870 Ch. 22 • The Great War
Germany confronting the necessity of fighting a war on two fronts, Bis
marck’s nightmare. In 1881, he resurrected the Three Emperors’ League,
which again allied the tsar of Russia with the emperors of Germany and
Austria-Hungary. Despite considerable points of tension with the Habsburg
monarchy, the Russian government entered this alliance as a hedge against
Austro-Hungarian expansion in the Balkans toward the straits of Constan
tinople. The result was that Bismarck’s resourceful diplomacy left Germany
allied, in one way or another, with all of its potential enemies except France.
As on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, France stood with
out allies.
Yet several factors seemed to draw Russia and France together, despite
great differences in their political systems. Both France and Russia stood
outside the Triple Alliance, which joined the powers of Central Europe with
Italy. Russia, too, faced diplomatic isolation, despite the Three Emperors’
League, because its Balkan interests clashed with those of Austria-Hungary.
Russia hoped that an alliance with France would limit German support for
the ambitions of the Habsburgs in southeastern Europe. Cultural ties
between the Russian aristocracy and France remained strong; many Russ
ian nobles still preferred to speak French.
French investment in Russia increased dramatically in the late 1880s
and early 1890s. French bankers seized the opportunity to provide capital
at attractive interest rates for Russian railway and mining development,
and French investors enthusiastically purchased Russian bonds. By 1914,
about one-fourth of all French foreign investment was in Russia. In con
trast, Bismarck and his successors made it a policy to discourage and even
to forbid German loans to Russia, although they invested in the Austro
Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. German private investors usually lacked
the capital to undertake such loans. At the same time, German and French
financial cooperation was extremely limited. French and German capital
ists saw each other as rivals.
Franco-Russian ties were further solidified by Tsar Alexander Ill’s visit
to Paris during the Exposition of 1889. Yet the French left was outraged by
government overtures to the autocratic and often brutal tsarist regime. For
their part, Russian Tsar Alexander III and his successor Nicholas II were
uncomfortable with close ties to a republic.
As the Russian government blamed Austria-Hungary for opposing what
they considered its natural influence in the Balkans, the Three Emperors’
League lapsed. In 1887, Germany and Russia signed a Reinsurance Treaty,
by which each pledged to remain neutral if the other went to war, but it
did not cover the most likely contingency of all—war between Russia and
Austria-Hungary—because Germany was already committed to aid Austria
Hungary if Russian forces attacked. The young, headstrong Kaiser William
II dismissed Bismarck as chancellor in 1890. Bismarck’s successors were
increasingly anti-Russian and failed to prevent Russia’s alliance with
France.