Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/217

 1920 CONGRESS OF VERONA, 1822 209 Great Britain and the continental powers it was urged that, with the exception of the treaty, everything that had passed should be regarded as confidential and that nothing should be allowed to transpire. There was to be no protocol, but a simple memoran- dum embodying the acts of the congress and unsigned. Mont- morency agreed in the hope that he would thus be able to shelve his parliamentary responsibilities, but Wellington, whose anxieties though similar in origin were different in kind, demurred on the ground that as the allies' dispatches would be certain to find their way into every newspaper in Europe, he must have something to show parliament on the part of his government. It was then agreed to allow the publication of these two papers if ever the treaty which was secret should become known, or the dispatches, as was only too probable, should reappear in the press. ^ The arrangement thus come to was this. Wellington's paper of 30 October, excluded from publication by the terms of this agreement, disappears ; his protests of 19 and 20 November survive.^ But how vast is the change ! If any one will take the trouble to compare the paper of 30 October either with the paper of 19 November or with the paper of 20 November, he will discover for himself, far better than from any discourse of mine, how far along the allies' path Wellington has travelled in those three weeks ; and only then will he be in a position to gauge the measure and extent of Metternich's triumph. 3. What is our final criticism ? Our final criticism is this. Wellington's sense of reality, his profound knowledge of strategy, his no less profound knowledge of the internal resources and condition of Spain did not enable him to sustain the part of attempting to dissuade France from intervention on purely military grounds. Our evidence for this reposes mainly, though not exclusively, on Boislecomte. Boislecomte tells us how Wellington admitted the extreme facility of military operations, and how these operations became the subject of conversation after the circulation of Montmorency's paper of 20 October. As I have stated elsewhere, this paper was generally construed as an intimation that the French were preparing for war. Let us hear what Boislecomte has to say in his own words : On parlait alors de la probabilite de la guerre et que dans le cas ou elle se ferait les Frangais se concentreraient d'avance jusqu'a I'Ebre ; qu'ils donneraient ainsi un puissant encouragement aux Royalistes ; que ' Wellington, Suppl. Desp. i. 564, dispatch of 22 November ; also Villele, Memoirea, iii. 227, Montmorency's dispatch of 19 November. " This arrangement seems to have been kept. The dispatches found their way into the press, and Wellington's paper of 20 November appears among the parlia- mentary papers. His paper of the 1 9th does not appear. The existence of a secret treaty was suspected but not known. VOL. XXXV. — NO. CXXXVIII. P