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University of Virginia 
 Barbour-Page Foundation 
 
 ORIGINS OF THE TRIPLE 
 ALLIANCE 
 
 THREE LECTURES 
 BY 
 
 ARCHIBALD CARY COOLIDGE 
 
 PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1917 
 
33 317 
 
 •C7 
 
 Copyright, 1917, by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published July, 1917 
 
 JUL 25 1917 
 
 J. 25 
 
 ©CI.A467954 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In January, 1916, I had the honor and 
 the pleasure of giving the Barbour-Page 
 lectures for that year at the University of 
 Virginia. The substance of those lec- 
 tures is reproduced in this little volume, 
 though there have been many changes in 
 the form besides the addition of foot- 
 notes. Any one who wishes to under- 
 stand even in a superficial way the causes 
 that have brought about the present 
 world conflict should familiarize himself 
 with the history of Europe since the 
 Franco-Prussian War, and should try to 
 grasp the interplay of political forces, the 
 aims of statesmen, and the aspirations of 
 peoples during that period. For the 
 greater part of the time the so-called 
 Triple Alliance was the strongest political 
 and military element in the international 
 situation. Its friends declared that it was 
 an element for peace; its enemies regarded 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 it as a conservative league to protect ill- 
 gotten gains. Although it dissolved when 
 brought to the touchstone of actual war, 
 its importance as an international factor 
 for many years makes it well worth our 
 study. In the following three chapters I 
 have tried to point out the causes, per- 
 sonal as well as international, that led 
 to its formation. I have not made any 
 startling discoveries, nor have I new the- 
 ories to put forth, but I believe I have 
 made use of the best accessible informa- 
 tion. Instead of St. Petersburg I ought 
 perhaps to have used the name Petrograd, 
 and I should have done so in speaking of 
 current affairs, but for those of the past 
 it still seems permissible to keep to the 
 older form. For the sake of brevity and 
 smoothness I have often used the word 
 Austria where Austria-Hungary or the 
 Dual Empire would have been more cor- 
 rect; but this, also, is, I think, condoned 
 by current usage. 
 
 June, 1917. 
 
ORIGINS OF THE TRIPLE 
 ALLIANCE 
 
THE ORIGINS OF THE 
 TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 On May 10, 1871, the Peace of Frank- 
 fort was signed between the new French 
 republic and the still newer German em- 
 pire. This date may be regarded as 
 marking, in the conventional way that 
 dates do, the termination not only of 
 a great and dramatic war, but also of 
 a period of European history. With 
 the complete triumph of Germany over 
 France, accompanied by the overthrow 
 of what a few years before had seemed 
 the brilliantly successful government of 
 Napoleon III, with the proclamation at 
 Versailles of William of Prussia as Ger- 
 man emperor, with the entry of the 
 Italian troops into Rome, and the ex- 
 
THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 tinction of the age-long temporal sov- 
 ereignty of the Pope, Europe had within 
 a few months undergone such changes as 
 to constitute the end of an epoch and 
 the beginning of a new one. This new 
 epoch, which closes with the war of 19 14, 
 may be described as that of the ascen- 
 dancy of Germany. 
 
 The Europe of 1871 was represented 
 and controlled, as it had been for cen- 
 turies, by certain great powers, jealous 
 indeed of one another and often in disa- 
 greement, but whose collective decision 
 once reached was in practice binding 
 upon the rest of the continent. The 
 composition of the group had varied 
 from time to time, and the relative 
 strength and influence of the different 
 members had been subject to continual 
 readjustment. They were six in number. 
 One of them, united Italy, had only just 
 come into existence and was hardly rec- 
 ognized by the rest as quite an equal. 
 Imperial Germany, on the other hand, 
 
THE GREAT POWERS 
 
 was a political outgrowth of the kingdom 
 of Prussia, which had been a power for 
 more than a century, and now in its new 
 form, crowned with a halo of victories, it 
 had stepped from the last to the first 
 place among the great European states. 
 Three of the others, Russia, Austria, and 
 France, had been severely defeated in 
 war in the course of the last twenty years, 
 and of these none so disastrously as 
 France. 
 
 Ever since the days of Richelieu, for 
 well over two centuries, France had been, 
 with occasional eclipses, the first power 
 in the world. One coalition after an- 
 other had been necessary to check the 
 ambitions of Louis XIV. The last and 
 most formidable of all, though its armies, 
 led by Marlborough and Eugene, hum- 
 bled his pride and exhausted his resources, 
 did not succeed in preventing him from 
 seating his grandson on the throne of 
 Spain. Even the fatal reign of Louis XV, 
 with its loss of colonial empires in North 
 
THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 America and India, was marked by the 
 widest supremacy of the French language 
 and of French ideas. Politically, too, 
 France soon began to recover under his 
 successor and enjoyed a partial revenge 
 on England in the war of American inde- 
 pendence. Then followed the victories of 
 the Revolution, and the unexampled glo- 
 ries of the Napoleonic empire, when the 
 conquering soldiers of France entered the 
 gates of Berlin and Vienna, of Rome and 
 of Madrid and of Moscow. When at last 
 the tide turned and she was vanquished 
 by combined Europe, only a few years of 
 rest were necessary for her before she 
 again began to assert herself. A genera- 
 tion later, under Napoleon III, she was 
 victorious in the Crimea and in Italy, 
 and once more became the brilliant cen- 
 tre of Europe and the leading power in 
 international affairs. 
 
 Now all was changed. France had 
 been overwhelmingly defeated, this time 
 not by a coalition, but by a single foe, in 
 
THE DEFEAT OF FRANCE 
 
 a war into which she had entered 'with a 
 light heart' and in which she had lost 
 every important battle. A large part of 
 her territory had been overrun, her capi- 
 tal had been entered by the victorious 
 enemy, she had had imposed upon her 
 the payment of an indemnity such as had 
 never been heard of in history. She was 
 deprived of her eastern provinces, Alsace 
 and part of Lorraine, with some 1,600,000 
 people, and she was left with a disad- 
 vantageous frontier unfortified against a 
 neighbor who had just given such fearful 
 evidence of his power. As a crowning 
 humiliation, she had to retake Paris itself 
 from the anarchistic government of the 
 Commune amid wild scenes of bloodshed, 
 and this under the very eyes of the Ger- 
 mans. In the midst of these disasters 
 she met with little compassion from the 
 outside world. Sympathy is the last 
 thing a vanquished nation may expect to 
 find, especially if it has excited envy in 
 the past. Instead, it is assured that it 
 
TEE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 has merited its fate by its faults, which 
 are pointed out to it with unsparing 
 frankness. 
 
 When we add to all this the fact that in 
 1 87 1 the government of France was con- 
 fessedly only provisional, and the existing 
 republican form did not appear to satisfy 
 the wishes of the majority of the people, 
 though there was no telling just what 
 they did want, and finally when we re- 
 member that her birth rate had long been 
 declining and was lower than that of any 
 other country in Europe, we can see rea- 
 son enough for the widespread belief that 
 her sun had set and that henceforth she 
 must content herself with a secondary 
 place among nations. In any event, it 
 was hard to conceive that she could ever 
 again be the first state on the continent. 
 
 History records with admiration the 
 way in which the French people and their 
 rulers met and overcame the innumerable 
 difficulties that beset them, and in a sur- 
 prisingly short time brought order out of 
 
THE RECOVERY OF FRANCE 
 
 chaos. Their most immediate and press- 
 ing task was the payment of the war in- 
 demnity, in order to obtain liberation of 
 French territory from the burden and 
 shame of foreign occupation. The huge 
 sums necessary for the purpose were 
 raised with a promptness that astonished 
 the world, and made the Germans regret 
 that they had not insisted on obtaining 
 more. Then followed the painful process 
 of recovery from the wounds inflicted by 
 the war, the arduous work of reconstruc- 
 tion, and especially the reconstitution of 
 the military strength of the country. 
 Not only did the building of a new chain 
 of fortresses on the exposed frontier cost 
 by itself many hundred million francs, 
 but the army had to be reorganized and 
 reenforced from top to bottom. Here, 
 too, the progress was soon such as to pro- 
 voke disquiet, not to say irritation, on the 
 part of the watchful neighbor to the east. 
 The question as to the final form of the 
 government of France remained open for 
 
THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 some years, but in the meanwhile the 
 republicans, at first a minority in the na- 
 tion and a still smaller one among its 
 leading men, steadily gained ground. 
 The Conservatives, even after they had 
 brought about the fall of President Thiers, 
 were too divided among themselves to 
 profit by the majority they had in the 
 chambers, and in the end, against their 
 wills, they voted a republican constitu- 
 tion. 
 
 These circumstances imperatively de- 
 manded that the energies of France 
 should be devoted to internal affairs. In 
 consequence, the foreign policy of the 
 third republic was at first cautious, not 
 to say timorous, in the extreme, being 
 dominated by fear of Germany and by 
 the necessity of avoiding complications 
 of all kinds until the country should have 
 recovered its strength. This was no 
 time for France to take the initiative in 
 international questions, or, indeed, to do 
 much of anything, except keep on good 
 
ITALY q 
 
 terms with other powers, and, if she 
 could not make friends, at least avoid 
 giving offence. 
 
 Her Latin sister, the young kingdom 
 of Italy, was equally timid. Italian 
 unity had been achieved in large part 
 thanks to the assistance of stronger na- 
 tions, and thanks also to their quarrels 
 with one another. The coping stone of 
 the edifice, the acquisition of Rome as a 
 capital, had only been possible owing to 
 the withdrawal of the French army of 
 occupation after the first Prussian vic- 
 tories. This passing of the Eternal City 
 from the hands of the papacy, which had 
 ruled it for so many centuries, had created 
 a painful impression in the Catholic 
 world. It was, indeed, no secret that not 
 only in Austria and Germany, but also 
 among the Conservatives in France, there 
 were not a few who openly advocated the 
 restoration of the temporal authority of 
 the Pope, and were willing to use force to 
 bring this about. The fear of such inter- 
 
10 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 vention was for many years a controlling 
 element in Italian foreign policy, and 
 combined with a sense of the weakness 
 and the backwardness of the new kingdom 
 to make its statesmen eminently cautious. 
 The Italians still professed their gratitude 
 for the aid France had given them on the 
 field of battle, but they were disposed to 
 claim that she had repaid herself by her 
 annexation of Nice and Savoy, an act 
 which they still resented. They had not 
 forgotten the French occupation of Rome, 
 and they feared the advent to power of 
 the clerical party in Paris. They were 
 also beginning to entertain ambitions of a 
 Mediterranean empire, ambitions which 
 could not fail to bring them some day 
 into disagreement if not actual collision 
 with their former benefactor. Austria 
 they regarded as a one-time hated op- 
 pressor, who still held Italians under her 
 rule, and was capable at any moment of 
 again menacing Italian unity and inde- 
 pendence. 
 
ENGLAND 
 
 Of the great European powers, Eng- 
 land was the one that had been least af- 
 fected by the recent convulsions on the 
 continent; indeed, her position in the 
 world had long been subject to fewer 
 variations than that of others. In the 
 course of the last four hundred years, 
 though often at war, she had met with but 
 one serious defeat, the war of American 
 independence. Even then, heavy as her 
 losses had been, they had brought little 
 direct gain to her rivals. England had 
 never dominated Europe, but she had al- 
 ways been a power of the first rank which 
 continental statesmen could not safely 
 leave out of account, though they some- 
 times affected to do so. She had reached 
 her highest point relatively in 1815, after 
 her triumph over Napoleon, whom she 
 had opposed so long, often single-handed. 
 In Nelson she had possessed perhaps the 
 greatest of all admirals, in Wellington she 
 had the one general who had been uni- 
 formly victorious over the French, and it 
 
12 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 was her troops that had borne the brunt 
 of the fray in the crowning victory of 
 Waterloo. At that time she was not only 
 the first but in fact the only great mari- 
 time and colonial power; indeed, Britan- 
 nia ruled the waves more completely then 
 than ever before or since. In mechanical 
 invention, too, and in industrial progress, 
 she led mankind. 
 
 Since those days, however, her prestige 
 and political influence had somewhat 
 waned. It was not that Great Britain 
 had not made satisfactory progress. On 
 the contrary, in population, in industrial 
 development, in commerce, in wealth, she 
 had advanced without halt, and she had 
 added steadily to her vast colonial em- 
 pire. Nevertheless, her position in the 
 world, if imposing, was no longer com- 
 manding. Although she still held the 
 first place economically, other nations also 
 had modern industries and extensive sea- 
 going commerce. The British navy was 
 still the strongest in existence, but France 
 
THE DECLINE OF BRITISH PRESTIGE 13 
 
 and the United States possessed powerful 
 fleets. British troops had won many vic- 
 tories over Orientals and savages, but 
 such successes have never made much 
 impression on foreign military opinion, 
 and in the Crimean war, the one struggle 
 where the English had had to face Euro- 
 pean opponents, though they fought with 
 their usual bravery, they did not display 
 equal competence, and in the later stages 
 they were completely cast into the shade 
 by the superior achievements of their 
 French allies. Not many people, even in 
 England, remember the name of the Eng- 
 lish general in command when Sebastopol 
 fell. On the continent there was a ten- 
 dency to depreciate the British army, and 
 to regard it as something good enough 
 against enemies of inferior civilization, 
 but not the equal of troops trained to 
 meet more scientific foes. 
 
 In the ten years preceding 1871, Eng- 
 land had several times been on the verge 
 of war with other great powers — with the 
 
14 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 United States over the Trent affair and 
 over the question of the Confederate 
 cruisers, with Russia over the Polish in- 
 surrection of 1863, and with the German 
 states over the Schleswig-Holstein ques- 
 tion. In the Trent affair, the demand of 
 England had been acceded to, but in the 
 other cases she had suffered some hu- 
 miliation. She was still harassed by the 
 question of the Alabama claims, which, 
 as later arbitrated, ended in a triumph 
 for the United States; she had encouraged 
 the Polish revolt by joint diplomatic in- 
 tervention with France in its behalf, but 
 as she was unwilling to go to the point of 
 war, she had to submit to being severely 
 snubbed by Russia, while the Poles were 
 in the end left worse off than ever; and in 
 the question of Schleswig-Holstein, she 
 had likewise failed altogether to make 
 good her words by action. Of late, espe- 
 cially since the disappearance from the 
 scene of the bumptious figure of Lord 
 Palmerston, the foreign policy of England 
 
ENGLISH FOREIGN POLICY 15 
 
 had been unaggressive and inclined to 
 mind its own business. 
 
 During the Franco-Prussian war Eng- 
 lish public opinion had been in the main 
 favorable to the Germans. This was not 
 due to any especial love for them, though 
 there was much respect for Prussia, but 
 Englishmen had sympathized with the 
 achievement of German unity, and for 
 some years they had disliked and dis- 
 trusted their former ally, Emperor Napo- 
 leon III. The way, too, in which the war 
 had apparently been brought about had 
 prejudiced many against France, as had 
 Bismarck's timely revelations of French 
 desires for the acquisition of Belgium. 
 The first victories of the German armies 
 were, therefore, generally applauded. It 
 is true that, after the overthrow of 
 the Second Empire, the heroic efforts of 
 France to retrieve her desperate fortunes 
 and the severity of the terms of peace 
 imposed upon her produced a certain 
 reaction in her favor, but, as a whole, 
 
16 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 English feeling toward the new German 
 empire was one of cordiality and frank 
 admiration. There seemed to be no im- 
 portant matters about which the interests 
 of the two peoples were likely to conflict, 
 and the relations between the two courts 
 were intimate. Prince Albert of Saxe- 
 Coburg, the beloved husband of Queen 
 Victoria, had been a patriotic German, 
 and their daughter was now married to 
 Crown Prince Frederick, the heir to the 
 new imperial throne. 
 
 The only power which England viewed . 
 with suspicion and hostility was Russia; 
 indeed, there had been little improvement 
 in the relations between the two countries ; 
 since the Crimean war. The events con- 
 nected with the Polish insurrection, the 
 renewal of Russian activity in Asia, and 
 particularly the repudiation by Russia of 
 the article in the Treaty of Paris that 
 limited her freedom of action in the Black 
 Sea, had aroused British anger and deep- 
 ened British distrust of a state whose de- 
 
ENGLAND AND RUSSIA 17 
 
 signs were deemed to be full of menace 
 to the interests of the British empire. 
 
 Russia under Tsar Alexander II had 
 profited by the bitter experiences of the 
 Crimean war to put her house in order. 
 Public opinion, from the emperor down, 
 had realized that the country was in 
 need of drastic changes, and that all re- 
 forms must be based on the fundamental 
 one of the abolition of serfdom. This, 
 perhaps the greatest legislative act in the 
 history of mankind, had been formally 
 proclaimed on March 3, 1861. It had 
 been carried out with the enthusiastic 
 support of all that was best in the nation 
 and had been followed up by the insti- 
 tution of provincial councils and by other 
 measures of far-reaching importance that 
 should help to create a new Russia. But, 
 as was inevitable in a work of such mag- 
 nitude, there had been numerous mis- 
 takes in matters of detail, and the first 
 enthusiasm of the public was succeeded 
 by disappointment. The government, 
 
18 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 too, alarmed at some of the results of its 
 own policy, had of late grown reactionary, 
 and had thereby aroused increasing dis- 
 content among the liberal elements of 
 society. In her absorption in the work 
 of internal regeneration and also in that 
 of reconstituting her military strength, 
 Russia had for fifteen years withdrawn 
 from active participation in international 
 questions. She had taken no share in the 
 events that led to the liberation of Italy 
 and to the unification of Germany. She 
 had, it is true, watched with lively satis- 
 faction the defeat and humiliation of 
 Austria, whose ungrateful hostility at the 
 time of the Crimean war she had not 
 forgiven. For a while she had seemed 
 to seek closer relations with France, but 
 the threat of French intervention during 
 the Polish insurrection, in contrast with 
 the ostentatious friendship of Prussia at 
 this juncture, had led to a reawakening of 
 Russian nationalism and thrown Alexan- 
 der II into the embrace of his kinsman 
 
RUSSIA AND GERMANY 19 
 
 in Berlin. The Tsar had not only drunk 
 to the success of German arms at the 
 time of the Franco-Prussian war, he had 
 likewise made no secret of the intention 
 of Russia to intervene in case Austria 
 should ally herself to France. In return, 
 Russia, with the complicity of Bismarck, 
 had profited by the French disasters to 
 abrogate the Black Sea clause in the 
 Treaty of Paris in defiance of England 
 and Austria, who had protested angrily, 
 but in the end could only sanction* what 
 they were unable to prevent. In 1871 
 official relations between Berlin and St. \ 
 Petersburg were of the most cordial na- 
 ture, and personal ones were closer still. J 
 To be sure, the former friendship of the 
 two chancellors, Gorchakov and Bis- 
 marck, had cooled down in the course of 
 time — neither of the two was sentimental/ 
 in such matters — but real ties of affection 
 bound together Tsar Alexander and his 
 uncle, Kaiser William. 
 
 * At the London Conference in 1 871. 
 
20 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 Austria-Hungary had within a few 
 years undergone profound changes, both 
 external and internal. When Francis Jo- 
 seph had come to the throne on December 
 2, 1848, his territories were in the throes 
 of revolutions that threatened the very 
 existence of his empire. Thanks, how- 
 ever, to able generals and ministers, and 
 still more thanks to the assistance of Rus- 
 sia, he had triumphed over Italians, Hun- 
 garians, and other insurgents, and had 
 been able to resume his absolute author- 
 ity. The German Confederation was re- 
 established, with Austria once more as its 
 leading member, and presently Russia, an 
 all too powerful friend, was defeated in 
 the Crimean war, while Austria took the 
 opportunity to "astonish the world by 
 her ingratitude." But this period of suc- 
 cess had been short-lived. In 1859, Aus- 
 tria had been expelled by the French from 
 Italy, save for the Trentino and the prov- 
 ince of Venetia, and had been forced to 
 tolerate the growth of a united Italian 
 
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 
 
 state. Seven years later, by the battle of 
 Sadowa, she lost Venetia, and had also to 
 submit to being excluded from Germany, 
 to which her own German territories had 
 belonged by race and history ever since 
 they had come into existence. Her sys- 
 tem of centralized despotic rule had now 
 broken down, and disaffection was rife 
 throughout the empire. 
 
 It was high time for a change of policy. 
 The imperial government turned to the 
 strongest of the discontented elements, 
 the Hungarians, and offered to meet their 
 wishes. In the negotiations that ensued 
 the Hungarian leaders showed themselves 
 much the shrewder of the two parties. 
 The agreement reached, the so-called 
 Ausgleich y was highly favorable to them, ., 
 for they succeeded in obtaining not only 
 a liberal constitution for their kingdom, 
 but a complete ascendancy for the Mag- 
 yar race over all other elements in it, and 
 a reincorporation in it of the province of 
 Croatia, thus dividing and weakening the 
 
THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 South Slavs. Hungary, though the less 
 populous of the two halves of the mon- 
 archy, was granted equal rights with 
 Austria in every respect, except in the 
 language of the army, and she soon ob- 
 tained and has kept more than an equal 
 influence in the management of foreign 
 affairs. The least statesmanlike part of 
 the new constitution was the provision 
 that the Ausgleich should hold good only 
 for periods of ten years at a time, and 
 should then be renewed by fresh agree- 
 ment. It is in human nature that such 
 renewals can only be reached after sharp 
 bargaining, and that every ten years the 
 Dual Empire is threatened with a crisis. 
 Just before the outbreak of the Franco- 
 Prussian war, Austria had been in nego- 
 tiation with France for an alliance that 
 should bring her revenge against Prussia. 
 The plan had come to nothing, owing to 
 the opposition of the Hungarians, the 
 attitude of Russia, and the sudden com- 
 pleteness of the German victories. Aus- 
 
GERMANY 23 
 
 tria quickly saw the error of her ways, and 
 was anxious for reconciliation with her 
 old rival and recently triumphant foe. 
 
 All that France had lost in the disas- 
 trous war of 1870, and more, Germany 
 had gained. The position of Napoleon III 
 at the height of his fortunes had never ap- 
 proached that attained by his victorious 
 adversary, William of Prussia, now Ger- 
 man emperor. The rank of the Germans 
 as one of the great peoples of Europe had 
 long been secure. Their achievements in 
 many fields ever since they had over- 
 thrown the Roman empire had assured 
 them a foremost place in the history of 
 the world, and though after the close of 
 their period of splendid accomplishments 
 in the middle ages they had lost their po- 
 litical eminence, they had given repeated 
 proof of their vitality and genius. Dur- 
 ing the last hundred years they had gained 
 fresh distinction in many fields of human 
 endeavor. German literature could show 
 names that rivalled any in the literature 
 
24 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 of England or of France; German music 
 had surpassed the glory of the Italian; 
 German philosophy, with its cluster of 
 celebrities of the first rank, had not been 
 equalled since the days of ancient Greece; 
 German science had already come to be 
 regarded as second to none; German uni- 
 versities, as the models of learning and 
 advanced thought, were attracting stu- 
 dents from all over the civilized world. 
 Even German military prestige, some- 
 what tarnished with time, had received 
 fresh lustre from the exploits of Frederick 
 the Great. Since his day, however, it had 
 hardly gained, for Waterloo, where the 
 English had done most of the fighting, did 
 not more than efface the memories of 
 Jena, and the Germans as a whole had 
 the reputation of being not so much a 
 people of soldiers as of thinkers and poets. 
 In one respect Germany had been for 
 centuries a conspicuous failure. Her peo- 
 ple, though not devoid of national feeling 
 and pride, had long seemed unable to form 
 
GERMANY 25 
 
 any real political union. Her magnificent 
 empire of the middle ages had disinte- 
 grated into a mass of disjointed frag- 
 ments, many of them ridiculously small, 
 and tempting to the cupidity of their 
 neighbors. The wars of the French Rev- 
 olution had, indeed, swept most of these 
 petty states into the melting-pot, and the 
 final rising against Napoleon had taken 
 on the character of a true national move- 
 ment, but the hopes of patriots had been 
 bitterly disappointed after the overthrow 
 of the oppressor. Left to themselves, 
 that is to say, to their governments, the 
 Germans had been able only to produce 
 a confederation helpless for any effective 
 purpose, and one whose two chief mem- 
 bers watched each other with constant 
 jealousy and seldom combined except to 
 put pressure on the others. The story 
 of the abortive' risings of 1848, and the 
 lamentable fiasco of the Parliament of 
 Frankfort appeared to set the seal on 
 German political incapacity. 
 
26 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 Now all was changed. Prussia in six 
 years had fought three successful wars. 
 The first of these, it is true, had been 
 against so weak a foe that it could bring 
 but little glory, but in the second Austria 
 had been defeated in six weeks, and in the 
 third two great French armies had been 
 forced to surrender, others had been re- 
 peatedly defeated, Paris had had to yield 
 to a siege, and at Versailles, in the halls 
 that had witnessed the splendors of Louis 
 XIV, there had been proclaimed a new 
 German empire, which seemed to rec- 
 oncile the conflicting claims of the au- 
 tonomy of the smaller states and of the 
 necessary predominance of Prussia, the 
 principle of a strong monarchical author- 
 ity and a modern parliament based on 
 universal suffrage. The political achieve- 
 ment was as remarkable as the military. 
 No wonder that the world was filled with 
 astonishment and admiration. "Eu- 
 rope," it was said, "has lost a mistress 
 and got a master." * Not only was the 
 
 * Morley's Gladstone, ii, p. 357. 
 
BISMARCK 27 
 
 victorious German army without ques- 
 tion the most powerful in existence and 
 under the command of the first general in 
 Europe, but the destinies of the new em- 
 pire were directed by the great statesman 
 who had forged it 'with blood and iron,' 
 Prince Otto von Bismarck. 
 
 In 1 87 1, the German chancellor was 
 fifty-six years of age. Though somewhat 
 fatigued by his labors, he was at the 
 height of his extraordinary intellectual 
 powers. Since the days of the first Na- 
 poleon, no man in Europe had been so 
 feared and admired. Even his enemies — 
 and he had many of them — did not ven- 
 ture to question his genius. His domi- 
 nant personality, his gift of caustic ex- 
 pression, the apparent reckless frankness, 
 nay, the very brutality of his utterances, 
 fascinated and subjugated those with 
 whom he came into contact. Born for 
 strife, he passionately resented opposi- 
 tion, and was a good hater who seldom 
 forgot an injury. The difficulties he had 
 to overcome in winning over his master 
 
2 8 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 to his opinions — for William of Hohen- 
 zollern, who took a serious view of his 
 rights and duties as a sovereign, was not 
 easy to convince — and the resistance that 
 he not infrequently met with at the hands 
 of the parties in the Reichstag, or of the 
 military authorities, or of hostile influ- 
 ences at court, at times so irritated Bis- 
 marck's nerves as to menace a breakdown 
 of his health and render intercourse with 
 him difficult. Ever and anon he would 
 threaten to resign; but, except at certain 
 critical moments, we may question the 
 seriousness of his intention. His master, 
 though sometimes angry enough with 
 him, recognized the immense services that 
 he had rendered, and had no thought of 
 letting him go. 
 
 Like other statesmen of the first rank, 
 Bismarck followed in the main a simple 
 policy, even if his contemporaries could 
 not be expected to realize this. He was 
 infinitely resourceful in detail, keeping 
 open various possibilities and ready to 
 
BISMARCK 29 
 
 change on the instant, if need be, from 
 one course of action to another; he was 
 never off his guard, and was constantly 
 puzzling and bewildering his opponents; 
 but at bottom his aims and ambitions 
 were not complicated. Now that Ger- 
 man unity had been achieved in the form 
 he desired, with Prussian supremacy and 
 the exclusion of Austria, now that France 
 had been defeated and deprived of her 
 German territories, he regarded his crea- 
 tion as complete. Henceforth it was not 
 his object to add to the stately fabric he 
 had erected. He confined himself to 
 strengthening it and to putting it in a 
 position to weather future storms. He 
 strove to consolidate the new empire, to 
 make its inhabitants feel its advantages, 
 to win over the discontented elements, to 
 stimulate its economic development, to 
 keep up its military strength at the high- 
 est point of efficiency, but there is no 
 proof that he seriously harbored designs 
 of further extending its borders. Here 
 
3 o THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 we have one of his remarkable character- 
 istics. In spite of successes sufficient to 
 turn the coolest head, his ambitions re- 
 mained what they had been, and in spite 
 of the aggressiveness of his manner and 
 the roughness, if need be, of his means, 
 he was essentially a moderate as well as 
 a conservative. The most famous proof 
 of this in his career was his single-handed 
 opposition to the desire of the king and 
 of the whole Prussian army to exact ter- 
 ritory from Austria after the victory of 
 Sadowa. By a desperate effort he had tri- 
 umphed, and his countrymen have since 
 been unanimous in recognizing the ex- 
 traordinary wisdom of his views on this 
 occasion. Toward France he did not dis- 
 play and could not be expected to display 
 the same moderation, but he had serious 
 doubts as to the advisability of taking the 
 French part of Lorraine. In this case he 
 yielded to the arguments of the military 
 authorities, perhaps thinking that as 
 France would be irreconcilable anyway, 
 
BISMARCK 31 
 
 it was needless to try to conciliate her. 
 Even admitting that his imagination may 
 occasionally have played with the possi- 
 bility of fresh conquests,* the policy he 
 followed in his later years was one of 
 peace. As a statesman he belonged to 
 the school of Frederick the Great and of 
 Talleyrand, not to that of Napoleon. He 
 lacked, indeed, a certain kind of imagina- 
 tion, and this sometimes prevented his 
 understanding the forces opposed to him. 
 Thus in the famous Kulturkampf, which 
 was soon to break out, he long failed to 
 grasp the real strength of the modern 
 
 * Beust, Jus drei Viertel-J ahrhunderten, ii, pp. 480, 48 1 . (At 
 Gastein, August, 1871): "We also spoke of the German prov- 
 inces of Austria, and Prince Bismarck strongly disclaimed any 
 desire of acquiring these provinces for the German Em- 
 pire. ... I do not question the sincerity of these objections, 
 but I cannot forget another circumstance in connection with 
 this subject. 'I would rather,' Bismarck told me, 'annex 
 Holland to Germany.' When I entered, some months later, 
 on my post as ambassador in London, the new Dutch am- 
 bassador, with whom I had formerly been acquainted, arrived 
 at the same time. He had hitherto been ambassador in 
 Berlin. The first thing he told me was that Bismarck had 
 reassured him as to the rumor that Germany wished to annex 
 Holland, by saying that he would greatly prefer the German 
 provinces of Austria." 
 
32 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 Catholic church. When he did make the 
 discovery, he extricated himself with his 
 usual skill from a situation that had 
 grown too difficult. In spite of brave 
 words, he ended by going to Canossa, but 
 he did not do so until he had assured 
 himself of a very different reception 
 from Henry IV's, and of picking up a 
 good many advantages from the journey. 
 Though a conservative and an aristocrat, 
 he took the initiative in legislation to 
 ameliorate the condition of the laboring 
 classes, and set an example to Europe for 
 measures of state socialism; but he re- 
 garded the socialists themselves with the 
 most narrow-minded intolerance. Geo- 
 graphically, his outlook was limited, reach- 
 ing little beyond the European continent. 
 Even England he never completely under- 
 stood, and he looked on the Eastern Ques- 
 tion as one that did not touch Germany 
 directly and that, therefore, she should 
 keep out of. For lands farther away he 
 cared nothing at all. Great as he was, he 
 
BISMARCK 33 
 
 was not in his visions ahead of his times; 
 indeed, if anything, he rather lagged be- 
 hind them. He had treated the Great 
 Germany idea of 1848 as a foolish Uto- 
 pia, and he never foresaw that the gen- 
 eration after his own would come to feel 
 that the German unity he had founded 
 was not complete when it left twenty 
 million Germans outside of its domain. 
 Nor did he realize that the industrial de- 
 velopment of the empire which he favored 
 and stimulated, breaking a few years later 
 with his liberal supporters and turning 
 from Free Trade to Protection, would 
 with its vast increase of German com- 
 merce and* shipping lead to the building 
 up of a large navy. He believed such a 
 navy to be a useless and dangerous lux- 
 ury. In his old age he yielded to a public 
 opinion that had gone beyond him, and 
 entered upon a policy of the acquisition 
 of German colonies, but although in the 
 diplomatic controversies to which his ac- 
 tion gave rise he held his own with his 
 
34 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 accustomed skill and aggressiveness, he 
 had no ambition for a colonial empire; he 
 only cared for trading-posts, and he 
 grudged expense even for them. 
 
 In 1871 the relations of Germany with 
 the other European powers were in the 
 main satisfactory. England Bismarck 
 did not like, and he resented British influ- 
 ence at the German court, as represented 
 particularly by the Crown Princess of 
 Prussia. In discussions with England his 
 tone was frequently sharp rather than 
 conciliatory, and he regarded her as being 
 too much interested in her commerce and 
 in her colonial affairs, and too unreliable 
 under democratic influences, to be a state 
 that could be counted upon. At the 
 same time he did not feel that her inter- 
 ests were antagonistic to those of Ger- 
 many, and would have deemed a serious 
 quarrel with her to be unnecessary and 
 foolish. With Russia Germany was on 
 intimate terms, even if the personal rela- 
 tions between the two chancellors were 
 
BISMARCK 35 
 
 perhaps not quite so friendly as they once 
 had been. With Austria the first steps 
 to a reconciliation had already been 
 taken; with Italy there was no cause for 
 dispute. The one land whose enmity 
 must be accepted as a permanent fact and 
 appreciated accordingly was France. 
 
 With his usual sound judgment, Prince 
 Bismarck realized that France could not 
 be expected to forgive and forget the war 
 of 1870. Her loss in prestige and position 
 were in themselves hard enough for a 
 proud nation to bear, though time might 
 heal the ordinary wounds of the conflict, 
 including in this case the payment of a 
 huge war indemnity. But the loss of 
 Alsace-Lorraine was not a thing that a 
 people like the French could accept as 
 final, at least for a generation, and as 
 long as it was not accepted there would 
 always be Frenchmen who would wish to 
 seize the first favorable opportunity for a 
 guerre de revanche. This being so, Bis- 
 marck wasted no time in laments or illu- 
 
36 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 sions, but faced the situation and shaped 
 his plans accordingly. He was willing, 
 when it suited his purposes, to assume a 
 polite, nay, even a benevolent, attitude 
 toward France, though often his tone was 
 much the reverse, but as she was always 
 a possible enemy, his policy was in the 
 first place to keep her weak and occupied 
 with home affairs, and in the second to 
 keep her isolated. 
 
 With these objects in view, he favored 
 for France a republic as the form of gov- 
 ernment that would suit him best. Court 
 circles in Berlin, like the rest of aristo- 
 cratic and conservative Europe, would 
 have preferred to see a Bourbon or an 
 Orleans prince restored to the French 
 throne, but such sentimentality did not 
 affect Bismarck. He believed that a 
 French republic would be weak and prob- 
 ably distracted, therefore not in a posi- 
 tion to desire a war, still less to carry one 
 on successfully, whereas a prince, whether 
 a Bourbon or an Orleans or a Bonaparte, 
 
BISMARCK 37 
 
 would feel the need of strengthening his 
 position by gaining the prestige which 
 only a successful war could give him. 
 Undeterred, therefore, by court influ- 
 ences, the chancellor showed himself 
 friendly toward the French republicans, 
 and he even seems to have had a liking for 
 his old acquaintance, President Thiers. 
 When the German ambassador in Paris, 
 Count Harry von Arnim, attempted a 
 policy of his own not in accordance with 
 the prescribed one, he was recalled from 
 his post, tried on a charge of retaining 
 state papers in his own possession, and 
 his career was blasted. 
 
 But there was a still stronger reason 
 why Bismarck wished to see a republican 
 government in France. He was con- 
 vinced that a republic would find it much 
 more difficult than a monarchy to secure 
 alliances with the other great states of 
 the continent, all of which were monar- 
 chies. As against France alone, the Ger- 
 man empire bade fair to be able hence- 
 
38 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 forth to hold its own. It was already the 
 stronger power of the two, and, owing to 
 the difference in birth rate, the disparity 
 between them would become steadily 
 greater. What he feared was an anti- 
 German coalition, and almost any com- 
 bination of this kind appeared to him 
 conceivable. To the world at large such 
 a danger might appear remote enough. 
 The German empire was not only so for- 
 midable that no other country would 
 lightly dream of attacking it, it was also 
 on better terms with the others than was 
 its weak, distracted neighbor. But this 
 was not enough for Bismarck. Some 
 years later, in answer to the charge, "You 
 have the nightmare of coalitions," he said, 
 "Yes, necessarily. ,, * He remembered 
 that even the genius of Frederick the 
 Great would not have sufficed to save 
 Prussia in the Seven Years' war but for 
 the timely death of the most dangerous 
 
 * Conversation with Count P. Shuvalov. Gedanken und 
 Erinnerungen, ii, p. 224. 
 
BISMARCK 39 
 
 of the king's enemies, the Empress Eliza- 
 beth. And a new alliance of these same 
 powers — Russia, Austria, and France — 
 that had so nearly brought Prussia to de- 
 struction in the eighteenth century, was 
 not unthinkable against Germany in the 
 nineteenth. Nor was this the only peril. 
 In 1870 Austria and Italy had both 
 been disposed to draw the sword against 
 Prussia. A little more diplomatic skill 
 and willingness to make concessions on 
 the part of Napoleon III, or a French 
 victory or two at the outset of the war, 
 might well have led to a triple alliance 
 with which even the armies of von Moltke 
 would have found it difficult to cope, ex- 
 cept, perhaps, with Russian assistance, an 
 assistance that would have had to be paid 
 for some day. It was true that since Ger- 
 many had triumphed, Austria and Italy 
 had hastened to express their friendliness 
 and to put far from them all thoughts 
 of hostility. Bismarck's old antagonist, 
 Count Beust, was now anxious to be his 
 
4 o THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 friend. But the chancellor had a good 
 memory, and he looked further ahead than 
 the mere present, however glorious. The 
 friends of today had been the enemies of 
 yesterday, and might be the enemies 
 of tomorrow. No precautions could be 
 too great in such vital matters. At the 
 time these fears appeared without foun- 
 dation, but the events of recent years 
 have shown their extraordinary fore- 
 sight. 
 
 The policy of Bismarck, accordingly, 
 was to keep France isolated by every 
 means at his command, both direct and 
 indirect. Whether he happened to be on 
 bad terms with the government at Paris 
 and addressing it in a menacing tone, or 
 whether he seemed indifferent and openly 
 contemptuous, or whether he was just 
 then conciliatory and willing to do favors, 
 he never relaxed in his efforts to prevent 
 the republic from finding an ally in any 
 other great power. Circumstances aided 
 him, and as long as he remained at the 
 
THE HOLY ALLIANCE 41 
 
 helm, France did not succeed in emerging 
 from her isolation. 
 
 The obvious way for Germany to avoid 
 all danger of a hostile coalition was to 
 become, herself, a member of some alli- 
 ance so strong that it would have noth- 
 ing to fear from any number of foes. In 
 the memory of men then living, there had 
 been a league which, after it had over- 
 thrown the Corsican conqueror of Europe, 
 had dominated the continent and had 
 maintained law and order often by the 
 mere terror of its name and the knowl- 
 edge of the immense forces at its disposal. 
 The union of Russia, Austria, and Prus- 
 sia, given a mystical consecration in 1815 
 by the so-called Holy Alliance, had lasted 
 for more than a generation. There had 
 been occasional friction between its mem- 
 bers, and even an interruption of good re- 
 lations in 1829, owing to divergences over 
 the Eastern Question, but the Revolution 
 of 1830 in Paris had brought the three con- 
 servative powers together once more, and 
 
42 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 they lived in substantial harmony until 
 the outbreak of the Crimean war. Since 
 that event, to be sure, intercourse be- 
 tween Austria and Russia had been 
 devoid of cordiality, and Prussia and 
 Austria had actually fought against one 
 another in 1866, but first Russia and 
 then Austria had had her lesson and had 
 learned by it. In the defeat and humilia- 
 tion of Austria, Russia had her revenge for 
 Austrian ingratitude, which she was now 
 willing to forget. Austria, on her part, 
 after her own disasters and that of France, 
 was in a somewhat perilous position, in 
 view of the permanent ill will of Italy and 
 the close friendship between Berlin and 
 St. Petersburg. The counsel of wisdom 
 suggested that she should break with the 
 past, and, frankly accepting her present 
 situation, should forgive and forget what- 
 ever grievances she had entertained against 
 her two former partners. Instead, there- 
 fore, of showing resentment when the 
 new empire was proclaimed at Versailles, 
 
LEAGUE OF THE THREE EMPERORS 43 
 
 Austria gave assurances of her entire sat- 
 isfaction and of her desire to be on the 
 best of terms with the Germany to which 
 she had ceased to belong. 
 
 This was what Bismarck wanted, and 
 he now reaped the reward for his modera- 
 tion in 1866. No other combination pos- 
 sessed such attractions for him as the 
 binding together of *he old allies into a 
 new League of the Three Emperors. For, 
 as long as this league should last, French 
 schemes of a revanche would be innocuous. 
 It would represent, too, not merely a vast 
 military force, but, as in the past, a 
 grouping of the conservatives of Europe. 
 And Bismarck, like his master, was thor- 
 oughly conservative. He had never at 
 heart renounced the principles which as a 
 Prussian Junker he had proudly defended 
 in his early days. Even if he had more 
 than once made use of revolutionary 
 forces when they suited his purposes and 
 had accepted universal suffrage as part of 
 the foundations of the new German em- 
 
44 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 pire, to the great realist these were but 
 means to his ends, and he used them 
 without scruple when convenient. None 
 the less, he remained a conservative. 
 He could maintain good relations with 
 republics, nay, he preferred one in France, 
 but his natural friends were the cham- 
 pions of the altar and the throne, the long- 
 established guardians of law and order, 
 the governments that ruled their people, 
 not those that were ruled by them.* It 
 seemed wise, too, in view of the recent 
 alarming growth of international social- 
 ism, for the conservative powers of Eu- 
 rope to forget their dissensions and once 
 more emphasize the solidarity of their 
 permanent interests. 
 
 On August ii, 1871, at Ischl in Austria, 
 the German emperor paid a visit to Em- 
 peror Francis Joseph. A few days later 
 their chancellors, Prince Bismarck and 
 Count Beust, came together in confer- 
 ence and discussed the relations of the 
 
 * Gedanken und Erinnerungen, ii, p. 229, 
 
ANDRASSY 45 
 
 two empires, and interchanged expres- 
 sions of mutual good will. But the feud 
 between the two men in the past had been 
 too bitter for them to have any real con- 
 fidence in one another. It was only when 
 Beust, the Saxon, had been succeeded as 
 foreign minister for the Dual Empire by 
 Andrassy, the Magyar, that intimate re- 
 lations became possible between the Ball- 
 platz and Wilhelmstrasse. In his earlier 
 years, Count Julius Andrassy had been 
 officially hanged in effigy as a rebel and 
 traitor. He was now the representative 
 of the triumph of Hungary as well as of 
 the new direction of Austrian policy. In 
 1870, when Hungarian prime minister, he 
 had strongly opposed Austrian participa- 
 tion in the war between Prussia and 
 France. He was also on good personal 
 terms with Bismarck. We have it on his 
 own authority that from the start he 
 aimed at obtaining for Austria admission 
 as a third party into the intimacy that 
 existed between Russia and Germany, 
 
46 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 and then at the gradual supplanting of 
 Russia in German good graces.* 
 
 But even before the fall of Beust, the 
 next step had been taken toward draw- 
 ing together the two empires. On Sep- 
 tember 7 Emperor Francis Joseph re- 
 turned at Salzburg the visit that had been 
 paid him at Ischl. Etiquette demanded 
 that the next visit should be paid by the 
 Austrian emperor in Germany, and policy 
 required that it should be in Berlin, the 
 capital now not only of William the 
 Prussian king, but of William the Ger- 
 man emperor. This public tribute to the 
 new empire of his Hohenzollern rival 
 must have cost not a little to the pride of 
 the heir of the Hapsburgs, whose house 
 had so long borne the imperial crown. 
 But whatever the sacrifice was, Francis 
 Joseph resolved to make it. Friendly re- 
 lations could be had on no other terms. 
 It was arranged, therefore, that he should 
 come to Berlin in state, accompanied by 
 
 * Wertheimer, Graf Julius Andrdssy, iii, p. 226. 
 
THE THREE EMPERORS AT BERLIN 47 
 
 his new foreign minister, who had already 
 had a meeting with Bismarck. 
 
 The news of the intended visit may well 
 have awakened some apprehension and 
 jealousy at St. Petersburg, as perhaps 
 foreshadowing a change in Prussian, now 
 German, policy. At any rate, it was not 
 for the interest of Russia to see herself 
 supplanted at Berlin in her position of 
 best friend. For this or for other rea- 
 sons, Tsar Alexander, when informed offi- 
 cially of what was to take place, asked: 
 "Why am I not wanted, too?"* Of 
 course, there could be but one answer, 
 and with all speed he was sent a cordial 
 invitation. 
 
 From the 5th to the nth of September, 
 1872, the three emperors and their foreign 
 ministers met in the German capital amid 
 high festival, while Europe looked on 
 and wondered what might be the intent 
 
 * The Tsar was urged to take this step in a confidential letter 
 he received from his former German teacher, Schneider. It is 
 possible that Bismarck instigated the letter. 
 
 \ 
 
48 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 and the scope of their conversations. 
 These conversations resulted in a gen- 
 eral agreement, but the entente thus 
 concluded did not take the form of a 
 written alliance. The sovereigns and 
 their ministers, instead of formal confer- 
 ences, held a number of separate inter- 
 views, during which they exchanged ex- 
 pressions of good will and assurances of 
 mutual support. They also explained 
 their policies to one another and made 
 clear that there was nothing in the inten- 
 tions of any one of them to which the 
 others might fairly object. The attitude 
 of Austria was naturally more reserved 
 than that of Russia and of Germany, for 
 she was in the position of a former enemy 
 just admitted to the society of two old 
 friends.* Nevertheless, the Austrians had 
 no cause for complaint in the way they 
 were received, and they were, or fancied 
 they were, the objects of more popular 
 acclamation than the Russians.f 
 
 * Broglie, La Mission de M. de Gontaut-Biron, p. 45. 
 t Wertheimer, ii, p. 77. 
 
GERMANY, RUSSIA, AND AUSTRIA 49 
 
 The old league of the three great con- 
 servative European states was thus re- 
 constituted, more powerful, more impos- 
 ing, than ever. Again it dominated the 
 continent. Not only was the combined 
 strength of its armies incomparably supe- 
 rior to any force that could be brought 
 against them, but as long as it lasted each 
 of its members could feel safe against at- 
 tack by land. But there was one very 
 important new feature to the league. 
 The relative position of the three allies 
 had changed profoundly since the days 
 they had first gone hand in hand with 
 each other. When, in 1815, Tsar Alex- 
 ander I had formed the Holy Alliance, 
 there was no doubt that he was its most 
 powerful sovereign and leading spirit, 
 even if in subsequent years he came under 
 the influence of the Austrian chancellor, 
 Prince Metternich. In the time of Nich- 
 olas I the primacy of Russia was clearer 
 still, so much so that after 1849 Austria 
 and Prussia were almost in a dependent 
 position, Prussia, indeed, had through- 
 
5 o THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 out been the weakest of the three allies, a 
 docile follower of the other two; she had 
 never taken the lead in their joint policy. 
 
 In 1872 the situation in this respect was 
 different. It was evident to the whole 
 world that the mightiest of the three em- 
 pires was that of Germany and the first of 
 their statesmen was the German chan- 
 cellor. It was Germany that had brought 
 together the other two members of the 
 league, and it was in Berlin that the gen- 
 eral reconciliation had been effected. 
 Whatever else this renewal of former in- 
 timacies might mean, it meant without 
 question one more brilliant achievement 
 for the policy of Prince Bismarck. 
 
 The next few months served to 
 strengthen his position even more. In 
 May, 1873, together with his sovereign 
 and with von Moltke, he paid a visit to 
 St. Petersburg, where he found many old 
 acquaintances from his days as Prussian 
 minister there eleven years before. He 
 now came as the lion of the hour, enter- 
 
BISMARCK AT ST. PETERSBURG 51 
 
 tained and run after by all the highest so- 
 ciety of the city. In return he had no 
 hesitation in recognizing the debt that he 
 and his country owed to Russia, and is 
 said to have declared before his depar- 
 ture: "Si j'admettais seulement la pensee 
 d'etre jamais hostile a l'Empereur et a 
 la Russie, je me considererais comme un 
 traitre." * His master went even further 
 and concluded a treaty of alliance with 
 Alexander II, which was countersigned 
 by the two field-marshals, von Moltke 
 and Bariatinski, but to which Bismarck 
 refused to append his signature, giv- 
 ing as his excuse that he objected to 
 " binding conventions in circumstances 
 where there was as yet no positive object 
 in view/'f Almost immediately after the 
 departure of their German guests, Tsar 
 Alexander and Prince Gorchakov went by 
 invitation to visit the Vienna Exhibition 
 of 1873. Fresh expressions of good will 
 
 * Tatishchev, Alexander II, ii, p. 100. 
 
 f Moritz Busch, Bismarck, some Secret Pages, \\, pp. 480, 481. 
 
52 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 were exchanged, matters of common in- 
 terest were discussed in the most amicable 
 spirit, and an agreement was concluded 
 which may be regarded as a counterpart 
 of the one between Russia and Germany 
 at St. Petersburg.* Emperor William, 
 also, in his turn came to Vienna, and an- 
 other distinguished guest appeared in the 
 person of Victor Emmanuel, king of the 
 Italy so long bitterly hostile to Austria, 
 and so recently united at her expense. 
 His visit showed at least a desire to estab- 
 lish better relations between the two 
 states; and as he followed it up with one 
 to Berlin, where he met with a cordial 
 reception, the Italian kingdom seemed to 
 be following in the orbit of the three em- 
 pires. Great Britain, though unenthusi- 
 astic, was friendly; France could only 
 look on, lonely and helpless. 
 
 The diplomatic triumph of Bismarck 
 was thus complete, and he could have lit- 
 tle to fear from any foreign quarter. At 
 
 * Wertheimer, ii, p. 89. 
 
THE KULTURKAMPF 53 
 
 home, on the other hand, matters were 
 not going to his taste, for he was in the 
 thick of a struggle with the Catholic 
 church, the so-called Kulturkampf, a con- 
 flict into which he had entered without 
 realizing the enormous latent power of his 
 adversary. The more deeply he became 
 involved, the worse became the difficulties 
 that it brought upon him, and the less 
 the prospect of a satisfactory issue. This 
 told upon his nerves. He was also much 
 irritated by the opposition he encoun- 
 tered in various other quarters, and he 
 especially resented the intrigues, real or 
 imaginary, spun against him by the 
 Empress Augusta and her friends. His 
 health, as well as his temper, was affected 
 by all this; so that he more than once 
 threatened to resign, and perhaps seri- 
 ously thought of doing so. 
 
 Meanwhile the rapid recovery of France 
 had first astonished and then angered and 
 alarmed the Germans. The French had 
 paid off their tremendous war indemnity 
 
54 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 with unexpected facility; and now that 
 their territory was evacuated by the en- 
 emy, they were building up, in spite of 
 the storms of their internal politics, a new 
 army on a firmer basis and a larger scale 
 than ever before. This army was in- 
 tended primarily for purposes of defence 
 — French policy in those days was nothing 
 if not timid — and it was still no match 
 for that of Germany. Nevertheless, this 
 too rapid recuperation awakened displea- 
 sure and anxiety, especially among the 
 German military authorities, who were 
 inclined to argue that, however peaceful 
 the intentions of France might be for the 
 moment, yet, as she had not abandoned 
 the hope of getting back Alsace-Lorraine, 
 she would profit by the first favorable op- 
 portunity to undertake a war of revenge. 
 Granting that such was the case, would it 
 not be wise for Germany to provoke a 
 conflict now, before France had recov- 
 ered her full strength or had found an 
 ally, and then, after defeating her a second 
 
THE WAR SCARE OF 1875 55 
 
 time, to impose upon her terms that 
 would render her harmless for the future ? 
 Such reasoning was not unnatural, and 
 there is little question that both at this 
 time and later several of the military 
 leaders, including von Moltke himself, 
 desired another war. On the other hand, 
 there is no ground for thinking that the 
 emperor had any intentions of the sort. 
 He wished to end his days in peace. Bis- 
 marck's position is not so clear. Several 
 times in his memoirs and elsewhere he 
 expressed his disapproval of 'preventive 
 wars.' On some other occasions his tone 
 was different.* 
 
 Early in 1875, Europe was startled by a 
 sudden war scare, an episode whose true 
 significance has not been entirely cleared 
 up to the present day. In February 
 
 * Denkwiirdigkeiten des Fursten Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst, 
 ii, p. 107 (February 18, 1874): "Bismarck: 'We want to keep 
 the peace; but if France goes on arming so that she is to be 
 ready in five years, and bent on war at the end of that time, 
 then we will declare war in three years.' This he had told 
 them quite plainly." 
 
5 6 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 Count von Radowitz, one of the trusted 
 servants of the chancellor, and newly 
 appointed minister to Greece, was des-: 
 patched on a special mission to St. Pe- 
 tersburg. According to Bismarck's un- 
 convincing later explanation, he was sent 
 to straighten out certain matters in the 
 machinery of the diplomatic relations 
 between the two capitals. It has been 
 charged, however, and there is reason for 
 believing, that the real object of the mis- 
 sion was to obtain for Germany, in return 
 for a promise of support in the Eastern 
 Question, a free hand from Russia in case 
 of war against France, but that this object 
 was not attained. At any rate, the 
 French foreign minister, the Due De- 
 cazes, was disturbed, and on March n 
 communicated his fears to Lord Lyons, 
 the British ambassador in Paris.* On the 
 following day the French Chamber voted 
 a bill which had been under consideration 
 for some time, to add a fourth battalion 
 
 * Lord Newton, Lord Lyons, ii, p. 68. 
 
THE WAR SCARE OF iS/J 57 
 
 to each regiment. It was in vain that 
 France declared that her intentions were 
 purely defensive and that she was not 
 materially increasing her armament; pub- 
 lic opinion in Germany was inclined to 
 regard the measure as a menacing if not 
 hostile act. On the 8th of April the Ber- 
 lin Post, a newspaper supposed to be on 
 good terms with the authorities, published 
 a violent article entitled "War in Sight." 
 Three days later the article was repro- 
 duced without contradiction by the North 
 German Gazette, which, as was well known, 
 was often inspired by the foreign office. 
 The French government now felt serious 
 alarm, an alarm which was heightened by 
 the report of the Due de Gontaut-Biron, 
 ambassador in Berlin, that in conversa- 
 tion with him at a banquet, von Radowitz 
 had discussed the ethics of "preventive 
 wars' and had expressed the opinion that 
 Germany would be justified on grounds of 
 humanity as well as of policy in begin- 
 ning hostilities with France instead of 
 
58 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 waiting until France had recovered 
 enough strength to attack with better 
 prospect of success. Bismarck later de- 
 clared that Radowitz carried his wine 
 badly and was in the habit of talking non- 
 sense after a banquet, but in view of the 
 strict discipline the chancellor kept among 
 his subordinates, it is unlikely that one of 
 them would venture so far on his own 
 authority, and there is no sign that Rad- 
 owitz was ever reproved for his loquacity 
 on this occasion. Nor were his remarks 
 the only ones to cause anxiety. Reports 
 came in from several quarters of menacing 
 language held by Bismarck, by Moltke, 
 and by German diplomats at foreign 
 courts. On May 5 Prince Hohenlohe, 
 ambassador at Paris, made a formal com- 
 munication to the Due Decazes that 'the 
 German government was not entirely 
 convinced of the inoffensive character 
 of the French armaments/ and that 
 'the German general staff considers war 
 against Germany as the ultimate object 
 
THE WAR SCARE OF 1873 59 
 
 of those armaments, and so looks forward 
 to their consequences.'* The chancellor 
 was feeling just then particularly harassed 
 by various difficulties that beset him, and 
 on this account, or as a tactical move and 
 means of pressure, on May 4 he asked 
 permission of the emperor to retire from 
 office to take care of his shattered health. 
 The permission was not granted, and was 
 hardly meant to be. 
 
 Meanwhile the French had wasted no 
 time, but had appealed for support in 
 pressing terms at both London and St. 
 Petersburg. On April 15 General LeFlo, 
 their ambassador in St. Petersburg, had 
 communicated his fears and those of his 
 government to the Tsar, who had reas- 
 sured him and declared that during a 
 visit he was about to make to Berlin he 
 would clear up everything. England, too, 
 promised to add her influence to that of 
 Russia to check any hostile designs on the 
 
 * A. Dreux, Dernieres annees de Vambassade en Allemagne 
 de M. de Gontaut-Biron, pp. 108, 109. 
 
60 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 part of Bismarck. On May 6 the London 
 Times startled the world by an article, 
 based on information secretly furnished 
 by the Due Decazes, which revealed to 
 the public the gravity of the crisis. The 
 storm, however, soon blew over. On 
 May 10 Alexander II and Gorchakov ar- 
 rived in Berlin. When the Tsar took up 
 the matter, Emperor William declared 
 emphatically that he had no thought of 
 war with France. Bismarck, too, treated 
 the whole affair as a newspaper excite- 
 ment and a plot on the part of his ene- 
 mies to discredit him, but he had to sub- 
 mit to being lectured by Gorchakov, and 
 had also to listen to official exhortations 
 from the British ambassador. He was 
 not the man to relish such a lesson, and 
 he was further exasperated by a diplo- 
 matic circular of Gorchakov announcing 
 that "peace is now assured," a bit of 
 needless vanity which Bismarck never 
 forgave. 
 The whole incident of the 'war scare of 
 
THE WAR SCARE OF 1875 61 
 
 1875' remains mysterious. Most Ger- 
 man writers have accepted Bismarck's as- 
 surances on the subject. Many French- 
 men and some other foreigners have ac- 
 cused him of having planned mischief, but 
 of having been foiled by the intervention 
 of Russia and England.* We may well 
 believe that Emperor William was inno- 
 cent of warlike intentions at this time, 
 but the chancellor was capable of creating 
 a situation which would force his master's 
 hand. He may have been feeling the pulse 
 of France for his own purposes without 
 having made up his mind as to his fu- 
 ture course of action; he may merely have 
 intended to browbeat her; he may, per- 
 haps, as was feared in Paris, have thought 
 of sending an ultimatum demanding a 
 reduction of French armaments, a de- 
 mand which the French were determined 
 
 * Sir Charles Dilke, an unusually well informed and com- 
 petent observer, declared a dozen years later: "There can be 
 no doubt that ... in 1875, when Russia prevented a war 
 between Germany and France, and England took credit for 
 having done so, Germany could have crushed her rival." 
 — Present Position of European Politics, p. 37. 
 
62 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 to refuse at all risks, and which they 
 would have regarded as tantamount to a 
 declaration of war. The truth will prob- 
 ably never be known with certainty. 
 What is certain is that at London and 
 St. Petersburg (though not at Vienna, 
 which maintained an attitude of reserve) 
 both the sovereigns* and their ministers, 
 after first treating French alarms as 
 groundless, became convinced that there 
 was serious reason for anxiety and acted 
 accordingly. Even some persons in Ger- 
 many entertained the same fear, among 
 them the Crown Prince. f 
 
 Matters soon settled down, and in out- 
 ward appearance the League of the Three 
 Emperors was unaffected by what had 
 passed. In reality, the effects were last- 
 ing, especially upon Prince Bismarck. 
 To begin with, it had been made clear to 
 him that in case of another Franco-Ger- 
 
 m 
 
 * After the incident was closed, Queen Victoria had some 
 correspondence with Emperor William on the subject. 
 
 f Mrs. Wemyss, Memoirs and Letters of Sir Robert Morier, ii, 
 P- 3SO. 
 
GERMANY AND RUSSIA 63 
 
 man war Germany could not count again 
 on the moral support or even the inaction 
 of Russia. Friendly as Alexander II was 
 to Germany, it was, after all, plainly 
 against the interest of Russia that France 
 should once more be crushed and still 
 further weakened. The Tsar had now 
 shown that he understood this and wished 
 to maintain the existence of France as a 
 great power, however inconvenient such 
 an existence might be to Germany. Sec- 
 ondly, Bismarck was not the man to for- 
 get a bad turn and still less a humiliation. 
 From now on he bore a grudge against 
 his former friend, Prince Gorchakov. 
 
 As long as no serious conflict of interest 
 arose between the three imperial partners 
 in the League, some divergency of views 
 and the personal pique of their ministers 
 might not be of consequence.* But who 
 
 * Sir Robert Morier, after seeing Gorchakov at Wildbad in 
 June, wrote (Memoirs, ii, p. 362): "It is clear that in the 
 * happy family' of the three Kaisers, each of the 'mutual 
 friends' is endeavoring to convince the public that he has 
 an exclusive monopoly of the affections of No. 3." 
 
64 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 could tell when such a conflict might 
 arise ? There was one domain where 
 jealousy between Russia and Austria 
 dated back to the early years of the 
 eighteenth century, where there was al- 
 ways at least latent antagonism between 
 them, and where every disturbance of the 
 status quo at once threatened to bring 
 their interests into sharp collision. Twice 
 before in the last fifty years the alliance 
 of the conservative powers had been dis- 
 rupted by the affairs of Turkey, and now 
 once more, in the summer of 1875, came 
 the news that a rising had occurred in the 
 Turkish province of Herzegovina, and 
 that Europe must again face the incalcu- 
 lable difficulties and dangers inseparable 
 from a reopening of the Eastern Question. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The Eastern Question, that cause of 
 such perplexities to statesmen and of so 
 much bloodshed among peoples, may be 
 said to have begun with the beginning of 
 European history. The story of the hos- 
 tility between Europe and Asia, and of the 
 struggles for predominance in the lands of 
 the eastern Mediterranean, can be traced 
 back in the first pages of Herodotus to the 
 semi-mythical piratical expeditions that 
 culminated in the Trojan war, and it can 
 be followed down through the ages to the 
 conflict between Austria and Serbia in 
 1 9 14, which has involved in its gigantic 
 extension one-half the population of the 
 world. 
 
 In the course of the centuries the tide 
 of conquest has surged to and fro. Per- 
 sia invaded Europe but was beaten back; 
 Europe, as represented by Alexander of 
 65 
 
66 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 Macedon and later by Rome, overran and 
 subdued western Asia, which, with North 
 Africa, became part of Europe in history 
 and culture and remained so for many 
 generations. With the rise of Islam the 
 reaction set in. In the seventh century 
 the Arabs won back Syria and North 
 Africa to Asia, and subjugated Spain and 
 even a part of France. In the eleventh, 
 the Seljuk Turks broke the power of the 
 Byzantine empire and conquered Asia 
 Minor. In the fourteenth, the Ottoman 
 Turks crossed into Europe, and by the 
 middle of the sixteenth they had built up 
 a dominion reaching from the Persian 
 Gulf almost to the Strait of Gibraltar 
 and up into the borders of Austria. 
 
 Then the tide turned once more. The 
 Turks, after a last great offensive move- 
 ment, which brought their hosts in 1683 
 to the walls of Vienna, met with defeat 
 there at the hands of the Polish king, 
 John Sobieski. This disaster was quickly 
 followed by others, and by the time of the 
 
THE DECLINE OF TURKEY 67 
 
 Peace of Passarowitz, in 171 8, after an- 
 other calamitous war with Austria, the 
 Ottoman empire from being a terror to 
 its neighbors bade fair to become their 
 prey. Already, two centuries ago, peo- 
 ple were talking of its extinction in 
 Europe as a likely event of the near 
 future. 
 
 With the decline of the power of the 
 Turks, which has continued with little 
 interruption to the present day, and has 
 been marked by oft-repeated loss of terri- 
 tory, the Eastern Question entered into 
 a new phase. It has not been confined to 
 the relations between them and the vari- 
 ous claimants to their heritage. The re- 
 lations of those claimants to one another 
 have played an equal and often greater 
 part. By an extraordinary historical co- 
 incidence, the years in which the Turks 
 were first being defeated and shorn of 
 lands they were never to regain, witnessed 
 also the sudden appearance upon the 
 scene of European politics of a new state 
 
68 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 destined henceforth to be a perpetual 
 menace to them. A few months before 
 the siege and deliverance of Vienna, Peter 
 the Great had ascended the throne of 
 Russia. When he came to manhood his 
 first important act was to wrest from the 
 Turks the port of Azov and obtain access 
 to the waters of the Black Sea. Ever 
 since then Russia, which under the iron 
 hand of Peter assumed at least the out- 
 ward semblance of a European state pro- 
 vided with a modern governmental ma- 
 chine and army and diplomatic service, 
 has taken a foremost part in the affairs of 
 the Near East. But she has not had the 
 field to herself. She has from the first 
 met not only foes but rivals, and her chief 
 rival has been Austria. Little as they 
 have liked it, Russia and Austria, in all 
 their calculations and plans in regard to 
 Turkey and later to the Christian states 
 of the Balkans, have had to take each 
 other into account for the last two hun- 
 dred years. Their ambitions and inter- 
 
RUSSIA AND TURKEY 60 
 
 ests have continually come into conflict, 
 and the two powers have been often 
 enough on the verge of war with one an- 
 other. It is, in truth, a remarkable fact, 
 that, critical as the situation has been be- 
 tween them, jealous as they have shown 
 themselves of one another, they have 
 never actually come to blows until the 
 world conflict of 1914.* 
 
 The almost permanent hostility be- 
 tween Russia and Turkey, who are at war 
 with one another for the tenth time, has 
 been based on causes historical, religious, 
 social, and economic. The Turk has been 
 the successor of the Tartars, the former 
 masters of the Russians, who even at the 
 time of Peter the Great as Turkish vas- 
 sals held the whole territory north of the 
 Black Sea. The Turk has been the infi- 
 del, the Asiatic, under whose tyranny 
 millions of Christians, the Orthodox 
 brethren of the Russians and many of 
 
 *The nominal hostilities between them on two occasions 
 during the Napoleonic period can hardly be termed war. 
 
70 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 them fellow Slavs, have groaned and suf- 
 fered for centuries. The Russians on 
 their part have regarded their country as 
 the successor and avenger of the Byzan- 
 tine empire, destined to erect the cross 
 once more on the cathedral of St. Sophia, 
 and to liberate Greek Orthodox Christen- 
 dom, and especially the oppressed Balkan 
 Slavs, from Paynim rule. As the popula- 
 tion of Russia has increased, it has ex- 
 panded southward into the prairie lands, 
 richer and more fertile than the northern 
 forests, but it has only been able to make 
 its way by driving back the Tartar and 
 the Turk. Even yet it has not reached 
 open water. In order to gain access to 
 western Europe, the great and growing 
 maritime commerce of the regions north 
 and east of the Black Sea must pass 
 through channels still in foreign hands. 
 Russia has grown to greatness largely at 
 the expense of the Turks, and it seems 
 impossible that she should have perma- 
 nently good relations with them as long 
 
RUSSIA AND TURKEY 71 
 
 as the entrance to the Black Sea remains 
 under their control. Again and again the 
 Eastern Question has been the chief of 
 her interests. She has often not known 
 her own mind; she has made her fair 
 share of costly blunders; but, in the main, 
 her policy has been consistent, and has 
 been dictated, though at times uncon- 
 sciously, by natural laws as well as by the 
 sympathies of her people. Only occasion- 
 ally and for short intervals has she posed 
 as the friend and defender of the Turk. 
 
 The chief disadvantage with which 
 Russia has had to contend has been the 
 distances that her forces have had to 
 traverse before they could arrive at the 
 scene of action. They have had to oper- 
 ate from remote bases and to overcome 
 one line of defence after another. But 
 these drawbacks have diminished as her 
 frontiers and her settled territory have 
 been pushed farther to the south and her 
 means of communication have improved. 
 On the other hand, the fact that her 
 
72 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 people have been of the same faith and 
 of the same race as the majority of the 
 Christians of European Turkey has given 
 to her conflicts with the Ottoman empire 
 a moral justification and a popular na- 
 tional character of the utmost value. 
 They have been crusades and wars of 
 liberation. In recent years, as fanati- 
 cism has declined, the religious sentiment 
 has been replaced by an almost equally 
 potent nationalistic one. The desire to 
 aid brother Slavs rather than brother 
 Orthodox has fired the Russian popular 
 mind, but the effects have been much the 
 same, and have strengthened, and, in- 
 deed, more than once forced, the hand 
 of the government of St. Petersburg. 
 
 Conversely, Russia, as the one inde- 
 pendent and mighty Orthodox power, 
 was long looked upon by most of the 
 Christian subjects of the Sultan as their 
 protector and future liberator. Their 
 hopes and their sympathies have turned 
 naturally to her, not to Catholic Austria, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SUBJECTS OF TURKEY 73 
 
 the zealous daughter of the hated Roman 
 church. Russia could count on these 
 Christians for such assistance as they 
 could give in furnishing her with informa- 
 tion, aiding her agents, and smoothing the 
 way for her armies. Even of late, when 
 the religious motive has receded into the 
 background, the Russians, though they 
 have lost most of their hold on the Ru- 
 manians and Greeks, have been in a much 
 better position to win over the Monte- 
 negrins, Serbians, and Bulgarians, their 
 fellow Slavs, than have the Germans and 
 Magyars of Austria-Hungary. It has 
 also, for the same reasons, been easier for 
 Russia than for Austria to stir up troubles 
 in the dominions of the Sultan or to find 
 causes for interfering in behalf of his op- 
 pressed subjects. The role of defender 
 of the oppressed has, indeed, never been 
 a peculiarly Austrian one. 
 
 The situation and policy of Austria 
 have been widely different. Until 1870 
 the government at Vienna was usually 
 
74 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 more concerned with the affairs of Ger- 
 many and of Italy than with those of the 
 Ottoman empire. It has been consistent 
 in its determination that Russia should 
 not be allowed to dispose of affairs in the 
 East without consulting the interests of 
 Austria, but it has more than once 
 changed its mind as to whether those in- 
 terests could better be served by protect- 
 ing the Turks against Russian aggression 
 or by a division of Turkish spoils. In the 
 eighteenth century Austria usually leaned 
 to the latter policy. Since then, for the 
 last one hundred and twenty years, she 
 has been for the most part the friend of 
 the Ottoman empire, though not a senti- 
 mental one, and quite ready to profit at 
 its expense if that should seem the wisest 
 course. She has had the strategical ad- 
 vantage of being near to the scene of 
 action and of occupying a position which 
 threatened the exposed flank and long 
 line of communication of the Russian 
 armies when they had advanced far to 
 the southward. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SUBJECTS OF TURKEY 75 
 
 With the early years of the nineteenth 
 century a new element appears in the 
 Eastern Question. The Christian subject 
 nationalities, which for generations had 
 submitted passively to Turkish rule, be- 
 gan to reassert their rights to independent 
 existence and to strive to cast off the 
 yoke of the oppressor. With these move- 
 ments the Russian people ardently sym- 
 pathized from the first, and the govern- 
 ment of St. Petersburg also supported 
 them, though rather intermittently. Aus- 
 tria, on the other hand, cared nothing 
 for the wrongs or for the aspirations of 
 Greeks and Serbs and Rumanians, whom 
 she regarded as clients of Russia, nor did 
 she wish to see them achieve indepen- 
 dence at the expense of her former foe but 
 now convenient neighbor, the Ottoman 
 empire. She, therefore, bitterly opposed 
 the intervention of the powers that led to 
 the liberation of Greece. At the time of 
 the Crimean war, she not only ordered the 
 Russians out of the Rumanian principali- 
 ties, but after it was certain they were 
 
76 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 defeated, practically joined the alliance 
 against them which forced them to the 
 Peace of Paris, and by a treaty with Eng- 
 land and France guaranteed the integrity 
 of the Ottoman empire. 
 
 That empire, thus set up again by the 
 powers, enjoyed a few years of progress 
 and reform, but soon the process of de- 
 composition set in more rapidly than 
 ever. Corruption and misgovernment 
 were everywhere rampant, and the money 
 wrung from an overtaxed people was 
 squandered in wanton fashion, until in 
 1875 the national debt was scaled down 
 by partial repudiation. Security of life 
 and property, or justice before the courts, 
 hardly existed for the Christian subjects 
 of the Sultan. It is no wonder that they 
 looked across the borders with envy to 
 their more fortunate brethren in the little 
 Balkan states which had succeeded in 
 emancipating themselves, wholly or in 
 part, from Turkish rule. It was also in 
 the nature of things that they found sym- 
 
PANSLAVISM 77 
 
 pathy not only among their free Balkan 
 kinsmen but also farther away, a sym- 
 pathy heightened by a nationalistic move- 
 ment that had been going on in the Rus- 
 sian empire itself. 
 
 The intense consciousness of national- 
 ity which has been so potent a factor in 
 the history of the world since about the be- 
 ginning of the nineteenth century, even if 
 at bottom much the same everywhere, has 
 taken on many shapes in different coun- 
 tries. In Russia one of its manifestations 
 has been a keen new interest in the fate 
 of the other Slav peoples and a desire for 
 union with them. As a purely senti- 
 mental idea, based on real or fancied 
 community of race, language, and cul- 
 ture, but without political objects, this 
 movement has been called Slavophilism. 
 Akin to this, but going a step further, and 
 with the avowed aim of bringing the 
 various Slav peoples into some sort of 
 common political system, has been the 
 better known movement termed Pan- 
 
78 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 slavism. Not unnaturally this last doc- 
 trine was regarded by foreign countries 
 with Slavic subjects as a menace to their 
 integrity, especially as it found partisans 
 among all the Slav peoples. In 1867 their 
 ideals were set forth with much fervor in 
 a Panslavic Congress held in Moscow. 
 Panslavism had by this time obtained no 
 small hold on Russian public opinion, 
 and could count its orators and its poets 
 and its many local societies whose object 
 was not only to preach the cause but to 
 give assistance to brother Slavs suffering 
 under foreign oppression. 
 
 The imperial government at first looked 
 on the movement with little favor. Ever 
 since the days of Peter the Great the 
 Russian court and administration had 
 cared more for being regarded as full- 
 fledged exponents of general European 
 civilization than they had for any pecu- 
 liar virtues of the Slavic race. It was 
 difficult, too, to harmonize Panslavic 
 ideals with the severity which had been 
 
PANSLA VISM AND THE BALKAN PENINSULA 79 
 
 meted out to the Poles since the insurrec- 
 tion of 1863. Nevertheless, the Panslav- 
 ists had their friends at court and in the 
 official world of St. Petersburg, and were 
 supported by a widespread national feel- 
 ing. 
 
 The Balkan Peninsula presented an 
 obvious field for the activity of those 
 zealous for the cause of Slavic welfare. 
 Serbia and Montenegro had, indeed, won 
 their liberties, but there were still several 
 million Slavs groaning under the evils of 
 Turkish misrule. It is no wonder that 
 they found ardent sympathy in Russia, 
 and that Panslavist organizations there 
 not only sent them money for schools and 
 for many other needs, but also encouraged 
 their hopes of independence and aided 
 them to plot and prepare for it. The au- 
 thorities in St. Petersburg seem to have 
 kept aloof from these activities, though 
 they must have had some cognizance of 
 them; but the able and not too scru- 
 pulous ambassador in Constantinople, 
 
So THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 Count Ignatiev, an ardent Panslavist, 
 gave ground for English and Austrian 
 accusations that the Russian embassy 
 was a centre of conspiracy against the 
 integrity of the Ottoman empire. In 
 spite of this, Ignatiev had more influence 
 with the Sultan than had any of his col- 
 leagues. 
 
 The special object of Russian interest 
 was the Bulgarians. They had reawak- 
 ened to national consciousness later than 
 had the Greeks and the Serbs, but now 
 they were awake. Since the middle of 
 the century there had been an active Bul- 
 garian movement, not outwardly dis- 
 loyal, yet, in the nature of things, con- 
 cealing under its efforts for education and 
 progress hopes for political emancipation. 
 It had already achieved one notable suc- 
 cess in 1870, when, thanks in part to Rus- 
 sian influence, the Sultan had been per- 
 suaded to consent to the establishment of 
 a Bulgarian ecclesiastical exarchate, in- 
 dependent of the Greek patriarch of Con- 
 
BULGARIA, BOSNIA, AND HERZEGOVINA 81 
 
 stantinople. The action of Russia on 
 this occasion showed that times had 
 changed, that the Greeks were no longer 
 her favorites as in the days of Catherine 
 II, but that in her sentiments toward the 
 Christian populations of the East the 
 nationalistic impulse had now taken the 
 place of the old religious one. 
 
 Bad as conditions were in Bulgaria, 
 they were still worse in the territories of 
 Bosnia and Herzegovina. Here the un- 
 fortunate Christian peasantry had to suf- 
 fer not only from the usual exactions of 
 the Turkish official and tax-gatherer, but 
 also from the oppression of the upper 
 classes, a landowning aristocracy who, 
 though of Serbian origin, were Moham- 
 medan in faith, and treated their serfs 
 with brutal harshness. The mountain- 
 ous nature of the region, which made in- 
 surrection easy and its repression difficult, 
 the patent weakness of the Turkish gov- 
 ernment, and the spectacle of the success 
 of their brethren in Serbia in achieving in- 
 
THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 dependence contributed to make a rising 
 of the hard-pressed Christians in Bosnia 
 and Herzegovina an event that might 
 occur at any time. 
 
 But here the interests of Austria would 
 at once be vitally affected. Already, in 
 the wars of the eighteenth century, Aus- 
 trian armies had entered these regions. 
 Since 1815 Bosnia and Herzegovina had 
 been surrounded on three sides by Aus- 
 tro-Hungarian territory, and they formed 
 the obvious hinterland for the maritime 
 province of Dalmatia, which without 
 them had unsatisfactory connection with 
 the rest of the empire. The possibility of 
 their acquisition must have been often in 
 the minds of the statesmen in Vienna, 
 especially since the loss of Venice had 
 weakened the position of Austria in the 
 Adriatic and given her a dangerous rival 
 there in the new kingdom of Italy. The 
 military authorities frankly advocated the 
 annexation of the territory at the earliest 
 favorable opportunity, and there is reason 
 
INSURRECTION IN HERZEGO VINA AND BOSNIA 83 
 
 for thinking that the emperor himself was 
 anxious to obtain compensation in this 
 way for the loss of Lombardy and Vene- 
 tia, and not to go down to history as one 
 of the few Hapsburgs under whose rule 
 the dominions of the house had grown 
 smaller, not larger. In 1875 he paid a 
 visit to Dalmatia with an ostentation and 
 in a manner that seemed to show interest 
 in the land beyond the borders of the 
 province. 
 
 When, therefore, in the course of that 
 autumn news began to reach Europe of 
 an insurrection in Herzegovina which soon 
 spread to Bosnia, and which the Turks 
 appeared unable to suppress, there was 
 little to surprise but much to alarm those 
 who cared for the preservation of Euro- 
 pean peace. However cordial the inter- 
 course might be between Austria and 
 Russia, however specific the political 
 agreements, however friendly the sover- 
 eigns, experience had shown again and 
 again that the raising of the Eastern 
 
84 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 Question was fraught with danger to good 
 relations between the two empires. Twice 
 before in the nineteenth century it had 
 brought them into sharp opposition to 
 one another, and now at St. Petersburg 
 and at Vienna every one knew that the 
 League of the Three Emperors was too 
 feeble a bond to maintain Austro-Rus- 
 sian harmony if there should be a serious 
 clash of interests. 
 
 At first there was little difficulty in 
 maintaining the concert of the powers. 
 All of them were sincerely anxious that 
 the conflagration that had broken out in 
 the Balkans should not spread farther. 
 The nearest available consular officers 
 were sent to hunt out the insurgents and 
 persuade them to lay down their arms 
 and trust to the promises of the Sultan. 
 This they refused to do; they had lost 
 faith in such promises. As there was no 
 doubt that their grievances were real, 
 and as the sins of the Turkish administra- 
 tion were notorious, the three imperial 
 
THE ANDRASSY NOTE 85 
 
 governments entered into communication 
 with one another and agreed upon a note 
 which took its name from Count An- 
 drassy, and which demanded from the 
 Porte, besides an armistice, a series of 
 reforms, including the equality of Chris- 
 tians and Mohammedans, the abolition of 
 the farming of taxes, an improvement of 
 agrarian conditions, and the appointment 
 of a mixed Christian and Mohammedan 
 commission to look after the carrying out 
 of these measures. England and France 
 adhered to this note, and on January 31, 
 1876, it was presented in Constantinople, 
 where after some parley it was accepted 
 in principle by the Turks. But the in- 
 surgents were not satisfied. They made 
 counter-propositions, demanding not only 
 greater concessions but guarantees; that 
 is to say, that the powers should see to it 
 that the Turkish promises were carried 
 out. The Turks in their turn promptly 
 refused, and fierce desultory fighting con- 
 tinued, while thousands of refugees fled 
 
86 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 into Dalmatia and Montenegro and agi- 
 tation increased among all the Balkan 
 Slavs. Aroused by this state of affairs, 
 the three imperial governments deter- 
 mined to make another effort. It was 
 agreed that their foreign ministers should 
 meet in Berlin and come to a further de- 
 cision on Eastern affairs. This time 
 Prince Gorchakov took the lead. He was 
 emphatic in his disbelief in Turkish prom- 
 ises and favored some vigorous step, but 
 met with unwillingness on the part of 
 Andrassy. A new note, however, was 
 drawn up, known as the Berlin Memo- 
 randum. The suggestions of the An- 
 drassy note were reiterated, and it was 
 declared that the carrying out of the 
 necessary reforms must be under the 
 safeguard of an international commis- 
 sion. Finally, in case the Turks should 
 remain obstinate, there was a distinct 
 hint at coercion. 
 
 Up to this point there had been at least 
 apparent agreement among the great 
 
THE BERLIN MEMORANDUM 87 
 
 powers. But the League of the Three 
 Emperors had made a mistake in assum- 
 ing that all the other European states 
 would accede without discussion to what- 
 ever decisions were submitted to them. 
 France and Italy might not be in a posi- 
 tion to follow an independent course, but 
 Great Britain had just then as its prime 
 minister a man who held lofty ideas about 
 his country and had definite views as to 
 the course he meant to pursue. 
 
 Benjamin Disraeli, soon to be made 
 Earl of Beaconsfield, may be termed the 
 first of modern English Imperialists. To 
 him the British empire was no mere ab- 
 straction; it was a great world power with 
 interests everywhere and a right to be 
 consulted and listened to everywhere. 
 This right he meant to assert. The coro- 
 nation in 1876 of Queen Victoria as em- 
 press of India was not the bit of empty 
 theatrical display it appeared to many. 
 It was an assertion of the imperial posi- 
 tion of the sovereign of Great Britain, 
 
THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 and as such a declaration of policy. Dis- 
 raeli hardly entertained many illusions 
 about the Turks; but the Orient had long 
 appealed to his imagination, and he be- 
 lieved that England could and should 
 play a great part there. He had already 
 achieved one brilliant diplomatic success. 
 By his sudden secret purchase of the Khe- 
 dive's shares in the Suez Canal he had 
 strengthened the position of Britain in 
 the East at the expense of France, who 
 saw her control of the great waterway, 
 built by a Frenchman with French money, 
 slipping away from her, yet could only 
 look on with impotent chagrin. Toward 
 Prince Bismarck he seems to have felt at 
 this time a certain personal dislike, and, 
 it may be, jealousy, but the real foe, in 
 his eyes, the power that he ever watched 
 and distrusted, was Russia. His feelings 
 in this respect may, as has often been 
 asserted, have been influenced by his 
 Jewish origin, but they were in accor- 
 dance with English traditions of the pre- 
 
GREAT BRITAIN DISSENTS 89 
 
 vious twenty years, and they were natural 
 in the breast of a statesman who had 
 visions of a splendid future for his own 
 country. At this very time the violently 
 anti-Russian ambassador of Britain at 
 Constantinople was sending home alarm- 
 ing reports of Muscovite intrigue. 
 
 When the League of the Three Emper- 
 ors had agreed upon the Andrassy note, 
 London had acceded, though without en- 
 thusiasm. Now when there came a sec- 
 ond document on Eastern affairs, con- 
 cocted without the participation of Great 
 Britain, and merely submitted by tele- 
 gram with a request for a prompt adhe- 
 sion, British dignity and the spirit that 
 guided British policy asserted themselves. 
 The reply sent was not prompt, and when 
 it did come it was a flat refusal. "Her 
 Majesty's government appreciate the ad- 
 vantage of concerted action by the pow- 
 ers in all that relates to the questions 
 arising out of the insurrection, but they 
 cannot consent to join in proposals which 
 
go THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 they do not conscientiously believe likely 
 to effect the pacification which all the 
 powers desire to see attained." * 
 
 This put an end to the unanimity of 
 the powers, and also to any impression 
 that the Memorandum might make on 
 the Turks, who now felt that they had, 
 as in 1854, friends on whom they could 
 rely for support, even without following 
 their advice. Meanwhile the situation in 
 the East had become grave, for the ex- 
 citement among the Christians of the 
 Ottoman empire had stimulated counter- 
 excitement among the Mohammedans. 
 On May 6, 1876, a mob in Salonica mur- 
 dered the French and German consuls 
 there. On May 29 the stupid and profli- 
 gate Sultan Abdul-Aziz was overthrown 
 by a revolution. Six days later he was 
 assassinated or committed suicide. He 
 was succeeded by his brother, Murad V, 
 who after a few months was deposed in 
 his turn on account of insanity and re- 
 
 * Parliamentary Papers, 1876, lxxxiv, Turkey, no. 3, p. 1 71. 
 
SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO DECLARE WAR 91 
 
 placed by Abdul-Hamid II, then a very 
 young man. In May there were risings 
 in Bulgaria, and in time rumors from 
 there reached Europe of sporadic insur- 
 rections followed by fierce repression. 
 On July 1 and 2 Serbia and Montenegro, 
 carried away by their sympathies for 
 their insurgent kinsmen in Bosnia and 
 Herzegovina and by the hope of adding 
 these territories to their own, declared 
 war on Turkey. 
 
 As was inevitable, the news of what was 
 happening in the Balkans at once affected 
 Russia. The nation espoused with en- 
 thusiasm the cause of the brother Slavs. 
 Gifts of all kinds, and volunteers, includ- 
 ing army officers, came pouring into Ser- 
 bia. Public opinion began to clamor for 
 war, or at least intervention, and the 
 government itself could not, if it would, 
 remain indifferent to the pressure that 
 was being put on it. 
 
 It was not, indeed, to be expected that 
 Alexander II and his ministers could sit 
 
92 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 with folded hands as mere spectators of 
 whatever events might occur in the Bal- 
 kan Peninsula. Sooner or later they must 
 take some decisive action. Every Rus- 
 sian tradition in the Eastern Question 
 made this imperative. But besides the 
 probable hostility of England, they had, 
 as so often before, to reckon with the 
 attitude of Austria, especially since the 
 immediate cause of the crisis had been 
 the troubles in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 
 the part of the Balkan Peninsula in which 
 she was most interested. It was well 
 known at St. Petersburg that Austria, 
 having abandoned the hope of playing a 
 role in German and Italian affairs, was 
 now looking more toward the iEgean, and 
 was not inclined to remain a merely pas- 
 sive spectator. Also, it was at least sus- 
 pected that she could rely on the good 
 will and perhaps the actual support of 
 Germany. As early as 1867, the Austrian 
 minister at St. Petersburg had suggested 
 that if Russia were to regain Bessarabia, 
 
RUSSIA AND AUSTRIA 93 
 
 Austria ought to have Bosnia and Herze- 
 govina. Gorchakov had combated the 
 idea, but not very strenuously.* We do 
 not know whether it was considered again 
 at Berlin in 1872. In the conversations 
 that took place there, Gorchakov and 
 Andrassy agreed not to meddle in the in- 
 ternal affairs of the Ottoman empire, but 
 not to aid it in suppressing insurrections 
 in its dominions, even if appealed to. 
 The first stipulation might be regarded as 
 a concession on the part of Russia, the 
 second on that of Austria, so long the 
 supporter of the status quo. In the fol- 
 lowing year, when Alexander II visited 
 Francis Joseph in Vienna, the question of 
 Bosnia and Herzegovina seems to have 
 been taken up again and an understand- 
 ing was reached but not put down in writ- 
 ing. A treaty of alliance, however, of a 
 general nature was concluded at the pal- 
 
 * Count Friedrich Revertera. The incident is narrated by 
 him in an article in the Deutsche Revue for May, 1904 
 (pp. 139-H0). 
 
94 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 ace of Schonbrunn and signed by both 
 sovereigns, who pledged themselves to full 
 confidence in one another and to common 
 action for the maintenance of European 
 peace.* The time had now come when 
 it was urgent to pass from these vague 
 generalities to something more definite, 
 
 * Revertera declares that there was a signed agreement that 
 in case of a Russian-Turkish war Austria was to remain neu- 
 tral, and in case of a Russian victory was to obtain Bosnia 
 and Herzegovina. Russia was to have a free hand in settling 
 the affairs of the other Balkan territories, but must not retain 
 possession of Constantinople and must notify Austria in ad- 
 vance of the terms of peace. This statement cannot be recon- 
 ciled with the account given by Wertheimer (iii, 89), who had 
 consulted the copy of the compact in Andrassy's own hand- 
 writing. Revertera declares that he got his information from 
 one of the Russian diplomats present at the discussion; but, 
 writing about the event many years afterward, he may well 
 have confused previous discussions and oral agreements with 
 what was actually put into written form. According to Wert- 
 heimer (ii, 118), quoting from the unpublished correspon- 
 dence of the German ambassador, Prince Reuss, when An- 
 drassy visited St. Petersburg in 1874, Gorchakov declared to 
 him emphatically that an Austrian occupation of Bosnia and 
 Herzegovina would mean a casus belli. On the other hand, 
 the promptitude with which the understanding was reached 
 at Reichstadt would suggest that the terms had been discussed 
 earlier. It is curious that neither Goriainov nor Wertheimer 
 nor any other writer, so far as I know, has alluded to Re- 
 vertera's article. 
 
REICHSTADT 95 
 
 especially as divergencies of policy were 
 beginning to manifest themselves. 
 
 It was under these circumstances that 
 the emperors of Russia and Austria, ac- 
 companied by their foreign ministers, once 
 more met, on July 8, 1876, at the Bohe- 
 mian castle of Reichstadt. The inter- 
 view lasted but a few hours and the scant 
 accounts of it that have been published 
 contain several discrepancies. Still, the 
 main outlines of what was stipulated are 
 clear. No official document was signed, 
 but an understanding was reached and 
 noted down, though some of its details 
 may not have been put in writing or 
 even formally expressed. Two hypoth- 
 eses were discussed: the victory of the 
 Turks and the victory of the Serbians and 
 Montenegrins. In the first event, Russia 
 and Austria were to preserve the two little 
 Christian states from suffering permanent 
 loss. This looked simple, but the second 
 contingency — and it seems to have been 
 regarded as the more probable of the two 
 
96 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 — was much harder to provide for. A 
 defeat of the Turks might well mean the 
 end of the Ottoman empire in Europe. 
 In that case, what should be the policy of 
 Russia and Austria ? 
 
 The arrangement on this subject con- 
 cluded at Reichstadt showed astonishing 
 moderation or disinterestedness or weak- 
 ness — call it which we will — on the part 
 of Russia. It provided for a number of 
 slight additions of territory to Monte- 
 negro, Serbia, and Greece, and also for an 
 independent Bulgaria and Albania (Con- 
 stantinople was to be a free city), but 
 there was to be no large Balkan Slav 
 state, whether Serbian or Bulgarian, that 
 could be either a dangerous satellite of 
 Russia or a real obstacle to Austrian prog- 
 ress farther to the southward at some 
 future date. Austria was to have imme- 
 diate possession of Bosnia and Herze- 
 govina. All that Russia stipulated for 
 herself was the fragment of Bessarabia 
 that had been taken away from her at 
 
REICH ST ADT 07 
 
 the Peace of Paris in 1856,* and this, 
 though it gave her a foothold on the lower 
 Danube, was a matter of pride rather than 
 of real importance, and, secondly (but 
 perhaps not in writing), a rectification of 
 her frontier in Asia, a matter in which 
 Austria felt no interest. No wonder that 
 Emperor Francis Joseph and Count An- 
 drassy are said to have left Reichstadt 
 well satisfied.! 
 
 Events in the Balkans now ran their 
 course, but not in the way that had been 
 expected. The Ottoman state which had 
 shown itself incompetent to put down 
 the insurrection in Bosnia suddenly ral- 
 lied in the face of new perils. The feeble 
 risings in Bulgaria had been quenched in 
 the blood of some twelve thousand of the 
 inhabitants, men, women, and children. 
 It is true that the Montenegrins held 
 their own, but the Serbians, whose terri- 
 
 * But not the islands of the delta, which she had held from 
 1812 to 1856. 
 f A. Fournier, Wie wir %u Bosnien kamen, p. 23. 
 
98 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 tory was soon invaded, were defeated in 
 one encounter after another, in spite of 
 the streams of Russian volunteers that 
 came to their aid. On August 29, Prince 
 Milan appealed to the powers for media- 
 tion. At the news of these disasters the 
 excitement in Russia increased, and the 
 clamor for armed intervention in behalf 
 of the Balkan Slavs became ever louder. 
 The government could not but take heed 
 of this, and, while refusing to allow itself 
 to be hurried into precipitate action, it 
 urged the calling of a general European 
 conference, and even suggested to Eng- 
 land that she take the initiative. 
 
 The game of political and diplomatic 
 intrigue was at this moment particularly 
 intricate. The League of the Three Em- 
 perors still existed, and the relations be- 
 tween the members were in theory close 
 and cordial, but not one of the partners 
 had complete trust in the others. Cir- 
 cumstances beyond their control seemed 
 to be pushing them toward an estrange- 
 
THE GAME OF INTRIGUE 99 
 
 merit, if not worse. Bismarck, Gorcha- 
 kov, and Andrassy were all diplomats of 
 more than ordinary skill, and each was 
 now trying to feel his way with the others. 
 Bismarck, the ablest of the three, was 
 also in much the strongest position, for, 
 besides representing the most powerful 
 empire, he had the fewest difficulties at 
 home to contend with, and he had no 
 immediate ambitions to serve or vital 
 interests at stake. 
 
 In August General Manteuffel was 
 sent with a letter from Emperor William 
 assuring the Tsar of his undiminished 
 friendship and of his readiness to sup- 
 port him.* Manteuffel also seems, fol- 
 lowing in the steps of the Radowitz mis- 
 sion of the previous year, to have sug- 
 gested a new treaty of alliance between 
 Germany and Russia, presumably on the 
 same sort of terms, namely, freedom of ac- 
 tion against France in return for support 
 
 *The language was perhaps stronger than Bismarck ap- 
 proved. 
 
ioo THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 in the Eastern Question. Again Emperor 
 Alexander refused to entertain the sug- 
 gestion. Instead he asked that Ger- 
 many should keep Austria in check. 
 Matters were not going well between St. 
 Petersburg and Vienna. Owing to the 
 Ottoman victories the Reichstadt agree- 
 ment soon ceased to fit the situation. 
 Austria no longer showed any zeal for the 
 betterment of the Turk; she at first re- 
 fused the conference of the powers when 
 suggested by England; and though she 
 later consented to it, she made it clear 
 that she would not consent to the political 
 autonomy of Bosnia, or to its annexation 
 to Serbia. Such an attitude could not 
 but provoke irritation. 
 
 It happened that Alexander II was at 
 that time at Livadia in the Crimea, as 
 were a number of the chief Russian gen- 
 erals, who were naturally occupied with 
 the political situation and with plans for 
 a possible campaign in the near future. 
 Suddenly General von Werder, the Ger- 
 
BISMARCK'S REPLY 
 
 man military representative specially at- 
 tached to the Tsar, was asked to inquire 
 by telegraph whether Germany would 
 remain neutral in case of war between 
 Russia and Austria. The question was 
 most unwelcome to Bismarck, who tried 
 to evade a direct reply; but when it 
 was repeated with urgency, he at last 
 answered that Germany could indeed put 
 up with it that her friends should win 
 or lose battles against each other, "but 
 not that one of the two should be so 
 severely wounded and injured that her 
 position as an independent great power 
 taking its place in the councils of Europe 
 would be endangered."* This was plain 
 enough. As no one in Russia had any 
 fear that she might need German support 
 to maintain her position as an independ- 
 ent great power against Austria, the real 
 meaning of Bismarck's reply was that 
 Russia, despite the fact that she had been 
 
 * See Bismarck's account of the matter. Gedanken und 
 Erinnerungen, ii, p. 214. 
 
THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 prepared to fight Austria if necessary in 
 behalf of Germany six years earlier, now 
 could not count on German neutrality in 
 a Russo- Austrian war. A couple of weeks 
 later Bismarck once more sounded Gor- 
 chakov as to whether, in return for the 
 assistance of Germany in the East, Rus- 
 sia would guarantee to her the possession 
 of Alsace-Lorraine. Again the proposal 
 was declined.* 
 
 Baffled in its hope of obtaining a prom- 
 ise of German neutrality in case of a 
 breach with Austria, the government of 
 the Tsar, which was being reluctantly 
 driven toward a Turkish war by popular 
 feeling at home,"turned again to its pro- 
 fessed ally and friend in Vienna. Al- 
 ready, before von Werder had left Liva- 
 dia, and before Bismarck's reply had been 
 received, a special envoy had been sent 
 to Emperor Francis Joseph bearing a let- 
 ter from the Tsar, in which Alexander pro- 
 posed that in order to put pressure on the 
 
 * Wertheimer, iii, p. 249. 
 
RUSSIA AND AUSTRIA 103 
 
 Turks the Austrians should occupy Bos- 
 nia and Herzegovina, the Russians Bul- 
 garia, and that an allied fleet should be 
 sent to the Dardanelles. 
 
 In Vienna these overtures met with a 
 cool reception. Neither Count Andrassy 
 nor his master had the slightest desire to 
 go to war with Turkey. Partnership with 
 Russia was looked at askance by many 
 elements in the Dual Empire, and par- 
 ticularly by the Hungarians, who had 
 Turkish sympathies and who had not 
 forgotten that their revolution in 1849 
 had been put down by Russian armies. 
 Even the idea of annexing Bosnia and 
 Herzegovina was none too popular, ex- 
 cept in military circles. The Germans 
 and the Hungarians, the dominant na- 
 tionalities in the two parliaments, feared 
 the results of so large an addition to the 
 Slav elements in the population. An- 
 drassy, therefore, found himself in a deli- 
 cate situation. He does not appear to 
 have been eager for the annexation, and 
 
104 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 he was anxious, if it should come, to have 
 it come peacefully, but he was deter- 
 mined not to let the territory go to any 
 other power or to permit any new obsta- 
 cles to be placed in the path if annexation 
 should prove to be desirable. Accord- 
 ingly, Emperor Francis Joseph, while re- 
 serving the rights and interests of Aus- 
 tria whatever might be the outcome of 
 the existing situation, refused to take any 
 joint steps with Russia toward actual 
 coercion of the Turks. A fresh inter- 
 change of imperial letters produced no 
 further agreement. In other words, Aus- 
 tria, though admitting that conditions 
 in the Balkan Peninsula were intolerable, 
 was none the less determined to leave the 
 risk and burden of intervention to her 
 ally, and yet to take her full pound of 
 flesh. Who could feel sure that even the 
 friendly neutrality which was all that she 
 offered was to be relied upon, and that 
 when once the armies of her ally had 
 made their way well to the southward, 
 
THE BULGARIAN ATROCITIES 105 
 
 and she could threaten their long ex- 
 posed line of communications from her 
 dominant position on their flank, she 
 would not come forward with new de- 
 mands ? 
 
 Meanwhile, in England the reports of 
 the Bulgarian atrocities, elaborated in a 
 famous pamphlet by Mr. Gladstone, had 
 excited such public indignation as to 
 dampen for a time the pro-Turkish zeal 
 of Lord Beaconsfield's administration. In 
 Russia the war party was temporarily 
 mollified by an ultimatum on October 31, 
 summoning the Porte to grant within 
 forty-eight hours a two months' armistice 
 to Serbia. Even before receiving it the 
 Turks, yielding to English advice and still 
 more to the necessities of the situation, 
 had decided to make the concession. 
 None the less, Russia was steadily pre- 
 paring for war, and on November 2 the 
 Tsar, in an audience given to Lord Loftus, 
 the British ambassador, while earnestly 
 disclaiming all desire of territorial ag- 
 
106 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 grandizement and especially of the ac- 
 quisition of Constantinople, declared: 
 "He wished to maintain the European 
 concert, but if Europe remained passive, 
 he would be obliged to act alone. "* On 
 the following day he sent a third personal 
 letter to Emperor Francis Joseph, and 
 fresh instructions to his own ambassador 
 at Vienna to negotiate for the friendly 
 neutrality of Austria even though she 
 had refused her cooperation. 
 
 But now Lord Beaconsfield sounded a 
 blast. At a Guildhall banquet on No- 
 vember 9 he proclaimed that "though 
 the policy of England is peace, there is no 
 country so well prepared for war as our 
 own," and he continued in a strain which 
 was generally interpreted as a menace to 
 Russia. Next day the Tsar replied f in 
 an address to the nobility at Moscow, in 
 which he declared that in spite of herself 
 
 * Parliamentary Papers, 1877, xc, p. 576. 
 f It is not certain whether he had already received news of 
 the Guildhall speech. 
 
PROPOSAL FOR A CONFERENCE 107 
 
 Russia might have to draw the sword; 
 and on the morrow he emphasized his re- 
 marks by an order for the mobilization 
 of six army corps. 
 
 The English government, however, had 
 already issued an invitation to the powers 
 for a conference at Constantinople.* The 
 programme was based on the recognition 
 of the integrity of the Ottoman empire 
 and a disclaimer of all individual advan- 
 tages on the part of the powers, but the 
 object of the meeting was the elaboration 
 of a satisfactory plan of reform and au- 
 tonomy for the Balkan Christians. Lord 
 Derby suggested peace and the status quo 
 for Serbia and Montenegro, autonomy 
 for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and guar- 
 antees for an improved administration of 
 Bulgaria. Russia was in sympathy with 
 these proposals. Austria was not; but 
 as she could not make public the real 
 grounds for her objections to the auton- 
 
 * We may attribute this to the foreign secretary, Lord 
 Derby, rather than to the premier. 
 
108 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 omy of Bosnia and Herzegovina, she ob- 
 tained a definition that it was local ad- 
 ministrative reform, not political auton- 
 omy, that was meant ; and she instructed 
 her representatives to observe a passive 
 attitude. 
 
 The official opening of the conference at 
 Constantinople was preceded by prelimi- 
 nary sessions from which the Turks were 
 excluded : a proceeding naturally offensive 
 to them, but necessary, as they could not 
 well be permitted to take part in the dis- 
 cussion of what terms were to be imposed 
 upon them. For once English and Rus- 
 sian diplomacy were in harmony. Lord 
 Salisbury, the chief British representative, 
 displayed a zeal for reform that was in 
 rather surprising contrast to the recent at- 
 titude of the government he represented. 
 He and Count Ignatiev worked hand in 
 hand, with the result that the powers 
 agreed upon a series of demands that 
 were to be presented to the Turks. Mere 
 promises of amelioration could no longer 
 
THE CONSTANTINOPLE CONFERENCE 109 
 
 be accepted. Europe knew by this time 
 that "the whole history of the Ottoman 
 empire, since it was admitted into the 
 European concert under the engagements 
 of the Treaty of Paris, has proved that 
 the Porte is unable to guarantee the exe- 
 cution of reforms in the provinces by 
 Turkish officials, who accept them with 
 reluctance, and neglect them with im- 
 punity." * The powers now insisted not 
 only on local autonomy and improvement 
 of administration, but also on the appoint- 
 ment of a foreign supervising commission 
 to see that their decrees were carried out. 
 These unpalatable demands were pre- 
 sented to the Turks at the first 'full' 
 meeting of the conference (December 23). 
 But proceedings were soon interrupted by 
 the sound of the booming of cannon. 
 Whereupon Safet Pasha, Turkish foreign 
 minister, informed his astonished hearers 
 that they were listening to a salute fired 
 
 * Instructions of Lord Derby to Lord Salisbury, Parlia- 
 mentary Papers, 1877, xci, Turkey, No. 2, p. 7. 
 
no THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 in honor of the constitution which His 
 Majesty, the Sultan, had just conferred 
 upon the peoples under his rule. It was, 
 indeed, deserving of a salute, for it was all 
 that it should be, modern and democratic, 
 granting not only representative govern- 
 ment but full and equal rights to every 
 race and creed in the transformed Otto- 
 man state. Compared with what it be- 
 stowed, the reforms insisted upon by the 
 powers looked insignificant enough; but 
 as its blessings were for all, it made no 
 mention of special autonomies, and, of 
 course, foreign control was inconceivable. 
 The only immediate effect of this the- 
 atrical stroke was to irritate the members 
 of the conference, who regarded the whole 
 thing as a farce and continued to press 
 their demands. On January 13, 1877, 
 they presented them, with some modifi- 
 cations, as an ultimatum. But the Turks 
 stuck to their ground, refusing to tolerate 
 foreign interference and claiming that the 
 Sultan had of his own free will conferred 
 
AMBASSADORS LEAVE CONSTANTINOPLE in 
 
 on his subjects, Christian as well as Mo- 
 hammedan, far more than the powers had 
 asked for. Even the solemn departure of 
 all the ambassadors front Constantinople 
 failed to affect their attitude of flat de- 
 fiance. The Turks did not believe that 
 Europe could or would do anything. 
 
 In this belief they were right as re- 
 garded Europe as a whole, but one power 
 had gone too far to retreat. Genuine as 
 was his reluctance at being drawn into 
 war, Alexander II felt that his dignity 
 and that of his country made it impossi- 
 ble for him to submit tamely to further 
 rebuffs. He would have liked to act as 
 the mandatory of Europe, but though the 
 other powers had joined in diplomatic 
 notes and had even withdrawn their rep- 
 resentatives from Constantinople, they 
 would go no further. Russia had to act 
 alone, at her own risk and peril; and, 
 above all, before launching herself upon 
 the enterprise, she must take into ac- 
 count the attitude of Austria, 
 
H2 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 And that attitude by this time was 
 clear enough. The government at Vi- 
 enna not only was determined to take no 
 action itself, but also had no intention of 
 granting a free hand to its ally. Its posi- 
 tion was a disagreeably strong one. The 
 geographical situation of Austria on the 
 flank of the Russian armies made it un- 
 safe for them to venture into the Balkan 
 Peninsula unless assured of her neutrality, 
 and if the Tsar in his anger should turn 
 them first against her, not only would she 
 have the probable help of England, but 
 she could at the last resort count on the 
 protection of Germany. It was all very 
 well for Bismarck to declare, as he did in 
 his celebrated speech to the Reichstag of 
 December 5, 1876, that for Germany the 
 whole Eastern Question was not worth 
 the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier. 
 He might proclaim her equal friendship 
 for both her allies and her desire to main- 
 tain good relations between them. None 
 the less, he had made his choice and let it 
 
THE RUSSO-AUSTRIAN AGREEMENT 113 
 
 be understood that in case of a conflict, if 
 the integrity of Austria were threatened, 
 Germany would take up arms in her be- 
 half.* It is true this did not prevent him 
 from continually repeating in public, and 
 still more in his interviews with the Rus- 
 sian ambassador, the assurances of his 
 warm friendship for Russia and his desire 
 to serve her. He also, in these inter- 
 views, gave his advice in favor of a war 
 with Turkey, f 
 
 The result of all this was that after 
 some negotiation two Russo-Austrian 
 agreements were concluded. The first, 
 which was signed at Vienna on January 
 15, 1877, provided that, in case of war, 
 Austria would observe an attitude of 
 friendly neutrality and would give diplo- 
 matic support; but it was stipulated that 
 though Serbia and Montenegro might ren- 
 der military aid, their territories must not 
 
 * He expressed himself definitely in this sense at a parlia- 
 mentary dinner (December 1), and in accordance with his 
 wishes, his words were widely quoted in the newspapers. 
 
 j Tatishchev, Alexander II (in Russian), ii, pp. 349-354. 
 
114 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 be used by Russian troops as a base of 
 operations. This meant, to use a term 
 not then invented, that they were not to 
 be regarded as in the Russian 'sphere of 
 influence/ In a second agreement, not 
 signed till three months later, but re- 
 garded as an integral part of the first and 
 antedated accordingly, it was stipulated, 
 as at Reichstadt, that in case of a dis- 
 memberment of the Ottoman empire, Ser- 
 bia and Montenegro were, indeed, to ob- 
 tain some enlargement, but that Austria 
 should have Bosnia and Herzegovina, 
 while Russia was to get back the part of 
 Bessarabia she had been forced to cede 
 in 1856.* 
 
 Once more Count Andrassy and his 
 master had cause to feel satisfied and 
 doubtless did so, even though Emperor 
 Francis Joseph in a telegram to the Tsar 
 
 * Russia was also to have Batum and the adjacent terri- 
 tory, but by Gorchakov's express wish this was not men- 
 tioned in the compact, which had to do with the European 
 and not the Asiatic territories of the Porte. Wertheimer, ii, 
 P- 393- 
 
LAST EFFORTS TO AVERT WAR 115 
 
 expressed the fervent hope that these 
 agreements might never have to be car- 
 ried out and that their efforts to maintain 
 peace might yet succeed. Alexander II, 
 indeed, still hesitated.* The excited pub- 
 lic urged him to action; but he and his 
 ministers realized that Russia had not 
 yet recovered from the wounds of the 
 Crimean war. Her army was not thor- 
 oughly reorganized, her finances were in 
 bad condition, even the emancipation of 
 the serfs and the other great reforms of 
 the earlier years of his reign had been fol- 
 lowed after the first enthusiasm by dis- 
 appointment and discontent, and there 
 were already dangerous symptoms of 
 revolutionary agitation. All these facts 
 made the position of Alexander II and 
 his chancellor a difficult one. 
 
 The Tsar accordingly made a last effort 
 to bring about a peaceful solution. On 
 March 31a document was drawn up in 
 
 * The beginning of the winter was the worst season for the 
 opening of military operations. 
 
n6 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 London embodying a final appeal to the 
 Porte. The proposal for a foreign com- 
 mission was dropped, and was replaced 
 by a mere threat of further action in case 
 the reforms demanded were not carried 
 out. All the other powers adhered to 
 this protocol, though without much en- 
 thusiasm, perhaps even without the wish 
 that it should succeed. The situation 
 was further complicated by what the 
 Turks regarded as an unfair demand for 
 their demobilization before that of Rus- 
 sia. At any rate, the Sultan, supported 
 by the unanimous vote of the parliament 
 he had summoned under the new consti- 
 tution, had now determined to refuse all 
 concessions. On April 10, 1877, the Porte 
 answered the powers in a circular note in 
 which it refused to tolerate any foreign 
 interference in its internal affairs, and 
 three days later it notified Montenegro 
 that the existing armistice had come to 
 an end. On April 24 Russia declared 
 war. 
 
OUTBREAK OF THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR 117 
 
 The position of Russia at the outbreak 
 of hostilities was not particularly favor- 
 able from either a political or a military 
 standpoint. By considerable sacrifices 
 she had secured for the time being the 
 neutrality of Austria, but that neutrality 
 was in no true sense friendly, and it was 
 provisional, dependent on the highly un- 
 certain course of events. From the Brit- 
 ish came the word "that the decision of 
 the Russian government is not one which 
 can have their concurrence or approval,"* 
 and Lord Derby gave formal warning 
 against the inclusion of Egypt or the Suez 
 Canal in the sphere of hostilities, or the 
 occupation of Constantinople, or any 
 change in the treaties of 1856. The atti- 
 tude of Germany was one of ostentatious 
 disinterestedness, that is to say, lack of 
 interest. France and Italy did not need 
 to be taken into serious consideration. 
 
 On paper, at least, the army Russia 
 could put into the field was much larger 
 
 * Parliamentary Papers, 1877, xci, Turkey, No. 18, p. 4. 
 
n8 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 than that of her adversary, and, thanks 
 to the introduction of railways, it could 
 be conveyed to the front with far greater 
 ease than in any of her previous wars. 
 That front, however, was a contracted 
 one, owing to the agreement with Austria 
 which precluded the use of Serbian terri- 
 tory for military purposes. Russia, too, 
 had not since regaining her liberty of ac- 
 tion by the Treaty of London of 1871 had 
 time to rebuild a Black Sea fleet capable 
 of meeting the entire Turkish navy, which 
 could be concentrated against it. She 
 was, therefore, unable to bring troops and 
 supplies by water or to hamper the Turks 
 in this respect. The only way in which 
 she could reach the European territory of 
 her foe was through a Turkish vassal 
 state, the principality of Rumania. 
 
 Rumania had to make up her mind as 
 to what would be the wisest policy to 
 pursue under the circumstances. Russia 
 had repeatedly invaded the principality 
 in former wars, and had even occupied 
 
RUMANIA 119 
 
 it for years at a time, and had now no 
 thought of allowing her sole passageway 
 to the Balkan Peninsula to be barred by 
 any desire of Rumania for neutrality. At- 
 tempts at resistance on her part would 
 be hopeless, even with Turkish aid, and 
 would bring her misfortune; mere pas- 
 sive acquiescence offered only negative 
 advantages; but actual collaboration with 
 Russia promised the much desired boon 
 of complete emancipation from Turkish 
 sovereignty. She therefore decided to 
 conclude a treaty providing for the free 
 passage of Russian troops, and when the 
 Turks resented this as an act of hostility 
 and bombarded Rumanian forts across 
 the Danube, she declared war on her 
 own account. Difficulties about subordi- 
 nation, however, as well as the Russian 
 contempt for the untried Rumanian mili- 
 tia, and disinclination to share with them 
 the glory of the campaign, resulted in 
 their not taking part at first in military 
 operations. 
 
120 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 In the spring of 1877 the military repu- 
 tation of the Turks did not stand high. 
 For the last two hundred years they had 
 been defeated by inferior numbers in al- 
 most every important battle they had 
 fought — not only by Europeans, but even, 
 not long before, by the unwarlike Egyp- 
 tians. The glories of their earlier tri- 
 umphs had thus become much dimmed. 
 It was known that they were brave and 
 could defend fortifications obstinately, 
 but their discipline was loose, their offi- 
 cers were ill trained, and the progressive 
 disorganization of the Ottoman empire in 
 the last twenty years did not promise well 
 for the efficiency of the troops. The Rus- 
 sians accordingly were confident of rapid 
 and easy success, and they made the mis- 
 take of undertaking their campaigns in 
 both Europe and Asia with insufficient 
 forces. Such ventures have often been 
 justified by the outcome and might well 
 have been in this case, but when such 
 risks are run a single check may lead to 
 grave disaster. 
 
PLEVNA 
 
 The campaign began brilliantly. With 
 little difficulty the Russians succeeded in 
 crossing the Danube, they rapidly over- 
 ran much of northern Bulgaria, seized 
 some of the Balkan passes, and made a 
 daring raid beyond. But the Turks, who 
 in history have more than once surprised 
 the world both favorably and unfavor- 
 ably, rallied in an unexpected manner. A 
 small Russian force incautiously attacked 
 a much larger Turkish one under Osman 
 Pasha in an important strategic position 
 at Plevna and was shattered. When 
 more men had been hastily gathered 
 and the onslaught was renewed ten days 
 later, the result was a second and more 
 serious defeat. For a time the situation 
 was critical, as the Turks now took the 
 offensive and the Russian armies were in 
 danger of being thrown back shamefully 
 across the Danube. In Asia, too, they 
 presently met with a sharp check and had 
 to retreat to within their own frontiers. 
 In both fields weeks must elapse before 
 
THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 considerable reinforcements could be 
 brought up. 
 
 Under these circumstances the Rus- 
 sians, putting their pride in their pockets, 
 appealed to Rumania for aid. This was 
 granted on terms highly honorable to the 
 Rumanians, and, assisted by the lack of 
 capacity shown by the Turkish generals, 
 saved the situation. The Russian and 
 Rumanian forces did, indeed, fail in a 
 third assault on Plevna, one of the great 
 battles of the nineteenth century; but 
 they kept their ground, and on the arrival 
 of fresh troops they turned the attack into 
 a siege. The Turks held out through the 
 autumn, till at last, on December 10, Os- 
 man Pasha, after a fierce belated attempt to 
 cut his way through, surrendered his army. 
 
 After this events followed each other 
 swiftly. The Russians, heedless of the 
 rigors of a winter campaign in the moun- 
 tains, gave their disorganized enemies no 
 respite, and forced their way across the 
 Balkans, routed the Turks in one en- 
 
RUSSIAN VICTORIES 123 
 
 gagement after another, and pressed on 
 toward Constantinople. The tide had 
 also turned in Asia, where the Turks were 
 defeated in battle and the fortress of 
 Kars was taken by storm. Serbia now 
 joined in the war, and Greece was stirring. 
 
 European diplomacy, which had been 
 waiting on the course of military events, 
 now awoke to feverish activity. Austria 
 and Great Britain, in particular, were 
 resolved not to accept any solution dis- 
 advantageous to their interests. They 
 asserted that the status of the Eastern 
 Question was part of the public law of 
 Europe, as established by the Congress of 
 Paris in 1856, supplemented by the con- 
 ference in London in 1871, and that no 
 changes could be made in it without the 
 consent of all the signatories. They 
 wished, indeed, to be consulted by Russia 
 in advance, that is to say, to have a voice 
 in the negotiations. 
 
 As the foreign offices at Vienna and 
 London held much the same views, they 
 
124 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 kept in close touch with one another. 
 London would have liked to take common 
 action, and proposed this as early as May 
 20, 1877. Andrassy, however, suspected 
 the British government of having in mind 
 the exigencies of home politics and of de- 
 siring his aid in order to obtain a diplo- 
 matic and parliamentary triumph for its 
 own selfish benefit.* He did not wish to 
 alienate too completely the Slavs in the 
 Balkan Peninsula, and to make them feel 
 that Russia was their only friend. More- 
 over, the relations of Austria with Russia 
 were not the same as those of England. 
 Great Britain and Russia were still at 
 peace with one another and maintained 
 correct official intercourse, but that was 
 about all. There was no pretense of cor- 
 diality between them, and one disagree- 
 able act more or less meant little. But 
 Austria was theoretically an ally of Russia 
 and did not wish to give unnecessary of- 
 fence. Besides, unknown to London, 
 
 * Wertheimer, iii, p. 28. 
 
GREAT BRITAIN AND AUSTRIA 125 
 
 Andrassy had in reserve his agreement of 
 January 15, which, if it were carried out, 
 as he meant that it should be, would safe- 
 guard Austrian interests. It was better 
 to wait and to watch the course of events, 
 while not neglecting precautions for the 
 future. He therefore declined all English 
 suggestions of immediate alliance, and 
 proposed instead a secret interchange of 
 declarations by which the two powers 
 bound themselves to uniform but separate 
 diplomatic, and, if need be in the future, 
 to joint military action.* 
 
 To this suggestion the English agreed. 
 For many reasons they were anxious to 
 see the war brought to an end as soon as 
 possible. While deeply disliking and dis- 
 trusting Russia and determined to oppose 
 her advance, they did feel a certain sym- 
 pathy for the Christians under Turkish 
 rule and for their aspirations, whereas 
 Austria's foreign policy has seldom been 
 affected by such sentiments. The Eng- 
 
 * Wertheimer, iii, p. 39. 
 
126 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 lish cabinet, moreover, was not united as 
 to what it should do, or just how far Rus- 
 sia should be allowed to go in weakening 
 the Ottoman empire. The prime min- 
 ister himself, Lord Beaconsfield, who 
 throughout favored vigorous action, was 
 nevertheless disturbed by the fear, felt 
 likewise in France, that Bismarck rejoiced 
 in the whole Eastern complication and 
 wished to profit by it in order to attack 
 the French at a moment when they could 
 obtain no outside help. On one point the 
 English government was clear; under no 
 circumstances would it permit the Rus- 
 sians to get into the Mediterranean; that 
 is to say, it would not consent to any 
 change in the clauses of the Treaty of 
 Paris which closed the Straits to Russian 
 ships of war. For the same reason, it was 
 opposed to the creation of a strong Slavic 
 state, especially to one on both sides of 
 the Balkans and with a seaport on the 
 iEgean, for it believed that this state 
 would be a vassal of Russia, its creator. 
 
GREAT BRITAIN AND AUSTRIA 127 
 
 Here Austria was equally determined. 
 There must not be a Great Serbia or a 
 Great Bulgaria that included Macedonia. 
 Such a state, besides being a natural ally 
 of Russia, would be a bar to the exten- 
 sion of Austrian influence to the south- 
 ward, and might even serve as a centre 
 of encouragement to discontented Slavic 
 elements in the Dual Empire. 
 
 On the 8th of June, 1877, before her 
 armies had even passed the Danube, Rus- 
 sia had informed England as to the con- 
 ditions under which she would be willing 
 to concede peace to the Turks, provided 
 they asked for it before her troops had 
 crossed the Balkans. These conditions, 
 which in the main corresponded with 
 those in the agreement with Austria, were 
 not accepted by England as satisfactory, 
 but the matter rested for a time. The 
 disasters at Plevna made immediate dis- 
 cussion superfluous. But when at last 
 Osman Pasha surrendered and the Rus- 
 sians swarmed across the mountains, cap- 
 
128 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 taring or driving before them without 
 respite whatever was left of the Turkish 
 armies, both Austria and England began 
 to make pressing inquiries as to Russian 
 intentions and to intimate that they 
 themselves ought to be consulted. 
 
 The demand was most unwelcome. It 
 often happens toward the close of a war 
 that interested third parties not only 
 proffer their good offices to bring hostili- 
 ties to an end, but even insist that they 
 have the right to be heard regarding the 
 terms of peace. Such intervention may 
 be hailed by the defeated combatant, but 
 the victorious one fears and dislikes it 
 and rejects it if he can. In 1871 Bis- 
 marck had been worried over the danger 
 that some other nation might try to med- 
 dle in the peace negotiations between 
 Germany and France. In 1878 the Rus- 
 sians had special reasons for resenting any 
 attempt to rob them of the fruits of suc- 
 cess. They believed that they had done 
 alone what had been the duty of all Eu- 
 
FEELING IN RUSSIA 129 
 
 rope, and yet they had been refused as- 
 sistance or even a mandate from the other 
 powers, though all had made the same 
 demands and had met with the same re- 
 buffs. The war had proved more diffi- 
 cult than the Russians had expected; they 
 had suffered heavy losses of men and 
 money; they had met with severe reverses 
 and some humiliations; and now that they 
 had finally triumphed, they were not dis- 
 posed to let those who should have helped, 
 but had only hampered them, dictate 
 what terms of peace they might impose 
 on the enemy. The Russian public knew 
 nothing of any secret agreement with 
 Austria, and the Russian army, after what 
 it had gone through and had achieved, 
 was as anxious to enter Constantinople in 
 triumph as the German one had been to 
 enter Paris in 1871. Tsar Alexander II, 
 in the correspondence which he still main- 
 tained with Emperor Francis Joseph, 
 while asserting that Russia would act ac- 
 cording to the spirit of the agreement of 
 
130 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 January 15, declared that after all that 
 had happened it could not be carried out 
 to the letter. On January 26, 1878, the 
 Russians officially informed Vienna of the 
 demands which five days later they im- 
 posed on the Turks by the armistice of 
 Adrianople. 
 
 By this time the Turks were no longer 
 in a position to haggle over terms, but 
 Austria and England were, and had no 
 thought of allowing themselves to be 
 brushed aside. On February 3, Andrassy, 
 in a circular note, invited the powers to 
 an international conference at Vienna. 
 Russia, though agreeing to the idea, ob- 
 jected to Vienna as a meeting place, and 
 it was decided to hold, not a conference, 
 but a formal congress of the powers at 
 Berlin. The international situation was 
 alarming. On January 28 the English 
 ministry had asked Parliament for an 
 additional military grant of six million 
 pounds. Five days earlier the British fleet 
 had been ordered to pass the Darda- 
 
CONDITIONS IN THE BALKANS 131 
 
 nelles. The order had been recalled, but 
 •on February 7 it was repeated and was 
 carried out. The Russians answered by 
 declaring that if the English entered the 
 Bosphorus, they themselves would oc- 
 cupy Constantinople. The forces of the 
 two nations were now almost in sight of 
 one another, and any step forward on the 
 part of either would have led to immedi- 
 ate war. The Balkan Peninsula was in a 
 state of wild confusion. The Bulgarians 
 had begun to take sanguinary revenge on 
 their enemies for the outrages they had 
 suffered, and the Mohammedans retali- 
 ated when strong enough to do so. A 
 Greek army invaded Thessaly, only to be 
 withdrawn at the urgent remonstrance of 
 the powers, and the promise that the in- 
 terests of Greece should be looked after 
 at the general settlement. Meanwhile 
 the Russians, undeterred by the prepara- 
 tions against them and by the forthcom- 
 ing congress, continued their negotiations 
 with the representatives of the Sultan, till 
 
i 3 2 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 on March 3 they concluded the Peace of 
 San Stefano. 
 
 By the terms of this treaty Russia was 
 to receive a war indemnity of 1,410,000,- 
 000 roubles, an uncertain asset in view of 
 the state of Turkish finances; but 1,100,- 
 000,000 of it were to be commuted for the 
 district of the Dobrudja in eastern Bul- 
 garia, and for a territory in Asia including 
 the fortress of Kars, the port of Batum, 
 and the town of Bayazid. Rumania was 
 to obtain her independence, but was to 
 cede Bessarabia to Russia and receive the 
 Dobrudja in exchange. Serbia and Mon- 
 tenegro were to have independence and 
 an accession of territory. Bosnia and 
 Herzegovina were to get reform and au- 
 tonomy. Most important of all was the 
 creation of a large Bulgarian vassal prin- 
 cipality, extending to the iEgean and to 
 the frontiers of Albania. Until it was 
 organized it was to be occupied by Rus- 
 sian troops, for as long as two years if 
 necessary. 
 
THE PEACE OF SAN STEFANO 133 
 
 The news of this treaty excited loud 
 clamors. Mohammedans in Bulgaria, 
 Greeks, Rumanians, and even Serbians 
 protested violently. These outcries Rus- 
 sia could disregard, but not the opposition 
 of England, who now refused to attend 
 the proposed congress unless the whole 
 San Stefano agreement should be sub- 
 mitted to it for discussion and modifica- 
 tion. On April i Lord Salisbury, who 
 had succeeded Lord Derby as foreign sec- 
 retary, sent a circular note to the pow- 
 ers, sharply criticising the treaty. Mili- 
 tary preparations were feverishly pushed. 
 Lord Beaconsfield startled Europe by the 
 despatch of Indian troops to Malta, as an 
 indication that in case of hostilities Brit- 
 ain could count on the resources not only 
 of the United Kingdom but of her whole 
 vast empire — a foretaste of what she was 
 to do on a much larger scale a generation 
 later. Andrassy, on his part, made no 
 secret of his opposition to the terms of 
 peace as they stood, and called on the 
 
134 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 Austro-Hungarian delegations for an ex- 
 tra military credit of 60,000,000 gulden. 
 The government of Tsar Alexander II 
 now found itself in just the position it had 
 feared from the beginning, but had not 
 succeeded in avoiding. Its victorious 
 armies stretched as far as the gates of 
 Constantinople, but their flanks and rear 
 were at the mercy of an Austrian attack; 
 and whereas Russia could not count on an 
 ally, Austria would be joined by England, 
 and also by Rumania, who was intensely 
 exasperated at seeing the aid she had fur- 
 nished at a critical moment requited by a 
 demand for a cession of her territory. 
 Worst of all was the patent fact that Bis- 
 marck stood behind Austria. He had 
 encouraged the policy of Andrassy from 
 the start; indeed, he has been accused 
 of having suggested it; this is probably 
 an exaggeration, but it is easy to un- 
 derstand why he should have wished 
 to turn the energies and ambitions of 
 Austria to the eastward, and even have 
 
THE PEACE OF SAN STEFANO 135 
 
 looked upon her, up to a certain point, 
 as the German advance guard in that 
 part of the world. None could say when 
 he would think the time had come for the 
 formidable intervention of Germany, an 
 intervention that might have results for 
 Russia far more disastrous than those of 
 the Crimean war. 
 
 England by herself was less to be 
 feared. She could hardly send aid suffi- 
 cient to enable the Turks to prolong their 
 resistance with success, and the Russians 
 believed that from Central Asia they 
 could make trouble for her in Afghanistan 
 and India.* But her demands were so 
 much like those of Austria that it was 
 probable that if either state took up 
 arms it would have the support of the 
 other. The conflict that had just ended 
 had proved unexpectedly costly in blood 
 
 * Skobelev, the most brilliant Russian general, and one with 
 Asiatic experience, had made a plan for the invasion of India 
 which he believed feasible. It was at this time that the 
 Russian mission was sent to Kabul which alarmed England 
 and led to the second Afghan war. 
 
136 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 and treasure, Russia was exhausted, her 
 finances were in bad shape, and her victo- 
 rious army near Constantinople was melt- 
 ing away by disease, while before its eyes 
 the city, at first almost undefended, was 
 being provided with fortifications which 
 grew more formidable with every week 
 that passed. Rage as the Russian gov- 
 ernment and people might, the perils of 
 a general war were too great for them to 
 face, except at the last extremity. To 
 avoid disaster they must come to some 
 sort of terms with their rivals. 
 
 Bismarck, with his usual common sense, 
 had insisted that the Congress of Berlin 
 should not meet until all serious points in 
 dispute had been settled by preliminary 
 agreement. Gradually this was accom- 
 plished. Though England yielded more 
 than had been expected at St. Petersburg, 
 most of the concessions were made by 
 Russia, who by three secret compacts, 
 signed in London on May 30, gave up 
 her creation of a Great Bulgaria, but 
 
THE CYPRUS CONVENTION 137 
 
 kept Bessarabia in Europe and Batum 
 and Kars (but not Bayazid) in Asia. 
 
 But while the British government was 
 reducing the gains of Russia, it was also 
 providing itself with securities for the 
 future. By the Cyprus Convention,* 
 signed June 4, it guaranteed to the Turks 
 from Russian aggression the rest of their 
 possessions in Asia, in return for which 
 the Porte undertook "to introduce neces- 
 sary reforms, to be agreed upon later be- 
 tween the two powers, into the govern- 
 ment, and for the protection of the Chris- 
 tian and other subjects of the Porte in 
 these territories." And in order that 
 Great Britain might the more easily de- 
 fend and protect these territories (the 
 Turks knew nothing of the Anglo-Russian 
 arrangement signed five days before), she 
 was to receive the island of Cyprus to 
 occupy and administer. Having thus 
 sanctioned in her own case the principle of 
 
 * Also called the Convention of Constantinople. Parlia- 
 mentary Papers, 1878, lxxxii, Turkey, no. 36, pp. 3, 4. 
 
138 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 appropriating Turkish lands for the good 
 of the Ottoman empire, she was in a posi- 
 tion to advocate it in the case of her 
 friends, and two days later, in one more 
 secret agreement, she promised to sup- 
 port the views of Austria in regard to 
 Bosnia and Herzegovina. 
 
 After the main difficulties had been sur- 
 mounted in advance, the representatives 
 of Europe could meet with the expecta- 
 tion of a happy result from their labors. 
 The celebrated Congress of Berlin was a 
 gathering of very distinguished and able 
 men, Beaconsfield, Gorchakov, Andrassy, 
 Salisbury, and various minor lights, 
 presided over with masterful vigor and 
 tact by Prince Bismarck, then at the full 
 height of his genius and his fame. He 
 had hoped that the proceedings would 
 last but a few days, and would consist in 
 the prompt ratification of the bargains 
 made between the great powers, and in 
 the submission to them by the smaller 
 ones, whose representatives were only al- 
 
THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 139 
 
 lowed to appear before the Congress, but 
 not to take part in it. Yet in spite of the 
 ruthless energy with which Bismarck 
 pushed matters through, the Congress 
 lasted for a month (June 13 to July 13), 
 and there were several disagreeable and 
 even critical moments before everything 
 was settled. The Bulgarian question, as 
 the most difficult, was taken up first, and 
 some time passed before every one was 
 agreed as to just what boundaries and 
 rights should be assigned to the three 
 parts into which the Great Bulgaria of 
 San Stefano was to be divided: namely, a 
 vassal Bulgarian principality, an autono- 
 mous province of Eastern Rumelia, and a 
 Macedonia. This last was handed back 
 to the tender mercies of the Turks, with 
 no protection except promises of reforms 
 that were never to be carried out, and 
 that did not preserve it from another 
 thirty years of constantly increasing op- 
 pression and misery. On the other hand, 
 the Turks had a painful surprise when by 
 
140 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 previous arrangement their friend, Great 
 Britain, proposed that Bosnia and Herze- 
 govina should be handed over to their 
 other friend, Austria. When they at- 
 tempted to object they were browbeaten 
 by Bismarck and freely lectured on the 
 dangers of obstinacy. Russia, bound by 
 her agreements, was unable to do anything, 
 and the Turks, left unsupported, yielded 
 in the end. It was voted that Austria 
 should occupy and administer the two 
 provinces, and should also occupy the dis- 
 trict of Novibazar. The Rumanians pro- 
 tested in vain at being obliged to cede 
 Bessarabia. They met with some sym- 
 pathy but no aid. Serbia and Monte- 
 negro were granted accessions of territory, 
 and Montenegro, thanks to Russian in- 
 sistence, was to have a seaport on the 
 Adriatic, though without the right of 
 policing its waters, which was put in Aus- 
 trian hands. The Russians obtained Kars 
 and Batum, but had to declare an inten- 
 tion of making Batum a free port. Their 
 
THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 141 
 
 war indemnity of 300,000,000 roubles was 
 left to them, but as it was stipulated that 
 this should have no precedence over other 
 Turkish debts, the prospect that it would 
 ever be paid was remote. 
 
 Shortly before the Congress came to a 
 close, it was astonished, the Russian dele- 
 gates most disagreeably so, by the an- 
 nouncement of the Cyprus Convention. 
 Other territorial changes were suggested 
 in private discussion, but got no further. 
 Various minor matters were attended to, 
 including a vague promise of a rectifica- 
 tion of boundary for the Greeks and of 
 reforms for the Armenians, and a stipula- 
 tion that whatever was left of the decrees 
 of the Congress of Paris and of the Lon- 
 don Conference should be still regarded 
 as binding. The members of the high 
 assembly then departed to their homes, 
 among them Lord Beaconsfield, who on 
 his return proclaimed to an admiring 
 throng that he had brought back 'peace 
 with honor.' 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The Congress of Berlin in 1878 marks 
 one of the turning points in the history of 
 the Eastern Question. The changes in 
 the map made or consecrated there were 
 almost revolutionary in their extent. In 
 1856, at the Congress of Paris, the pow- 
 ers had attempted to rejuvenate and to 
 fortify the Ottoman empire. They had 
 freed it from the Russian menace, they 
 had guaranteed its integrity, they had 
 renounced the right of interference in its 
 internal affairs, and they had expressed 
 kindly approval of its projects of reform. 
 It was the spoilt child of Europe. In 
 1878 it fared differently. Friends, ene- 
 mies, former vassals, while squabbling 
 with each other, were one and all ready 
 to possess themselves of its territory. 
 Its wishes were the last thing that any 
 142 
 
ATTITUDE OF THE TURKS 143 
 
 one thought of consulting, and its prom- 
 ises imposed upon nobody. No wonder 
 that the Turks felt every man's hand to 
 be against them, and that, far from carry- 
 ing out the mandates of the Congress in a 
 compliant and cheerful manner, they 
 adopted a policy of passive resistance, 
 which they pushed as far as they dared. 
 Nothing in the nature of reform was done 
 or even attempted for Macedonia or Ar- 
 menia; the Bosnian Mohammedans were 
 secretly instigated to resist Austrian oc- 
 cupation; the Albanians were played off 
 against the demands of Montenegro, un- 
 til a joint naval demonstration of the 
 powers and the threat of other measures 
 finally brought the Porte to terms and to 
 the keeping of its promises. In the mat- 
 ter of the extension of the Greek bound- 
 ary, Turkey, not unnaturally, showed no 
 inclination to grant anything. It was in 
 vain that the powers took up the matter 
 and decided she must yield Thessaly and 
 Epirus; she remained obstinate, till in the 
 
144 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 end she wore down their insistence and 
 managed by a final agreement, in 1880, to 
 keep most of Epirus, to the wrath of the 
 Greeks. 
 
 But the Turks were not the only people 
 dissatisfied with the results of the Con- 
 gress. The anger of the Russians was 
 still hotter. They had fought what they 
 believed was the fight of Europe and of 
 humanity, they had shed their blood and 
 spent their treasure without stint, and in 
 the hour of victory their hand had been 
 stayed, the other nations had combined 
 against them, their fair compensation had 
 been cut down, while their jealous rivals, 
 Austria and England, had helped them- 
 selves to whatever Turkish lands were 
 to their liking. At Berlin Russia had 
 found herself without a friend. Even 
 Germany, the ally who owed so much 
 to her, had adopted an attitude of lofty 
 neutrality, which was only a mask for her 
 support of Austria. 
 
 Most of the smaller states were no 
 
BULGARIA 145 
 
 better pleased. The Bulgarians had, in- 
 deed, not a little to be thankful for when 
 they compared their situation with what 
 it had been two years earlier, but they had 
 seen the brimming cup dashed from their 
 lips. The Great Bulgaria of San Stefano 
 had been partitioned, and much of it had 
 been handed back more or less completely 
 to the Turks. In consequence, the dis- 
 appointment of the Bulgarians was in- 
 tense. Far from resigning themselves to 
 their new lot, they never gave up the 
 hope of regaining what had once been 
 promised to them, and the chief historical 
 importance of the Bulgaria of San Ste- 
 fano has been that it created for a nation 
 an ideal they have pursued unswervingly 
 ever since. 
 
 Serbia was now independent and en- 
 larged, as was Montenegro, who had ob- 
 tained her long-coveted seaport, but both 
 these states bitterly resented the Austrian 
 occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 
 which were inhabited by their kinsmen, 
 
146 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 and which they had desired for them- 
 selves. They also disliked the Austrian 
 occupation of Novibazar, which separated 
 them from one another. Greece was 
 much dissatisfied with the smallness of her 
 acquisitions, and she regarded the new 
 Bulgaria as a dangerous rival for territory 
 which she had long hoped might some 
 day be hers. Altogether, the outlook for 
 future harmony in the Balkans was not 
 promising. 
 
 Even the two powers that had fared 
 best could not, as later events have 
 proved, look back on their success with 
 complete satisfaction. Great Britain 
 may have obtained "peace with honor/ 
 though not every one thought so, but she 
 soon learned that she had been egregiously 
 mistaken in her estimate of the future re- 
 lations between the Russians and the Bul- 
 garians, and she had cause to regret that 
 she had opposed the creation of the Great 
 Bulgaria, which would thereafter have 
 given a different aspect to the history of 
 
ENGLAND AND TURKEY 147 
 
 the Balkan Peninsula, and would have 
 saved Europe the perplexities and horrors 
 of the Macedonian question. By the Cy- 
 prus Convention, England assumed a 
 guarantee for the integrity of Asiatic 
 Turkey. This, luckily for herself, she has 
 never been called upon to make good, but 
 she also assumed an obligation to protect 
 the Armenians, an obligation that was to 
 weigh heavily on her in after-times, and 
 that she has found herself painfully un- 
 able to fulfil. With the Turks her rela- 
 tions soon underwent a radical change. 
 After the fall of the Beaconsfield ministry 
 in 1880 she ceased to be what she had 
 been for the previous half century, the 
 protector to whom they looked for aid in 
 every crisis. At the head of the new 
 Liberal government was Mr. Gladstone, 
 the champion of oppressed peoples, the 
 benefactor of Greece, the author of the 
 famous pamphlet on The Bulgarian Hor- 
 rors. Henceforth the voice of England 
 was no longer that of a friend. The 
 
148 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 change was to prove lasting. From that 
 day to this, Great Britain and the Otto- 
 man empire have rarely been on cordial 
 terms. 
 
 Even Austria-Hungary was by no 
 means so content with her acquisitions as 
 might have been expected. Count An- 
 drassy had steered his course with skill 
 and had brought his vessel of state tri- 
 umphantly into port. He had checked 
 the ambitions of Russia, he had prevented 
 the creation of a powerful South Slav 
 kingdom, he had kept open the road to 
 Salonica, and he had secured for his sov- 
 ereign a territory that might be regarded 
 as a compensation for the loss of Lom- 
 bardy and Venetia. Under his guidance 
 Austria, excluded from Italy and Ger- 
 many, had found a new field for her expan- 
 sion, and she had entered into this heri- 
 tage not by war and conquest, but in re- 
 sponse to the official mandate of Europe, 
 which had commissioned her to take over 
 these lands from the Turks, who had 
 
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY i 49 
 
 shown themselves incapable of retaining 
 them. And yet there were shadows to 
 this picture. In Austria, and still more 
 in Hungary, the two chief nationalities, 
 the Germans and the Magyars, were none 
 too well pleased at the strengthening of 
 the Slav element in the Dual Empire, 
 which sooner or later must result from the 
 bringing of over a million more Slavs 
 under the rule of Francis Joseph. At the 
 last moment Andrassy had decided to get 
 the right, not of 'annexation' of Bosnia 
 and Herzegovina, but only of ' occupation 
 and administration.' He was probably 
 influenced by the difficulty as to the dis- 
 position of the two provinces between the 
 two halves of the monarchy if they were 
 formally annexed, and also by his anxiety 
 to obtain the acquiescence of the Turks. 
 If he had asked for outright annexation 
 he might not have been able to obtain 
 the signatures of their plenipotentiaries 
 at Berlin, and without them his action 
 would bear an appearance of violence 
 
150 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 which he was eager to avoid. Even as it 
 was he had to agree to a secret promise, 
 which we may feel sure he never intended 
 to keep, that the occupation should be 
 only temporary. Doubtless he thought 
 that he was getting the substance and 
 sacrificing only the shadow,* neverthe- 
 less his imperial master and the military 
 party at home seem to have been disap- 
 pointed, and his resignation a few months 
 later may have been connected with this. 
 He was never restored to favor, a thing 
 Bismarck declared to be incomprehen- 
 sible in a country possessing so few states- 
 men as Austria. The uncertainty as to 
 the ultimate status of Bosnia and Herze- 
 govina was destined to remain one of 
 the disturbing elements in the Balkans 
 for thirty years. When annexation was 
 at last formally decreed, it almost led 
 to a general conflict. 
 
 * In private he described the Austrian occupation of Bosnia 
 as annexation "very badly disguised." H. Drummond Wolff, 
 Rambling Recollections, ii, p. 194.. 
 
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA 151 
 
 Andrassy had hoped and believed that 
 the territories he had won for his master 
 would submit peacefully to their new lot. 
 Instead, the Mohammedan population 
 rose in savage resistance, which was over- 
 come only by the employment of large 
 forces and after sharp fighting. The 
 Christians accepted the change more 
 quietly, for it brought them great bene- 
 fits, but the largest element among them, 
 the Orthodox Serbs, never renounced their 
 nationalistic aspirations. On the con- 
 trary, as time went on, these aspirations 
 grew constantly stronger. They ren- 
 dered good relations between Austria and 
 Serbia almost impossible, till they cul- 
 minated, in 1914, in the tragedy of 
 Seraievo, the immediate cause of the 
 European war. 
 
 Germany, at the Congress of Berlin, 
 had, according to Bismarck's well known 
 phrase, played the part of 'the honest 
 broker.' She had smoothed over the dif- 
 ferences between the other countries and 
 
152 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 had approved of the division of the spoil 
 between them, while asking nothing for 
 herself. And yet, disinterested as Bis- 
 marck claimed to have been, and dexter- 
 ous as his management certainly was, he 
 had scant reason to look back on the 
 events of the last few months with satis- 
 faction. He had, it is true, helped to 
 launch Austria on a career of expansion 
 to the southeast in sharp rivalry with 
 Russia, thereby insuring that the two 
 would not combine against him, and 
 securing himself against any return on 
 the part of Austria to a policy of inter- 
 vention in German affairs. This was 
 well enough, but the League of the Three 
 Emperors, the one that of all others he 
 preferred, and the one that precluded 
 most completely any combination of 
 powers dangerous to Germany, was now, 
 if still nominally in existence, a mere 
 sham. What was more, he had failed 
 in his attempt to aid Vienna without 
 alienating St. Petersburg; and though he 
 
POLICY OF BISMARCK 153 
 
 may have had confidence in the military 
 strength of Germany as compared with 
 that of her eastern neighbor, never in 
 his long career did Bismarck regard the 
 attitude of Russia as a matter of small 
 importance. As between Austria and 
 Russia he had deliberately chosen to 
 support the former,* but without swerv- 
 ing from this policy he had sought to 
 avoid arousing Russian susceptibilities, 
 except from delight in annoying and 
 humiliating Gorchakov or in occasional 
 outbursts of temper. Speaking publicly, 
 ten years later, he declared: "My con- 
 duct at the congress was such that I 
 thought, after it was over: Well, if I 
 had not got long ago the highest Russian 
 order set in precious stones, I ought to 
 get it now." f None the less, his effort 
 to retain Russian friendship had resulted 
 in failure. To the Russians his boasts of 
 
 * The reasons given by him in his memoirs may be accepted 
 as far as they go. 
 f Reden, xii, p. 463. 
 
154 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 what he had done for them appeared 
 a mockery. No small services that he 
 might have rendered them could obscure 
 the fact that, from their point of view, 
 Germany under his guidance had in the 
 hour of need deserted the friend to whom 
 she owed so much. And as the false 
 friend arouses more bitterness than the 
 open enemy, every one from the Tsar 
 down resented the so-called neutrality of 
 Germany as keenly as the open hostility 
 of England or Austria. 
 
 For popular opinion Prince Bismarck, 
 as a rule, cared little, especially for Rus- 
 sian opinion. He strove to win the good 
 will of the emperor, not that of the na- 
 tion, and he abominated the Panslavists, 
 who repaid him in kind, but now the Tsar 
 and his advisers were as angry as the most 
 ardent Panslavist. During the winter of 
 1878-79 the newspapers of St. Petersburg 
 and Moscow indulged in violent recrimi- 
 nations with those of Berlin, even men- 
 tioning with favor the idea of a Franco- 
 
FEELING OF THE TSAR i 55 
 
 Russian alliance. In the reorganization 
 and redistribution of the Russian armies 
 that followed the war with Turkey, the 
 troops stationed in Poland were strength' 
 ened to an extent that excited alarm in 
 Germany, where this action was regarded 
 as a sign of ill will. On their side the 
 Russian government, and especially the 
 emperor, were irritated by what they be- 
 lieved to be the unfriendly attitude of the 
 German representatives in the interna- 
 tional commission determining the bound- 
 aries of Bosnia. 
 
 The sincere admiration and affection 
 that the Tsar, a man of frank, impulsive 
 nature, had long felt for his aged uncle, 
 the Kaiser, and the many years of close 
 intimacy between the two, made his dis- 
 appointment and resentment the more 
 keen. Was this the gratitude to which 
 he was entitled ? Had not Emperor 
 William himself written in 1871 : "Prussia 
 will never forget that she owes it to you 
 that the war did not assume the most ex- 
 
156 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 treme dimensions. May God bless you 
 for it." * At last, unable to restrain his 
 feelings longer, Alexander II poured out 
 his grievances to the German ambassador 
 at St. Petersburg and ended with a warn- 
 ing, and a week later wrote to his im- 
 perial uncle a letter f complaining in a 
 tone almost of menace of the conduct of 
 Germany, which he ascribed chiefly to 
 Bismarck's resentment against Gorcha- 
 kov.f There was more truth than tact 
 
 * Politische Correspondent Kaiser Wilhelm's /, p. 302. 
 
 t He wrote at the same time a similar letter to Emperor 
 Francis Joseph, if we may trust Bismarck's statement to St. 
 Vallier. Chaudordy, La France en i88g, p. 261. 
 
 J "I understand perfectly that you are anxious to maintain 
 your good relations with Austria, but I do not understand 
 why it is to the interests of Germany to sacrifice those of 
 Russia. Is it worthy of a real statesman to put into the 
 scale a personal quarrel when it is a question of the interests 
 of two great states born to live on good terms with one 
 another and when one of them rendered the other, in 1870, a 
 service which according to your own words you said you 
 would never forget ? I should not have presumed to remind 
 you of this, but the situation is becoming too serious for me 
 to conceal from you the fears that are harassing me of con- 
 sequences that might be disastrous to our two countries. May 
 God preserve us from them and be your guide." H. Kohl, 
 Wegweiser durch Bismarck's Gedanken und Erinnerungen, 
 p. 170. 
 
THE TSAR'S LETTER 157 
 
 in his remarks, and the letter greatly 
 incensed Emperor William. Bismarck 
 profited by the opportunity. He had 
 just heard of the forthcoming resignation 
 of Andrassy, which had filled him with 
 alarm, as perhaps meaning the triumph 
 of clerical and anti-Prussian influences at 
 Vienna and a change in Austrian policy. 
 Although he had soon been reassured on 
 this point, he deeply regretted the re- 
 tirement of a statesman whose aims had 
 accorded so well with his own. On 
 August 13 he had expressed by telegraph 
 a desire to see Count Andrassy again at 
 any time and place that was convenient 
 to him. Andrassy replied on the 15th 
 (the day that the letter of the Tsar was 
 written), fixing Gastein as the meeting 
 place. 
 
 A close alliance between Germany and 
 Austria was an idea which Bismarck had 
 entertained before and even informally 
 suggested. This may seem strange in one 
 who had risen to greatness by his reso- 
 
158 TEE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 lute anti-Austrian policy, which had tri- 
 umphed in the war of 1866, and had led 
 to the aggrandizement of Prussia and to 
 the expulsion of Austria from the German 
 Confederation. Yet, much as he had dis- 
 liked the previous hollow friendship be- 
 tween Vienna and Berlin, which he be- 
 lieved to be entirely to the advantage of 
 the former, and convinced as he was that 
 Prussia could only fulfil her ambitions by 
 a successful war with Austria, none the 
 less, even before that war was finished, he 
 had begun to look forward to better rela- 
 tions in the future. The obstinacy with 
 which in the hour of victory he had 
 stood out against the eager wish of his 
 master and of the Prussian military 
 leaders for an acquisition of Austrian 
 territory, was due only in part to the 
 immediate dangers that he perceived in 
 case Prussia should show herself im- 
 moderate in her demands. It was also 
 due to his extraordinary foresight as to 
 the advantages of not alienating Austria 
 
GERMANY, AUSTRIA, AND RUSSIA 159 
 
 permanently, but of leaving the way 
 open to a subsequent reconciliation. In 
 the League of the Three Emperors, Bis- 
 marck had already reaped a first reward 
 for this policy, and he was now to reap 
 a further one when he believed the mo- 
 ment had come to guarantee Germany 
 against the consequences of Russian re- 
 sentment. 
 
 The friendship between Russia and 
 Prussia was of old standing. For over a 
 century, since the alliance concluded be- 
 tween Catherine II and Frederick the 
 Great in 1764, the two countries, although 
 at times there had been coolness between 
 them, had never been at war with one 
 another, except, nominally, during the 
 Moscow campaign of Napoleon I. Their 
 soldiers had fought side by side at the bat- 
 tle of Leipsic and on other glorious fields, 
 they had entered Paris in triumph to- 
 gether, and Emperor William himself, 
 then a boy, had taken part in that trium- 
 phant entry. Since then the two coun- 
 
160 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 tries had often befriended each other to 
 the advantage of both. The closely re- 
 lated courts of Berlin and St. Petersburg 
 had been on intimate terms, and the sov- 
 ereigns were bound together by sincere 
 mutual affection. But such sentimental 
 considerations did not weigh with Bis- 
 marck. Earlier in his career the friend- 
 ship of Russia had brought him great ben- 
 efits for which he had had to pay little in 
 return. He was not disposed now to pay 
 much and get little. If Russia had been 
 willing to give him a free hand against 
 France, his attitude might have been dif- 
 ferent, but as he later wrote in his mem- 
 oirs: "That for Russian policy there is 
 a limit beyond which the importance of 
 France in Europe must not be decreased 
 is explicable. That limit was reached, as 
 I believe, at the Peace of Frankfort — a 
 fact which in 1870 and 1871 was not so 
 completely realized at St. Petersburg as 
 five years later. I hardly think that dur- 
 ing our war the Russian cabinet clearly 
 
GERMANY, AUSTRIA, AND RUSSIA 161 
 
 foresaw that, when it was over, Russia 
 would have as neighbor so strong and 
 consolidated a Germany." * This was 
 true, and whatever may have been Bis- 
 marck's designs in 1875, the famous war 
 scare at least made clear that Russia was 
 not minded to permit him to attack 
 France. 
 
 Another consideration also weighed 
 with him. He says later in his memoirs: 
 "In point of material force I held a union 
 with Russia to have the advantage," f 
 and history has shown that this assump- 
 tion was correct. On the other hand, 
 Germany had great material force of her 
 own, so great that in an alliance between 
 her and Austria there could be little doubt 
 as to which would be the dominant part- 
 ner — as again later events have proved. 
 With Russia there was no such prospect. 
 To be sure, the time was past when St. 
 Petersburg could take with Berlin the 
 
 * Gedanken und Erinnerungen, ii, p. 231. 
 f Ibid., ii, p. 234. 
 
162 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 superior tone used by Emperor Nicholas 
 I toward his brother-in-law, King Freder- 
 ick William IV. But even so, complete 
 docility to German suggestions could 
 hardly be expected on the banks of the 
 Neva. Russia was too mighty, too proud, 
 and too ambitious a state to remain long 
 content with the role of second fiddle. 
 She would wish to receive at least as 
 much as she gave, especially as she be- 
 lieved there was a good balance due her 
 already, and she would not be likely to 
 alienate for long her own liberty of ac- 
 tion. There was some ground for the 
 fear Bismarck expressed to Shuvalov, 
 "that if the German policy confined its 
 possibilities to the Russian alliance, and, 
 in accordance with the wishes of Russia, 
 refused all other states, Germany would 
 with regard to Russia be in an unequal 
 position, because the geographical situa- 
 tion and the autocratic constitution of 
 Russia make it easier for her to give up 
 the alliance than it would be for us." * 
 
 * Gedanken und Erinnerungen, ii, p. 225. 
 
RUSSIA OR AUSTRIA ? 163 
 
 This does not mean that under certain 
 circumstances, and if paid his price, Bis- 
 marck might not have gone back to the 
 policy of a close alliance with Russia, 
 even, to a certain extent, at Austrian ex- 
 pense, and such a policy is probably what 
 would have best pleased his sovereign. 
 But neither Russia nor Germany was 
 ready at the last analysis to grant the 
 other a perfectly free hand as against 
 France and Austria respectively. This 
 explains the failure of the offers of 
 Radowitz in 1875 and of Werder in the 
 following year, and, on the other hand, 
 the refusal of Bismarck to the Russian 
 proposal for an offensive and defensive 
 alliance, made to him in 1877 * and re- 
 newed and urged upon him a year later 
 by Shuvalov, just before the Congress 
 of Berlin. 
 
 To these considerations we may add the 
 deeper one of the common nationality and 
 history of the Germans in Germany and 
 
 * Tatishchev, Alexander II, ii, p. 487. See also Gedanhen 
 und Erinnerungen, ii, p. 220. 
 
164 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 of those in Austria. For a thousand years 
 they had been in the same empire, and 
 their present political severance from one 
 another dated back scarcely more than a 
 decade. Such factors weighed with Bis- 
 marck, and he mentions them among the 
 reasons for his decision, but we must not 
 exaggerate their importance. Though he 
 was a German to the core and the chief 
 maker of German unity, he had little of 
 the spirit of intense nationalism so char- 
 acteristic of the next generation; he had 
 never belonged to the "Great Germany' 
 party, and without a qualm he had cut 
 off ten million Austrian Germans from 
 their immemorial connections, just as he 
 never worried over the fate of the Ger- 
 mans in the Russian Baltic provinces. 
 His positive genius was far removed from 
 the dreams of the modern Pangermanist. 
 He neither rhapsodized over the merits 
 of Kultur nor looked forward to an inev- 
 itable conflict between Slav and Teuton, 
 though he regarded Russian Panslavism 
 
BISMARCK'S MOTIVES 165 
 
 as a menace. In short, he was a patriot, 
 but not a nationalist, clear-sighted and 
 practical rather than sentimental or im- 
 aginative. He had already shown by his 
 conduct throughout the whole Eastern 
 crisis that if the League of the Three 
 Emperors should break down, and he 
 were forced to choose between Austria and 
 Russia, it was Austria he would support. 
 Now, angered by the attitude of Russia 
 since the Congress of Berlin, and fearing 
 that in spite of assurances to the contrary 
 the retirement of Andrassy might lead to 
 a change of policy at Vienna, he deter- 
 mined while there was still time to bind 
 Germany and Austria together by an alli- 
 ance which should put an end to the dan- 
 gers that threatened them both. Hav- 
 ing, therefore, commented at length on 
 the letter of the Tsar, in such a manner 
 as to inflame rather than soothe the 
 anger of his sovereign, and having sub- 
 mitted a draft for a stiff reply, he started 
 for Gastein, eager to meet his Austrian 
 
166 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 friend and to push matters to a con- 
 clusion. 
 
 Count Andrassy, on his part, if we may- 
 trust to a memorandum that he wrote in 
 1888, had been aiming for just such a 
 result ever since he had become foreign 
 minister. It did not, therefore, take long 
 for the two statesmen to reach an under- 
 standing when they came together at 
 Gastein. They agreed that after each 
 had obtained the approval of his master, 
 Bismarck should proceed to Vienna to 
 enter into formal negotiations for an 
 Austro-German alliance. The idea was 
 immediately approved by Emperor 
 Francis Joseph, but the aged German 
 emperor was at first quite unfavorable 
 to it. Although offended at the tone of 
 his nephew, he still clung to the hered- 
 itary friendship between Berlin and St. 
 Petersburg, and he was just sending 
 General Manteuffel with a special mes- 
 sage to the Tsar. He also had not en- 
 tirely got over his old distrust of Austria. 
 
ALEXANDROVO 167 
 
 He telegraphed, accordingly, to Gastein, 
 forbidding Bismarck's journey to Vienna, 
 and only gave his consent after the most 
 vigorous remonstrances on the part of 
 the chancellor, who declared that his 
 own position and further continuation 
 in office would be impossible if he were 
 to be disavowed in this manner. Em- 
 peror William yielded with reluctance, 
 and presently, in answer to an invitation 
 from Tsar Alexander, decided to meet him 
 and clear up the situation. Unwelcome 
 as such a step was to Bismarck at this 
 juncture, he was unable to do anything, 
 except submit to his master a long memo- 
 randum on the relations between Ger- 
 many, Russia, and Austria, in the past, 
 present, and future. The document, how- 
 ever, seems to have had little effect. On 
 September 3, at the Russian frontier town 
 of Alexandrovo, uncle and nephew greeted 
 each other once more. All the clouds be- 
 tween them soon vanished.* The Tsar 
 
 * For an account of the meeting, see Tatishchev, Alexander 
 II, ii, p. 550. 
 
168 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 expressed his profound regret if anything 
 he had written had offended his uncle, 
 and declared that his feelings and pur- 
 poses had been misunderstood in Ger- 
 many. He brought forward his minister 
 of war, General Miliutin, the man sup- 
 posed to be the leader of the anti-German 
 faction, to aver that there was no truth 
 in the charge, and that the recent Rus- 
 sian military movements were not in 
 any sense hostile. The two monarchs 
 parted completely reconciled, and with 
 Emperor William satisfied that his chan- 
 cellor's suspicions of Russia were without 
 real foundation. He therefore rejected 
 flatly the idea of an Austro-German al- 
 liance directed against Russia, declaring 
 that such an act would now be dis- 
 honorable and treacherous on his part. 
 
 This brought matters to a crisis. Bis- 
 marck, from Gastein, where he was kept 
 by the state of his health, continued to 
 assail his master with arguments and 
 with threats of resignation. In answer 
 
CROSS CURRENTS 169 
 
 the emperor talked of abdicating rather 
 than stooping to a dishonorable act. 
 Only after obstinate resistance did he 
 unwillingly consent to negotiations for 
 a defensive alliance, but it must not be 
 one that was specifically directed against 
 Russia. 
 
 On September 21 Prince Bismarck ar- 
 rived in Vienna. He was well received. 
 The discussions between him and Count 
 Andrassy and the drawing up of the 
 treaty lasted but three days. Andrassy 
 declined Bismarck's suggestion that the 
 pact should be made part of the constitu- 
 tion of both empires, thus bringing them 
 into a permanent relation with one an- 
 other that would recall in a measure the 
 Germanic federation dissolved by the war 
 of 1866. He also refused to sign any gen- 
 eral treaty of alliance, declaring that Aus- 
 tria had no quarrel with France and 
 wished to keep on good terms with her, 
 partly out of consideration for England. 
 As Germany was amply able to hold her 
 
170 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 own against France without assistance, 
 just as Austria was against Italy, an al- 
 liance for such contingencies was not 
 necessary or desirable. The only real 
 menace was from Russia, or from a com- 
 bination of Russia and some other power, 
 and this was all that should be provided 
 against. On this point we may suspect 
 that Bismarck merely made a show of 
 following the instructions given him. If 
 he had cared at bottom, he would have 
 displayed more vigor and obstinacy than 
 he did in contesting Andrassy's argu- 
 ments. As it was, he soon yielded to 
 them, and in a memorandum to his em- 
 peror, on September 24, recommended 
 the ratification of the agreement that 
 had been reached. 
 
 This led to another acute crisis. Em- 
 peror William asserted repeatedly that 
 the proposed treaty would be an act of 
 ill faith on his part, after the assurances 
 he had just interchanged with the Tsar. 
 Again he talked of abdicating rather than 
 
EMPEROR WILLIAM AND BISMARCK 171 
 
 consenting to such a thing. Why was 
 not the best and simplest solution to ad- 
 mit Russia herself to the pact, and thus 
 renew and strengthen the League of the 
 Three Emperors ? On the other hand, 
 Bismarck once more came forward with 
 the threat of his own resignation. He 
 called to his assistance the chief men of 
 the empire. He assured himself of the 
 approval of the king of Bavaria, and he 
 called on Prince Hohenlohe, the German 
 ambassador in Paris, to add his argu- 
 ments. Von Moltke brought the whole 
 weight of his military authority and in- 
 fluence to bear on the same side. The 
 crown prince also supported it with en- 
 thusiasm. The imperial ministers were 
 unanimous in its favor, and announced 
 their intention of resigning if the treaty 
 were not ratified. Thus the aged emperor 
 found himself alone. Most reluctantly he 
 yielded to the pressure put upon him. 
 The only concession that he was able to 
 obtain was that though for the present 
 
172 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 the terms of the pact were to remain 
 secret, he might in case of need inform 
 the Tsar of its scope. To this Andrassy 
 consented, and on October 7, 1879, the 
 Austro-German alliance was signed by 
 him and by Prince Reuss, the German 
 ambassador in Vienna. 
 
 The news of what had been done soon 
 transpired. In both Germany and Aus- 
 tria it was greeted with loud applause. 
 There were a few dissentients, especially 
 in Austria among the clericals and the 
 Slavs, but in the main both countries felt 
 that the alliance was a natural one, 
 founded on the interests of both, against 
 a common danger. To the former parti- 
 sans of Great Germany it seemed a par- 
 tial realization of their once cherished 
 dreams, bringing together all Germans, if 
 not into one confederation, at least into 
 close and, they hoped, permanent part- 
 nership. It threatened no one, for it was 
 purely defensive in character, but by its 
 existence and power it formed a dam 
 
THE AUSTRO-GERMAN ALLIANCE 173 
 
 against the progress of Panslavism, while 
 it helped to keep France quiet by making 
 her feel her isolation. 
 
 In England, still under the Conserva- 
 tive and anti-Russian ministry of Lord 
 Beaconsfield, the news was well received. 
 Lord Salisbury, in a speech at Manchester 
 on October 17, hailed it as "good tidings 
 of great joy." In France, as was to be 
 expected, it aroused apprehension. The 
 French feared that Bismarck might now 
 attack them without fear of the restraint 
 which had been imposed upon him in 
 1875. He gave no indication, however, 
 of any such design. While he was nego- 
 tiating at Vienna, he had expressly sought 
 out the French ambassador there and 
 had spoken to him most reassuringly as 
 to German intentions. Indeed, his at- 
 titude during and after the Congress 
 of Berlin was more friendly than it had 
 been for years. 
 
 There remained Russia. Even with- 
 out knowing the exact contents of the 
 
174 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 Austro-German treaty, the Russians real- 
 ized that the alliance was directed against 
 them and resented it accordingly. But 
 the Tsar took the matter quietly. On 
 November 4 Emperor William wrote a 
 letter to his "dear Nephew and Friend, " 
 enclosing the preamble to the treaty as 
 a memorandum and explaining with ob- 
 vious difficulty and confusion the reasons 
 for his action. He even went to the 
 length of declaring: "I like to say to 
 myself that you will judge the principles 
 embodied in this important act at their 
 true value, and that you will agree with 
 them as strengthening the League of 
 the Three Emperors, which since the year 
 1873 has rendered Europe such signal 
 services." Alexander II replied that he 
 was glad "that this political transaction 
 contains absolutely nothing contrary to 
 my wishes," and that "I like to see in 
 it the return to that perfect understand- 
 ing between the three emperors which, as 
 you remark with so much truth, has ren- 
 
ATTITUDE OF RUSSIA 175 
 
 dered the greatest services to Europe."* 
 The words of the Tsar may have been 
 tinged with irony, but he continued on 
 good terms with his uncle until his own 
 death by assassination on March 13, 1881. 
 This event had little immediate influ- 
 ence on the international situation. The 
 new Tsar, Alexander III, was a man of 
 limited education and with no great range 
 of ideas, profoundly honest, slow, con- 
 servative, religious, not to say bigoted, 
 with a high sense of his duties and of his 
 position. He had come to the throne 
 under the most tragic circumstances, and, 
 after a short moment of hesitation, he 
 resolutely set his face against liberalism, 
 and reverted to the traditions of undi- 
 luted autocracy. With stern determina- 
 tion he stamped the revolutionary move- 
 ment almost out of existence and followed 
 a firm reactionary policy. In foreign af- 
 fairs he was nationalistic, with none of 
 the cosmopolitanism that had character- 
 
 * Kohl, Wegzveiser, pp. 178-182. 
 
176 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 ized his predecessors for the last century 
 and a half. But little as he loved foreign 
 nations, he was a sincere lover of peace 
 and intent on preserving it, and by nature 
 he was adverse to adventure or to wanton 
 enterprise. He established friendly rela- 
 tions with his great-uncle at Berlin, and 
 he, and still more his quiet, moderate, 
 and cautious foreign minister, M. de 
 Giers, were soon on an amicable footing 
 with Bismarck. The tension with Aus- 
 tria also relaxed, as was shown by a secret 
 treaty signed in 1881,* according to 
 which, in return for Austrian consent to 
 a union of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia, 
 "si elle se faisait par la force des choses," 
 Russia agreed that Austria might, when 
 she chose, convert her occupation of Bos- 
 nia and Herzegovina into actual annexa- 
 tion. 
 
 The difficulty Austria had experienced 
 
 * See the article on Kalnoky by Friedjung in the Bio- 
 graphisches Jahrbuch, March, 1909. See also Denkwurdig- 
 keiten des Fiirsten Hohenlohe-Sc hillings jiirst, ii, p. 311. 
 
AUSTRIA AND SERBIA 177 
 
 in pacifying these two provinces led her 
 to postpone for nearly a year longer her 
 occupation of Novibazar, which was 
 carried out, this time without resistance, 
 in September, 1879. She thus kept open 
 her passage to the southward and in- 
 serted herself between Serbia and Mon- 
 tenegro. She now possessed almost irre- 
 sistible means of pressure upon Serbia, 
 an inland state whose commerce with 
 western Europe must pass through her 
 territories, and whose capital, Belgrade, 
 could be reached across the river by 
 Austrian guns and could be threatened 
 with immediate attack. 
 
 Besides this, the Serbians had been 
 angered by the fact that Russia had 
 assigned to Bulgaria, at the Peace of 
 San Stefano, lands they regarded as 
 theirs and had also supported Bulgarian 
 claims at Berlin.* Serbia got these lands 
 
 *On Serbia at the Congress" of Berlin, see the article by 
 Dr. Vladan Georgevitch in the Revue cTHistoire Diplomatique, 
 1891, pp. 483-552- 
 
178 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 in the end * with the aid of Austria, who 
 had opposed her expansion in other direc- 
 tions and to whose dictation she had to 
 submit in railway and commercial affairs. 
 Continuing her pressure, Austria next 
 succeeded in winning over to her policy 
 Prince (later King) Milan, a man of intel- 
 ligence, but of untrustworthy character, 
 who felt far from secure on his throne. In 
 1 88 1 he brought back from Vienna the 
 draft of a treaty which he persuaded his 
 minister of foreign affairs to sign. It was 
 then put away in the archives, and very 
 few even of the prime ministers and min- 
 isters of foreign affairs of Serbia knew of 
 its existence for the next dozen years, by 
 which time it had come to be regarded 
 as inoperative. 
 
 By this treaty of June 28, i88i,f in or- 
 der to establish a "perfect friendship" 
 between the two states, Serbia bound her- 
 
 * The territory about Pirot. Bulgarian claims extended as 
 far as Nish. 
 
 t For an account of it, see the article by Stojan Protitch in 
 the Fortnightly Review for May, 1909. 
 
AUSTRIA AND SERBIA i 79 
 
 self not to tolerate any intrigues against 
 Austria-Hungary, who gave a reciprocal 
 assurance, promising also to support 
 the dynasty and to assist Serbia and 
 her interests with other European cab- 
 inets; Serbia in return undertook "not 
 to negotiate with or conclude political 
 treaties with any other states without 
 previous agreement with Austria-Hun- 
 gary." The two powers promised each 
 other mutual friendship and neutral- 
 ity in the event of war with a foreign 
 state. Even if this treaty did not mean 
 any great accession of strength to Aus- 
 tria, it helped to keep Serbia in the posi- 
 tion of her client in Balkan affairs. 
 
 But strong and satisfactory as the Aus- 
 tro-German alliance was, it was capa- 
 ble of being improved or at least supple- 
 mented by the accession of another 
 power, and that power, after earlier hesi- 
 tation and reluctance, was now eager to 
 be admitted into partnership. 
 
 The young kingdom of Italy had been 
 
180 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 completed by the occupation of Rome in 
 September, 1870. Unlike Prussia, Italy 
 had not reached greatness by brilliant 
 victories of her own; her success had 
 been due not only to her efforts, but also 
 to the misfortunes of others, which she 
 had turned to good account. After the 
 achievement of her unity, she still feared 
 an Austrian attempt to reverse the ver- 
 dict of 1859 and of 1866, and that this 
 time she would not have a French or a 
 Prussian ally. She feared still more that 
 some power might take up the cause of 
 the Pope and demand the restoration of 
 his temporal authority, and she believed 
 that the greatest danger in this respect 
 threatened her from the side of France. 
 
 The relations between France and Italy 
 extend over a period of more than two 
 thousand five hundred years: that is to 
 say, to the beginning of the known his- 
 tory of each. Even before the founding 
 of Rome, Celtic tribes from Gaul had 
 penetrated into the heart of the peninsula 
 
FRANCE AND ITALY 181 
 
 and settled there as conquerors. Rome 
 itself was captured by the Gauls in 390 
 b. c.j and as late as the time of Caesar, 
 though Cisalpine Gaul had long been 
 under Roman rule, the frontier of Italy 
 proper was not the Alps but the Apen- 
 nines and the Rubicon. On the other 
 hand, during the centuries that Gaul 
 was part of the Roman possessions, it be- 
 came so thoroughly Latinized that, like 
 Spain, it retained its Latin character in 
 spite of a period of barbarian conquest 
 and domination. Only its eastern por- 
 tion was permanently Germanized; in the 
 rest of the land the intruders were soon 
 absorbed. Therefore in this present age 
 of nationalistic consciousness Frenchmen 
 and Italians regard themselves as bound 
 together by ties of blood, of identical cul- 
 tural origin, and of common civilization 
 and ideals. Questionable as these ties 
 may be from a scientific point of view, the 
 belief in them and the sentimental value 
 attached to them are real. 'The sister- 
 
i82" THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 hood of the Latin nations/ to use a favor- 
 ite term, represents the same sort of 
 vague nationalistic ideals as Panslavism, 
 Panteutonism, and other movements of 
 the kind. 
 
 This feeling of sisterhood has not kept 
 the Latin nations on especially good 
 terms with one another in the past. 
 Much as the French have owed not only 
 to Roman but to Renaissance Italian cul- 
 ture, they have none the less invaded 
 Italy again and again for frankly selfish 
 reasons. Their first appearance as bene- 
 factors, though still as plunderers, was 
 in the days of the French Revolution, 
 when they brought in temporarily a cer- 
 tain measure of political liberty, long 
 unknown south of the Alps. In the nine- 
 teenth century, liberals in France, as else- 
 where, sympathized with Italian aspira- 
 tions for freedom and political unity. 
 Napoleon III, himself an Italian almost 
 as much as a Frenchman, was moved by 
 sentimental considerations as well as by 
 
FRANCE AND ITALY 183 
 
 calculation when he took up the Italian 
 cause and declared war on Austria in 
 1859. His two victories of Magenta and 
 Solferino soon led to the emancipation of 
 nearly the whole peninsula (if not quite 
 in the way he had intended), and though 
 he had his hesitations and misgivings, and 
 was not willing to abandon the Pope al- 
 together, he remained to the end of his 
 reign the sincere friend of Italy. By his 
 attitude in 1866 he helped her to obtain 
 Venice. 
 
 For all this the Italians were grateful to 
 him and to France. They had, however, 
 grievances which loomed large in their 
 eyes. The Peace of Villafranca, by which 
 Napoleon, in obedience to sound military 
 and political considerations, halted his 
 successful campaign and left Venice for 
 some years longer in the hands of Aus- 
 tria, was a sad disappointment to the 
 Italians, whose hopes had been inflamed 
 by the emperor's ill-advised proclamation 
 that he would free Italy "from the Alps 
 
1 84 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 to the Adriatic. " It is true that he still 
 gave them his support, and it would have 
 been impossible for them to achieve their 
 unity without his protection against Aus- 
 trian interference, a protection to which 
 they owed as much as to the genius of 
 Cavour or to the enterprise of Garibaldi. 
 But when their success went much fur- 
 ther than he had foreseen, he had exacted, 
 in compensation for his services and for 
 the sacrifices of France, the cession of 
 Nice and Savoy. Nice has in the past 
 been at times connected with Italy, at 
 times with France, and geographically be- 
 longs with either. The peasants in the 
 country about speak a dialect of Proven- 
 cal, but by i860 the town of Nice had 
 become Italianized, and it was here that 
 Garibaldi was born. The duchy of Savoy 
 is situated on the French side of the 
 Alps and has never been Italian in lan- 
 guage, but it was the home of the dynasty 
 that had now been raised to the Italian 
 throne, and as such was dear to them. 
 
FRANCE AND ITALY 185 
 
 The enforced cession of these two dis- 
 tricts, although not objected to by the 
 inhabitants themselves, has not been for- 
 given by the Italians to this day. When- 
 ever relations have been strained between 
 Italy and France, the eyes of those who 
 dream of Italia Irredenta — and every 
 Italian patriot has dreamed of it more or 
 less — have turned in the direction of Nice 
 and Savoy, and of the island of Corsica, 
 which once belonged to the republic of 
 Genoa and has been French only since 
 the middle of the eighteenth century. 
 
 Another cause of Italian discontent was 
 the continued occupation of Rome by 
 French troops, in deference to the wishes 
 of the clerical party in France. When the 
 garrison was withdrawn in 1867, Gari- 
 baldi's ill-advised expedition against the 
 city led to its prompt return, and to the 
 painful incident of the hero's defeat at 
 Mentana. In 1870 Italy, if given per- 
 mission to occupy Rome, was ready to 
 join with France against Prussia, her 
 
186 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 partner of four years earlier. But as 
 Napoleon refused his consent until too 
 late, the Italians, without running any 
 risks, profited by his disasters, and after 
 the withdrawal of the French garrison 
 seized the Eternal City. 
 
 Meanwhile in France there was much 
 division of opinion. Many were enthu- 
 siastic for the liberation of Italy and 
 proud of the part their country had taken 
 in it, but the powerful clerical party con- 
 demned the policy of the emperor alto- 
 gether and supported the territorial claims 
 of the Pope. There were Frenchmen, too, 
 who, though not clerical in their sympa- 
 thies, yet could not shut their eyes to the 
 fact that there were disadvantages in the 
 creation on the southeastern frontier of 
 France of a new great power and future 
 rival in the Mediterranean, whose ambi- 
 tions might some day conflict with hers. 
 Granted that the aspirations of the 
 Italians toward national unity were, like 
 those of the Germans, legitimate in them- 
 
FRANCE AND ITALY 187 
 
 selves, was it, after all, the business of 
 France to further them from sentimental 
 reasons when their success must diminish 
 her own relative position among Euro- 
 pean states ?* 
 
 In the later part of the Franco-Ger- 
 man war, a number of Italian volunteers 
 served in the French army under Gari- 
 baldi, and though neither they nor their 
 leader achieved much success, the senti- 
 ment that inspired their action was ap- 
 preciated. But after the Peace of Frank- 
 fort the relations between France and 
 Italy became worse. The Italians had 
 grown weary of being reminded of a 
 debt which they regarded as being by 
 this time paid or cancelled, and indeed 
 many of them, including King Victor 
 Emmanuel, felt that they had owed 
 gratitude to Napoleon III rather than 
 to the people he had governed. They 
 
 * "Napoleon III said to me in Paris that he planned to 
 make a powerful nation out of Italy. I replied, 'Your Maj- 
 esty, that is a ward that may become stronger than his guard- 
 ian.' " Poschinger, Also sprach Bismarck, iii, p. 151. 
 
1 88 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 had little sympathy for the French repub- 
 lic, whose example might encourage the 
 republican party in Italy, though they 
 feared a Bourbon restoration, believing 
 that it would mean a French intervention 
 in behalf of the Pope. This fear was 
 strengthened by the outspoken advocacy 
 of the papal claims by many French 
 royalists, including the Pretender, the 
 Comte de Chambord himself, and also 
 by the fact that until October, 1874, tne 
 French government unwisely kept a man- 
 of-war stationed at Civita Vecchia, the 
 port of Rome. 
 
 The Italians, therefore, began to look 
 for friends in other quarters. In 1873 
 King Victor Emmanuel visited Vienna 
 and Berlin, and there was talk of the 
 probable adhesion of Italy to the League 
 of the Three Emperors. But these first 
 advances led to nothing. The three em- 
 pires looked askance at Italy and felt no 
 particular need of her friendship. Her 
 alliance with Prussia in 1866, although it 
 
ITALY AND GERMANY 
 
 had been profitable to both parties, had 
 led to singularly little good feeling be- 
 tween them. From first to last they had 
 mistrusted one another. The Prussians 
 had a poor opinion of Italian military 
 capacity, and the Italians, although, 
 thanks to the successes of their ally, 
 they obtained Venice, were humiliated 
 by the course of the war and chagrined 
 at the treaty of peace. Bismarck seems 
 to have entertained scant liking or re- 
 spect for them;* from Austria they could 
 hardly expect cordiality, and Russia was 
 indifferent. 
 
 In 1877, aroused by rumors of the 
 agreement of Reichstadt, the Italian gov- 
 ernment sent Francesco Crispi on a mis- 
 sion to sound the German chancellor as 
 to the possibility of an alliance between 
 Italy and Germany against France and 
 Austria.f But Bismarck, while express- 
 
 * In 1880 he remarked: "They are like carrion crows on 
 the battle-field, that let others provide their food." Busch, 
 Bismarck, ii, p. 233. 
 
 f See Crispi's account of the mission in his memoirs. 
 
igo THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 ing a willingness to make a defensive 
 treaty against France, frankly declared 
 that he was on excellent terms with Aus- 
 tria and would remain so. In answer to 
 Crispi' s declaration that Italy could not 
 permit Austria to have Bosnia and Her- 
 zegovina without compensation for her- 
 self, he suggested, not a rectification of 
 her immediate frontier, which was what 
 Crispi was doubtless hinting at, but that 
 she should appropriate Turkish territory 
 in Albania. Nothing came of this sug- 
 gestion, and at the Congress of Berlin 
 Italy neither gained anything herself nor 
 dared oppose the gains of Austria. This 
 outcome produced disappointment and 
 discontent in the peninsula,* which was 
 not much allayed by the statement of the 
 ministry that "Italy had returned from 
 the congress with clean hands"; others 
 called it with empty hands. France, too, 
 
 * Crispi declared in a speech at Naples: "We were humiliated 
 at Berlin as the last people in Europe; we returned slapped 
 and despised." Chiala, Pagine di storia contemporanea, ii, 
 p. 17. 
 
TUNIS iqi 
 
 came back from Berlin 'with clean hands/ 
 but she had something in her pocket,* 
 and that something was an object Italy 
 coveted. 
 
 The Roman province of Africa has 
 more than once played its part in history. 
 From here the Punic city of Carthage 
 established her rule over the shores of 
 the western Mediterranean and sent her 
 ships in the Atlantic as far as Britain 
 and down the coasts of Africa. After her 
 fall there rose on the same site a new 
 Roman Carthage, long the second city in 
 the West. Then came the Vandal and 
 later the Arab conquest. Of Carthage 
 few traces remain, but some miles away 
 the city of Tunis had its periods of glory 
 as the capital of various Mohammedan 
 dynasties. In the sixteenth century it 
 was fought over by the Spaniard and the 
 Turk, and became the home of a piratical 
 state, nominally vassal to the Ottoman 
 empire. When the age of piracy came 
 
 * Words of Waddington on leaving the congress. 
 
192 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 to an end, its fortunes declined, and by 
 the last quarter of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury the regency of Tunis seemed almost 
 in a state of dissolution. The rule of its 
 sovereign, the Bey, was tyrannical and 
 corrupt; the treasury was empty; and 
 the first fatal step in outside interference, 
 foreign control of finance, had already 
 been taken. But the natural resources 
 of the country were as great as they had 
 been in its brightest days, the soil was 
 as fertile, the climate as mild as ever. 
 All that it needed to bring back its former 
 prosperity was enlightened government 
 and foreign capital and enterprise. 
 
 No acquisition overseas could be more 
 alluring to the Italians than Tunis. 
 Lying at their very door, it would as- 
 sure them the possession of the southern 
 as well as the northern sides of the nar- 
 row passage between the western and 
 the eastern halves of the Mediterranean, 
 that Mediterranean in which they re- 
 garded themselves as the heirs of the 
 
ITALY AND TUNIS 103 
 
 imperial traditions of Rome. The natural 
 conditions of the country were suitable 
 for Italian colonization, and its small 
 and backward population left plenty of 
 land for the immigrants whom Italy's high 
 birth rate enabled her to supply in any 
 number desired, and who already formed 
 much the largest foreign colony there. 
 No wonder, then, that as soon as the 
 kingdom of Italy was constituted,* and 
 even before, f Italians began to talk of the 
 necessity of bringing Carthage once more 
 under the rule of Rome. 
 
 But if Italy's desire for Tunis was nat- 
 ural and legitimate, that of France was 
 equally so. Half a century had now 
 elapsed since the French, by the capture 
 of Algiers, had set foot in North Africa. 
 
 * Mazzini wrote in 1871: "As Morocco turns toward the 
 Iberian Peninsula and Algeria toward France, Tunis, the key- 
 to the central Mediterranean, linked in formation with Sar- 
 dinia and Sicily and distant but some twenty-five leagues 
 from Sicily, obviously turns toward Italy. . . . To-day the 
 French are making eyes at it and will soon possess it, if we 
 do not." Scritti, xvi, pp. 153, 154. 
 
 j For instance, in the writings of Gioberti. 
 
194 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 In the course of time, after years of ardu- 
 ous fighting and enormous expense, with 
 many hesitations and mistakes but with 
 stubborn persistence, they had built up 
 a colony that was just beginning to flour- 
 ish. The possession of Algeria not only 
 strengthened France in the Mediterra- 
 nean; it also furnished her with compen- 
 sation for what she had lost in Europe, 
 as well as for the colonies of which she 
 had been deprived in the previous cen- 
 tury. Although the French settlers in 
 Algeria were and always will be a minority 
 of the population, they can give it their 
 civilization and perhaps in time their lan- 
 guage, making it, if not an African 
 France, at least a fresh field for the ex- 
 pression of French character and genius, 
 one distant less than a day's sail from the 
 mother country, and capable of being 
 united to it by strong and permanent ties. 
 Algeria itself, however, is only the central 
 portion of a region known a century ago 
 as the Barbary states, the whole of which 
 
FRANCE IN NORTH AFRICA i 95 
 
 belongs naturally in the same hands, for 
 it has the same general features and is 
 inhabited by the same peoples. Geo- 
 graphically it has a well defined unity of 
 its own. Its political divisions have been 
 the result not of natural formation but of 
 historical accident. 
 
 As soon as the French began to feel at 
 home in Algeria they inevitably turned 
 their eyes toward their neighbors east 
 and west, the regency of Tunis and the 
 empire of Morocco, the two other portions 
 of this North African region.* Both were 
 in such condition that they bade fair 
 sooner or later to come under the control 
 of some European power. Napoleon III, 
 in his dreamy idealism, may have deemed 
 that France should content herself with 
 Algeria and should leave Tunis to Italy 
 and Morocco to Spain. Other and more 
 practical Frenchmen felt that if ever the 
 
 * Tripoli, though counted as one of the Barbary states, is 
 separated from Tunis by the desert, which here reaches the 
 
ig6 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 time should come when these natural 
 prolongations of Algeria must fall into 
 foreign hands, those hands must be 
 French. From every point of view — po- 
 litical, commercial, military — for Algeria 
 to have as a direct neighbor the territory 
 of another great European power would 
 be disastrous, no matter how friendly 
 that power might be. This was partic- 
 ularly true as regarded Tunis, which on 
 the map goes as obviously with Algeria 
 as does Portugal with Spain, or Sicily 
 with Italy. In consequence, France 
 strove, on the whole with success, to 
 establish a preponderating influence in 
 Tunis, and she emphatically refused to 
 recognize the claims which the Sultan 
 of Turkey still put forth to suzerainty 
 there. 
 
 At the court of the Bey, as at many 
 other African and Asiatic posts, the chief 
 opponent to the French consul was 
 usually the British one. After i860 
 the Italian consul appeared on the scene 
 
TUNIS 197 
 
 as a new and active force. Here as else- 
 where the Franco-German war greatly 
 diminished French prestige and influence; 
 indeed, during its course an Italian ex- 
 pedition against Tunis was at one time 
 threatened. 
 
 When in 1878 the plan of the Congress 
 of Berlin was broached, it was at first 
 doubtful whether France would be repre- 
 sented. The contrast between her situa- 
 tion then and the one she had held at the 
 last European congress, that of Paris in 
 1856 after the Crimean war, was ex- 
 tremely painful to Frenchmen. To at- 
 tend, and at Berlin of all places, seemed a 
 humiliation, but not to attend was for 
 France to abdicate her right to be con- 
 sulted as a great power. She therefore 
 accepted the invitation, but on the con- 
 dition that there should be no discussion 
 of Egypt or of the French protectorate 
 of the Holy Places. To this the other 
 powers readily assented: a detail which 
 did not, it appears, prevent Bismarck 
 
io8 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 from suggesting to England the occu- 
 pation of Egypt.* 
 
 Toward the end of the congress, when 
 M. Waddington, the French foreign min- 
 ister and first plenipotentiary, was in- 
 formed of the convention handing over 
 Cyprus to England, he was so angered 
 that he thought of leaving at once, thus 
 probably disrupting the congress. Lord 
 Salisbury sought him out and assured 
 him that Great Britain, recognizing that 
 the situation of France in the Mediter- 
 ranean and as the possessor of Algeria 
 gave her a right to shape the destinies of 
 Tunis, would make no opposition when 
 the time came for her to assert that right. 
 M. Waddington was also given to under- 
 stand, though just how has never been 
 revealed, that Germany would have no 
 
 * In his communication announcing the Cyprus Conven- 
 tion, Lord Salisbury wrote to M. Waddington, on July 6, 
 1878: "I am telling Your Excellency no secret when I say 
 that we have been very earnestly pressed, by advisers of no 
 mean authority, to occupy Egypt — or at least to take the 
 borders of the Suez Canal." Lord Newton, Lord Lyons, ii, 
 p. 149, 
 
TUNIS 199 
 
 objection to the acquisition of Tunis by- 
 France.* 
 
 This attitude on the part of both Eng- 
 land and Germany was somewhat ex- 
 traordinary. In 1830 England was so 
 bitterly opposed to the French expedition 
 to Algiers that she almost went to war 
 to prevent it, and for many years after 
 she viewed the presence of the French in 
 North Africa with intense dislike. For 
 her now, without solicitation, to offer 
 Tunis to France was a startling reversal 
 of policy. We may surmise that it was 
 due chiefly to the fact that Tunis seemed 
 to be destined to fall soon into the hands 
 of some European power, and that Eng- 
 land, who just then happened to be on 
 quite cordial terms with France, and 
 since 1870 no longer feared her as of 
 old, was willing to grant her this com- 
 pensation for the strengthening of the 
 English position in the Mediterranean 
 
 * See G. Hanotaux, Histoire de la France contemporaine, iv, 
 p. 388, n. 
 
2o6 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 farther to the eastward. It is true that 
 England was likewise on excellent terms 
 with Italy, but if Italy should get pos- 
 session of Tunis, she would hold both 
 sides of the Mediterranean at its nar- 
 rowest part, and might some day control 
 or at least menace the security of a 
 passageway which was of more impor- 
 tance to Great Britain than the Suez 
 Canal itself. From the point of view 
 of British interests, it was better that 
 the two sides should not be in the hands 
 of the same power, even if that power 
 were Italy. 
 
 The attitude of Prince Bismarck was 
 determined by a different set of consid- 
 erations, which again we can only surmise, 
 as we lack direct evidence on the subject. 
 In 1873 Count Arnim, the German am- 
 bassador to Paris, said abruptly to the 
 Due Decazes: "I forbid you to take 
 Tunis." * There was no good reason 
 
 * Denkwiirdigkeiten des Fursten Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst, ii, 
 p. 199. 
 
TUNIS 
 
 that we know of for the threat at that 
 time. Arnim may have gone beyond his 
 instructions, as he did more than once, 
 or his menace may have been part of the 
 policy of bullying which Bismarck then 
 followed in much of his dealings with 
 France. He cared little for the affairs of 
 the Mediterranean, and he had no senti- 
 mental predilections as between France 
 and Italy; but it was clear to him that if 
 either of the two obtained the supremacy 
 in Tunis, there would be an estrangement 
 between them, and that this would 
 accrue to the advantage of Germany.* 
 If Italy had been willing from the first 
 to court his favor and pay his price, he 
 might perhaps have been willing to sup- 
 port her claims. Indirect overtures were 
 
 * Sir Charles Dilke, one of the best informed students of 
 foreign politics in his day, and under-secretary for foreign 
 affairs in the Gladstone cabinet of 1880, later wrote: "It at 
 least seems plain . . . that a great deal of offering of other 
 people's property took place, and that some of those offers 
 were suggested by Prince Bismarck. In one case, at least, 
 the same thing was offered to two parties, which is an in- 
 genious method of inducing complications which may lead to 
 war." — Present Position of European Politics, pp. 27, 28. 
 
THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 made to her by Austria and Germany 
 at the Congress of Berlin, but were re- 
 jected by Count Corti, who believed 
 that they were only intended to embroil 
 his country with France, and who had 
 been enjoined by his government to 
 adopt an attitude of reserve.* It is 
 worthy of note that not long before, 
 when Crispi was seeking for a German 
 alliance, Bismarck had suggested to him 
 the taking of Turkish territories on the 
 Adriatic, but had made no mention of 
 Tunis. He may have believed that Italy, 
 even if assured of support, would not 
 summon up the resolution to follow his 
 advice at the cost of French enmity. He 
 may also have believed that, if he could 
 launch France into a career of colonial 
 expansion, he would not only turn her 
 thoughts from Alsace-Lorraine and a war 
 of revenge, but also weaken her by divert- 
 ing her resources from her tasks in Eu- 
 
 *J. Grabinski, M. Depretis, pp. 255-257. See also the 
 appendix by Hans F. Helmolt in Arthur Singer's Geschichte 
 des Dreibundes, p. 253. 
 
TUNIS 203 
 
 rope. Be that as it may, he let M. Wad- 
 dington know that he would not stand in 
 France's way in Tunisian affairs, and in 
 the years that followed he maintained a 
 consistently favorable attitude.* 
 
 The temptation thus offered to France 
 was considerable, and possibly her states- 
 men were mistaken in not yielding to it 
 at once. But French public opinion was 
 hardly ready yet; the war of 1870 was 
 still too recent, the need of rest and re- 
 cuperation still too pressing. There was 
 suspicion of Italian designs and intrigues, 
 but there was little inclination to take any 
 adventurous step in order to anticipate 
 them. Besides, anything Bismarck ap- 
 proved of was feared as perhaps conceal- 
 ing a trap. The government at Paris, 
 therefore, decided against immediate ac- 
 tion, but Waddington, after his return, 
 took care to put on record, in a more 
 precise and perhaps exaggerated form, 
 
 * There are many indications of this in Hohenlohe, Busch, 
 and elsewhere. Bismarck was probably also pleased by the 
 reserve France displayed toward certain advances on the part 
 of Russia. 
 
204 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 his conversation with Lord Salisbury, and 
 then to submit the paper at London and 
 thereby obtain a formal acknowledgment 
 that in substance at least his statement 
 was correct. 
 
 In Italy the results of the Congress of 
 Berlin were received with dissatisfaction. 
 Russia, Austria, England, and the Balkan 
 states had all obtained something, and 
 there were rumors of a concession to 
 France, whereas Italy had come out 
 empty-handed — and she had got rather 
 into the habit of expecting to profit from 
 each international crisis. Public opinion 
 in the peninsula was discontented and 
 restless. There was a renewal of Irredent- 
 ist agitation, which put a strain upon the 
 relations between Italy and Austria and 
 led to a threatening concentration of 
 Austrian troops on the frontier. In 
 Tunis, just as the English consul, Mr. 
 Woods, for twenty years the tireless 
 opponent of French influence, was re- 
 tired, a new and active Italian one, Sr. 
 
TUNIS 205 
 
 Maccio, appeared on the scene in a ship- 
 of-war and was installed with military 
 pomp. He immediately plunged into a 
 struggle with his equally active French 
 rival, M. Roustan, and for a couple of 
 years the duel between them continued, 
 the Bey hearkening sometimes to the one 
 and sometimes to the other,* while the 
 country fell into ever greater confusion. 
 In France and Italy the public followed 
 the course of these events with increas- 
 ing attention, and violent articles in the 
 press heightened the irritation on both 
 sides. 
 
 In all this the Italians were following a 
 dangerous policy. As the weaker nation 
 of the two, it was for their interest to 
 bide their time and maintain the status 
 quo, not to push matters to an issue. In- 
 stead, they angered and alarmed the 
 French by their noisy activity, until the 
 
 * Roustan, in obedience to orders from Paris, was trying 
 to persuade the Bey into signing a treaty that would make 
 him a protege of France. See C. de Freycinet, Souvenirs: 
 1878-1893, p. 168. 
 
206 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 government in Paris, secure in its greater 
 strength and in its knowledge that Italy 
 would get no outside assistance, deter- 
 mined to settle the matter once and 
 for all. Taking as its pretext the viola- 
 tion of Algerian territory by an unruly 
 Tunisian tribe called the Kroumirs, it 
 despatched a punitive military expedi- 
 tion of 30,000 men. On April 24, 1881, 
 the French armies crossed the Tunisian 
 frontier, and without opposition pushed 
 on to the capital. On May 12, in the 
 palace of the Bardo,* the Bey was forced 
 to sign a treaty, which, while preserving 
 for him the semblance of sovereignty over 
 his subjects, deprived him of all real au- 
 thority, and turned Tunis into a French 
 protectorate. 
 
 In preparing and carrying out this ex- 
 pedition, the ministry of Jules Ferry, then 
 in power in Paris, had shown itself calm 
 and resolute. It had not, however, been 
 frank in its explanations to the chamber 
 
 * Or Kasr-el-Said. 
 
TUNIS 207 
 
 of deputies, nor scrupulous as to truth 
 in its preliminary assurances to Italy. It 
 also made the mistake of withdrawing a 
 large part of the army of occupation too 
 soon, and thus giving an opportunity for 
 an insurrection, which broke out and ne- 
 cessitated the sending of fresh forces and 
 some little fighting before it was sup- 
 pressed. Nevertheless, in spite of their 
 mistakes, Jules Ferry and his colleagues 
 deserved well of their country. They 
 gained for France a territory which has 
 greatly strengthened her position in North 
 Africa, and is without question one of 
 the most valuable of all her possessions. 
 Its progress has been steady and satis- 
 factory; it has been admirably governed 
 from the first, and it presents perhaps 
 the most successful example of French 
 colonial administration. But it cost 
 France the enmity of Italy for twenty 
 years, and the entrance of Italy into an 
 alliance against her which lasted for a 
 generation. 
 
2 o8 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 The expedition against Tunis and the 
 treaty of the Bardo aroused the Italians 
 to frantic protest. Turn where they 
 would, they could find no ally — except, 
 perhaps, the Turks, who wished to assert 
 the Sultan's suzerainty by despatching 
 ships to the scene of action, but were 
 stopped by the categorical declaration of 
 the French that a Turkish fleet would be 
 treated as an enemy. The great powers 
 remained deaf to Italian appeals. In 
 England public opinion was somewhat 
 excited, but the hands of the Liberal gov- 
 ernment were tied by the benevolent as- 
 surances of its Conservative predecessor. 
 Germany and Austria remained ostenta- 
 tiously indifferent; Russia was more in- 
 different still. There was no help for the 
 Italians. France was not to be stopped 
 except by actual force, and they were too 
 weak unaided to risk the arbitrament of 
 the sword. 
 
 Throughout the peninsula the resent- 
 ment was bitter. The Cairoli ministry, 
 
RESENTMENT IN ITALY 209 
 
 which had been in power, fell after the 
 treaty of the Bardo, a victim to public 
 indignation. Italy regarded herself as in- 
 jured and humiliated, and she chafed at 
 her isolation and weakness. She believed 
 that France had cruelly wronged her, and 
 her ill-feeling was heightened by a riot, 
 accompanied by loss of life, between 
 Italians and Frenchmen at Marseilles. 
 She had relied in vain on assistance from 
 England. When she turned to Germany 
 and made fresh approaches for an alli- 
 ance, she was met with the frank answer 
 that the way to Berlin lay through 
 Vienna. 
 
 To Vienna the Italians went accord- 
 ingly. As a first step, King Humbert 
 himself made a visit there at the end of 
 October, 1881, despite the fact that Em- 
 peror Francis Joseph, on account of his 
 relations with the papacy, had never 
 been willing to return in Rome the visit 
 King Victor Emmanuel had paid him at 
 his capital in 1873. King Humbert was 
 
2io THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 received with friendly courtesy, but polit- 
 ical discussion was avoided. In Decem- 
 ber the Italian foreign office instructed 
 its ambassadors in Berlin and Vienna to 
 begin negotiations for a definite treaty. 
 At both places their overtures were re- 
 ceived with a calmness that was dis- 
 couraging. The truth was that though 
 the members of the Austro-German alli- 
 ance perceived the advantages of admit- 
 ting a new partner to their society, they 
 neither trusted nor greatly respected their 
 future friend, and they felt that they were 
 in a position to wait for advances and to 
 make their own terms. Prince Bismarck 
 graciously admitted that he was "satis- 
 fied" with the attitude of Italy,* and in- 
 timated that though he did not think the 
 time had yet come for an alliance between 
 her and Germany, he should be glad to 
 see her reach an agreement with Austria. 
 Cheered by this approval, the government 
 at Rome continued its negotiations with 
 
 * Chiala, iii, p. 282. 
 
ITALY AND AUSTRIA 211 
 
 Vienna, which, however, progressed but 
 slowly, as the views of the two parties dif- 
 fered in various respects. Several notes 
 had to be interchanged, and Bismarck 
 presently joined in and shared the dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 Italy asked for two things: first, a 
 guarantee of the integrity of her territory, 
 which should put an end to all danger of 
 foreign intervention in behalf of the 
 papacy; and, second, support for her po- 
 sition and ambitions in the Mediterra- 
 nean. The first demand meant for Em- 
 peror Francis Joseph and for Catholic 
 Austria a sacrifice of sentiment. It was 
 a painful thing for them to consecrate the 
 possession of Rome by the upstart house 
 of Savoy. At last they consented to this, 
 chiefly because the provision for a terri- 
 torial guarantee, being mutual, bound the 
 Italian government to set its face in fu- 
 ture against the cry of Italia Irredenta. 
 Germany, on her part, cared nothing for 
 the territorial claims of the Pope, and 
 
212 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 had naturally no objections to a provi- 
 sion that offered her one more security 
 for her possession of Alsace-Lorraine. 
 
 The second Italian demand was refused 
 by both Berlin and Vienna. Neither 
 had any interest in Italian ambitions in 
 the Mediterranean or inclination to put 
 themselves out to serve them. The 
 French occupation of Tunis did not dis- 
 turb them, and Austria at least was 
 hostile to any extension of Italian influ- 
 ence in the Adriatic. All that Italy could 
 get was a vague general promise that the 
 allies would support each other within the 
 limits of their own interests; and it was 
 provided, to reassure Austria, that the 
 principle of the status quo should be 
 maintained in the Balkans. The casus 
 foederis for military support was only to 
 become operative when one of the allies 
 was attacked by two foreign powers. 
 The duration of the treaty was set at five 
 years, and it was to be kept secret. 
 
 During the course of the discussions 
 
CONCLUSION OF THE ALLIANCE 213 
 
 Bismarck had decided to conclude an 
 identical treaty between Germany and 
 Italy, leaving out only the clause in re- 
 gard to the Balkans, which was of no in- 
 terest to him. On May 22, 1882, the two 
 documents which together constituted 
 the Triple Alliance were signed in Vienna, 
 the one by Count Kalnoky, foreign min- 
 ister for the Dual Empire, and by the 
 Italian ambassador, the other by the 
 German and Italian ambassadors. Sev- 
 eral months elapsed before the rumors 
 as to the existence of the agreement were 
 fully confirmed and it was officially ad- 
 mitted to the world.* 
 
 The formation of the Triple Alliance 
 was another triumph for Bismarck. He 
 paid almost nothing for it, as he refused 
 to interest himself in Italy's Mediterra- 
 
 * For these negotiations, see Chiala, iii, and Fraknoi, "Zur 
 Entstehungsgeschichte des Dreibundsvertrags," in the 
 Deutsche Revue, December, 1915. For a sharp criticism of 
 the ambiguities in the text as at present known, see Fraknoi, 
 "Kritik des Dreibundsvertrags," Deutsche Revue, January, 
 1916. 
 
214 TEE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 nean affairs, and the guarantee he gave 
 of the integrity of her territory imposed 
 no burden upon Germany. What he ob- 
 tained was an important addition to the 
 forces of the Austro-German alliance in 
 case of a conflict with France and Russia. 
 To be sure, his opinion of the Italian army 
 was not high, but that it should menace 
 the French and not the Austrian frontier 
 in case of hostilities counted for a great 
 deal.* The Italians had also a navy that 
 was reckoned as the third in Europe, and 
 could be of service to Germany, whose 
 fleet was still inferior to that of France. 
 Austria, too, in return for a considerable 
 profit sacrificed but little, for she had 
 definitely abandoned the idea of regaining 
 her lost Italian territories, though she was 
 determined to retain those she still pos- 
 
 * "That is what Prince Bismarck meant when he once 
 remarked that it was sufficient for him that an Italian cor- 
 poral with the Italian flag and a drummer beside him should 
 array themselves against the West, i. e., France, and not 
 against the East, i. e., Austria." Bulow, Imperial Germany, 
 p. 60. See also Poschinger, Also sprach Bismarck, iii, p. 151. 
 
ADVANTAGES OF THE ALLIANCE 215 
 
 sessed. The Triple Alliance relieved her 
 from anxiety on that score and assured 
 her against the possibility, which she had 
 sometimes feared, of a league between 
 Russia and Italy. 
 
 For Italy the advantage of the compact 
 was more problematical, even though it 
 was she who had solicited it, and though 
 it was generally approved throughout the 
 peninsula. In its favor could be urged 
 that it put an end to the isolation that 
 had weighed upon her, and that it made 
 her feel she was being treated as a really 
 great power. It avenged her for the hu- 
 miliation that had been inflicted upon 
 her by France, and it assured her against 
 French attack in the future. It also 
 secured her against Austria, and here we 
 have one of the peculiarities of the situa- 
 tion. So deep-seated, in spite of what 
 was loudly said to the contrary, were the 
 causes of hostility between Austria and 
 Italy, that many Italians believed that 
 the only way for the two countries to 
 
216 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 remain at peace with one another was 
 by becoming allies. Otherwise they must 
 be foes. Finally, the friendship of Ger- 
 many and Austria meant for Italy at least 
 their benevolent neutrality if she should 
 launch into colonial enterprises, and per- 
 haps their support, if France were to in- 
 terfere with her. 
 
 But critics of the alliance then, and still 
 more later, asserted that most of these 
 advantages were imaginary, since they 
 were an insurance against perils that did 
 not exist. Granting that France had 
 made use of her superior strength to seize 
 an object that had been coveted with 
 good reason by both countries, there was 
 no cause for believing that she meditated 
 further aggression.* The French repub- 
 lic was becoming increasingly radical and 
 anti-clerical, as was proved by its just 
 having passed a set of school laws that 
 had excited intense anger among good 
 
 * The Italian fears of French designs against Tripoli never 
 had any justification. 
 
ITALY AND THE ALLIANCE 217 
 
 Catholics. To imagine that it or any 
 statesman serving it would undertake a 
 crusade to restore the temporal authority 
 of the Pope was preposterous. If Italy 
 was isolated, so were Great Britain and 
 Spain and many other powers, and they 
 found themselves none the worse for it. 
 If her policy was wise and she paid proper 
 attention to her army and navy, she was 
 strong enough not only to defend herself 
 against any likely attack but also to make 
 her aid well worth courting by other 
 powers. Instead, by joining the Triple 
 Alliance she had tied her hands in the 
 choice of her friendships, sacrificing that 
 of France for many years to come. It 
 was useless to declare that the Triple 
 Alliance was purely defensive, a league 
 of peace to which none could properly 
 object. No rhetoric could alter the fact 
 that while France had shed her blood for 
 the liberation of Italy, now Italy, in so 
 far as she was able, had guaranteed to 
 Germany the possession of Alsace-Lor- 
 
2i8 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 raine. There was nothing for France to 
 do but to accept the situation,* but her 
 resentment was deep and lasting. This, 
 however, did not trouble the Italians. 
 They had found new friends and were 
 content with them. For better or for 
 worse, the Triple Alliance was destined 
 to last for a whole generation, during 
 which it was to be one of the dominant 
 forces in the European world. 
 
 * For an excellent and dignified article on the subject, see 
 G. Valbert, "Un publiciste allemand et son plaidoyer en fa- 
 veur de la triple alliance," in the Revue des deux mondes, I 
 June, 1892, pp. 683-694. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 I 
 
 THE AUSTRO-GERMAN ALLIANCE 
 
 The exact terms of the Austro-German al- 
 liance were known only to a very few people 
 until they were officially published on February 
 3, 1888. There may have been supplementary 
 conventions at different times, but there is no 
 reason for thinking that any changes have been 
 made in the original text. 1 
 
 Inasmuch as their Majesties the German Emperor, 
 King of Prussia, and the Emperor of Austria, King 
 of Hungary, must consider it their inalienable duty 
 to provide for the security of their Empires and the 
 peace of their subjects, under all circumstances; 
 
 Inasmuch as the two Sovereigns, as was the case 
 under the former existing Treaty, will be enabled by 
 the close union of the two Empires to fulfil this duty 
 more easily and more efficaciously; 
 
 Inasmuch as, finally, an intimate cooperation of 
 Germany and Austria-Hungary can menace no one, 
 but is rather calculated to consolidate the peace of 
 Europe on the terms established by the stipulations 
 of Berlin; 
 
 Published in the Berlin Official Gazette, February 3, 1883. 
 Translation in British and Foreign State Papers, lxxiii (Lon- 
 don, 1889), pp. 270-272. 
 
 219 
 
220 APPENDIX 
 
 Their Majesties the Emperor of Germany, and the 
 Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, while most 
 solemnly promising never to allow their purely de- 
 fensive Agreement to develop an aggressive tendency 
 in any direction, have determined to conclude an al- 
 liance of peace and mutual defence. . . . 
 
 Article I. Should, contrary to their hope, and 
 against the loyal desire of the two High Contracting 
 Parties, one of the two Empires be attacked by Rus- 
 sia, the High Contracting Parties are bound to come 
 to the assistance one of the other with the whole war 
 strength of their Empires, and accordingly only to 
 conclude peace together and upon mutual agree- 
 ment. 
 
 Article II. Should one of the High Contracting 
 Parties be attacked by another Power, the other High 
 Contracting Party binds itself hereby, not only not 
 to support the aggressor against its high ally, but to 
 observe at least a benevolent neutral attitude toward 
 its fellow Contracting Party. 
 
 Should, however, in such a case the attacking Power 
 be supported by Russia, either by an active coopera- 
 tion or by military measures which constitute a menace 
 to the Party attacked, then the obligation stipulated 
 in Article I of this Treaty, for mutual assistance with 
 the whole fighting force becomes equally operative, 
 and the conduct of the war by the two High Con- 
 tracting Parties shall in this case also be in common 
 until the conclusion of a common peace. 
 
 Article III. This Treaty shall, in conformity 
 with its peaceful character, and to avoid any mis- 
 interpretations, be kept secret by the two High Con- 
 tracting Parties, and only be communicated to a 
 third Power upon a joint understanding between the 
 
APPENDIX 22i 
 
 two Parties, and according to the terms of a special 
 Agreement. 
 
 The two High Contracting Parties venture to hope, 
 after the sentiments expressed by the Emperor Alex- 
 ander at the meeting at Alexandrovo, that the arma- 
 ments of Russia will not in reality prove to be menacing 
 to them, and have on that account no reason for making 
 a communication; should, however, this hope, con- 
 trary to their expectation, prove to be erroneous, the 
 two High Contracting Parties would consider it their 
 loyal obligation to let the Emperor Alexander know, 
 at least confidentially, that they must consider an 
 attack on either of them as directed against both. 
 
 In virtue of which the Plenipotentiaries have signed 
 this Treaty and affixed their seals. 
 
 Vienna, October 7, 1879. 
 
 (L.S.) H. VII, P. Reuss. 
 (L.S.) Andrassy. 
 
 II 
 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 The terms of the Triple Alliance have never 
 been published, but Articles I, III, IV, and VII 
 are given in the Austrian Red Book, issued in 
 1915. 1 The last part of Article VII, which refers 
 to possible territorial changes in the East, and 
 the meaning of which was the chief subject of 
 dispute in the negotiations that preceded the 
 
 1 Diplomatic Documents concerning the Relations of Austria- 
 Hungary with Italy, pp. 179, 189, 190. 
 
222 APPENDIX 
 
 outbreak of hostilities between Austria and 
 Italy, was not in the original treaty. It was 
 inserted in 1887, when the treaty was renewed 
 for the first time. The first part, on the other 
 hand, may well have been in the original treaty, 
 as we know there was a provision to this effect. 
 Articles I, III, and IV were probably in the 
 treaty of 1882; but the wording for III and IV 
 cannot have been quite the same, because, as 
 stated above, the original Triple Alliance was 
 formed by the Austro-German treaty of 1879, 
 supplemented in 1882 by separate though sim- 
 ilar treaties between Italy and Austria, and 
 Italy and Germany. In 1887 there was but one 
 document, signed by all the parties to the treaty. 
 
 Article I. The High contracting Parties mu- 
 tually promise peace and friendship, and shall not 
 enter into any alliance or engagement directed against 
 any one of their respective States. 
 
 They bind themselves to proceed to negotiations 
 on such political and economic questions of a general 
 nature as may arise; and, moreover, promise their 
 mutual support within the scope of their own in- 
 terests. 
 
 Article III. If one or two of the High Contract- 
 ing Parties should be attacked without direct provoca- 
 tion on their part, and be engaged in war with two or 
 several Great Powers not signatory to this Treaty, 
 the casus foederis shall apply simultaneously to all 
 the High Contracting Parties. 
 
 Article IV. In the event that a Great Power not 
 signatory to this Treaty should menace the safety 
 
APPENDIX 223 
 
 of the States of one of the High contracting Parties, 
 and that the menaced Party should be forced to make 
 tvar on that Power, the two others bind themselves 
 to observe toward their ally a benevolent neutrality. 
 Each one of them in that case reserves to herself the 
 right to participate in the war, if she should consider 
 it appropriate to make common cause with her ally. 
 
 Article VII. Austria-Hungary and Italy, being 
 desirous solely that the territorial status quo in the 
 near East be maintained as much as possible, pledge 
 themselves to exert their influence to prevent all terri- 
 torial modification which may prove detrimental to 
 one or the other of the Powers signatory to this Treaty. 
 To that end they shall communicate to one another 
 all such information as may be suitable for their mu- 
 tual enlightenment, concerning their own dispositions 
 as well as those of other Powers. 
 
 Should, however, the status quo in the regions of 
 the Balkans, or of the Turkish coasts and islands in 
 the Adriatic and iEgean Seas, in the course of events 
 become impossible; and should Austria-Hungary or 
 Italy be placed under the necessity, either by the ac- 
 tion of a third Power or otherwise, to modify that 
 status quo by a temporary or permanent occupation 
 on their part, such occupation shall take place only 
 after a previous agreement has been made between 
 the two Powers, based on the principle of reciprocal 
 compensation for all advantages, territorial or other- 
 wise, which either of them may obtain beyond the 
 present status quo, a compensation which shall satisfy 
 the legitimate interests and aspirations of both Par- 
 ties. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abdul-Aziz, Sultan, 90. 
 
 Abdul-Hamid II, Sultan, 91. 
 
 Adrianople, armistice of, 130. 
 
 Adriatic, the, 184, 202, 212. 
 
 iEgean, the, 92, 126, 132. 
 
 Afghanistan, 135. 
 
 Alabama claims, the, 14. 
 
 Albania, 96, 132, 143, 190. 
 
 Albert, Prince, 16. 
 
 Alexander I, Tsar, 49. 
 
 Alexander II, Tsar, 17, 18, 19, 47, 50, 59/., 63, 91 /., 
 
 93> 95> 99> ioo> 101, 102, 105 /., in, 115 /., 129/., 
 
 134, 154, 155, 156, 165, 167/., 170, 172, 174/. 
 Alexander III, Tsar, 175 /. 
 Alexander the Great, 65 /. 
 Alexandrovo, meeting of emperors at, 167 /. 
 Algeria, 193-196, 198. 
 Algiers, 193, 199. 
 
 Alsace-Lorraine, 5, 35, 54, 102, 202, 212, 217/. 
 American independence, war of, 4. 
 Andrassy, Count Julius, 45/., 85, 93, 97, 99, 103, 114, 
 
 124, 125, 130, 133, 134, 138, 148, 149/., 151, 157, 
 
 165, 166, 169, 170, 172. 
 Andrassy note, the, 85, 89. 
 Anti-clericalism, in France, 216/. 
 Arabs, the, 66, 191. 
 Armenia, 143. 
 Armenians, the, 141, 147. 
 
 225 
 
226 INDEX 
 
 Arnim, Count Harry von, 37, 200/. 
 
 Asia Minor, 66. 
 
 Augusta, Empress, 53. 
 
 Ausgleich, the, 21 /. 
 
 Austria-Hungary, 3, 20-23, 35, 4*> 4^ /-, 64, 66 y 67, 
 153, 154, 180, 183, 189, 190, 202, 204, 208; the League 
 of the Three Emperors, 43-62; the Eastern Question, 
 68/., 73-76, 80, 82/., 85 /., 92-105, m-115, 117, 
 123-130, I33~i4i> H4> I48-I5i> 176-179; the Aus- 
 tro-German alliance, 157-175; admission of Italy to 
 the alliance, 179, 209-216. 
 
 Azov, 68. 
 
 Balkan Peninsula, the, see Eastern Question. 
 
 Baltic provinces, the, 164. 
 
 Barbary states, the, 194/. 
 
 Bardo, treaty of the, 206, 208, 209. 
 
 Bariatinski, 51. 
 
 Batum, 114, note, 132, 137, 140. 
 
 Bayazid, 132, 137. 
 
 Beaconsfield, Earl of, 87, 105, 106, 126, 133, 138, 141, 
 
 147, 173- 
 
 Belgium, 15. 
 
 Belgrade, 177. 
 
 Berlin, Congress of, 130, 136-154, 163, 165, 173, 197/., 
 202, 204. 
 
 Berlin, meeting of the three emperors at, 47 /. 
 
 Berlin Memorandum, the, 86, 89, 90. 
 
 Bessarabia, 92, 96/., 114, 132, 137, 140. 
 
 Beust, Count, 39/., 44/.; quoted, 31, note. 
 
 Bismarck, Prince Otto von, 15, 19, 63, 88, 99, 126, 128, 
 150, 156, 176, 190, 210, 213^".; commanding position 
 of, 27/.; policy of, 28-43; the League of the Three 
 Emperors, 43-62; prefers Austria to Russia, 101 /., 
 
INDEX 227 
 
 112/., 134/.; the Congress of Berlin, 136, 138-141, 
 
 151-154; frames an alliance with Austria, 157-173; 
 
 his estimate of the Italians, 189, 214; suggests to 
 
 England the occupation of Egypt, 197/.; his Tunisian 
 
 policy, 200-203. 
 Black Sea clause of the Treaty of Paris, abrogation of, 
 
 16, 19. 
 Bonaparte, house of, 36. 
 Bosnia, 81, 82, 91, 92, 93, 94, note, 96, 97, 100, 103, 
 
 107, 108, 114, 132, 138, 140, 143, 145, 149, 150 /., 
 
 155, 176, 190- 
 Bourbons, the, 36, 188. 
 Britain, 191. 
 Bulgaria, 80/., 96, 97, 103, 105, 107, 121 /., 131, 132, 
 
 133, I39> 145; 176, 177- 
 Byzantine empire, the, 66, 70. 
 
 Caesar, 181. 
 
 Cairoli, 208. 
 
 Carthage, 191, 193. 
 
 Catherine II, empress of Russia, 81, 159. 
 
 Cavour, 184. 
 
 Central Asia, 135. 
 
 Chambord, Comte de, 188. 
 
 Christians, oppression of, by the Turks, 69 /., 75, 76, 
 
 97/., 131, 139, 147. 
 Cisalpine Gaul, 181. 
 Civita Vecchia, 188. 
 Clericals, in Austria, 172; in France, 10, 185; in Italy, 
 
 186. 
 Commune, the, 5. 
 Constantinople, 79, 94, note, 96, 106, 117, 123, 129, 
 
 131, 134, 136. 
 Constantinople Conference, the, 107-111. 
 
228 INDEX 
 
 Convention of Constantinople, see Cyprus Convention. 
 
 Corsica, 185. 
 
 Corti, Count, 202. 
 
 Crimea, the, 100. 
 
 Crimean war, the, 13, 16, 17, 18,20,42,75, 115,135,197. 
 
 Crispi, Francesco, 189/., 202. 
 
 Croatia, 21. 
 
 Cyprus, 137, 198. 
 
 Cyprus Convention, the, 137/., 141, 147, 198. 
 
 Dalmatia, 82, 83, 86. 
 
 Decazes, Due, 56, 58, 60. 
 
 Derby, Lord, 107, 117, 133; quoted, 109. 
 
 Dilke, Sir Charles, quoted, 61, note, 201, note. 
 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, see Beaconsfield. 
 
 Dobrudja, the, 132. 
 
 Eastern Question, the, 32, 41, 56, 64, 65-154, 176-179, 
 
 190, 197, 202, 212, 213. 
 Eastern Rumelia, 139, 176. 
 Egypt, 117, 197, 198. 
 Egyptians, the, 120. 
 Elizabeth, empress of Russia, 38/. 
 England, 11-17, 32, 34, 52, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 173, 198; 
 
 the Eastern Question, j6y 80, 85, 87-90, 98, 100, 
 
 105-111, 117, 123-131, I33~i4i> H4> 146/.; Tunis, 
 
 196, 198, 199/., 204, 208, 209. 
 Epirus, 143 /. 
 Eugene, Prince, 3. 
 Exarchate, Bulgarian, established, 80 /. 
 
 Ferry, Jules, 206, 207. 
 Fraknoi, cited, 213, note. 
 
 France, 3-9, 30 /., 35~4i> 43, 44> 52, 53 #•> 85, 128, 
 J 73» l %9> 190, 214, 215, 216/., 218; the war scare of 
 
INDEX 229 
 
 1875, 55-62, 161; the Eastern Question, 76, 87, 90, 
 117, 126; relations with Italy, 179-188; the acquisi- 
 tion of Tunis, 190-209, 212, 216. 
 
 Francis Joseph, emperor of Austria, 20, 44, 46, 93, 95, 
 97, 102, 104, 106, 114/., 129, 149, 156, note, 166, 
 209, 211. 
 
 Frankfort, Parliament of, 25. 
 
 Frankfort, Peace of, 1, 160, 187. 
 
 Frederick, crown prince of Germany, 16, 62. 
 
 Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, 24, 38/., 159. 
 
 Frederick William IV, king of Prussia, 162. 
 
 French Revolution, the, 4, 25, 182. 
 
 Garibaldi, 184, 185, 187. 
 
 Gastein, 157, 165-168. 
 
 Genoa, 185. 
 
 German Confederation, the, 20, 158, 169. 
 
 Germany, 2/., 23-27, 92, 99, 117, 128, 144, 198/.; Bis- 
 marck and his policy, 27-44; tne League of the 
 Three Emperors, 44-52; the Kulturkampf, 53; alarm 
 at the rapid recovery of France, 53 f.\ the war scare 
 of 1875, 55-62; loosening of the League of the Three 
 Emperors, 62 ff. t 84; murder of the German consul 
 at Salonica, 90; prefers Austria to Russia, 100 ff.> 
 112/., 134/.; the Congress of Berlin, 136-142, 151- 
 154; estrangement of Russia, 154-161; the Austro- 
 German alliance, 161-175; relations with Italy, 
 188 ff.; the question of Tunis, 200-203; tne forma- 
 tion of the Triple Alliance, 209-218. 
 
 Giers, de, 176. 
 
 Gladstone, William Ewart, 105, 147, 201, note. 
 
 Gontaut-Biron, Due de, 57. 
 
 Gorchakov, Prince, 51, 60, 63, 86, 93, 94, note, 99, 114, 
 note, 138, 153, 156. 
 
2 3 o INDEX 
 
 Great Britain, see England. 
 
 Great Bulgaria, 127, 136, 139, 145, 146/. 
 
 Great Germany, 33, 164, 172. 
 
 Great powers, the, 2-27. 
 
 Great Serbia, 127. 
 
 Greece, 24, 56, 81, 96, 123, 133, 141, 143 /., 146, 147; 
 
 invades Thessaly, 131. 
 Guildhall banquet, Lord Beaconsfield's address at, 106. 
 
 Herodotus, 65. 
 
 Herzegovina, 64, 81, 82, 83, 91, 92, 93, 94, note, 96, 
 
 103, 107, 108, 114, 132, 138, 140, 145, 149, 150/., 
 
 176, 190. 
 Hohenlohe, Prince, 58, 171. 
 Holland, 31, note. 
 Holy Alliance, the, 41, 49. 
 Holy Places, the, 197. 
 Humbert, king of Italy, 209 /. 
 Hungary, see Austria-Hungary. 
 
 Ignatiev, Count, 79 /., 108. 
 
 India, 4, 87, 135; Indian troops sent to Malta, 133. 
 
 Industrial development of Germany, 33. 
 
 Ischl, meeting at, 44, 46. 
 
 Italia Irredenta, 185, 204, 211. 
 
 Italy, 2, 9/., 35, 42, 52, 87, 92, 117, 148; relations with 
 France, 179-188; looks for friends elsewhere, 188- 
 191; the question of Tunis, 191-209; enters into alli- 
 ance with Austria and Germany, 209-218. 
 
 Jena, 24. 
 
 John Sobieski, king of Poland, 66. 
 
 Kabul, 135, note. 
 
 Kalnoky, Count, 176, note, 213. 
 
INDEX 231 
 
 Kars, 123, 132, 137, 140. 
 Kroumirs, the, 206. 
 Kulturkampf, the, 31 /., 53 /. 
 
 Latin nations, the, 181 /. 
 
 League of the Three Emperors, the, 43-62, 63, 84, 87, 
 
 89, 98, 152, 159, 165, 171, 188. 
 Le Flo, General, 59. 
 Leipsic, battle of, 159. 
 Livadia, 100 ff. 
 Loftus, Lord, 105. 
 Lombardy, 83, 148. 
 London, Treaty of (1871), 118. 
 London Conference, the, 19, note, 123, 141. 
 London protocol, the (March 31, 1877), 115/. 
 Lorraine, 30. 
 
 Louis II, king of Bavaria, 171. 
 Louis XIV, king of France, 3, 26. 
 Louis XV, king of France, 3 /. 
 Lyons, Lord, 56. 
 
 Maccio, Italian consul at Tunis, 204 /. 
 
 Macedonia, 127, 139, 143, 147. 
 
 Magenta, battle of, 183. 
 
 Malta, 133. 
 
 Manchester, Lord Salisbury's speech at, 173. 
 
 Manteuffel, General, 99, 166. 
 
 Marlborough, Duke of, 3. 
 
 Marseilles, riot at, 209. 
 
 Mazzini, quoted, 193, note. 
 
 Mediterranean, the, Italian ambitions for empire in, 
 10, 186, 192/., 200, 211, 212, 213/.; England opposes 
 Russia's access to, 126; policy of France in, 186, 194, 
 198; position of England in, 199/. 
 
232 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Mentana, 185. 
 
 Metternich, Prince, 49. 
 
 Milan, Prince, 98, 178. 
 
 Miliutin, General, 168. 
 
 Moltke, von, 39, 50, 51, 55, 58, 171. 
 
 Montenegro, 73, 79, 86, 91, 95, 96, 97, 107, 113 /., 116, 
 
 132, 140, 143, 145 /., 177. 
 Morier, Sir Robert, quoted, 63, note. 
 Morocco, 193, note, 195. 
 Moscow, Panslavic Congress at, 78; the Tsar's address 
 
 at (November 10, 1876), 106/. 
 Murad V, Sultan, 90 /. 
 
 Naples, speech of Crispi at, 190, note. 
 Napoleon I, II, 25, 27, 41, 159; the Napoleonic em- 
 pire, 4. 
 Napoleon III, 1, 4, 15, 23, 39, 182/., 186, 187, 195. 
 Nationality, development of the consciousness of, 77. 
 Nelson, 11. 
 
 .Nice, annexation of, 10, 184. 
 Nicholas I, Tsar, 49, 162. 
 Nish, 178, note. 
 
 North Africa, 66, 191-209, 212, 216. 
 North America, 3 /. 
 Novibazar, district of, 140, 146, 177. 
 
 Orleans, house of, 36. 
 Orthodox, the, 69, 70, 72. 
 Orthodox Serbs, the, 151. 
 Osman Pasha, 121, 122, 127. 
 Ottoman empire, the, see Turkey. 
 Ottoman Turks, the, 66. 
 
 Palmerston, Lord, 14. 
 
 Panslavism, 78/., 154, 164/., 173, 182. 
 
INDEX 
 
 233 
 
 Panteutonism, 182. 
 
 Paris, Congress of (1856), 123, 141, 142, 197. 
 
 Paris, taken by the allies, 159; by the Germans (1871), 
 26, 129; by the national troops, from the Com- 
 mune, 5. 
 
 Paris, Treaty of (1856), 76, 97, 109, 126. 
 
 Passarowitz, Peace of, 67. 
 
 * Peace with honor/ 141, 146. 
 
 Persia, 65. 
 
 Peter the Great, 68, 69, 78. 
 
 Pirot, 178, note. 
 
 Plevna, battles at, 121, 122, 127. 
 
 Poland, 155; the Polish insurrection of 1863, 14, 16, 18, 
 
 79- 
 Portugal, 196. 
 Prussia, see Germany. 
 
 Radowitz, Count von, 56, 57, 58, 99, 163. 
 
 Reichstadt, interview at, 95 ff., 189. 
 
 Reuss, Prince, 94, note, 172. 
 
 Revertera, Count Friedrich, cited, 93, note, 94, note. 
 
 Revolution of 1830, the, 41. 
 
 Richelieu, 3. 
 
 Roman Catholic church, the, 73; the temporal author- 
 ity of the Pope, 2, 180, 183, 186, 188, 211, 217; Fran- 
 cis Joseph and the papacy, 209; the Kulturkampf in 
 Germany, 31 /., 53 /. 
 
 Roman empire, the, overthrown by the Germans, 23; 
 modern Italy and the Roman imperial traditions in 
 the Mediterranean, 192 /. 
 
 Rome, taken by the Gauls, 181; subdues western Asia, 
 66; occupied by the French, 4, 185; acquired by Italy 
 as a capital, 1, 9, 180, 186, 211. 
 
 Roustan, French consul at Tunis, 205. 
 
234 INDEX 
 
 Royalists, French, 188. 
 
 Rubicon, the, 181. 
 
 Rumania, 118/., 132, 133, 134, 140. 
 
 Russia, 3, 17/., 34/., 41, 42, 63, 64, 159, 160-163, 165, 
 169, 170 /., 189, 204, 208, 214; the League of the 
 Three Emperors, 43-62; the Eastern Question, 68- 
 154; resentment toward Germany, 154-157; the Bal- 
 tic provinces, 164; meeting of Alexander II and 
 William I at Alexandrovo, 166 f.\ attitude toward 
 the Austro-German alliance, 173-176. 
 
 Sadowa, battle of, 21, 30. 
 
 Safet Pasha, 109/. 
 
 St. Sophia, cathedral of, 70. 
 
 Salisbury, Lord, 108, 133, 138, 173, 198, 204. 
 
 Salonica, 148; murder of the French and German con- 
 suls at, 90. 
 
 Salzburg, 46. 
 
 San Stefano, Treaty of, 131 f. 9 139, 145, 177. 
 
 Sardinia, 193, note. 
 
 Savoy, annexation of, 10, 184. 
 
 Savoy, house of, 184, 211. 
 
 Schleswig-Holstein question, the, 14. 
 
 Schneider, German teacher of Alexander II, 47, note. 
 
 Schonbrunn, treaty of alliance signed at, 93 /. 
 
 Sebastopol, fall of, 13. 
 
 Seljuk Turks, the, 66. 
 
 Seraievo, 151. 
 
 Serbia, 73, 75, 79, 80, 81, 91, 95, 96, 97/., 100, 105, 107, 
 113/., 118, 123, 132, 133, 140, 145/., 151, 177/. 
 
 Serfdom, abolition of, in Russia, 17, 115. 
 
 Seven Years' war, the, 38. 
 
 Shuvalov, 162, 163. 
 
 Sicily, 193, note, 196. 
 
INDEX 235 
 
 Skobelev, General, 135, note. 
 
 Slavophilism, 77. 
 
 Solferino, battle of, 183. 
 
 South Slavs, 22, 148. 
 
 Spain, 3, 181, 191, 195, 196, 217. 
 
 Suez Canal, the, 88, 117, 198, note, 200. 
 
 Syria, 66. 
 
 Talleyrand, 31. 
 
 Tartars, the, 69. 
 
 Thessaly, 131, 143. 
 
 Thiers, President, 8, 37. 
 
 Trent affair, the, 14. 
 
 Trentino, the, 20. 
 
 Tripoli, 195, note, 216, note. 
 
 Tunis, 191-209, 212, 215. 
 
 Turkey, 64, 149, 155, 190, 191, 196, 202, 208; rise and 
 decline of, 66-75; tne Crimean war, 75 /.; increasing 
 corruption and misgovernment, 76; religious, racial, 
 and diplomatic causes of the war of 1877-78, 76- 
 116; the Russo-Turkish war, 1 16-138; the Cyprus 
 Convention, 137/., 147; the Congress of Berlin, 138- 
 141; contrast between 1856 and 1878, 142 /.; 
 estrangement of England, 147/. 
 
 United States, the, 13. 
 
 Vaibert, G., cited, 218, note. 
 
 Vandal conquest of Africa, the, 191. 
 
 Venetia, 20, 21, 83, 148. 
 
 Venice, 82, 183, 189. 
 
 Versailles, proclamation of the German empire at, 
 
 1, 26. 
 Victor Emmanuel, king of Italy, 52, 187, 188, 209. 
 
236 INDEX 
 
 v 
 
 
 Victoria, Queen, 16, 62, note, 87. 
 Vienna, defeat of the Turks at, 66, 68. 
 Vienna Exhibition of 1873, the, 51. 
 Villafranca, Peace of, 183. 
 
 Waddington, 191, note, 198, 202 /. 
 
 War indemnity, French, 5, 7, 35, 53 /.; Turkish, 132, 
 
 140/. 
 War scare of 1875, the, 55-62, 161. 
 Waterloo, 12, 24. 
 Wellington, II. 
 
 Werder, General von, 100/., 102, 163. 
 William I, emperor of Germany, 1, 18, 19, 23, 28, 44, 
 
 46, 50, 60, 61, 99, 155 /., 157, 159, 165, 166, 167, 168, 
 
 170, 171, 174, 176. 
 Woods, English consul at Tunis, 204. 
 
 
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