The Times Great Victorian Lives

The year ‘68 must have been one of great searchings of heart at the Court of the Tuileries. The interview of the German Emperors at Salzburg, although followed by all manner of satisfactory assurances, kept minds uneasy as to the new relations of France with her neighbours, and stimulated the audacity of those reckless men who fish for profit and popularity in troubled waters. Ugly omens multiplied towards the close of the year, urging the Emperor towards some decided if not desperate resolution. The incident in the Hall of the Sorbonne, when, at the distribution of prizes, young Cavaignac refused to receive his at the hands of the Imperial Prince, must have shaken the Emperor’s faith in the hold Imperialism had on the upper classes, while of a sudden the turbulent democracy discovered a martyr in Baudin, one of the victims of the Coup d’Etat, and even the eminent veteran Berryer contributed a letter and a subscription to the agitation.

The Emperor’s resolution was taken. He would use his personal power and what remained of his prestige to promulgate a scheme of comprehensive Constitutional reform. Judging by the course of events, we may well doubt whether the resolution would have served him had he taken it earlier. As it was, he was late then, as he had so often been before. It seemed as if he was graciously making a gift of the power he felt slipping through his fingers; and after all, the gift, such as it was, was in a degree illusory. For the future his Ministers were to be responsible to the Chambers; they were to be chosen by the party that commanded a parliamentary majority, they were to hold office by the votes of the House, as in England. But so long as the Empire maintained its traditional electoral machinery the Emperor assured himself an enormous working majority, happen what might. The masses of the rural voters were drilled by obsequious Préfets on their promotion, and the different circumscriptions were manipulated, so that in most instances the votes of the stolid and loyal country should swamp those of the feverish radical towns. In the towns, if the voters were not bribed, and bought with hard cash, they were delicately conciliated by the concession of serviceable public works – town-halls, lines of railway, free bridges. The Autocratic Empire had consolidated its popularity on a system of corruption; it would have been simply suicidal had it reformed and become pure all of a sudden. There had been another unlucky coincidence for the shaking Empire. The Assembly had been dissolved, and there had been a general election. Of course, the Government obtained its commanding majority; but, unfortunately, Paris and the great cities had returned Opposition members as a rule. The logical deduction was obvious – the intelligence of the country is opposed to Imperialism, and the Opposition represents a moral force out of all proportion to its numerical strength. It is notorious that in France, the inert masses are swayed to one side or the other, as they receive the impulse, and it became clear that any day an accident might derange the existing equilibrium. The various chiefs of the Opposition attacked, with the whole weight of their eloquence and their influence, the vicious electoral system that made politics a comedy and falsified opinion. Excited mobs in the town shouted for the Republic and Rochefort. The Emperor was being forced towards abdication or a Coup d’Etat. He decided again for the Coup d’Etat, but this time it was altogether a Constitutional one. Cæsar proposed a ‘senatus consultum,’ which resigned the power he had held in trust into the hands of the people, from whom it had flowed originally, and charged responsible Ministers with the exercise of the people’s authority. The stanch Imperialist Ministers shook their heads at this putting new wine into old bottles. Rouher, Duruy, Lavalette, and Baroche resigned. Prince Napoleon made a remarkable and characteristic speech, which gave some colour to the theory of certain political seers that, with the assent of the head of his house, he held himself in reserve in case of a political catastrophe that should prove fatal to his cousin. The Prince approved the measure in the main, although, in his opinion, it was not sufficiently thorough. He avowed that he was not one of those who believed the Empire incompatible with the most absolute liberty, and he boldly touched all those burning topics which the official orators had carefully shunned. It was remarked at the time that the daring speaker had a long interview immediately afterwards with his Imperial cousin, and it was understood that they separated on the most cordial terms. It is probable the Emperor, having lost self-confidence, was in painful uncertainty as to the direction in which unforeseen circumstances might hurry him. The Home Minister, M. Forcade de la Roquette, proclaimed the programme of the Court in language sufficiently precise. The Empire hoped to succeed in solidly founding liberty, where the Governments of the Restoration and of July had failed, ‘because its principle is stronger and more popular; because it rests upon the national will several times proclaimed, and because it defies surprises.’ At that moment it felt so strongly that its existing titles were discredited that already it was thinking of a fresh appeal to the democracy; while it was the suspicion of surprises in store that had suggested its present attitude. Weakened and compromised by the secessions, the last genuinely Imperialist Ministry resigned, and the Emperor had recourse to the flexible Liberals, as represented by Emile Ollivier and his colleagues.

We may judge him with tolerable confidence after the event, and, enlightened by results, we may estimate pretty fairly the formidable difficulties against which he precipitated himself. The fact remains that at that time men who would rather have been rid of the dynasty believed it so firmly established that the best and most patriotic course was to come to an understanding with it. Men patriotic or ambitious, like Ollivier, Buffet, and Daru, accepted office and undertook the execution of the new programme. Yet the signs of the times were thickening. Not the least significant was the retirement of Haussmann, whose magnificent schemes – half developed, and arrived at a stage where perseverance might have been the truest economy – had so terribly embarrassed the finances of the capital. It was an acknowledgment that the Empire had reached the limits of its lavish expenditure and pushed to an extreme the fatal principle of national workshops. Yet it was plain that if the men who had so long been subsidized became idle, needy, and discontented, the streets of the capital would be crowded with turbulent émeutiers, ready to swell the ranks of the Reds, and to force the hand of the Government when prudence and patriotism should alike suggest a cautious game. A sinister incident occurred on the very day when the Chambers met the new Ministers. Prince Pierre Bonaparte shooting Victor Noir at Auteuil threw a weapon into the hands of the Red Republicans which they were not slow to lay hold of. Rochefort’s language in his Marseillaise exceeded all measure. Noir was made a martyr, and the Empire was in more imminent danger on the day of his funeral than men suspected at the time. Had Rochefort been as daring in action as in speech, had his nerves not failed him before the starting of the funeral cortége, and had the impetuous Flourens taken his place at its head, it is hardly doubtful that there would have been a sauguinary collision in the Champs Elysées. The Empire would have triumphed for the day, for it was well prepared. But in its discredited condition a second carnage among the citizens of Paris could scarcely have failed to be a fatal defeat for it.

On the eve of the famous Plébiscite the position of the Olivier Ministry was more treacherous than ever, and the attitude of the Government was visibly ill-assured. The Ministry trembled between Liberalism and extreme Imperialism, and one of its genuinely liberal measures had terribly multiplied its difficulties by allowing full licence of language to all its most unscrupulous enemies. In throwing the rein to the Press, Olivier had said that they trusted it in future to the control of a healthy public opinion. It is hard to believe that either the Minister or the Emperor could have had any such confidence. Opinion had so long been stifled and gagged that it was debauched and thoroughly diseased. It was inevitable that the régime of repression should be followed by the reaction of excess, and the Empire suffered from the vice of its origin, and paid the penalty of the system by which it had hitherto succeeded. Now that writers could speak out, they reverted with justice to those crimes of the Coup d’Etat, when the President for motives they assumed to be purely selfish, had violated the oath of the Constitution, and abused the responsibilities he had solemnly accepted. They raked up the details of all those high-handed proceedings that had necessarily been received at the time in sullen silence. They denounced the sensational foreign policy that had been dictated by dynastical motives. They attacked the luxury and extravagances the people, and especially the middle classes, had been taxed for. They had facts enough at command, which needed scarcely to be distorted or overcoloured, to make up a damaging indictment. But they did not stop at facts. They made unsparing use of every calumny and falsehood perverted ingenuity could invent, and the condemnation of Pierre Bonaparte to a simple fine gave the demagogues of the democracy a standing text for philippics against the family with which he had so little in common. The virulent energy of the Opposition Press was swaying opinion; the organized agitation which was being fed with unfaltering activity might spread from the cities to the Conservative bourgeoisie of the towns, and from the towns to the loyal country people, who were drilled and directed by Préfets and Maires in the country. The Plébiscite was pressed on, lest delay should reduce the Government majority. Henceforth the Constitution, drawn in the most democratic sense, was only to be revised by the masses of the people on the initiative of the Sovereign. The Sovereign, in having his election confirmed by an overwhelming assent of his constituents, was to receive a retrospective act of oblivion for all the misdemeanours he had been charged with; he was to have a deed of indemnity for all the blood and the treasure the Empire had spent at home and abroad. The Emperor had urged on the step with feverish impatience, in opposition, it was understood, to the advice of the Achitophels by whom he had been wont to be guided. He waited the result with intense anxiety, although the vote was a foregone conclusion. With his superstitious cast of mind and his belief in destiny, he must have felt he had come to one of the turning points in his career, and no doubt he sought his horoscope in an analysis of the voting list, as soothsayers used to search for the omens on some solemn national ceremony. The omens were sinister, and although there were seven millions of ayes as against a million and a half of noes, the forebodings were confirmed which had induced him to tempt his fate. Not only was the vote against him in Paris and most of the great cities, in the centres of industry, intelligence, and political intrigue, but 50,000 of his soldiers were with the enemy. The shock was severe; what was Cæsar in the face of adverse circumstances if he could not count on the fidelity of the legions? Nothing could give more striking proof of the extreme impolicy of a measure which invited the soldiers to discuss the conduct of the master who relied upon their bayonets. As one blunder leads on to another, the Emperor, in his haste, advertised to the world his uneasiness at this military vote in a letter written to Marshal Canrobert and intended for publication to the Army, in which he made ostentatiously light of it. From that time the suspicions that his power was declining turned to convictions confirmed by electoral statistics. It appeared he could not even reckon on that backing from brute force, in the last resort, with which even his enemies had hitherto been inclined to credit him.

The Plébiscite had been presented to the country as a vote of peace, as the commencement of a new era of sound Constitutional progress, and as giving a fresh impulse to domestic prosperity. It is just possible it might have turned out so, had the voting answered the Emperor’s hopes or dreams. As it was, it could scarcely fail to prove a vote of war sooner or later. That jealousy of growing German influence must become a question more dangerous to the dynasty than ever, now that the Emperor’s power seemed to be tottering. Now that there was a Fronde in the Army, must there not be a foreign war to divert the minds of politicians of the canteen? Almost simultaneously with these events had come a change in the Cabinet, which had been nearly as freely commented on in Germany as in France. Daru and Buffet had retired from the enfeebled Ministry. After the Plébiscite, the former statesman had been replaced at the Foreign Office by the Duc de Gramont. We may be very certain that Napoleon, who had been given to hesitation in his best days, was hesitating now more painfully than ever over that question of a war with Germany.

But, taking the Gramont appointment in connexion with all that followed on it, we can scarcely doubt that at that time he inclined to war. Had it been his settled resolution, or even his ardent wish, to preserve peaceful relations, he could hardly have made so unfortunate a choice. Not only was the Duke by no means the man to direct the Foreign Office, where susceptibilities had become so sensitive, but his Prussian antipathies were notorious. Nor should the fact that he came straight from Vienna have been a recommendation in the circumstances. The suspicion that he might have been selected on account of his excellent relations in the Austrian capital would, doubtless, have strengthened the Emperor’s hands had he decided upon war, by giving Europe the idea that Austria was prepared to revenge Sadowa. But if it was desirable to preserve peace, nothing could have been more injudicious than to give Prussia a pretext for taking the initiative in war, by persuading her that she was threatened by a danger which promptitude might best avert.

It is idle to speculate on what might have happened had the Emperor decided to play the patriot at all hazards – to accept facts abroad, and try to induce his subjects to accept them; to stake the fortunes of his family on his domestic policy. We have the authority of M. Thiers for asserting that the Empress urged him to make war for the sake of her son, and the assertion seems not improbable. It is certain that a knot of the most Bonapartist of the Bonapartists unceasingly pressed war on him for the most strictly personal reasons. They deluded themselves with the idea of the military preponderance of France; they believed the victory to be assured beforehand; the blood and treasure it might cost were nothing to them so long as they were assured a fresh lease of prosperity. The Emperor cannot altogether have shared these delusions, although doubtless to some extent he was deceived and willing to be deceived. But the successes that had once been matter of congratulation were now crowding their consequences upon him. He was being driven to seek for safety in provoking Providence; he was paying the penalties of a political vie orageuse. The Coup d’Etat had cut him loose from relations that should have been his security in time of danger, had he held his throne by a more legitimate title. But his interests already were trending far apart from those of his subjects; the events of the night of the 2d of December had left him few conscientious advisers, and limited his choice of capable military instruments. He had able creatures and subordinates who were bound fast to him; but the most eminent politicians of France, the men who might have had the confidence of the country, were in opposition or retreat, while disinterested veterans like Changarnier and Trochu were banished from his councils of war. The interests of an individual and of something far smaller than a faction were to decide on the destinies of the country at the moment when its fortunes were trembling in the balance. But no man, even in that extremity, would have rushed blindly on ruin to escape the dangers which menaced him. Did the Emperor believe he could enter on the war with reasonable hopes of success? Leboeuf might have deceived him so far with that unhesitating answer –‘We are ready, and more than ready.’ But, after Leboeuf, there should have been no better judge of the situation than the Emperor himself. His master rolls might have been falsified, yet, all deductions made, he could roughly estimate the effective strength of his forces. At least, he knew the numbers Germany could put on foot in a given number of days, for the German military statistics were open to the world, and there was Stoffel at Berlin shrewdly noting everything and duly transmitting his Cassandra-like despatches to Paris. He must have been aware that, unless he could strike before those nine days of mobilization were accomplished, even Northern Germany would have a great numerical superiority in the field. The probability is that he taxed his ingenuity to combat the remonstrances of his common sense. In trying to deceive himself, he had plausible grounds to go upon. There was the reputation of those troops who had been the terror of Europe since the days of his uncle. They had only been repulsed by a combination of all the armies of Europe, when exhausted by unparalleled exertions. They had sustained that reputation in his own time, although he might have taken warning from the considerations which persuaded him to sign in haste the unlooked-for Peace of Villafranca. Then there were the chasse-pots, the mitrailleuses, and those new rifled cannon of bronze. Moral and armaments might compensate for lack of numbers, fortresses which could not be taken might be masked, and the French élan might carry him into Germany before the more sluggish Teutons had settled their plans or combined their operations. The communications once cut between the North of Germany and the South, he might hide his allies in the enemy’s country, and beat Prussia, as his uncle had done, with South German auxiliaries. It was the Emperor’s misfortune that he was doubly deceived, – that he was alike ill served in military affairs and in diplomacy. Had he been informed of the real spirit of Germany, he might have dismissed his notion of German alliances as the most extravagant of dreams; but his envoys to the minor German Principalities accepted the temper of the Courts as representing the spirit of the people. As is the manner of Frenchmen, they spoke no German. They reported that if France won a first success she might count on enlisting on her side South German jealousies of Prussia. It is less surprising that the Emperor received the fable at the time, since a man so intelligent as Edmond About repeats it confidently to this very moment. Moreover, as it appears now, the new Foreign Minister was persuaded that he had secured the adhesion of Austria. What he had to tell the Emperor probably confirmed such false reports as came from Courts like Würtemberg and Hesse Darmstadt.

Thus we may understand the Emperor’s mental attitude early in the year. It was with anything but a light heart that he looked forward to this war looming on his horizon, yet to a certain extent he had succeeded in persuading himself that the venture was not so very desperate. Did not Leboeuf answer for the army? Had not De Gramont and his colleagues reassured him as to German alliances? Meanwhile, men were speaking of peace, while a sense of coming troubles was spreading, and there were rumours of war in the air. The country, and even the obsequious Chamber, became dangerously susceptible. Stanch Imperialists like Baron Jerome David held strange language. The project of a railway over the Alps threatened to create a conflagration in Europe. For a time there was a lull, but the heavens were lowering. Ollivier’s voluble assurances in the debate on the Army Bill made most people uneasy; the barometer was falling fast, and men felt somehow by the movements of the ship of State that the hands which steered it were beginning to falter.

Early in July the squall of the Hohenzollorn-Sigmaringen candidate for the Spanish Crown blew up. The Emperor found himself suddenly forced towards the resolution over which he had been hesitating so long. Let us judge his conduct and that of his Cabinet as we may, it is idle to say they regulated their policy on considerations of the dignity of France. The dignity of France was saved, and more than saved, when the King of Prussia formally approved the withdrawal of the objectionable candidate. But for the sake of the Emperor, of the dynasty, and the Bonapartist place-holders, it was deemed necessary there should be a diplomatic triumph to compensate the humiliation of Sadowa, by offering French vanity a brilliant satisfaction. The Emperor himself doubted and hesitated; if France was to be flattered by a triumph, Germany must smart under a defeat. But, in place of grasping at the reprieve which was offered him, doing his best in the circumstances, and giving himself time for reflection, he was tempted to push his success, and try if he could insult Prussia without having previously beaten her. Probably his judgment was remonstrating all the time. But we may believe that prolonged suspense was wearing a nature which had been tried by reaction of ill-luck after an extraordinary flush of prosperity. The Emperor saw that safety lay in waiting, had waiting been possible; but he had no longer either the resolution or the time to hold by his old maxim – ‘Everything comes to him who waits.’ The matter was precipitately discussed with the brutal bluntness of the telegraph. The most momentous questions were decided by the readiest pen in Cabinet Councils held standing, and in feverish exaltation of spirits. Stories were invented and facts deliberately misrepresented by officials with the idea of provoking popular enthusiasm. On the 19th of July the die was cast, and war was declared by Ministers almost as thoughtless as the gamins who raised the cry of ‘A Berlin’ upon the Boulevards.

The war was declared, and the Emperor could have prevented or delayed it, but the French were never more unjust than when they subsequently insisted on holding him solely responsible. It was not only that seven millions of them, men like M. Guizot included, had voted the affirmative in the Plébiscite, but organs of all shades of opinion had been stimulating their jealousy of German unity, and the illustrious Thiers himself had published his gospel of war and revenge in his History of the Consulate and the Empire. Had it not been for the tone held by French writers for many years before, the Emperor would never have dreamt of the German war-path as the shortest way to regain his lost popularity; and it is matter of little consequence whether the cries on the Boulevards which followed the declaration of war came from his paid police agents or his enfranchised voters of the faubourgs.

Every one should be familiar with the history of the war, so far as it can be gathered from the conflicting testimony of the leading actors in it. The error of declaring it once committed, the Emperor became only secondarily responsible for the disasters which cost him so dearly. The moral and material efficiency Leboeuf had pledged himself for was lacking. A multitude of men who had been carried on the rolls were missing, and those who were actually under arms were never in the right place at the critical moment. The boasted Intendance system utterly broke down; magazines were found unfurnished, and supplies ran short. There was recrimination, disunion, and discontent among the leaders of the several corps d’armée. Time was lost when time was everything, and instead of France breaking ground with the swift advance that alone could have extenuated her precipitate declaration of war, her attenuated armies stood echeloned in a long line of observation along her assailable frontier. The plan attributed to the Emperor, of an aggressive movement that should sever Germany at once strategically and politically, had broken down before it could even be attempted. Had it been attempted it may be doubted whether it would not have proved more disastrous, if possible, than the one actually adopted.