Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/439

 his point, and the treaty of Bucharest was signed on 28 May 1812, and ratified just before the arrival of Mr. (afterwards Sir Robert) Liston superseded Canning at the embassy.

This was the most important act of Stratford Canning's life. Apart from the reputation thus acquired by the young diplomatist, the gain to Europe was immense. The negotiations which ended in the treaty of Bucharest laid the foundations of that predominating influence which England has ever since exerted at the Porte, and established the extraordinary personal prestige which enabled Canning to maintain that influence at Constantinople through times of severe strain and confusion. More than this, it released Tschitschakoff's army of the Danube at the precise moment when it was needed to aggravate the discomfiture of the French in their retreat from Moscow, an opportune achievement, which the Duke of Wellington characterised as ‘the most important service to this country and the world that ever fell to the lot of any individual to perform.’ Canning had gone to Constantinople when Turkey was in open rupture with us, and almost in the arms of Napoleon. He left it under the supreme influence of England, with our maritime rights secured, Russia set free to join the great alliance against the French emperor; and all this without a word of advice from the home government, and without using his trump card, the exchange of the secret article of the treaty of the Dardanelles, which would have cost England 300,000l., and which had been left to his discretion.

In July 1812 he left the Bosphorus, with a firm resolve never to return. Apart from the special drawbacks of life and society at Stamboul, he disliked residence abroad, and had only accepted the secretaryship, and subsequently the embassy, under the idea that it would be a very temporary and brief engagement. His inclinations pointed to a career at home, where the quick intellectual life of London, and the usual goals of ambition, literary and political, attracted him. When he arrived in England, however, George Canning was not in power; Castlereagh occupied the foreign office, and there seemed little likelihood of immediate promotion. He was, indeed, in recognition of special services, granted a pension of 1,200l. as minister plenipotentiary en disponibilité. But he was lonely in London; most of his school and college friends were scattered; and he took no pleasure in ordinary town amusements. He read a good deal, in a desultory fashion; wrote poetry, and contributed some articles to the ‘Quarterly Review,’ which he had a share in founding. Perhaps his greatest pleasures were his regular walks with George Canning to Hyde Park Corner, where the ex-minister's carriage awaited him, economically, outside the turnpike, to drive him home to Brompton. To the long and intimate conversations which enlivened these daily walks the younger man always attributed much of his political knowledge and insight.

In 1813 the offer was made to him of accompanying Lord Aberdeen on his special mission to Vienna; but as his acceptance would have involved a step backwards in diplomatic rank, from plenipotentiary to secretary, he thought it wise to decline, though he thereby lost the opportunity of accompanying the allied armies in their march against Napoleon. He went to Paris, however, after the emperor's abdication, saw the king make his entry, and was presented to Louis XVIII. On that occasion he ‘saw, and never saw again, the handsome youth who was destined to hold the reins of empire in Russia, to keep all Europe in alarm for thirty years, and to close a proud career under the pressure of a disastrous war.’ He met, for the first and last time, his lifelong enemy, the Czar Nicholas.

At this time Lord Castlereagh, who had formed a very high opinion of Stratford Canning's abilities, offered him (May 1814) the post of envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary in Switzerland, and as this carried with it a diplomatic step, and involved a great deal of important work—Castlereagh had indeed selected him because he was known to like work—he accepted. His business was to substitute, for the act of mediation by which Napoleon had bound the Swiss cantons to France, a new federal act, which should create a neutral and guaranteed state, to act as a check upon French aggression in Germany and North Italy. The work was rendered exceedingly difficult and delicate by the wide differences between the governments of the several cantons, and all Canning's tact and decision were needed to reconcile the conflicting systems. After much negotiation, and a long diplomatic duel with Count Capo d'Istria, the Russian plenipotentiary, an act was agreed upon, and the envoys proceeded to Vienna to submit it to the congress then sitting to adjust the affairs of Europe. Canning lived to be the last survivor of the famous congress; for though he was not one of the plenipotentiaries (having only a seat on the committee appointed to inquire into the Swiss question), he was more than once invited to join the sittings of the general council. As far as Switzerland was concerned the congress did its work