Finally, there was the unspoken question of Poland. The idea of restoring Polish independence from Russia had first been advanced among the wartime allied diplomats by Walewski, the son of Napoleon I by the Polish Countess Marie Walewska. After the capture of Sevastopol, the French Emperor wanted to do something for Poland: an independent Polish kingdom fitted the Napoleonic ideal of a new Europe based on nation states to overthrow the 1815 settlement. At first Napoleon III supported Czartoryski’s programme for the restoration of Congress Poland, the autonomous kingdom established by the Vienna treaty, whose freedoms had been undermined by the Russians. Later on, as the pre-congress talks got under way and it became apparent that none of the other powers would come out in favour of the Poles, Napoleon gave his backing to Czartoryski’s pared-down list of conditions for Polish language rights and the defence of Poland against Russification. But Orlov would have none of this, insisting that Russia’s rights in Poland were based, not on the 1815 treaty, but on the Russian conquest of Poland during the suppression of the Polish insurrection of 1830–31. In the interests of improving his relations with Russia, whose support would be needed against the Austrians in Italy, Napoleon decided to give up on the Poles. Nothing more was said about the Polish question at the Paris congress. Even Palmerston, who rarely missed a chance to confront Russia, advised Clarendon not to make an issue of the Poles. ‘It would not be expedient,’ he explained, ‘to require Russia to restore the Kingdom of Poland.’
The advantage to the Poles would be very doubtful; if they could be made independent of Russia, that indeed would be a great advantage both for the Poles and for Europe, but the difference either for the Poles or for Europe between the present condition of the Kingdom of Poland and that which was established by the Treaty of Vienna would be hardly worth all the difficulties which we should have to encounter in endeavouring to carry such a change into effect. The Russian Govt would say as it said in former years that Poland had rebelled and was conquered, and that consequently it is held now by right of conquest and not by the Treaty of Vienna, and that therefore Russia is freed from the obligation of that Treaty. The Russians would moreover say that to make such a demand is to interfere in the internal affairs of Russia.
‘Poor Poland!’ remarked Stratford Canning to Lord Harrowby, one of Czartoryski’s supporters. ‘Her revival is a regular flying Dutchman. Never is – always to be.’6
With all the major issues resolved beforehand, the Paris congress proceeded smoothly without any major arguments. Just three sessions were required to draft the settlement. There was plenty of spare time for a full range of social engagements – banquets, dinners, concerts, balls and receptions, and a special celebration to mark the birth of the Prince Imperial, Louis-Napoleon, the only child of Napeolon III and the Empress Eugénie – before the diplomats finally assembled for the formal signing of the peace treaty at one o’clock on Sunday, 30 March.
Announcements of the peace were made throughout Paris. Telegraphs worked overtime to spread the news across the world. At two o’clock, the ending of the war was signalled by a thunderous cannonade fired by the guns at Les Invalides. Cheering crowds assembled in the streets, restaurants and cafés did a roaring trade, and in the evening the Paris sky was lit by fireworks. The next day, there was a parade on the Champ de Mars. French troops passed by the Emperor and Prince Napoleon, senior French commanders and foreign dignitaries, watched by tens of thousands of Parisians. ‘There was an electrical tremor of excitement in the crowd,’ claimed the official history of the congress, published the next year, ‘and from the people there was a deafening cheer of national pride and enthusiasm that filled the Champ de Mars better than a thousand cannon could.’7 Here was the glory and popular acclaim Napoleon had wanted when he went to war.
News of the peace arrived in the Crimea the next day – as long as it took for the telegram to be relayed from Paris to Varna and communicated by the underwater cable to Balaklava. On 2 April the allied guns in the Crimea were fired for the final time – in salute to mark the end of the war.
