WHO MADE THE WAR OF 1870?

Otago Witness, Issue 2817, 4 March 1908, Page 79

WHO MADE THE WAR OF 1870?

Last week I was going over ground which is ever fresh to me, the days which preceded and followed the great war of 1870 ; it is a happy coincidence that just at the same moment there should come into my hands two volumes of the essays of the late Lord Acton, which contain come of the most interesting material I have read with regard to that epoch. Before 1 come to the particular essay which has suggested this article to me, let me say thaf these essays are. in their way, a wonder. Never before did I realise the vast extent of that encyclopedic knowledge with which I had always heard Lord Acton credited. There is something uncanny almost in tha variety and the detailed and intimate knowledge with the affairs of all times and countries which you find in these essays. But in these pages I have time to deal with only one of the essays, and that is the essay which describes the event that preceded and led up to the great war between France and Germany. One of the first factors in producing that war -was, undoubtedly, the illness «f Louis Najja-

>otj v ■i'fjif f^ft«« of uncertainty with regxrd. to tke duration of the dynasty, on the one hand, which this produced, and on the other, the want of will and vigoui which the insidious and painful nxaiaSy from which he suffered is so apt to produce. When the disastrous experiment* of Mexico was finished with the execution of Maximilian^ and w-lien the (French Army was brought back humiliated end core, Napoleon thought it absolutely necessary that he should do something to restore his own prestige and the "prestige of France. „ At the very moment of hi» humiliation in Mexico the war between Prussia and Austria broke out, and this war he found -was a 6 perilous to the French as to the Austrian Empire ; he backed the wrong horse, and made an arrangement ,~whh Austria to divide the spoil when Prussia was conquered. The complete victory of Prussia left him then baffled and again defeated. He sought to obtain some compensation by suggesting to Bismarck an increase of French territory, the Rhenish provinces, Luxemburg, Belgium, anything to give h« subjects the impression that France had not loeE her position as the leading powej ' of Europe. Bismarck amused' himseli by playing with the Emperor, suggesting a great deal, promising nothing, and when | the point came .showing clearly that he never meant to alienate an acre of German territory. Then .both sides realised j that it must be war, and they began to I make their preparations accordingly. They did so after their different fashions. Napoleon was secret, hesitant, indefinite, j leaving Tnuch to chance; mistakingdreams, visions, and' private letters for* embodied realities. Bismarck consulted his. General and his Ministers for War ; knew that he was ready and that France waa not ; 'heard all about the soundings in! Vienna and also in Turin ; had managed to keep the negotiations froir coming to anything decisive. Austria, meantime, waa Teady for am alliance. Her Emperor and Ms people were 6tlll full of fresh resentment at the defeat of Sadowa ; Beust, his Foreign Minister, was* a vehement personal enemy' of Bismarck ; and Italy might be neutralised, perhaps made an ally, i£ the Emperor had not got entangled in the engagement to support the temporal Botror <oi the Pope and to keep Italy out of Rome by -French bayonets. But the .negotiations did not bring the Emperor the firm assurance of an alliance -which he wttn*ed. And just at that moment' Napoleon did a, curious thing ; he held a big consultation of doctors to get a report on his health, and tihe theory is that he did 60 with a view of knowing whether or not he would be in a fit condition to mount a. Morse And 1 take the field actively in case of war. And, finally, it comes to this: '•bat I Napoleon was preparing for a war, tori | t halt he knew that ne:lther he nor his alMes i would be ready for it sooner than the year [ 1871. I Bismarck suddenly brought the Emperor up with an incident which advanced the date of the war by one year ; that inj cident being the proposal to give I —The Spanish Throne— ' to Prince Leopold of HohenssoHern. Bismarck had heard of the campaign of Napaleon to create an alliance against him, and he took time by the forelock. The candidature of the Hohenzollern was not — as it was made to appear at the time — an impromptu and spontaneous affair, coming suddenly and on the initiative of Spain. Bismarck had sent to Madrid in 1869 one of the very ablest of. all his agents, Berrahardi. Bernhardi was I declared 'by Tviokke to be the best military writer in Europe ; he "was eminent also," writes Lord Acton, "as an economist, a. historian, and a politician ;" "and," goes on Acton, "it would have been hard to discover hie equal in any European Cabinet." This was probably the man whol suggested t/he tnanae of the Hohenzolierm to General Prim, then tlie dictator of the 'politics of Spain ; and in doing so both. Bernhardi and Bismarck knew that he was recommending something which waa almost certain to provoke war. The offer of the throne came in the autumn of 1869. Acton tells us now it was made : Count Werthern, Prussian Minister at> Munich, *a-d been at the Legation at( Madrid, and knew Prim. In September the Spanish deputy, Salazar, came to him with letters from Prim, and on the 17th Werthern took him to'^Vemburg, on the Lake of Constance, and introduced him, after nightfall, and with every precaution, to the Prince ofl Hohenaollern. His mission was to feel hie way and find out what hope there was of his son if the Crown was formally, offered to him. Father and sonls were against it-, but the refusal was no* a positive one. This was not, however, the end. Prim* •was üblo to make the prize more worth' having by successfully putting down some risings that had occurred in Spain •, and! he once again offered tihe throne to the Hohenzollem. This time the offer was made through the King of Prussia ; and so the Prussian Government was brought into the matter. The offer was discussed at a big dinner party ; and all the Ministers, Bismarck at their head, and the soldiers — Moltke leading— favoured acceptance. It was because both. Bismarck and Moltke wanted tb© war in 1870 ; the one because he knew of the attempt to create a combination against Prussia; the other because he knew that his army was ready, and the aormy of Fiance was not. When someone objected that Napoleon and •France might raise obstacles, both Bismarck and Moltke laughed the idea to scorn ; the truth w«6 that wac just wliafe they wanted. And then Bismarck, in order to know exactly how things stood, sent another of his most confidential agents to Madrid ; this time it was little Lothar Bucher — the converted Socialist — obscure, "elf-effaced, sour-faced, the unseen but most powerful of the springs that moved and were moved by Bismarck. Buebe* brought back word that Spain was all right, aria by June, 1870, the reluctance o! Prince Leopold "was overcome, and Prim was invited by Bismarck to renew the

ofler, the King of Prussia's assent having been also obtained. And then came the explosion ; France demanding that the candidature should be «yithdr«iw. - n. The fcir .lavs whi'-'b fo'lowed et« th»v>«

{ which decided the issue. The French — i especially Napoleon — did not want the war | then, and the Prime Minister, M. Ollivier, J was strong against the war. It is doubtful if Fiance ac a whole -wanted the war;

and certainly it was not for the intereet 1 ot France, and still less for the interest ot the dynasty, the war should take p'aoe. By what combination of errors and fatalities did it come, then, that the Emperor or his Government and his country were plunging into a war which they dreaded ! — which they wanted any excuse to avoid ? j The answer must be sought in two' direc- j tions. In, the first place Bismarck wa& determined that there should be war there and then. The second reason j was that the French Government played j into his hands. Ollivier, the Prime Minister, represented a Liberal regime instead of j Jie old autocracy, and from the , very start the extreme Imperialists — among whom the Empress must be counted — were determined on making his task so impossible as to compel him to give it up, andi let the Empire get back to the old autocratic lines. While he was rejoicing that the war — to which he continued to be op-posecU-had been prevented by the consent -t>f the Prince Leopold to withdraw his candidature and the King of Prussia's approval of this course, the Imperialists demanded that Beneditti should be asked to go a step further, and to demand from the King of Prussia a pledge that the candidature should never be put forward again. This was the demand that poor Beneditti very unwillingly found himself j compelled to make to the King of Prussia at Ems. The demand was refused, though politely, and the King refused to say more. And then a dispatch was sent to Bismarck, announcing what had taken place. Bismarck had with him dining Moltke and Yon Room, the Minister for War. The three were extremely disappointed with the withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidature, for they were agreed in wanting the war then. And when Bismarck read the dispatch announcing what the King had promised' to Beneditti, they became so downcast that they were scarcely able to eat their dinners. But suddenly a brilliant idea occurred to Bismarck. He his himself described what he then did with a chuckle that is almost Mephistophelian. He took the dispatch, and by omitting a. word here and strengthening a word there he managed so to represent what had occurred at Ems as to exhibit the French Ambassador insulting the Piussian King on the one hand, and the Prussian King insulting the French Ambassador in turn. Bismarck calculated that such a despatch would act a 6 a red rag to France, and when he read it out to his two companions they agreed. And then it was that the French crowned their — Tale of Errors. — They met on the evening of the 14th of June at St. Cloud. The French Government were still divided ; Ollivier was still for peace. But the Imperialists had two powerful advocates. One was the Due He Graanont — an amibitious and rather j empty-headed man. The other, a much j more j>owerful advocate, was the Empress. It is the part she took in these councils j which lies heavy upon her reputation. The evidence 16 conflicting, but it leans to the assumption generally held at the time that she spoke, "as one present afterwards said," "passionately"' in favour of war as demanded by the honour of IFrance. Still, when the final council met at 10 o'clock at night, there was by no means unanimity in favour of war. Indeed, the chances of peace weie even yet stronger than those of an appeal to arms. At 11 o'clock there was a sudden change in the whole situation, and the Council were ready to pronounce the fata/1 word. There is some uncertainty as to what constituted this final and unexpected factor which tipped the balance in favour of war. I gather from the words of Lord Acton that it was a dispatch of Lord Loftus, the British Ambassador at Berlin at the time. On the 13th, the day before the final meeting of the Council at St. Cloud, he saw Bismarck, and naturally he congratulated him on the disappearance of the prospect of war, for then all that was known was that the candidature of Prince Leopold had been withdrawn, and that the King of Prussia had approved this step. He met with an unexpected reception : Bismarck replied that he was mistaken^ that he meant to demand satisfaction for the language of Gramont — implying that it must be made clear that he yielded to the unanimous feelings of Europe, not to the threats of France. He said : "We must require some guarantee that we may not be subjected to a sudden attack Uke a flash of lightning in perfect darkness, which suddenly reveals a band of robbers." This dispatch came to the knowledge of Count Beust ; Beust, as we know, was fiitndly to France and hostile to Bismarck, and he thought it his duty to transmit an account of the despatch to Paris. It anived as the Council was sitting; it was held to demonstrate plainly that Bismarck meant to force on the war and to insult, the Emperor and France, and then it was consideied that any further discussion was unnecessary. If there was to be the throwing down of the glove 't was better for France and for the Emperor that he should appoar to be the first to do it. The challenge was further encouraged by the dispatch of Beust of his confidant, Count Vitzthum, from Brussels to Paris so as to concert measures for the alliance of Austria and France in the coming conflict. And in the meantime the Prussian military authorities proceeded with their work. The King of Prussia, when he iead the despatch from Ems as Bismarck had doctoied it, was deeply moved. " This is war,'' he said to Eulenberg, and then he hiuried to Berlin. There on the station the heads of the War Office and of the General Staff and Bismarck were waiting to greet him, and there on the platform a council was held which was to give the final message that let loose the dogs of war. Everything meantime had been prepared, so that neither the King nor anybody elee had much further to do. Forms, proclamations, orders, everything was ready ; all that wae left for Bismarck to do was to sign an order which was lying on his desk. The responsibility, then, fox this war

cannot be placed on one man ot on one woman ; it is divided among many. And among these must be counted the Austrian Emperor and his Minister, Count Beust. Which reminds me that among the many curious and significant statements made in the new Life of the Empress, by M. Lolliee, there is this : that the Empress, after a reconciliation with Prince Napoleon, when she was left desolate, professed to place at his disposal all the papers of her husband. Prince Napoleon came to a drawer in which he expected to find some specially interesting papers ; but the drawer was empty. The document he wanted, and which was missing, was the letter from Francis Joseph which led Louis Napoleon to believe that he would have the support of Austria in his fight with Prussia. — T. P.'s Weekly. I