No. 102.
Duc de Gramont to Mr. Berthemy.
Monsieur: The cabinet of Berlin has published, relative to the negotiations at Ems, various documents, in the number of which is a dispatch from Baron de Werther, giving an account of a conversation we had together during his last stay in this capital. These papers do not present the veritable aspect of the course pursued by the Emperor’s government under these circumstances, and the report of M. de Werther especially attributes words to me which I believe my duty requires me to rectify on several points.
The ambassador of Prussia, in our interview, dwelt particularly on this consideration, that the King, in authorizing the candidature of Prince de Hohenzollern, had never had any intention of wounding the Emperor, and had never supposed that this combination could give umbrage to France. I observed to my interlocutor that if such was the case a similar assurance given would be of a nature to facilitate the accord we were seeking. But I did not ask that the King should write a letter of excuse, as the Berlin journals have pretended in their semiofficial commentaries.
Nor can I agree to the observations which the baron attributes to me on the subject of the declaration of the 6th of July. I did not admit that this manifestation had been determined by parliamentary necessities. I explained our language by the sharpness of the wound we had received, and I in no way put forward the personal position of the ministers as the motive determining their conduct. What I said was, that no cabinet could preserve in France the confidence of the Chambers and public opinion in consenting to an arrangement which did not contain a serious guarantee for the future. I must add, contrary to the recital of M. de Werther, that I made no distinction between the Emperor and France. Nothing in my language could authorize the representative of Prussia to suppose that a strict solidarity of impressions did not prevail between the sovereign and the whole nation.
Those reserves made. I arrive at the principal reproach made against us by the cabinet of Berlin. We are said to have voluntarily opened the discussion with the King of Prussia instead of with his government. But when, on the 4th of July, in accordance with my instructions, our chargé d’affaires called upon Count de Thile to speak to him of the news we had received from Spain, what was the language of the secretary of state? According to his own expression, “the Prussian government was completely ignorant of this affair, which did not exist for it.” In presence of the attitude of the cabinet, which affected to have nothing to do with the incident, and to consider it as solely regarding the Prussian royal family, what could we do except apply to the King himself?
It is thus that, against our will, we requested our ambassador to place himself in communication with the sovereign instead of treating with his minister.
I have resided long enough in the courts of Europe to know how disadvantageous that mode of negotiation is, and all the cabinets will put faith in my words when I affirm that we only pursued that path because all others were closed to us. We regret that Count de Bismarck, as [Page 138] soon as he was aware of the gravity of the affair, had not gone to Ems to resume his natural position as intermediary between the King and our ambassador. But are we in reality responsible for the isolation in which his Majesty doubtless desired to remain, and which the chancellor probably found favorable to his designs? And if, as the cabinet of Berlin states, the declaration of war remitted by our chargé d’affaires constitutes our first written and official communication, whose is the fault? Are notes addressed to sovereigns? Could our ambassador so far derogate from customary usages when he was treating with the King, and is not the absence of any document exchanged between the two governments the necessary consequence of the obligation under which we were placed to pursue the discussion at Ems, instead of continuing it at Berlin, where we had first raised it?
Before closing these rectifications, I must refer to one observation of the Prussian cabinet. According to a telegram from Berlin, published by the journals of the 23d, MM. de Bismarck and de Thile, contesting a passage in my circular dispatch of the 21st of July, declared that “since the day they heard of the offer addressed to the Prince de Hohenzollern, the question of that candidature to the throne of Spain has never been the subject of the least conversation, either official or private, between themselves and M. Benedetti.” In the form in which it is produced, this affirmation is ambiguous; it seems to refer solely to the relations of our ambassador with the Prussian ministry, posterior to the acceptance of Prince Leopold. In that sense it would not be contrary to what we have ourselves said; but if it is extended to anterior communications, it ceases to be true, and to establish that fact I cannot do better than cite here a dispatch dated the 31st of March, 1869, addressed by Count Benedetti to the Marquis de Lavalette, then minister of foreign affairs.
It is thus conceived:
Berlin, March 31, 1869.
M. le Marquis: Your excellency requested me by telegraph yesterday to assure myself whether the candidature of the Prince de Hohenzollern to the throne of Spain had a serious character. I had occasion this morning to see M. de Thile, and I asked him if I was to attach any importance to the rumors in circulation on this subject, I did not conceal from him that I was anxious to be exactly informed, remarking that such an eventuality was of too direct interest to the Emperor’s government for my duty not to compel me to point out the danger if any reason existed to believe that the project might be realized. I made him aware that I intended to commuicate our conversation to you.
M. de Thile gave me the most formal assurance that he had not at any moment been aware of any indication whatever which could authorize such a conjecture, and that the Spanish minister at Vienna, during the stay he made in Berlin, had not even made any allusion to the subject. The under secretary of state, in thus expressing himself, and without anything I said being of a nature to induce such a manifestation, believed himself called upon to pledge his word of honor.
According to him, M. Rancès had confined himself to talking to Count de Bismarck— who perhaps was anxious to take advantage of the passage of this diplomatist to obtain some information on the state of things in Spain—of the manner in which affairs were advancing in what concerned the choice of the future sovereign.
That, in substance, is what M. de Thile stated to me, several times repeating his first declaration that there was not, and could not be, a question of the Prince de Hohenzollern for the crown of Spain.
Accept, &c.,
BENEDETTI.
After this quotation I believe I have no occasion to enter into any further explanations on a point we must consider as definitively established.
Monsieur Berthemy, Minister of France, &c., &c.