Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress with the Annual Message of the President, December 5, 1870
No. 153.
Mr. Bancroft to Mr. Fish.
Sir: I inclose a copy of the circular letter of Count Bismarck relating to the Benedetti project of a treaty. It is in every respect one of the most important State papers of our time. * * *
The British government has undertaken in Berlin the protection of the French in Germany, and to keep matters even, would have very gladly undertaken the protection of the Germans in France, but Count Bismarck refused to allow this, and by turning over the office to our Government called the United States visibly into the circle of first-class powers. The act of yourself and the President in accepting this protection is, I will not say a new era in European politics, but a new incident, which has been received with acclamation. * * *
[Circular.]
I have previously fulfilled, by a telegraphic dispatch to Count Bernstorff, on the 27th of this month, the expectation, announced by Lord Granville and Mr. Gladstone in Parliament, that further particulars were to be expected from both the interested parties relative to the draught of a treaty by Count Benedetti.
The article published in the Times does not, by any means, contain the only offer which has been made us from the French side in this relation. Before the Danish war both official and unofficial French agents tried to effect through me a union of France and Prussia for the purpose of mutual enlargement.
It is hardly necessary for me to draw your excellency’s attention to the fact that the belief of the French government in the possibility of such a transaction with a German minister, whose position is conditional upon his harmony with the national sentiment finds its explanation only in the ignorance of French statesmen of the principal conditions of the existence of other nations. If the agents of the Paris cabinet had been fitted for the observation of German relations they, in Paris, would not have given themselves up to the illusion that Prussia could have consented to this. Your excellency is, indeed, as well informed of the ignorance of the French of. Germany as I am.
The exertions of the French government to carry out, with the support of Prussia, its covetous designs upon Belgium and the borders of the Rhine, were already made known to me before 1862, therefore before my assumption of the duties of the office of foreign affairs. I cannot regard it as my duty to bring such communications, which [Page 201] were of a purely personal nature, into the province of international law, and think that I should keep hack the interesting contributions which I could make, by means of private conversation and private letters, for the explanation of this question.
The chosen tendencies of the French government made themselves recognizable by the outward influence on European politics of the position which Prance observed in our favor during the German-Danish struggle. The feeling in France against us, in regard to the following treaty of Gastein, agrees with the anxiety that a lasting foundation of the Prussian-Austrian union might be the result of the Paris cabinets sustaining its position. Already in 1865 France reckoned upon the breaking out of a war between us and Austria, and reapproached itself to us as soon as our relations to Vienna began to become troubled.
Before the breaking out of the Austrian war of 1866 proposals were made to us, partly through relatives of his Majesty the Emperor of the French, partly through trusted agents, which tended at that time to complete greater or less transactions for mutual enlargement; sometimes it was a question of Luxemburg, or of the boundary of 1814 with Landau and Saar-Louis, sometimes of still greater objects, from which French Switzerland and the question where the language boundary of Piedmont was to be drawn were not excluded.
In May 1866 these requests assumed the form of an offer of a defensive and offensive alliance, the following extract from the princial points of which remained in my possession:
1. In case of a congress, to pursue amicably the cession of Venice to Italy, and the annexation of the duchies to Prussia.
2. If the congress fails, alliance defensive and offensive.
3. The King of Prussia to commence hostilities ten days after the separation of the congress.
4. If the congress does not reconvene Prussia shall attack within thirty days alter the signature of the present treaty.
5. The Emperor of the French shall declare war against Austria as soon as hostilities shall have commenced between Austria and Prussia. (In thirty days, 300,000.)
6. Neither shall make separate peace with Austria.
7. Peace shall be made under the following conditions: Venice to Italy; the undermentioned German territories to Prussia, (seven to eight million souls at a choice;) also the federal reform in the Prussian sense. For France, the territory between the Moselle and Rhine, except Coblentz and Mayence. comprising 500,000 souls of Prussia, Bavaria on the left bank of the Rhine. Birkenfeld. Homburg, Darmstadt, 213,000 souls.
8. Military and maritime convention between France and Prussia from the time of signature.
9. Adherency to the King of Italy. The strength of the army with which the Emperor wished to support us was given, according to Article 5, at 300,000 men in written explanations. The number of souls in the addition for which France exerted herself was 1,800,000, according to French calculation, which does not agree with reality.
Every one who is acquainted with the inner diplomatic and military history of the year 1866 will perceive, through these clauses, the policy which France followed at the same time with Italy, with whom she also treated in secret, and later with Prussia and Italy. After we had declined the above project of alliance in June 1866, in spite of several almost threatening requests to accept it, the French government counted still upon Austrian victory over ns and upon our availing ourselves of French assistance after our final defeat, and French policy now busied itself in strengthening its diplomatic introduction. That the congress thought of in the foregoing project of alliance, and which was later proposed once again, would have had the effect to bring our union with Italy, which had been closed but three months, uselessly to an end, your excellency is well aware. The “patriotic anxiety” of Minister Rouher gives a commentary upon the further course of events.
From that time on France has not ceased to tempt us by offers at the expense of Germany and Belgium. I was never doubtful of the impossibility of consenting to any offer of the kind; nevertheless I held it to be of use in the interest of peace to leave the French statesmen to their peculiar illusions so long as this should be possible, without making any, even oral, promises. I thought that the destruction of this French hope would endanger peace, which it was for the interest of Germany and Europe to sustain. I did not agree with those politicians who advised us not to flinch from a war with France on account of our strength, because it was inevitable. None can understand the foresight of God in regard to future events, and I looked upon even a victorious war as in itself an evil which statesmanship should take pains to spare the people. I could not predict, without considering the possibility that in France changes in constitution and policy might take place which would have saved both these great neighboring nations from the necessity of a war; a hope which acted in favor of a delay of the rupture. For this reason I kept silent in respect to the requests made, and acted in a dilatory manner regarding them, without making any promise on my side.
[Page 202]After the transaction with his Majesty the King of the Netherlands about the purchase of Luxemburg was broken up, in a manner which is well known, the enlarged propositions of France were repeated to me, which comprehended Belgium and South Germany. In this conjunction falls the communication of the Benedetti manuscript. That the French ambassador should have formed these proposals with his own hands, should have given them to me, and gone over them with me, and, by modification of position in the text, prompted by me, should have acted without the assent of his sovereign, is as improbable as the assertion, at another time, that the Emperor Napoleon did not agree to the demand for the surrender of Mayence, which was officially made to me in August 1866, by the imperial ambassador, with a threat of war in case of refusal.
The different phases of French ill humor and desire for war which we experienced from 1866 to 1869, coincided pretty exactly with the inclination or disinclination to action of this kind which French agents thought to find in me.
At the time of the preparation of the sale of the Belgian railroads, in March 1868, a person in high position, who was not ignorant of the earlier transactions, pointed out to me, with respect to the latter, that in case of a French occupation of Belgium “we could well find our Belgium somewhere else.” In the same wav, on former occasions, I was given to understand that France, in the case of an opening of the eastern question, could take its share, not in the far east, but immediately on its border.
I have the impression that only the definite conviction that with us no enlargement of the boundaries of France was to be gained, led the Emperor to seek the same in spite of us. I have even reasons for believing that if the publication which is now in question had not taken place, that after the French and our equipments were finished that the proposal would have been made us by France to carry out together, at the head of a million equipped warriors, and against unarmed Europe, the proposals previously made us, i. e., before or after the first battle to make peace upon the basis of the Benedetti proposition, at the cost of Belgium. Upon the text of these proposals, I have yet to remark that the draught in our hands is, from the beginning to the end, in the handwriting of Count Benedetti, and is written upon the paper of the imperial embassy, and that the ambassadors herein named, respectively, ministers of Austria, Great Britain, Russia, Baden, Bavaria, Belgium, Hesse, Italy, Saxony, Turkey, and Wurtemburg, who have seen the original, have recognized the handwriting.
At the first reading Count Benedetti renounced the closing passage in Article I, and immediately after I had remarked to him that the same presupposed an interference of France in the internal affairs of Germany, which I could not permit even in secret acts, he inclosed it in parentheses. From an impulse of his own, he, in my presence, made a correction of less importance on the margin in Article II.
I orally informed Lord Aug. Loftus, on the 24th, of the existence of the act, and upon his doubting it I invited him to view it personally. On the 27th he saw it, and convinced himself that it was from the hand of his former French colleague.
The aspect of the political situation is explained by the imperial cabinet’s denial to-day of the designs for the accomplishment of which it has exerted itself without interruption since 1864, changing from threats to promises in order to win us.
Your, &c., will have the kindness to read this to——, and to hand him a copy.