The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1

S >> Stephen Gwynn >> The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50

'On one of the last sad days before the commencement of the siege
(Vinoy's or) Ducrot's army crossed Paris, and the 30,000 men which
formed it marched down the Rue Lafayette, across the Place de l'Opera,
and down the Rue de la Paix towards the south-western heights, where
they afterwards ran away on September 19th. I never saw a more
depressing sight. I stood all day and through the evening in the rain,
comparing these wretched, draggled, weary, dejected men, on the one
hand, with the French troops I had seen at Nancy six weeks earlier,
and, on the other, with the Prussian Fifth Army Corps I now knew so
well. Troops, however, cannot be always judged by the eye alone, for
the Bavarians, who fought admirably throughout the war, when I saw
them on the march at the beginning of it looked so bad that I expected
daily to see the whole 60,000 of their two strong corps eaten up by
the single French corps which I knew was just in front of them. This
French corps was commanded by de Failly, who had commanded three years
earlier a mixed Papal and French force against Garibaldi at Mentone,
near Monte Rotondo, and reported: "Les chasse-pots ont fait
merveille."

'The day before I left Paris I saw a sergeant of foot surrounded by a
crowd of roughs. He was explaining to them that he was an Alsatian. "I
come from down there. They have eaten my cow!" "Ah," cried the witty
Paris crowd, "if they had only eaten _Leboeuf!_" The Marshal was
looked upon in Paris as the cause of the war in virtue of his
influence with the Empress.

The investment of Paris was completed on September 15th, and on the
16th 'I parted from Louis Blanc, who was despondent, and to whom I was
able to give no reassuring words, for I had seen the wonderful
organization of the Germans. I left by the southern station for
Geneva. Thousands of packing-cases encumbered the courts, the luggage
abandoned by the women and children flying from Paris. At Villeneuve
St. Georges the French marines were drawn up in skirmishing order, and
the enemy's cavalry were in sight. Our train was the last but one
which passed, but we could, if stopped, have left Paris two days later
by the Rouen line, although on the 18th the trains by that last line
were fired at. I wrote home that I could not help thinking of one of
the plays of Aristophanes, in which a peasant wings his way to heaven
on the back of a gigantic dung-beetle in order to remonstrate with God
upon the evils which He has inflicted upon man by war, and finds that
God is out, and that His place has been taken by a devil, who is
pounding all the powers together in a mortar.

'I went to Lyons, where the red flag was flying from the Town Hall,
but where the feeling in favour of continuing the war was just as
strong as in the districts of the tricolour. I then crossed France to
Tours, where I saw M. Cremieux, a Jew, the representative of the
Government outside Paris, Gambetta not having yet descended from his
balloon....

'I visited the camp of the Army of the Loire, of which the
organization was commencing, saw Lord Lyons and Sheffield, his
secretary, near Tours, and took despatches for them to Calais by Rouen
and Amiens. They included the correspondence of Mme. de Pourtales and
Mme. de Metternich. The railways were in terrible confusion--National
Guards moving, people flying before the Prussians, no food. I was
three days and three nights on this little bit of road, and slept on
tables in waiting-rooms at Vierzon and elsewhere. Passports were
strictly demanded at this time on leaving as well as on entering
France. When I reached Calais I found that the boat (and even that
boat one with no passengers) would leave about 4 a.m., after the
arrival of mails by sea. The inspection of my passport could only take
place, I was told, when the boat was starting. It was midnight, the
gates of the town were shut and drawbridges up, and the hotel at the
station had been closed for lack of visitors. Watching my time, I
dropped on board the steamer from off the quay, when the
coastguardsman's head was turned, and, finding a deck-cabin unlocked,
I popped in and bolted the door, going fast asleep, and woke only when
we were outside the harbour in the grey light of early morning, which
shows that passport regulations can be evaded. All through the war
Prussian spies could get into France with ease, without any need of
false papers, by visiting the Savoy coast of Lake Leman as Swiss
peasants. I was not called upon to show my papers when I passed from
the Germans to the French by way of Basle, Ouchy, and Evian.'

Sir Charles here concludes the story of his French adventures of this year
by giving his judgment of that moment upon the--

'events which will never be forgotten by those of my time ... the
downfall of the most magnificent imposture of any age--the Second
Empire....

'As I noted in my diary at the time, "it is possible that the
Bonapartists may raise their heads again, though if so, it is more
likely to be under Plon-Plon than under the Empress, an impossible
woman, whom even her son would have to exile should he come to the
throne. But the 'Sphinx' who dominated Europe for so long is fallen,
and it seems that my grandfather and dear old Kinglake were right, who
always said that he had long ears and was a sorry beast after all. Now
Europe thinks so, except the Rothschilds and the _Daily Telegraph_.
What will future ages say of the shameful story of the _coup d'etat_
of 1851, of the undermining of the honour of every officer in the
French Army by promises of promotion for treachery to the nation, of
France ruined by the denying of all advancement to those who had not
Court favour, of the Morny war in Mexico--of Maximilian, abandoned
after having been betrayed, of the splendour of the Guards and of the
Imperial stables, of the plundering, of the degradation of justice, of
the spying by everybody on everybody else? What a sad farce the whole
thing was, but how seriously Europe took it at the time!"'

CHAPTER IX

THE BLACK SEA TREATY--THE COMMUNE

I.

In September, 1870, shortly after the Siege of Paris had begun, the
Russian Chancellor, Gortschakof, intimated to the Powers that the Tsar
proposed to repudiate that article in the Treaty of Paris which declared
the Black Sea neutral, forbade Russia to build arsenals on it, and limited
her fleet there to six small vessels. [Footnote: Treaty of Paris, July
13th, 1856 (Hertslet's _Treaties_, vol. xiv., p. 1172).] This particular
article had been specially demanded by England; and when France, desirous
of closing the Crimean War, spoke of yielding to Russia's resistance,
Palmerston had declared that without this stipulation England and Turkey
must carry on the war alone.

Sir Charles, on this matter as on many others, inclined to the
Palmerstonian tradition, which was certainly neither that of Mr. Gladstone
nor of Lord Granville. But Lord Granville gave him introductions for his
projected second journey to Russia, and charged the young Liberal member
with the task of representing the Cabinet's views:

"In talking to Russians I hope that you will say that we are about the
most peaceable Ministry it is possible for England to have, but we are
determined not to put up with any indignity. On the other hand, we
greatly regret any stop to increasing good relations between the two
countries, and shall be glad to make them even more cordial than
before if we are properly treated."

He added the request that Sir Charles would write him first-hand
impressions of the situation in Russia.

From St. Petersburg Sir Charles, in November, 1870, went to Moscow, where
he lived with the Mayor, Prince Tcherkasky, 'who afterwards became
Governor of Bulgaria, and died at San Stefano, just after the signature of
the Treaty.' He was thus brought into touch with 'the political intrigues'
of the moment:

'The Imperial Prince, who was afterwards Alexander III., was no
stranger to them. Alexander II. was, like his grandfather Alexander
I., a German and a dreamer, as well as melancholy mad. His son, the
Imperial Prince, like his grandfather Nicholas and like Paul, was both
violent and sulky; but he was patriotic, and had at this time the
sense to put himself in the hands of the Moscow men.'

"It is satisfactory to know that the antagonism of an heir-apparent to the
reigning Sovereign docs not depend on race or climate," was, says Sir
Charles, Lord Granville's comment on this description.

'It was an interesting moment, and no foreign residence of my life was
ever more full of the charm which attaches to the development of new
political situations. The Emperor Alexander II. had fallen back from a
most brilliant early part of his reign into its second period, which
saw the rise of his unpopularity and the birth of Nihilism. He had
become frightened, had not perhaps lost all his good intentions, but
become too terrified to escape political reaction. His son, afterwards
Alexander III., was, as often happens in despotisms, glorified by a
popularity which he afterwards did not retain. When I saw the heir-
apparent at his palace he seemed to me to be a hard-working, stupid
man, and I never afterwards was able during his reign to divest myself
of this first impression.

'Of all those that I met in Russia, the ablest were the two brothers
Miliutine. The General, I think, survived his brother by a long time,
and continued to be Minister of War for years after his brother's
death; but the brother, the Miliutine of the reorganization of Poland
after the last Polish insurrection, who was when I knew him half
paralyzed in body but most brilliant in mind, struck me as being more
full of ideas than any man I have ever met. His inferior brother was,
though inferior, nevertheless a good Minister of War.

'The Miliutines were Liberals. The leader of the high Tory party of my
time was an equally remarkable man, Count Tolstoi, the iron
representative of iron Toryism, of perfect honesty, in whom energy and
strength were not destroyed by prejudice. He was the most ideal
minister of despotism that autocracy has produced, representing the
principles of order and authority with more ability than is generally
found in leaders of his type. He was intensely hated by the
Universities and by most of those, chiefly Liberals, with whom he
lived. But although he is said by his terrorism to have created
Nihilism, I am far from being convinced that any other course was
possible to the Russian Empire, and if this course was to be taken, he
took it well. In modern times there never was so unpopular a Minister,
and when, in after years, Alexander III. recalled him to power as
Minister of the Interior, one could not but feel that the break
between the principles acted on by this Sovereign as Emperor, and
those which he had honestly professed when heir-apparent, was
complete.

'I not only well knew Jomini, but I had made the acquaintance in 1868
in London (and renewed it at a later date) of his colleague Vlangali,
at that time as truly brilliant and as supple as Jomini himself,
though as silent as Jomini was talkative; ... and between them and
their marvellous subordinates, Hamburger the hunchback Jew, and his
head of the Asiatic Department, Westmann, I do not wonder that two
stupid men, the vain Gortschakof and the drill-sergeant de Giers, were
able successively to pretend to rule the Foreign Office without the
policy of the country suffering.

'In Katkof I was greatly disappointed. The man was very powerful under
two reigns, and with the exception of Count Tolstoi, he was the only
man who was so, since otherwise all the adherents of Alexander II.
were in disgrace during the reign of Alexander III.; but I could see
nothing in Katkof except strength of will and obstinacy. He was
entirely without judgment or measure or charm. The two Vassiltchikofs
were men of what is called in Russia a "European" type, or
"civilized." There was nothing specially Russian about them, but they
were far pleasanter than as a rule are able Russians, and this was
also the case with Madame Novikof's brothers, the two Kiriefs. In
general it may be said that in the Moscow chiefs of the Slav
Committees there was more European give and take, and less obstinacy
or pig-headed Toryism of Russian character, than among any other set.
One of the Vassiltchikofs had an art collection, and afterwards
became, I think, Art Director at St. Petersburg, while the other, who
was the greater Slav, and who was the son-in-law of Prince Orlof
Davydof of St. Petersburg, who sent me to him at Moscow, was chiefly
given to good works in Moscow. I think, if I remember right, that my
hostess, Princess Tcherkasky, with whom I lodged, was their sister.

'I saw a good deal of Peter Schouvalof, known as "all-powerful," of
whom I afterwards again saw a great deal when I was at the Foreign
Office and he was Ambassador in London. He was the bitter enemy of
Count Tolstoi all through life; but his complete fall, and it may even
be said utter destruction, during the reign of Alexander III., was, I
think, not owing to this fact, but because he was easygoing and had
made friends with the morganatic wife of Alexander II. in his last
years. Alexander III. never forgave anyone who had shown this
disrespect to the memory of his mother, although as soon as his son in
time succeeded to the throne, the members of the Imperial family
visiting France, who had never acknowledged the existence of the
Princess during all the years of Alexander III.'s reign, immediately
began to revisit her at Biarritz or in Paris.

'Peter Schouvalof represented the French Regency in our times, with
all its wit, with all its half-refined coarseness--the coarseness of
great gentlemen--with the drunkenness of the companions of the Regent,
and with their courage. At the time that I knew him in St. Petersburg
he was as much hated as his enemy Count Tolstoi, but that was because
he held the terrible office of head of the Third Section or Director
of the Secret Police, with the power of life and death over everyone
except the Emperor. It was a somewhat sinister contrast to find, in
one who used to the full the awful powers of his office, the greatest
gaiety that existed in mortal man, unless in Gambetta.

'K. Aksakof was in Moscow the superior in power even of Tcherkasky the
Mayor, even of the two Samarines, even of Miliutine of Moscow, the
brother of the General. He was not in reality so strong a man, but he
had the ear of the heir-apparent, and I cannot but think, from a good
deal which came to my knowledge at the time, that there was some
secret society organization among the Slavophiles, of which he was the
occult chief. Some think that had he liked he would have continued to
rule Alexander III. after the latter ascended the throne, but my own
impression is that he would have ended his days in Siberia. His
brother John, who survived and had influence, was a very different
man, and held other views. His influence for a time was enormous,
although I could more easily have understood the dominance in the
party of Miliutine or of Samarine. Katkof retained his influence
because he was above all of the despotic party. Aksakof would have
failed to retain his, because, although he held, as an article of
faith, that reforms must come from the Emperor to the people, yet he
desired that the Emperor should be a Russian Liberal--a very different
thing from a "European" Liberal, but still something different from
Alexander III. or from Count Tolstoi's ideal of a Russian autocrat....

'Among those I knew' (says a later note) 'was the pretty little child
of Count Chotek of the Austrian Embassy, the bosom friend of Prince
Henry VII. of Reuss, the Prussian Ambassador. The child's mother,
Chotek's wife, was Countess Kinsky. She became the wife of the
Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and the birth of her son, in 1902, was
hailed by the Magyars as that of an heir to the throne of the dual
monarchy, and may lead to civil war in Austria some day.' [Footnote:
It was the assassination of this Archduke which preceded the Great War
of 1914.]

Sir Charles continued to correspond with Lord Granville about the
international complication. The Foreign Secretary wrote in December of the
proposed Conference of London that--

"It would not be a bad result that each side should imagine it had had
a victory. There would remain the public opinion of Europe, and as we
are neither of us popular, that may be tolerably impartial."

The Russian point of view had been put to Sir Charles before he left
England in a letter from Baron Jomini, who complained that attempts to
revise the Treaty of Paris by a European Congress had repeatedly failed,
because England had always made it a condition that at such "a Congress
the Eastern question should not be raised." What, then, was open to
Russia--since "all the world privately admitted that the position created
for her by the Treaty of 1856 was inequitable and an obstacle to good
understanding" but to show the signatory Powers the impossibility of her
remaining any longer in a false position?

The view which Sir Charles formed at the time was in strong condemnation
of Lord Granville's action. In his opinion, Great Britain, by consenting
to a Conference (proposed by Russia's friend; Prussia), consented to
negotiate upon an act of repudiation by which her own rights were
infringed; and this surrender seemed to him wholly unnecessary. Later
knowledge only confirmed him in his opinion.

'We knew' (he writes in the Memoir) 'that Austria, the original
proposer of the neutralization, had on November 22nd stated that she
would join us in a war with Russia if we declared war upon the
question, and Italy had already declared that she would act with
Austria and ourselves. On the other hand, we now know (1906) that the
British Cabinet of 1856 did not contain a member who thought the
neutralization worth anything, or that it could be maintained beyond
"the first opportunity." Gladstone, in 1879, returned to the question,
and said that even Turkey had been willing to agree in 1870 to what
had been done; but from a despatch to Lord Granville, dated November
24th, 1870, which has been published, it is clear that Austria, Italy,
and Turkey would have gone along with us. Under these circumstances no
fighting would have been wanted. All that we need have done would have
been to have declared that we should take no notice of the Russian
denunciation, and to have sent our fleet into the Black Sea, and the
Russians could have done nothing but give in, as a platonic
declaration that they were free would not have enabled them to launch
a ship. Then we might gracefully have yielded; but as it was, we gave
in to a mere threat of force.'

Acceptance of the Conference, moreover, seemed to Sir Charles a betrayal
of France. France, who had been England's ally in the Crimea, one of the
signatory Powers to the Black Sea Treaty, saw her capital beleaguered by
the Prussian friends of the Power which repudiated the Treaty, and could
not even send a representative to the Conference to protest.

It was natural, then, that at the opening of Parliament in 1871 the member
for Chelsea should raise this question. But to do so involved the bringing
forward of a motion tantamount to a vote of censure on the Government,
which Sir Charles Dilke himself supported; and Mr. Gladstone contrived to
put his too critical supporter in a difficulty.

The Queen's Speech inevitably contained reference to Prince Gortschakof's
action, and in both Houses there was considerable comment upon this in the
debate on the Address. The Prime Minister referred to the opportunity for
fuller discussion which would be afforded by Sir Charles's motion, but,
when pressed to name a day for the motion, deprecated discussion while the
Conference was sitting. Frequent questioning led finally to the
intervention of Mr. Disraeli, who raised the whole question of Conference
and Treaty in a speech, and was answered by Mr. Gladstone. When after all
this Sir Charles still persisted in his motion, the purpose of which was
not to discuss either the methods or the results of the Conference, but to
deplore the Government's action in having entered on it at all, Mr.
Gladstone declared that Government could spare no time, and would give a
day only if it were taken as a direct vote of censure, which they must in
honour meet; adding that the day could only be found by the postponement
of a Licensing Bill which had much support in the Liberal party. Sir
Charles persevered, and made a very able speech, to which no serious
answer was given. He entirely destroyed the pretence that the Conference
had met without a "foregone conclusion," and stigmatized the indecent
haste which could not wait to secure the presence of France even as an
assenting party to this acceptance of an act of repudiation. But the House
was dominated by dislike for anything which seemed to hint at opening up a
new European war at the moment when a settlement of the existing conflict
was expected. The Tories, 'would only speak, and would not vote'; while
Sir Charles's Radical associates, such as Mr. Peter Rylands, welcomed
anything done under pretext of avoiding war.

'An attempt was made by Sir Henry Bulwer, the cynical and brilliant
brother of Lord Lytton, by Mr. Horsman and Mr. Otway, to use my motion
for their own purposes. Otway had resigned his Under-Secretaryship of
Foreign Affairs on account of his strong opinion upon the question,
and was distressed to find that his resignation had fallen flat.
Horsman was always discontented, and Bulwer wanted to be a peer.
[Footnote: Sir Henry Bulwer was afterwards created Lord Calling; Mr.
Horsman had been a conspicuous Adullamite in the previous Parliament.]
I used to tell Bulwer up to his death that I gave him his peerage, for
he received Gladstone's offer of the peerage just in time to prevent
him from speaking for my motion. Bulwer, whom I had known as
Ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Andrew Buchanan, whom I had known as
Ambassador at St. Petersburg, Horsman, and Otway came and dined with
me, and we made a great plot, and thought we were going to upset the
arrangement with the Russians. But Gladstone succeeded in taking away
Goldsmid, who was one of our very few Liberal supporters, made Bulwer
a peer, and left me only with Otway, Gregory, afterwards Governor of
Ceylon, and Horsman....

'I ought to have divided, even if I had been in a minority of one, for
the proposal to withdraw my motion brought a hornet's nest about my
ears, and was a parliamentary mistake.'

Michel Chevalier, the celebrated French Economist and Free Trader, wrote
thanking Sir Charles. He had spent, he said, thirty years of his life in
advocating an Anglo-French understanding, and now he would not know how to
look his countrymen in the face were it not for the courageous utterances
of a few friendly Englishmen to which he could point as evidences of a
good-will that had not forsaken France in her evil day.

II.

'Immediately after my return to England in the middle of the winter of
1870-1871, which had already been the severest ever known in Russia, I
again started for the scene of war. I first visited the army of
General Faidherbe, which was gallantly fighting in the north, and I
was present at one of the engagements near Bapaume, in which the
French took prisoners sixty sharpshooters of the Prussian Landwehr--
splendid soldiers, towering above our little Frenchmen, to whom it
seemed incredible, whatever the odds, they should have surrendered. I
never saw so wretched an army to look at as Faidherbe's. His cavalry
were but a squadron. He had one good regiment of foot Chasseurs and
two good regiments of marines; and the gunners of his artillery
(escaped men from Sedan) were excellent, and the guns were new; but he
had for his main body some 20,000 second-skim of the National Guard,
the cream from the north having been sent south to the Army of the
East under Bourbaki, with whom they were driven into Switzerland.