If England had proposed to France, in the month of July, 1870, not to employ artillery against Prussia, what would have been the answer? A cry of indignation would have been raised from Cape Finisterre to the furthermost confines of Corsica. If England had insisted on it, war would have been declared against her, or the war with Prussia would have been abandoned. In any case it would have been understood that England was making common cause with Prussia. But artillery afloat is quite another thing from artillery on land. In order to prepare for war France had provided herself with armies; but she had also provided herself with fleets. The use of the latter was to carry and transport guns. The guns so conveyed exceeded in number those which had to accompany her armies, by two and a half times, and they exceeded them in the same ratio as regards weight of metal. Steam was also used in addition to wind for their transport. This steam, calculated according to horse-power, represented a total which exceeded by six times the number of horses allowed for the artillery. The force therefore which France possessed in her marine was at least five times greater than that which she possessed in her artillery. This force had its own field, one where armies could not appear. It could reach and strike the enemy at the most distant point of his frontiers, and even carry the war home to his own country at the time he was besieging her capital. The ships could have transported her armies from the most remote points of her own territory without expense, and without exhausting either men or animals. To strike the commerce of an enemy is the means of striking at his revenue. A country whose revenue is drawn for the most part from indirect taxes is more exposed to this species of danger than another. The kingdom of Prussia was not one of these. But the war of 1870 was with all Germany, whose collective revenue is drawn almost entirely from indirect taxes. Prussia in this war depended almost entirely on her allies, the other States of Germany; that is to say, on their willingness to act with her. A blow therefore which struck the whole effectively, would for her have been more dangerous than one which fell on her alone. In the year 1868 the exports from the Zollverein to England amounted to eighteen millions sterling. We may double that for the rest of the world. There must have been, therefore, forty millions of property afloat when the war broke out exposed to the attacks of French cruisers. At the commencement of hostilities I said that France was going to war with one arm tied behind her back, and I added that it was her right arm which was so tied. But this expression falls far short of conveying a true idea of the state of things; for her naval force of itself alone, was sufficient for the reduction of her enemy, if, confining herself at home to defence, she had struck at German commerce on every sea. It was only a question of making At the commencement of the war, Prussia, being uncertain of the use which France would make of her navy, had retained 150,000 men to protect her Northern frontiers. the war last long enough, in order to obtain a triumph. The loss by Prussia in her public securities, and the ruinous expenditure of her treasure, would have been accompanied by the revolt of her allies, by whose aid she has triumphed, and whom, by this triumph, she has reduced to subjection. But instead of so employing her navy, that navy disappeared. There was no disembarkation on the coasts of the enemy, no blockade of her ports; not even the transport of armies and troops along the coasts of France. No one knew where they were gone; no one knew what had become of those magnificent vessels whose organisation was as admirable as that of the army was corrupt. Above all, there were no cruisers. German commerce flourished from the Gulf of Bothnia to the peninsula of Corea with an impunity as complete as if the war did not exist, or as if France were not the second maritime Power in the world. But, it will be said, "we had signed the Declaration of Paris." That was no Treaty at all. It was an abnormal act, without character in itself, without right in the persons who signed it, without ratification by the respective Sovereigns, and which, containing no engagements, contained a lie. It did not pretend to say, "such henceforward shall be the law," but it said such and such is the fact.* (Privateering is abolished, &c.) This was not the reason why the Declaration of Paris was observed; the reason was that France deceived herself. I am unfortunately in a position to bear testimony on this matter by the fruitless efforts which I made to awaken the attention of public men of all opinions as to the result to France of having renounced her rights, and with them her maritime strength. I succeeded only with one, and he was unable to do anything with the others. But universal error and ignorance would not alone have sufficed to avert from Prussia this danger. Up to a certain moment she had to take measures of precaution. It was England who came to the assistance of Prussia, and who, by means of a bit of paper, drove away every thought in France of having recourse to her natural arms. A despatch, bearing the signature of Lord GRANVILLE, reminded the Government of France of the Declaration of Paris, with an injunction to conform to it. Nobody asked why this despatch had been written, or what a despatch to confirm an engagement meant, or if that could really be an engagement which required such aid. Much less was it asked, whether the despatch proceeded from affection for the Declaration, or from a wish to take part against France. Why this summons if the English Government had no uneasiness with respect to the observance by France of this Declaration of Paris, the signing of which that very Government had explained on the grounds of its being necessary to conciliate France! How was it that the French Government could accept this despatch *The Armed Neutrality Treaty of 1780, said: "All merchandise, and all property belonging to the subjects of the said belligerent Powers embarked in neutral bottoms, shall be free, with the exception of contraband of war. without exacting the support of England as a consideration, or without even informing itself of her intentions? That which is truly instructive in all this is not the catastrophe, but the disorder in the public service. It was a reciprocal suicide which was the result of ignorance. England, by prostrating France, gave herself a blow more terrible than that which her neighbour received; for France might recover herself, could not England. There are, however, not many despatches to turn over in order to discover the key to the enigma. Only two years previously hostilities were on the point of breaking out between France and Prussia, with regard to Luxembourg. England on that occasion (for reasons not more her own than those which produced the despatch of Lord GRANVILLE) sought to restrain the ill-feeling existing between the two countries, and to avert its explosion. She went to work with Prussia very simply by saying: "Do not trust to the Declaration of Paris. If a war breaks "out France will never consent to deprive herself of her maritime strength, against which you have nothing to oppose, and she will sweep German commerce from the oceans and the seas.' 66 It is possible that France may not have had a copy of these despatches. The English Government, however, had the courtesy to publish them in the Blue-Book relating to Luxemburg,* But this publicity has, for the French Government, been of no avail. What is certain is, that this despatch, beside which all the political operations sink into insignificance, has never been the subject of a remark in the press, either in England or France, and has never been referred to in any parliamentary debate, in any political discussion, or in any newspaper. There is, after all, in this, nothing to excite surprise, seeing that the document related to matters of which no one comprehended a word, with the exception of a very small number, who only comprehended them too well. Nor is it the only important document. There is another which may be placed with it in the same line; but this belongs to the category of things supposed to be understood. I allude to the despatch of the 10th of August, in which Lord GRANVILLE communicated to Lord LYONS the steps which he had taken in concert with Prussia and Russia, with the Governments of Denmark, Italy, and Austria, in order to prevent those countries from coming to the rescue of France. This despatch, just like the other, passed unnoticed! * Lord Stanley wrote to the English Ambassador at Berlin, on the 17th of April, 1867, as follows: "Prussia has a very long line of coast and forts to defend. She has no means of resisting the action of the French fleets on her own coasts, and the ravages which the naval superiority of France would enable her to commit on German commerce, not only in Europe, but everywhere else where this commerce is actively carried on, might lead to a financial crisis alarming for Germany. It is important that Prussia should attend to these considerations." On the 17th of April, he wrote again: "A war between France and Prussia would not fail to retard that consolidation of Germany towards which so great a progress has been recently made" (the war with Austria). The day following he wrote thus to the English Ambassador at Paris: "The Government of Her Majesty has not been afraid to present to the Prussian Government the various considerations which ought to decide it on not insisting upon retaining a Prussian garrison in Luxemburg." (Blue-Book relating to Luxemburg, 1867.) The moment the official volume was in my hands this document struck me at once. I lost not an instant of time in calling the attention to it, not only of the men in power, but also of others. I caused it to be distributed, I commented upon it, and I showed it everywhere. It only excited incredulity or alarm, and an excuse was sought for doing nothing—that is, for saying nothing. A French officer said, "I will not believe it unless I see the original;" a politician said, "It raises great "questions." All welcomed as a relief the words "to restrain "the limits of the war," which Lord GRANVILLE had put forward as the object of his negotiation; precisely as Lord PALMERSTON had done in 1848, when I compelled him, before the House of Commons, to justify the analogous measure he had taken (then secretly) to insure the defeat of Poland by menacing at the same time France, Turkey, Austria, Sweden, and Persia. There yet remains the application which I wish to make of this incident. Eighteen months after the publication of the volume, the Duke de GRAMMONT was ignorant of the existence of this despatch! He warmly thanked the person who sent it to him. It was only two years and a half afterwards that it found a corner for insertion in a French newspaper.* Of course it was not inserted or mentioned in any English newspaper. Such is publicity! There are here two important inferences to be drawn: 1st. That these steps of an English Minister would have been impossible if he had had previously to state his reasons for them to any non-political man; 2nd. That to make war is not the only means of prostrating a country, and that a Minister who plays an arbitrary part can, by writing a letter, ruin an ally, and do so without the knowledge of his victim and of his own country, while publishing such a letter to the whole world. I believe I have said sufficient to show that the capitulation of Paris in 1871 was the result of the Declaration of Paris in 1856. It remains, however, to relate the history of that Declaration. The change of which we are speaking was not the result of a congress assembled for the purpose of making it, but of a war; and it was not even slipped into the Treaty of Peace, but into an abnormal act which was annexed to it, without the Plenipotentiaries of any of the Powers having been furnished with authority beforehand to discuss the question. Never before this epoch had any proposition of the kind been submitted to a deliberative assembly. The decision to change maritime law sprang up all of a sudden, and its success was only due to the absolute secresy with which it had been guarded. The English negotiator (Lord CLARENDON) confessed it in Parliament,† and the L'Univers of March 29, 1873. "Do you think that if the articles of this Treaty, even the bases on which it was founded had been submitted to Parliament, such a Treaty would ever have been signed?" [He was not speaking of the Treaty of Paris, but of the Declaration of Paris].-Lord Clarendon in the House of Lords, May 22, 1856. "Lord Clarendon, in signing at the Congress of Paris the extinction of England's maritime rights, acted (as he afterwards avowed in the House of Lords) without the knowledge of the Queen or the mandate of the Crown. His powers emanated from a private letter of Lord Palmerston."-La Presse (of Vienna), Dec. 25, 1861. French Minister for Foreign Affairs (M. THOUVENEL) designated it as "the modern international law"*-that is to say, that the Declaration of Paris had displaced the Law of Nations which had existed up to that time. The war referred to was between two Powers called maritime and another Power, exclusively territorial and military; the same which had put forward and sustained by arms, since 1780, the new code. That war did not end in the defeat of the maritime Powers and the triumph of the Power which had proposed the new "International Law." But it was not she who was the proposer of the change at this Peace Congress; the maritime Powers were the proposers of it, especially France; it was she who proposed it, and England who accepted it. Whilst this war was going on the right of confiscating enemies' goods in neutral ships, in other words, maritime strength had not been exercised by the maritime Powers; their line of battleships were exhibited on the scene, but uselessly, for the enemy's commerce was allowed to go free. This enemy was enabled to continue the war until the meeting of the Congress of Paris, where, presenting himself as conquered, it became possible that the effacement of maritime power should be accepted; a thing which would have been impossible if presenting himself as conqueror, he had exacted from the conquered the abandonment of their strength in this respect, a strength which constituted all the strength possessed by one, and one half of that possessed by the other. The plan was only feasible on the condition that in making the war the Allies should not make it; that is to say, that they should not interfere with their enemy's commerce, the only point in which Russia was vulnerable, and vulnerable to such a degree that she was absolutely at the mercy of the smallest State which had the power of sending cruisers to sea. Twice already, in the present century, had she been brought to reason by England, without the latter employing against her a single ship of war, even a frigate; without a single regiment, even a battalion. It was this which caused one of the most distinguished Russian diplomatists to say, "We have "nothing to fear from the alliance of France with England, for the "French navy, joined to that of England, will not add to its strength." From the Declaration of Paris in 1856, we go back then to the suspension, in 1854, of the Right of Search and Seizure on board neutral vessels, which was stated in the following terms: 46 Order in Council, March 28, 1854.† "In order to preserve the commerce of neutrals from all unnecessary obstruction, Her Majesty consents, for the present, to sus"pend a portion of the belligerent rights which belong to her by the "Law of Nations. Her Majesty will suspend the right of seizing enemy's property on board neutral vessels, unless it be contraband "of war. * M. Thouvenel to the French Minister at Washington, Dec. 3, 1851. |