Independently of success, however, it may be fairly admitted that the general tendency of the Emperor’s foreign policy was moderate and pacific; but it would not be equally easy to clear it altogether from the charge of disingenuousness and irresolution. The Emperor’s diplomacy was unlike that of any other man. No Sovereign ever came to the Throne with so large a crowd of ready-made agents and advisers; none attained power by so long a series of underhand manoeuvres. Louis Napoleon had been for half his life a conspirator. Necessity, no less than habit, made him a plotter on the Throne. Bent uponbringing into his hands all legislative and executive authority, upon exacting from all and each of his subordinates the fullest responsibility to himself alone, the Emperor had, properly speaking, no Ministers, but simply Heads of Departments, blind and passive tools to be taken up or cast off at his own pleasure. But, behind his responsible Cabinet, behind his acknowledged Council of State, there was always a little knot of more trusted and devoted instruments, chosen chiefly among the faithful followers of the Pretender’s obscure fortunes, men upon whom, in the gloomy isolation of absolute power, he must needs rely for his knowledge of that public opinion to which he denied all free utterance, and among whom he must seek such executors of his will as would rather guess than question his motives – men who would allow him all the merit of success, and take upon themselves all the blame of miscarriage; men between whom and himself there must be such a bond of freemasonry as to give them the intimate consciousness of their employers unfailing support, even under the cloud of his affected displeasure or the storm of his formal disavowal. It was in obedience to these necessities, created no less by the origin than by the nature of his government, that the Emperor, in his relations with foreign States, was frequently induced to give preference to indirect and clandestine negotiation; to intrust to extra-official agents messages un-meet for the conveyance of regularly accredited Envoys; to reserve for unwitnessed interviews the transaction of affairs of which no tangible document should be allowed to remain. Not satisfied with these not very dignified acts, which for some time established his credit for consummate dexterity, the Emperor also seemed to stake his reputation on a suddenness of action commensurate with his maturity of deliberation. He was perpetually taking the world by surprise. A Government ushered in by a Coup d’Etat was carried on by a succession of Coups de Théâtre. Whether a declaration of war was to be conveyed in a New Year’s greeting to a foreign Ambassador, or peace to be announced in an after-dinner speech to a Provincial Magistrate; whether the revelation of the Imperial mind was to take the shape of a mysterious pamphlet, or whether his mind was to be intimated in a familiar letter-the aim as well as the result invariably was to give the Emperor’s policy a ‘sensational’ character. ‘The Emperor,’ as his flatterers observed, ‘allows himself no rest.’ Perpetual activity and almost actual ubiquity seemed to be as indisputable attributes of an Imperial Providence as omniscience and omnipotence. Wherever the Emperor might go he must be in pursuit of some hidden object; his simplest act must proceed from some farfetched motive. A morbid expectation was created to which it daily became more difficult to minister. The Emperor’s speech and his silence were invested with an equally awful significance. Such overweening assumption must, however, be borne out by deeds of corresponding magnitude. The mere prestige of moral ascendency is soon brought to the test of material success. The world grew tired of all that solemn emphasis and oracular ambiguity. It looked for the results of all that profound statescraft, and saw it foiled by Cavour’s superior cunning; thwarted by Bismarck’s steadier resolve; it saw it wrecked against the Pope’s passive obstinacy; it saw it everywhere frustrated by the combination of unforeseen circumstances, by a series of irresistible catastrophes. It heard it acknowledging the force of a fatal necessity by alluding to the presence of dark spots on the horizon. And it was, be it observed, not so much to error of judgment as to infirmity of purpose that the repeated failures of the Emperor were imputed. Hesitation and inconsistency were the bane of his political conduct. He would have been equally powerful to create a United or a Federal Italy. He might as easily have upheld as pulled down the Papacy. He might have checked all Germany in the Danish War of 1864. He might have backed one-half of it against the other half during the seven weeks’ campaign of 1866. He might have done much less in Mexico, or he could have gone much greater lengths against the United States. His fault consisted in an excess of caution and circumspection. He seemed everywhere to arrive one day too late, and only to make up his mind when he had missed his opportunity. His Ministers were twitted in the Legislature by emboldened opponents, who asserted that there ‘was not one fault left for the Imperial Government to commit,’ and thus challenged them, as it were, to remain in office without a vital change in their policy. Two courses were open to the Emperor Napoleon after Sadowa – to make up by brute force what he had lost by unsuccessful manoeuvre, or else to acquiesce in the inevitable, to put a cheerful countenance on a losing game, and even to claim credit for a consummation which he had been unable to prevent. For nearly two years the Emperor wavered between the two resolutions. To rush into war before Nikolsburg or after Prague was declared to be impossible, owing to the unreadiness of the French military forces. Yet to accept and even to applaud the rise of a rival nation close on the Rhine frontier, especially after all that had been said about territorial compensations, natural boundaries, and popular aspirations, was, perhaps, to inflict too sore a wound on French susceptibilities. Hence there began that tentative, faltering, fidgeting policy; those abortive negotiations at Berlin, at the Hague, at Munich, at Vienna; those mysterious journeys and ominous interviews, which at first bewildered and dismayed, and at last half-amused, half-wearied Europe. At Paris and at Lille, the Emperor talked of peace. At Luxembourg, Salzburg, Copenhagen, he sought allies and nursed pretexts for war. Unequal to single-handed action, France affected to look for confederates. The real object was, if not to win partisans, at least to gain time; but both purposes were defeated. France revealed her unprepared condition at the same time that she widened and completed her isolation.
War, except on the most hazardous conditions, was clearly out of the question. Could, then, the Emperor resolve on peace? Peace he could certainly have with the world if he could only have it with France. The Emperor Napoleon was not cast in the mould of heroic conquerors. He was cold, cautious, even to the extreme of moral timidity. He had no love for war, at least for war’s sake and on a large scale. He had a great respect for ‘the odds’ in any game. He never would launch France on an equal duel with Germany. The difficulty lay in preventing France from dragging him into such a war against his better judgment. All his sayings and doings since Sadowa had but one object – to humour, to soothe, to reassure French opinion. Faith in his infallibility, he conceived, was shaken in others as well as in himself; that his wonted good fortune had to some extent forsake him, that black spots were looming in the horizon, he had himself deemed it necessary to avow. It was now important for him to allay the apprehensions he had himself created, to restore the confidence which his words had undermined as much as his deeds.
The real question, however, lay in the estimate the Emperor could arrive at with respect to the state of public opinion. He had lived for many years away from the Throne; he was a man of the world, a cool, shrewd observer, and might form a correct judgment of whatever came before his eyes. But for the last twenty years he was labouring under the ‘curse of Kings.’ He had deprived France offree utterance. He must either take her at a rude guess or see her through the medium of that cumbrous scaffolding of official administration which he