CHAPTER VII.

RETROSPECT OF THE ANGLO-FRENCH ALLIANCE.

THE greatest political fact in the history of the last forty years, and the pivot upon which European history may be said to have turned, has been the alliance or good understanding between France and England. Happily for the just appreciation of that alliance, it has not been made a party question in England; each party in the State having equally acknowledged its desirableness and value. It has had its vicissitudes, its difficulties, and even dangers; it has not been wholly beneficial to England; but still its general results have been favourable to the peace and liberty of Europe, the tranquillity and security of France, and the welfare of England.

Thus much being granted, there is another aspect of the question which should not be overlooked, whether in striving to appreciate the past or to seek guidance in it for the future. In that aspect it will appear that the Anglo-French Alliance was precarious, one-sided, and exposed to dangers arising from French pretensions hardly suspected, and never admitted by any English Government. Isolated facts of past history may have little comparative importance relative to the future; but where those facts resulted from an arrogant, ill-founded, and inadmissible political theory, that theory gives importance to the facts. It is contended here that French policy during that alliance was influenced more or less by the theory that France might dictate to

Europe, but that Europe might not dictate to France. In other words, that France had established a supremacy to which other nations ought to submit. That political presumption which among enlightened Frenchmen sprang from misconceptions of history, and among the majority from knowing nothing of it, may seem incredible to Englishmen; yet it moulded the policy of M. Thiers, who may be taken as a representative French statesman, and it nearly involved France in a war with all Europe thirty years ago.

To establish this view it is only necessary-though anticipating the events of this retrospect-to look at the events of 1840. On that occasion, in a momentous question of European interest, the Turco-Egyptian war, France differed with all the other Great Powers. In the course of negociations, the French Cabinet, which had its own views on Egypt, but agreed with England in opposing Russian influence at Constantinople, thus instructed Admiral Roussin :- It is very improbable that 6 the Sultan should recur to the armed interference of Russia before the courier reaches his destination; 'should he do so, however, you ought, in concert with 'Lord Ponsonby, or even without him, if he refuses to join you, adopt the measure of an armed intervention' (French). Thus the French Government thought itself at liberty to act singly in the Eastern Question. Late in the year 1840 the other four Great Powers came to a perfect understanding on that question, but France, wishing to make Egypt independent of the Porte, refused to adopt their policy, and they acted without her. M. Thiers told the French Chambers thereupon (as was related before) that he would have made war against all Europe for daring to act in any matter of general interest without the concurrence of France. Thus M. Thiers considered that while France might act inde* See page 145.

pendently of Europe that right was not reciprocal. Such arrogance on the part of an enlightened statesman, like Thiers, can only be accounted for by the fact that in too intently studying the dazzling epoch of the French Empire, he had forgotten the general current of history and the fact that England never at any time took the law from France. With regard to the less eminent Frenchmen who took the same view, their arrogance was due to the really wondrous ignorance of history* which has been observed by foreigners in France. The wretched, incredibly wretched, administration of the British navy at the time (1835-1839) probably

The ignorance of geography prevalent in France is proverbial, and incurred the ridicule of the better-taught Germans in the late war. M. Ernest Feydeau, in his amusing but rather spiteful little book, L'Allemagne en 1871, says of the Germans, S'ils connaissent mieux 'que nous la géographie de la France,' as if it had been the fault of the Germans that French teachers taught no better. But in knowledge of history Frenchmen do not seem much more advanced. As an example taken from a French author, quoted at p. 134, M. A. Laya, who, as a lawyer, and formerly chef au cabinet du ministre de l'intérieur, and a politician, might be expected to know something of history: M. Laya tells us, vol. ii. p. 169, that 'le capitaine anglais qui prit Gibraltar 'fit ce haut fait d'armes dans le même temps que le grand Marlborough • rapportait à Londres les trophées de la Hollande!' and a little later, 'La Hollande n'est plus par elle' (i.e. England) 'qu'un trophée et 'qu'un souvenir.' M. Laya, therefore, evidently thinks that 'le grand 'Marlborough' took Holland, and that England still keeps that trophy. It would probably be a surprise to him to learn that Marlborough, so far from taking Holland, was much aided by that country in taking French fortresses, and that his trophies were, besides these, French guns, standards, and prisoners not a few, including a French marshal. Certainly Marlborough deserved to be remembered well, though not gratefully, by Frenchmen.

We were at times

In 1884-5 the British Ministry, by way of economy, reduced even the peace complements' of our ships of war, and sent them to sea half-manned and the line-of-battle ships half-armed. almost on the point of a rupture with France, and yet we sent our admirals to distant stations in line-of-battle ships which, being without their lower battery, would have fallen an easy prey to a French frigate!

encouraged the French Cabinet to assume the tone they did.

In looking back, then, at the whole history of this most important political period, what do we really and undeniably find to have been its character?

At the very commencement, 1830, there was upon the side of England the most perfect cordiality and entire absence of jealousy and suspicion. There was, in fact, no room for the latter feeling. We had then no interests opposed to those of France, and no resentments. The recent Revolution, which had given to France a Parliamentary Monarchy very like our own, established a political sympathy between us, and the gallant contest in Paris by which the French had obtained what we regarded as their legitimate rights won our admiration and good-will. Any one who can consult his own memory upon the crisis will remember that our honest and sincere sympathy was given to our French neighbours, and that on our side there was not the shadow of a reason why the two nations should not become fast friends. Why should there have been? We were on the very best terms with ourselves—a great help towards general benevolence. By sea we considered our position as simply unassailable. The Admiralty (taken as a succession of Boards) had not then muddled away our magnificent position as mistress of the seas, won in a hundred fights. The laurels of the Peninsula and Waterloo were still green upon our soldiers' brows; our influence in Europe was still paramount; and while we were regarded as invulnerable at home, there was an exaggerated idea entertained of what we might, in case of need, do abroad.

As to any jealousy of France, why our very Chauvinism made it impossible! Our good-humoured British Philistine held it as the first article of his creed that we had always beaten the French by sea, and whenever we

set about it in good earnest by land also. As to colonies, France had hardly any but what we gave back to her at the peace; and in our complacency we considered that the French had been very useful to us as enemies by enhancing our reputation in war. In fact, we had no tender point, no defeats to forgive, no loss of territory to regret, no sense of failure in the last war to suggest that we might have better fortune in a fresh contest. We could not have mended the peace of 1815.

So far, then, as our own feelings towards France were concerned, they were cordial in the extreme.

But on the French side any such cordiality had been rendered impossible, not so much by the facts of history as by the fictions of French historians and other writers. Ever since Waterloo the Paris press had occupied itself in pourtraying English men and English policy in colours suggested by ill-will, and with that disregard of truth which French authorities tell us is the primary cause of the national decay. If Englishmen had been in the remotest degree like these portraits, no alliance with such monsters would have been possible, and Frenchmen believed in the portraits. The harmless English tourist (only too innocent of any purpose whatever in his travels) was regarded by the average Frenchman as an 'emissary of the infamous Pitt,' bent upon some dire project of injury to France; and, in fact, John Bull, as conceived by our neighbours, did not differ more from the reality than the inhabitants of another planet might do.

There was thus no reciprocity of feeling in the beginning of the alliance, nor, as will be shown, for many years-about a quarter of a century-and bearing this in mind, its history will be more intelligible.

The Anglo-French Alliance may be considered as it existed under the reign of Louis Philippe, from 1830 to 1848, and as it existed under the Second Empire. In