Читать книгу Secret Diplomacy: How Far Can It Be Eliminated? онлайн

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When Cromwell had allowed himself to be tangled up in double-faced negotiations with the Spanish and the French courts of which the latter had obtained complete knowledge, the French envoy, DeBass, very cleverly rebuked him for the inconstancy and disingenuousness of his action. The envoy related to Cromwell in complete detail, but as an “unauthenticated report,” all the facts of the dubious negotiation, and then asked the Protector kindly to extricate him from this labyrinth. Cromwell was entirely taken aback and took his departure abruptly on urgent business, leaving his secretary to make excuses. The star performance of Metternich was when Napoleon, returning from a hunt in a fit of heated excitement, in the presence of the other foreign representatives, rushed up to him shouting, “What the deuce does your Emperor expect of me?” Metternich replied with the greatest composure, “He expects his ambassador to be treated with respect.”

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The correspondence of diplomats of the eighteenth century is full of interest because of the particular intimacy which characterized social life at that time. But we receive from it also direct and invaluable information on the spirit and methods of diplomacy. The correspondence from St. Petersburg at the time of Catherine the Great gives a complete picture of the less noble features of diplomatic life and action. At that Court, presided over by a woman of great ambition whose every movement and mood the diplomats felt necessary to take into account and carefully to calculate, at a time when England and France as well as other nations were involved in almost constant hostilities, the sharpest characteristics of eighteenth century diplomacy came to the surface. Politics is seen as a game of forfeits and favors in which wars were made for personal and dynastic reasons and territories traded off in the spirit of the gamester without regard to natural or ethnic facts, or the welfare of the population.