Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859 Part 13

'This engagement had been allowed to sleep; I will not say that it was forgotten, but no one seemed disposed to revert to it. But after the twenty-second Protocol, when Piedmont was allowed to threaten Austria, and neither England nor France defended her, Buol got alarmed. He feared that Austria might be left exposed to the vengeance of Russia on the north and east, and to that of the Italian Liberals on the South. An alliance with France and England, though only for a specified purpose, at least would relieve Austria from the appearance of insulation. She would be able to talk of the two greatest Powers in Europe as her allies, and would thus acquire a moral force which might save her from attack. He recalled, therefore, the old engagement to the recollection of Clarendon and Louis Napoleon, and summoned them to fulfil it. I do not believe that either of them was pleased. But the engagement was formal, and its performance, though open to misconstruction, and intended by Austria to be misconstrued, was attended by some advantages, though different ones, to France and to England. So both your Government and ours complied.'

_Tuesday, May 20_.--The Tocquevilles and Rivet drank tea with us.

I mentioned to Tocqueville the subject of my conversations with Cousin and H.

'I agree with Cousin,' he said. 'The attempt to turn our national activity into speculation and commerce has often been made, but has never had any permanent success. The men who make these sudden fortunes are not happy, for they are always suspected of _friponnerie_, and the Government to which they belong is suspected of _friponnerie_. Still less happy are those who have attempted to make them, and have failed. And those who have not been able even to make the attempt are envious and sulky. So that the whole world becomes suspicious and dissatisfied.

'And even if it were universal, mere material prosperity is not enough for us. Our Government must give us something more: must gratify our ambition, or, at least, our vanity.'

'The Government,' said Rivet, 'has been making a desperate plunge in order to escape from the accusation of _friponnerie_. It has denounced in the "Moniteur" the _faiseurs_; it has dismissed a poor _aide-de-camp_ of Jerome's for doing what everybody has been doing ever since the _coup d'etat_. When Ponsard's comedy, which was known to be a furious satire on the _agioteurs_, was first played, Louis Napoleon took the whole orchestra and pit stalls, and filled them with people instructed to applaud every allusion to the _faiseurs_. And he himself stood in his box, his body almost out of it, clapping most energetically every attack on them.'

'At the same time,' I said, 'has he not forced the Orleans Company and the Lyons Company to buy the Grand Central at much more than its worth?

And was not that done in order to enable certain _faiseurs_ to realise their gains?'

'He has forced the Orleans Company,' said Rivet, 'to buy up, or rather to amalgamate the Grand Central; but I will not say at more than its value.

The amount to be paid is to depend on the comparative earnings of the different lines, for two years before and two years after the purchase.'

'But,' I said, 'is it not true, first, that the Orleans Company was unwilling to make the purchase? and, secondly, that thereupon the Grand Central shares rose much in the market?'

'Both these facts,' answered Rivet, 'are true.'

'Do you believe,' I said to Tocqueville, 'H.'s history of the Tripart.i.te Treaty?'

'I do,' he answered. 'I do not think that at the time when it was made we liked it. It suited you, who wish to preserve the _statu quo_ in Europe, which keeps us your inferiors, or, at least, not your superiors. _You_ have nothing to gain by a change. We have. The _statu quo_ does not suit us. The Tripart.i.te Treaty is a sort of chain--not a heavy one, or a strong one--but one which we should not have put on if we could have avoided it.'

'Do you agree,' I asked Tocqueville, 'with Lafosse, Cousin, and H. as to the effect in Paris of our opposition to the Suez Ca.n.a.l?'

'I agree,' he answered, 'in every word that they have said. There is nothing that has done you so much mischief in France, and indeed in Europe.

'I am no engineer; I should be sorry to p.r.o.nounce a decided opinion as to the feasibility or the utility of the ca.n.a.l; but your opposition makes us believe that it is practicable.'

'Those among us,' I answered, 'who fear it, sometimes found their fear on grounds unconnected with its practicability. They say that it is a political, not a commercial, scheme. That the object is to give to French engineers and French shareholders a strip of land separating Egypt from Syria, and increasing the French interest in Egypt.'

'What is the value,' answered Tocqueville, 'of a strip of land in the desert where no one can live? And why are the shareholders to be French?

The Greeks, the Syrians, the Dalmatians, the Italians, and the Sicilians are the people who will use the ca.n.a.l, if anybody uses it. They will form the bulk of the shareholders, if shareholders there are.

'My strong suspicion is, that if you had not opposed it, there never would have been any shareholders, and that if you now withdraw your opposition, and let the scheme go on until calls are made, the subscribers, who are ready enough with their names as patriotic manifestations against you as long as no money is to be paid, will withdraw _en ma.s.se_ from an undertaking which, at the very best, is a most hazardous one.

'As to our influence in Egypt, your journal shows that it is a pet project of the Viceroy. He hopes to get money and fame from it. You _imitate_ both his covetousness and his vanity, and throw him for support upon us.'

_Paris, May_ 21--The Tocquevilles and Chrzanowski[1] drank tea with us.

We talked of the French iron floating batteries.

'I saw one at Cherbourg,' said Tocqueville, 'and talked much with her commander. He was not in good spirits about his vessel, and feared some great disaster. However, she did well at Kinburn.'

'She suffered little at Kinburn,' said Chrzanowski, 'because she ventured little. She did not approach the batteries nearer than 600 metres. At that distance there is little risk and little service. To knock down a wall two metres thick from a distance of 600 metres would require at least 300 blows. How far her own iron sides would have withstood at that distance the fire of heavy guns I will not attempt to say, as I never saw her. The best material to resist shot is lead. It contracts over the ball and crushes it.'

'Kinburn, however,' said Tocqueville, 'surrendered to our floating batteries.'

'Kinburn surrendered,' said Chrzanowski, 'because you landed 10,000 men, and occupied the isthmus which connects Kinburn with the main land. The garrison saw that they were invested, and had no hope of relief. They were not Quixotic enough, or heroic enough, to prolong a hopeless resistance. Scarcely any garrison does so.'

We talked of Malta; and I said that Malta was the only great fortification which I had seen totally unprovided with earth-works.

'The stone,' said Chrzanowski, 'is soft and will not splinter.'

'I was struck,' I said, 'with the lightness of the armament; the largest guns that I saw, except some recently placed in Fort St. Elmo, were twenty-four pounders.'

'For land defence,' he answered, 'twenty-four pounders are serviceable guns. They are manageable and act with great effect within the short distance within which they are generally used. It is against s.h.i.+ps that large guns are wanted. A very large ball or sh.e.l.l is wasted on the trenches, but may sink a s.h.i.+p. The great strength of the land defences of Malta arises from the nature of the ground on which Valetta and Floriana are built, indeed of which the whole island consists. It is a rock generally bare or covered with only a few inches of earth. Approaches could not be dug in it. It would be necessary to bring earth or sand in s.h.i.+ps, and to make the trenches with sand-bags or gabions.'

I asked him if he had read Louis Napoleon's orders to Canrobert, published in Bazancourt's book?

'I have,' he answered. 'They show a depth of ignorance and a depth of conceit, compared to which even Thiers is modest and skilful. Canrobert is not a great general, but he is not a man to whom a civilian, who never saw a shot fired, ought to give lectures on what he calls "the great principles" or "the absolute principles of war." He seems to have taken the correspondence between Napoleon and Joseph for his model, forgetting that Canrobert is to him what Napoleon was to Joseph. Then he applies his principles as absurdly as he enunciates them. Thus he orders Canrobert to send a fleet carrying 25,000 men to the breach at Aboutcha, to land 3,000 of them, to send them three leagues up the country, and not to land any more, until those first sent have established themselves beyond the defile of Agen. Of course those 3,000 men would be useless if the enemy were _not_ in force, or destroyed if they _were_ in force. To send on a small body and not to support them is the grossest of faults.

It is the fault which you committed at the Redan, when the men who had got on to the works were left by you for an hour unsupported, instead of reinforcements being poured in after them as quickly as they could be sent.

'In fact,' he continued, 'the horrible and mutual blunders of that campaign arose from its being managed by the two Emperors from Paris and from St. Petersburg, Nicholas and Alexander were our best friends. Louis Napoleon was our worst enemy.

'There is nothing which ought to be so much left to the discretion of those on the spot as war. Even a commander-in-chief actually present in a field of battle can do little after the action, if it be really a great one, has once begun.

'If we suppose 80,000 men to be engaged on each side, each line will extend at least three miles. Supposing the general to be in the centre, it will take an _aide-de-camp_ ten minutes to gallop to him from one of the wings, and ten minutes to gallop back. But in twenty minutes all may be altered.'

[Footnote 1: 'Chrzanowski has pa.s.sed thirty years fighting against or for the Russians. He began military life in 1811 as a sous lieutenant of artillery in the Polish corps which was attached to the French army. With that army he served during the march to Moscow, and the retreat. At the peace, what remained of his corps became a part of the army of the kingdom of Poland. He had attained the rank of major in that army when the insurrection on the accession of Nicholas broke out. About one hundred officers belonging to the staff of the properly Russian army were implicated, or supposed to be implicated, in that insurrection, and were dismissed, and their places were supplied from the army of the kingdom of Poland. Among those so transferred to the Russian army was Chrzanowski.

He was attached to the staff of Wittgenstein, and afterwards of Marshal Diebitsch, in the Turkish campaigns of 1828 and 1829. In 1830 he took part with his countrymen in the insurrection against the Muscovites, and quitted Poland when it was finally absorbed in the Russian Empire. A few years after a quarrel was brewing between England and Russia. Muscovite agents were stirring up Persia and Affghanistan against us, and it was thought that we might have to oppose them on the sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea.

Chrzanowski was attached to the British Emba.s.sy at Constantinople and was employed for some years in ascertaining what a.s.sistance Turkey, both in Europe and in Asia, could afford to us. In 1849 he was selected by Charles Albert to command the army of the kingdom of Sardinia.

'That army was const.i.tuted on the Prussian system, which makes every man serve, and no man a soldier. It was, in fact, a militia. The men were enlisted for only fourteen months, at the end of that time they were sent home, and were recalled when they were wanted, having forgotten their military training and acquired the habits of cottiers and artisans. They had scarcely any officers, or even _sous_ officers, that knew anything of their business. The drill sergeants required to be drilled. The generals, and indeed the greater part of the officers, were divided into hostile factions--Absolutists, Rouges, Const.i.tutional Liberals, and even Austrians--for at that time, in the exaggerated terror occasioned by the revolutions of 1848, Austria and Russia were looked up to by the greater part of the n.o.blesse of the Continent as the supporters of order against Mazzini, Kossuth, Ledru Rollin, and Palmerston. The Absolutists and the Austrians made common cause, whereas the Rouges or Mazzinists were bitterest against the Const.i.tutional Liberals. Such an army, even if there had been no treason, could not have withstood a disciplined enemy.

When it fell a victim to its own defects, and to the treachery of Ramorino, Chrzanowski retired to Paris.'--(_Extracted from Mr. Senior's article in the 'North British Review.'_)

Chrzanowski died several years ago.--ED.]

CORRESPONDENCE.

Kensington, August 20, 1856.

My dear Tocqueville,--A few weeks after my return to London your book reached me--of course from the time that I got it, I employed all my leisure in reading it.

Nothing, even of yours, has, I think, so much instructed and delighted me. Much of it, perhaps, was not quite so new to me as to many others; as I had had the privilege of hearing it from you--but even the views which were familiar to me in their outline were made almost new by their details.

It is painful to think how difficult it is to create a Const.i.tutional Government, and how difficult to preserve one, and, what is the same, how easy to destroy one.

Mrs. Senior is going to Wales and to Ireland, where I join her, after having paid a long-promised visit to Lord Aberdeen.