Secret Diplomacy/Chapter 3
III. AFTER THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA
[edit]THE convulsions of the French revolution and the Napoleonic conquests did not seem materially to affect the principles and practices of diplomacy. When the Congress of Vienna met to re-arrange the state of Europe, it was guided by men who still looked upon diplomacy entirely in the manner of the 18th century, when, in the words of Horace Walpole, "it was the mode of the times to pay by one favor for receiving another."The idea of restoring the balance of Europe or patching up the rents and cracks in the old system which had been so severely shaken was the purpose which animated these men. They viewed everything from the dynastic interests of their respective rulers and traded off lesser kingdoms and slices of territory with the same spirit of the gamester that has always characterized the absolutist diplomacy.
Of the three master minds of the Congress of Vienna, Talleyrand, Metternich and Pozzo di
Borgo, it may indeed be said that they illustrated both the qualities and the vices of the old diplomacy in a superlative degree. The last named has characterized Talleyrand as u a man who is unlike any other. He wheedles, he arranges, he intrigues, he governs in a hundred different manners every day. His interest in others is proportioned to the need which he has of them at the moment. Even his civilities are luxurious loans which it is necessary to repay before the end of the day." Talleyrand, himself, has said: "Two things I forbid too much zeal and too absolute devotion they compromise both persons and affairs." He did not, indeed, betray his great master Napoleon, he only quitted him in time.
Metternich, who resembled Talleyrand in the complete self-control of a passionless diplomat, had a long and brilliant, but essentially sterile, career. His correspondence shows a keen and luminous spirit with a great mastery of detail, and capacity for manipulating the human pawns; but there is no deep insight, no real constructive policy. Indeed, he supported Alexander I in his efforts for a Holy Alliance or sacred league among nations, but it was conceived in such a form that it would not have interfered w ith the traditional game of diplomacy. Metternich in- deed often pays his compliments to the ideal, as when he praises the league as resting on the same basis as the great Christian society of man, namely, the precept of the Book of Books, "Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you." But the details of his policy were governed entirely by the barren principles of balance of power and legitimacy, and showed an utter disregard for the natural and ethnic facts underlying government. Metternich indeed him- self at times realized the vanity of political in- trigue, as when he wrote to his daughter from Paris in 1815, "This specific weight of the masses will always be the same, while we, poor creatures, who think ourselves so important, live only to make a little show by our perpetual motion, by our dabbling in the mud or in the shifting sand." When Alexander himself left the realm of vague ideals and descended to details, his impulses often took a form somewhat like the proposal made to Castlereagh at Vienna, "We are going to do a beautiful and grand thing. We are going to raise up Poland by giving her as king one of my broth- ers or the husband of my sister." The British statesman does not seem to have been immedi- ately carried away with this generous design.
It was consistent with the character and tem- per of the Congress of Vienna that there flowed in it innumerable currents and counter-currents of intrigue. In January, 1815, the representa- tives of England, France and Austria agreed upon a secret treaty of alliance, directed against Rus- sia and Prussia. When Napoleon returned from Elba he found this document and showed it to the Russian Minister before tearing it up.
The first half of the nineteenth century was dominated by the principles that had prevailed at Vienna. In the details of diplomatic intercourse, indirection, bribery and deceit continue to prevail although in a less flamboyant fashion than in the eighteenth century. As the principle of nation- alism comes more clearly to emerge, the secrecy of diplomatic methods is distinguished from the secrecy of diplomatic policy with increasing con- demnation of the latter; a greater sense of re- sponsibility to the nation as a whole begins to show itself, and the traditional resources of di- plomacy are no longer quite adequate.
Nevertheless, the diplomatic literature of the age still looks upon diplomacy as essentially a tactical pursuit, conditioned by the continuous enmity of states. The French writer, Garden, in his Traite de diplomatic, gives the following elucidation: "Put on this plane, diplomacy becomes like a transcendent maneuvering of which the entire globe is the theater, where states are army corps, where the lines of combat change unceasingly, and where one never knows who is a friend, and who is an enemy. It is a political labyrinth in the midst of which ability alone is capable of moving with ease and without being smothered by detail."
The memoirs and anecdotal literature of the period afford numerous instances of the persistence of that desire for cleverness in dealing with secrets, which often brings about amusing incidents.
At the time when Frankfort was the capital of the North German Confederation, the Austrian government provided its representative there (Count Rechberg) with duplicate instructions; one to the effect that he must exhaust every energy to maintain the most friendly and mutually helpful relations with Prussia; the other of quite the opposite tenor. The former was to be shown to the Prussians. Unfortunately, at the critical moment the Austrian Minister showed the wrong letter to Bismarck, who guessed the situation; suppressing his amusement as best he could, Bismarck tried to console the embarrassed Austrian by promising not to take any advantage of the slip.
A Prussian Minister for Foreign Affairs (Manteuffel) had hired a police agent to sneak into the French Embassy in order to secure some documents there. When he delightedly showed one of the letters secured to General Von Gerlach, the latter said: "I could have written you ten such letters for what this cost you."
Disraeli, in a letter to his sister, spoke of the Danish Minister at London as his secret agent in the diplomatic corps.
There were also more innocent means of gaining advantages such as are practised in many other branches of human enterprise. For instance, Labouchere relates his discovery, when attache at Washington, that Secretary Marcy was put in a terrible ill-humor whenever he lost at whist. Upon a hint from Labouchere, the British Minister managed thereafter regularly to lose in his games with Marcy who was immensely pleased at "beating the British at their own game." Labouchere adds: "Every morning when the terms of the treaty were being discussed we had our revenge and scored a few points for Canada."
There was all this time an increasing tendency to discount the importance of the tradition arts of diplomacy and to believe that a great deal of this carefully nurtured secrecy was merely a trick of the trade. Bismarck expressed himself in the following language on diplomatic literature: "'For the most part it is nothing but paper and ink. If you wanted to utilize it for historical purposes, you could not get anything worth having out of it. I believe it is the rule to allow historians to consult the Foreign Office archives at the expiration of thirty years (after the date of despatches). They might be permitted to examine them much sooner, for the despatches and letters, when they contain any information at all, are quite unintelligible to those unacquainted with the persons and relations treated of in them." In reporting this statement, Labouchere observes: "If all foreign office telegrams were published they would be curious reading."[1] He also relates how his youthful efforts at secret diplomacy were received by the Foreign Office. He had succeeded at St. Petersburg in being able quite regularly, through the assistance of a laundress, to get from the government printing office loose sheets of confidential minutes of State Council meetings. When Lord John Russell discovered the method in which this interesting information was obtained, he put a stop to the simple intrigue; Labouchere concludes his account of this experience thus: "For what reason, I wonder, did Russell imagine diplomacy was invented?"
The term "secret diplomacy" is during this period used in a special sense, referring to a secret intrigue on the part of a monarch or minister without the knowledge of those who have the public responsibility in the matter. Earlier monarchs often played their own game without informing their ministers and attempted to keep the threads of foreign intrigue in their own hands. Louis XV did great injury to his country by pursuing this method.
Napoleon III was a great offender in this respect. Not only was his international policy prone to unscrupulous attempts and proposals, but he acted in these matters frequently without informing those who were responsible before the country. Most of his secret advances to Bismarck were made entirely on his own responsibility; he did not inform the Foreign Minister, Ollivier, of the fateful instructions to Benedetti to the effect that he should demand of Prussia assurances that no German prince should ever again be suggested for the Spanish throne; his Mexican policy, too, was worked out by himself, in conjunction with the Due de Morny and Jecker, the banker, rather than with his ministers. The disastrous consequences of the secret diplomacy of Napoleon III will be reverted to later on.
It has also repeatedly happened that envoys have incurred a strong suspicion of playing a political game of their own without the authorization or even the knowledge of their Foreign Minister. While a diplomatic representative in taking such action risks disavowal and dismissal, yet the temptation felt by a strong-willed man who is confident that he knows the local situation and the needs of his country there better than any one else, has often been too powerful to be resisted. When the unauthorized action has been successful in gaining some advantage, it has generally been condoned.[2] But though the home government is at all times able theoretically to disavow unauthorized actions of its foreign representatives, yet the latter through their self-willed acts may have set in motion forces which can no longer be controlled. Very often also doubt and confusion is cast on the real causes of important events and a general feeling of suspicion is thus generated.
One of the most self-willed of British Ministers was Stratford Canning (Lord Stratford de Redcliffe). It is generally accepted that his personal diplomacy at Constantinople, where he began his diplomatic career in 1808 and where he ended it in 1858 after various intervening missions, was one of the causes which brought on the Crimean war. After reciting that Lord Stratford constantly held private interviews with the Sultan and did his utmost to alarm him, urging him to reject accommodation with Russia, and promising him the armed assistance of England, John Bright stated that all this was done without instructions from the home government. Lord Clarendon wrote: "He is bent on war and on playing the first part in settling the great Eastern question." When the war came on, Lord Granville wrote: "We have generals whom we do not trust, and whom we do not know how to replace. We have an Ambassador at Constantinople, an able man, a cat whom no one cares to bell, whom some think a principal cause of the war, others the cause of some of the calamities which have attended the conduct of the war; and whom we know to have thwarted or neglected many of the objects of his Government."
Labouchere, who served under Lord Stratford in 1862, wrote afterwards that the despatches of Stratford during the Crimean war could not be recognized as the originals from which Mr. Kinglake drew his material for a narrative of the ambassador's career.[3] He thought that Stratford's great power at Constantinople was due to his long stay there which made it necessary for the Turks to remain on good terms with him. Labouchere also claims that Lord Stratford misled his own government by getting the Sultan to publish certain reform decrees which he would send home as evidence of good government, never explaining that such decrees were entirely dead letters.
The danger and disadvantage of having a diplomat or ruler inject his personal ambitions and dislikes into his diplomacy have, unfortunately, been frequently exemplified. With respect to the causes of the Crimean war, it will be remembered that Napoleon III had a personal grudge against Emperor Nicholas who had addressed him "Sire and Good Friend" instead of "Brother" as is customary among monarchs. Though Napoleon answered him, acknowledging the compliment implied from the fact that one may choose one's friends but not one's brothers, yet he never forgot the slight.
Lord Palmerston as Foreign Minister quite openly regarded himself as a power independent not only of Parliament but of the Cabinet itself, and not bound to consult his colleagues provided he could justify himself later before the House of Commons. But when in December, 1851, he had entirely on his own responsibility approved the coup d'éat by which Napoleon III made himself emperor, Lord John Russell instantly dismissed him and thus vindicated the rule that the Foreign Minister must always pay regard to the joint responsibility of the Cabinet.
In 1861 a select committee of Parliament on the diplomatic service was appointed. It took evidence, among other things, on the existence of "secret diplomacy" in the British service. By this term was understood private correspondence or private action affecting the conduct of public affairs, which did not become part of the record in the ministry. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the Earl of Clarendon, Lord Cowley, and Lord John Russell, all gave evidence with respect to the conduct of business by private correspondence. They all seemed to agree that private correspondence between the Foreign Minister and the individual representatives abroad was useful and even necessary for supplementing the formal instructions and reports. But they stated their belief that whenever any such private correspondence should begin to affect the actual con- duct of public affairs it would certainly get into the record; if, however, it should come to nothing, then it might not be referred to in public despatches.
- ↑ He writes that when "I was an attaché" at Stockholm, the present Queen, the Duchess of Ostrogotha, had a baby, and a telegram came from the Foreign Office desiring that Her Majesty's congratulations should be offered, and that she should be informed how the mother and child were. The Minister was away, so off I went to the Palace to convey the message and to inquire about the health of the pair. A solemn gentleman received me. I informed him of my orders, and requested him to say what I was to reply. 'Her Royal Highness,' he replied, 'is as well as can be expected, but His Royal Highness is suffering a little internally, and it is believed that this is due to the fact of the milk of his nurse having been slightly sour last evening.' I telegraphed this to the Foreign Office."
- ↑ Frequently, indeed, ministers have been encouraged to make certain démarches "on their own account"; if successful, they
could be sanctioned after the event. Such is the procedure which Palmerston criticized in a letter to Lord Clarendon (May 22, 1853):
"The Russian Government has always had two strings to its bow—moderate language and disinterested professions at Petersburg and at London; active aggression by its agents on the scene of operations. If the aggressions succeed locally, the Petersburg Government adopts them as a fait accompli which it did not intend, but cannot, in honor, recede from. If the local agents fail, they are disavowed and recalled, and the language previously held is appealed to as a proof that the agents have overstepped their instructions."
- ↑ Labouchere wrote: "Lord Stratford was one of the most detestable of the human race. He was arrogant, resentful and spiteful. He hated the Emperor Nicholas because he had declined to accept him as Ambassador to Russia, and the Crimean war was his revenge. In every way he endeavored to envenom the quarrel and to make war certain."