Chapter I · (continued 2)

About 11 P.M. I was again called to the Minister. The reports respecting the English coal ships to be at once sent by a Chancery attendant to Wolf’s Telegraphic Agency for circulation to the newspapers.

In this connection may be mentioned an Embassy report from London, dated the 30th of July, to the following effect: Lord Granville had asked the Ambassador if he had not stirred up the authorities in Berlin against the English Government. The reply was in the negative. The Ambassador had only carried out his instructions. Public opinion in Germany influenced the Government, just as the German press influenced public opinion. The manner in which neutrality was observed on the part of England had excited the greatest indignation in Germany. The action of the English Government, which indeed recognised that France was in the wrong, but failed to give expression to that conviction, was also bitterly resented there. Granville replied that once it had been decided to remain neutral that neutrality must be maintained in every respect. If the export of contraband of war were forbidden, the French would regard it as an act of one-sided hostility, while at the same time it would ruin English trade in the branches affected by such prohibition, and favour American manufacturers. For the present, every one in England approved of the maintenance of neutrality, and therefore in a general way no change was possible in these matters. At the same time, the English Government was ready, in case of complaints reaching them in an official way respecting any acts of illegality, to institute an inquiry into the facts and secure the punishment of the guilty parties. It did not seem impossible to prevent the supply of English coal to French men-of-war. Next Monday a Bill was to be submitted to Parliament for the amendment of the laws regulating neutrality. The report concluded as follows: “England is in many respects well disposed towards us, but will for the present remain neutral. If we make further attacks upon English public opinion through our official press in connection with these grievances, it will serve no purpose but to conjure up future difficulties. Granville is not what we might desire, but he is not prejudiced against us. He may become so, however, if he is further provoked by us. We can hardly succeed in overthrowing him, and if we did his probable successor would in all likelihood be much worse than himself.”

July 24th.—I am instructed by the Count to send an article to the Kölnische Zeitung respecting the Dutch coal question. He gave me the following information on this subject: “Holland asked us to again permit the passage of Prussian coal down the Rhine, and requested that a large transport of Rhenish coal intended for Holland should be allowed to pass the frontier. It was only to be used in factories, and the Government of the Netherlands would prohibit its re-exportation. Prussia willingly agreed to this, but shortly afterwards it was ascertained that foreign vessels were being loaded with coal in Dutch ports, and the Government of the Netherlands subsequently informed us that in promising to prevent the re-exportation they had overlooked the circumstance that their treaty with France did not permit this. Thereupon as a matter of course the export of Prussian coal to Holland was prohibited. In the interval, however, they seem to have secured a sufficient supply in Holland to provide the French fleet for a considerable time. That is a very suspicious method of observing the neutrality promised by the gentlemen at the Hague.”

Bucher brings me the following paragraph from the Chief, which is to be inserted in the Spenersche Zeitung, or some other non-official organ, and afterwards in the North German Correspondence: “In 1851 a literary gamin in Paris was commissioned to conjure up the Red Terror in a pamphlet, which proved very useful to the President Louis Napoleon, enabling him to escape from a debtors’ prison and ascend the Imperial throne. The Duc de Grammont now tries to raise the Spanish Terror in order to save the Emperor from the necessity of accounting for the hundred millions which he diverted from the State Treasury into his private purse. The literary gentleman in question was made a Prefect. What reward can Grammont have had in view?”

Evening.—The Minister wishes an article to be prepared for circulation in the German press describing the French and French policy under the Emperor Napoleon. This is to be first sent to the Spenersche Zeitung, while the Literary Bureau is to secure the insertion of the principal points in a condensed form in the Magdeburg papers and a number of the smaller journals to-morrow. The Count said (literally): “The French are not so astute as people generally think. As a nation they resemble certain individuals amongst our lower classes. They are narrow-minded and brutal,—great physical force, boastful and insolent, winning the admiration of men of their own stamp through their audacity and violence. Here in Germany the French are also considered clever by persons who do not think deeply, and their Ministers are regarded as great statesmen because of their insolent interference in the affairs of the whole world, and their desire to rule everywhere. Audacity is always impressive. People think their success is due to shrewd political calculation, but it is actually due to nothing else than the fact that they always keep 300,000 soldiers ready to back up their policy. That alone, and not their political intelligence, has enabled them to carry things with such a high hand. We must get rid of this fiction.... In political affairs the French are in the fullest sense of the word a narrow-minded nation. They have no idea how things look outside of France, and learn nothing about it in their schools. The French educational establishments, for the greater glory of France, leave their pupils in the crassest ignorance as to everything beyond her frontiers, and so they have not the slightest knowledge of their neighbours; that is the case with the Emperor, or at least he is not much better, to say nothing of Grammont, who is an ass (Rindvieh). Napoleon is ignorant at bottom, although he has been educated in German schools. His ‘Cæsar’ was intended to conceal that fact. He has forgotten everything. His policy was always stupid. The Crimean War was against the interests of France, which demanded an alliance or at least a good understanding with Russia. It was the same with the war in Italy. There he created a rival in the Mediterranean, North Africa, Tunis, &c., who may one day prove dangerous. The Italian people are much more gifted than the French, only less numerous. The war in Mexico and the attitude adopted in 1866 were blunders, and doubtless in storming about as they do at present the French feel conscious that they have committed another blunder.”

July 25th.—At 11 o’clock this morning Count Bismarck and his family took the Holy Communion at their residence. He asked whether any one in our bureau desired to join them, but no one offered to do so. I was for a moment tempted, but reconsidered the matter. It might look as if I wished to recommend myself.

Copies of the Benedetti draft treaty are sent to Auber (the French Press Agency) and Heide.

July 27th.—It is to be stated either in the Norddeutsche or the Spenersche Zeitung that secrecy respecting confidential communications between great States is, as a rule, more carefully observed and maintained than the public imagines. Nevertheless, the French misrepresentation of Prussia’s attitude in the affair of the candidature for the Spanish throne (in Grammont’s despatch of the 21st of July) obliged the authorities here to disregard these considerations of discretion. Benedetti’s proposal has therefore been published and it may be followed by other documents of the same description. The Count concluded his directions as follows: “We are at least entitled to tell the truth with discretion in presence of such indiscreet lies.”

Bucher brings me from the Minister the following sketch of a paragraph for the press: “The despatch of the Duc de Grammont, the full text of which now lies before us, is a desperate attempt to prove that the origin of the situation which they have themselves created was the Hohenzollern candidature, and to conceal the motive which they confessed on many other occasions—namely, the conquest by France of the left bank of the Rhine and of Belgium. The inconsistency of the whole assertion is made clear by the circumstance that the offer of the Spanish throne to the Hereditary Prince of Hohenzollern was first made in a letter dated the 14th of February of the present year. Therefore, there can be no connection between this offer and the conversations in March, 1869, between Benedetti and Von Thile, which were the outcome of aspirations or proposals frequently ventilated in the press (also with reference to Prince Frederick Charles). In 1851 the President Louis Napoleon succeeded in obtaining credence both at home and abroad for certain fictions, so long as that was necessary for the attainment of his object. The fiction which is now circulated, at a somewhat late hour, to the effect that the Prince of Hohenzollern was the candidate of Prussia is refuted in advance by the fact, which has been well known for a long time, that the Prussian Government as well as the officials of the Confederation, had absolutely no knowledge of, or connection with, the Spanish proposal. It was resolutely opposed by his Majesty the King, as the head of the Hohenzollern family, until last June, when at Ems he reluctantly withdrew his opposition when it was represented to him that otherwise Spain would fall into the hands of the Republicans. We find it difficult to understand what interest the French Government can have in circulating such lies now that war has actually broken out. The attempt of the Duc de Grammont to conjure up the spectre of a restoration of Charles V.’s monarchy can only be explained by the complete isolation of the French mind. That apparition had no sooner manifested itself than it vanished before the angry contempt of public opinion, which resented being supposed capable of such credulity.”

The Chancellor desires to see the following considerations reproduced in the evening papers: “The Benedetti document is by no means the only one dealing with the matter in question. Negotiations were also carried on by others, as, for instance, by Prince Napoleon during his stay in Berlin. Since French diplomacy was ignorant enough to believe that a German Minister who followed a national policy could for a moment think of entertaining such proposals, it had only itself to thank if it was befooled with its own schemes so long as such fooling appeared calculated to promote the maintenance of peace. Even those who pursue the most ignorant and narrow-minded policy must ultimately come to recognise that they have hoped for and demanded impossibilities. The bellicose temper which now prevails in Paris dates from such recognition. The hopes of German statesmen that they would be able to befool the French until a peaceful régime was established in France by some transformation of her despotic constitution have unfortunately not been realised. Providence willed it otherwise. Since we can no longer maintain peace it is not necessary now to preserve silence. For we preserved silence solely in order to promote the continuance, and, if possible, the permanency, of peaceful relations.”... The Minister concluded: “You can add, too, that the question of French Switzerland was also mentioned in the negotiations, and that it was hinted that in Piedmont they knew quite well where the French districts begin and the Italian districts leave off.”

July 28th.—I see the original of Benedetti’s draft treaty, and I am to receive a photographic copy of it similar to that which has been prepared for distribution amongst foreign Governments.

Bucher handed me the following sketch of an article, received by him from the Minister, which is to be inserted in some organ not apparently connected with the Government: “Those who now hold power in Spain declare that they do not wish to interfere in the conflict between Germany and France, because the latter might create internal difficulties for them. They allow Bonaparte to prohibit their election of the King of their own choice. They look on calmly with folded arms while other nations go to war over a difference that has arisen out of a question of Spanish domestic interest. We had formed quite another opinion of the Castilian gentilhomme. The Spanish temper seems to resemble that of Gil Blas, who wanted to fight a duel with the army surgeon but observed that the latter had an unusually long rapier.”

July 30th, 10 p.m.—The Minister desires that attention should be again called to the manner in which the French are looking about for foreign assistance, and he once more gives a few points: “France is begging in all directions, and wants in particular to take Italy into her pay. Here, as everywhere, she speculates upon the worst elements, while the better elements will have nothing to do with her. How does that harmonise with the greatness of the nation which ‘stands at the head of civilisation,’ and whose historians always point out that it was only defeated at Leipzig because its opponents were four to one? At that time they had half Germany, Italy, Holland, and the present Belgium on their side. To-day, when they stand alone, they go round hat in hand to every door, and seek mercenaries to reinforce their own army, in which they can therefore have but very little confidence.”

July 31st.—This morning received from Roland one of the photographic copies of the Benedetti draft.