Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress with the Annual Message of the President, December 5, 1870
No. 56.
Mr. E. B. Washburne to Mr. Fish.
Sir: I have the honor to transmit herewith a printed copy of a dispatch addressed by his excellency the Duke de Gramont, minister of foreign affairs, to the diplomatic agents of France at foreign courts, on the subject of the treaty said to have been proposed by the Emperor of the French to the government of the North German Confederacy. It is taken from the columns of Galignani of this day.
The Duke de Gramont to the diplomatic agents of France.
Paris,August 3.
Monsieur: We are at present acquainted with the full explanation of the telegram addressed by Count de Bismarck to the Prussian ambassador at London, to announce to England the pretended secrets of which the federal chancellor stated himself to be the depositary. His communication adds no essential fact to those which he had advanced. We find in it only a few additional improbabilities. We shall not reply to them, for public opinion has already treated as they deserved assertions which do not gain any authority from the audacity with which they are repeated, and we consider as definitively established, in spite of all contradiction, the fact that the Emperor Napoleon never proposed to Prussia a treaty for taking possession of Belgium. That idea belongs to M. de Bismarck; it was one of the expedients of that unscrupulous policy which, we hope, is approaching its termination.
I should therefore abstain from reverting to statements, the falsity of which is now manifest, had not the author of the Prussian dispatch, with a want of tact which I remark for the first time to such a degree in a diplomatic document, spoken of relatives of the Emperor as bearers of compromising messages and confidences. Whatever may be the repugnance with which I see myself forced, in order to follow the Prussian minister, to enter on a path contrary to my habits, I overcome that sentiment because my duty requires me to repel the perfidious insinuations which, directed against the members of the imperial family, are evidently intended to reach the Emperor himself.
It was at Berlin that M. de Bismarck, taking the initiative of the ideas which he now wishes to attribute to us, addressed in the following terms the French prince, whom, in spite of all propriety, he at present drags into the controversy:
“You seek,” he said, “what is impossible; you wish to take the Rhenish provinces, [Page 87] which are German. Why not annex Belgium, where a people exists which has the same origin, the same religion, and the same language as yourselves? I have already suggested the idea to the Emperor; if he entertained my views, we would aid you to take that state. As for myself, if I was master, and was not hampered by the King’s obstinacy, it would have been already done.”
Those words of the Prussian chancellor were, so to say, repeated literally to the court of France by Count de Goltz. That ambassador so little attempted concealment, that the number of witnesses who heard him is considerable. I may add that, at the period of the Universal Exhibition, the overtures of Prussia were known to several high personages, who took note of them, and still remember them. Besides, this was not a mere passing idea with the count, but a well-concerted project, to which his ambitious plans were attached; and he pursued its execution with a perseverance thoroughly proved by his numerous excursions to France, either to Biarritz or elsewhere. He failed before the unshakable determination of the Emperor, who always refused to join in a policy unworthy of his integrity.
I now leave this subject, which I have touched on for the last time, with the firm intention of not again reverting to it; and I come to the point, really new, in Count de Bismarck’s dispatch:
“I have, beside, reason to believe,” he says, “that had the publication in question not taken place, so soon as our and the French preparations for war were complete, propositions would have been made to us by France jointly, and at the head of a million armed men, to carry out against unarmed Europe the proposals formerly made to us, and either before or after the first battle to conclude peace on the basis of the Benedetti proposals, and at the expense of Belgium.”
The Emperor’s government cannot tolerate such an assertion. In the face of Europe, his Majesty’s ministers defy M. de Bismarck to bring forward any fact whatever which could lead to the supposition they have manifested, directly or indirectly, by official channels or through secret agents, the intention to unite with Prussia to accomplish with her on Belgium the violence consummated on Hanover.
We have not opened any negotiations with the Prussian minister either on the subject of Belgium or on any other matter. Far from seeking war, as we have been accused of doing, we begged Lord Clarendon to intervene with the federal chancellor to procure a reciprocal disarmament, an important mission with which his lordship, through friendship for France and devotedness to ideas of peace, consented to undertake confidentially. The following are the terms in which Count Darn, in a letter of the 1st February, explained the intentions of the government to the Marquis de la Valette, our ambassador at London:
“It is certain that I shall not mix myself up in this affair, and that I should not ask England to do so, if the question was purely and simply an ordinary proceeding and one of pure form, made simply to furnish M. de Bismarck with an occasion to express once more his refusal. The overture which we make is decided, serious, and positive.
“The principal secretary of state seems to expect from Count de Bismarck a first movement of displeasure and ill humor. That is possible, but not certain. In that provision we shall perhaps do well to prepare the ground so as to avoid a negative reply from the commencement.
“I am convinced that time and reflection will lead the chancellor to take into serious consideration the proposal of England; should he not at once reject all overtures, the interests of Prussia and of the whole of Germany will be sufficient to moderate his resistance. He would not wish to excite against him public opinion throughout his country. What, in fact, would be his position if we deprived him of the only pretext behind which he can take refuge, by disarming?”
Count de Bismarck replied first that he could not take on himself to inform the King of the suggestions of the British government, and that he was sufficiently acquainted with the views of his sovereign to know what the impressions of William I would be. The King, he said, would certainly consider such a step on the part of the cabinet of London as the proof of a change in the dispositions of England toward Prussia. In fine, the federal chancellor declared that “it was impossible for Prussia to modify a military system so deeply rooted in the traditions of the country, which formed one of the bases of its constitution, and which was quite normal.”
Count Daru did not accept that reply as definitive, and on the 13th February wrote to the Marquis de la Valette as follows:
“I hope that Lord Clarendon will not take that answer as final and will not be discouraged. We will shortly give him an opportunity of returning to the charge, if he is disposed to do so, and to take up the conversation which has been interrupted with the federal chancellor. Our intention is, in fact, to diminish our contingent; we should have reduced it considerably if we had obtained a favorable reply from Count de Bismarck; we shall decrease it less, as his answer is negative, but we shall nevertheless diminish it. The reduction I shall propose will be 10,000 men.
“We shall thus be affirming by acts, which are always better than words, our intentions and our policy. Nine contingents, each reduced by 10,000 will make a total diminution [Page 88] of 90,000. That is already something; it is a tenth of our present force, and I regret that I am not able to do more. The bill on the contingent will be brought forward immediately. Lord Clarendon will then have to consider whether there will be an advisability of representing to Count de Bismarck that the Prussian government is alone in Europe in not making any concession to the spirit of peace, and that it is thus placing itself in a grave situation in the midst of European society, because it is furnishing arms against itself to every one, including the populations crushed beneath the burden of the military charges it imposes on them.”
Count de Bismarck, being closely pressed, thought necessary to enter into some fresh explanations with Lord Clarendon.
Those explanations, as we are acquainted with them by a letter of the Marquis de la Valette, dated the 23d February, were full of reticences. The chancellor of the Prussian Confederation, reconsidering his first resolution, had communicated to King William the proposal of England, but his Majesty had declined it. In support of that refusal the chancellor alleged the fear of an eventual alliance between Austria and the states of Southern Germany, and the ideas of aggrandizement which France might have. But he especially put forward the anxiety with which he said he was filled by the policy of Russia, and entered on that subject into private considerations on the court of St. Petersburg, which I prefer to pass over in silence, not wishing to repeat offensive insinuations. Such are the motives of refusal which Count de Bismarck opposed to the frank and conscientious entreaties repeatedly renewed by Lord Clarendon at the request of the Emperor’s government.
If, therefore, Europe has remained in arms; if a million of men are about to come into collision on fields of battle, the fact can no longer be contested that the responsibility for such a state of things rests with Prussia; for she rejected all ideas of disarming when we made the proposal to her, and when we commenced by giving an example. Is not that conduct besides explained by the fact that at the same moment in which confiding France was diminishing her contingent, the cabinet of Berlin was organizing in secret the provocatory candidateship of a Prussian prince? Whatever may be the calumnies invented by the federal chancellor, we have no fear; he has lost the right of being believed. The public conscience of Europe and history will say that Prussia sought for the present war by inflicting on France, preoccupied by the development of her political institutions, the outrage which no proud and courageous people could have submitted to without deserving the contempt of the nations.