suffrage. This was no mere academic opinion; and he gave later on proof of his earnestness for the principle involved in convincing fashion.
To the argument still urged against that principle–the argument that most women are against it–he gave his answer in 1870:
“You will always find that in the case of any class which has been despotically governed–and though I do not wish to use strong language, it cannot be denied that women have been despotically governed in England, although the despotism has been of a benevolent character–the great majority of that class are content with the system under which they live.”
He pointed out that to admit women to the franchise did not compel those to vote who did not desire to do so.
In this matter Jacob Bright was his leading associate in Parliament; but outside Parliament he was working with Mill.
To the two questions already dealt with–Education and Woman’s Suffrage– was now added a third, which Sir Charles describes as ‘chief of all the questions I had to do with in 1870–the land question.’ There is this endorsement on one of Mill’s letters written in 1870:
“I acted as his secretary for above a year on (_a_) his land movement = taxation of land values; (_b_) the women’s suffrage proposal, which followed the carrying of his municipal franchise for women by me in 1869 and the School Boards, 1870.”
The Radical Club was founded, with Sir Charles as Secretary, in 1870, and Mill was among the original members of the Club. [Footnote: The others were Professor Cairnes, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Frank Hill (editor of the _Daily News_), Leslie Stephen, Mr. Leonard Courtney, Mr. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. W. C. Sidgwick, Mr. McCullagh Torrens, and Mr. Fawcett. Sir David Wedderburn, Mr. Peter Taylor, and Mr. Walter Morrison were added at the first meeting, as also was Mr. Hare. At the first meeting it was decided that women should be eligible. Half the Club was to consist of members of Parliament, half of non-members.] From this platform Mill propounded, in 1870, his views on land–views which forty years later became the adopted principles of the Liberal party; and at the inaugural public meeting of the Land Tenure Association in 1870 Sir Charles for the first time promulgated the doctrine of taxing the “unearned increment.” He insisted that England’s system of land tenure was “unique in the world,” and answerable for tragic consequences.
“One who has seen our race abroad under fair conditions knows how frank and handsome the Englishman is elsewhere, and might be here. But when he looks around him in Sheffield or in East London, he sees none but miserable and stunted forms. The life of the English labourer is a steady march down a hill with a poorhouse at the bottom. At the same time the observer finds, when he asks for the remedy, that in these matters there is not a pin to choose between the two parties in the State.” [Footnote: A note sent to Lord Courtney in 1909 will show exactly what Sir Charles’s position had been on this fundamental matter from the very outset of his political career:
“Mill’s object was–
“To claim for the benefit of the State the interception by taxation of a great part of the unearned increase of the value of land which is continually accruing, without effort or outlay by the proprietors, through the growth of population and wealth.
“To purchase land for the State, and let for co-operative agriculture under conditions of efficiency and to smallholders on durable cultivating interests.”
He adds a reference to his own Bill “for utilizing public and quasi- public lands under public management, with repeal of the Statute of Mortmain and forbidding of alienation.”
This Bill was introduced by him in the early seventies, but obtained no support till 1875 (see Chapter XIII., p. 192).]
Within the previous twenty-five years over six hundred thousand acres of common land had been enclosed, under Orders sanctioned by Parliament. Of this vast amount only four thousand had been set apart for public purposes. In 1866 the commons near London were threatened, and a Society for their preservation was formed, in which Mr. Shaw Lefevre was the moving spirit. [Footnote: Now Lord Eversley.] Sir Charles became in 1870 Chairman of the Society. Among the latest of his papers is a note from Lord Eversley accompanying an early copy of the new edition of his _Commons and Forests_ “which I hope will remind you of old times and of your own great services to the cause.” ‘We saved Wisley Common and Epping Forest,’ says the Memoir. It was more important that on April 9th, 1869, the annual Enclosure Bill was referred to a Select Committee, notwithstanding the determined opposition of the Government. The date is memorable in the history of the question, for the Committee recommended that all further enclosures should be suspended until the general Act had been amended, as it was in 1876.
About the same time Sir Charles became publicly committed to another cause, barren of political advantage, into which he put, first and last, as much labour as might have filled the whole of a creditable career. He began to take an active part in connection with the Aborigines Protection Society and presided at its Annual Meeting in 1870. This, says the Memoir laconically, ‘threw on me lifelong duties.’
II.
The Franco-German War broke upon Europe in July, 1870. Later, it became one of the chief interests of Sir Charles’s mind to track out the workings of those few men who prepared what seemed a sudden outburst; here it is important only to outline his attitude towards the combatants. In that period of European history every politician was of necessity attracted or repelled by the personality of the Emperor of the French. In Sir Charles’s case there was no wavering between like and dislike: he carried on his grandfather’s detestation of the lesser Napoleon. The chapter in _Greater Britain_ which is devoted to Egypt shows this feeling; and when news of Sadowa reached him during his American journey in the autumn of 1866, he wrote home to say that he rejoiced in Prussia’s triumph, and hoped “Louis Napoleon would quarrel with the Germans over it, and get well thrashed, with the result that German unity might be brought about.”
‘This’ (he notes in the Memoir) ‘is somewhat curious at a time when everybody believed (except myself and Moltke and Bismarck, not including, I think, the King of Prussia) that the French Army was superior to the armies of all Germany.’
In coming down the Mexican coast he touched at Acapulco, which was under Mexican fire, as the French still held the bay and city; and he had then, later in 1866, ‘begun to hope for the fall of Louis Napoleon, who was piling up debt for France at the average rate of ten millions sterling every year, and whose prestige was vanishing fast in the glare of the publicity given to the actions of Bazaine.’
Before Sir Charles returned to Europe in 1867, Maximilian, the Austrian Archduke sent by Napoleon III to be ‘Emperor of Mexico,’ had fallen, an unlucky victim of French intrigue. But Paris was still the centre of Europe; and the traveller on his way home from Egypt–where he had seen French enterprise opening the Suez Canal, French language and influence dominant–saw Louis Napoleon preside at a pageant, already darkened by the rising storm-cloud:
‘Reaching Paris’ (in June, 1867), ‘I attended the review held (during the Exhibition of 1867) by the Emperors of Russia and of the French, and the King of Prussia, at which I saw Gortschakof, Schouvalof, Bismarck, and Moltke, on the day on which the Pole Berezowski shot at Alexander II. Sixty thousand men marched past the three Sovereigns at the very spot at which, three years later, one of them was, to review a larger German force. The crash was near; Maximilian had been shot. It is, however, not pleasant to contrast the horror with which the news of the execution of the puppet Emperor was received in Europe, with the indifference with which all but a handful of Radicals had regarded the Paris executions of December, 1851.’
‘In October, 1867, three months later, I again visited Paris, with my father, and made the acquaintance of the Queen of Holland, the Queen of Sheba to Louis Napoleon’s Solomon in his glory. The Emperor of Austria, the King of Bavaria, and Beust were also in Paris on business which boded no good to Bismarck, and the populace were amusing themselves in crying “Vive Garibaldi!” to the Austrian Emperor, as three or four months earlier they had cried “Vive la Pologne!” to the Tsar. At a banquet to the Foreign Commission to the Exhibition, at which I dined, I heard Rouher make his famous speech, “L’Italie n’aura jamais Rome,” which he afterwards in December repeated in the Corps Legislatif–“L’Italie ne s’emparera pas de Rome–jamais” (shouts of “Jamais!” from the Right): “Jamais la France ne supportera cette violence faite a son honneur et a la catholicite.” When I heard the word “jamais,” I believed I should live to see Italy at Rome, but hardly so soon.’
His governing dislike of France’s rulers had reflected itself in that part of his first address to the electors of Chelsea which laid down his views on foreign affairs. “Our true alliance,” he had told them, “is not with the Latin peoples, but with men who speak our tongue, with our brothers in America, and with our kinsmen in Germany and Scandinavia.” This prepossession, notable in one who came afterwards to be regarded as the closest friend of France among English politicians, shaped his action when the crash came. It tempted him to the German side, but contact with Prussian militarism showed where his real sympathies lay.
War was declared on Tuesday, July 19th. On the following Saturday morning Sir Charles left London for Paris: left Paris for Strasbourg the same evening: visited Metz on the Monday, and saw the Imperial Guard at Nancy. Within four days from the time of leaving he was back in London, and busy with preparations. He had decided to attach himself to the ambulances of the Crown Prince of Prussia’s army, and in this expedition two other members of Parliament joined him:
‘Auberon Herbert (physically brave, and politically the bravest, though not politically the strongest, man of our times) and Winterbotham, afterwards Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, and a man of eloquence, whose early death is still deplored by those who knew him. We took letters from Count von Bernstorff, the Prussian Ambassador, and following up the German armies through the Bavarian Palatinate, a journey during which we were arrested and marched to Kaiserslautern to the King’s headquarters by Bavarian gendarmes, as French spies, we were enrolled under the Prussian Knights of St. John at Sulz by Count Goertz, and received billets from that time, although we used to pay for all we had at every place. At Wissembourg and at Sulz we were sent to the inn, and at Luneville I was planted on an ironmonger, but we were divided. At Nancy only, being fixed on a legitimist Baron, I was not allowed to pay for what I had, but I was put with him by his wish, by his friend the Mayor, as he would not have real Prussians. He made things so unpleasant for my companion, Count Bothmer–though, unlike his brother, the Count was a non-combatant–that this Knight of St. John had to go elsewhere. Auberon and Winterbotham were also put elsewhere at Nancy. At Sarrebourg and Pont-a-Mousson I forget with whom we were, but we were together and were nearly starved.
‘We marched with the Poseners, or Fifth Army Corps, through Froeschwilier and Reichshoffen; went off the road to Saverne to witness the bombardment of Phalsbourg; joined again at Sarrebourg; marched by Luneville, and from Nancy were sent to Pont-a-Mousson during the battles before Metz.
‘The first thing that struck us much during this portion of the war was that the grandest of the early victories in this so-called war of races, the Battle of Worth, was won and lost in the centre of the position by pure Poles and native Algerians. Poseners were arrayed against Turcos, and both fought well, while hardly a German or a Frenchman was in sight. On the field of Worth I noted that the Poseners had all many cartridges as well as their Polish hymn-books with them, but the Turcos were as short of cartridges as of hymn- books. Wanting a French cartridge, I was unable to find one in the pouches of the dead, while of German cartridges I had at once as many dozens as I pleased. I fancy, however, that it would not be safe to conclude, from the fact that the French had fired away their ammunition, that they fired carelessly because too fast; for the Germans, vastly outnumbering the French (who ought not to have fought a battle, but rather should have fallen back), had probably opposed at different portions of the day different corps to the same French regiments, who had not been relieved. After this battle all was lost to the French cause. The scattered French spread terror where they went, and while the railway might have been wholly destroyed by the simple plan of blowing up some tunnels, only bridges were blown up, which in the course of a few days were, of course, replaced even where they were not in a few hours easily repaired….
‘I was glad to have seen the beginning of the invasion. At no other time could I have gained a real knowledge of that which every politician ought to know–the working of the transport system of a modern army. We were the smaller of the two invading forces, yet we needed a stream of carts the whole way to Nancy from Bingen upon the Rhine, perpetually moving day and, night. The French compared the swarming in of Germany to the invasions of the Huns….
‘My letters to my grandmother (by the military field post) were not numerous. My first (written from Wissembourg) states that we are much elated at the victory of Wissembourg; while the second is as follows:
‘”I write on paper left by the French in the Palace of Justice. They seem to have fled in haste, for… the judges’ pen-and-ink portraits of one another still adorn the blotting-paper. This place (Wissembourg) is in much confusion…. When, by straining, and a good deal of pressure upon the members of the old French municipal council, a regiment is housed, in comes another with a demand for food and lodging for six hundred horses and four hundred men; then a Prussian infantry regiment two thousand strong, and so on all night…. We are leaving as members of the Prussian Order of St. John for the Bavarian camp. The whole series of French telegrams up to July 30th are still posted here on the Sous-Prefecture, inside which is confined Baron de Rosen, Colonel of the 2nd Cuirassiers of the French Guard.” I go on to say that the “town commandant is an English volunteer and lives in London when at home…. He is a most accomplished man.” He was accomplished enough, but he was a lunatic; and there is no more singular episode in the war than the fact that an unauthorized lunatic should have appointed himself to the command of an important depot, and been recognized for at least a week as commandant by all the authorities. The fact was that no regiment was stopping many hours in the town, and that each Colonel, finding a particular person established there, although he may have thought him a curious commandant, never thought of questioning his authority.
‘One of my letters appeared in the _Daily News_. It was dated August 15th, and prophesied the complete destruction of the French armies, and it contained a somewhat amusing paragraph:
‘”In our march last night we came into a part of the country unoccupied by either army. We were twice driven from villages by the Mayors, who seemed at their wits’ end in the mazes of international law. One said to us: ‘This town is not Prussian. It is French, and martial law is proclaimed in this part of France. Accordingly I must tell you that you need a French military safe-conduct. If you stop here without it I must arrest you, and send you’–he thought for a while–‘to the Prussian Commandant at Sarrebourg.'” At Nancy I saw the Crown Prince, Dr. Russell of the _Times_, Mr. Hilary Skinner of the _Daily News_, and Mr. Landells of the _Illustrated London News_, who afterwards died of rheumatism caused by exposure in the war. Lord Ronald Gower was there on the same day, but was sent away, as his presence with Dr. Russell as a guest was unauthorized.
‘Among our adventures, in addition to our arrest near Kreuznach and to our obtaining passes from the maniac commandant, was the adventure of our being lost in the Vosges, and nearly coming to be murdered by some French peasants, who in the night tried to force their way into the village school in which we had barricaded ourselves. Another adventure was our being nearly starved at Pont-a-Mousson, where at last we managed to buy a bit of the King of Prussia’s lunch at the kitchen of the inn on the market-place at which it was being cooked in order to be placed in a four-in-hand break. While we were ravenously gorging ourselves upon it, a man burst into the room, and suddenly exclaimed: “Winterbotham!” It was Sir Henry Havelock, who was hiding in the place, being absent without leave from the Horse Guards, where he was, I think, an Assistant Quartermaster-General. He had made friends with the Prussian Military Attache, to whom Bismarck had lent his maps, and we thus saw them and learnt much. It was on the same day that Bismarck himself was nearly starved. The first part of the story had appeared in print, and I asked him about it when I was staying with him in September, 1889. He told me that he had with him at his lodging the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg and General Sheridan, the American cavalry officer. Bismarck had gone out to forage, and had succeeded in finding five eggs, for which he had paid a dollar each. He then said to himself: “If I take home five, I must give two to the Grand Duke and two to Sheridan, and I shall have but one.” “I ate,” he said, “two upon the spot and took home three, so that the Grand Duke had one, and Sheridan had one, and there was one for me. Sheridan died: he never knew–but I told the Grand Duke, and he forgave me.”‘
No turn of fortune any longer seemed possible, and in Sir Charles’s mind hatred of the Emperor began to be replaced by sympathy for France.
‘Writing on the day of Gravelotte to my grandmother, I said: “I have no notion how I shall get back…. Perhaps I shall come from Paris when we take it, as I suppose we shall do in a week or two.” Such was the impression made on me by the rapidity of the early successes of the Germans. My feelings soon changed. Winterbotham continued to be very German, but Herbert and I began to wish to desert when we saw how overbearing success had made the Prussians, and how determined they were to push their successes to a point at which France would have been made impotent in Europe….
‘During the week which followed Gravelotte I saw much of Gustav Freytag, the celebrated Prussian writer and politician, who was the guest of the Crown Prince. This “Liberal,” who had the bad taste to wear the Legion of Honour in conquered France, was odious in his patriotic exultation.
‘Bringing back with me nothing but a couple of soldiers’ books from the field of Worth, and the pen of the Procureur-Imperial of Wissembourg, which still hangs outside my room, I got myself sent to Heidelberg in charge of a train full of wounded French officers of Canrobert’s Division, wounded at the Battle of Mars la Tour on August 16th, but not picked up until after Gravelotte on August 18th. It was the first train back; and as there was no signal system, and we had to keep a lookout ahead, it took me two days to reach the German frontier. We halted for the night at Bischweiler, and, passing through Hagenau, were received at the frontier of the Palatinate by a young man who came and spoke to every French officer, and asked after his wounds, introducing himself at each compartment by saluting and saying: “Je suis le duc Othon de Baviere.” This pleasant boy was afterwards to show the hereditary madness of his unhappy race. One of my prisoners was a Nancy man, and at this station I managed to find a boy who ran to his house, and brought down his old nurse with wine and food. It was a touching scene of a simple kind, and we were all the gainers by the officer’s hospitality.
‘From Heidelberg and Karlsruhe, where I was examined as a spy, I made my way by Switzerland and Paris to London. Almost the moment I reached London I saw a telegram in an evening paper announcing Sedan. I started that evening for Paris, accompanying Major Byng Hall, who carried despatches to Lord Lyons. We were the first to bring the news to Calais, where it was not believed, and we were mobbed in the railway-station. Old Byng Hall put his hand on his heart, and assured the crowd upon his honour that, though he was very sorry, it was true.
‘On the morning of September 4th, my birthday and that of the French Republic, I was standing in Paris with Labouchere, afterwards the “Besieged Resident,” in front of the Grand Hotel upon the Boulevard in an attitude of expectation. We had not long to wait. A battalion of fat National Guards from the centre of Paris, shopkeepers all, marched firmly past, quietly grunting: “L’abdication! L’abdication!” They were soon followed by a battalion from the outskirts marching faster, and gaining on them to the cry of “Pas d’abdication! La decheance! La decheance!” It was a sunny cloudless day. The bridge leading to the Corps Legislatif was guarded by a double line of mounted Gardes de Paris, but there were few troops to be seen, and were indeed very few in Paris. We stood just in front of the cavalry, who were perhaps partly composed of mounted Gendarmerie of the Seine, only with their undress _kepis_ on, instead of the tall bearskins which under the Empire that force wore…. Labouchere kept on making speeches to the crowd in various characters–sometimes as a Marseillais, sometimes as an Alsatian, sometimes as an American, sometimes as an English sympathizer; I in terror all the while lest the same listeners should catch him playing two different parts, and should take us for Prussian spies. We kept watching the faces of the cavalry to see whether they were likely to fire or charge, but at last the men began one by one to sheathe their swords, and to cry “Vive la Republique!” and the Captain in command at last cried “Vive la Republique!” too, and withdrew his men, letting the crowd swarm across the bridge. So fell the Second Empire, and I wished that my grandfather had lived to see the day of the doom of the man he hated.
‘The crowd marched across the bridge singing the “Marseillaise” in a chorus such as had never been heard before, perhaps, for the throng was enormous. After ten minutes’ parley inside the Chamber the leaders returned from it, and chalked up on one of the great columns the names of the representatives of Paris declared to constitute the Provisional Government, and I drew the moral–on a day of revolution always have a bit of chalk. The crowd demanded the addition of Rochefort’s name, and it was added. We then parted, one section going off to look for Paul de Cassagnac, [Footnote: M. Paul de Cassagnac was a conspicuous Imperialist.] who was the only man that the crowd wanted to kill.
‘I went with the others, first to the statue of Strasbourg, which was decorated with flowers, and to which a sort of worship was paid on account of the gallant defence of the city, Labouchere making another speech, and then on to the Tuileries. A Turco detained us for some time at the gates by dancing in face of the crowd. But at last they insisted on the private gardens being thrown open, and then swept in, and we passed through the whole of the apartments. Privates of the National Guard stationed themselves as sentries in all the rooms, and not a thing was touched, an inscription proclaiming “Death to thieves” being chalked upon every wall. Precautions were necessary, for the police, knowing themselves to be unpopular, had disappeared. Indeed the first proof to me in the early morning of the certainty of a revolution had been that on the boulevards the squads had passed me, relieving themselves in the usual way, but no squads going to take their places. The crowds were orderly, but the eagles, of course, were broken down, and a bit of one from the principal guardroom hangs still on the wall of my London study. The next day I wrote to my grandmother: “I would not have missed yesterday for the world. Louis Blanc and other exiles have come over, but I fear that the great northern line will be cut by Wednesday, and then you will get no more news from me.”
‘I had dined with Lord Lyons on the previous evening in such a costume as had never till then been seen at dinner at the Embassy, and had listened with him to the bands playing the “Marseillaise” and “Mourir pour la Patrie,” and on the morning of the 5th I had seen Louis Blanc. On the 6th I wrote that I feared that my letters would be stopped. In the course of the following days I visited all the forts with Alfred Tresca, of the Arts et Metiers, who had been set by Government, although a civil engineer, to organize the bastion powder-magazines, so I saw the defences well. Alfred Tresca was afterwards arrested while I was in Paris under the Commune, in the first week in April, 1871, for refusing to point out where his powder was.
‘I did not believe in food being got in fast enough to enable Paris to hold out long. Knowing as I do that the German cavalry were within 100 miles of Melun for a fortnight before they cut the Lyons line, I consider that to have allowed the French its use was a great error on the part of Germany, an error equal to that of letting Canrobert’s army join Bazaine by Frouard Junction without hindrance on August 13th, when we were already in Nancy, only five miles off. Both errors turned out well enough, as the luck of the Germans had it; but I do not believe that anyone now realizes the narrowness of the escape that the Prussians had of being crushed by Gambetta. They undertook too much when, with 210,000 men (at first), they set themselves to besiege Paris, which had in it 500,000 (though of bad material and no discipline), with 300,000 more French upon the Loire. The Germans succeeded, but I believe, with the French, that if Bazaine had held out a fortnight longer they must have failed….
‘What was done in thirteen days at Paris was wonderful. It is to Jules Favre and to Gambetta that France owed the exhaustion of the Germans by a siege in 132 days, instead of a collapse in ten days, and it is to them, therefore, that they nearly owed success–success which would have crowned Gambetta a king of men, though he had done no more than what, as it is, he did. I had an interview with Jules Favre [Footnote: Jules Favre was at this time Vice-President of the Provisional Government for National Defence with the Portfolio of Foreign Affairs.] at the Foreign Office one morning at 6 a.m. I also met Blanqui, [Footnote: Blanqui, well known as an agitator and revolutionary writer, was elected to Parliament in 1871 for Montmartre. He was disqualified from membership by various judicial condemnations, but “the Chamber decided to invalidate his election by solemn vote, instead of accepting as his disqualification the recital of the sentences passed on him depriving him of political rights” (_France_, by J. E. C. Bodley, vol. ii., p. 101). Theirs had him arrested and imprisoned.] afterwards too famous, at breakfast at Louis Blanc’s restaurant (opposite the old Town Hall), the headquarters of the Reds. Naquet, the hunchback, now known for his divorce law, was also there.
‘On one of the last sad days before the commencement of the siege (Vinoy’s or) Ducrot’s army crossed Paris, and the 30,000 men which formed it marched down the Rue Lafayette, across the Place de l’Opera, and down the Rue de la Paix towards the south-western heights, where they afterwards ran away on September 19th. I never saw a more depressing sight. I stood all day and through the evening in the rain, comparing these wretched, draggled, weary, dejected men, on the one hand, with the French troops I had seen at Nancy six weeks earlier, and, on the other, with the Prussian Fifth Army Corps I now knew so well. Troops, however, cannot be always judged by the eye alone, for the Bavarians, who fought admirably throughout the war, when I saw them on the march at the beginning of it looked so bad that I expected daily to see the whole 60,000 of their two strong corps eaten up by the single French corps which I knew was just in front of them. This French corps was commanded by de Failly, who had commanded three years earlier a mixed Papal and French force against Garibaldi at Mentone, near Monte Rotondo, and reported: “Les chasse-pots ont fait merveille.”
‘The day before I left Paris I saw a sergeant of foot surrounded by a crowd of roughs. He was explaining to them that he was an Alsatian. “I come from down there. They have eaten my cow!” “Ah,” cried the witty Paris crowd, “if they had only eaten _Leboeuf!_” The Marshal was looked upon in Paris as the cause of the war in virtue of his influence with the Empress.
The investment of Paris was completed on September 15th, and on the 16th ‘I parted from Louis Blanc, who was despondent, and to whom I was able to give no reassuring words, for I had seen the wonderful organization of the Germans. I left by the southern station for Geneva. Thousands of packing-cases encumbered the courts, the luggage abandoned by the women and children flying from Paris. At Villeneuve St. Georges the French marines were drawn up in skirmishing order, and the enemy’s cavalry were in sight. Our train was the last but one which passed, but we could, if stopped, have left Paris two days later by the Rouen line, although on the 18th the trains by that last line were fired at. I wrote home that I could not help thinking of one of the plays of Aristophanes, in which a peasant wings his way to heaven on the back of a gigantic dung-beetle in order to remonstrate with God upon the evils which He has inflicted upon man by war, and finds that God is out, and that His place has been taken by a devil, who is pounding all the powers together in a mortar.
‘I went to Lyons, where the red flag was flying from the Town Hall, but where the feeling in favour of continuing the war was just as strong as in the districts of the tricolour. I then crossed France to Tours, where I saw M. Cremieux, a Jew, the representative of the Government outside Paris, Gambetta not having yet descended from his balloon….
‘I visited the camp of the Army of the Loire, of which the organization was commencing, saw Lord Lyons and Sheffield, his secretary, near Tours, and took despatches for them to Calais by Rouen and Amiens. They included the correspondence of Mme. de Pourtales and Mme. de Metternich. The railways were in terrible confusion–National Guards moving, people flying before the Prussians, no food. I was three days and three nights on this little bit of road, and slept on tables in waiting-rooms at Vierzon and elsewhere. Passports were strictly demanded at this time on leaving as well as on entering France. When I reached Calais I found that the boat (and even that boat one with no passengers) would leave about 4 a.m., after the arrival of mails by sea. The inspection of my passport could only take place, I was told, when the boat was starting. It was midnight, the gates of the town were shut and drawbridges up, and the hotel at the station had been closed for lack of visitors. Watching my time, I dropped on board the steamer from off the quay, when the coastguardsman’s head was turned, and, finding a deck-cabin unlocked, I popped in and bolted the door, going fast asleep, and woke only when we were outside the harbour in the grey light of early morning, which shows that passport regulations can be evaded. All through the war Prussian spies could get into France with ease, without any need of false papers, by visiting the Savoy coast of Lake Leman as Swiss peasants. I was not called upon to show my papers when I passed from the Germans to the French by way of Basle, Ouchy, and Evian.’
Sir Charles here concludes the story of his French adventures of this year by giving his judgment of that moment upon the–
‘events which will never be forgotten by those of my time … the downfall of the most magnificent imposture of any age–the Second Empire….
‘As I noted in my diary at the time, “it is possible that the Bonapartists may raise their heads again, though if so, it is more likely to be under Plon-Plon than under the Empress, an impossible woman, whom even her son would have to exile should he come to the throne. But the ‘Sphinx’ who dominated Europe for so long is fallen, and it seems that my grandfather and dear old Kinglake were right, who always said that he had long ears and was a sorry beast after all. Now Europe thinks so, except the Rothschilds and the _Daily Telegraph_. What will future ages say of the shameful story of the _coup d’etat_ of 1851, of the undermining of the honour of every officer in the French Army by promises of promotion for treachery to the nation, of France ruined by the denying of all advancement to those who had not Court favour, of the Morny war in Mexico–of Maximilian, abandoned after having been betrayed, of the splendour of the Guards and of the Imperial stables, of the plundering, of the degradation of justice, of the spying by everybody on everybody else? What a sad farce the whole thing was, but how seriously Europe took it at the time!”‘
CHAPTER IX
THE BLACK SEA TREATY–THE COMMUNE
I.
In September, 1870, shortly after the Siege of Paris had begun, the Russian Chancellor, Gortschakof, intimated to the Powers that the Tsar proposed to repudiate that article in the Treaty of Paris which declared the Black Sea neutral, forbade Russia to build arsenals on it, and limited her fleet there to six small vessels. [Footnote: Treaty of Paris, July 13th, 1856 (Hertslet’s _Treaties_, vol. xiv., p. 1172).] This particular article had been specially demanded by England; and when France, desirous of closing the Crimean War, spoke of yielding to Russia’s resistance, Palmerston had declared that without this stipulation England and Turkey must carry on the war alone.
Sir Charles, on this matter as on many others, inclined to the Palmerstonian tradition, which was certainly neither that of Mr. Gladstone nor of Lord Granville. But Lord Granville gave him introductions for his projected second journey to Russia, and charged the young Liberal member with the task of representing the Cabinet’s views:
“In talking to Russians I hope that you will say that we are about the most peaceable Ministry it is possible for England to have, but we are determined not to put up with any indignity. On the other hand, we greatly regret any stop to increasing good relations between the two countries, and shall be glad to make them even more cordial than before if we are properly treated.”
He added the request that Sir Charles would write him first-hand impressions of the situation in Russia.
From St. Petersburg Sir Charles, in November, 1870, went to Moscow, where he lived with the Mayor, Prince Tcherkasky, ‘who afterwards became Governor of Bulgaria, and died at San Stefano, just after the signature of the Treaty.’ He was thus brought into touch with ‘the political intrigues’ of the moment:
‘The Imperial Prince, who was afterwards Alexander III., was no stranger to them. Alexander II. was, like his grandfather Alexander I., a German and a dreamer, as well as melancholy mad. His son, the Imperial Prince, like his grandfather Nicholas and like Paul, was both violent and sulky; but he was patriotic, and had at this time the sense to put himself in the hands of the Moscow men.’
“It is satisfactory to know that the antagonism of an heir-apparent to the reigning Sovereign docs not depend on race or climate,” was, says Sir Charles, Lord Granville’s comment on this description.
‘It was an interesting moment, and no foreign residence of my life was ever more full of the charm which attaches to the development of new political situations. The Emperor Alexander II. had fallen back from a most brilliant early part of his reign into its second period, which saw the rise of his unpopularity and the birth of Nihilism. He had become frightened, had not perhaps lost all his good intentions, but become too terrified to escape political reaction. His son, afterwards Alexander III., was, as often happens in despotisms, glorified by a popularity which he afterwards did not retain. When I saw the heir- apparent at his palace he seemed to me to be a hard-working, stupid man, and I never afterwards was able during his reign to divest myself of this first impression.
‘Of all those that I met in Russia, the ablest were the two brothers Miliutine. The General, I think, survived his brother by a long time, and continued to be Minister of War for years after his brother’s death; but the brother, the Miliutine of the reorganization of Poland after the last Polish insurrection, who was when I knew him half paralyzed in body but most brilliant in mind, struck me as being more full of ideas than any man I have ever met. His inferior brother was, though inferior, nevertheless a good Minister of War.
‘The Miliutines were Liberals. The leader of the high Tory party of my time was an equally remarkable man, Count Tolstoi, the iron representative of iron Toryism, of perfect honesty, in whom energy and strength were not destroyed by prejudice. He was the most ideal minister of despotism that autocracy has produced, representing the principles of order and authority with more ability than is generally found in leaders of his type. He was intensely hated by the Universities and by most of those, chiefly Liberals, with whom he lived. But although he is said by his terrorism to have created Nihilism, I am far from being convinced that any other course was possible to the Russian Empire, and if this course was to be taken, he took it well. In modern times there never was so unpopular a Minister, and when, in after years, Alexander III. recalled him to power as Minister of the Interior, one could not but feel that the break between the principles acted on by this Sovereign as Emperor, and those which he had honestly professed when heir-apparent, was complete.
‘I not only well knew Jomini, but I had made the acquaintance in 1868 in London (and renewed it at a later date) of his colleague Vlangali, at that time as truly brilliant and as supple as Jomini himself, though as silent as Jomini was talkative; … and between them and their marvellous subordinates, Hamburger the hunchback Jew, and his head of the Asiatic Department, Westmann, I do not wonder that two stupid men, the vain Gortschakof and the drill-sergeant de Giers, were able successively to pretend to rule the Foreign Office without the policy of the country suffering.
‘In Katkof I was greatly disappointed. The man was very powerful under two reigns, and with the exception of Count Tolstoi, he was the only man who was so, since otherwise all the adherents of Alexander II. were in disgrace during the reign of Alexander III.; but I could see nothing in Katkof except strength of will and obstinacy. He was entirely without judgment or measure or charm. The two Vassiltchikofs were men of what is called in Russia a “European” type, or “civilized.” There was nothing specially Russian about them, but they were far pleasanter than as a rule are able Russians, and this was also the case with Madame Novikof’s brothers, the two Kiriefs. In general it may be said that in the Moscow chiefs of the Slav Committees there was more European give and take, and less obstinacy or pig-headed Toryism of Russian character, than among any other set. One of the Vassiltchikofs had an art collection, and afterwards became, I think, Art Director at St. Petersburg, while the other, who was the greater Slav, and who was the son-in-law of Prince Orlof Davydof of St. Petersburg, who sent me to him at Moscow, was chiefly given to good works in Moscow. I think, if I remember right, that my hostess, Princess Tcherkasky, with whom I lodged, was their sister.
‘I saw a good deal of Peter Schouvalof, known as “all-powerful,” of whom I afterwards again saw a great deal when I was at the Foreign Office and he was Ambassador in London. He was the bitter enemy of Count Tolstoi all through life; but his complete fall, and it may even be said utter destruction, during the reign of Alexander III., was, I think, not owing to this fact, but because he was easygoing and had made friends with the morganatic wife of Alexander II. in his last years. Alexander III. never forgave anyone who had shown this disrespect to the memory of his mother, although as soon as his son in time succeeded to the throne, the members of the Imperial family visiting France, who had never acknowledged the existence of the Princess during all the years of Alexander III.’s reign, immediately began to revisit her at Biarritz or in Paris.
‘Peter Schouvalof represented the French Regency in our times, with all its wit, with all its half-refined coarseness–the coarseness of great gentlemen–with the drunkenness of the companions of the Regent, and with their courage. At the time that I knew him in St. Petersburg he was as much hated as his enemy Count Tolstoi, but that was because he held the terrible office of head of the Third Section or Director of the Secret Police, with the power of life and death over everyone except the Emperor. It was a somewhat sinister contrast to find, in one who used to the full the awful powers of his office, the greatest gaiety that existed in mortal man, unless in Gambetta.
‘K. Aksakof was in Moscow the superior in power even of Tcherkasky the Mayor, even of the two Samarines, even of Miliutine of Moscow, the brother of the General. He was not in reality so strong a man, but he had the ear of the heir-apparent, and I cannot but think, from a good deal which came to my knowledge at the time, that there was some secret society organization among the Slavophiles, of which he was the occult chief. Some think that had he liked he would have continued to rule Alexander III. after the latter ascended the throne, but my own impression is that he would have ended his days in Siberia. His brother John, who survived and had influence, was a very different man, and held other views. His influence for a time was enormous, although I could more easily have understood the dominance in the party of Miliutine or of Samarine. Katkof retained his influence because he was above all of the despotic party. Aksakof would have failed to retain his, because, although he held, as an article of faith, that reforms must come from the Emperor to the people, yet he desired that the Emperor should be a Russian Liberal–a very different thing from a “European” Liberal, but still something different from Alexander III. or from Count Tolstoi’s ideal of a Russian autocrat….
‘Among those I knew’ (says a later note) ‘was the pretty little child of Count Chotek of the Austrian Embassy, the bosom friend of Prince Henry VII. of Reuss, the Prussian Ambassador. The child’s mother, Chotek’s wife, was Countess Kinsky. She became the wife of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and the birth of her son, in 1902, was hailed by the Magyars as that of an heir to the throne of the dual monarchy, and may lead to civil war in Austria some day.’ [Footnote: It was the assassination of this Archduke which preceded the Great War of 1914.]
Sir Charles continued to correspond with Lord Granville about the international complication. The Foreign Secretary wrote in December of the proposed Conference of London that–
“It would not be a bad result that each side should imagine it had had a victory. There would remain the public opinion of Europe, and as we are neither of us popular, that may be tolerably impartial.”
The Russian point of view had been put to Sir Charles before he left England in a letter from Baron Jomini, who complained that attempts to revise the Treaty of Paris by a European Congress had repeatedly failed, because England had always made it a condition that at such “a Congress the Eastern question should not be raised.” What, then, was open to Russia–since “all the world privately admitted that the position created for her by the Treaty of 1856 was inequitable and an obstacle to good understanding” but to show the signatory Powers the impossibility of her remaining any longer in a false position?
The view which Sir Charles formed at the time was in strong condemnation of Lord Granville’s action. In his opinion, Great Britain, by consenting to a Conference (proposed by Russia’s friend; Prussia), consented to negotiate upon an act of repudiation by which her own rights were infringed; and this surrender seemed to him wholly unnecessary. Later knowledge only confirmed him in his opinion.
‘We knew’ (he writes in the Memoir) ‘that Austria, the original proposer of the neutralization, had on November 22nd stated that she would join us in a war with Russia if we declared war upon the question, and Italy had already declared that she would act with Austria and ourselves. On the other hand, we now know (1906) that the British Cabinet of 1856 did not contain a member who thought the neutralization worth anything, or that it could be maintained beyond “the first opportunity.” Gladstone, in 1879, returned to the question, and said that even Turkey had been willing to agree in 1870 to what had been done; but from a despatch to Lord Granville, dated November 24th, 1870, which has been published, it is clear that Austria, Italy, and Turkey would have gone along with us. Under these circumstances no fighting would have been wanted. All that we need have done would have been to have declared that we should take no notice of the Russian denunciation, and to have sent our fleet into the Black Sea, and the Russians could have done nothing but give in, as a platonic declaration that they were free would not have enabled them to launch a ship. Then we might gracefully have yielded; but as it was, we gave in to a mere threat of force.’
Acceptance of the Conference, moreover, seemed to Sir Charles a betrayal of France. France, who had been England’s ally in the Crimea, one of the signatory Powers to the Black Sea Treaty, saw her capital beleaguered by the Prussian friends of the Power which repudiated the Treaty, and could not even send a representative to the Conference to protest.
It was natural, then, that at the opening of Parliament in 1871 the member for Chelsea should raise this question. But to do so involved the bringing forward of a motion tantamount to a vote of censure on the Government, which Sir Charles Dilke himself supported; and Mr. Gladstone contrived to put his too critical supporter in a difficulty.
The Queen’s Speech inevitably contained reference to Prince Gortschakof’s action, and in both Houses there was considerable comment upon this in the debate on the Address. The Prime Minister referred to the opportunity for fuller discussion which would be afforded by Sir Charles’s motion, but, when pressed to name a day for the motion, deprecated discussion while the Conference was sitting. Frequent questioning led finally to the intervention of Mr. Disraeli, who raised the whole question of Conference and Treaty in a speech, and was answered by Mr. Gladstone. When after all this Sir Charles still persisted in his motion, the purpose of which was not to discuss either the methods or the results of the Conference, but to deplore the Government’s action in having entered on it at all, Mr. Gladstone declared that Government could spare no time, and would give a day only if it were taken as a direct vote of censure, which they must in honour meet; adding that the day could only be found by the postponement of a Licensing Bill which had much support in the Liberal party. Sir Charles persevered, and made a very able speech, to which no serious answer was given. He entirely destroyed the pretence that the Conference had met without a “foregone conclusion,” and stigmatized the indecent haste which could not wait to secure the presence of France even as an assenting party to this acceptance of an act of repudiation. But the House was dominated by dislike for anything which seemed to hint at opening up a new European war at the moment when a settlement of the existing conflict was expected. The Tories, ‘would only speak, and would not vote’; while Sir Charles’s Radical associates, such as Mr. Peter Rylands, welcomed anything done under pretext of avoiding war.
‘An attempt was made by Sir Henry Bulwer, the cynical and brilliant brother of Lord Lytton, by Mr. Horsman and Mr. Otway, to use my motion for their own purposes. Otway had resigned his Under-Secretaryship of Foreign Affairs on account of his strong opinion upon the question, and was distressed to find that his resignation had fallen flat. Horsman was always discontented, and Bulwer wanted to be a peer. [Footnote: Sir Henry Bulwer was afterwards created Lord Calling; Mr. Horsman had been a conspicuous Adullamite in the previous Parliament.] I used to tell Bulwer up to his death that I gave him his peerage, for he received Gladstone’s offer of the peerage just in time to prevent him from speaking for my motion. Bulwer, whom I had known as Ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Andrew Buchanan, whom I had known as Ambassador at St. Petersburg, Horsman, and Otway came and dined with me, and we made a great plot, and thought we were going to upset the arrangement with the Russians. But Gladstone succeeded in taking away Goldsmid, who was one of our very few Liberal supporters, made Bulwer a peer, and left me only with Otway, Gregory, afterwards Governor of Ceylon, and Horsman….
‘I ought to have divided, even if I had been in a minority of one, for the proposal to withdraw my motion brought a hornet’s nest about my ears, and was a parliamentary mistake.’
Michel Chevalier, the celebrated French Economist and Free Trader, wrote thanking Sir Charles. He had spent, he said, thirty years of his life in advocating an Anglo-French understanding, and now he would not know how to look his countrymen in the face were it not for the courageous utterances of a few friendly Englishmen to which he could point as evidences of a good-will that had not forsaken France in her evil day.
II.
‘Immediately after my return to England in the middle of the winter of 1870-1871, which had already been the severest ever known in Russia, I again started for the scene of war. I first visited the army of General Faidherbe, which was gallantly fighting in the north, and I was present at one of the engagements near Bapaume, in which the French took prisoners sixty sharpshooters of the Prussian Landwehr– splendid soldiers, towering above our little Frenchmen, to whom it seemed incredible, whatever the odds, they should have surrendered. I never saw so wretched an army to look at as Faidherbe’s. His cavalry were but a squadron. He had one good regiment of foot Chasseurs and two good regiments of marines; and the gunners of his artillery (escaped men from Sedan) were excellent, and the guns were new; but he had for his main body some 20,000 second-skim of the National Guard, the cream from the north having been sent south to the Army of the East under Bourbaki, with whom they were driven into Switzerland.
‘Ours were what schoolboys would call second choice. Oh, such men! and without boots, without overcoats, facing arctic weather in wooden shoes and old sacks–facing the Prussians, too, with old muzzle- loading guns; but they fought well, and their leader, a man of genius, made the most of them. I returned two or three times to England–that is, to Dover–to eat and buy things I could carry, for I could hardly get anything at Lille, where, by the way, I heard Gambetta make his great speech. It was the finest oratorical display to which I ever listened, though I have heard Castelar, Bright, Gladstone, the Prime Minister Lord Derby, Gathorne Hardy, and Father Felix (the great Jesuit preacher) often, at their very best.
‘Picking up Auberon Herbert, who was on his way to Versailles to wait for the surrender of Paris in order to take in food to his brother Alan, who was serving as a doctor on the ambulance inside, I went to the siege of Longwy. Like all the fortresses of France bombarded in this war, with two exceptions, it surrendered far too easily.
‘From Longwy we passed on to Montmedy, at which latter place we witnessed the immediate effects of a fearful railway accident, a collision in a tunnel between a trainful of French prisoners and one of recruits for the Prussian Guards. The scene in the darkness and smoke, with the stalwart, long-bearded Landwehr men, who formed the garrison of the town, holding blazing torches of pine and pitch, and the glare from the fires of the upset engines, was one which would have delighted Rembrandt. When a rush of water, a cataract from the roof of the lately blown-up tunnel, suddenly occurred, adding to the horror of the night, the place was pandemonium. Almost the only men unhurt in the front carriages, which were smashed to pieces, were the Mayors of the villages on the line, travelling compulsorily as hostages for the safety of the trains. I made military reflections on the advantage of blowing up tunnels, as against the practice of destroying bridges and so forth.’
Sir Charles was one of the first in Paris after the siege (which was raised by an armistice on January 29th, 1871), taking in with him a large quantity of condensed milk, of which he made presents to his Paris friends. The purpose of the armistice was to enable regular conditions to be signed between the conqueror and the conquered. The Imperial Government had declared war on Prussia; but the Empire had fallen and the existing Government was only provisional. It had a branch in Paris, another branch in Bordeaux, and between these the investing army barred all intercommunication. The purpose of the armistice was to allow the holding of elections throughout France to return a National Assembly, which in its turn should appoint Ministers fully authorized to treat for peace. The elections did but emphasize the division between Paris and the provinces, for in Paris an Ultra-Radical representative was returned, while in the country a considerable majority of monarchical deputies were elected. Republican France feared, and not without cause, some attempt to re- establish a dynasty.
When, on February 20th, the new Government, with Thiers at its head, signed preliminaries of peace, a condition was included which stipulated that the Prussian troops should formally enter Paris and remain for three days in possession of all the forts before evacuating the place. The National Guard, refusing to obey orders, entrenched itself in Montmartre; the seat of government was transferred to Versailles, lately the Prussian headquarters; fighting broke out in the streets, and the control of the city was seized in the name of the Commune.
So began the second siege, in which revolutionary Paris stood at bay against those whom they called ‘the Prussians of Versailles,’ while the real Prussians, still occupying part of the exterior line of forts, looked on, impartial spectators. Sir Charles writes:
‘At this time my attention was exclusively turned to foreign affairs, and immediately after my Black Sea speech I started for Paris. I took with me an appointment as a Daily News correspondent–not that I intended to correspond, but only because it would explain my presence. Having been unable to leave London during the first days of the rising of March 18th, which developed into the Commune of Paris, I left it with my brother on April 2nd, and reached Creil at night, and St. Denis in the morning. From Creil I wrote to my grandmother: “We shall reach Paris in the morning. It is no use writing, and we shall not be able to write to you.” We drove into Paris, and at once went to the Hotel de Ville, where we found the famous Central Committee sitting. We obtained from some Garibaldian officers of the Staff a special pass to leave Paris in order to see Gustave Flourens, for whom I was carrying a private letter from a friend of his in London…. The drums were beating through the streets all day, and great numbers of National Guards were under arms attempting to march upon Versailles, and there was heavy fighting, which we witnessed from a distance.
‘We counted 160 battalions of National Guards all carrying the red flag, and saw altogether, as near as we could compute, almost 110,000 men. That all Paris was in the movement at this time was clear, not only from this fact, but also from the following: that on March 26th between 226,000 and 227,000 electors voted, a full vote for Paris considering the great number of persons who, having left Paris before the siege, had not returned. In the municipal elections after the Commune, when the Conservatives had come back and made a great attempt to win, the total number of voters was only 186,000. I noticed at the Hotel de Ville that the Parisians had a great many sailors in uniform with them. These were sailors who had remained in Paris after serving there during the siege, and my pass was handed to me by a splendid specimen of a French tar wearing the name of the _Richelieu_ on his hat. I was one of the few persons not in the insurrection (and these were mostly killed) who saw the pictures in the Hotel de Ville so late–that is, so soon before the fire which destroyed them all–and I recognized old friends which I had known from 1855, when I was there at the great ball. Those who showed us from room to room were chiefly Garibaldian Poles, among them the Dombrowskis, one of whom was killed, and two of whom I afterwards befriended in London in their exile.
‘The next morning we left Paris early by the Vaugirard gate, for no one could tell us where Flourens was engaged. We had followed the main line of fighting; his death occurred upon the other line; but so great was the confusion of these days that we knew nothing of it until the 5th. We thought that to make for Clamart would be the surest course to bring us to the forefront of battle, and at 8 a.m. we were in Issy. We then heard heavy firing, and came over the hill between Forts Issy and Vanves, but there was a dense fog which deadened sound, and it was not till we were well down the hillside that we heard the crunch of the machine-guns, when we suddenly found ourselves under a heavy fire from the other side. Seeing the railway embankment in front of us at the bottom of the hill, we ran down and got under shelter near an arch at the corner of a park wall, which may, perhaps, have been the cemetery. Here we sat in safety while the bullets sang in swarms through the trees over our heads, while the forts cannonaded the heights, and the heights bombarded the forts, and while the federal regiments of the National Guard tried in vain to carry once more the line of hills which they had carried on the previous day, but had of their own accord at night abandoned, having no commissariat. They used, in fact, to go home to dinner. Indeed, many would in the morning take an omnibus to the battlefield, and fight, and take the omnibus back home again to dine and sleep–a system of warfare which played into the hands of the experienced old soldiers–the police of Paris–all ex- non-commissioned officers, and the equally well-trained Customs guards and forest guards, by whom they were opposed. General Vinoy, who was commanding, had, however, heavy work on this day, in which Duval, the General of the Commune, met his death within a quarter of a mile of the spot where we were hiding. With this day ended, indeed, the offensive operations of the Federalists against Versailles, and began the offensive operations of the regulars against Paris. After sitting a long time in our corner we found ourselves starved, and ran up the hill by the park wall, under a heavy fire, to Issy and then walked into Paris. I have a bullet in my room which struck the wall between us just as we reached shelter at the top. One of my curiosities of the time is the official newspaper of April 4th, which was conducted, of course, for the insurrection, but which played so well at being official that it announced as good news the telegrams from Algeria showing that the Arab insurrection was being put down, although the Government which was putting down this insurrection was the very same Government which was engaged in putting down the more formidable insurrection in Paris, to which the journal temporarily belonged.
‘On Wednesday, the 5th, my brother went to the fighting at Neuilly bridge, where the troops from Versailles were beginning to develop a serious attack, destined, however, to continue for six weeks without result, for Paris was not entered at this point. I, with a letter from Franqueville [Footnote: Le Comte de Franqueville, well known to a large circle of English friends by his book, _Le Gouvernement et le Parlement Britanniques_ (Paris, 1887).] to the Duc de Broglie, afterwards Prime Minister, in one pocket, and a pass from the Insurrection in the other, left Paris at 5 a.m. by the Porte Montrouge, and walked by Bourg la Reine to La Croix de Berny, and thence by Chatenay to La Cour Roland, where I met a cavalry patrol of the regular forces, and then came to an infantry camp. Having shown my letter, my English passport, and my appointment as a newspaper correspondent, I was allowed to go on to Versailles. There I slept on a table, there being a terrible crowd of Paris fugitives in the town. In the morning I had my interview with the Duke. He was kind to me, and I saw much of him in London and in Paris in later years. Thiers was right in alluding to his dull father as “The Duc de Broglie; the other, _the_ duke.” But both were narrow doctrinaires.
‘After looking at M. Thiers’ reserves, which at this time consisted of 250 guns parked on the Place d’Armes, with no artillerymen to work them, and a Paris regiment, the 118th, raised during the siege, locked up in the park to prevent their joining the insurrection, I started for St. Germain, where I met Major Anson, M.P., afterwards the leader of “the Colonels” (who resisted abolition of army purchase) in the House of Commons, and lunched, watching the firing of Mont Valerien on Paris. I then drove to St. Denis, the Prussian headquarters. Thence I drove again (the La Chapelle gate of Paris being shut) to Pantin. After a long parley the Belleville-Villette drawbridge was lowered for me, and I was admitted to Paris, having been almost all round it in the two days.
‘Major Anson gave me a bag of gold to pay to his brother’s (Lord Lichfield’s) cook. This man was in Paris, and on the 7th I called on him at a house close to the Ministry of the Interior, and to the Palace of the Elysee. The cook’s rooms were at the top of the house, over the Librairie, still there in 1907. He received the visit of myself and my brother in bed. “Excuse me,” he said, “but I have been fighting these three days, and I am tired out.” I asked his wife what he was fighting for, and she did not in the least know. No more did he, for the matter of that. He was fighting because his battalion was fighting. “The Prussians of Versailles” had taken the place of the other Prussians; that was all. At this moment 215 battalions of the National Guard supported the insurrection, having joined in pursuance of the resolution that, in the event of the seat of Government being transferred from Paris to any other place, Paris was to constitute itself a separate Republic. This more than anything else was at the bottom of the insurrection, and, as M. Jules Simon has said, “many Republicans who were neither Socialists nor Revolutionists hesitated. One asked oneself if in fighting on the side of order one was not at the same time fighting for a dynasty.” Then, again, serving in the National Guard meant pay and food, especially for the working man, for there was no work to be got in Paris, as business had not been reopened. Moreover, Paris was writhing with rage at the Prussian entry, and Parisian vanity was engaged on the side of the insurrection.
‘The insurrection was certainly at this time very far from being a communistic movement, as from a natural confusion of names it was thought to be by foreigners. There was a burning jealousy in Paris of the “Rurals,” and a real fear, not ill-founded, that a Royalist conspiracy was on foot. The irritations of the siege, however, played the largest part. The National Guard, who had fought very well at Buzenval on January 19th, profoundly moved by the capitulation, had carried off their guns to their own part of Paris in February, and it may be said that the insurrection dated from that time, and was historically a protest against the peace, for M. Thiers temporized with the insurrection until the old seasoned soldiers were beginning to return to him from their captivity in Germany. The fighting began with the sudden attempt of the Government to remove by force the guns which had been taken to Montmartre, followed as it was by the murder of two Generals by the mob. [Footnote: General Lecomte and Clement Thomas, the Commandant of the National Guard, were shot on March 18th, 1871, under conditions of peculiar brutality.] A number of men threw themselves into the movement from love of fighting for fighting’s sake, like the Garibaldian Poles. Some joined it from ambition, but the majority of the men who later on died on the walls or in the streets in the Federalist ranks died, as they believed, for the Republic, and had no idea of the plunder of the rich. Ricciotti Garibaldi was near Dijon “in observation,” as he afterwards told me. He said that he wanted to march upon Versailles with his excellent little army, which would have followed him, and fought well, and would certainly have taken the new capital, although it would have been crushed later on. He telegraphed to Garibaldi, and “Papa” telegraphed to him not to move, Garibaldi being wiser, perhaps, in his son’s case than he would have been had it been his own, for he was not remarkable for wisdom. It was a strange moment: the Prussians watching the fighting from those of the forts which were still in their hands, and a careless, idle Paris crowd of boys and women watching it from the walls.
‘On the 7th my brother and I were all but killed by a shell from Mont Valerien which suddenly burst, we not having heard it, close to us in a garden at the corner of the Place de l’Etoile and Avenue d’Uhrich, as the Avenue de l’Imperatrice had at this time been named, from the General who defended Strasbourg. During the 7th and 8th a senseless bombardment of a peaceable part of Paris waxed warm, and continued for some days uselessly to destroy the houses of the best supporters of the Conservative Assembly without harming the Federalists, who did not even cross the quarter. M. Simon has said that Thiers did not bombard Paris; that he only bombarded the walls of Paris at the two points at which he intended to make a breach…. All I can say is that if this was the intention there must have been someone in command at Mont Valerien who failed to carry it into effect, and who amused himself by knocking the best part of Paris to pieces out of mischief, for no artilleryman could have been so incapable as to fire from hill to hill when intending to fire down into that which, viewed from Mont Valerien, looks like a hole. In 1841, curiously enough, Thiers had been accused, at the time of the erection of the forts of which Mont Valerien was one, of making it possible that Paris should be bombarded in this way, and had indignantly replied, asking the Assembly if they believed that after having _inonde de ses feux la demeure de vos familles_ a Government could expect to be continued in power. But in 1871 he did it, and was continued in power for a time, and that with the triumphant support at the moment of the very persons whose houses he had destroyed. The Commune had a broad back, and that back was made to bear the responsibility of the destruction.’
Sir Charles returned to his duties in London after the Easter recess, but he was back in Paris to see the last moments of the second siege. On May 21st the army had forced its way into the city, though several days of bitter street fighting remained, in which the town was fired, and the Hotel de Ville and Ministry of Finance were destroyed. [Footnote: Sir Charles writes of the celebrated order, “Flambez Finances”: ‘the order to burn the Ministry of Finance was an undoubted forgery, as a distinguished Frenchman, signing himself “A Communalist,” showed in the _Pall Mall Gazette_. The evidence before the court-martial of the porter of the Ministry of Finance, that the fire was caused by shells, confirms my view, and shows how the events of the moment have been distorted by the passions of writers.’] Sir Charles had foreseen the destruction of these uildings, “because they were behind great barricades in the direct line of the necessary attack,” and was also proud of the verification which a minor military forecast received. Alan Herbert, Auberon’s elder brother, who for many years practised as a doctor in Paris, was awakened on May 21st by a disturbance in the street, and
‘”saw several National Guards and dirty-looking fellows taking counsel together whether they should raise a barricade opposite my windows, and they were actually beginning it. However,” he wrote to his mother, Lady Carnarvon, “Sir Charles Dilke, when he was in Paris with Auberon, came to see me here, and the question being raised as to a barricade being placed opposite my windows he decided it could not be, as the only proper place for one would be some doors lower down at the meeting of the three streets. This recollection was some consolation to me, and his opinion was quite correct, for an officer arrived, supposed to have been the General Dombrowski, who made them begin lower down.”‘
It was on May 25th that Sir Charles left London to reach Paris, which was known by the 24th to be in flames.
‘Crossing by Calais, I reached St. Denis at night, drove to Le Bourget, got a pass into Paris from the Germans at dawn, with a warning, however, that it would not bring me out again. By the drizzling rain I passed unhindered into Paris, all the gates being open and the drawbridges down, as the Federalists were both within and without the walls. I reached the great barricade in front of the gates of the Docks de la Villette at seven in the morning. My road had been lighted till the daylight grew strong by the flames of the conflagration of the warehouses. This day, Friday the 26th, was that of the third or last massacre of hostages–the thirty-seven gendarmes, the fifteen policemen, the eleven priests, and four other people, I believe. It was a very useless crime. When I reached the great barricade at a meeting of roads, one of which I think was called Route d’Allemagne, fighting had just recommenced after a pause during the night. At this point the field artillery were bombarding the barricade from the Rue Lafayette. I stood all day in comparative safety at the door of a baker’s shop in the Rue de Flandre, for the baker was interested in what was going on sufficiently to keep his door open and look out and talk with me, though his shutters were up at all the windows. When evening came the Federalists still at this point maintained their strong position, and I, of course, knew nothing of the movements on the south by which the troops had all but hemmed them in. The baker with whom I had made friends offered me hospitality for the night, which I accepted, and I might have stayed longer with him had I pleased; but not knowing how long the fighting might continue, I determined to make my way into the Versailles lines at dawn.
‘Fighting in our quarter had been again suspended at night, and in the grey light of early morning (it was fine after a long rain) I left my baker and made my way to the left, the left again, and then down a long street towards the Eastern Railway. A sentry about two hundred yards off presented his piece. I stood still in the middle of the street. He seemed then not to know what to do. I had on the red-cross armlet which I wore throughout the war, and held a white handkerchief in my hand. I suppose I looked respectable enough to be allowed to come nearer, for he let me advance. When near enough I called to him that I wished to speak with the officer of the post. He called out a corporal, to whom I made the same statement. They kept me there for a time which seemed an age, and then brought an officer. I shouted to him that I was an English newspaper correspondent, that I had an authorization as such, an English passport, and a Prussian pass into Paris, and that I was known to the Due de Broglie and to Lord Lyons; also that I could name friends in the centre of Paris to whom I might be sent under guard. He let me pass, and said: “Allez! Vous avez eu de la chance.” I went straight to the Arts et Metiers. The dead were lying thick in the streets, especially at the Porte St. Martin barricade, where they were being placed in tumbrils. The fighting had been very heavy; the troops alone had lost 12,000 killed and wounded after entering Paris. At least as many Federalists were killed fighting, or wounded and finished, besides the great number shot after their surrender. I found Tresca, the father, picking up the pieces of the shells which were bursting in the courtyard, and putting them all together with wires, to the greater glory of his own particular make. It was the Federal artillery on the heights which was bombarding Paris with Tresca’s shells. When one burst perfectly into some twenty equal pieces he would say:” Beautiful; that is one of mine.” Any that burst into one large piece and two or three little ones he set down to the “genie militaire” of Vincennes.
‘After several days I left Paris with Dr. W. H. Russell of the _Times_, my former opponent at Chelsea at the ’68 election, whom I had last previously seen at Nancy on the day of Mars la Tour, and returned to London, having for the purpose of leaving Paris a pass from Marshal MacMahon’s Chief of the Staff, which I still preserve.’ [Footnote: This Diary Extract of the War of 1870 was published in the _Nineteenth Century_ of January, 1914.]
So ends the story. Later in life, during his championship of army reform in the House of Commons, a Tory Colonel interrupted the civilian critic with some bluntness. “I have been on more battlefields,” Sir Charles retorted, “than the honourable and gallant member has ever seen.” The white ambulance cap, with its black and green peak, which he preserved as a memento, bore on its lining:
“WORTH. ORLEANS.
PHALSBOURG. LONGWY.
MARS LA TOUR. BAPAUME.
GRAVELOTTE. PARIS.”
Preserved among Sir Charles’s papers, and dated September 30th, 1870, there is this letter from John Stuart Mill:
“If Gladstone had been a great man, this war would never have broken out, for he would have nobly taken upon himself the responsibility of declaring that the English Navy should actively aid whichever of the two Powers was attacked by the other. This would have been the beginning of the international justice we are calling for. I do not blame Gladstone for not daring to do it, for it requires a morally, braver man than any of our statesmen to run this kind of risk.”
At the outset of hostilities France, and not Germany, appeared to Sir Charles not only ostensibly, but really the attacking Power, and therefore the true menace to the liberties of Europe. The policy of Louis Napoleon was apparently responsible for the Franco-German War, and as he said in _Greater Britain_: “If the English race has a mission in the world, it is surely this, to prevent peace on earth from depending upon the verdict of a single man.” With the fall of Napoleon and observation of the Germans as conquerors, Sir Charles became wholly French in his sympathies, and before long his close study of events preceding the war showed him that it had really been of Bismarck’s making. This did not lead him to advocate “alliance,” for when alliances between various Powers were constantly advocated, he declared his belief that “the time for permanent alliances is past”; [Footnote: Speech at Chelsea to his constituents, January 24th, 1876.] but his observations in these years made him through life the steady friend of France, the constant upholder of her value to Europe, the advocate of fellowship between her free greatness and that of his own free country. “France,” said he, “has in England no stronger friend than I.” He lectured and spoke more than once upon the great war and its results, and the passage which ends a Recess speech of 1875 was delivered after one of the critical moments when Germany had shown a disposition to renew attack on France. Someone had spoken of Germany “as the most ‘moral’ among the nations.” Sir Charles replied:
‘Not only do I think the conduct of Prussia towards Denmark the reverse of “moral,” but I confess I have the same opinions of her later conduct towards France…. No doubt the military law presses hardly on the German people, and no doubt the Prussian Court tells them that it is the fault of France; but is it true? Do not believe in the French lamb troubling the waters to the hurt of the Prussian wolf. Taxes and emigration increase in Germany because, as Count Moltke said in his place in Parliament, “Germany must stand armed to the teeth for fifty years to defend the provinces which it took her but six months to win.” But why have taken them? Did not England and Austria at the time warn Prussia what would be the wretched consequences of the act? German fears of to-day are the direct outcome of the frightful terms which victorious Germany imposed on France. She might have had money, reduction of forces, dismantlement of fortresses, but she would have the dismemberment of France and her money too. She insisted, in defiance of all modern political ideas, in tearing provinces from a great country against their will. France has since that time set an example of moderation of tone, yet Germany cries out that she will fight again, and crush her enemy to the dust. Poor German Liberals, who abandoned all their principles when they consented to tear Alsace and Lorraine from France, and who now find themselves powerless against the war party, who say: “What the sword has won the sword shall keep!”‘
He then quoted ‘the words of an Alsatian Deputy who spoke before the German Parliament on February 16th, 1874, words which were received with howls and jeers, but which were none the less eloquent and true.’ The words dealt with the dismemberment of France, and ended with this passage: “Had you spared us you would have won the admiration of the world, and war had become impossible between us and you. As it is, you go on arming, and you force all Europe to arm also. Instead of opening an age of peace, you have inaugurated an era of war; and now you await fresh campaigns, fresh lists of killed and wounded, containing the names of your brothers and your sons.” “The view of this Alsatian Deputy is my view,” said Sir Charles: “I do not believe that might makes right…. For our own sakes as well as hers, T pray that France may not be crushed. France is not merely _one_ of the nations. The place of France is not greater than the place of England, but it is different. The place of France is one which no other nation can quite hold.”
CHAPTER X
THE CIVIL LIST
The disregard of party allegiance which Sir Charles showed in regard to the Education Bill and the Black Sea Conference did not grow less as time went on. When the Ballot Bill of 1870 was in Committee, he moved an amendment to extend the hours of polling from four o’clock to eight, as many working men would be unable to reach the poll by the earlier hour. There was much talk in debate of the danger which would ensue from carrying on so dangerous an operation as voting after dark, and the Government Whips were actually put on to tell against this proposal; nor was any extension of the hours effected till 1878, and then by Sir Charles Dilke himself, in a Bill applying to London only, which he introduced as a private member of the Opposition under a Tory Government.
The first of the many Bills introduced by him was that to amend the procedure of registration, which in the session of 1871 he got successfully through Committee stage; but it perished in the annual “slaughter of the innocents.”
One of the measures which contributed to a decline of the Government’s popularity was the unlucky proposal in Mr. Lowe’s Budget of 1871 to levy a tax on matches; and Sir Charles was the first to raise this matter specifically in Committee, condemning the impost as one which would be specially felt by the poor, and would deprive the humblest class of workers of much employment. On the day when Lowe was forced to withdraw the obnoxious proposal, Sir Charles had opened the attack by a question challenging Government interference with a procession of the matchmakers organized to protest against the tax. He was, therefore, personally identified with the rebuff administered to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The tremendous spectacle of events in France had inevitably bred a panic in England. It was proposed to increase the active army by 70,000 men. Sir Charles was no friend to panics, and he was one of the seven who voted against the motion.
But his was not merely a blank negative directed against any proposal for increasing the standing army. He writes:
“About this time” (March, 1871) “I promoted a movement in favour of a system of universal instruction in arms, and between fifty and sixty members of Parliament attended the meeting which I called, the most prominent among them being Sir M. Hicks Beach, Mr. Mundella, and Henry James. We all lived to know better.”
Those who joined him in this momentary propaganda dropped the proposal of universal instruction in arms, and turned their attention elsewhere. He substituted for it another ideal of military efficiency, and laboured all his life to give it effect. Speaking to his constituents at Kensington in the autumn of 1871, he advocated “the separation of the Indian from the home army, and the adoption of the Swiss rather than of the Prussian military system.” As a Radical, he faced the question whether Radicals ought to interest themselves at all in army reform, and he answered:
“As a mere matter of insurance, it is worth taking some trouble to defend ourselves. There are, however, higher reasons for such interest, and among them are treaty obligations and the duty which we owe to the rest of the world of not suppressing our influence–on the whole a just and moral one.”
‘In these words,’ Sir Charles notes, ‘there lies in a nutshell all that I afterwards wrote at much greater length upon army reform in my book, _The British Army_.’
In this year he made a visit to the autumn manoeuvres, then held for the first time, and ‘looked upon by the army reformers as the dawn of a new day.’ Sir Charles, however, with his knowledge of war, ‘thought them singularly bad.’ He was to repeat that experience several times, attending manoeuvres both in France and England. He held that annual manoeuvres were “essential to efficiency,” and with other army reformers brought later much pressure to bear on the Government to secure this end.
As early as February, 1871, Mr. Trevelyan (then out of office) had written to propose “a little meeting of Radical army reformers, say ten or twelve or fifteen, to arrange parts for practical work in the House, and to found a nucleus for an Army Reform Association in case of dire need (to stump the country).” The stumping of the country Mr. Trevelyan did himself, and his speeches led to the abolition in this year of the purchase system. What he wanted of Sir Charles is indicated by another sentence: “There never was a time when your turn for organization would be of more immediate value.” But even more immediate use was made of Sir Charles’s willingness to confront unpopularity. The “practical” part assigned to him in House of Commons’ work was to undertake a motion (on going into Committee of Supply) for the suppression of two regiments of Household Cavalry and the substitution of two regiments of cavalry of the line. The change was justified by Sir Charles not only on the score of economy, but upon the ground that heavy cavalry had proved unserviceable in the Franco- Prussian War. Whatever his arguments, this attack on the maintenance of privileged troops brought social displeasure on the assailant.
In 1870 the Queen had consented to abandon the tradition which made the appointment of the Commander-in-Chief a matter within the Sovereign’s personal control; and the subordination of the military head of the forces to the Secretary for War was formally recognized. But the Duke of Cambridge continued to be Commander-in-Chief, and army reformers were extremely desirous to remove him. On this subject the Press was reticent no less than public speakers, and finally it was left for Sir Charles to advocate in the speech at Kensington already referred to the substitution of some other officer “more amenable to parliamentary control.”
In 1870 the Civil Service had been (with the exception of one preserve, the Foreign Office) thrown open to competitive examination. In 1871 the institution of purchase in the army perished after a fierce conflict.
In the autumn of 1871 Sir Charles arranged to deliver at great centres throughout the country a series of speeches advocating a redistribution of seats which should make representation more real because more equitable. The first of the series, delivered in Manchester, merely propounded the view that a minority in Parliament very often represented a large majority of voters, because one member might have 13,000 electors and another only 130. But when he came to speak at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, on November 6th, he gave this general principle definite application to a particular instance, in which very small minorities had nevertheless represented very large bodies of the electorate, and, as Sir Charles held, very widespread opinions.
This instance was the vote for an allowance of L15,000 a year to Prince Arthur, proposed on his coming of age. Radical opinion had been already stirred in the earlier part of the Session by the Queen’s request for a dowry of L30,000 for the Princess Louise on her marriage with the Marquis of Lorne; and Mr. Peter Taylor, in opposing the dowry, had spoken of the probability that such a grant would strengthen the tendency towards republican views among the artisan class. [Footnote: Taylor’s opposition had led to a division, in which Fawcett had a lobby to himself, Dilke, with Taylor, being tellers for the “Noes.” But on the question of the allowance to Prince Arthur fifty-three voted for a reduction of the allowance, and eleven against any grant at all.]
‘I visited Newcastle, and there spoke chiefly upon the Dowry question, which had led to a division in the House of Commons, in which the minority had consisted of but three persons, with two tellers…. But in the course of the recess I had gone into the question of the Civil List expenditure upon the Court, and at Newcastle I made references to this subject which were accurate, though possibly unwise.’
The Queen’s long retirement (now of ten years’ duration) from all ceremonial functions had occasioned considerable discontent. A pamphlet, under the title _What does She do with it?_ written, as Sir Charles believed, by one who had been a member of the Government, had received wide publicity. Sir Charles alluded to this, and, taking up the pamphleteer’s argument, drew a picture of royal power as increasing, of quaint survivals of ancient offices kept up at high cost, and of the army’s efficiency impaired by the appointment of Royal personages to command. He concluded by a peroration on the model State, inspired, one fancies, not only by his early training, but by Vacation reading of that long series of Utopias and “Commonwealths ideal and actual,” the recollection of which fascinated him to the end: [Footnote: Chapter V., p. 55.]
“It is said that some day a commonwealth will be our government. Now, history and experience show that you cannot have a republic unless you possess at the same time the republican virtues. But you answer: Have we not public spirit? Have we not the practice of self-government? Are not we gaining general education? Well, if you can show me a fair chance that a republic here will be free from the political corruption that hangs about the monarchy, I say, for my part–and I believe that the middle classes in general will say–let it come.”
This was the abstract avowal of a theoretical preference, which Sir Charles expressed with greater clearness and decision than others who professed it–than Fawcett, who preached Republicanism at Cambridge, or than Chamberlain; whose attitude is sufficiently indicated by the letter which he wrote to Dilke on seeing the very violent leader with which the _Times_ greeted the Newcastle speech:
“I am glad to see that you have raised the Philistine indignation of the _Times_ by your speech at Newcastle, which, as well as that at Manchester, I have read with interest and agreement.”
‘Going on beyond my utterances, or indeed my belief, Chamberlain added:
‘”The Republic must come, and at the rate at which we are moving it will come in our generation. The greater is the necessity for discussing its conditions beforehand, and for a clear recognition of what we may lose as well as what we shall gain.”‘
The essence of Republicanism to Sir Charles was equality of opportunity for all citizens in a well-ordered State.
His theoretical avowal of Republicanism was seized upon by all who were offended by his lack of deference in dealing with a matter so nearly connected with Royalty. Charges of treason were made against the member of Parliament who, in defiance of his oath of allegiance, proposed to overthrow the monarchy.
This general outcry did not begin till the _Times_ leader had circulated for a few days. But within a week the whole Press had broken out in fury. The London correspondent of the _New York Tribune_ reported that “Sir Charles Dilke’s speech competes with the Tichborne trial” as a subject of public comment. There was a second article in the _Times_ The _Spectator_ imputed to Dilke a want both of sense and decency, and declared that he “talked sheer vulgar nonsense and discourteous rubbish in order to mislead his audience.” But as the correspondent of the _New York Tribune_ said: “No one proved or attempted to prove that Sir Charles Dilke had misstated facts.”
‘On one point, and on one point only, had I any reason to think that I was wrong–namely, upon the Queen’s Income Tax.’ No documents existed, and information was promised to Sir Charles by Mr. W. E. Baxter, Secretary to the Treasury, ‘but when he applied for it he was told that it could not be given unless Mr. Gladstone agreed, and on this Mr. Gladstone wrote one of his most mysterious letters, and I never really believed that the matter was cleared up.’
In December, when the Prince of Wales was brought to the extremity of danger by grave illness, an outburst of loyalty was aroused which shaped itself into a protest against the “republican” demonstrations. But in the hearts of thousands of working men who had expected some great change from the Reform Act of 1868 and found no real alteration, there was a deep resentment against the power and the attitude of the upper classes; and against this power Sir Charles had struck a blow. The Press campaign against him had the result which always follows when popular clamour seeks to brand a strong man for an act of moral courage–it made him notable. He was at a crisis in his political career, and the risks were great. Opposition to him in Chelsea was threatened from orthodox Liberalism. A letter from Labouchere warned him of this, and of the support which such opposition would assuredly receive from Government organizers. Dilke went straight ahead. It happened that the projected campaign on Representation had pledged him to a series of speeches, and he did not therefore need to seek occasions.
His next appearance on a public platform after the Newcastle meeting was fixed for November 20th at Bristol, and opposition was promptly threatened, somewhat to the surprise of Professor F. W. Newman, who had been asked to take the chair.
“I do not read the papers daily” (the Professor wrote), “and was quite unaware that any animosity against Sir Charles Dilke existed among the Bristol Liberals. But I think it is high time that the Liberal party everywhere be pulled out of the grooves of routine, and that _new men_ take the lead of it. I hope there will not be a mere noisy disturbance, but I will try to do my duty in any case.”
There was a noisy disturbance, but at Leeds on November 23rd the chairman of the meeting was Alderman Carter, a Radical member of Parliament, of considerable local influence, and an immense hall was packed by 5,000 supporters who secured the speaker from any interruption. Under these conditions, Sir Charles delivered a speech much better, in his own opinion, than the Newcastle discourse. As he put it many years later, the former was on the cost of the Crown, the second a defence of the right of free speech in the discussion of the cost of the Crown. [Footnote: Private letter to the Editor of _Reynolds’s Newspaper_, June 23rd, 1894.]
A main part of his defence was devoted to one point on which throughout all this controversy he showed himself sensitive. “I care nothing,” he said at Leeds, “for the ridiculous cry of ‘treason,’ but I do care a great deal for a charge of having used discourteous words towards the Queen;” and he went on to explain by citation of his speech that ‘the malversation, if there was one,’ had been charged, not against the Queen, but against the neglect of her Ministers. He added now that the “breach of the spirit of the Civil List Act,” in allowing the savings to accumulate, was one for which neither the present Government nor the Opposition were responsible so much as their predecessors; and he made it doubly clear that, although he desired to see savings made for the public, his true objection to the office of Hereditary Grand Falconer and other sinecures was ‘not on account of the money that they cost, but on account of the miserable political and moral tone which was set by their retention.’ Asserting that the Duke of Edinburgh had been appointed to an independent naval command without the training which other officers would have undergone, he reverted to the ideal of the model State:
“To say these things is not to condemn the monarchy, because they are no necessary part of the monarchy, although the opposite idea–that of promotion by merit alone and of the non-recognition of any claims founded upon birth–is commonly accepted as republican. I care not whether you call it republican or whether you do not, but I say that it is the only principle upon which, if we are to keep our place among the nations, we can for the future act.”
‘Not only was the Leeds meeting a success, but so also was one at Middlesboro’ a few days later than that at Leeds. But on November 30th, when I attempted to address a meeting at Bolton under the auspices of the local leaders of the Liberal party, such as Mr. Cross [Footnote: Eventually the chairman named withdrew his support in view of the agitation; and the Liberal Association (on the casting vote of their Chairman, Mr. J. K. Cross) decided to refuse sanction to the meeting.] (afterwards Under Secretary of State for India), Mr. Mellor, and Mr. Haslam, there was a fearful riot, at which a man was killed and a great number of persons injured by iron nuts and bars being thrown in through the windows by the Tory roughs outside the hall.’ [Footnote: Eight of the party who broke up the meeting were put on their trial, and Serjeant Ballantine, who defended, made such play with “Citizen” Dilke’s unpopular opinions that “most of the jury felt that, as loyal men, they were bound to acquit the prisoners.” Mr. George Harwood, the late member for Bolton, related in a letter of 1911 what he saw as “an indifferent young fellow” who had “strolled down to look on.” “The crowd” he writes, “was very thick and very fierce, having declared that Sir Charles should not get away alive; but when the excitement was hottest, Sir Charles came out of the main door and stood quietly in sight of all, then struck a match and lit his cigar, and walked unguarded and unaccompanied through the thickest part of the crowd. His cool courage quite took everyone’s breath away, so not a sound was uttered.”]
One passage in the speech is notable in view of later events: “I think working men should not make themselves too much the slaves of any political party, but should take care of the means of seeking representation in Parliament, and when they have got the means in their hands, they will then be able to use them so as to be favourable to their interests as a whole.”
‘My speech at Newcastle had been not only as true as Gospel, but a speech which, as Americans would say, “wanted making.” But I was nearly subjected to physical martyrdom for it at Bolton, and was actually and really subjected to moral martyrdom for a time. The thing was not, however, wholly painful. It had its ludicrous side. The then Lord Chelsea, for example, afterwards my friend Lord Cadogan, regretted, in a discourse at Bath with regard to my speech, “that the days of duelling were over.”‘
The Memoir goes on to note that Lord Chelsea and Sir Alfred Slade, the Receiver-General of Inland Revenue–
‘who had both accused me of inventing “lies,” afterwards asked to be introduced to me and were very civil, and I, for political and local reasons, had to forget their speeches and to be civil to them.
‘On December 6th I spoke at Birmingham Town Hall, and Chamberlain, who was Mayor, and who was my host, had the whole borough police force present or in reserve, and had every interrupter (and there were several hundred) carried out singly by two policemen, with a Conservative Chief of Police to direct them, after which I delivered an extremely humdrum speech to a very dull assembly. [Footnote: He spoke on the House of Lords.] Chamberlain was more lively, and made a speech in ridicule of Second Chambers, in which I still (1895) agree. On the other hand, in Chelsea we carried the war into the enemy’s camp. The “loyal inhabitants” tried to hold a meeting at the Vestry Hall to censure me, on which occasion no article or piece of furniture larger than a match was left in existence in the room, and the meeting concluded with a vote of confidence in me, carried in the dark after the gas had been put out. The second attempt was made outside the borough, at the Duke of Wellington’s Riding School at Knightsbridge, but the result was the same. Although the meeting was a ticket meeting, the hall was stormed, and the loyal address to the Queen captured and carried off in triumph by my friends. It is still (May, 1905) at the Eleusis Club–the centre for the Radical working men in Chelsea.’
Hostility concentrated on Sir Charles because the courage and cogency with which he expounded views shared by many men of standing, and men far senior to himself at this time, marked him out for the public as the leader:
‘Fawcett had taken a far more active republican line, as had Chamberlain, and both of them had joined republican clubs in towns, while Fawcett had himself founded one in the University of Cambridge, which had but a short existence. I had refused to join these clubs, and to work in any way in connection with republican propaganda, but it was difficult to get people to understand my position, and the perfect legality of holding republican opinions was even denied by many, while the wisdom of expressing them was denied by almost all. Some thought that I was of opinion that an immense amount of revolutionary feeling existed in the country, and that I wished to lead a storm to my own profit. Some thought that I was sorry I had said what I did.
‘It never seemed to occur to anyone that there were many persons who had been trained up in families republican in sentiment, and that it was possible that I should have never been anything but a republican without the trace of a “reason,” and thought it honest to say so when I was charged with Republicanism as with some fearful crime. But to think and even to say that monarchy in Western Europe is a somewhat cumbersome fiction is not to declare oneself ready to fight against it on a barricade. It is only to protest against the silence of many being read into agreement with the fulsome nonsense that the majority talk about the personal loyalty of the country to the reigning House. My Republicanism was, however, with me a matter of education. My grandfather was a conservative republican in old age, a radical republican in youth, but a republican through life, and, as I have said before, my young ideas were my grandfather’s ideas. It is a mistake to think that republican opinions in England died with Algernon Sidney, that Tom Paine was about the only English sympathizer with the French Revolution, and Shelley, Landor, and Swinburne only three mad poets. It is forgotten now that Burns subscribed to the funds of the French Republic, that Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Moore all wrote republican odes to it, and that at the beginning of the century Southey and Brougham were republican, not to speak of Bentham and Godwin and other writers on whose books I had been brought up.’
Sir Charles was not only denounced, but boycotted. [Footnote: Shirley Brooks of _Punch_ wrote in his diary, under date December 5th, 1871: “Macmillan asked me to dine, but as Sir C. Dilke, who has been spouting Republicanism, was to be one, I would not go, hating to dine with a man and abuse him in print, as I must do.” (_Life, Letters, and Diaries of Shirley Brooks_, by G. S. Layard).] He seems for the moment to have had only two close friends available in London, Mr. Trevelyan and Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice. The former–
‘who had been deeply engaged in the anti-dowry agitation, although keeping himself in the background … used to come every Sunday to go for walks with me; generally the two of us only, though on one of these occasions he brought Wilfrid Lawson, the wit of the public platforms, but a dismal man enough in private, [Footnote: Sir Charles’s friendship with the great Temperance Reformer was cemented five years later by his adhesion to the Temperance ranks.
‘February 4th, 1877, in Paris on my road I received a letter from Wilfrid Lawson, who had learnt that I had turned teetotaller. I was as a fact teetotaller for some eleven years, from 1874-1885. Lawson’s letter was in verse with a chorus:
“Coffee and tea,
Coffee and tea,
Those are the liquors for Lawson and me.”
There was a good deal of chaff of the Bishop of Peterborough in the letter, as this Bishop, whose name unfortunately rhymed to “tea,” had been speaking against Lawson’s views in the House of Lords:
“Some day, perhaps, we both bishops may be, And both much more sober than Doctor Magee, Who finds that he cannot be sober _and_ free; But it’s only last week that I heard from you, Dilke, That you’d rashly and recklessly taken to milk. Abandon the habit, I beg and I pray,
Only think what the scoffers and mockers will say. They’ll say, with a cynical grin and a laugh, ‘He has taken to milk–just the thing for a calf.’ Oh, abandon that milk–stick to coffee and tea, For those are the liquors for you and for me.
_Chorus:_
“Coffee and tea,
Coffee and tea,
Finest of Mocha and best of Bohea; “Coffee and tea,
Coffee and tea,
Those are the liquors for Dilke and for me.”‘] while George Trevelyan was in private most agreeable.’
This social isolation, if it severed Sir Charles from some acquaintances, restored to him a friend, Miss Katherine Sheil, who was living in Sloane Street with Miss Louisa Courtenay, a near neighbour and old friend of Charles Dilke. Both Miss Sheil’s parents were dead. Her father, who died when she was a baby, had been a Captain in the 89th Foot; her mother came of an old Devonshire family, the Wises. Although she and Sir Charles had been close friends for about three years, their friendship had broken down.
For a long time we avoided one another, and I was only forgiven when the attacks on me in November, 1871, and the Bolton riot led to an expression of sympathy on her part. Miss Courtenay, who knew us both extremely well, … said: “A very suitable marriage. You are neither of you in love with one another, but you will get on admirably together.” Miss Courtenay was, perhaps, at this time not far wrong. I had a profound respect for Miss Sheil’s talent and a high admiration of her charm and beauty, and I think she had more liking than love for me. We both of us had a horror of the ordinary forms of wedding ceremonies, and we told only five persons in all-my great-uncle, who came up to town for the wedding, and was present at it; my brother, who was in Russia; my grandmother, who kept house for me, and who was present at it; George Trevelyan, [Footnote: ‘On January 14th I announced to him my intended marriage with Miss Sheil, which was a profound secret… but our walks did not come to an end with my wedding a fortnight later.’ Sir Charles’s marriage to Miss Sheil took place January 30th, 1872.] and Kitty’s maid.’
[Illustration: LADY DILKE (MISS KATHERINE SHEIL) From a photograph by Hills and Saunders]
‘We did not go far away till Easter. Castelar [Footnote: ‘Easter, 1870, I spent in Spain. I made the acquaintance of Castelar, then Professor of Political Economy in the University of Madrid, and probably the first orator in the world–a little man, though not so small as Thiers, or my other orator friend, Louis Blanc.’] sent over a friend to ask me to go to stay with him in Spain, but when I had been in Paris at the end of ’71, I had found myself watched by the French police, doubtless under the impression that I was helping the English Comtists under Harrison in supplying English passports to the Communards in hiding to help them to leave France; and I objected to return to the Continent till this spy system was at an end.’ [Footnote: “Kinglake, dining with Thiers at the close of the Franco- German War–the sole Englishman at a dinner to Deputies of the Extreme Left–tells how ‘among the servants there was a sort of reasoning process as to my identity, ending in the conclusion, “il doit etre Sir Dilke.”‘ Soon the inference was treated as a fact, and in due sequence came newspaper paragraphs declaring that the British Ambassador had gravely remonstrated with the President for inviting Sir Charles Dilke to his table. Then followed articles defending the course taken by the President, and so for some time the ball was kept up. The remonstrance of the Ambassador was a myth; Lord Lyons was a friend of Sir Charles, but the latter was suspect at the time, both in England and France–in England for his speeches and motion on the Civil List; in France because, with Frederic Harrison, he had helped to get some of the French Communards away from France, and the French Government was watching him with spies” (A. W. Kinglake: _a Biographical and Literary Study_, by the Rev. W. Tuckwell, p. 114).]
This assurance was procured for him by his friend Louis Blanc from Casimir-Perier, then Minister of the Interior, who wrote by the hand of his son, afterwards President of the Republic.
‘Before I could leave London, I had to meet my constituents, which I did with complete success, and to stand the fire of my enemies by bringing forward in the House of Commons, on the earliest day that I could obtain, a motion on which I should be able to repeat the statements of my Newcastle speech, that they might be answered if any answer could be given.
‘I had a rival in this project, a member who had given notice in the previous session for a Committee to inquire into the Civil List, George Dixon, known at that time in connection with the Education League.’
But as the day, March 19th, approached, Mr. Dixon wrote to Sir Charles–
‘saying that his mind had been greatly exercised with regard to the motion of which he had given notice, and which had originally been suggested to him by Trevelyan, that he had come to the conclusion to leave the matter in my hands, but that he thought it one which ought to be brought before the House. “Of course,” he added, “I shall go into the lobby with you if you divide the House.” This, however, he did not do.’
No ordinary moral courage was needed to face the demonstration which had been carefully prepared. The House of Commons has seldom witnessed a stormier scene.
When Sir Charles stood up in a crowded House, charged with that atmosphere which the expectation of a personal incident always engenders there, Lord Bury intervened with an appeal to privilege, and, backed by tempestuous cheers, asked the Speaker to refuse the member for Chelsea a hearing on the ground that by declaration of republican principles he had violated the oath of allegiance. When this appeal had been dismissed, Sir Charles, on rising again to address the House, was, in the discreet words of Hansard, “received with much confusion.” There was a “chorus of groans and Oh’s and ironical cheers.” But the House, after a brief demonstration, settled down to hear the speaker, who proceeded to set out the grounds on which he asked for full information concerning the Civil List under a number of tabulated heads, “his object,” said the London correspondent of the New York Tribune, “clearly being to crowd as many facts as possible into a certain amount of time.” It was, he says himself, ‘solid and full of matter, but studiously wooden, ‘unutterably dull,’ and ‘towards the latter part of the speech members went trooping out of the House, and conversation was general.’ At last Sir Charles sat down, and men crowded in, all agog to hear Mr. Gladstone, who had sat uneasily on his bench, “longing to be at him,” says one reporter; and at him he went, with tremendous artillery of argument, sarcasm, and declamation, while the Opposition cheered every point to the echo, though the Liberals sat in glum silence. Probably many of them shared the feeling which Sir Wilfrid Lawson reflects in his _Reminiscences_, that Mr. Gladstone was “often most unfair in debate,” and on this occasion (not for the first time) “simply tried to trample upon Dilke, having the whole House at his back.”
The Prime Minister ended with an appeal for the division to be taken at once, but Sir Charles’s seconder, one of the most picturesque figures in the politics of that time, insisted upon claiming his part in the condemnation. Not so much Radical as Anarchist, converted from the traditional Toryism of his surroundings by the influence of J. S. Mill and Ruskin, Auberon Herbert was at this moment vehemently republican, and nothing would serve him but to rise and, in supporting this motion purely on the Civil List, to make an avowal of republican principles:
‘He stood up before a howling House, which had listened quietly to me, but was determined to have no more, with remarkable pluck, equal to that with which he had faced bullets in the Danish lines; but it was partly useless and partly mischievous.’
When clamour failed to silence the speaker, members trooped out, and attempts were made to count out the House, but unsuccessfully. Thereupon Lord George Hamilton “spied strangers,” and the Press having been excluded, Tories trooped back and went resolutely to work to howl Herbert down. Imitations of the crowing of cocks were said to have been given by Mr. George Bentinck, though Sir Wilfrid Lawson declared that he did not hear them, and added:
“If there was such a manifestation it was, however, for the last time in the House of Commons; therefore I mention it. The division was 276 against 2–the two consisting of Anderson, one of the Glasgow members, and myself. [Footnote: Dilke and Herbert acted as tellers.] I think my vote was quite right, for the returns asked for by Dilke were due to the country, and Mr. Gladstone did not at all benefit the monarchy by withholding them.”
That was the impression which Sir Charles desired to leave on the mind of Radicals. But he had produced also the effect that he intended on the mind of the general public. The Press complained
‘that my speech was voted prosy, and that my want of vivacity tended to prevent the interruptions which had been organized, and that it would have been impossible to make an oration more mild and inoffensive. This was exactly what I had wished and intended….
‘My speech was left unanswered, and I afterwards had the satisfaction of arranging while in office for acting on the principles which I laid down, and that action has since been taken. My main point was the right of the House of Commons to inquire into the Civil List even during the continuance of the reign, a right important because inquiry at the beginning of a reign is held under circumstances which prevent the possibility of its being satisfactory. This has since been admitted by Mr. Gladstone himself, and my view has been acted on. Mr. Gladstone professed to answer me at the time, and to do so with much vigour, but as a fact he carefully avoided coming to close quarters. He stated indignantly that he had not been able to find who were the members of the Committee of 1837 who had complained of insufficient investigation, to whose complaints I had referred, and he said this as though none did complain, although it is notorious that Grote and his friends, especially Hawes, did so complain. He maintained that I was wrong in saying that the Civil List in the present reign was greater than in the last, although I was quoting a Chancellor of the Exchequer, and although Mr. Gladstone made his figures support his view by including the allowance to Queen Adelaide, while I properly excluded both that allowance and the allowance of Prince Albert, as these personages were supposed to spend these allowances themselves, and not to hand them over to the King or to the Queen Regnant, as the case might be. Mr. Gladstone denied the pretended statement by me that the annuities to Princes and Princesses in the present reign were unprecedented in amount, but I had never named Princes, and I had never named amount. What I had said was that the provisions made for the Royal children during the reign were unprecedented in character, and so they were, as I showed clearly in my speech, and especially the allowances to the Princesses. Mr. Gladstone, with regard to the Royal savings, declined to go into the Exchequer accounts on the ground that I had not given him enough notice. I had given him eight days’ notice, and he had not asked for any further information than that which I had afforded him. He argued that the savings were not great, for L590,000 had been spent on private allowances and personal pensions, a fact which was wholly new to us and not intended by Parliament. He argued that there was little to say about sinecures, because none had been created during the present reign, a reply which gave the go-by to the fact that the old ones continue. Long afterwards, when I was Mr. Gladstone’s colleague, he recanted a good deal of his doctrine of 1872, as I shall show. Indeed, in 1889 all the information was given to the House which I had asked for and been refused in 1872, and the principle was laid down by the Committee on grants to the Royal Family, which I had privately suggested in 1880.’ [Footnote: See also Chapter LIX., which deals with the Committee on the Civil List (Volume II., pp. 526, 527).]
During the whole of 1872 it was not easy to find a platform on which local Liberals would be at ease in company with the member for Chelsea. Even Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice hinted that at a meeting held in Wiltshire to promote the cause of the agricultural labourer, Dilke and Auberon Herbert would be better away. But towards the close of the year, when a meeting devoted to the same cause was fixed for Exeter Hall, Joseph Arch, its chief promoter, insisted that Sir Charles should speak, and though the appointed chairman, Sir Sydney Waterlow, resigned his office, Archbishop Manning and Dr. Jackson, Bishop of London, made no scruple of attending while Dilke’s speech was delivered.
‘It was a dreary speech, and, given the fact that my speaking was always monotonous, and that at this time I was trying specially to make speeches which no one could call empty noise, and was therefore specially and peculiarly heavy, there was something amusing to lovers of contrast in that between the stormy heartiness of my reception at most of these meetings, and the ineffably dry orations which I delivered to them–between cheers of joy when I rose and cheers of relief when I sat down.’
But courage and resource and knowledge had got their chance. His opponents had gone about to make a marked man of Sir Charles Dilke; within six months they had established his position beyond challenge as a man of mark.
CHAPTER XI
PERIOD OF FIRST MARRIAGE