It soon, however, became clear that behind these insignificant combatants loomed the figures of the emperors of Russia and France. The motives that induced Napoleon to take up the cause of the rights of the Latin church in this matter were partly political, partly personal. He resented the tsar’s attitude towards himself; he wished to gain the firm support of the clergy for his throne; he desired to win prestige for himself and his dynasty by reasserting the traditional influence of France in the Ottoman empire. The events that led up to the Crimean War, and those of the war itself, are told elsewhere (see Crimean War). Great Britain had been drawn into the war by her traditional policy of preserving the Ottoman empire as a barrier against the advance of Russia to the Mediterranean and the consequent danger to the British empire in India. It is now generally conceded that, so far as these objects were concerned, the war was a tragic mistake. The hopes that were built on the capacity of Turkey to reform itself were disappointed; the restrictions imposed upon Russia were repudiated at the first opportunity, during the Franco-German War in 1870; and the results of the Russo-Turkish War of 1876 have shown that a far more effective barrier against Russia than the weakened Ottoman Congress of Paris, 1856. empire has been furnished by the young and vigorous national states of the Balkan Peninsula. None the less, the treaty of Paris (1856), by which the war was closed, marks an important epoch in the diplomatic history of Europe; and it is impossible to say that the blood spilled in the Crimea was wholly wasted. At the time the main success of the allied powers seemed to be in the thrusting back of Russia from the Danube by the cession of Bessarabia, the extinction of Russian sea-power in the Black Sea, the formal repudiation of the tsar’s claim to a special right of interference in Turkey. But the true significance of the work of the congress of Paris lies in the impetus given by it to the development of an effective international law. The concert of Europe was consecrated anew by the solemn admission of the Ottoman empire to an equality of status with the European powers and the declaration of the collective obligations of Europe towards it. The congress, moreover, acted in some sort as the legislative body of Europe; it established the principle of the free navigation of the Danube and of the right of all nations to carry their commerce into the Black Sea; by a declaration, signed by all the powers present, it abolished the practice of granting letters of marque to privateers in war time. The question was even discussed of establishing some sanction by which the rules of international law agreed upon should be enforced upon recalcitrant states; and, though nothing was settled, a vœu to this effect was entered upon the protocol. The congress of Paris thus set a precedent more hopeful than those of the congresses held earlier in the century, because the issues were not confused by the supposed necessity for upholding “legitimacy” at all costs; it was a stage in the progress from the ideals of the Grand Alliance to those of the Hague Conference.
The conclusion of the Crimean War left the emperor Napoleon the most influential personage in Europe; and Paris, the seat of the congress, became also the centre of the diplomatic world. Russia had been bled almost to death Preponderance of France. by the war; Austria was discredited and isolated owing to the dubious part she had played in it; Prussia had not recovered from the humiliation of Olmütz; Great Britain was soon plunged into the critical struggle of the Indian Mutiny. The time was obviously opportune for the realization of some of the aspirations implied in the Napoleonic idea. The opportunity came from the side of Italy. By sending Sardinian troops to fight in a quarrel not their own, Napoleon and Italy. War of 1859. alongside the Allies in the Crimea, Cavour had purchased for Piedmont the right to be heard in the councils of the powers—a right of which he had made use at the Paris congress to denounce before all Europe the Austrian misrule in Italy. The Italian unionists were at one with Napoleon in desiring to overset “the treaties”; and the Franco-Italian alliance which, in 1859, drove the Austrians out of Lombardy and established the nucleus of the Italian kingdom was the beginning of a process which, within twelve years, was to change the balance of Europe. It was ominous of the future that it was largely the menace of Prussian intervention that persuaded Napoleon to conclude the armistice of Villafranca (July 11, 1859), which, contrary to his agreement with Victor Emmanuel, left Venice to the Austrians. In spite of the peace of Zürich (November 10), indeed, the union of Italy continued during the succeeding years, and Savoy and Nice were the reward of the French emperor’s connivance (see Italy). France thus once more gained her “natural frontier” of the Alps; the question was whether she would be able to regain her other natural frontier on the Rhine. The times were not unpropitious for an enterprise which was undoubtedly one of the main objects of Napoleon’s policy. The European concert had ceased to exist as an effective force; the treaties had been violated Napoleon and Germany. with impunity; in Germany, where the tension between the two great powers had not been eased by Prussia’s dubious attitude during the war, there was little prospect of a united opposition to French aggression, and the conditions seemed highly favourable for reviving the traditional policy of exploiting German disunion for the aggrandizement of France. Prussia was arming, but her armaments were directed not against Napoleon but against Austria, and the beginning of the reign of William I., who had become regent in 1858 and king in 1861, pointed to the development of a situation in which the French emperor would once again become the arbiter of Germany. On the 29th of March 1862 Prussia signed a commercial treaty with France on a basis that involved the exclusion of Austria from the Zollverein, and replied to the protests of the court of Vienna by recognizing the new kingdom of Italy. In September of the same year King William placed the supreme direction of Prussian policy in the hands of Otto von Bismarck, whose views on the exclusion of Austria from Germany were known to all the world.
The outcome of the Polish insurrection of 1863, however, again altered the aspect of things, and in a direction unfavourable to France (see Poland: History). Napoleon had been forced by French public opinion to come forward as Decline of Napoleon’s influence. the protector of the Poles; but the spectacle of a Bonaparte posing as the champion of “the treaties” was not impressive; his brave words were not translated into action; and he only succeeded in offending Russia by his protests and alienating Great Britain by his tergiversations. The proffered intervention of Austria, France and Great Britain was rejected in a note of Prince Gorchakov to Baron Brunnow, the Russian ambassador in London (July 1, 1863); no action followed; and the last effort to put forward the treaties of Vienna as the common law of Europe ended in a fiasco. British ministers, who had been made to look somewhat ridiculous, henceforth began to be chary of active intervention in continental affairs; Austria and France were alike discredited and isolated. Prussia which, under Bismarck’s auspices, had aided Russia in suppressing the Poles (convention of February 8, 1863) alone emerged from the crisis with increased prestige. Bismarck, indeed, was too wary to accept the tsar’s suggestion of an offensive alliance and an immediate combined attack on Austria and France; but in the coming struggle for the hegemony of Germany he was assured at least of Russia’s neutrality.
The final act in this long rivalry began with the opening up of the Schleswig-Holstein question on the death of Frederick VII. of Denmark and the accession of the “protocol-king” Christian IX. (November 15, 1863). The Rivalry of Prussia and Austria. Schleswig-Holstein question. German claim to the Elbe duchies, the Danish claim to at least Schleswig as an integral part of the northern kingdom, were but subordinate issues of questions far more fateful, the developments of which once more illustrated the hopeless enfeeblement of the idea of the European concert. In the struggle for the possession of the duchies the general sentiment of Germany was on one side, that of Europe on the other. By the protocol of 1852 the duchies had been treated as an integral part of Denmark, and France and Great Britain, as signatory powers, alike protested against the action
