London, May 9. The Morning Chronicle, Advertiser, The Daily 

News, etc., all end their philippics against the assassin Pianori '*” 

with more or less timid criticisms of the issue of the Moniteur,? 
which published the indictment of Pianori at the same time as the 
decree ordering to pay the Napoleonic legacy of 10,000 francs 
to the former French N.C.O. Cantillon, now on the shelf in 
Brussels, as the reward for his attempted assassination of 
Wellington. Especially amusing are the twists and turns of the 
Chronicle, a paper that is serious by profession. Napoleon III, it 
says, must be ignorant of this strange, and at the present moment 
so tactless tribute to Napoleon I. The name “Cantillon” must have 
strayed into the morally spotless columns of the Moniteur by a 
lapsus pennae.” Or some officious junior civil servant must have 
endowed Cantillon with the 10,000 francs off his own bat, etc.‘ 
The worthy Chronicle seems to imagine that the French bureaucra- 
cy is formed on the English pattern, where it is indeed possible, as 
we have seen from the last hearing of the parliamentary Committee 
of Inquiry, for a junior civil servant of the Board of Ordnance“ to 
place an order for a certain type of rocket, involving thousands of 
pounds, of his own accord and without informing his superiors or, 
as Palmerston has told the House of Commons, for diplomatic 
documents to be withheld from Parliament for weeks because the 
“person” in the Foreign Office entrusted with the translation of 

* Le Moniteur universel, No. 126, May 6, 1855.— Ed. 

the said documents happens to be suffering from a cold or from 
rheumatism. 

For the last few days the London press has been trying to edge 
away from its admiration for Austria and prepare its readership 
for an abrupt transition into an opposite key. As usual it 1s left to 
“our own correspondents”* to break the ice. Thus The Morning 
Chronicle carries the following report from Berlin: 

“No positive act of deception or formal breach of promise can be laid to the 
charge of the Prussian Cabinet [...]. 

“If Western Cabinets have been deceived, it has been their own fault, or those 
whosc business it is to open their eyes. But can the same be said of Austria? Has 
her conduct been as undisguised [...] as that of Prussia? The latter has done all 
the mischief in her power to the West openly and undisguisedly. She defies and laughs 
at us without mask or restraint. The former has dallied with England and France 
during twenty months; laughed at us [...] in her sleeve; held out hopes officially as well 
as privately; lured us on from concession to concession ; given assurances of the most 
formal character; and, as long since predicted by those who were not blinded by 
overweening confidence, is now on the eve, it appears, of leaving us in the lurch if we 
do not assent to conditions of peace, [...] upon terms the most advantageous to Russia, 
and utterly [...] detrimental to France and England [...]. So, in fact, Austria after 
having served as a shield to Russia on the Pruth, and enabled Gorchakoff to detach 
nearly the whole of his force from Bessarabia to the Crimea, is to step forward and 
insist on a peace, which shall ‘leave things as they are’ [...]. If this be all we have to 
expect from Austrian friendship, then the sooner the mask is thrown aside the 
better.” 

On the other hand, The Times carries this report from Vienna‘: 

“..Baron Hess, the Commander-in-Chief of the 3rd and 4th armies, has recently 
drawn up and presented to his Imperial master a memorial, in which it is 
demonstrated that it would not, under present circumstances, be advisable for Austria 
to declare war against Russia. A cry will probably be raised against me for thus publicly 
touching on such a delicate matter, but in my opinion it is a service rendered to the 
British and French nations to tell them that they must depend on their own resources, 
and that Austria is not likely to come to their assistance. If she could have persuaded 
Prussia and the Bund to cover her left flank with an army of 100,000 men, she would 
probably, in spite of numerous impediments [...] long since have pledged herself to 
assume the offensive against Russia. It is not positively known what arguments Baron 
Hess employed in his memorial, but the Austro-Russians, who [...] are always best 
informed on such matters, say that it contained matter something like the following: 
The Western Powers, having proved to demonstration that they require all their own 
resources and those of Turkey in order to make head against the Russians in 

published in The Times, No. 22049, May 9, 1855.— Ed. 

the Crimea, it would be highly imprudent for Austria, unless she can induce her 
federal allies to support her, to engage in a war with Russia. It is acknowledged J...] 
that the latter has an army of 250,000 men, including the Guard and Grenadier 
Corps, in Poland; and, as it is posted within the rayon of seven of the strongest 
fortresses in the empire, no force that was not at least twice as large could hope to 
obtain any advantage over it. It is also said that mention is made of the disordered 
state of the finances, of the inability of France to place a hundred thousand men 
at Austria’s disposal, of the helplessness displayed by the British Government, and 
of the little reliance that can be placed on Prussia. Since Sunday last another 
argument has been added to the foregoing, [...] on the mutability of things in gen- 
eral, [...] the uncertainty of the life of man, and [...] the dilemma Austria would be 
in should anything happen to Louis Napoleon while she was engaged in a war 
with Russia.”