[Footnote 252:  The Life of the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, by Sir A. Lyall (1905), vol. i. p. 304.]

To the end of his days Bismarck maintained that the Austro-German alliance did not imply the lapse of the Three Emperors’ League, but that the new compact, by making a Russian attack on Austria highly dangerous, if not impossible, helped to prolong the life of the old alliance.  Obviously, however, the League was a mere “loud-sounding nothing” (to use a phrase of Metternich’s) when two of its members had to unite to guard the weakest of the trio against the most aggressive.  In the spirit of that statesmanlike utterance of Prince Bismarck, quoted as motto at the head of this chapter, we may say that the old Triple Alliance slowly dissolved under the influence of new atmospheric conditions.  The three Emperors met for friendly intercourse in 1881, 1884, and 1885; and at or after the meeting of 1884, a Russo-German agreement was formed, by which the two Powers promised to observe a friendly neutrality in case either was attacked by a third Power.  Probably the Afghan question, or Nihilism, brought Russia to accept Bismarck’s advances; but when the fear of an Anglo-Russian war passed away, and the revolutionists were curbed, this agreement fell to the ground; and after the fall of Bismarck the compact was not renewed[253].

[Footnote 253:  On October 24, 1896, the Hamburger Nachrichten, a paper often inspired by Bismarck, gave some information (all that is known) about this shadowy agreement.]

* * * * *

It will be well now to turn to the events which brought Italy into line with the Central Powers and thus laid the foundation of the Triple Alliance of to-day.

The complex and uninteresting annals of Italy after the completion of her unity do not concern us here.  The men whose achievements had ennobled the struggle for independence passed away in quick succession after the capture of Rome for the national cause.  Mazzini died in March 1872 at Pisa, mourning that united Italy was so largely the outcome of foreign help and monarchical bargainings.  Garibaldi spent his last years in fulminating against the Government of Victor Emmanuel.  The soldier-king himself passed away in January 1878, and his relentless opponent, Pius IX., expired a month later.  The accession of Umberto I. and the election of Leo XIII. promised at first to assuage the feud between the Vatican and the Quirinal, but neither the tact of the new sovereign nor the personal suavity of the Pope brought about any real change.  Italy remained a prey to the schism between Church and State.  A further cause of weakness was the unfitness of many parts of the Peninsula for constitutional rule.  Naples and the South were a century behind the North in all that made for civic efficiency, the taint of favouritism and corruption having spread from the governing circles to all classes of society.  Clearly the time of wooing had been too short and feverish to lead up to a placid married life.