The Sleepwalkers (86 page)

Poincaré, too, was feeling the strain. Particularly vexing was a sequence of confused and almost unintelligible radiogrammes on 27 July reporting various statements by Sir Edward Grey. Having warned the Austrian ambassador that Britain would not stand aside in a war of Balkan origin, Grey was now warning the French ambassador, Paul Cambon, that British public opinion would not support British involvement in a war over the Serbian question. But whereas Viviani feared a headlong rush towards war, what Poincaré feared above all was a failure to confront and oppose an Austria démarche against Serbia.

. . . if Austria wants to push her victory further [by ‘victory', Poincaré meant Belgrade's supposed acceptance of the Austrian demands], if she declares war or if she enters Belgrade, will Europe let her do it? Is it only between Austria and Russia that [Europe] will intervene to put a stop to [a further escalation]? That would mean taking Austria's part and giving it open season vis-à-vis Serbia. I set out all these objections to Viviani . . .
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On 28 July, as they entered the North Sea and approached the French coast, Poincaré had the telegraph officer radio ahead to cancel the reception at Dunkirk – the president's train should be made ready so that the party could travel directly from the harbour to Paris. The air over the North Sea was colder and greyer, the sea was choppy, and there were frequent drenching showers. The latest radiogrammes reported that the British supported a ‘collective démarche' by the powers to defuse the crisis, encouraging news for the president, because it meant that the Russians would be expected to stand down only if the Austrians did. And lastly there was very cheering news from Paris: in reply to the German ambassador von Schoen, who had insisted that the Austro-Serbian quarrel was a matter for the two countries to resolve between themselves, the acting foreign minister Bienvenu-Martin had declared that France would do nothing to restrain Russia unless Germany restrained Austria-Hungary. Delighted with this unexpectedly firm riposte, Poincaré instructed de Margerie to have Viviani telegraph to Paris his – i.e. Viviani's – approval of the acting minister's reply. It was a neat illustration of the chain of command driving French foreign policy in the last days of July 1914.
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By the time of his arrival in France, Poincaré had made up his mind – though there were still no signs of military counter-measures from Germany – that a European war could no longer be avoided.
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He found the ministers in a calm and resolute mood and was relieved to see that their attitude was more energetic than that of the faint-hearted Viviani. Poincaré had already telegraphed Bienvenu-Martin, instructing him to liaise with his colleagues in the ministries of war, the navy, the interior and finance to ensure that all the ‘necessary precautions' were in place in case of a heightening of tension; he was pleased to find that great progress had been made in all relevant sectors. Abel Ferry, the under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, and René Renoult, minister of public works, who had travelled to Dunkirk to meet the presidential party, informed Poincaré that soldiers on leave had been recalled, troops in training camps had returned to their garrisons, the prefects had been placed on alert, civil servants had been instructed to remain at their posts and key supplies had been purchased by Paris; ‘in short, the steps had been taken which, in the event of need, would permit an immediate mobilization'.
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When Renoult asked him in the train from Dunkirk to the capital whether a political settlement among the great powers was still possible, Poincaré replied: ‘No, there can be no settlement. There can be no arrangement.'
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Most telling of all is the description in Poincare's diary of the crowds that gathered to greet him on the way to Paris; it suggests the state of mind of a political leader already at war:

Immediately we note that the morale of the population is excellent, especially of the labourers and dockers. A very dense multitude had poured onto the wharves and quays and greeted us with repeated cries of Vive la France! Vive Poincaré! I master my emotion and exchange a few words with the mayor, senators and deputies. They all tell me, and the Prefect confirms, that we can count on the unity and on the determination of the country.
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The Russian government had already implemented far-reaching pre-mobilization measures. Paris was well informed of these, both by Paléologue, in the brief note of 25 July and, in more detail on the following day, by the French military attaché in St Petersburg, General Pierre de Laguiche.
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Then came the news, brought by Ambassador Izvolsky on the morning of 29 July, that a Russian partial mobilization against Austria-Hungary was planned for the same day. It is difficult to retrace Poincaré's reponse to this news, because he later (while preparing his memoirs) removed the latter half of the entry for 29 July from the manuscript of his diary, a page that appears to have been concerned with the Russian measures.
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And there are no extant minutes of the discussion at the Council of Ministers convened that day. But according to an account confided to Joseph Caillaux that evening by a minister who had been present (Minister of the Interior Louis Malvy), the Council of Ministers expressly approved the Russian measures.
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Neither on 26–27 nor on 29 July did Paris see fit to urge restraint on the alliance partner.

All of this was in accordance with the Balkan inception scenario and with French strategic thinking, which laid great weight upon the speed and effectiveness of Russian mobilization. But this priority had to be balanced with the need to secure British intervention. At the end of July, the British government remained undecided on the question of whether, when and in what way it would take part in the impending European war. One thing was clear: if France were seen to be entering a war of aggression at the side of its ally, this would thoroughly undermine its moral claim to British support. Yet French security in the face of a German westward attack required that Paris insist on the swiftest possible military response by St Petersburg. This was the familiar paradox: the war that needed to be fought defensively in the west had to begin aggressively in the east. These conflicting imperatives placed immense pressure on the decision-makers in Paris. And the pressure became especially acute on the night of 29 July, when the Germans warned St Petersburg that they would consider mobilizing their own forces unless Russia halted its own mobilization.

Late in the night of 29–30 July, a telegram from Sazonov arrived at the Russian embassy in Paris informing Izvolsky of the German warning. Since Russia could not back down, Sazonov wrote, it was the Russian government's intention to ‘accelerate our defence measures and to assume the likely inevitability of a war'. Izvolsky was instructed to thank the French government, on Sazonov's behalf, for its generous assurance ‘that we can count absolutely on the support of France as an ally'.
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Since the Russians had already advised France of the earlier decision to launch a
partial
mobilization (against Austria only), it can be inferred that Sazonov's ‘acceleration' referred to an imminent Russian
general
mobilization, a measure that would indeed make a continental war virtually inevitable.
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Unsurprisingly, this message triggered a flurry of activity in Paris. Izvolsky sent his legation secretary in the dead of night to the Quai d'Orsay and went himself to Viviani to present him with Sazonov's telegram. Shortly thereafter, at four o'clock on the morning of 30 July, Viviani met with War Minister Adolphe Messimy and Poincaré in the Elysée Palace to discuss the news. The result was a carefully worded French reply, dispatched on the morning of that day:

France is resolved to fulfil all the obligations of the alliance. But, in the interest of general peace and given that discussions are still underway among the less interested powers, I believe that it would be desirable that, in the measures of precaution and defence to which Russia believes it must proceed, it does not make immediately any disposition that might offer Germany a pretext for a total or partial mobilization of its forces.
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This reply is sometimes cited as evidence that the French government, alarmed by the Russian measures, were willing for the sake of peace to jeopardize the security arrangements of the Franco-Russian Alliance.
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Certaintly this was how it seemed to Viviani: during a meeting that evening with the former foreign minister Gabriel Hanotaux, he complained that the Russians ‘are confronting us with faits accomplis and are hardly consulting us at all'.
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But the purpose of the note was more complex. It was intended to persuade the British that France was endeavouring to restrain its ally – with this purpose in mind, a copy of the message was dispatched immediately to Paul Cambon in London. The link with the Anglo-French Entente is made explicit in Poincaré's diary, which records that the message to St Petersburg was formulated ‘on account of the ambiguous attitude of England'.
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At the same time, however, de Margerie and Messimy were instructed by Poincaré – apparently without Viviani's knowledge – to clarify to Izvolsky the true nature of the French government's intentions. Izvolsky's report of conversations with the diplomat and the minister substantially muted the impact of the earlier telegram urging restraint:

Margerie, with whom I have just spoken, told me that the French government
has no wish to intervene in our military preparations
, but believes it to be extremely desirable, in the interests of the continuation of negotiations for the preservation of peace, that these preparations should avoid as far as possible an overt and provocative character. Developing the same thought, the minister of war also said to Count Ignatiev [the Russian military attaché in Paris] that we could make a declaration to the effect that we are willing, for the sake of the higher interests of peace, temporarily to slow our mobilization measures,
which need not prevent us on the other hand from continuing our military preparations and indeed pursuing them more energetically, as long as we refrain from mass transports of troops
.
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These two telegrams, both dispatched on 30 July, capture the complex triangulations of a French policy that had to mediate between the hard imperatives of the Franco-Russian Alliance and the fuzzy logic of the Anglo-French Entente. Appealing to the ‘higher interests of peace' in essence meant offering the opponent an opportunity to back down – an eventuality that looked increasingly unlikely. In the meanwhile, Russia's preparations for war continued, in the form of an almost-mobilization that stopped short of the concentration of masses of troops at the western frontier. As he jotted down notes in the Council of Ministers on the morning of 30 July, the under-secretary of state at the Quai d'Orsay, Abel Ferry, summarized French policy thus: ‘
Do not stop Russian mobilization. Mobilize, but do not concentrate
.'
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In Poincaré's diary, the passage from that day reporting the dispatch of the telegram urging restraint on St Petersburg is followed by the sentence: ‘At the same time, we take the necessary measures to establish our covering troops in the East.'
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On the evening of 29 July, the chief of the Russian General Staff passed the
Ukaz
for general mobilization to General Sergei Dobrorolsky. As director of mobilization, it was Dobrorolsky's task to collect the ministerial signatures without which the order could not come into effect. The general later recalled his visits to the ministries of war, the navy and the interior. The mood was sombre. Sukhomlinov, once so outspoken in his belligerence, had grown very quiet in recent days. Perhaps, Dobrorolsky reflected, he now regretted the incendiary article he had planted some months before in the
Birzheviia Vedomosti
declaring that Russia was ‘ready for war'.
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The minister of the navy, Admiral Grigorovich, was shocked to see the
Ukaz
: ‘What, war with Germany? Our fleet is in no state to hold its own against the German fleet.' He called Sukhomlinov on the telephone for confirmation and then signed ‘with a heavy heart'. In the office of the reactionary ultra-monarchist minister of the interior, Nikolai Maklakov, Dobrorolsky found ‘an atmosphere of prayers': large icons standing on a narrow table glowed in the light of a church lamp. ‘In Russia,' the minister said, ‘war will never be popular with the profound masses of the people. Revolutionary ideas are more to their taste than a victory over Germany. But one does not escape one's destiny . . .' Crossing himself, Maklakov, too, signed the order.
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At around 9 p.m., with all the necessary signatures collated, Dobrorolsky made his way to St Petersburg's Central Telegraph Office, where the director-in-chief of posts and telegrams had been warned in advance to make himself available for a transmission ‘of the greatest importance'. With scrupulous care, the text was typed up in multiple copies so that it could be sent simultaneously from the machines in the main hall that linked St Petersburg to the principal centres of the Russian Empire. From these it would be retransmitted to all towns in all districts. Following the protocol for the dispatch of mobilization orders, the telegraph office had shut down all other traffic. At 9.30 p.m., just before transmission, the phone rang: it was Yanushkevich, chief of the General Staff, ordering Dobrorolsky not to transmit the text, but to stand by for further instructions. A few minutes later a messenger, in the form of Staff Captain Tugan-Baranowsky, arrived in a state of agitation. The Tsar had changed his mind. Instead of the mobilization order, an order for
partial
mobilization was to be promulgated, along the lines resolved ‘in principle' at the meetings of 24 and 25 July. The new order was duly drawn up and transmitted at around midnight on 29–30 July, triggering mobilization measures in the Kiev, Odessa, Moscow and Kazan districts.
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