[Footnote 119:  Bismarck:  his Reflections and Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 259 (Eng. ed.).] We may notice one other criticism:  that Russia’s agreement with Austria implied the pre-existence of aggressive designs.  This is by no means conclusive.  That the Czar should have taken the precaution of coming to the arrangement of January 1877 with Austria does not prove that he was desirous of war.  The attitude of Turkey during the Conference at Constantinople left but the slightest hope of peace.  To prepare for war in such a case is not a proof of a desire for war, but only of common prudence.

Certain writers in France and Germany have declared that Bismarck was the real author of the Russo-Turkish War.  The dogmatism of their assertions is in signal contrast with the thinness of their evidence[120].  It rests mainly on the statement that the Three Emperors’ League (see Chapter XII.) was still in force; that Bismarck had come to some arrangement for securing gains to Austria in the south-east as a set-off to her losses in 1859 and 1866; that Austrian agents in Dalmatia had stirred up the Herzegovina revolt of 1875; and that Bismarck and Andrassy did nothing to avert the war of 1877.  Possibly he had a hand in these events—­he had in most events of the time; and there is a suspicious passage in his Memoirs as to the overtures made to Berlin in the autumn of 1876.  The Czar’s Ministers wished to know whether, in the event of a war with Austria, they would have the support of Germany.  To this the Chancellor replied, that Germany could not allow the present equilibrium of the monarchical Powers to be disturbed:  “The result . . . was that the Russian storm passed from Eastern Galicia to the Balkans[121].”  Thereafter Russia came to terms with Austria as described above.

[Footnote 120:  Elie de Cyon, op. cit. chap. i.; also in Nouvelle Revue for 1880.]

[Footnote 121:  Bismarck, Recollections and Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 231 (Eng. ed.).]

But the passage just cited only proves that Russia might have gone to war with Austria over the Eastern Question.  In point of fact, she went to war with Turkey, after coming to a friendly arrangement with Austria.  Bismarck therefore acted as “honest-broker” between his two allies; and it has yet to be proved that Bismarck did not sincerely work with the two other Empires to make the coercion of Turkey by the civilised Powers irresistibly strong.  In his speech of December 6, 1876, to the Reichstag, the Chancellor made a plain and straightforward declaration of his policy, namely, that of neutrality, but inclining towards friendship with Austria.  That, surely, did not drive Russia into war with Turkey, still less entice her into it.  As for the statement that Austrian intrigues were the sole cause of the Bosnian revolt, it must appear childish to all who bear in mind the exceptional hardships and grievances of the peasants of that province.  Finally, the assertion of a newspaper, the Czas, that Queen Victoria wrote to Bismarck in April 1877 urging him to protest against an attack by Russia on Turkey, may be dismissed as an impudent fabrication[122].  It was altogether opposed to the habits of her late Majesty to write letters of that kind to the Foreign Ministers of other Powers.