World War I is of course one of the most important wars in modern history, and of the key geo-political aspects of the war was the formation of the Triple Entente between Britain, France, and Russia. These Great Powers with overlapping interests were not necessarily natural allies in World War One, but the nature of international affairs in the preceding decades pushed them together.
Here, Bilal Junejo continues a series looking at how the Triple Entente was formed by considering what happened in the 1870s. In particular, Otto von Bismarck’s approach to diplomacy, Frances’s search for an alliance, the role of Russia, and how the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 led to the Congress of Berlin - and many implications.
Read part one in the series on the origins of Germany here.
The taking of the Grivitsa redoubt by Russia during the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish War.
Otto von Bismarck’s was “a being high-uplifted above the common run”.[1] His were a mind and genius that would not rest upon the laurels of mere conquest, but rather continue to exert themselves till their ready devotion of much cogitation to the morrow’s actions had revealed the most magisterial means of fortifying excellence freshly achieved with princely permanence — to the total exclusion of anything even remotely akin to misplaced complacency and consequent reverie. Aware with becoming keenness of how the precious is inherently precarious, he was determined that the singular tenacity which had marked his erection of the new German Empire should now be rivaled, if not surpassed, only by that which would inform his preservation thereof. It was the ambivalent fortune of the Second Reich that its formidable founder also served for an unbroken spell of nineteen years as its first Chancellor; for whilst he achieved much in the course of that fateful period, he also bequeathed to his successors a legacy for whose onerous preservation they were equipped to exude neither the ability nor the vision. To this day, it remains near impossible to say what conduced more to the eventual undoing of Hohenzollern Prussia and her dominions — that Bismarck should have been Chancellor before Wilhelm II, or that Wilhelm II should have been Kaiser after Bismarck.
Bismarck’s first and foremost priority in the wake of victory over France was to ensure that she — the humiliated neighbor whose lasting enmity he had so easily and rashly earned — should not meet with success in the endeavor upon which she was certain to embark for the purpose of securing an ally to wage a war of revenge. The shock of Sedan[2] had been a sobering lesson in the pitfalls of pride, and its digestion was not rendered any easier by the facility with which a jubilant Prussia proclaimed the terms of surrender and humiliation at Frankfurt[3] for their incorporation in the annals of the world. Gone were the days when all her neighbors would tremble at the mere thought of the Sun King, and all Europe would scatter at the merest sight of Napoleon Bonaparte. Now was she reduced to a shadow of her former self, vanquished and retiring, destined to forever grapple with memories that served as a constant and invidious reminder of all that had been, but was no more. It was nothing less than a desire for revenge that could animate her spirit henceforth, and nothing else that could chart the course of her future exertions. Newly deprived of the power she had for so long been accustomed to wield in the face of these upstarts from across the Rhine, she would redress this unbecoming inferiority to the nascent Reich with the succor of another’s superiority to, or at least equality with, her malicious and meticulous foe.
This resolution had, amidst all the hope it happily renewed and vigor that it justly roused, commended itself to the people of France despite the burden of a hurdle that, in the circumstances, was part and parcel of it. Since the Franco-Prussian War had been but a bilateral confrontation, it was obvious to all — and to none more so than France herself — that a war waged for mere vengeance would be the pursuit of Paris alone, as no other European power had at the time cause for even contemplating conflict with Germany, let alone actually doing to her what she had just done to France. The French had, therefore, to look for a Power with whom they could, at the very least, share interests, if not passions. To put it in words a trifle blunter, that Power need not view the destruction of Germany as an end in itself, so long as it could be counted upon to regard a considerable weakening of German power to be the means of achieving some other end, even if that end was one which France would not necessarily feel inclined to share. The French were looking for what might be called negative unity, which is unity stemming from bonds that are forged to surmount a common obstacle, rather than to secure a common end.
A French ally
But what Power would that be? A glance at the map of Europe in 1871, in conjunction with the barest modicum of geopolitical sense, would and did suffice to yield the ambivalent answer. Since Germany lay in the center of the Continent, and to the immediate east of France, it made sense to have an ally who would be both willing and able to engage Germany on any front so long as it was not her western, where a resolute French were already baying for blood. A simultaneous engagement on two fronts would automatically halve German strength before each adversary. But which front would that be? It was not as if there were a lot of options from which to make a leisurely choice. To the south of Germany lay the sprawling dominions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whose Habsburg rulers had already dissolved their sour memories of Sadowa[4] in the tonic of Bismarck’s blandishments, which somehow never ceased to work wonders for the health of his diplomacy. To the north lay the serene Baltic, and around it a host of Scandinavian mediocrities. The only front that remained was the eastern, where possible salvation for the pusillanimous successors of Bonaparte lay in the arms and armies of the Tsar of Russia. Here was finally a Power not only ideally situated on Germany’s border, but also believed to be possessed of military strength sufficient, should its possessors be commensurately provoked, to arouse both German alarm and French approbation. Since actual confrontation had not yet taken place, perceptions mattered more than did reality, and it was more important for diplomatic purposes what Germany and France believed to be the magnitude of Russian strength, rather than what it actually was — “an imposing phantom”[5], as subsequent events would prove beyond dispute and not long after.
But these were happenings yet to come. At the beginning of the 1870s, with the purported pursuing of Russia — and the attendant, if rather erroneous, surmise that hers was a friendship to court and an enmity to shun — the talk of many a chancellery in Europe, both France and Germany, albeit each in her own way, could be expected to do the needful. But how was Russia herself inclined to act just then? On whose side, if on anyone’s, did she wish to be? What were her ambitions, and what were her fears?
Russia enters the picture
It so happened that at the very moment when France would have almost prostrated herself before Russia for the sake of settling scores with her parvenu neighbor, the Tsar Alexander II, who reigned and ruled from 1855 to 1881, showed himself ready to evince not even the slightest interest in reciprocating the sycophantic sentiments of a nation that, in concert with Great Britain, had humiliated his own in the Crimea only a decade and a half prior to when the author of the Ems Telegram would resolve that similar scathe should be meted out to the would-be myrmidons of Marianne as well. Unsurprising Russian neutrality during the Franco-Prussian War had been one of the principal factors that contributed to the decisive victory achieved by Bismarck in the crucial winter of 1870-71. The Treaty of Paris (1856), by dint of which both France and Great Britain had dealt a united and decisive blow to the Tsar’s overweening pretensions (principally by stipulating Russian demilitarization of the Black Sea), now proved sufficient to ensure that for the fairly immediate future, poor France, whilst still reeling from the shame of Frankfurt, would have to grapple with the strictures inherent in the new diplomatic order of Europe on her own. Even though the Treaty of Paris had been in the main an Anglo-French enterprise, the price that, in retrospect, it came to exact from the French was disproportionately greater, for it was Bismarck’s tacit acquiescence in Russian remilitarization of the Black Sea (in 1870) that Russia would repay in the form of benevolent neutrality during the Franco-Prussian War.
A telling account of the consequences that, in 1865, had been made inevitable by the diplomatic folly exhibited with abandon in lovely Lutetia was furnished, to the immeasurable fortune of posterity, by the arresting wits of the eminent English philosopher, John Stuart Mill (1806-73). Reflecting in the manner of a thoughtful contemporary, even as the third Napoleon fell like the first, on what had come to pass, both by way of gain and loss, Mill was moved to observe that in the matter of making international treaties:
“Nations should be willing to abide by two rules. They should abstain from imposing conditions which, on any just and reasonable view of human affairs, cannot be expected to be kept. And they should conclude their treaties as commercial treaties are usually concluded — only for a term of years.
If these principles are sound, it remains to be considered how they are to be applied to past treaties, which, though containing stipulations which, to be legitimate, must be temporary, have been concluded without such limitation, and are afterwards violated, or, as by Russia at present, repudiated, on the assumption of a right superior to the faith of engagements.
It is the misfortune of such stipulations, even if as temporary arrangements they might have been justifiable, that if concluded for permanency they are seldom to be got rid of without some lawless act on the part of the nation bound by them. If a lawless act, then, has been committed in the present instance, it does not entitle those who imposed the conditions to consider the lawlessness only, and to dismiss the more important consideration, whether, even if it was wrong to throw off the obligation, it would not be still more wrong to persist in enforcing it. If, though not fit to be perpetual, it has been imposed in perpetuity, the question when it becomes right to throw it off is but a question of time. No time having been fixed, Russia fixed her own time, and naturally chose the most convenient. She had no reason to believe that the release she sought would be voluntarily granted on any conditions which she would accept; and she chose an opportunity which, if not seized, might have been long before it occurred again, when the other contracting parties were in a more than usually disadvantageous position for going to war.”[6]
It is even more as a lawyer than as an amateur historian that I declare — though the stature of one as great as Mill hath scarce any need of my declaration to rest assured of its greatness — the ready accord of my own reason with the celebrated counsel of that perspicacious man. Even when it comes to the conclusion of a simple contract, be it for purposes commercial or otherwise, the law recognizes the possibility of there arising, without the fault of either contracting party, the frustration of their contract. This is the unforeseen termination of a contract as the result of a supervening event that either renders its performance impossible or illegal or prevents its main purpose from being achieved.[7]
This is precisely why no commercial contract worth its name is ever concluded for an indefinite period. A contract, which is but an exchange of promises, is born in, and because of, certain conditions prevailing at the time that it is made. Since the promises whose execution, in the course of time, the contract envisages owe their very raison d’être to those conditions, it would make little, if any, sense to prolong the duration of the contract beyond the period for which those conditions can reasonably be expected to last. Obligations that outlive the conditions in which they were assumed invariably bode ill for the future welfare of the parties that undertook them in the first place. The selfsame considerations apply, and as exactly, in the case of international treaties.
Bismarck’s diplomacy
Bismarck had no need of a jurist’s manual to teach him these fundamental truths of human life on our motley planet. Instinctively aware of how to extract the most whilst offering the least, he was about to embark on a series of daring diplomatic maneuvers that would pay solemn, if silent, homage to the exhortations of his erudite contemporary, and yield rich dividends into the bargain. Convinced of his opportunity to engage Russia on Germany’s side, he was determined not to surrender that opportunity to France, and it is the ultimate testament to his diplomatic genius that this is precisely the state of affairs that he, despite many a contretemps, was able to sustain continuously until the very moment of his unceremonious dismissal from the chancellorship by a wayward Wilhelm II in 1890.
Bismarck’s first major move was to secure the diplomatic arrangement that history remembers by the rather pompous name of Dreikaiserbund (which is German for the Three Emperors’ League). Based upon agreements concluded in May and June 1873 — following a preliminary meeting of the German Emperor, Austro-Hungarian Emperor and Russian Tsar in Berlin in September 1872 — it, despite its significance as indicated by the propinquity it bore to the war just fought with France, was little more than a vague understanding that emphasized the importance of monarchical solidarity in the face of subversive movements (this was an era of burgeoning nationalism in Europe and around the world).[8] In substance, it was at least better than the “sublime mysticism and nonsense”[9] of the Holy Alliance, which had cherished as its sole aim the sustained perpetuation of moribund regimes; but it proved far less durable than the somewhat similar Triple Entente that it anticipated, and the advent of which it precipitated by its own eventual dissolution.
The dissolution was in spite of Bismarck. He had been wise not to seek a formal treaty where none would have been forthcoming, but the absence of definite obligations also meant that far greater room for diplomatic maneuver existed for each member of the Dreikaiserbund than was desirable for the health and longevity of it. With the Tsar eagerly fanning the flames of Panslavism in the Balkans — to the joy of many a Slav braving the yoke of Hapsburg and Ottoman imperialism and yearning for liberation, but to the calculated wrath of both Vienna and the Sublime Porte — in the hope of distracting domestic attention from real issues at home to alleged dangers abroad, it was all the Iron Chancellor could do to bring Austria and Russia together at the same table, without the added burden of committing each to the definite restraints inherent in a formal treaty or alliance. For a time, Russia acquiesced in the workings of this tripartite arrangement, not only because it knew that Germany alone (who had a major interest in the preservation of her only dependable friend in Europe) possessed the power to induce Austria to adopt a less confrontational attitude against Russia in the Balkans, but also because this would help her to convince France that her diplomatic options were not limited (and thus assist her in procuring more favorable terms in the case of an eventual alliance with her erstwhile foe). Most unfortunately, however, for even this incipient goodwill from St Petersburg, events in the Balkans soon decided against the rebarbative continuation of such an affable arrangement.
Bulgarian conflict
In 1875, conflict broke out in Bulgaria. Subjected to the Porte’s alien rule for the past five hundred years, Bulgaria had not been slow to appreciate the rise of nationalism in the farrago of nineteenth century Europe and the competing ambitions of her many peoples, any more than she had been in recognizing a growing opportunity to wrest independence from her oppressors in times that were only growing more favorable by the day. The Porte had been equally quick of perception, and judging that prevention was better than cure, took the bold step of sowing the discord between moderate and extremist that has ever furnished the principal prop and pillar of the policy entitled divide et impera. In this case, in the year 1870, the step was taken in the form of an edict that authorized the establishment of a Bulgarian Excharcate (i.e. a separate branch of the Eastern Orthodox Church).[10] The wily Porte had probably calculated that such a move could be counted upon to flatter the clergy, appease the moderates, and isolate the extremists — all to the advantage, however ephemeral, of a regime that was decaying, and which could not hope to survive the resolution of those internal Slavonic squabbles that were as internecine as they were endemic in the Balkan peninsula.
On this occasion, however, the Sultan’s turned out to be an egregious miscalculation. The new Excharcate, so far from offering any gratitude to the Sultan by rallying their people behind the Ottoman throne, chose instead to view the Porte’s latest concession as a sign of not magnanimity but abject weakness; and it decided not altogether implausibly that the time had come to try conclusions with the imperious House of Osman. The reasoning that underlay the timing of this Bulgarian unrest stemmed from a realization that Russia, the sanctimonious champion of independence for the South Slavs, would in the wake of her recent denunciation of the Treaty of Paris be in an unusually favorable position to assist the Bulgar nation in its quest for the categoric expulsion of Ottoman rule from Bulgarian soil. It was, therefore, for five years that matters smoldered and men seethed, till the advent of that day when Russia, armed by what it thought was the sanction of an amorphous and taciturn Dreikaiserbund, ventured to bestow its definite approbation of the Bulgar cause on the Bulgar people, unflinching in its determination to efface that record of shame to which she herself had made many an unwitting contribution since the time of the Holy Alliance.
Russia enters the fray
Affronted beyond measure by what it saw as the brazen ingratitude of the Bulgars and the unwarrantable presumption of their Russian sponsors, the ruthless forces of the Porte resolved to call the latter’s bluff by unleashing such a wave of savagery and destruction on the former as could not fail to elicit a response from the Tsar and his truculent court, who were already awaiting a suitable pretext for intervention from the frigid banks of the Neva. Fired with the enthusiasm to champion and secure for the Bulgars those very rights that she had never exhibited the slightest sorrow in denying to the Slavs rotting in her own Polish backyard, Russia entered the Balkan fray without a qualm and proceeded with the serene confidence of a somnambulist to vindicate Santayana’s solemn warning, albeit not given in as many words by any at the time, that “those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it”.
Russia should have remembered that ever since the time of the “loud-sounding nothing” that had been the Holy Alliance, and of which she had been the principal proponent, hers had not been a position from which she could hope to threaten or thrash the Porte without bringing down upon her skull the redoubtable bludgeon of the Royal Navy. But as has almost always been the case with people who do not know the limits of their ambitions, the Tsar and his advisers spurned the toil of logic, and sought in its stead the meretricious gratification that is the certain and ruinous promise of frivolous braggadocio and inflated estimations of one’s own prowess and possibilities. Whilst their mettlesome forces did eventually manage to arrive at the very gates of Constantinople, and from there compel the Sultan to append his signature to a shameful document of capitulation, they had reckoned without the opposition of those who were more ably placed than was the decrepit empire of the Ottomans to check this alarming aggrandizement in Russian fortune on the shores of those very waters that flowed without choice into the vital maritime routes of international trade, the lynchpin of which had lain in the Suez Canal since its opening to all traffic on 17 November 1869. It would be pertinent to remember that in the very year when the Bulgars finally embarked upon their crusade to reclaim the freedom they had lost of yore, Great Britain — principally at the instigation of her justly renowned Tory statesman, Benjamin Disraeli, whose second and final premiership had spanned with a remarkable prescience the fateful years from 1874 to 1880 — acquired a holding interest at 40% of the Suez Canal Company’s equity (making her the single largest shareholder), under the auspices of a loan to the tune of four million pounds sterling rendered by the astute acumen of Lord Rothschild and his illustrious bank. Since Disraeli was still in office at the time the ominous cloud of Russian ambition was beginning to darken the horizon at Suez, he was determined that no manner of artifice or bluster emanating from the halls of that “icy Muscovite” and “overgrown barbarian of the East” should be allowed to wreck what had to up to that point in time been the most signal achievement of his formidable premiership.
When such were the considerations to uphold at a time of great diplomatic uncertainty, it was not to be expected that an apprehensive government in London would find much to allay their fears of Russian intentions in the treaty that announced to the world not only the cessation of hostilities between Turkey and Russia, but also the imminent end of all that Great Britain had been so sedulous to uphold by way of solution to the Eastern Question for the past eighty years. The Treaty of San Stefano, concluded on 3 March 1878 and upon the ashes of Ottoman pride, had pledged the signatories to honor the creation of a large autonomous state of Bulgaria that would include present-day Macedonia and also cherish an outlet to the Aegean Sea. It had also enlarged the size of both Serbia and Montenegro, confirmed the independence of Serbia, Montenegro and Romania, furnished Russia with sizeable gains in the Caucasus, and provided for the payment of a large indemnity by Turkey to the victors.
British considerations
With the new state of Bulgaria thus poised to become a Russian satellite that would secure to her patron easy access by land to the Aegean (and thence the Mediterranean), and the slow but steady disintegration of the empire that had for near six centuries held sway over the junction of three continents, Great Britain could discern no cause for assurance in the uncomfortable realization that an eventual elimination of the Ottoman presence at Constantinople and in its environs could make no contribution in the region to either British security or Russian maturity. There was no reason to suppose that an assertive Russia, already buoyed by fresh triumphs, would in any way prove as submissive to British demands as the effete Ottoman Empire had thus far proven to be.
And Great Britain was not alone in the entertainment of her apprehensions. The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, which was itself gradually buckling under the pressure of that clamor for self-determination being made by her own Slavonic population that could only receive fresh impetus in the event of Russia’s ascendancy in the Balkans and Asia Minor, was already beginning to nurture serious reservations regarding the Dreikaiserbund into which she had entered so willingly at the behest of Bismarck. If Germany was not going to restrain Russia from furthering the portentous cause of Panslavism in the Balkans, even when Great Britain was willing to challenge her all on her own, then there could be no reason why Austria should foolishly continue to remain a party to that useless agreement called the Dreikaiserbund. And Austrian withdrawal would spell the end of Bismarck’s bargaining leverage over Russia, whose own on the other hand would increase dramatically over Germany, who could never cease to feel the searing glare of French hatred on her back.
The Dreikaiserbund had arrived at a decisive precipice. It was the moment to decide whether, being adjudged redundant, it would be pushed to certain death; or whether, deemed imperative, it would be retained still by dint of adequate compromise. Since no signatory required the Bund as direly as did the Germany of Bismarck, that sagacious statesman prudently chose the latter course.
Congress of Berlin
It was to this end that he opened the Congress of Berlin in June 1878 (a mere three months after San Stefano). Continuing into July, the Congress, to which delegates from all the major countries of Europe brought the succor of their good offices, was not likely, despite the best endeavors of Bismarck, to cut much, if any, ice with Russia — for two important reasons.
First, the Congress had been convened for the express purpose of revising the pledges of San Stefano, which was the apple of a myopic Russian eye. The only reason the Tsar even agreed to send his representative to the Congress was that he expected Bismarck, who was both an ostensible ally and the host, to argue the case for Russia in the face of implacable British and Austrian opposition. But the Congress was also as much Bismarck’s opportunity as it was the Tsar’s hope. As host, he could create the clever impression of being the “honest broker” between Russia and Great Britain, and as such, leave it to the former to address the claims of the latter in what was supposed to be an impartial forum. If what Great Britain sought by way of settlement was already in accord with Germany’s interests, then all Bismarck had to do was to make Russia confess to her ambitious designs in the Balkans before the Congress, give suitable air to the British answer, and then maintain he would uphold the unanimous, or at least majority, decision rendered by the Congress. With Russia in no position to confront Great Britain on the seas alone, Bismarck would achieve the desired result without in any obvious way betraying the spirit of the Dreikaiserbund.
The second reason that the Congress was more or less predestined to go against Russia was the fact that of all the important countries who sent their delegates there, Great Britain was the only one who sent not only her Foreign Secretary, but also Prime Minister! Benjamin Disraeli had chosen to attend in person because he did not want his Foreign Secretary, Lord Salisbury, to achieve the primary credit for the fruits of the Congress’s deliberations. The fact that Disraeli prioritized the Congress so highly shows not only how catastrophic it would have been for Great Britain not to achieve her objectives, but also how certain Disraeli was of achieving what he had so long sought for his country. Upon returning home, he would triumphantly announce that he had returned from Berlin with “peace with honor” (a phrase that would later be borrowed by another Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, upon his return from Germany exactly sixty years later, but with far less commendable consequences).
Coming, as it did, so soon in the wake of the triumph that had been the Treaty of San Stefano, the Congress unsurprisingly proved to be an unmitigated disaster for Russia. Its principal accomplishments were that an autonomous principality of Bulgaria was created; a province of Eastern Roumelia, nominally Turkish but with a Christian Governor was established south of Bulgaria, with the result that British fear of Russian access to the Aegean via Bulgaria was satisfactorily addressed, especially since the Christian Governor could be counted upon to pacify the Christian population of what was nominally still a Turkish province; the independence of Serbia and Montenegro, in accordance with San Stefano, was confirmed, with both states receiving territorial compensation; the independence of Romania was also confirmed, the Romanians obtaining northern Dobruja in return for ceding Bessarabia to Russia; Russia was confirmed in possession of the Caucasus; Austria-Hungary received the right to occupy Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Sanjak of Novi-Bazar; and Great Britain received the right to occupy the strategically important island of Cyprus. Although Eastern Roumelia eventually united with Bulgaria, the main lines of the settlement lasted for thirty years.[11]
Implications
This was the end of the Dreikaiserbund — at least, until 1881, when the Tsar was assassinated, and his successor, Alexander III, negotiated a much more formal and precise Dreikaiserbund Alliance with both Germany and Austria. But even then, Russia could never forget the humiliating lessons of the Congress, her nationalist press having memorably remarked at the time how it had been nothing but “a coalition of Europe against Russia under the leadership of Prince Bismarck”.[12]
Bismarck did not forget the sobering experience of having to mediate between Vienna and St Petersburg at an international forum either. Shortly after the Congress, he entered into a formal but secret alliance with Austria, the Dual Alliance of 1879, in which he solemnly pledged to assist Austria if she were ever to be attacked by Russia in future. The decade that had started off with Bismarck seeking to cement a triumvirate of sorts of the three great eastern autocracies had ended in the alienation of one, and the advent of a formal alliance between the other two against the third.
In the next part, we shall review the exertions of Bismarck during the 1880s. We shall look at how he managed to sustain his relations with both Russia and Austria even after, and in spite of, the unpleasant developments that had taken place towards the end of the 1870s. It was a feat of pure skill and ardor that can be easily neither forgotten nor emulated.
What do you think were the impacts of the 1870s? Let us know below.
[1] Said originally of Arthur Balfour by Winston Churchill, in the latter’s famous book Great Contemporaries (first published by Thornton Butterworth Ltd in 1937)
[2] The Battle of Sedan (1-2 September 1870), which marked the surrender and capture of the French Emperor, Napoleon III
[3] The Treaty of Frankfurt (10 May 1871), which formally ended the Franco-Prussian War
[4] The Battle of Sadowa (3 July 1866)
[5] Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (Simon and Schuster Paperbacks 1994) 140
[6] Quoted in The Times, on 2 January 1939, page 15
[7] Definition of ‘frustration of a contract’ in the Oxford Dictionary of Law
[8] A. W. Palmer, A Dictionary of Modern History 1789-1945 (Penguin 1964) 110
[9] A description rendered by Lord Castlereagh, British Foreign Secretary 1812-22. Ibidem, 155
[10] A. W. Palmer, A Dictionary of Modern History 1789-1945 (Penguin 1964) 60-61
[11] Ibidem, 46
[12] Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (Simon and Schuster Paperbacks 1994) 157
