The Sleepwalkers (52 page)

But alliances, like constitutions, are at best only an approximate guide to political realities. The policy-makers in Paris recognized the risks implicit in Article 2 and were quick to assert a restrictive interpretation of French obligations. In 1897, for example, during the Thirty Days' War between Greece and the Ottoman Empire, Foreign Minister Gabriel Hanotaux informed St Petersburg that France would not regard an Austro-Hungarian intervention as a
casus foederis
(case stipulated by treaty).
¹⁷⁹
And we have seen how reluctant France was to be drawn into the Bosnian annexation crisis of 1908–9, a crisis in which it refused to recognize an authentic threat to either French or Russian ‘vital interests'.
¹⁸⁰
In 1911, at the urging of the French, the terms of the military convention were altered. The obligation to render immediate mutual assistance remained in place for the case of a
German
general mobilization; in the case of an Austrian total or partial mobilization, however, it was decided that Russia and France would agree an appropriate course of action.
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In 1912, this trend was suddenly thrown into reverse, in what would prove one of the most important policy adjustments of the pre-war. Having sought for some years to insulate France from the consequences of Balkan shocks, the government in Paris now extended the French commitment to include the possibility of an armed intervention in a purely Balkan crisis. The principal agent behind the change of course was Raymond Poincaré, prime minister and minister of foreign affairs from 14 January 1912 until 21 January 1913, and thereafter president of the Republic. On the day following his appointment, Poincaré publicly declared that he would ‘maintain the most upright relations with Russia' and ‘conduct the foreign policy of France in the fullest agreement with her ally'.
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It was highly unusual for incoming French foreign ministers to make programmatic statements of this kind. In a series of conversations with Alexander Izvolsky in Paris, Poincaré reassured the Russians that they could count on French support in the event of a war arising from an Austro-Serbian quarrel.
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The French government, he informed Izvolsky in November 1912, had no reason to fear a ‘lack of support on [France's] part'.
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Tracing the evolution of this train of thought is not easy. Poincaré's visceral preoccupation with the threat posed by Germany was one driving factor. He had been ten years old when the Germans overran his native Lorraine in 1870, forcing his family to flee. His home town, Bar-le-Duc, was occupied by the Germans for three years, pending the payment of the French indemnity. This did not mean that Poincaré was a
revanchiste
in the mould of Boulanger, but he remained deeply suspicious of the Germans; their efforts to achieve détente with Russia and France were dismissed as snares and delusions. Salvation, Poincaré believed, lay solely in the fortification of the Franco-Russian Alliance, the keystone of French security.
¹⁸⁵
He also wanted to prevent a relapse into the chaos of the Agadir crisis, when parallel policy threads had created confusion. Personality played a role here: he loved clarity and he pursued his objectives with remarkable consistency. Critics saw in this determined pursuit of clearly defined objectives evidence of a regrettable lack of flexibility. Poincaré's ‘stiffness' (
raideur
), Paul Cambon argued, reflected his ‘inexperience of diplomacy and the intellectual structure of the man of law'.
¹⁸⁶
His brother Jules spoke of a ‘mind in which everything is numbered, classed and recorded, as in a file'.
¹⁸⁷

But Poincaré was not alone in wishing to endow French security policy with a more aggressive orientation. His rise to high office took place against the background of a shift in the tone of French politics after Agadir that historians have called the ‘Nationalist Revival'. Republican politicians had tended after the Dreyfus affair to adopt a
défenciste
approach to French security policy marked by an emphasis on border fortifications, heavy artillery and brief training stints for an army conceptualized as the ‘nation-in-arms'. By contrast, the years after Agadir saw France return to a policy that took account of the professional interests of the army, accepted the need for longer training periods and a more concentrated amd efficient command structure and envisaged an unequivocally offensive approach to the next war.
¹⁸⁸
At the same time, the pacifist and anti-militarist popular mood that had prevailed in 1905 made way for a more belligerent attitude. Not all of France was inundated by the nationalist wave – it was predominantly young, intelligent Parisians who embraced the new bellicism – but the restoration of military strength became one of the regenerating creeds of Republican politics.
¹⁸⁹

It was probably the Italian attack on Libya and the incipient collapse of Ottoman power in Europe that prompted Poincaré to incorporate the Balkans into his strategic thinking. As early as March 1912, he had told Izvolsky that the long-standing distinction between local Balkan crises on the one hand and issues of broader geopolitical significance, ‘no longer had any practical importance'. Given the current system of European alliances, it was difficult to imagine ‘an event in the Balkans that would not affect the general equilibrium of Europe'. ‘Any armed collision between Russia and Austria-Hungary on account of Balkan affairs would constitute a
casus foederis
for the Austro-German alliance; and this in turn would entail the activation of the Franco-Russian Alliance.'
¹⁹⁰

Was Poincaré aware of the risks entailed in supporting Russian policy in the Balkans? A conversation between the French premier and the foreign minister Sazonov during a visit to St Petersburg in August 1912 is illuminating on this point. Poincaré knew that the Serbs and the Bulgarians had signed a treaty, because Izvolsky had informed him of it in April, but he had no idea of what the treaty contained.
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When the French foreign ministry had asked St Petersburg for clarification, there had been no reply (Sazonov later claimed that he had delayed sending the text to Poincaré for fear that parts of it might be leaked to the French press).
¹⁹²
During an interview with the foreign minister in St Petersburg in August, Poincaré asked the question again. Sazonov produced the text in Russian and translated it for the French prime minister. The details came as something of a shock, especially the stipulations regarding simultaneous mobilizations against Turkey and, if necessary, Austria, not to mention the reference to the partition of lands still lying deep inside Ottoman Macedonia and – perhaps most disturbingly – the role assigned to Russia as the arbiter in all future disputes, a role, Poincaré observed, that ‘appears in every line of the convention'. The notes he jotted down after the meeting convey something of his discomfiture:

It seems that the treaty contains the seeds not only of a war against Turkey but of a war against Austria. Moreover, it establishes the hegemony of Russia over the Slav kingdoms, since Russia is identified as the arbiter in all questions. I remark to M. Sazonov that this convention does not correspond in the least to the information that I had been given about it, that, if the truth be told, it is a convention of war, and that it not only reveals the ulterior motives of the Serbs and the Bulgarians, but also gives reason to fear that their hopes are being encouraged by Russia . . .
¹⁹³

Poincaré was not alone in taking fright at the scale of Russian involvement in Balkan politics. Jean Doulcet, a counsellor at the French embassy in St Petersburg, also noted at around the same time that the Balkan agreements were in effect ‘treaties of partition'; Russian support for them suggested that ‘the Russians are prepared to take no account whatsoever of Austria and to proceed toward the liquidation of Turkey without concerning themselves with her [i.e. Austria's] interests'.
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At this point, one might have expected Poincaré to begin entertaining doubts about the wisdom of supporting St Petersburg in the Balkans. But his discovery of how deeply the Russians had already ensconced themselves in the turbulent affairs of the peninsula seems to have had the opposite effect. Perhaps it was simply a matter of recognizing that in view of the general complexion of Russian policy, a future Balkan conflict was not just likely, but virtually certain, and therefore needed to be incorporated into the horizons of the alliance. A further factor was Poincaré's belief, shared by parts of the French military, that a war of Balkan origin was the scenario most likely to trigger full Russian participation in a joint campaign against Germany. An Austro-Serbian war would – so Poincaré's military advisers told him – tie down between one half and two-thirds of Austrian forces, releasing large contingents of Russian troops for service against Germany, thereby forcing Germany to deploy more of its troops to the east and taking some of the pressure off the French army in the west.
¹⁹⁵

Whatever the reasons for his change of course, by the autumn of 1912 Poincaré was firmly supporting a Russian armed intervention in the Balkans. In a conversation with Izvolsky in the second week of September, when the First Balkan War was in sight but had not yet begun, the French prime minister told the Russian ambassador that the destruction of Bulgaria by Turkey, or an attack by Austria-Hungary on Serbia might ‘force Russia to give up its passive role'. Should it be necessary for Russia to mount a military intervention against Austria-Hungary, and should this trigger an intervention by Germany (which was inevitable, given the terms of the Dual Alliance), ‘the French government would recognise this in advance as a
casus foederis
and would not hesitate for one moment to fulfil the obligations which it has incurred in respect of Russia'.
¹⁹⁶
Six weeks later, with the war well underway, Izvolsky reported to Sazonov that Poincaré was ‘not afraid' of the idea that it might prove necessary to ‘initiate a war under certain circumstances' and that he was certain the states of the Triple Entente would prevail. This confidence, Izvolsky added, was based on a detailed analysis by the French General Staff that had recently come to the prime minister's desk.
¹⁹⁷

Indeed, Poincaré anticipated his obligations so energetically that there were moments when he appeared in danger of jumping the Russian gun. On 4 November 1912, one month into the First Balkan War, he wrote to Sazonov proposing that Russia join with France and England in pre-emptively opposing an Austrian intervention in the conflict.
¹⁹⁸
So unexpected was this overture that Izvolsky wrote to Sazonov explaining it. Until recently, the ambassador pointed out, the French government had not wished to be drawn into what it saw as purely Balkan concerns. But recently there had been a change of view. Paris now recognized that ‘any territorial conquest by Austria-Hungary would constitute a breach of the European equilibrium and
would affect France's vital interests
' (here was an unmistakable inversion of the language the French had used in justifying their lack of interest in the Bosnian annexation crisis). Poincaré's proactive approach to Balkan affairs, Izvolsky concluded, signified a ‘new outlook' at the French ministry of foreign affairs. He advised the foreign ministry in St Petersburg to take advantage of it immediately and secure the backing of both France and England for the future.
¹⁹⁹

By mid-November, Sazonov did indeed anticipate the possibility of an Austrian attack on Serbia (or at least on the Serbian forces in Albania) and wished to know how London and Paris would react to an armed response by Russia. Grey's answer was characteristically evasive: the question, he replied, was academic and ‘one could not give a decision about a hypothetical contingency which has not arisen'.
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Poincaré's response, by contrast, was to demand clarity from Sazonov: what exactly, he asked, did the Russian government intend? This must be set out clearly – otherwise, by ‘taking the initiative, the French government would run the risk of embracing a position which would either fall short of or exceed the intentions of its ally'. The Russians should not doubt that France would support them in the event of a Balkan crisis: ‘if Russia goes to war, France will do the same, because we know that in this matter, Germany will back Austria'.
²⁰¹
In a conversation with the Italian ambassador in Paris only a few days later, Poincaré confirmed that ‘should the Austro-Serbian conflict lead to a general war, Russia could count entirely on the armed support of France'.
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In his memoirs, Poincaré vehemently denied having made these assurances.
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And Izvolsky is admittedly not an entirely disinterested witness. This was the man whose mismanagement of the Bosnian annexation crisis had ruined his career in St Petersburg, a diplomat who had left high office under a cloud and remained obsessed with the supposed perfidy of Aehrenthal and Austria. Might he not have lied in order to strengthen the resolve of his colleague (and former subordinate) Sazonov, in Balkan affairs? Might he not – as Poincaré himself later suggested – have overstated the French prime minister's commitment in order to magnify his own role in consolidating the alliance?

These are plausible suppositions, but the evidence suggests that they are wrong. For example: Poincaré's claim, reported by Izvolsky on 12 September, that the French military was confident of victory in the event of the continental escalation of a war begun in the Balkans, is corroborated by a gung-ho General Staff memorandum of 2 September, a document of which Izvolsky could have had no independent knowledge; this suggests at the very least that the conversation in question really did take place.
²⁰⁴
Poincaré's uneasiness, recorded by Izvolsky on 17 November, about overleaping the Russians rings true – Poincaré would confide exactly the same doubts to his diary during the July Crisis of 1914. And there are supporting witnesses, such as the former premier and minister of foreign affairs Alexandre Ribot, a brilliant jurist and political scientist who met with Poincaré on several occasions during the autumn of 1912. In a private note dated 31 October 1912, Ribot recorded: ‘Poincaré believes that Serbia will not evacuate Üsküb and that if Austria intervenes, Russia will not be able not to intervene. Germany and France will be obliged by their treaties to enter the scene. The Council of Ministers has deliberated on this and has decided that France ought to hold to its commitments.'
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