Yet, sandwiched uncomfortably between three rival great powers, what alternative had the southern states? The revelation of France’s ambitions in the Rhineland made her appear a predator rather than a protector. The opportunity France had in the 1820s to pre-empt Prussia and make clients of the southern states by bringing them into her customs system had been missed because of French protectionism, and now membership of the German Customs Union was an economic necessity to the South. Bismarck knew this and attempted to use it as a lever to attach the South more firmly to the North. He devised a plan for a Customs Parliament consisting of members of the North German Reichstag and elected representatives from the South. The South German states had reluctantly to accept the plan, but elections there in 1868 showed how strong separatist sentiment was. Catholics, who made up 5 million of the 8.7 million people of the South, feared union with the Protestant North; many conservatives, peasants and workers saw in it a dangerous threat to their way of life and remained strongly loyal to their states. Of the eighty-five members of the Customs Parliament democratically elected from the South and sent to Berlin, forty-nine opposed greater unification and used their power to block northern moves in that direction. Seeing the Customs Parliament determined to confine itself to economic issues and unwilling to play the political part he had cast it for, Bismarck lost interest. Other expedients he explored were no more fruitful. A proposal for a loose political federation and hopes that the South German states might join together in a single entity that would help dissolve particularist sentiment and facilitate ties with the North were resisted by the South. With apparent resignation, Bismarck famously wrote to the frustrated Prussian Minister to Bavaria in February 1869:
Arbitrary interference in the course of history … has only ever resulted in the shaking down of unripe fruit. That German unity is not at this moment a ripe fruit is obvious in my opinion … We can put the clocks forward, but time does not move faster on that account, and the ability to wait, while the situation develops, is a prerequisite of practical politics.24
Of the four southern states, only the government of the Grand Duchy of Baden was amenable to closer union, largely because its Grand Duke was Protestant and the son-in-law of King Wilhelm of Prussia, and ruled a state bordering the Rhine, so had most to fear from French invasion. Military integration therefore proceeded more smoothly than in the other states. In February 1870 a Liberal deputy in the Reichstag proposed admitting Baden to the North German Confederation, but Bismarck opposed the move as ill-timed. French reaction would be hostile, and he had no intention of allowing the National Liberals in the Reichstag to provoke war or dictate the pace of unification in a way that would increase their powers. If Prussia’s best friend in the South were admitted prematurely, it would make winning over recalcitrant Württemberg and Bavaria even harder. Indeed, resistance in those states was becoming stronger rather than weaker by 1869–70, as election results and a monster petition against conscription in Württemberg demonstrated. Local ‘Patriot’ parties were everywhere in the ascendant over German nationalists, and arguments over closer union were throwing southern politics into dangerous turmoil.
Early in 1870 Bismarck made one further effort to promote the national idea. He floated a proposal that King Wilhelm, instead of being styled President of the North German Confederation, should assume the title of Emperor. But this idea too fell flat. The National Liberals in the Reichstag wanted concessions on ministerial responsibility that Bismarck was unwilling to yield. The other German princes, including the kings of Württemberg and Bavaria, made known their displeasure at one of their number being elevated above them.
For all Bismarck’s efforts, his many opponents in the South could rejoice that, in the words of a Bavarian journal, the Prussian engine had been halted at the line of the Main. Union between North and South, let alone one legitimized by popular votes, looked even less likely in the spring of 1870 than it had in the autumn of 1866. It needed no genius to see that the only circumstance in which the South German states would willingly join with the North would be that of an unprovoked attack by France which would activate the military alliances with Prussia. That alone might overcome separatist sentiment and rally all Germans to the national cause. Bismarck occasionally spoke of the possibility, even inevitability, of war with France, though disclaiming any desire to bear the responsibility for bringing it about. It was, nevertheless, at a juncture when prospects for promoting voluntary union with the South looked bleakest that he secretly set in train an initiative that had the potential to lead to a major diplomatic crisis with France.
Chapter 4
The Crisis
The Liberal Empire
The year 1870 opened on a note of optimism and renewal in France. After months of political uncertainty, a Liberal ministry took office on 2 January. The most prominent figure in it was the eloquent, well-intentioned but inexperienced Émile Ollivier, who embarked on an ambitious programme of constitutional reform with the support of the political centre in the Legislature. Gambetta might rail at the new administration that ‘You are nothing but a bridge between the Republic of 1848 and the Republic to come, and we shall pass over that bridge!’1, but for the moment republicans remained a noisy minority.
The new government showed its determination to deal firmly with disorder from the Left. On 10 January a hot-tempered cousin of the Emperor’s, Prince Pierre Bonaparte, shot dead a republican journalist, Victor Noir, who had struck the Prince while delivering a challenge to a duel from a radical editor whose insults to the Bonaparte family had incurred the Prince’s wrath. Noir’s employer, Henri Rochefort, who had been party to the war of words preceding this incident, boldly attacked the dynasty in his paper, La Marseillaise, declaring, ‘I have been so weak as to believe a Bonaparte could be other than an assassin! … For eighteen years now France has been held in the bloodied hands of these cut-throats, who, not content to shoot down republicans in the streets, draw them into dirty traps in order to slit their throats in private. Frenchmen, have you not had quite enough of it?’2
Funerals were favourite occasions for political demonstrations in France, and Noir’s on 12 January threatened to spark revolution. Some 100,000 people gathered in the western suburbs of Paris. The more violent revolutionaries, followers of Auguste Blanqui, tried to lead the funeral procession into the centre of the capital to start an insurrection. But the government deployed troops, and more experienced republicans like Delescluze, seconded by the timid Rochefort, concluded that the procession should go instead straight to the Neuilly cemetery, so averting violent confrontation. In February Rochefort was arrested at a meeting, charged with insulting the Emperor and inciting civil war, and imprisoned for six months. Some 450 radical activists were also arrested. With even-handedness, Prince Pierre was put on trial, though the court found that he had acted in self-defence and acquitted him.
The government had passed its first test confidently, but hostility from the Right would prove more insidious and eventually fatal. That hostility was deep-rooted among loyalists of the authoritarian Empire, who wanted restoration of Napoleon’s personal rule. They resented seeing power wielded by politicians who in many cases were Liberal monarchists still loyal to the Orléans dynasty, and who had opposed the coup d’état of 1851. When Ollivier set about reforming the Senate as a step towards introducing genuine parliamentary government, a committee of senators led by Rouher suggested to the Emperor that such a change to the constitution approved by the plebiscite of 1852 required popular endorsement. Napoleon was persuaded, and in April announced that a plebiscite would be held asking whether or not voters approved of the Liberal reforms he had introduced since 1860. The question was cleverly posed, for in endorsing reform voters had also to endorse the Empire. The decision to hold a plebiscite disconcerted the Centre Left, who saw a direct appeal by the sovereign to the people as incompatible with the introduction of parliamentary sovereignty. Two ministers resigned over the issue, including Count Daru, the Foreign
Minister.
After a lively campaign, the vote was held on 8 May. Although some opponents of the regime abstained, enough voted to show that Paris and other big cities remained irreconcilably hostile to the Empire. In the country as a whole it was a different story. The national vote was 7,358,786 in favour, 1,571,939 against, with 1,894,681 abstentions. It was hard to deny that it was a major triumph for Napoleon after his recent difficulties. It seemed that the veteran political operator had not lost his touch after all. ‘The enemies of our institutions have made an issue between revolution and the Empire. The country has decided,’ he pronounced. The eventual succession of the Prince Imperial seemed assured. Gambetta was devastated, confessing privately that ‘the Emperor is stronger than ever’, and he thought that the Empire might last another ten years.3
Republicans could take solace from the apparent effectiveness of their propaganda among troops stationed in the cities. A sixth of the army voted ‘no’ in the plebiscite. Publication of the results for the armed forces conveniently informed the Germans that the French army had 299,494 men present for duty.
One of the Ollivier ministry’s first foreign policy initiatives had been to sound Bismarck secretly about possible mutual troop reductions. Ollivier himself believed in the principle of nationality and thought peaceful co-existence with Germany possible. ‘The moment to halt Prussia has passed, irrevocably passed,’ he wrote just before taking office, and in February 1870 he told the Cologne Gazette that, so far as he was concerned, ‘There is no German question.’4 Rather than approach Bismarck directly, that month Daru used the good offices of the British Foreign Minister, Lord Clarendon, to broach the disarmament question. Bismarck rejected the proposal, arguing that as Germany held a central position between three strong powers she had to be able to defend herself, and that King Wilhelm would not countenance changes to his military system. Despite this rebuff, the French proceeded with plans to reduce their annual contingent by 10,000 men to 90,000, and the Liberal Empire seemed to have ushered in an easing of Franco-German tensions.
Following Daru’s resignation and the plebiscite, Napoleon cast around for a new Foreign Minister, and eventually chose Duc Agénor de Gramont, a career diplomat who had served eight years as French ambassador to Austria. Bismarck and others in Germany interpreted this as a hostile move by a strengthened Napoleon. Gramont, an aristocrat who had rallied to the Bonapartist regime, believed that further Prussian ambitions should be checked, and was a known advocate of alliance with Austria.
Napoleon, who in foreign policy as in other fields took secret initiatives without informing his ministers or ambassadors, had been pursuing an alliance with Austria since 1867, and expected Gramont to be helpful in this regard. Talks with Austria had continued sporadically in 1868 and 1869, but had produced little more than expressions of goodwill between the sovereigns. The Austrians wished to maintain good relations with France, but feared that they had more to lose than to gain by joining too eagerly in any war of revenge against Prussia. They avoided giving any formal commitment. Attempts to bring Italy into a triple alliance foundered on continued French occupation of Rome. Yet Napoleon, regarding the treaty as ‘morally signed’,5 persisted in assuming that Austria would not stand aloof if a Franco-Prussian war did come – for instance, in the event that Prussia should attempt to seize the South German states by force. In March 1870 the Austrian Archduke Albrecht visited Paris and Napoleon discussed with him the strategy to be pursued in such a war. On 19 May Napoleon expounded to Generals Le Bœuf, Frossard and Lebrun the resulting plan, whereby French troops would advance into Bavaria and join with the Austrians and Italians before marching on Berlin. His generals were concerned that such a scheme could work only if the allies mobilized simultaneously.
Yet when General Lebrun, the Emperor’s aide, travelled to Vienna in June to discuss the military details of this strategy, Albrecht made clear that he regarded such planning as a theoretical exercise only, insisting that Austria would need six weeks to mobilize before declaring war. Albrecht’s calculations, like Napoleon’s, seriously underestimated the likely speed of German mobilization and the numbers they could bring to bear. Moreover, Emperor Franz Josef emphasized to Lebrun that he desired peace, and would only make common cause with Napoleon if he were to arrive in South Germany with his armies ‘not as an enemy but as a liberator’.6 If war broke out, in other words, the Austrians would wait on the sidelines until the French were winning.
Lebrun returned to Paris, saw the Emperor, and submitted his formal report on 30 June – by chance on the day that Ollivier justified the reduction in the annual military contingent by declaring to the Legislature that ‘the government has no anxieties, and that at no time has the maintenance of peace in Europe appeared to us better assured.’7 June was indeed a languid month. French farmers were worried by drought caused by the hot weather, and at the prospect of a bad harvest the War Ministry had begun to sell horses. In Germany, Bismarck, Moltke and Roon escaped the heat of Berlin to spend the summer on their country estates. On 1 July the Emperor Napoleon was examined by five eminent surgeons, who were divided on whether an operation was necessary for his chronic bladder complaint. Next evening, news reports reached Paris from Madrid that Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a cousin of King Wilhelm’s, the son of a former Prussian Minister-President, and a serving Prussian officer, had been offered the Spanish throne.
Spanish Complications
In September 1868 Queen Isabella II of Spain had been overthrown. For the Spanish generals who seized power in the faction-ridden kingdom, finding a new monarch proved a frustrating business, complicated by Great Power interests. France, for instance, objected strongly to the candidacy of a son of King Louis Philippe of the Orléans dynasty. Attempts to put Portuguese or Italian princes on the Spanish throne were no more successful, due to a combination of internal politics, the reservations of France and Britain about a possible union between Spain and Portugal, and the reluctance of the candidates themselves when considering such a precarious honour. Among several candidates discussed in Madrid from the autumn of 1868, Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen had much to recommend him. Leopold was in his prime, an army officer, and married to a Portuguese princess. Though a Hohenzollern, he was Catholic: his branch of the family had stayed on their ancestral estates in south Germany when the other branch had set off in the Middle Ages to find lands and fortune in Brandenburg to the north.
The French became aware that Leopold’s name was being aired in Madrid. Napoleon had no quarrel with the Sigmaringens. He was related to them on his mother’s side, had supported Charles, Leopold’s elder brother, in his successful bid for the Rumanian throne in 1866, and had even recommended Leopold himself for the Greek throne in 1863. But all that had been before Sadowa and Luxembourg. To have a Prussian prince on the throne of France’s southern neighbour was quite another matter. Napoleon believed that France would not stand for it and that it must be prevented.8 In March 1869 Benedetti, the French ambassador, told the Prussian Foreign Ministry that the possibility ‘interested the Emperor’s government too directly for it not to be my duty to call attention to the fact’. In May Benedetti sounded Bismarck on the issue, and Bismarck commented that, were the Spanish to make an offer, both King Wilhelm and the Sigmaringen family would be against Leopold’s embarking on such a hazardous adventure.9
King Wilhelm and Prince Karl Anton, Leopold’s father, had already exchanged views to this effect, and held to them when the Spanish made a preliminary approach to the Sigmaringens in September 1869. Karl Anton told the Spanish negotiator that the consent of both Napoleon and Wilhelm would be necessary if European peace were not to be imperilled.10 Five months passed before the Spanish, thwarted with regard to other candidates, renewed their secret approaches more formally in February 1870. It was only at this point that Bismarck took up the Hohenzollern candidacy in earnest. He drew up a report to the king urging the advantages to Germany and the Hohenzollern dynasty. A military ally on Fra
nce’s southern border could force her to detach an army corps to deal with that threat in the event of a war with Germany. Moltke advocated this argument, and had envisaged Spanish support in his 1869 military plan. Spain as an ally would provide a counterweight to the possible French alliance with Austria and Italy. Conversely, if the Spanish became allies of France, they might free French troops by providing the garrison for Rome. There would also be prestige for the Hohenzollern dynasty in supplying a king for Spain, elevating it to a status not seen since the Habsburg Emperor Charles V in the sixteenth century. Besides, a refusal might offend the Spaniards and cause them to turn to the Bavarian royal house instead – or, worse, open the way to a republic. Bismarck also alleged great commercial advantages.
King Wilhelm was sceptical of this reasoning, but called a special meeting for the evening of 15 March to discuss the matter. Those present included the Crown Prince, Karl Anton and Leopold, Roon and Moltke. Bismarck presented his case, which was strongly supported by Roon and Moltke. Wilhelm was unmoved. He considered Spain too unstable to justify the risk, quite apart from the possible reaction of other powers. As head of the family he would not encourage or support Leopold’s candidacy, but at most would give his reluctant consent if Leopold really wanted to go. Leopold did not. Nor, it transpired during April, did his younger brother.
Sedan 1870- The Eclipse of France Page 9