[Prussia and North Germany after the war.]

The war of 1866 had been brought to an end with extraordinary rapidity; its results were solid and imposing. Venice, perplexed no longer by its Republican traditions or by doubts of the patriotism of the House of Savoy, prepared to welcome King Victor Emmanuel; Bismarck, returning from the battle-field of Koniggratz, found his earlier unpopularity forgotten in the flood of national enthusiasm which his achievements and those of the army had evoked. A new epoch had begun; the antagonisms of the past were out of date; n.o.bler work now stood before the Prussian people and its rulers than the perpetuation of a barren struggle between Crown and Parliament. By none was the severance from the past more openly expressed than by Bismarck himself; by none was it more bitterly felt than by the old Conservative party in Prussia, who had hitherto regarded the Minister as their own representative. In drawing up the Const.i.tution of the North German Federation, Bismarck remained true to the principle which he had laid down at Frankfort before the war, that the German people must be represented by a Parliament elected directly by the people themselves. In the incorporation of Hanover, Hesse-Ca.s.sel and the Danish Duchies with Prussia, he saw that it would be impossible to win the new populations to a loyal union with Prussia if the King's Government continued to recognise no friends but the landed aristocracy and the army. He frankly declared that the action of the Cabinet in raising taxes without the consent of Parliament had been illegal, and asked for an Act of Indemnity. The Parliament of Berlin understood and welcomed the message of reconciliation.

It heartily forgave the past, and on its own initiative added the name of Bismarck to those for whose services to the State the King asked a recompense. The Progressist party, which had const.i.tuted the majority in the last Parliament, gave place to a new combination known as the National Liberal party, which, while adhering to the Progressist creed in domestic affairs, gave its allegiance to the Foreign and the German policy of the Minister. Within this party many able men who in Hanover and the other annexed territories had been the leaders of opposition to their own Governments now found a larger scope and a greater political career. More than one of the colleagues of Bismarck who had been appointed to their offices in the years of conflict were allowed to pa.s.s into retirement, and their places were filled by men in sympathy with the National Liberals.

With the expansion of Prussia and the establishment of its leadership in a German Federal union, the ruler of Prussia seemed himself to expand from the instrument of a military monarchy to the representative of a great nation.

[Hungary and Austria, 1865.]

To Austria the battle of Koniggratz brought a settlement of the conflict between the Crown and Hungary. The Const.i.tution of February, 1861, hopefully as it had worked during its first years, had in the end fallen before the steady refusal of the Magyars to recognise the authority of a single Parliament for the whole Monarchy. Within the Reichsrath itself the example of Hungary told as a disintegrating force; the Poles, the Czechs seceded from the a.s.sembly; the Minister, Schmerling, lost his authority, and was forced to resign in the summer of 1865. Soon afterwards an edict of the Emperor suspended the Const.i.tution. Count Belcredi, who took office in Schmerling's place, attempted to arrive at an understanding with the Magyar leaders. The Hungarian Diet was convoked, and was opened by the King in person before the end of the year. Francis Joseph announced his abandonment of the principle that Hungary had forfeited its ancient rights by rebellion, and asked in return that the Diet should not insist upon regarding the laws of 1848 as still in force. Whatever might be the formal validity of those laws, it was, he urged, impossible that they should be brought into operation unaltered. For the common affairs of the two halves of the Monarchy there must be some common authority. It rested with the Diet to arrive at the necessary understanding with the Sovereign on this point, and to place on a satisfactory footing the relations of Hungary to Transylvania and Croatia. As soon as an accord should have been reached on these subjects, Francis Joseph stated that he would complete his reconciliation with the Magyars by being crowned King of Hungary.

[Deak.]

In the a.s.sembly to which these words were addressed the majority was composed of men of moderate opinions, under the leadership of Francis Deak.

Deak had drawn up the programme of the Hungarian Liberals in the election of 1847. He had at that time appeared to be marked out by his rare political capacity and the simple manliness of his character for a great, if not the greatest, part in the work that then lay before his country. But the violence of revolutionary methods was alien to his temperament. After serving in Batthyany's Ministry, he withdrew from public life on the outbreak of war with Austria, and remained in retirement during the dictatorship of Kossuth and the struggle of 1849. As a loyal friend to the Hapsburg dynasty, and a clear-sighted judge of the possibilities of the time, he stood apart while Kossuth dethroned the Sovereign and proclaimed Hungarian independence. Of the patriotism and the disinterestedness of Deak there was never the shadow of a doubt; a distinct political faith severed him from the leaders whose enterprise ended in the catastrophe which he had foreseen, and preserved for Hungary one statesman who could, without renouncing his own past and without inflicting humiliation on the Sovereign, stand as the mediator between Hungary and Austria when the time for reconciliation should arrive. Deak was little disposed to abate anything of what he considered the just demands of his country. It was under his leadership that the Diet had in 1861 refused to accept the Const.i.tution which established a single Parliament for the whole Monarchy.

The legislative independence of Hungary he was determined at all costs to preserve intact; rather than surrender this he had been willing in 1861 to see negotiations broken off and military rule restored. But when Francis Joseph, wearied of the sixteen years' struggle, appealed once more to Hungary for union and friendship, there was no man more earnestly desirous to reconcile the Sovereign with the nation, and to smooth down the opposition to the King's proposals which arose within the Diet itself, than Deak.

[Scheme of Hungarian Committee, June 25, 1866.]

Under his influence a committee was appointed to frame the necessary basis of negotiation. On the 25th of June, 1866, the Committee gave in its report. It declared against any Parliamentary union with the Cis-Leithan half of the Monarchy, but consented to the establishment of common Ministries for War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs, and recommended that the Budget necessary for these joint Ministries should be settled by Delegations from the Hungarian Diet and from the western Reichsrath. [528]

The Delegations, it was proposed, should meet separately, and communicate their views to one another by writing. Only when agreement should not have been thus attained were the Delegations to unite in a single body, in which case the decision was to rest with an absolute majority of votes.

[Negotiations with Hungary after Koniggratz.]

[Federalism or Dualism.]

[Settlement by Beust.]

[Francis Joseph's Coronation, June 8, 1867.]

The debates of the Diet on the proposals of King Francis Joseph had been long and anxious; it was not until the moment when the war with Prussia was breaking out that the Committee presented its report. The Diet was now prorogued, but immediately after the battle of Koniggratz the Hungarian leaders were called to Vienna, and negotiations were pushed forward on the lines laid down by the Committee. It was a matter of no small moment to the Court of Vienna that while bodies of Hungarian exiles had been preparing to attack the Empire both from the side of Silesia and of Venice, Deak and his friends had loyally abstained from any communication with the foreign enemies of the House of Hapsburg. That Hungary would now gain almost complete independence was certain; the question was not so much whether there should be an independent Parliament and Ministry at Pesth as whether there should not be a similarly independent Parliament and Ministry in each of the territories of the Crown, the Austrian Sovereign becoming the head of a Federation instead of the chief of a single or a dual State. Count Belcredi, the Minister at Vienna, was disposed towards such a Federal system; he was, however, now confronted within the Cabinet by a rival who represented a different policy. After making peace with Prussia, the Emperor called to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Count Beust, who had hitherto been at the head of the Saxon Government, and who had been the representative of the German Federation at the London Conference of 1864.

Beust, while ready to grant the Hungarians their independence, advocated the retention of the existing Reichsrath and of a single Ministry for all the Cis-Leithan parts of the Monarchy. His plan, which pointed to the maintenance of German ascendency in the western provinces, and which deeply offended the Czechs and the Slavic populations, was accepted by the Emperor: Belcredi withdrew from office, and Beust was charged, as President of the Cabinet, with the completion of the settlement with Hungary (Feb. 7, 1867). Deak had hitherto left the chief ostensible part in the negotiations to Count Andra.s.sy, one of the younger patriots of 1848, who had been condemned to be hanged, and had lived a refugee during the next ten years.

He now came to Vienna himself, and in the course of a few days removed the last remaining difficulties. The King gratefully charged him with the formation of the Hungarian Ministry under the restored Const.i.tution, but Deak declined alike all office, honours, and rewards, and Andra.s.sy, who had actually been hanged in effigy, was placed at the head of the Government.

The Diet, which had rea.s.sembled shortly before the end of 1866, greeted the national Ministry with enthusiasm. Alterations in the laws of 1848 proposed in accordance with the agreement made at Vienna, and establishing the three common Ministries with the system of Delegations for common affairs, were carried by large majorities. [529] The abdication of Ferdinand, which throughout the struggle of 1849 Hungary had declined to recognise, was now acknowledged as valid, and on the 8th of June, 1867, Francis Joseph was crowned King of Hungary amid the acclamations of Pesth. The gift of money which is made to each Hungarian monarch on his coronation Francis Joseph by a happy impulse distributed among the families of those who had fallen in fighting against him in 1849. A universal amnesty was proclaimed, no condition being imposed on the return of the exiles but that they should acknowledge the existing Const.i.tution. Kossuth alone refused to return to his country so long as a Hapsburg should be its King, and proudly clung to ideas which were already those of the past.

[Hungary since 1867.]

The victory of the Magyars was indeed but too complete. Not only were Beust and the representatives of the western half of the Monarchy so overmatched by the Hungarian negotiators that in the distribution of the financial burdens of the Empire Hungary escaped with far too small a share, but in the more important problem of the relation of the Slavic and Roumanian populations of the Hungarian Kingdom to the dominant race no adequate steps were taken for the protection of these subject nationalities. That Croatia and Transylvania should be reunited with Hungary if the Emperor and the Magyars were ever to be reconciled was inevitable; and in the case of Croatia certain conditions were no doubt imposed, and certain local rights guaranteed. But on the whole the non-Magyar peoples in Hungary were handed over to the discretion of the ruling race. The demand of Bismarck that the centre of gravity of the Austrian States should be transferred from Vienna to Pesth had indeed been brought to pa.s.s. While in the western half of the Monarchy the central authority, still represented by a single Parliament, seemed in the succeeding years to be altogether losing its cohesive power, and the political life of Austria became a series of distracting complications, in Hungary the Magyar Government resolutely set itself to the task of moulding into one the nationalities over which it ruled.

Uniting the characteristic faults with the great qualities of a race marked out by Nature and ancient habit for domination over more numerous but less aggressive neighbours, the Magyars have steadily sought to the best of their power to obliterate the distinctions which make Hungary in reality not one but several nations. They have held the Slavic and the Roumanian population within their borders with an iron grasp, but they have not gained their affection. The memory of the Russian intervention in 1849 and of the part then played by Serbs, by Croats and Roumanians in crushing Magyar independence has blinded the victors to the just claims of these races both within and without the Hungarian kingdom, and attached their sympathy to the hateful and outworn empire of the Turk. But the individuality of peoples is not to be blotted out in a day; nor, with all its striking advance in wealth, in civilisation, and in military power, has the Magyar State been able to free itself from the insecurity arising from the presence of independent communities on its immediate frontiers belonging to the same race as those whose language and nationality it seeks to repress.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Napoleon III.--The Mexican Expedition--Withdrawal of the French and death of Maximilian--The Luxemburg Question--Exasperation in France against Prussia--Austria--Italy--Mentana--Germany after 1866--The Spanish candidature of Leopold of Hohenzollern--French declaration--Benedetti and King William--Withdrawal of Leopold and demand for guarantees--The telegram from Ems--War--Expected Alliances of France--Austria--Italy-- Prussian plans--The French army--Causes of French inferiority-- Weissenburg--Worth--Spicheren--Borny--Mars-la-Tour--Gravelotte--Sedan-- The Republic proclaimed at Paris--Favre and Bismarck--Siege of Paris--Gambetta at Tours--The Army of the Loire--Fall of Metz--Fighting at Orleans--Sortie of Champigny--The Armies of the North, of the Loire, of the East--Bourbaki's ruin--Capitulation of Paris and Armistice-- Preliminaries of Peace--Germany--Establishment of the German Empire--The Commune of Paris--Second siege--Effects of the war as to Russia and Italy--Rome.

[Napoleon III.]

The reputation of Napoleon III. was perhaps at its height at the end of the first ten years of his reign. His victories over Russia and Austria had flattered the military pride of France; the flowing tide of commercial prosperity bore witness, as it seemed, to the blessings of a government at once firm and enlightened; the reconstruction of Paris dazzled a generation accustomed to the mean and dingy aspect of London and other capitals before 1850, and scarcely conscious of the presence or absence of real beauty and dignity where it saw s.p.a.ciousness and brilliance. The political faults of Napoleon, the shiftiness and incoherence of his designs, his want of grasp on reality, his absolute personal nullity as an administrator, were known to some few, but they had not been displayed to the world at large. He had done some great things, he had conspicuously failed in nothing. Had his reign ended before 1863, he would probably have left behind him in popular memory the name of a great ruler. But from this time his fortune paled. The repulse of his intervention on behalf of Poland in 1863 by the Russian Court, his petulant or miscalculating inaction during the Danish War of the following year, showed those to be mistaken who had imagined that the Emperor must always exercise a controlling power in Europe. During the events which formed the first stage in the consolidation of Germany his policy was a succession of errors. Simultaneously with the miscarriage of his European schemes, an enterprise which he had undertaken beyond the Atlantic, and which seriously weakened his resources at a time when concentrated strength alone could tell on European affairs, ended in tragedy and disgrace.

[The Mexican Project.]

There were in Napoleon III., as a man of State, two personalities, two mental existences, which blended but ill with one another. There was the contemplator of great human forces, the intelligent, if not deeply penetrative, reader of the signs of the times, the brooder through long years of imprisonment and exile, the child of Europe, to whom Germany, Italy, and England had all in turn been nearer than his own country; and there was the crowned adventurer, bound by his name and position to gain for France something that it did not possess, and to regard the greatness of every other nation as an impediment to the ascendency of his own.

Napoleon correctly judged the principle of nationality to be the dominant force in the immediate future of Europe. He saw in Italy and in Germany races whose internal divisions alone had prevented them from being the formidable rivals of France, and yet he a.s.sisted the one nation to effect its union, and was not indisposed, within certain limits, to promote the consolidation of the other. That the acquisition of Nice and Savoy, and even of the Rhenish Provinces, could not in itself make up to France for the establishment of two great nations on its immediate frontiers Napoleon must have well understood: he sought to carry the principle of agglomeration a stage farther in the interests of France itself, and to form some moral, if not political, union of the Latin nations, which should embrace under his own ascendency communities beyond the Atlantic as well as those of the Old World. It was with this design that in the year 1862 he made the financial misdemeanours of Mexico the pretext for an expedition to that country, the object of which was to subvert the native Republican Government, and to place the Hapsburg Maximilian, as a va.s.sal prince, on its throne. England and Spain had at first agreed to unite with France in enforcing the claims of the European creditors of Mexico; but as soon as Napoleon had made public his real intentions these Powers withdrew their forces, and the Emperor was left free to carry out his plans alone.

[The Mexican Expedition, 1862-1865.]

[Napoleon compelled to withdraw, 1866-7.]

[Fall and Death of Maximilian.]

The design of Napoleon to establish French influence in Mexico was connected with his attempt to break up the United States by establishing the independence of the Southern Confederacy, then in rebellion, through the mediation of the Great Powers of Europe. So long as the Civil War in the United States lasted, it seemed likely that Napoleon's enterprise in Mexico would be successful. Maximilian was placed upon the throne, and the Republican leader, Juarez, was driven into the extreme north of the country. But with the overthrow of the Southern Confederacy and the restoration of peace in the United States in 1865 the prospect totally changed. The Government of Washington refused to acknowledge any authority in Mexico but that of Juarez, and informed Napoleon in courteous terms that his troops must be withdrawn. Napoleon had bound himself by Treaty to keep twenty-five thousand men in Mexico for the protection of Maximilian. He was, however, unable to defy the order of the United States. Early in 1866 he acquainted Maximilian with the necessities of the situation, and with the approaching removal of the force which alone had placed him and could sustain him on the throne. The unfortunate prince sent his consort, the daughter of the King of the Belgians, to Europe to plead against this act of desertion; but her efforts were vain, and her reason sank under the just presentiment of her husband's ruin. The utmost on which Napoleon could venture was the postponement of the recall of his troops till the spring of 1867. He urged Maximilian to abdicate before it was too late; but the prince refused to dissociate himself from his counsellors who still implored him to remain. Meanwhile the Juarists pressed back towards the capital from north and south. As the French detachments were withdrawn towards the coast the entire country fell into their hands. The last French soldiers quitted Mexico at the beginning of March, 1867, and on the 15th of May, Maximilian, still lingering at Queretaro, was made prisoner by the Republicans. He had himself while in power ordered that the partisans of Juarez should be treated not as soldiers but as brigands, and that when captured they should be tried by court-martial and executed within twenty-four hours. The same severity was applied to himself. He was sentenced to death and shot at Queretaro on the 19th of June.

[Decline of Napoleon's reputation.]

Thus ended the attempt of Napoleon III. to establish the influence of France and of his dynasty beyond the seas. The doom of Maximilian excited the compa.s.sion of Europe; a deep, irreparable wound was inflicted on the reputation of the man who had tempted him to his treacherous throne, who had guaranteed him protection, and at the bidding of a superior power had abandoned him to his ruin. From this time, though the outward splendour of the Empire was undiminished, there remained scarcely anything of the personal prestige which Napoleon had once enjoyed in so rich a measure. He was no longer in the eyes of Europe or of his own country the profound, self-contained statesman in whose brain lay the secret of coming events; he was rather the gambler whom fortune was preparing to desert, the usurper trembling for the future of his dynasty and his crown. Premature old age and a hara.s.sing bodily ailment began to incapacitate him for personal exertion. He sought to loosen the reins in which his despotism held France, and to make a compromise with public opinion which was now declaring against him. And although his own cooler judgment set little store by any addition of frontier strips of alien territory to France, and he would probably have been best pleased to pa.s.s the remainder of his reign in undisturbed inaction, he deemed it necessary, after failure in Mexico had become inevitable, to seek some satisfaction in Europe for the injured pride of his country. He entered into negotiations with the King of Holland for the cession of Luxemburg, and had gained his a.s.sent, when rumours of the transaction reached the North German Press, and the project pa.s.sed from out the control of diplomatists and became an affair of rival nations.

[The Luxemburg question, Feb.-May, 1867.]

Luxemburg, which was an independent Duchy ruled by the King of Holland, had until 1866 formed a part of the German Federation; and although Bismarck had not attempted to include it in his own North German Union, Prussia retained by the Treaties of 1815 a right to garrison the fortress of Luxemburg, and its troops were actually there in possession. The proposed transfer of the Duchy to France excited an outburst of patriotic resentment in the Federal Parliament at Berlin. The population of Luxemburg was indeed not wholly German, and it had shown the strongest disinclination to enter the North German league; but the connection of the Duchy with Germany in the past was close enough to explain the indignation roused by Napoleon's project among politicians who little suspected that during the previous year Bismarck himself had cordially recommended this annexation, and that up to the last moment he had been privy to the Emperor's plan. The Prussian Minister, though he did not affect to share the emotion of his countrymen, stated that his policy in regard to Luxemburg must be influenced by the opinion of the Federal Parliament, and he shortly afterwards caused it to be understood at Paris that the annexation of the Duchy to France was impossible. As a warning to France he had already published the Treaties of alliance between Prussia and the South German States, which had been made at the close of the war of 1866, but had hitherto been kept secret. [530]

Other powers now began to tender their good offices. Count Beust, on behalf of Austria, suggested that Luxemburg should be united to Belgium, which in its turn should cede a small district to France. This arrangement, which would have been accepted at Berlin, and which, by soothing the irritation produced in France by Prussia's successes, would possibly have averted the war of 1870, was frustrated by the refusal of the King of Belgium to part with any of his territory--Napoleon, disclaiming all desire for territorial extension, now asked only for the withdrawal of the Prussian garrison from Luxemburg; but it was known that he was determined to enforce this demand by arms. The Russian Government proposed that the question should be settled by a Conference of the Powers at London. This proposal was accepted under certain conditions by France and Prussia, and the Conference a.s.sembled on the 7th of May. Its deliberations were completed in four days, and the results were summed up in the Treaty of London signed on the 11th.

By this Treaty the Duchy of Luxemburg was declared neutral territory under the collective guarantee of the Powers. Prussia withdrew its garrison, and the King of Holland, who continued to be sovereign of the Duchy, undertook to demolish the fortifications of Luxemburg, and to maintain it in the future as an open town. [531]

[Exasperation in France against Prussia.]

Of the politicians of France, those who even affected to regard the aggrandis.e.m.e.nt of Prussia and the union of Northern Germany with indifference or satisfaction were a small minority. Among these was the Emperor, who, after his attempts to gain a Rhenish Province had been baffled, sought to prove in an elaborate State-paper that France had won more than it had lost by the extinction of the German Federation as established in 1815, and by the dissolution of the tie that had bound Austria and Prussia together as members of this body. The events of 1866 had, he contended, broken up a system devised in evil days for the purpose of uniting Central Europe against France, and had restored to the Continent the freedom of alliances; in other words, they had made it possible for the South German States to connect themselves with France. If this illusion was really entertained by the Emperor, it was rudely dispelled by the discovery of the Treaties between Prussia and the Southern States and by their publication in the spring of 1867. But this revelation was not necessary to determine the att.i.tude of the great majority of those who pa.s.sed for the representatives of independent political opinion in France. The Ministers indeed were still compelled to imitate the Emperor's optimism, and a few enlightened men among the Opposition understood that France must be content to see the Germans effect their national unity; but the great body of unofficial politicians, to whatever party they belonged, joined in the bitter outcry raised at once against the aggressive Government of Prussia and the feeble administration at Paris, which had not found the means to prevent, or had actually facilitated, Prussia's successes. Thiers, who more than any one man had by his writings popularised the Napoleonic legend and accustomed the French to consider themselves ent.i.tled to a monopoly of national greatness on the Rhine, was the severest critic of the Emperor, the most zealous denouncer of the work which Bismarck had effected. It was only with too much reason that the Prussian Government looked forward to an attack by France at some earlier or later time as almost certain, and pressed forward the military organisation which was to give to Germany an army of unheard-of efficiency and strength.

[France and Prussia after 1867.]

There appears to be no evidence that Napoleon III. himself desired to attack Prussia so long as that Power should strictly observe the stipulations of the Treaty of Prague which provided for the independence of the South German States. But the current of events irresistibly impelled Germany to unity. The very Treaty which made the river Main the limit of the North German Confederacy reserved for the Southern States the right of attaching themselves to those of the North by some kind of national tie.

Unless the French Emperor was resolved to acquiesce in the gradual development of this federal unity until, as regarded the foreigner, the North and the South of Germany should be a single body, he could have no confident hope of lasting peace. To have thus antic.i.p.ated and accepted the future, to have removed once and for all the sleepless fears of Prussia by the frank recognition of its right to give all Germany effective Union, would have been an act too great and too wise in reality, too weak and self-renouncing in appearance, for any chief of a rival nation. Napoleon did not take this course; on the other hand, not desiring to attack Prussia while it remained within the limits of the Treaty of Prague, he refrained from seeking alliances with the object of immediate and aggressive action.

The diplomacy of the Emperor during the period from 1866 to 1870 is indeed still but imperfectly known; but it would appear that his efforts were directed only to the formation of alliances with the view of eventual action when Prussia should have pa.s.sed the limits which the Emperor himself or public opinion in Paris should, as interpreter of the Treaty of Prague, impose upon this Power in its dealings with the South German States.

[Negotiations with Austria, 1868-69.]

The Governments to which Napoleon could look for some degree of support were those of Austria and Italy. Count Beust, now Chancellor of the Austrian Monarchy, was a bitter enemy to Prussia, and a rash and adventurous politician, to whom the very circ.u.mstance of his sudden elevation from the petty sphere of Saxon politics gave a certain levity and unconstraint in the handling of great affairs. He cherished the idea of recovering Austria's ascendency in Germany, and was disposed to repel the extension of Russian influence westwards by boldly encouraging the Poles to seek for the satisfaction of their national hopes in Galicia under the Hapsburg Crown. To Count Beust France was the most natural of all allies.

On the other hand, the very system which Beust had helped to establish in Hungary raised serious obstacles against the adoption of his own policy.

Andra.s.sy, the Hungarian Minister, while sharing Beust's hostility to Russia, declared that his countrymen had no interest in restoring Austria's German connection, and were in fact better without it. In these circ.u.mstances the negotiations of the French and the Austrian Emperor were conducted by a private correspondence. The interchange of letters continued during the years 1868 and 1869, and resulted in a promise made by Napoleon to support Austria if it should be attacked by Prussia, while the Emperor Francis Joseph promised to a.s.sist France if it should be attacked by Prussia and Russia together. No Treaty was made, but a general a.s.surance was exchanged between the two Emperors that they would pursue a common policy and treat one another's interests as their own. With the view of forming a closer understanding the Archduke Albrecht visited Paris in February, 1870, and a French general was sent to Vienna to arrange the plan of campaign in case of war with Prussia. In such a war, if undertaken by the two Powers, it was hoped that Italy would join. [532]

[Italy after 1866.]

[Mentana, Nov. 3, 1867.]

The alliance of 1866 between Prussia and Italy had left behind it in each of these States more of rancour than of good-will. La Marmora had from the beginning to the end been unfortunate in his relations with Berlin. He had entered into the alliance with suspicion; he would gladly have seen Venetia given to Italy by a European Congress without war; and when hostilities broke out, he had disregarded and resented what he considered an attempt of the Prussian Government to dictate to him the military measures to be pursued. On the other hand, the Prussians charged the Italian Government with having deliberately held back its troops after the battle of Custozza in pursuance of arrangements made between Napoleon and the Austrian Emperor on the voluntary cession of Venice, and with having endangered or minimised Prussia's success by enabling the Austrians to throw a great part of their Italian forces northwards. There was nothing of that comradeship between the Italian and the Prussian armies which is acquired on the field of battle. The personal sympathies of Victor Emmanuel were strongly on the side of the French Emperor; and when, at the close of the year 1866, the French garrison was withdrawn from Rome in pursuance of the convention made in September, 1864, it seemed probable that France and Italy might soon unite in a close alliance. But in the following year the attempts of the Garibaldians to overthrow the Papal Government, now left without its foreign defenders, embroiled Napoleon and the Italian people. Napoleon was unable to defy the clerical party in France; he adopted the language of menace in his communications with the Italian Cabinet; and when, in the autumn of 1867, the Garibaldians actually invaded the Roman States, he despatched a body of French troops under General Failly to act in support of those of the Pope. An encounter took place at Mentana on November 3rd, in which the Garibaldians, after defeating the Papal forces, were put to the rout by General Failly. The occupation of Civita Vecchia was renewed, and in the course of the debates raised at Paris on the Italian policy of the Government, the Prime Minister, M. Rouher, stated, with the most pa.s.sionate emphasis that, come what might, Italy should never possess itself of Rome. "Never," he cried, "will France tolerate such an outrage on its honour and its dignity." [533]

[Napoleon and Italy after Mentana.]