July 1914: Countdown to War (21 page)

Honoring France’s head of state, the
Alexandria
traveled out to meet the
France
. The tsar himself mounted the gangway to welcome Poincaré aboard the Russian imperial yacht, before it set sail for Peterhof Palace. “Seated in the stern,” Paléologue observed, “the Tsar and the President immediately entered into a conversation, I should perhaps say a discussion, for it was obvious that they were talking business, firing questions at one another and arguing. As was proper it was Poincaré who had the initiative. Before long he was doing all the talking, the Tsar simply nodded acquiescence.”
³

Of the two heads of state, France’s president was the stronger personality. It was the Russians, however, who held the cards. In any Balkan crisis, military measures against the Central Powers would be initiated by Russia, not France. The reason was simple geography. While Russia and France both bordered
Germany—this, indeed, was why they had teamed up in the first place—France shared no border with Austria-Hungary. Nor did Germany, unlike Austria, border any Balkan countries. Any Balkan affair must therefore involve Austria and Russia primarily, such that a European war would begin with Austrian and/or Russian mobilization, with Germany then responding to Russian mobilization, and France to Russian and German (after which, the Entente Powers hoped, Britain would come in, too). Because everyone expected Russia’s mobilization to be the slowest of all the powers’, with Germany’s the quickest (and expected to be focused on her western front), any war breaking out over Balkan issues would paradoxically put France in the first line of German attack. This is what Doumergue had meant when he said that “the safety of France” depended on how quickly she could “push [Russia] into the fight.”
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Of course, no one was sure yet whether the powers would come to blows in the Balkans. Poincaré had been at sea when the leaks from the Ballplatz about Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia had reached the ears of Russian Shebeko and then Sazonov. With Poincaré’s reputation for bellicosity, it was not hard to predict how he would react when he learned what the Austrians were up to.

All this, though, would have to wait until the morning. The main event Monday evening was the welcome banquet. When the
Alexandria
docked at the Peterhof at three
PM
, Poincaré recalled, the French delegation was greeted by “a posse of Grand Dukes.” They and the tsar’s entourage then completed the short zigzag journey through the palace gardens in horse-drawn carriages, “riding at a sharp trot.” Poincaré was less than impressed by the park, which he found “a rather
fadé
replica of Versailles.” His “heavily gilt,” white satin–lined suite, too, he found overdone, “being somewhat of a piece with the over-decorated galleries and the great saloons, the gorgeousness of which seems rather to run riot.”

Poincaré was more impressed with the hall where the gala dinner was held. It was “lighted by a dozen gorgeous crystal candelabra,” he recalled. “The wax candles [were] infinitely more becoming than the electric light, which has not yet been installed.” Paléologue, too, despite having lived in Petersburg for months, could not help being overwhelmed by “the brilliance of the uniforms, superb toilettes, elaborate liveries, magnificent furnishings and fittings, in short the whole panoply of pomp and power, the spectacle was such as no court in the world can rival.” The ladies were still more striking, with a “dazzling display of jewels on the women’s shoulders.” Glancing around the banquet table, his eyes were struck by “a fantastic shower of diamonds, pearls, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, topaz, beryls—a blaze of fire and flame.” “In this fairy milieu,” the ambassador observed, Poincaré’s “black coat was a drab touch.”
⁵

France’s president, of course, had not come to Petersburg to impress or flatter archduchesses. The business of the evening was the mutual toasts he and Nicholas II would give to cement the Franco-Russian alliance. The tsar went first, assuring France’s president that he would find the “warmest welcome” in Russia, owing to the “mutual sympathies and common interests” of the two peoples, now bound together as allies for “almost a quarter century.” The alliance, Nicholas II proclaimed, had worked to safeguard “the equilibrium and the peace of Europe.” Expressing the hope that “the ties which bind us will grow ever tighter,” Russia’s tsar raised his glass to the health of France’s president and to “the glory and prosperity of France.”
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Poincaré, in his reply, seconded the tsar’s sentiments but went further. True to his reputation for plain-speaking, France’s president noted that the alliance was “founded on a community of interests”—that is, fear of Germany—and “supported by armed forces on land and at sea which know and value one another and have become accustomed to act as brothers.” “Your Majesty
may rest assured,” he promised Tsar Nicholas II, “that France in the future, as always in the past, will, in sincere and daily cooperation with her ally, pursue the work of peace and civilization.” Poincaré then raised his glass to “Your Honorable Majesty, Your Majesty the Empress, Your Majesty the Emperor-Mother, His Imperial Majesty the heir to the throne and the entire imperial family.” Viviani raised his glass too, but with little enthusiasm.
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TUESDAY, 21 JULY

A
T TEN AM
T
UESDAY MORNING
, Tsar Nicholas II called on Poincaré in his suite at the Peterhof. They went straight to business. The first item on the agenda was Anglo-Russian relations. British diplomats had informed Poincaré that “several Russian consuls in Persia had broken the terms of the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, and had behaved themselves as if they were in a conquered country.” To his pleasant surprise, as the Frenchman recorded in his memoirs, the tsar conceded “frankly that England was perfectly justified in her complaints, and he assured me that there would be no recurrence of what were very regrettable incidents.” On the matter of an impending Anglo-Russian naval convention, which would help assuage French concerns about being left in the lurch by London in a conflict with Germany, the tsar promised to “speed things up.” “
The
thing,” he assured Poincaré, “is that no problem should present itself which might jeopardize good relations between England and Russia, and this I am as keen about as you are.”

The Russian sovereign had good reason to improve relations with England. Although Poincaré remained unaware of Austrian intentions, Nicholas II had learned about Berchtold’s
plan to issue a Serbian ultimatum over the weekend, when Sazonov had shown him Shebeko’s telegram from Vienna. His conclusion, as he had written in the margins of the document, was that Austria intended to make war on Serbia. A European war might thus be on the near-term horizon, and British belligerence was essential to the Franco-Russian cause. As Poincaré observed that morning, “the Tsar’s liveliest preoccupation was with Austria. He wanted to know what she was preparing in response to the assassination at Sarajevo.” Without spelling out what it was that he feared, Nicholas II told Poincaré with conviction that “in the current situation, the complete accord between our two governments was more necessary than ever.”

The tsar then took his leave, and Poincaré dressed for a trip into town, where he was to be formally welcomed by the diplomatic community at the Winter Palace. Nicholas II had offered the president the use of his imperial yacht for the trip but did not accompany him to St. Petersburg. Poincaré was perplexed as to why. “I could not see myself,” he thought, “receiving a crowned head at Versailles and letting him go alone to Paris.” “Does he fear,” Poincaré wondered, “or does he disdain a crowd?”
¹
Ambassador Paléologue, in his own memoirs, offers a possible explanation: on Monday a series of industrial strikes had broken out all over town, and there were “collisions with police at several points.” At any rate, Poincaré and Prime Minister Viviani were going in the safety of the tsar’s yacht (at least until they reached town). For the tsar to have called off the day’s program would have put a serious damper on the summit.

At about one thirty
PM
, Paléologue met Poincaré as he disembarked on the quai near Nicholas Bridge. “In accordance with the old Slav rites,” the ambassador recalled, “Count Ivan Tolstoy, the Mayor of the Capital, offered him bread and salt.” The president was then shown the nearby fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, where he laid a wreath on the tomb of Tsar Alexander III, to honor the father of the Franco-Russian alliance. The
party was then escorted by an honor guard of Cossacks along the banks of the Neva in a horse-drawn carriage as far as the French embassy, where Poincaré formally “received the deputations of the French colonies in St. Petersburg and throughout Russia”—many from as far away as Odessa, Kiev, and Tiflis. Thus far there was no sign of labor unrest in the streets, and there was much cheering from the crowds, although as Paléologue noticed, these often consisted of “poor wretches” who “cheered loudly under the eye of a policeman.”
²

At four
PM
, the French delegation arrived at the Winter Palace to meet the diplomatic community. It was a full-dress occasion, following strict protocol. Paléologue was to introduce each ambassador in turn to France’s president for a one-on-one conversation, with Viviani attending to Poincaré’s left (but not participating in the conversations). As the doyen of the diplomatic corps, Germany’s ambassador, Friedrich Pourtalès, went first. In view of the scarcely concealed hostility between his country and the president’s, this could have been an awkward audience, but it proved anything but. Pourtalès was part French by descent and spoke the language perfectly. He was planning a road trip later in the summer through Provence, where he would visit his relations in Castellane. The two men discussed the area and its sights. Poincaré found the German ambassador “an agreeable person with a pretty knack for evasive phrases and well-turned compliments.”

More significant was the encounter with the British ambassador, Sir George Buchanan. While Franco-British relations were fairly cordial at the moment, those between London and Petersburg were fraught with tension over Persia, which threatened to destroy the Triple Entente of French dreams before it would ever coalesce on the battlefield. While discussing the thorny Persian issue, Buchanan was “exquisitely courteous if a little cold,” Poincaré recalled afterwards, noting the Briton’s anxiety on the
subject. Buchanan thought that the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 needed to be modified to fit new conditions on the ground, and he hoped that the Russians would parley. Poincaré was able to report the tsar’s avowal of good faith intentions, given just that morning. Buchanan was “very pleased” to hear it.

Up to this point, matters had been fairly routine, as befitted a formal ceremony among professional diplomats trained to be polite. But then Buchanan let slip a confidence that alarmed Poincaré. Although the British ambassador had not received his colleague de Bunsen’s reports from Vienna (Foreign Secretary Grey, astonishingly, had not forwarded them to Petersburg), he had heard Sazonov discuss the expected Austrian ultimatum to Serbia on Saturday. Earlier Tuesday, Buchanan had spoken with the Serbian minister, who told him that he was expecting Austria to “create some incident that would furnish her with . . . a pretext for attacking [Serbia].” Putting these bits of information together, Britain’s ambassador painted a dark picture. “He has gathered,” Poincaré recalled learning, “from the Serbian Minister that some violent Austrian note may be sent to Belgrade.”
³

The protocol order now took on ominous significance. Right after Buchanan had put Poincaré on guard about Austrian intentions, the president received the Habsburg ambassador, Count Friedrich Szapáry. Seeking to draw out Berchtold’s man in Petersburg, France’s president asked straightaway, “Have you any news from Serbia?” Szapáry replied coldly that “the judicial enquiry is advancing.” When Poincaré noted that previous investigations of this sort had always increased tensions in the Balkans, Szapáry retorted, more coldly still: “Monsieur le Président, we cannot suffer a foreign Government to allow murderous attacks against our sovereignty to be prepared on its territory.” Poincaré responded by gently warning the Hungarian “that in the present state of public feeling in Europe every government should be twice as cautious as usual.” Changing tack
ever so slightly, the president said that “this Serbian business” could still be settled “with a little good will.” Poincaré could not resist, however, getting in the last word of the argument. “Serbia,” Poincaré warned Szapáry, “has very warm friends in the Russian people. And Russia has an Ally, France. There are plenty of complications to be feared!”
⁴

Like hunters catching a first, fleeting glimpse of their prey, the two men left this encounter energized and primed for battle. Szapáry reported the conversation to Vienna in sharp tones. The French president had been “tactless”; his so-called reassurances of cooperation had “sounded like a threat.” The ambassador contrasted Poincaré’s aggressive behavior with the “reserved and cautious attitude” taken by Sazonov on Saturday (when the Russian foreign minister had found Szapáry “docile as a lamb”). All in all, the unpleasant encounter in the Winter Palace confirmed Szapáry’s “expectation that M. Poincaré will have anything but a calming effect here.”
⁵

Szapáry had read Poincaré perfectly. “I’m not satisfied with this conversation,” France’s president told Paléologue shortly after speaking with Szapáry. “The Ambassador has obviously been instructed to say nothing. . . . Austria has a
coup de théâtre
in store for us. Sazonov must be firm and we must back him up.”
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