PRINCE GORTSCHAKOFF.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 937, 8 May 1883, Page 2

PRINCE GORTSCHAKOFF.

Prince Gortschakoff died in the house of his mistress, a lady whose acquaintance he made at the time of the Berlin Conference, at Baden-Baden, on Sunday, March ir. He had attained the age of eighty-five, and the immediate cause of his dea.th is said to have been the old disease—gout. For some years he had been an illustrious supernumerary on the stage of European politics. His mission was accomplished more than a decade ago, and he had neither sympathy with, nor insight into, the new era which then began. Kaunitz, Talleyrand, and Metternich were his diplomatic teachers. The first independent office in diplomacy which he held was that of Minister at the Court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He had formerly served as Attache to the Russian Embassy in London. During the greater portion of the Crimean War he was Ambassador at Vienna. It was then he discovered that his idea of an enterprise against Turkey, supported as Turkey was by France and Great Britain, was impossible. The attitude of Austria convinced him at the close of the war that Russia would commit a grievous mistake, and would provoke a severer reverse if she were not to agree to the terms of the Peace of Paris, and it was owing to his representations that the Russian Government were induced finally to accept the famous “ four points.” In 1856 he succeeded Nesselrode at the St. Petersburg Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and on the occasion of assuming his new office he issued a circular which showed how thoroughly he understood the temper of Russian officialism, and which immensely strengthened his own authority, and was extremely gratifying to Russian pride. Gortschakoff indeed embodied Russian aspirations as com-

pletely as did Thiers those of France. He was a typical representative of the old school of Muscovite Conservatism, hostile to reform of any kind. He made the acquaintance of Prince | Bismarck at Frankfort thirty years ago, and conceived for him the highest admiration. But, instead of using Bismarck, he was consistently used by him. He declined, though pressed, to interfere in the interests either of Austria or Denmark, and he negatived the proposals, both of Count Beust and of Lord Granville, foran understanding between Great Britain and Russia which might afford, a basis for an appeal to Germany during the war with France. To a certain extent Prince Gortschakoff reaped the rewards of his services to Germany in the permission accorded him by Prussia to tear up the Black Sea Clauses of the Treaty of Paris, But when after this he endeavored to assert himself as the arbiter of war and peace in Europe he found that he had been checkmated by Bismarck, and that the Austro-German alliance was a fatal check upon Russian ambition. Then followed the war between Russia and Turkey, and henceforth the German Chancellor was master of the situation.