[Footnote 242: In his speech of February 19, 1878, Bismarck said, "The _liaison_ of the three Emperors, which is habitually designated an alliance, rests on no written agreement and does not compel any one of the three Emperors to submit to the decisions of the two others."] Such was the purport of the Three Emperors' League of 1872. There is little doubt that Bismarck had worked on the Czar, always nervous as to the growth of the Nihilist movement in Russia, in order to secure his adhesion to the first two provisions of the new compact, which certainly did not benefit Russia. The German Chancellor has since told us that, as early as the month of September 1870, he sought to form such a league, with the addition of the newly-united Italian realm, in order to safeguard the interests of monarchy against republicans and revolutionaries[243]. After the lapse of two years his wish took effect, though Italy as yet did not join the cause of order. The new league stood forth as the embodiment of autocracy and a terror to the dissatisfied, whether revengeful Gauls, Danes, or Poles, intriguing cardinals--it was the time of the "May Laws"--or excited men who waved the red flag. It was a new version of the Holy Alliance formed after Waterloo by the monarchs of the very same Powers, which, under the plea of watching against French enterprises, succeeded in bolstering up despotism on the Continent for a whole generation. [Footnote 243: Débidour, _Histoire diplomatique de l'Europe_, vol. ii. pp. 458-59; Bismarck, _Reflections and Reminiscences_, vol. ii. ch. xxix.] Fortunately for the cause of liberty, the new league had little of the solidity of its predecessor. Either because the dangers against which it guarded were less serious, or owing to the jealousies which strained its structure from within, signs of weakness soon appeared, and the imposing fabric was disfigured by cracks which all the plastering of diplomatists failed to conceal. An eminent Russian historian, M. Tatischeff, has recently discovered the hidden divulsive agency. It seems that, not long after the formation of the Three Emperors' League, Germany and Austria secretly formed a separate compact, whereby the former agreed eventually to secure to the latter due compensation in the Balkan Peninsula for her losses in the wars of 1859 and 1866 (Lombardy, Venetia, and the control of the German Confederation, along with Holstein)[244]. [Footnote 244: _The Emperor Alexander II.: His Life and Reign_, by S.S. Tatischeff (St. Petersburg, 1903), Appendix to vol. ii.]