Dramatic Moments in American Diplomacy/Chapter Five
Elihu Washburne, Ambassador for the World During the Siege of Paris—The Commune Again—History Repeated—The Empress Eugénie Rescued from the Revolution by an American—The Coming of the Prussians—All the Foreign Envoys Pick Up Their Hats in a Hurry—The Deluge of Victims—The Secret Messenger of the Royal Family—The Gold of Prince Murat—Counsellor to the Republic—Vive l'Amérique—An Embassy Over a Mine and Under a Barricade.
Histories of American diplomacy have little to say about Elihu Washburne. The reason is that he had small part in controversy and barter and popular assertion of American rights and demands. For this very reason his influence was all the greater. He devoted himself to the service of other people—a method of establishing prestige which the world is beginning to recognize to be a thousand fold more potent than the selfish, grasping policy of the old chancellories, or the incessant rattling of the scabbard.
In milder form the dramas of the hectic days of Morris were played again in 1870. Washburne had a foretaste of the great task of protecting alien people in a war-ridden country which has since reflected such great credit upon our ambassadors abroad. At the outbreak of war he undertook the protection of the subjects of the North German Confederation, of Saxony, Darmstadt, and Hesse. His devotion and success not only won him the unstinted gratitude of Bismarck, and the German people—but in their behalf established a humane practice of handling enemy aliens on the part of the French Government that must bring a blush of shame to even the most callous Prussian contemplating the population of northern France which they have enslaved. The French readily agreed to send home all the Germans in Paris, except those capable of military duty. But even this did not suit Washburne. He demanded, and finally obtained permission to send them all home, excepting only actual spies and soldiers.
Lulled by false reports, and riding on the buoyant crest of their native enthusiasm, the Parisians were thunderstruck by the sudden news that MacMahon had been completely crushed at Sedan, 40,000 men lost; that their army had been defeated before Metz and the Emperor captured. They reacted after their ancient pattern. Overnight the royal government was overthrown, and the inevitable mob made its roaring expedition to the ancient Tuileries in quest of the Queen, even as it had done years before in the time of Marie Antoinette. The Empress Eugénie was quicker than her tragic predecessor to realize the resources of the benevolent neutral from Indiana. It was Prince Metternich of Austria, and the Cavalieri Nigra, the Italian Ambassador, that dashed her out of the palace. But the D'Artagnan that saved the Queen and turned the tragedy into an American comedy was the man from home. Down the street a bit from the Embassy lived an American dentist, Dr. Evans. Plots and communes and revolutions, wars and sudden death are nothing to a dentist—at least to a Yankee dentist. In Evans's hands the Prince and the Ambassador deposited the precious and dangerous charge. Suffice it to say that a few days later, after his own method, he saw her safely aboard an English yacht bound for Dover, and returned casually to his business, unknown and unsung.
Washburne's diary records that under these circumstances, and with a state of siege imminent, all the ambassadors representing the European powers picked up their hats in a hurry and left Paris for Tours. The South American consuls followed suit, and left him in charge of the diplomatic business of the world at the capital of France.
His services to these many masters, unique at the time, were conducted with such ability as to endear him and the United States to a major portion of the globe, and conducted in such patiently straightforward manner as to give him the confidence of all parties in France.
About midnight, on the 4th of September, 1870, when the streets were still full of the raging populace, a man appeared at the door of the Minister's residence on the Avenue Montaigne. It was the butler of Prince Murat, of the royal house of Napoleon. He presented the compliments of the Prince, and produced a bag of gold, for all the world as in an Arabian Nights' tale. He requested that the American take care of it for him through the whirlwind, as Morris had done for King Louis before him.
And at the same time, Jules Favre, Secretary for Foreign Affairs of the National Council, was consulting him daily upon the game to be played, and exhorting him in his own private capacity to fix up some kind of peace with the school of blood and iron.
Three days after the Revolution he officially recognized the Republic on behalf of the United States. This brought the people to his door by the thousands, in a delirium of joy. Twelve deputations with drums and banners arrived in one day, and the Stars and Stripes blossomed forth all over the city, as from time to time they are accustomed to do, showing the emotional heart of those extraordinary people.
Of course, Washburne was in a most dangerous position. But apparently he enjoyed it. A sense of humour is not the least of the equipment of an American diplomat. He said, whimsically:
"To-day I found they were mining the streets. Pleasant little neighbourhood this. As I came home this evening I found them erecting a barricade. * * * So in a day or two we shall be between the upper and the nether millstones, besides being in a capital position to have a bomb fall upon us."
All honour to Elihu B. Washburne. He upheld the traditions of Gouverneur Morris, who established the precedents of disinterested effort, and was a worthy representative of the principles of duty and service without designs of reward or advantage which has come to be the crowning precept of American diplomacy.