Chapter 276: Madrid Peace Talks
The dispute between France and Italy over Tunisia eventually returned to the negotiating table. Prime Minister Jules Ferry never imagined that the Italians would withstand France’s pressure and secretly dispatch troops to occupy a portion of Tunisia’s land.
Although France occupied most of Tunisia’s land, from the terrain of the occupied land, the Italians were not necessarily at a disadvantage.
The Kairouan, Sousse, and Sfax occupied by Italy were all plain areas near the coast, with enormous development value.
Although the southern land occupied by Italy had mountainous and desert terrain, the coastal areas also possessed a vast expanse of the Gafsa Plain.
In contrast, the Tunisian region occupied by France, although covering nearly seventy percent of Tunisia’s total area, included a considerable portion taken up by the Tunisian mountains.
To the south, there was also the Chott el Djerid salt marsh and some desert areas. The land that could truly be reclaimed for arable land or grazing was actually not much different in area from the land that could be reclaimed and grazed in the territory occupied by Italy.
It must be remembered that France was the one who initiated the war. Compared to Italy, France had invested more in this war but had not gained much benefit. This alone was enough to make the French public doubt Prime Minister Jules Ferry’s ability.
“Prime Minister, the Spanish Ambassador has once again expressed Spain’s willingness to act as a neutral country to mediate the colonial conflict between us and Italy over Tunisia. They hope we can dispatch a representative to Madrid to participate in the peace negotiations, to ensure no further conflict erupts between us and Italy.” Foreign Minister Gambetta pushed open the door and respectfully reported to Jules Ferry.
Gambetta and Jules Ferry belonged to the same party, which also meant that on the Tunisia issue, their goals were consistent.
Jules Ferry first stared blankly at the Tunisia combat plan map hanging in the Prime Minister’s office, then turned around, looked at Foreign Minister Gambetta, and responded, “Minister, who do you think we should send to attend this peace conference?”
“Prime Minister, this peace negotiation is extremely important, and a diplomatic ambassador cannot make appropriate decisions. If you do not plan to attend in person, I am willing to represent France in negotiations with Italy.” Foreign Minister Gambetta said word by word.
Jules Ferry nodded. The Foreign Minister was indeed a more suitable choice. Compared to an ordinary diplomatic ambassador, the Foreign Minister had greater authority and could also demonstrate the importance attached to this peace negotiation.
Compared to the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister’s status was not as high, avoiding France lowering its own status.
After all, the Prime Minister’s role corresponded to the Prime Ministers of Spain and Italy. Under the premise that Italy had not dispatched its Prime Minister for negotiations, France naturally had no need to send its Prime Minister.
Rashly attending such a conference would not only fail to give Prime Minister Jules Ferry any right to speak at the meeting but would also lower his status and make him looked down upon.
“Then you shall represent France to attend this conference. Minister Gambetta, this meeting must at least ensure that the land already occupied by France still belongs to France, and it would be best to reclaim more than half of the land occupied by the Italians.
Tunisia is an important part of our colonial expansion plan; our colonial plan absolutely cannot encounter problems here in Tunisia.” Jules Ferry made the decision and looked at Gambetta.
“As you command, Prime Minister.” Gambetta nodded and accepted this rather arduous task.
At the same time, the Italian Government was also determining its representative for the peace talks.
It was worth mentioning that the Italian Government had similarly chosen its Foreign Minister as the representative to attend the peace talks conference, which was perhaps a tacit understanding among European countries.
As for Spain, due to its status as the neutral mediating country, Prime Minister Cánovas would personally host the meeting.
After all, as the host, dispatching a Foreign Minister to receive the two countries’ representatives would inevitably seem too stingy.
The conference would be held in Madrid. In addition to discussing the situation in Tunisia, it would also explore to some extent the colonialism of Spain, France, and Italy in North Africa, to avoid such colonial conflicts among the three countries in the future.
After Spain invited the two countries to participate in the peace negotiations, it was not long before the representatives of both countries arrived successively in Spain’s capital, Madrid.
When arriving in Madrid, French Foreign Minister Gambetta showed no particular emotions. Although Madrid had become quite prosperous after more than ten years of development, compared to France’s capital Paris, Madrid was still somewhat inferior.
Madrid had built trams and constructed a large number of streetlights, making it the world’s first nightless city.
But France had followed suit afterward with projects for trams and streetlights, which were already commonplace to Gambetta.
But for the Italian Foreign Minister, everything seen in Madrid felt so fresh.
Italy had of course been involved in electricity, but Italy’s finances were not as exaggerated as those of Britain, France, and Germany.
This also resulted in Italy never building a nightless city like Madrid. Italy’s capital Rome, along with the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s capital Vienna and Tsarist Russia’s capital Saint Petersburg, were known as Europe’s three dark cities.
Of course, this appellation was a quirky comment from the European media, due precisely to the lag in electricity development in these three countries.
Italy had of course participated in Spain’s tram expo, but due to funding constraints, even the capital Rome had not achieved large-scale power supply.
Only the royal palace and government office buildings truly qualified to use electricity, and beyond that, only factories with substantial seniority would cooperate with Italy’s electric company to build power stations around their own factories.
Yes, Italian factories wanting to connect to the grid could only choose to fund and build power stations themselves.
As for the reason, it was naturally that the Italian Government lacked funds to build large power stations. Current electricity transmission had various problems; generally, electricity transmission would not cross cities, and even relatively short distances would result in significant losses.
The electricity from one power station could only supply cities within a few kilometers around it; for areas farther away wanting to use electricity, they either had to spend a greater cost or pool funds to build a new power station.
Precisely because of this, the electricity usage situation in Italy’s various cities was abysmal. Only a few northern cities had a few power stations, and all cities south of Rome did not even have a single power station.
“This is truly remarkable. Madrid has undergone earth-shaking changes in its more than ten years of development; these changes are exactly what Italy currently needs.” The Italian Foreign Minister, experiencing Madrid’s changes on the first day, could not help but sigh during communication with the Italian Ambassador to Spain.
The Italian Ambassador to Spain nodded upon hearing this. He had been in Spain serving as diplomatic ambassador for several years and could be said to have personally witnessed Madrid’s transformation.
Before Carlo became King of Spain, Madrid was also a major European city with a population of over 400,
But at that time, Madrid was somewhat backward compared to the capitals of other great powers, with only some factories in the suburbs, but both in number and scale, far behind those in other great power cities.
Now looking at Madrid again, aside from the urban scale not matching the capitals of Britain, France, and Germany due to population, it could already compare with the capitals of Austria and Italy.
Austria’s capital Vienna and Italy’s capital Rome—which city was not more famous than Spain’s capital Madrid?
Italy’s capital Rome had already become the capital during the Roman Empire period and had been the most important city in the Italian region for over 2,000 years.
The history of Vienna becoming the capital could also be traced back to the period of the Archduchy of Austria; since the Habsburg family controlled the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, Vienna had also been the capital of the Holy Roman Empire.
In contrast, Madrid had been the capital of Spain for just over 300 years. Coupled with the surrounding mountainous and forested areas and the lack of nearby plains, Madrid’s development had always been severely restricted.
Although there was still a certain gap in population, Madrid was no longer inferior to Rome and Vienna in urban infrastructure and industry.
As an Italian, the Italian Foreign Minister envied Spain.
It must be known that the current King of Spain, King Carlo I, was a duke in Italy more than ten years ago, the youngest son of the King of Italy.
Unfortunately, such an ambitious and talented monarch ultimately became King of Spain, and under Carlo’s leadership, Spain had reemerged as a powerful European great power, with overall strength even surpassing that of current Italy.
Although he was very moved about Spain’s development, the Italian diplomatic representative did not sigh for long.
Because for Italy, the upcoming negotiations with France would become extremely important. As long as Italy could hold onto the land it had occupied, Italy would not be the loser in this Tunisian colonial competition.
On the second day after both representatives arrived in Madrid, the peace negotiations between France and Italy officially began.
At the peace negotiations, Prime Minister Cánovas, as the Spanish representative, took the lead in attending and emphasized the importance of peace negotiations for peace, expressing hope that France and Italy could propose their demands based on the goal of achieving peace.
Subsequently, it was the stage where the French and Italian diplomatic representatives put forward demands to each other and argued.
If the Italian side wanted more to partition Tunisia according to the currently actually occupied areas, then the demand of the French diplomatic representative was for Italy to withdraw from the Tunisian region, or at least abandon half of the currently occupied land.
But France’s proposal would certainly not be accepted by Italy. The land occupied by Italy accounted for less than one-third of Tunisia’s total land; if it abandoned half again, wouldn’t that mean most of the benefits went to the French?
What was the goal of the Italians painstakingly occupying these two pieces of land? Was it not to snatch a piece of meat from the French’s mouths and secure an undefeated position for themselves?
Because both sides insisted on their demands without yielding, the first day’s peace negotiations fell into a stalemate, with no progress at all.
French Foreign Minister Gambetta returned to his residence expressionless and instructed the French ambassador to report the current progress of the peace talks to the homeland.
In fact, before attending the Madrid peace negotiations conference, France had considered inviting other countries to participate as neutral countries in the peace negotiations or directly starting a separate table, ignoring Spain’s request.
Spain’s diplomatic attitude in this competition also showed that Spain was firmly on Italy’s side.
France naturally understood the reasoning behind this, which was also why France wanted to invite other neutral countries to join this negotiation.
If only Spain acted as the intermediary, at critical moments, Spain would definitely side with Italy.
What was more fatal was that with only France and Italy participating in the negotiations, it also meant France would face pressure from both Italy and Spain from the very beginning.
Unfortunately, France had invited many European great powers including Germany, and all countries expressed no interest in this peace negotiation.
The reason for Germany’s, the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s, and Russia’s refusal was simple: they were too far from North Africa and had no need to offend Italy and Spain for France’s sake.
Britain’s reason for refusal was also simple: Britain preferred to see conflict erupt between France, Italy, and Spain.
Even Britain’s purpose in exchanging three colonies in West Africa was to provoke conflict between Spain and France.
The current situation was clearly a good opportunity; how could the British ruin their own careful planning?
As for whether France facing the enormous pressure from both the Three Emperors Alliance and the Italo-Spanish Alliance simultaneously would collapse, the British also had their own solutions.
First, the combined strength of the Italo-Spanish Alliance was not even as great as Germany or Russia individually in the Three Emperors Alliance; for France, although there was pressure, it was not fatal.
Second, the British were already working hard to dismantle the Three Emperors Alliance. In British eyes, Russia’s threat was the greatest, followed by France, then Germany.
The British had always wanted to pull Russia out of the Three Emperors Alliance while doing their utmost to sabotage the relationship between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Russia, thereby pushing Germany to oppose Russia as well.
In this way, Europe would reach a situation of confrontation between four major military blocs. Germany and Austria against Russia, Italy and Spain against France—these two countries fighting alone were exactly Britain’s two major headaches.
With Russia and France restrained, the British could expand unabated in Africa and the Middle East, which was the best situation for the British.
Precisely because of this, even though the British meddlesome nature made them very concerned about the situation in Tunisia, they ultimately refused France’s invitation, stating they would not intervene in the Tunisia situation.
This also forced France to attend alone, even knowing Spain would side with Italy at critical moments; France still had to participate in this peace negotiation.
Because if it did not participate in the peace negotiations, France would have to accept the reality of Italy occupying a portion of Tunisia’s land.
As for using military force to expel the Italian army, this was something the French Government had never considered. Although Italy was not strong, it was still a great power and not so easy to defeat.
Moreover, with Spain’s assistance to Italy, France was highly likely to face the pressure of fighting on two fronts. Once France became embroiled in a prolonged war, the Germans would certainly not remain indifferent.
If it backfired into France taking on all of Europe single-handedly, that would be a real mess. No matter how ambitious Jules Ferry was, he would not be bold enough to ignore France’s current diplomatic predicament.
Avoid starting a war if possible; at least until France broke Germany’s diplomatic isolation policy, France could not afford to thoroughly offend Italy and Spain.
