The Reshaping of the Dual Alliance

Abstract

GABRIEL HANOTAUX had shown an increasing lack of enthusiasm for the Dual Alliance during his years as foreign minister, and had completely alienated his Russian opposite number, Muraviev, whom he variously described at cabinet meetings as ‘cheat’ and ‘traitor’.¹ The relationship between Muraviev and Delcassé was quite different. Muraviev visited Paris soon after Delcassé took office and quickly came to feel confidence in him. A year later Delcassé told his wife: ‘Personally we are increasingly in sympathy and this personal friendship complements our political relationship’.² Delcasse’s original enthusiasm for the Dual Alliance had been based on an unsentimental assessment of the national interest. During his years as foreign minister, however, even his friends came to recognise his growing susceptibility to the flattering attentions of the Tsar and his ministers. He was not the first French statesman to be influenced in this way. Before his election as President, Félix Faure had been an avowed Russophobe; yet the account in his journal of the end of the Tsar’s state visit to France in 1896 reads like a romance: ‘We simultaneously moved towards each other and embraced. At this moment the Emperor, deeply moved, said to me: “It is for always, isn’t it?” Deeply moved myself, I replied: “Yes, sire, for always”.’³