THE LATEST IMPERIAL INTRIGUE.
under the title of Napoleon IV., with his mother as Regent,— his father being willing to abdicate in his favour. General Bourbaki is said to have told the Empress plainly, in declining to accede to her plan, that no French General would ever again consent to serve under a Napoleon. We are also as- sured that Bazaine has expressed great indignation at this attempt to make him an accomplice in an intrigue for the restoration of the Empire, and has declared his alle- giance to the Provisional Government; and the telegraphic reports from Tours state that General Bourbaki is now at Tours, and has offered his services to the -War Department there. As we remarked last week, the plot has no importance what- ever, except in relation to the obvious eagerness of the Prussian Government to help it forward. The messenger who obtained Bazaine's consent to the despatch of one of his subordinate Generals to the mysterious interview with the ex-Empress at Chislehurst, got into Metz and got out of it again with his military ambassador through the direct authority of Count Bismarck, and there can be no reasonable doubt that the German statesman grasped somewhat eagerly at any scheme which promised to afford him the means of setting up a puppet French Government with which to make peace on his own terms,—in case after the reduction of Paris he should find no Government possessed of the national con- fidence equally willing to fall in with his views. To have had a prince of the last reigning house, with a small but well- organized army at his back to ensure him influence with the nation, ready to sign any terms of peace the German con- queror should choose to dictate, might certainly have proved a great convenience to Count Bismarck; and he was not the man to hesitate, from any considerations for France, in availing himself of any political expedient that seemed ready to his hand. The statesman who spares not even to his own country the discipline of "iron and blood" needful in his eyes for its development, will not take much counsel whether or not his master's political convenience bequeathes to France the legacy of a civil war. As a statesman, the Count is the very type of that "hard master" who reaps where he has not sown, and gathers where he has not strewed. The popular local saying concerning the Bismarcks long before the present Count was a power in the world, in the neighbourhood of the family pro- perty at Schtinhausen, was that they are wont to cut the excuses of defaulters short with the curt remark, Not near enough yet,' that is, You have not come near to excusing yourselves yet,'—(" Noch lange nicht genug,' sagt Bismarck "). And this certainly holds of the statesman as well as of the feudal lord. To M. Jules Fevre, when he talked of the national wish for peace, of the popular disapprobation that had been felt for the war, and the willingness to pay any amount of indem- nity, the Count's reply was in effect Noch lenge nicht genug,"
You have not come near to what is requisite yet, either in the way of apology or of reparation.' Andwhen the Count prophesies in his circulars of a starving capital and a French Government repudiated by the nation, he seems to be repeating mentally to himself, 'Not near enough yet,'—' Even so you have not filled up the measure of your iniquities.' And well may he think so, if he really has been contemplating the possibility of leaving behind him that most terrible of all legacies,—a pretender to the throne of France hateful to the nation, but supported by the influence of the conqueror, and backed by an army which, though beaten by superior numbers, has' proved itself the equal in spirit and discipline even of the Germans.
As we said last week, we suppose we must admit that such a policy, however mischievous or even fatal to France it might prove, is not beyond the legitimate scope of a hostile policy which takes account only of what is most expedient for Germany,. and what is most likely to secure the conquests she has made. Yet there is something, to our minds, though it may fall quite within the range of military precedent, beyond measure un- worthy in this apparent absence of all reluctance to heighten the political anarchy of France, by lending any authority to the most monstrous of all the proposed solutions of the great pro- blem now before France. The Empire has been a dreary sham, —show without grandeur, authority without capacity, tyranny without power, a dead weight upon the people that crushed. and corrupted instead of uniting them against it, an atmo- sphere of enervation, a stimulus for selfish and dissolute pretentiousness, a premium on political impudence and servility ; and it has borne its fruits in a collapse more complete and abrupt than political history has ever yet registered,—more ruinous, humiliating, and bewildering to France, more paralyzing to the spirit of the people, more replete with disaster and despair than any which the records of past calamities can possibly produce. When Napoleon I. fell, it was at least after contending against a world which he had provoked, by conquering it, to rise against him, and it was impossible even to recount his reverses without recalling the wonderful greatness and resources of France. With his name, too, were coupled administrative re- forms of the most imposing magnitude. Indeed, it was the shadow of his name and the ghost of his intellect which betrayed the people of France into the vast blunder of the Second Empire. But now,—to set up again the child of calamity and political impotence, the- representative of corruption and weakness, the heir of an epoch of indignity and disaster, the one of all others who- would at once remind France of an ignoble past and give her- the promise of a yet more ignoble future, would be an insult which hardly even a conqueror, without a heart of steel, could bear to sanction. What could cow and crush France like a parting gift such as Count Bismarck has evidently contemplated leaving behind him,—a prince who• should represent to the eyes of the nation the double shame of that personal government which, while it was strong enough to extinguish the liberties of France, was far too weak to stand for a moment in the face of a national foe? Imbecile- before the enemy but with an iron heel for the French people, the second Empire has struck at the root of all French self-respect ; and yet it is upon a plan to collect the scattered.
fragments of that Empire, and present them to the people- as a government as worthy of their allegiance as any- which still remains to France, that Count Bismarck's smile- of cynical favour has been cast. We do not suppose he- would trouble himself to set up such a Government if
could find any other equally likely to accept his views, with which to conclude a peace. But failing anything better, he would not hesitate for a moment to throw in hie. influence for a weak rzfacimento of the government which ruined France and robbed it of all elasticity as well as strength. The child of a beaten father is good enough, to. Count Bismark's mind, for a beaten nation ; the nursling of a colossal system of corruption is good enough in his eyes for- a corrupt nation ; the.bewildered and terrified infant who has. looked on helplessly at his country's subjugation is good enough in his eyes for a bewildered and terrified nation. The scheme will fail because, as GeneralBourbaki is said to have told the Empress, no French General can again accept service under a Napoleon;: but Count Bismarck was determined it should not fail owing to any frowns of his. It was not worth his while to give it active support, but he was at least anxious to remove all German obstacles from the path. There was a dramatic- satisfaction in the thought of leaving poor little Louis, after his real baptism of fire,' to rule the nation which the Germans. had ground to powder. To leave France famished, ruined, help- less, shorn of territory, seemed apparently, to a Bismarck "not near enough yet." But to have left it with a nominal prince representing all its weakness and all its shame, and who. owed his throne to the favour of the conqueror,—that would, indeed, have been a feast of retribution almost satisfying even to the scornful imagination of the statesman who had built up the solid unity of Germany, and trampled France like the dust beneath his feet.
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