Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire Part 15

He had at first declared that the withdrawal of the Prince was worthless when it was officially communicated to him by Prussia; now he extended his demands. He suggested to the Prussian Amba.s.sador at Paris that the King should write to the Emperor a letter, in which he should express his regret for what had happened and his a.s.surance that he had had no intention of injuring France. To Benedetti he telegraphed imperative orders that he was to request from the King a guarantee for the future, and a promise that he would never again allow the Prince to return to the candidature. It was to give himself over to an implacable foe. As soon as Bismarck heard from Werther of the first suggestion, he telegraphed to him a stern reprimand for having listened to demands so prejudicial to the honour of his master, and ordered him, under the pretext of ill health, to depart from Paris and leave a post for which he had shewn himself so ill-suited.

That same morning he saw Lord Augustus Loftus, and he explained that the incident was not yet closed; Germany, he said, did not wish for war, but they did not fear it. They were not called on to endure humiliations from France; after what had happened they must have some security for the future; the Duc de Grammont must recall or explain the language he had used; France had begun to prepare for war and that would not be allowed.

"It is clear," writes the English Amba.s.sador, "that Count Bismarck and the Prussian Ministry regret the att.i.tude which the King has shewn to Count Benedetti, and feel, in regard to public opinion, the necessity of guarding the honour of the nation."

To the Crown Prince, who had come to Berlin, Bismarck was more open; he declared that war was necessary.

This very day there were taking place at Ems events which were to give him the opportunity for which he longed. On Benedetti had fallen the task of presenting the new demands to the King; it was one of the most ungrateful of the many unpleasant duties which had been entrusted to him during the last few years. In the early morning, he went out in the hope that he might see someone of the Court; he met the King, himself who was taking the waters. The King at once beckoned to him, entered into conversation, and shewed him a copy of the _Cologne Gazette_ containing the statement of the Prince's withdrawal. Benedetti then, as in duty bound, asked permission to inform his Government that the King would undertake that the candidature should not be resumed at any time. The King, of course, refused, and, when Benedetti pressed the request, repeated the refusal with some emphasis, and then, beckoning to his adjutant, who had withdrawn a few paces, broke off the conversation.

When a few hours later the King received a letter from the Prince of Hohenzollern confirming the public statement, he sent a message to Benedetti by his aide-decamp, Count Radziwill, and added to it that there would now be nothing further to say, as the incident was closed.

Benedetti twice asked for another interview, but it was refused.

He had done his duty, he had made his request, as he expected, in vain, but between him and the King there had been no departure by word or gesture from the ordinary courtesy which we should expect from these two accomplished gentlemen. All the proceedings indeed had been unusual, for it was not the habit of the King, as it was of Napoleon, to receive foreign envoys except on the advice of his Ministers, and the last conversation had taken place on the public promenade of the fas.h.i.+onable watering-place; but the exception had been explained and justified by the theory that the King's interest in the affair was domestic and not political. Both were anxious to avoid war, and the King to the last treated Benedetti with marked graciousness; he had while at Ems invited him to the royal table, and even now, the next morning before leaving Ems, granted him an audience, at the station to take leave.

Nevertheless, he had been seriously annoyed by this fresh demand; he was pained and surprised by the continuance of the French menaces; he could not but fear that there was a deliberate intention to force a quarrel on him. He determined, therefore, to return to Berlin, and ordered Abeken, Secretary to the Foreign Office, who was with him, to telegraph to Bismarck an account of what had taken place, with a suggestion that the facts should be published.

It happened that Bismarck, when the telegram arrived, was dining with Roon and Moltke, who had both been summoned to Berlin. The three men were gloomy and depressed; they felt that their country had been humiliated, and they saw no prospect of revenge. This feeling was increased when Bismarck read aloud the telegram to his two colleagues.

These repeated and impatient demands, this intrusion on the King's privacy, this ungenerous playing with his kindly and pacific disposition, stirred their deepest indignation; to them it seemed that Benedetti had been treated with a consideration he did not deserve; the man who came with these proposals should have been repulsed with more marked indignation. But in the suggestion that the facts should be published, Bismarck saw the opportunity he had wished. He went into the next room and drafted a statement; he kept to the very words of the original telegram, but he left out much, and arranged it so that it should convey to the reader the impression, not of what had really occurred, but of what he would have wished should happen. With this he returned, and as he read it to them, Roon and Moltke brightened; here at last was an answer to the French insults; before, it sounded like a "Chamade" (a retreat), now it is a "Fanfare," said Moltke. "That is better," said Roon. Bismarck asked a few questions about the army. Roon a.s.sured him that all was prepared; Moltke, that, though no one could ever foretell with certainty the result of a great war, he looked to it with confidence; they all knew that with the publication of this statement the last prospect of peace would be gone. It was published late that night in a special edition of the _North German Gazette_, and at the same time a copy was sent from the Foreign Office to all German emba.s.sies and legations.

It is not altogether correct to call this (as has often been done) a falsification of the telegram. Under no circ.u.mstances could Bismarck have published in its original form the confidential message to him from his sovereign; all he had to do was to communicate to the newspapers the facts of which he had been informed, or so much of the facts as it seemed to him desirable that the public should know. He, of course, made the selection in such a form as to produce upon public opinion the particular effect which for the purposes of his policy he wished. What to some extent justifies the charge is that the altered version was published under the heading, "Ems." The official statement was supplemented by another notice in the _North German Gazette_, which was printed in large type, and stated that Benedetti had so far forgotten all diplomatic etiquette that he had allowed himself to disturb the King in his holidays, to intercept him on the promenade, and to attempt to force demands upon him. This was untrue, but on this point the telegram to Bismarck had been itself incorrect. Besides this, Bismarck doubtless saw to it that the right instructions should be given to the writers for the Press.

But, indeed, this was hardly necessary; the statement itself was a call to arms. During all these days the German people had been left almost without instruction or guidance from the Government; they had heard with astonishment the sudden outbreak of Gallic wrath; they were told, and were inclined to believe it, that the Prussian Government was innocent of the hostile designs attributed to it; and the calm of the Government had communicated itself to them. They remained quiet, but they were still uneasy, they knew not what to think; now all doubt was removed.

It was then true that with unexampled eagerness the French had fastened an alien quarrel upon them, had without excuse or justification advanced from insult to insult and menace to menace; and now, to crown their unparalleled acts, they had sent this foreigner to intrude on the reserve of the aged King, and to insult him publicly in his own country.

Then false reports came from Ems; it was said that the King had publicly turned his back on Benedetti on the promenade, that the Amba.s.sador had followed the King to his house, and had at last been shewn the door, but that even then he had not scrupled again to intrude on the King at the railway station.[10] From one end of Germany to another a storm of indignation arose; they had had enough of this French annoyance; if the French wished for war then war should they have; now there could no longer be talk of Prussian ambition; all differences of North and South were swept away; wherever the German tongue was spoken men felt that they had been insulted in the person of the King, that it was theirs to protect his honour, and from that day he reigned in their hearts as uncrowned Emperor.

The telegram was as successful in France as in Germany. There the question of peace and war was still in debate; there was a majority for peace, and indeed there was no longer an excuse for war which would satisfy even a Frenchman. Then there came in quick succession the recall and disavowment of the Prussian Amba.s.sador, news of the serious language Bismarck had used to Lord A. Loftus, and then despatches from other Courts that an official message had been sent from Berlin carrying the record of an insult offered to the King by the French Amba.s.sador; add to this the changed tone of the German Press, the enthusiasm with which the French challenge had been taken up; they could have no doubt that they had gone too far; they would now be not the accuser but the accused; had they wished, they did not dare retreat with the fear of the Paris mob before them, and so they decided on war, and on the 15th the official statement was made and approved in the Chamber.

It was on this same day that the King travelled from Ems to Berlin. When he left Ems he still refused to believe in the serious danger of war, but as he travelled north and saw the excited crowd that thronged to meet him at every station his own belief was almost overthrown. To his surprise, when he reached Brandenburg he found Bismarck and the Crown Prince awaiting him; the news that they had come to meet the King was itself looked on almost as a declaration of war; all through the return journey Bismarck unsuccessfully tried to persuade his master to give the order for mobilisation. When they reached Berlin they found the station again surrounded by a tumultuous throng; through it pressed one of the secretaries of the Foreign Office; he brought the news that the order for mobilisation had been given in France. Then, at last, the reluctance of the King was broken down; he gave the order, and at once the Crown Prince, who was standing near, proclaimed the news to all within earshot. The North German Parliament was summoned, and five days later Bismarck was able to announce to them that he had received the Declaration of War from France, adding as he did so that this was the first official communication which throughout the whole affair he had received from the French Government, a circ.u.mstance for which there was no precedent in history.

What a contrast is there between the two countries! On the one hand, a King and a Minister who by seven years of loyal co-operation have learnt to trust and depend upon one another, who together have faced danger, who have not shrunk from extreme unpopularity, and who, just for this reason, can now depend on the absolute loyalty of the people. On the other side, the Emperor broken in health, his will shattered by prolonged pain and sickness, trying by the introduction of liberal inst.i.tutions to free himself from the burden of government and weight of responsibility which he had voluntarily taken upon his shoulders. At Berlin, Bismarck's severity and love of power had brought it about that the divergent policy and uncertainty of early years had ceased; there was one mind and one will directing this State; the unauthorised interference and amateur criticism of courtiers were no longer permitted. In France, all the evils from which Prussia had been freed by Bismarck were increasing; here there was no single will; the Ministry were divided, there was no authority over them; no one could foresee by whom the decision of the Emperor would be determined; the deliberate results of long and painful negotiations might be overthrown in ten minutes by the interference of the Empress or the advice of Prince Napoleon. The Emperor would pursue half a dozen inconsistent policies in as many hours. And then, below all, there was this fatal fact, that Napoleon could not venture to be unpopular. He knew the folly of the course into which he was being driven, but he did not dare to face the mob of Paris, or to defy the Chamber of Deputies. He owed his throne to universal suffrage, and he knew that the people who had set him up could quickly overthrow him. No man can ever govern who fears unpopularity.

Bismarck did not, Napoleon did.

Before the campaign began, two events took place which we must record.

The first was the publication in the _Times_ of the text of the treaty with France regarding Belgium. We need not add anything further to what we have said regarding it; published at this moment it had a great effect on English public opinion. The other arose out of the opposition which the exiled King of Hanover had continued to maintain. He had used the very large sums of money which he possessed to keep together a Hanoverian Legion, recruited from former officers and soldiers of the Hanoverian army. He had hoped that war would break out before this and would be accompanied by a rising in Hanover. His means had now come to an end, and the unfortunate men were living in Paris almost without support. They were now exposed to a terrible alternative. They could not return to Germany; they did not wish to take part in a war on the French side. Their only hope was emigration to America. Bismarck heard of their position; he offered to pardon them all and to pay to them from the Prussian funds the full pension which they would have received had they continued to serve in the Hanoverian army. It was a timely act of generosity, and it had the effect that the last element of hostility in Germany was stilled and the whole nation could unite as one man in this foreign war.

NOTE.--In this chapter, besides the ordinary authorities, I have depended largely on the memoirs of the King of Roumania. Bismarck, in his own memoirs, states that the writer was not accurately informed; but even if there are some errors in detail, the remarkable statements contained in this work must command belief until they are fully contradicted and disproved. There has, I believe, been no attempt to do this.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE WAR WITH FRANCE AND FOUNDATION OF THE EMPIRE.

1870-1871.

On July 31, 1870, Bismarck left Berlin with the King for the seat of war, for, as in 1866, he was to accompany the army in the field. For the next few months indeed Germany was to be governed from the soil of France, and it was necessary for the Minister to be constantly with the King. Bismarck never forgot that he was a soldier; he was more proud of his general's uniform than of his civil rank, and, though not a combatant, it was his pride and pleasure that he should share something of the hards.h.i.+ps and dangers of war. He was as a matter of fact never so well as during the campaign: the early hours, the moderate and at times meagre food, the long hours in the saddle and the open air, restored the nerves and health which had been injured by the annoyances of office, late hours, and prolonged sedentary work. He was accompanied by part of the staff of the Foreign Office, and many of the distinguished strangers who followed the army were often guests at his table; he especially shewed his old friendliness for Americans: General Sheridan and many others of his countrymen found a hearty welcome from the Chancellor.

It was not till the 17th of August that the headquarters came up with the fighting front of the army; but the next day, during the decisive battle of Gravelotte, Bismarck watched the combat by the side of the King, and, as at Koniggratz, they more than once came under fire. At one period, Bismarck was in considerable danger of being taken prisoner. His two sons were serving in the army; they were dragoons in the Cuira.s.siers of the Guards, serving in the ranks in the same regiment whose uniform their father was ent.i.tled to wear. They both took part in the terrible cavalry charge at Mars-la-Tour, in which their regiment suffered so severely; the eldest, Count Herbert, was wounded and had to be invalided home. Bismarck could justly boast that there was no nepotism in the Prussian Government when his two sons were serving as privates. It was not till the war had gone on some weeks and they had taken part in many engagements, that they received their commissions. This would have happened in no other country or army. This was the true equality, so different from the exaggerated democracy of France,--an equality not of privilege but of obligation; every Pomeranian peasant who sent his son to fight and die in France knew that the sons of the most powerful man in the country and in Europe were fighting with them not as officers but as comrades. Bismarck was more fortunate than his friends in that neither of his sons--nor any of his near relatives--lost his life; Roon's second son fell at Sedan, and the b.l.o.o.d.y days of Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte placed in mourning nearly every n.o.ble family in Prussia.

From Gravelotte to Sedan he accompanied the army, and he was by the King's side on that fatal day when the white flag was hoisted on the citadel of Sedan, and the French general came out of the town with the message that Napoleon, having in vain sought death at the head of his troops, placed his sword in the hands of the King of Prussia.

The surrender of Sedan was a military event, and the conditions had to be arranged between Moltke and Wimpffen, who had succeeded MacMahon in command, but Bismarck was present at the conference, which was held in his quarters, in case political questions arose. As they rode down together to Doncheroy he and Moltke had agreed that no terms could be offered except the unconditional surrender of the whole army, the officers alone being allowed to retain their swords. Against these conditions Wimpffen and his companions struggled long, but in vain.

Moltke coldly a.s.sured them that they could not escape, and that it would be madness to begin the fight again; they were surrounded; if the surrender were not complete by four o'clock the next morning the bombardment of the town would begin. Wimpffen suggested that it would be more politic of the Germans to show generosity; they would thereby earn the grat.i.tude of France, and this might be made the beginning of a lasting peace; otherwise what had they to look forward to but a long series of wars? Now was the time for Bismarck to interfere; it was impossible, he declared, to reckon on the grat.i.tude of nations; at times men might indeed build with confidence on that of a sovereign and his family; "but I repeat, nothing can be expected from the grat.i.tude of a nation." Above all was this true of France. "The Governments there have so little power, the changes are so quick and so unforeseen, that there is nothing on which one can rely." Besides, it would be absurd to imagine that France would ever forgive us our successes. "You are an irritable and jealous people, envious and jealous to the last degree.

You have not forgiven us Sadowa, and would you forgive us Sedan? Never."

They could not therefore modify the terms in order to win the grat.i.tude and friends.h.i.+p of France; they might have done so had there been prospects of immediate peace. One of the officers, General Castelnau, announced that he had a special message from Napoleon, who had sent his sword to the King and surrendered in the hope that the King would appreciate the sacrifice and grant a more honourable capitulation.

"Whose sword is it that the Emperor Napoleon has surrendered?" asked Bismarck; "is it the sword of France or his own? If it is the sword of France the conditions can be greatly softened; your message would have an extraordinary importance." He thought and he hoped that the Emperor wished to sue for peace, but it was not so. "It is only the sword of the Emperor," answered the General. "All then remains as it was," said Moltke; he insisted on his demands; Wimpffen asked at least that time might be allowed him to return to Sedan and consult his colleagues. He had only come from Algeria two days before; he could not begin his command by signing so terrible a surrender. Even this Moltke refused.

Then Wimpffen declared the conference ended; rather than this they would continue the battle; he asked that his horses might be brought. A terrible silence fell on the room; Moltke, with Bismarck by his side, stood cold and impenetrable, facing the three French officers; their faces were lighted by two candles on the table; behind stood the stalwart forms of the German officers of the staff, and from the walls of the room looked down the picture of Napoleon I. Then again Bismarck interfered; he begged Wimpffen not in a moment of pique to take a step which must have such horrible consequences; he whispered a few words to Moltke, and procured from him a concession; hostilities should not be renewed till nine o'clock the next morning. Wimpffen might return to Sedan and report to the Emperor and his colleagues.

It was past midnight when the conference broke up; before daybreak Bismarck was aroused by a messenger who announced that the Emperor had left Sedan and wished to see him. He hastily sprang up, and as he was, unwashed, without breakfast, in his undress uniform, his old cap, and his high boots, shewing all the marks of his long day in the saddle, he mounted his horse and rode down to the spot near the highroad where the Emperor in his carriage, accompanied by three officers and attended by three more on horseback, awaited him. Bismarck rode quickly up to him, dismounted, and as he approached saluted and removed his cap, though this was contrary to etiquette, but it was not a time when he wished even to appear to be wanting in courtesy. Napoleon had come to plead for the army; he wished to see the King, for he hoped that in a personal interview he might extract from him more favourable terms. Bismarck was determined just for this reason that the sovereigns should not meet until the capitulation was signed; he answered, therefore, that it was impossible, as the King was ten miles away. He then accompanied the Emperor to a neighbouring cottage; there in a small room, ten feet square, containing a wooden table and two rush chairs, they sat for some time talking; afterwards they came down and sat smoking in front of the cottage.

"A wonderful contrast to our last meeting in the Tuileries,"

wrote Bismarck to his wife. "Our conversation was difficult, if I was to avoid matters which would be painful to the man who had been struck down by the mighty hand of G.o.d. He first lamented this unhappy war, which he said he had not desired; he had been forced into it by the pressure of public opinion. I answered that with us also no one, least of all the King, had wished for the war. We had looked on the Spanish affair as Spanish and not as German."

The Emperor asked for more favourable terms of surrender, but Bismarck refused to discuss this with him; it was a military question which must be settled between Moltke and Wimpffen. On the other hand, when Bismarck enquired if he were inclined for negotiations for peace, Napoleon answered that he could not discuss this; he was a prisoner of war and could not treat; he referred Bismarck to the Government in Paris.

This meeting had therefore no effect on the situation. Bismarck suggested that the Emperor should go to the neighbouring Chateau of Belle Vue, which was not occupied by wounded; there he would be able to rest. Thither Bismarck, now in full uniform (for he had hurried back to his own quarters), accompanied him, and in the same house the negotiations of the previous evening were continued; Bismarck did not wish to be present at them, for, as he said, the military men could be harsher; and so gave orders that after a few minutes he should be summoned out of the room by a message that the King wished to see him.

After the capitulation was signed, he rode up with Moltke to present it to the King, who received it on the heights whence he had watched the battle, surrounded by the headquarters staff and all the princes who were making the campaign. Then, followed by a brilliant cavalcade, he rode down to visit the captive sovereign.

Bismarck would at this time willingly have made peace, but there was no opportunity of opening negotiations and it is doubtful whether even his influence would have been able successfully to combat the desire of the army to march on Paris. On September 4th, the march, which had been interrupted ten days before, was begun. Immediately afterwards news came which stopped all hopes of a speedy peace. How soon was his warning as to the instability of French Governments to be fulfilled! A revolution had broken out in Paris, the dethronement of the Emperor had been proclaimed, and a Provisional Government inst.i.tuted. They at once declared that they were a government of national defence, they would not rest till the invaders were driven from the land, they appealed to the memories of 1792. They were indeed ready to make peace, for the war, they said, had been undertaken not against France but against the Emperor; the Emperor had fallen, a free France had arisen; they would make peace, but they would not yield an inch of their country or a stone of their fortresses. With great energy they prepared the defence of Paris and the organisation of new armies; M. Thiers was instructed to visit the neutral Courts and to beg for the support of Europe.

Under these circ.u.mstances it was Bismarck's duty to explain the German view; he did so in two circular notes of September 13th and September 16th. He began by expounding those principles he had already expressed to Wimpffen, principles which had already been communicated by his secretaries to the German Press and been repeated in almost every paper of the country. The war had not been caused by the Emperor; it was the nation which was responsible for it. It had arisen from the intolerance of the French character, which looked on the prosperity of other nations as an insult to themselves. They must expect the same feeling to continue:

"We cannot seek guarantees for the future in French feeling. We must not deceive ourselves; we must soon expect a new attack; we cannot look forward to a lasting peace, and this is quite independent of the conditions we might impose on France. It is their defeat which the French nation will never forgive. If now we were to withdraw from France without any accession of territory, without any contribution, without any advantage but the glory of our arms, there would remain in the French nation the same hatred, the same spirit of revenge, for the injury done to their vanity and to their love of power."

Against this they must demand security; the demand was addressed not to any single Government but to the nation as a whole; South Germany must be protected from the danger of French attack; they would never be safe so long as Strasburg and Metz were in French hands; Strasburg was the gate of Germany; restored to Germany, these cities would regain their defensive character. Twenty times had France made war on Germany, but from Germany no danger of disturbance to the peace of Europe was to be feared.

For the first time he hereby officially stated that Germany would not make peace without some accession of territory; that this would be the case, everyone had known since the beginning of the war. At a council of war directly after Gravelotte it was determined to require Alsace; after Sedan the terms naturally rose. The demand for at least some territory was indeed inevitable. The suggestion that from confidence in the peaceful and friendly character of the French nation they should renounce all the advantages gained by their unparalleled victories scarcely deserved serious consideration. Had the French been successful they would have taken all the left bank of the Rhine; this was actually specified in the draft treaty which General Le Brun had presented to the Emperor of Austria. What claim had France to be treated with a leniency which she has never shewn to any conquered enemy? Bismarck had to meet the a.s.sumption that France was a privileged and special land; that she had freedom to conquer, pillage, and divide the land of her neighbours, but that every proposal to win back from her what she had taken from others was a crime against humanity.

So long as the Provisional Government adopted the att.i.tude that they would not even consider peace on the basis of some surrender of territory, there was no prospect of any useful negotiations. The armies must advance, and beneath the walls of Paris the struggle be fought out to its bitter end. Bismarck meanwhile treated the Government with great reserve. They had no legal status; as he often pointed out, the Emperor was still the only legal authority in France, and he would be quite prepared to enter into negotiations with him. When by the medium of the English Amba.s.sador they asked to be allowed to open negotiations for an armistice and discuss the terms of peace, he answered by the question, what guarantee was there that France or the armies in Metz and Strasburg would recognise the arrangements made by the present Government in Paris, or any that might succeed it? It was a quite fair question; for as events were to shew, the commander of the army in Metz refused to recognise them, and wished to restore the Emperor to the throne; and the Government themselves had declared that they would at once be driven from power if they withdrew from their determination not to accept the principle of a cession of territory. They would be driven from power by the same authority to which they owed their existence,--the mob of Paris; it was the mob of Paris which, from the beginning, was really responsible for the war. What use was there in a negotiation in which the two parties had no common ground? None the less Bismarck consented to receive M. Jules Favre, who held the portfolio of Foreign Affairs, and who at the advice of Lord Lyons came out from Paris, even at the risk of a rebuff, to see if by a personal interview he might not be able to influence the German Chancellor. "It is well at least to see what sort of man he is," was the explanation which Bismarck gave; but as the interview was not strictly official he did not, by granting it, bind himself to recognise Favre's authority.

Jules Favre met Bismarck on September 18th. They had a long conversation that evening, and it was continued the next day at Ferneres, Baron Rothschild's house, in which the King was at that time quartered. The French envoy did not make a favourable impression; a lawyer by profession, he had no experience in diplomatic negotiations; vain, verbose, rhetorical, and sentimental, his own report of the interview which he presented to his colleagues in Paris is sufficient evidence of his incapacity for the task he had taken upon himself. "He spoke to me as if I were a public meeting," said Bismarck afterwards, using an expression which in his mouth was peculiarly contemptuous, for he had a platonic dislike of long speeches. But let us hear Favre himself:

"Although fifty-eight years of, age Count Bismarck appeared to be in full vigour. His tall figure, his powerful head, his strongly marked features gave him an aspect both imposing and severe, tempered, however, by a natural simplicity amounting to good-nature. His manners were courteous and grave, and quite free from stiffness or affectation. As soon as the conversation commenced he displayed a communicativeness and good-will which he preserved while it lasted. He certainly regarded me as a negotiator unworthy of him and he had the politeness not to let this be seen, and appeared interested by my sincerity. I was struck with the clearness of his ideas, his vigorous good sense, and his originality of mind. His freedom from all pretensions was no less remarkable."

It is interesting to compare with this the account given by another Frenchman of one of the later interviews between the two men[11]:

"The negotiations began seriously and quietly. The Chancellor said simply and seriously what he wanted with astonis.h.i.+ng frankness and admirable logic. He went straight to the mark and at every turn he disconcerted Jules Favre, who was accustomed to legal quibbles and diplomatic jobbery, and did not in the least understand the perfect loyalty of his opponent or his superb fas.h.i.+on of treating questions, so different from the ordinary method. The Chancellor expressed himself in French with a fidelity I have never met with except among the Russians. He made use of expressions at once elegant and vigorous, finding the proper word to describe an idea or define a situation without effort or hesitation."

"I was at the outset struck by the contrast between the two negotiators. Count Bismarck wore the uniform of the White Cuira.s.siers, white tunic, white cap, and yellow band. He looked like a giant. In his tight uniform, with his broad chest and square shoulders and bursting with health and strength, he overwhelmed the stooping, thin, tall, miserable-looking lawyer with his frock coat, wrinkled all over, and his white hair falling over his collar. A look, alas, at the pair was sufficient to distinguish between the conqueror and the conquered, the strong and the weak."

This, however, was four months later, when Jules Favre was doubtless much broken by the anxieties of his position, and perhaps also by the want of sufficient food, and Comte d'Herisson is not an impartial witness, for, though a patriotic Frenchman, he was an enemy of the Minister.

Bismarck in granting the interview had said that he would not discuss an armistice, but only terms of peace. For the reasons we have explained, Favre refused to listen even to the proposition of the only terms which Bismarck was empowered to bring forward. The Chancellor explained those ideas with which we are already acquainted: "Strasburg," he said, "is the key of our house and we must have it." Favre protested that he could not discuss conditions which were so dishonourable to France. On this expression we need only quote Bismarck's comment:

"I did not succeed in convincing him that conditions, the fulfilment of which France had required from Italy, and demanded from Germany without having been at war, conditions which France would undoubtedly have imposed upon us had we been defeated and which had been the result of nearly every war, even in the latest time, could not have anything dishonourable in themselves for a country which had been defeated after a brave resistance, and that the honour of France was not of a different kind to that of other countries."

It was impossible to refuse to discuss terms of an armistice; as in 1866 the military authorities objected to any kind of armistice because from a military point of view any cessation of hostilities must be an advantage to France; it would enable them to continue their preparations and get together new armies, while Germany would have the enormous expense of maintaining 500,000 men in a foreign country. Bismarck himself from a political point of view also knew the advantage of bringing the war to a rapid close, while the moral effect of the great victories had not been dissipated. However, France had no Government; a legal Government could not be created without elections, and Favre refused to consider holding elections during the progress of hostilities. After a long discussion Bismarck, other suggestions being rejected, offered an armistice on condition that the war should continue round Metz and Paris, but that Toul and Strasburg should be surrendered and the garrison of Strasburg made prisoners of war. "The towns would anyhow fall into our hands," he said; "it is only a question of engineering." "At these words," says Favre, "I sprang into the air from pain and cried out, 'You forget that you speak to a Frenchman. To sacrifice an heroic garrison which is the object of our admiration and that of the world would be a cowardice. I do not promise even to say that you have offered such a condition.'" Bismarck said that he had no wish to offend him; if the King allowed it the article might be modified; he left the room, and after a quarter of an hour returned, saying that the King would accept no alteration on this point. "My powers were exhausted," writes Favre; "I feared for a moment that I should fall down; I turned away to overcome the tears which choked me, and, while I excused myself for this involuntary weakness, I took leave with a few simple words." He asked Bismarck not to betray his weakness.

The Count, who seems really to have been touched by the display of emotion, attempted in some sort of way to console him, but a few days later his sympathy was changed into amus.e.m.e.nt when he found that the tears which he had been asked to pa.s.s over in silence were paraded before the people of Paris to prove the patriotism of the man. "He may have meant it," said Bismarck, "but people ought not to bring sentiment into politics."