with Russia by helping the Khirgiz Horde in a recent revolt against their new masters.

Russia soon had ready three columns, which were to converge on Khiva: one was stationed on the River Ural, a second at the rising port of Krasnovodsk on the Caspian Sea, and a third, under General Kaufmann, at Tashkend. So well were their operations timed that, though the distances to be traversed varied from 480 to 840 miles, in parts over a waterless desert, yet the three chief forces arrived almost simultaneously at Khiva and met with the merest show of resistance (June 1873). Setting the young Khan on the throne of his father, they took from him his ancestral lands of the right bank of the Amu Daria (Oxus) and imposed on him a crushing war indemnity of 2,200,000 roubles, which assured his entire dependence on his new creditors. They further secured their hold on these diminished territories by erecting two forts on the river[291]. The Czar's Government was content with assuring its hold upon Khiva, without annexing the Khanate outright, seeing that it had disclaimed any such intention[292]. All the same, Russia was now mistress of nearly the whole of Central Asia; and the advance of roads and railways portended further conquests at the expense of Persia and the few remaining Turkoman tribes.

[Footnote 291: J. Popowski, The Rival Powers in Central Asia, p. 47 (Eng. edit).; A. Vambéry, The Coming Struggle for India, p. 21; A.R. Colquhoun, Russia against India, pp. 24-26; Lavisse and Rambaud, Histoire Générale, vol. xii. pp. 793-794.]

[Footnote 292: Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 1 (1878), p. 101.]

In order to estimate the importance of these facts, it must be remembered that the teachings of Geography and History concur in showing the practicability of an invasion of India from Central Asia. Touching first the geographical facts, we may point out that India and Afghanistan stand in somewhat the same relation to the Asiatic continent that Italy and Switzerland hold to that of Europe. The rich lands and soft climate of both Peninsulas have always been an irresistible attraction to the dwellers among the more barren mountains and plains of the North; and the lie of the land on the borders of both of these seeming Eldorados favours the advance of more virile peoples in their search for more genial conditions of life. Nature, which enervates the defenders in their sultry plains, by her rigorous training imparts a touch of the wolf to the mountaineers or plain-dwellers of the North; and her guides (rivers and streams) conduct the hardy seekers for the sun by easy routes up to the final mountain barriers. Finally, those barriers, the Alps and the Hindu Koosh, are notched by passes that are practicable for large armies, as has been seen now and again from the times of Alexander the Great and Hannibal to those of Nadir Shah and Napoleon.

In these conditions, physical and climatic, is to be found the reason for the success that has so often attended the invasions of Italy and India. Only when the Romans organised all the forces of their Peninsula and the fresh young life beyond, were the defensive powers of Italy equal to her fatally attractive powers. Only when Britain undertook the defence of India, could her peoples feel sure of holding the North-West against the restless Pathans and Afghans; and the situation was wholly changed when a great military Empire pushed its power to the river-gates of Afghanistan.

The friendship of the Ameer was now a matter of vital concern; and yet, as we have seen, Lord Northbrook alienated him, firstly by giving an unfavourable verdict in regard to the Persian boundary in the district of Seistan, and still more so by refusing to grant the long-wished-for guarantee of his dynasty.

The year 1873 marks a fatal turning-point in Anglo-Afghan relations. Yakub Khan told Lord Roberts at Cabul in 1879 that his father, Shere Ali, had been thoroughly disgusted with Lord Northbrook in 1873, "and at once made overtures to the Russians, with whom constant intercourse had since been kept up[293]."

[Footnote 293: Lord Roberts, Forty-one Years in India, vol. ii. p. 247; also Life of Abdur Rahman, by Mohammed Khan, 2 vols. (1900), vol. i. p. 149.]

In fact, all who are familiar with the events preceding the first Afghan War (1839-42) can now see that events were fast drifting into a position dangerously like that which led Dost Mohammed to throw himself into the arms of Russia. At that time also the Afghan ruler had sought to gain the best possible terms for himself and his dynasty from the two rivals; and, finding that the Russian promises were far more alluring than those emanating from Calcutta, he went over to the Muscovites. At bottom that had been the determining cause of the first Afghan War; and affairs were once more beginning to revolve in the same vicious circle. Looking back on the events leading up to the second Afghan War, we can now see that a frank compliance with the demands of Shere Ali would have been far less costly than the non-committal policy which in 1873 alienated him. Outwardly he posed as the aggrieved but still faithful friend. In reality he was looking northwards for the personal guarantee which never came from Calcutta.

It should, however, be stated that up to the time of the fall of the Gladstone Ministry (February 1874), Russia seemed to have no desire to meddle in Afghan affairs. The Russian Note of January 21, 1874, stated that the Imperial Government "continued to consider Afghanistan as entirely beyond its sphere of action[294]." Nevertheless, that declaration inspired little confidence. The Russophobes, headed by Sir Henry Rawlinson and Sir Bartle Frere, could reply that they distrusted Russian disclaimers concerning Afghanistan, when the plea of necessity had so frequently and so speedily relegated to oblivion the earlier "assurances of intention."

[Footnote 294: Argyll, Eastern Question, vol. ii. p. 347. See, however, the letters that passed between General Kaufmann, Governor of Turkestan, and Cabul in 1870-74, in Parl. Papers, Central Asia, No. 1 (1881), pp. 2-10.]

Such was the state of affairs when, in February 1874, Disraeli came to power at Westminster with Lord Salisbury as Secretary of State for India. The new Ministry soon showed the desire to adopt a more spirited foreign policy than their predecessors, who had fretted public opinion by their numerous acts of complaisance or surrender. Russia soon gave cause for complaint. In June 1874 the Governor of the trans-Caspian province issued a circular, warning the nomad Turkomans of the Persian border-lands against raiding; it applied to tribes inhabiting districts within what were considered to be the northern boundaries of Persia. This seemed to contravene the assurances previously given by Russia that she would not extend her possessions in the southern part of Central Asia[295]. It also foreshadowed another stride forward at the expense of the Turkoman districts both of Persia and Afghanistan.

[Footnote 295: Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 1 (1878), p. 107.]

As no sufficient disclaimer appeared, the London partisans of the Indian "forward policy" sought to induce Lord Derby and Lord Salisbury to take precautionary measures. Their advice was summed up in the Note of January 11, 1875, written by that charming man and able administrator, Sir Bartle Frere. Its chief practical recommendation was, firstly, the despatch of British officers to act as political agents at Cabul, Candahar, and Herat; and, secondly, the occupation of the commanding position of Quetta, in Baluchistan, as an outpost commanding the chief line of advance from Central Asia into India[296].

[Footnote 296: General Jacob had long before advocated the occupation of this strong flanking position. It was supported by Sir C. Dilke in his Greater Britain (1867).]

This Note soon gained the ear of the Cabinet; and on January 22, 1875, Lord Salisbury urged Lord Northbrook to take measures to procure the assent of the Ameer to the establishment of British officers at Candahar and Herat (not at Cabul)[297]. The request placed Lord Northbrook in an embarrassing position, seeing that he knew full well the great reluctance of the Ameer at all times to receive any British Mission. On examining the evidence as to the Ameer's objection to receive British Residents, the viceroy found it to be very strong, while there is ground for thinking that Ministers and officials in London either ignored it or sought to minimise its importance. The pressure which they brought to bear on Lord Northbrook was one of the causes that led to his resignation (February 1876). He believed that he was in honour bound by the promise, given to the Ameer at the Umballa Conference, not to impose a British Resident on him against his will.

[Footnote 297: Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 1 (1878), pp. 128-129.]

He was succeeded by a man of marked personality, Lord Lytton. The only son of the celebrated novelist, he inherited decided literary gifts, especially an unusual facility of expression both in speech and writing, in prose and verse. Any tendency to redundance in speech is generally counted unfavourable to advancement in diplomatic circles, where Talleyrand's mot as to language being a means of concealing thought still finds favour. Owing, however, to the influence of his uncle, then British Ambassador at Washington, but far more to his own talents, Lytton rose rapidly in the diplomatic service, holding office in the chief embassies, until Disraeli discerned in the brilliant speaker and writer the gifts that would grace the new imperial policy in the East.

In ordinary times the new Viceroy would probably have crowned the new programme with success. His charm and vivacity of manner appealed to orientals all the more by contrast with the cold and repellent behaviour that too often characterises Anglo-Indian officials in their dealings with natives. Lytton's mind was tinged with the eastern glow that lit up alike the stories, the speeches, and the policy of his chief. It is true, the imperialist programme was as grandiosely vague as the meaning of Tancred itself; but in a land where forms and words count for much the lack of backbone in the new policy was less observed and commented on than by the matter-of-fact islanders whom it was designed to glorify.

The apotheosis of the new policy was the proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India (July 1, 1877), an event which was signalised by a splendid Durbar at Delhi on January 1, 1878. The new title warned the world that, however far Russia advanced in Central Asia, England nailed the flag of India to her masthead. It was also a useful reminder to the small but not uninfluential Positivist school in England that their "disapproval" of the existence of a British Empire in India was wholly Platonic. Seeing also that the name "Queen" in Hindu (Malika) was one of merely respectable mediocrity in that land of splendour, the new title, "Kaisar-i-Hind," helped to emphasise the supremacy of the British Raj over the Nizam and Gaekwar. In fact, it is difficult now to take seriously the impassioned protests with which a number of insulars greeted the proposal.

Nevertheless, in one sense the change of title came about most inopportunely. Fate willed that over against the Durbar at Delhi there stood forth the spectral form of Famine, bestriding the dusty plains of the Carnatic. By the glint of her eyes the splendours of Delhi shone pale, and the viceregal eloquence was hushed in the distant hum of her multitudinous wailing. The contrast shocked all beholders, and unfitted them for a proper appreciation of the new foreign policy.

That policy may also be arraigned on less sentimental grounds. The year 1876 witnessed the re-opening of the Eastern Question in a most threatening manner, the Disraeli Ministry taking up what may be termed the Palmerstonian view that the maintenance of Turkey was essential to the stability of the Indian Empire. As happened in and after 1854, Russia, when thwarted in Europe, sought for her revenge in the lands bordering on India. No district was so favourable to Muscovite schemes as the Afghan frontier, then, as now, the weakest point in Great Britain's imperial armour. Thenceforth the Afghan Question became a pendant of the Eastern Question.

Russia found ready to hand the means of impressing the Ameer with a sense of her irresistible power. The Czar's officials had little difficulty in picking a quarrel with the Khanate of Khokand. Under the pretext of suppressing a revolt (which Vambéry and others consider to have been prepared through Muscovite agencies) they sent troops, ostensibly with the view of favouring the Khan. The expedition gained a complete success, alike over the rebels and the Khan himself, who thenceforth sank to the level of pensioner of his liberators (1876). It is significant that General Kaufmann at once sent to the Ameer at Cabul a glowing account of the Russian success[298]; and the news of this communication increased the desire of the British Government to come to a clear understanding with the Ameer.

[Footnote 298: Parl. Papers, Central Asia, No. 1 (1881), pp. 12-14; Shere Ali's letters to him (some of them suspicious) and the replies are also printed.]

Unfortunately our authorities set to work in a way that increased his irritation. Lord Salisbury on February 28, 1876, instructed Lord Lytton to offer slightly larger concessions to Shere Ali; but he refused to go further than to allow "a frank recognition (not a guarantee) of a de facto order in the succession" to the throne of Afghanistan, and undertook to defend his dominions against external attack "only in some clear case of unprovoked aggression." On the other hand, the British Government stated that "they must have, for their own agents, undisputed access to [the] frontier positions [of Afghanistan][299]." Thus, while granting very little more than before, the new Ministry claimed for British agents and officers a right of entry which wounded the pride of a suspicious ruler and a fanatical people.

[Footnote 299: Parl. Papers, Central Asia, No. 1 (1881), pp. 156-159.]

To sum up, we gave Shere Ali no help while he was struggling for power with his rivals; and after he had won the day, we pinned him to the terms of a one-sided alliance. In the matter of the Seistan frontier dispute with Persia, British arbitration was insolently defied by the latter Power, yet we urged the Ameer to accept the Shah's terms. According to Lord Napier of Magdala, he felt the loss of the once Afghan district of Seistan more keenly than anything else, and thenceforth regarded us as weak and untrustworthy[300].

[Footnote 300: Ibid. pp. 225-226.]

The Ameer's irritation increased at the close of the year when the Viceroy concluded an important treaty with the Khan of Khelat in Baluchistan. It would take us too far from our main path to turn aside into the jungle of Baluchee politics. Suffice it to say that the long series of civil strifes in that land had come to an end largely owing to the influence of Major (afterwards Sir Robert) Sandeman. His fine presence, masterful personality, frank, straightforward, and kindly demeanour early impressed the Khan and his turbulent Sirdars. In two Missions which he undertook to Khelat in the years 1875 and 1876, he succeeded in stilling their internal feuds and in clearing away the misunderstandings which had arisen with the Indian Government. But he saw still further ahead. Detecting signs of foreign intrigue in that land, he urged that British mediation should, if possible, become permanent. His arguments before long convinced the new Viceroy, Lord Lytton, who had at first doubted the advisability of the second Mission; and in the course of a tour along the north-west frontier, he held at Jacobabad a grand Durbar, which was attended by the Khan of Khelat and his once rebellious Sirdars. There on December 8, 1876, he signed a treaty with the Khan, whereby the British Government became the final arbiter in all disputes between him and his Sirdars, obtained the right of stationing British troops in certain parts of Baluchistan, and of constructing railways and telegraphs. Three lakhs of rupees were given to the Khan, and his yearly subsidy of Rs. 50,000 was doubled[301].

[Footnote 301: Sir Robert Sandeman, by T.H. Thornton, chaps, ix.-x.; Parl. Papers relating to the Treaty . . . of 8th Dec. 1876; The Forward Policy and its Results, by R.I. Bruce; Lord Lytton's Indian Administration, by Lady Betty Balfour, chap. iii.

The Indian rupee is worth sixteen pence.]

The Treaty of Jacobabad is one of the most satisfactory diplomatic triumphs of the present age. It came, not as the sequel to a sanguinary war, but as a sign of the confidence inspired in turbulent and sometimes treacherous chiefs by the sterling qualities of those able frontier statesmen, the Napiers, the Lawrences, General Jacob, and Major Sandeman. It spread the pax Britannica over a land as large as Great Britain, and quietly brought a warlike people within the sphere of influence of India. It may be compared with Bonaparte's Act of Mediation in Switzerland (1803), as marking the triumph of a strong organising intelligence over factious groups, to which it imparted peace and order under the shelter of a generally beneficent suzerainty. Before long a strong garrison was posted at Quetta, and we gained the right to enlist Baluchee troops of excellent fighting powers. The Quetta position is a mountain bastion which strengthens the outer defences of India, just as the Alps and Juras, when under Napoleon's control, menaced any invaders of France.

This great advantage was weighted by one considerable drawback. The victory of British influence in Baluchistan aroused the utmost resentment of Shere Ali, who now saw his southern frontier outflanked by Britain. Efforts were made in January-February 1877 to come to an understanding; but, as Lord Lytton insisted on the admission of British Residents to Afghanistan, a long succession of interviews at Peshawur, between the Ameer's chief adviser and Sir Lewis Pelly, led to no other result than an increase of suspicion on both sides. The Viceroy thereupon warned the Ameer that all supplies and subsidies would be stopped until he became amenable to advice and ceased to maltreat subjects known to be favourable to the British alliance. As a retort the Ameer sought to call the border tribes to a Jehad, or holy war, against the British, but with little success. He had no hold over the tribes between Chitral and the Khyber Pass; and the incident served only to strengthen the Viceroy's aim of subjecting them to Britain. In the case of the Jowakis we succeeded, though only after a campaign which proved to be costly in men and money.

In fact, Lord Lytton was now convinced of the need of a radical change of frontier policy. He summed up his contentions in the following phrases in his despatches of the early summer of 1877:--"Shere Ali has irrevocably slipped out of our hands; . . . I conceive that it is rather the disintegration and weakening, than the consolidation and establishment, of the Afghan power at which we must now begin to aim." As for the mountain barrier, in which men of the Lawrence school had been wont to trust, he termed it "a military mouse-trap," and he stated that Napoleon I. had once for all shown the futility of relying on a mountain range that had several passes[302]. These assertions show what perhaps were the weak points of Lord Lytton in practical politics--an eager and impetuous disposition, too prone to be dazzled by the very brilliance of the phrases which he coined.

[Footnote 302: Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. pp.166-185, 247-148.]

At the close of his despatch of April 8, 1878, to Lord Cranbrook (Lord Salisbury's successor at the India Office) he sketched out, as "the best arrangement," a scheme for breaking up the Cabul power and bringing about "the creation of a West Afghan Khanate, including Merv, Maimena, Balkh, Candahar, and Herat, under some prince of our own selection, who would be dependent on our support. With Western Afghanistan thus disposed of, and a small station our own, close to our frontier in the Kurram valley, the destinies of Cabul itself would be to us a matter of no importance[303]."

[Footnote 303: Ibid. pp. 246-247.]

This, then, was the new policy in its widest scope. Naturally it met with sharp opposition from Lord Lawrence and others in the India Council at Whitehall. Besides involving a complete change of front, it would naturally lead to war with the Ameer, and (if the intentions about Merv were persisted in) with Russia as well. And for what purpose? In order that we might gain an advanced frontier and break in pieces the one important State which remained as a buffer between India and Russian Asia. In the eyes of all but the military men this policy stood self-condemned. Its opponents pointed out that doubtless Russian intrigues were going on at Cabul; but they were the result of the marked hostility between England and Russia in Europe, and a natural retort to the sending of Indian troops to Malta. Besides, was it true that British influence at Cabul was permanently lost? Might it not be restored by money and diplomacy? Or if these means failed, could not affairs be so worked at Cabul as to bring about the deposition of the Ameer in favour of some claimant who would support England? In any case, the extension of our responsibilities to centres so remote as Balkh and Herat would overstrain the already burdened finances of India, and impair her power of defence at vital points.

These objections seem to have had some weight at Whitehall, for by the month of August the Viceroy somewhat lowered his tone; he gave up all hope of influencing Merv, and consented to make another effort to win back the Ameer, or to seek to replace him by a more tractable prince. But, failing this, he advised, though with reluctance on political grounds, the conquest and occupation of so much of Afghan territory as would "be absolutely requisite for the permanent maintenance of our North-West frontier[304]."

[Footnote 304: Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. p. 255. For a defence of this on military grounds see Lord Roberts' Forty-One Years in India, vol. ii, p. 187; and Thorburn's Asiatic Neighbours, chap. xiv.]

But by this time all hope of peace had become precarious. On June 13, the day of opening of the Congress of Berlin, a Russian Mission, under General Stolieteff, left Samarcand for Cabul. The Ameer is said to have heard this news with deep concern, and to have sought to prevent it crossing the frontier. The Russians, however, refused to turn back, and entered Cabul on July 22[305]. As will be seen by reference to Skobeleff's "Plan for the Invasion of India" (Appendix II.), the Mission was to be backed up by columns of troops; and, with the aim of redoubling the pressure of Russian diplomacy in Europe, the Minister for War at St. Petersburg had issued orders on April 25, 1878, for the despatch of three columns of troops which were to make a demonstration against India. The chief force, 12,000 strong, with 44 guns and a rocket battery, was to march from Samarcand and Tashkend on Cabul; the second, consisting of only 1700 men, was to stir up the mountain tribes of the Chitral district to raid the north of the Punjab; while the third, of the same strength, moved from the middle part of the Amu Daria (Oxus) towards Merv and Herat. The main force set out from Tashkend on June 13, and after a most trying march reached the Russo-Bokharan border, only to find that its toils were fruitless owing to the signature of the Treaty of Berlin (July 13). The same disappointing news dispelled the dreams of conquest which had nerved the other columns in their burning march.

[Footnote 305: Parl Papers, Afghanistan, No. 1 (1878), pp.242-243; ibid. Central Asia, No. 1, pp.165 et seq.]

Thus ended the scheme of invasion of India to which Skobeleff had lately given shape and body. In January 1877, while in his Central Asian command, he had drawn up a detailed plan, the important parts of which will be found in the Appendices of this volume. During the early spring of 1878, when the Russian army lay at San Stefano, near Constantinople, he drew up another plan of the same tenour. It seems certain that the general outline of these projects haunted the minds of officers and men in the expeditions just referred to; for the columns withdrew northwards most slowly and reluctantly[306].

[Footnote 306: For details see Russia's Advance towards India, by "an Indian Officer," vol. ii. pp.109 et seq.]

A perusal of Skobeleff's plan will show that he relied also on a diplomatic Mission to Cabul and on the despatch of the Afghan pretender, Abdur Rahman, from Samarcand to the Afghan frontier. Both of these expedients were adopted in turn; the former achieved a startling but temporary success.

As has been stated above, General Stolieteff's Mission entered Cabul on July 22. The chief himself returned on August 24; but other members of his Mission remained several weeks longer. There seem to be good grounds for believing that the Ameer, Shere Ali, signed a treaty with Stolieteff; but as to its purport we have no other clue than the draft which purports to be written out from memory by a secret agent of the Indian Government. Other Russian documents, some of which Lord Granville afterwards described as containing "some very disagreeable passages . . . written subsequently to the Treaty of Berlin," were found by Lord Roberts; and the Russian Government found it difficult to give a satisfactory explanation of them[307].

[Footnote 307: The alleged treaty is printed, along with the other documents, in Parl. Papers, Central Asia, No. 1 (1881), pp. 17-30. See also Lord Roberts' Forty-one Years in India, vol. ii. p.477.]

In any case the Government of India could not stand by and witness the intrusion of Muscovite influence into Afghanistan. Action, however, was very difficult owing to the alienation of the Ameer. His resentment had now settled into lasting hatred. As a test question Lord Lytton sought to impose on him the reception of a British Mission. On August 8 he received telegraphic permission from London to make this demand. The Ameer, however, refused to allow a single British officer to enter the country; and the death of his son and heir on August 17 enabled him to decline to attend to affairs of State for a whole month.

His conduct in this matter was condoned by the champions of "masterly inactivity" in this country, who proceeded to accuse the Viceroy of haste in sending forward the British Mission to the frontier before the full time of mourning was over[308]. We now know, however, that this sympathy was misplaced. Shere Ali's grief did not prevent him seeing officers of the Russian Mission after his bereavement, and (as it seems) signing an alliance with the emissaries of the Czar. Lord Lytton was better informed as to the state of things at Cabul than were his very numerous critics, one of whom, under the shield of anonymity, confidently stated that the Russian Mission to Cabul was either an affair of etiquette or a means of warding off a prospective attack from India on Russian Turkestan; that the Ameer signed no treaty with the Mission, and was deeply embarrassed by its presence; while Lord Lytton's treatment of the Ameer was discourteous[309].

[Footnote 308: Duke of Argyll, _The Eastern Question, _vol. ii. pp. 504-507.]

[Footnote 309: _The Causes of the Afghan War, _pp. 305 et seq.]

In the light of facts as now known, these charges are seen to be the outcome of a vivid imagination or of partisan malice. There can be no doubt that Shere Ali had played us false. Apart from his intrigues with Russia, he had condoned the murder of a British officer by keeping the murderer in office, and had sought to push on the frontier tribes into a holy war. Finally, he sent orders to stop the British Mission at Ali Musjid, the fort commanding the entrance to the Khyber Pass. This action, which occurred on September 22, must be pronounced a deliberate insult, seeing that the progress of that Mission had been so timed as that it should reach Cabul after the days of mourning were over. In the Viceroy's view, the proper retort would have been a declaration of war; but again the Home Government imposed caution, urging the despatch of an ultimatum so as to give time for repentance at Cabul. It was sent on November 2, with the intimation that if no answer reached the frontier by November 20, hostilities would begin. No answer came until a later date, and then it proved to be of an evasive character.

Such, in brief outline, were the causes of the second Afghan War. In the fuller light of to-day it is difficult to account for the passion which the discussion of them aroused at the time. But the critics of the Government held strong ground at two points. They could show, first, that the war resulted in the main from Lord Beaconsfield's persistent opposition to Russia in the Eastern Question, also that the Muscovite intrigues at Cabul were a natural and very effective retort to the showy and ineffective expedient of bringing Indian troops to Malta; in short, that the Afghan War was due largely to Russia's desire for revenge.

Secondly, they fastened on what was undoubtedly a weak point in the Ministerial case, namely, that Lord Beaconsfield's speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet, on November 9, 1878, laid stress almost solely on the need for acquiring a scientific frontier on the north-west of India. In the parliamentary debate of December 9 he sought to rectify this mistake by stating that he had never asserted that a new frontier was the object of the war, but rather a possible consequence. His critics refused to accept the correction. They pinned him to his first words. If this were so, they said, what need of recounting our complaints against Shere Ali? These were merely the pretexts, not the causes, of a war which was to be waged solely in the cold-blooded quest for a scientific frontier. Perish India, they cried, if her fancied interests required the sacrifice of thousands of lives of brave hillmen on the altar of the new Imperialism.

These accusations were logically justifiable against Ministers who dwelt largely on that frigid abstraction, the "scientific frontier," and laid less stress on the danger of leaving an ally of Russia on the throne of Afghanistan. The strong point of Lord Lytton's case lay in the fact that the policy of the Gladstone Ministry had led Shere Ali to side with Russia; but this fact was inadequately explained, or, at least, not in such a way as to influence public opinion. The popular fancy caught at the phrase "scientific frontier"; and for once Lord Beaconsfield's cleverness in phrase-making conspired to bring about his overthrow.

But the logic of words does not correspond to the logic of facts. Words are for the most part simple, downright, and absolute. The facts of history are very rarely so. Their importance is very often relative, and is conditioned by changing circumstances. It was so with the events that led up to the second Afghan War. They were very complex, and could not be summed up, or disposed of, by reference to a single formula. Undoubtedly the question of the frontier was important; but it did not become of supreme importance until, firstly, Shere Ali became our enemy, and, secondly, showed unmistakable signs of having a close understanding with Russia. Thenceforth it became a matter of vital import for India to have a frontier readibly defensible against so strong a combination as that of Russia and Afghanistan.

It would be interesting to know what Mr. Gladstone and his supporters would have done if they had come into power in the summer of 1878. That they blamed their opponents on many points of detail does not prove that they would not have taken drastic means to get rid of Shere Ali. In the unfortunate state into which affairs had drifted in 1878, how was that to be effected without war? The situation then existing may perhaps best be summed up in the words which General Roberts penned at Cabul on November 22, 1879, after a long and illuminating conversation with the new Ameer concerning his father's leanings towards Russia: "Our recent rupture with Shere Ali has, in fact, been the means of unmasking and checking a very serious conspiracy against the peace and security of our Indian Empire[310]."

[Footnote 310: Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 1 (1880), p. 171.]

Given the situation actually existing in 1878, the action of the British Government is justifiable as regards details. The weak point of the Beaconsfield policy was this: that the situation need not have existed. As far as can be judged from the evidence hitherto published (if we except some wild talk on the part of Muscovite Chauvinists), Russia would not have interfered in Afghanistan except in order to paralyse England's action in Turkish affairs. As has been pointed out above, the Afghan trouble was a natural sequel to the opposition offered by Disraeli to Russia from the time of the re-opening of the Balkan problem in 1875-76; and the consideration of the events to be described in the following chapter will add one more to the many proofs already existing as to the fatefulness of the blunder committed by him when he wrecked the Berlin Memorandum, dissolved the Concert of the Powers, and rendered hopeless a peaceful solution of the Eastern Question.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us