CHAPTER XXIII. XXIII. French letter to A NEW Opportunity of making his way back to peace CHAP. was now thrown away by the Czar. The exigencies of a throne based upon the deeds of the 2d of De- The cember were always driving the French Emperor to Emperor's endeavour to allay the remembrance of the past by the Czar. creating a stir in Europe, and endeavouring to win celebrity. When Europe was quiet, he was obliged, for his life's sake, to become its disturber; but when it was at war, or threatened with war, he was willing, it seems, to take an exactly opposite method of attaining the required conspicuousness; for he was not a bloodthirsty nor even a very activeminded man, and there seems no good reason to doubt that, having brought Europe to the state in which it was at the close of January, he was sincere in the pacific step which he then took. At a moment when war was already kindled and seemed to be on the point of involving the great Powers, the odd vanity and the theatric bent which had so strangely governed his life, might easily make him wish to come upon the scene and bestow the blessing of peace upon the grateful, astonished nations. On XXIII. CHAP. the other hand, an English Minister would be careless of this kind of celebrity, and, so that peace could be restored to Europe, would be well pleased that the honour of the achievement should seem to belong to the French Emperor. There is no reason to doubt that the English Government assented to the somewhat startling plan under which the French Emperor conceived himself entitled to speak for the Queen of England as well as for himself; and certainly the licence, however strange it may appear, was in strict consistency with the spirit of the understanding which seems to have been established between the two Western Powers.* 6 On the 29th of January the French Emperor addressed an autograph letter to his 'good friend' of All the Russias. The letter in many parts of it was ably worded, and moderate in its tone, but it was mainly remarkable for the language in which the French Emperor took upon himself to speak and even to threaten war in the name of the Queen of England. After suggesting a scheme of pacification, he said to the Czar: 'Let your Majesty adopt this plan, upon which the Queen of Eng'land and myself are perfectly agreed, and tranquillity will be re-established and the world satisfied. There is nothing in the plan which is unworthy ' of your Majesty-nothing which can wound your 'honour; but if, from a motive difficult to under'stand, your Majesty should refuse this proposal, then * See the inferred purport of this understanding as stated ante, p. 328. XXIII. France as well as England will be compelled to CHAP. 'leave to the fate of arms and the chances of war 'that which might now be decided by reason and 'justice.' The French Emperor permitted himself to write this at a time when, so far as is known, no threat like that which he chose to utter in the name of the Queen had been addressed by the English Cabinet to the Court of St Petersburg. With the feelings which might be expected from them, English Ministers of State have generally been slow to use threatening words; and they have been chary, too, in putting forward the name of their Sovereign. Our Government could not have been willing that England should be thrust upon the attention of the world in a way which the too fastidious Court of St Petersburg would be sure to regard as grotesque. No one can doubt the pain with which the members of Lord Aberdeen's Cabinet must have seen the French Emperor come forward upon the stage of Europe, and publicly menace the Emperor of Russia in the name of their Queen. The process by which they were brought to suffer this is unknown to me. What seems probable is, that a draft of the letter was submitted to them, accompanied with significant representations of the importance which the French Emperor attached to it, and that the Cabinet yielded to the pressure because it feared that resistance might chill the new alliance, and might even perhaps cause it to be suddenly abandoned for an alliance between Russia and France. VOL. I. * Annual Register,' 1854. 2 D XXIII. СНАР. The letter proposed an armistice, in order to leave open a free course for negotiation. It would seem that, in a military point of view, an armistice for a limited period, commencing in the early days of February, could not have been inconvenient to a Sovereign whose main difficulty at that time lay in the immense marches which he had to effect within his own dominions; and, on the other hand, to any one acquainted with the French Emperor's personal weakness, it was obvious that, by a little harmless play upon his vanity, Russia might hope to obtain a great diplomatic advantage, and to effect a decorous escape from her troubles. But the Czar was not politic; and, instead of seizing the proffered occasion, he not only rejected the overture, but aggravated his refusal by an unwise allusion to the French disasters of 1812. Mission to burg from the Eng Party. In his quest after this sort of fame the French Emperor was not without rivals. We have seen the share which the English Peace Party had had in misleading the Emperor of Russia, and tempting him to become a disturber by withdrawing the wholesome fear which deters a man from venturing upon outrage. Certain brethren of the Society of Friends, who had been prominent members of this Party, now thought it becoming or wise to proceed to St Petersburg and request the Emperor of All the Russias to concur with them in preserving Europe from the calamity of war. A little later, and the Czar would have stamped in fury and driven from his sight any hapless aide-de XXIII. camp who had come to him with a story about a CHAP. deputation from the English Peace Party; for the hour was at hand when his curses were about to fall heavy on the men who had led him on into all his troubles by pretending that England was immersed in trade, and resolved to engage in no war.* But at this time his hope of seeing our Government held back by the Peace Party had not altogether vanished, and he resolved to give this strange mission a genial welcome. 6 Of course, the political conversation between the booted Czar and the men of peace was sheer nothingness; but what followed shows the care with which Nicholas had studied the middle classes of England. When he thought that the first scene of the interlude had lasted long enough, he suddenly said to his prim visitors, By the by, do you know my wife?' They said they did not. The Czar presented them to the Empress. She charmed them with her kindly grace. They came away sorrowing to think that their wrongheaded countrymen in England should be seeking a quarrel with so good and well-meaning a man as friend Nicholas Romanoff; but perhaps what more than all else laid hold of their hearts, was the thought that the Czar called his Empress so naturally by her dear homely title of wife. The scene of violence here prospectively alluded to will be mentioned in a later volume: it occurred in the autumn. |