Frankfort,” he said, “may be very bright, but the gold which gives truth to its brilliance has first to be won by melting down the Prussian crown.” His speech caused great indignation; ten thousand copies of it were printed to be distributed among the electors so as to show them the real principles and objects of the reactionary party.
His opposition to any identification of Prussia and Germany was maintained when the Prussian Government itself took the initiative and proposed its own solution. During the summer of 1849, the Prussian programme was published. The Government invited the other States of Germany to enter into a fresh union; the basis of the new Constitution was to be that of Frankfort, but altered so far as might be found necessary, and the union was to be a voluntary one. The King in order to carry out this policy appointed as one of his Ministers Herr von Radowitz. He was a man of the highest character and extreme ability. An officer by profession, he was distinguished by the versatility of his interests and his great learning. The King found in him a man who shared his own enthusiasm for letters. He had been a member of the Parliament at Frankfort, and had taken a leading part among the extreme Conservatives; a Roman Catholic, he had come forward in defence of religion and order against the Liberals and Republicans; a very eloquent speaker, by his earnestness and eloquence he was able for a short time to give new life to the failing hopes of the German patriots.
Bismarck always looked on the new Minister with great dislike. Radowitz, indeed, hated the Revolution as much as he did; he was a zealous and patriotic Prussian; but there was a fundamental difference in the nature of the two men. Radowitz wished to reform Germany by moral influence. Bismarck did not believe in the possibility of this. To this perhaps we must add some personal feeling. The Ministry had hitherto consisted almost entirely of men who were either personal friends of Bismarck, or whom he had recommended to the King. With Radowitz there entered into it a man who was superior to all of them in ability, and over whom Bismarck could not hope to have any influence. Bismarck’s distrust, which amounted almost to hatred, depended, however, on his fear that the new policy would bring about the ruin of Prussia. He took the extreme Particularist view; he had no interest in Germany outside Prussia; Wuertemberg and Bavaria were to him foreign States. In all these proposals for a new Constitution he saw only that Prussia would be required to sacrifice its complete independence; that the King of Prussia would become executor for the decrees of a popular and alien Parliament. They were asked to cease to be Prussians in order that they might become Germans. This Bismarck refused to do. “Prussians we are,” he said, “and Prussians we will remain.” He had no sympathy with this idea of a United Germany which was so powerful at the time; there was only one way in which he was willing that Germany should be united, and that was according to the example which Frederick the Great had set. The ideals of the German nation were represented by Arndt’s famous song, “Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?” The fatherland of the Germans was not Suabia or Prussia, not Austria or Bavaria, it was the whole of Germany wherever the German tongue was spoken. From this Bismarck deliberately dissociated himself. “I have never heard,” he said, “a Prussian soldier singing, ‘Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?'” The new flag of Germany was to be the German tricolour, black and white and gold.
“The Prussian soldiers,” cried Bismarck, “have no tricoloured enthusiasm; among them you will find, as little as in the rest of the Prussian people, the desire for a national regeneration; they are contented with the name of Prussia, and proud of the name of Prussia. These troops follow the black and white flag, not the tricolour; under the black and white they die with joy for their country. The tricolour they have learnt since the 18th of March to look on as the colours of their foes.”
These words aroused intense indignation. One of the speakers who followed referred to him as the Prodigal Son of the German Fatherland, who had deserted his father’s house. Bismarck repudiated the epithet. “I am not a prodigal son,” he said; “my father’s house is Prussia and I have never left it.” He could not more clearly repudiate the title German. The others were moved by enthusiasm for an idea, he by loyalty to an existing State.
Nothing was sound, he said, in Germany, except the old Prussian institutions.
“What has preserved us is that which is specifically Prussian. It was the remnant of the _Stock-Preussenthum_ which has survived the Revolution, the Prussian army, the Prussian treasure, the fruits of many years of intelligent Prussian administration, and the living co-operation between King and people. It was the attachment of the Prussian people to their hereditary dynasty, the old Prussian virtues of honour, loyalty, obedience, and the courage which, emanating from the officers who form its bone and marrow, permeates the army down to the youngest recruit.”
He reminded the House how the Assembly at Frankfort had only been saved from the insurgent mob by a Prussian regiment, and now it was proposed to weaken and destroy all these Prussian institutions in order to change them into a democratic Germany. He was asked to assent to a Constitution in which the Prussian Government would sink to the level of a provincial council, under the guidance of an Imperial Ministry which itself would be dependent on a Parliament in which the Prussian interests would be in a minority. The most important and honourable duties of the Prussian Parliament would be transferred to a general Parliament; the King would lose his veto; he would be compelled against his will to assent to laws he disliked; even the Prussian army would be no longer under his sole command. What recompense were they to gain for this?
“The pleasant consciousness of having followed an unselfish and noble policy; of having satisfied the requirements of a national regeneration; of having carried out the historical task of Prussia, or some such vague expression.”
With this he contrasted what would have been a true Prussian policy, a policy which Frederick the Great might have followed.
“He would have known that now as in the day of our fathers the sound of the trumpets which summoned them to their sovereign’s flag has not lost its power for Prussian ears; he would have had the choice either of joining our old comrade Austria, and undertaking the brilliant part which the Emperor of Russia has played, and destroying the cause of the Revolution, or by the same right by which he took Silesia, he might, after refusing to accept the crown, have ordered the Germans what constitution they should have, and thrown the sword into the scale; then Prussia would have been in the position to win for Germany its place in the Council of Europe.
“We all wish the same. We all wish that the Prussian eagle should spread out his wings as guardian and ruler from the Memel to the Donnersberg, but free will we have him, not bound by a new Regensburg Diet. Prussians we are and Prussians will we remain; I know that in these words I speak the confession of the Prussian army and the majority of my fellow-countrymen, and I hope to God that we will still long remain Prussian when this sheet of paper is forgotten like a withered autumn leaf.”
The policy of Radowitz was doomed to failure, not so much because of any inherent weakness in it, but because Prussia was not strong enough to defend herself against all the enemies she had called up. The other Courts of Germany were lukewarm, Austria was extremely hostile. The Kings of Hanover and Saxony retreated from the alliance on the ground that they would enter the union only if the whole of Germany joined; Bavaria had refused to do so; in fact the two other Kings had privately used all their influence to prevent Bavaria from joining, in order that they might always have an excuse for seceding. Prussia was, therefore, left surrounded by twenty-eight of the smaller States. A Parliament from them was summoned to meet at Erfurt in order to discuss the new Constitution. Bismarck was elected a member of it; he went there avowedly to protect the Prussian interests. He had demanded from the Government that at least the Constitution agreed on in Erfurt should again be submitted to the Prussian Chamber; he feared that many of the most important Prussian rights might be sacrificed. His request was refused, for it was obvious that if, after the Parliament of Erfurt had come to some conclusion, the new Constitution was to be referred back again to the twenty-eight Parliaments of the allied States, the new union would never come into effect at all. It is curious here to find Bismarck using the rights of the Prussian Parliament as a weapon to maintain the complete independence of Prussia. Sixteen years later, when he was doing the work in which Radowitz failed, one of his chief difficulties arose from the conduct of men who came forward with just the same demand which he now made, and he had to refuse their demands as Radowitz now refused his.
He did not take much part in the debates at Erfurt; as he was one of the youngest of the members, he held the position of Secretary; the President of the Assembly was Simpson, a very distinguished public man, but a converted Jew. “What would my father have said,” observed Bismarck, “if he had lived to see me become clerk to a Jewish scholar?” On one occasion he became involved in what might have been a very serious dispute, when he used his power as Secretary to exclude from the reporters’ gallery two journalists whose reports of the meeting were very partial and strongly opposed to Austria. His attitude towards the Assembly is shewn by the words:
“I know that what I have said to you will have no influence on your votes, but I am equally convinced that your votes will be as completely without influence on the course of events.”
The whole union was, as a matter of fact, broken down by the opposition of Austria. Bismarck had, in one of his first speeches, warned against a policy which would bring Prussia into the position which Piedmont had held before the battle of Novara, when they embarked on a war in which victory would have brought about the overthrow of the monarchy, and defeat a disgraceful peace. It was his way of saying that he hoped the King would not eventually draw the sword in order to defend the new Liberal Constitution against the opposition of Austria. The day came when the King was placed in this position. Austria had summoned the old Diet to meet at Frankfort; Prussia denied that the Diet still legally existed; the two policies were clearly opposed to one another: Austria desiring the restoration of the old Constitution, Prussia, at the head of Liberal Germany, summoning the States round her in a new union. There were other disputes about Schleswig-Holstein and the affairs of Hesse, but this was the real point at issue. The Austrians were armed, and were supported by the Czar and many of the German States; shots were actually exchanged between the Prussian and Bavarian outposts in Hesse. The Austrian ambassador had orders to leave Berlin; had he done so, war could not have been avoided. He disobeyed his orders, remained in Berlin, asked for an interview with the King, and used all his influence to persuade him to surrender. The Ministry was divided; Radowitz stood almost alone; the other Ministers, Bismarck’s friends, had always distrusted his policy. They wished to renew the old alliance with Austria; the Minister of War said they could not risk the struggle; it was rumoured that he had deliberately avoided making preparations in order to prevent the King putting himself at the head of the Liberal party. During the crisis, Bismarck was summoned to the King at Letzlingen; there can be no doubt what his advice was; eventually the party of peace prevailed, and Radowitz resigned. Bismarck on hearing the news danced three times round the table with delight. Brandenburg died almost immediately after; Manteuffel became Minister-President; he asked Schwarzenberg for an interview, travelled to Olmuetz to meet him, and an agreement was come to by which practically Prussia surrendered every object of dispute between the two great Powers.
The convention of Olmuetz was the most complete humiliation to which any European State has ever been subjected. Prussia had undertaken a policy, and with the strong approval of the great majority of the nation had consistently maintained it for over a year; Austria had required that this policy should be surrendered; the two States had armed; the ultimatum had been sent, everything was prepared for war, and then Prussia surrendered. The cause for this was a double one. It was partly that Prussia was really not strong enough to meet the coalition of Austria and Russia, but it was also that the King was really of two minds; he was constitutionally unable to maintain against danger a consistent course of policy.
Bismarck was one of the few men who defended the action of the Ministry. In the ablest of all his speeches he took up the gauntlet, and exposed all the weakness and the dangers of Radowitz’s policy. This was not a cause in which Prussia should risk its existence. Why should they go to war in order to subject Prussia not to the Princes but to the Chambers of the smaller States? A war for the Union would, he said, remind him of the Englishman who had a fight with the sentry in order that he might hang himself in the sentry-box, a right which he claimed for himself and every free Briton. It was the duty of the councillors of the King to warn him from a policy which would bring the State to destruction.
“Still I would not shrink, from the war; I would advise it, were anyone able to prove to me the necessity for it, or to point out a worthy end which could be attained by it and in no other way. Why do great States wage war nowadays? The only sound principle of action for a great State is political egoism and not Romanticism, and it is unworthy of a great State to fight for any matter which does not concern its own interests. Shew us, gentlemen, an object worthy of war and you have my vote. It is easy for a statesman in his office or his chamber to blow the trumpet with the breath of popularity and all the time to sit warming himself by his fireside, while he leaves it to the rifleman, who lies bleeding on the snow, whether his system attains victory and glory. Nothing is easier; but woe to the statesman who at such a time does not look about for a reason for the war which will be valid when the war is over. I am convinced you will see the questions which now occupy us in a different light a year hence, when you look back upon them through a long perspective of battle-fields and conflagrations, misery and wretchedness. Will you then have the courage to go to the peasant by the ashes of his cottage, to the cripple, to the childless father, and say: ‘You have suffered much, but rejoice with us, the Union is saved. Rejoice with us, Hassenpflug is no longer Minister, Bayernhofer rules in Hesse.'”
Eloquent words; but what a strange comment on them his own acts were to afford. In 1850 Prussia had a clearer and juster cause of war than in 1866; every word of his speech might have been used with equal effect sixteen years later; the Constitution of 1850 was little different from that which Bismarck himself was to give to Germany. The policy of Radowitz was the only true policy for Prussia; if he failed, it was because Prussia’s army was not strong enough; war would have been followed by defeat and disaster. There was one man who saw the evils as they really were; the Prince of Prussia determined that if ever he became King the army of Prussia should be again made strong and efficient.
It was probably this speech which determined Bismarck’s future career. He had defended the agreement with Austria and identified himself with the policy of the Government; what more natural than that they should use him to help to carry out the policy he had upheld. Prussia consented to recognise the restoration of the Diet; it would be necessary, therefore, to send an envoy. Now that she had submitted to Austria the only wise policy was to cultivate her friendship. Who could do this better than Bismarck? Who had more boldly supported and praised the new rulers of Austria? When the Gotha party, as they were called, had wished to exclude Austria from Germany, he it was who said that Austria was no more a foreign State than Wuertemberg or Bavaria. The appointment of Bismarck would be the best proof of the loyal intentions of the Prussian Government.
A few years later he himself gave to Motley the following account of his appointment:
“In the summer of 1851,” Motley writes, “he told me that the Minister, Manteuffel, asked him one day abruptly, if he would accept the post of Ambassador at Frankfort, to which (although the proposition was as unexpected a one to him as if I should hear by the next mail that I had been chosen Governor of Massachusetts) he answered, after a moment’s deliberation, ‘yes,’ with out another word. The King, the same day, sent for him, and asked him if he would accept the place, to which he made the same brief answer, ‘Ja.’ His Majesty expressed a little surprise that he made no inquiries or conditions, when Bismarck replied that anything which the King felt strong enough to propose to him, he felt strong enough to accept. I only write these details, that you may have an idea of the man. Strict integrity and courage of character, a high sense of honour, a firm religious belief, united with remarkable talents, make up necessarily a combination which cannot be found any day in any Court; and I have no doubt that he is destined to be Prime Minister, unless his obstinate truthfulness, which is apt to be a stumbling-block for politicians, stands in his way.”
CHAPTER V.
FRANKFORT.
1851-1857.
Bismarck when he went to Frankfort was thirty-six years of age; he had had no experience in diplomacy and had long been unaccustomed to the routine of official life. He had distinguished himself by qualities which might seem very undiplomatic; as a Parliamentary debater he had been outspoken in a degree remarkable even during a revolution; he had a habit of tearing away the veil from those facts which everyone knows and which all wish to ignore; a careless good-fellowship which promised little of that reserve and discretion so necessary in a confidential agent; a personal and wilful independence which might easily lead him into disagreement with the Ministers and the King. He had not even the advantage of learning his work by apprenticeship under a more experienced official; during the first two months at Frankfort he held the position of First Secretary, but his chief did not attempt to introduce him to the more important negotiations and when, at the end of July, he received his definite appointment as envoy, he knew as little of the work as when he arrived at Frankfort.
He had, however, occupied his time in becoming acquainted with the social conditions. His first impressions were very unfavourable. Frankfort held a peculiar position. Though the centre of the German political system it was less German than any other town in the country. The society was very cosmopolitan. There were the envoys of the German States and the foreign Powers, but the diplomatic circle was not graced by the dignity of a Court nor by the neighbourhood of any great administrative Power. Side by side with the diplomatists were the citizens of Frankfort; but here again we find indeed a great money-market, the centre of the finance of the Continent, dissociated from any great productive activity. In the neighbourhood were the watering-places and gambling-tables; Homburg and Wiesbaden, Soden and Baden-Baden, were within an easy ride or short railway journey, and Frankfort was constantly visited by all the idle Princes of Germany. It was a city in which intrigue took the place of statesmanship, and never has intrigue played so large a part in the history of Europe as during the years 1850-1870. Half the small States who were represented at Frankfort had ambitions beyond their powers; they liked to play their part in the politics of Europe. Too weak to stand alone, they were also too weak to be quite honest, and attempted to gain by cunning a position which they could not maintain by other means. This was the city in which Bismarck was to serve his diplomatic apprenticeship.
Two extracts from letters to his wife give the best picture of his personal character at this time:
“On Saturday I drove with Rochow to Ruedesheim; there I took a boat and rowed out on the Rhine, and bathed in the moonlight–only nose and eyes above the water, and floated down to the Rat Tower at Bingen, where the wicked Bishop met his end. It is something strangely dreamlike to lie in the water in the quiet, warm light, gently carried along by the stream; to look at the sky with the moon and stars above one, and, on either side, to see the wooded mountain-tops and castle parapets in the moonlight, and to hear nothing but the gentle rippling of one’s own motion. I should like a swim like this every evening. Then I drank some very good wine, and sat long talking with Lynar on the balcony, with the Rhine beneath us. My little Testament and the starry heavens brought us on Christian topics, and I long shook at the Rousseau-like virtue of his soul.”
“Yesterday I was at Wiesbaden, and with a feeling of melancholy revisited the scenes of former folly. May it please God to fill with His clear and strong wine this vessel in which the champagne of twenty-one years foamed so uselessly…. I do not understand how a man who reflects on himself, and still knows, and will know, nothing of God, can endure his life for contempt and weariness. I do not know how I endured this in old days; if, as then, I were to live without God, thee, and the children, I do not know why I should not put life aside like a dirty shirt; and yet most of my acquaintances live thus.”
Now let us see what he thinks of his new duties:
“Our intercourse here is at best nothing but a mutual suspicion and espionage; if only there was anything to spy out and to hide! It is pure trifles with which they worry themselves, and I find these diplomatists with their airs of confidence and their petty fussiness much more absurd than the member of the Second Chamber in his conscious dignity. Unless some external events take place, and we clever men of the Diet can neither direct nor foresee them, I know already what we shall bring about in one or two or three years, and will do it in twenty-four hours if the others will only be reasonable and truthful for a single day. I am making tremendous progress in the art of saying nothing in many words; I write reports many pages long, which are smooth and finished like leading articles, and if Manteuffel after reading them can say what they contain, he can do more than I. We all do as though we believed of each other that we are full of thoughts and plans, if only we would express them, and all the time we none of us know a hair’s breadth more what will become of Germany.”
Of the Austrian Envoy who was President of the Diet he writes:
“Thun in his outward appearance has something of a hearty good fellow mixed with a touch of the Vienna _roue_. Underneath this he hides, I will not say great political power and intellectual gifts, but an uncommon cleverness and cunning, which with great presence of mind appears from underneath the mask of harmless good-humour as soon as politics are concerned. I consider him as an opponent who is dangerous to anyone who honestly trusts him, instead of paying back in his own coin.”
His judgment on his other colleagues is equally decisive; of the Austrian diplomatists he writes:
“one must never expect that they will make what is right the foundation of their policy for the simple reason that it is the right. Cautious dishonesty is the characteristic of their association with us. They have nothing which awakens confidence. They intrigue under the mask of good-fellowship.”
It was impossible to look for open co-operation from them;
“their mouths are full of the necessity for common action, but when it is a question of furthering our wishes, then officially it is, ‘We will not oppose,’ and a secret pleasure in preparing obstacles.”
It was just the same with the envoys of the other countries: with few exceptions there is none for whom right has any value in itself.
“They are caricatures of diplomatists who put on their official physiognomy if I ask them for a light, and select gestures and words with a truly Regensburg caution, if they ask for the key of the water-closet.” Writing to Gerlach he speaks of “the lying, double-tongued policy of the Austrians. Of all the lies and intrigues that go on up and down the Rhine an honest man from the old Mark has no conception. These South German children of nature are very corrupt.”
His opinion of the diplomatists does not seem to have improved as he knew them better. Years later he wrote:
“There are few diplomatists who in the long run do not prefer to capitulate with their conscience and their patriotism, and to guard the interests of their country and their sovereign with somewhat less decision, rather than, incessantly and with danger to their personal position, to contend with the difficulties which are prepared for them by a powerful and unscrupulous enemy.”
He does not think much better of his own Prussian colleagues; he often complains of the want of support which he received. “With us the official diplomacy,” he writes, “is capable of playing under the same roof with strangers against their own countrymen.”
These letters are chiefly interesting because of the light they throw on his own character at the beginning of his diplomatic career; we must not take them all too seriously. He was too good a raconteur not to make a good story better, and too good a letter-writer not to add something to the effect of his descriptions; besides, as he says elsewhere, he did not easily see the good side of people; his eyes were sharper for their faults than their good qualities.[4] After the first few passages of arms he got on well enough with Thun; when he was recalled two years later Bismarck spoke of him with much warmth. “I like him personally, and should be glad to have him for a neighbour at Schoenhausen.”
It is however important to notice that the first impression made on him by diplomatic work was that of wanton and ineffective deceit. Those who accuse him, as is so often done, of lowering the standard of political morality which prevails in Europe, know little of politics as they were at the time when Schwarzenberg was the leading statesman.
It was his fate at once to be brought in close contact with the most disagreeable side of political life. In all diplomatic work there must be a good deal of espionage and underhand dealing. This was a part of his duties which Bismarck had soon to learn. He was entrusted with the management of the Press. This consisted of two parts: first of all, he had to procure the insertion of articles in influential papers in a sense agreeable to the plans of the Prussian Government; secondly, when hostile articles appeared, or inconvenient information was published, he had to trace the authors of it,–find out by whom the obnoxious paper had been inspired, or who had conveyed the secret information. This is a form of activity of which it is of course not possible to give any full account; it seems, however, clear that in a remarkably short time Bismarck shewed great aptitude for his new duties. His letters to Manteuffel are full of curious information as to the intrigues of those who are hostile to Prussia. He soon learns to distrust the information supplied by the police; all through his life he had little respect for this department of the Prussian State. He soon had agents of his own. We find him gaining secret information as to the plans of the Ultramontane party in Baden from a compositor at Freiburg who was in his pay. On other occasions, when a Court official at Berlin had conveyed to the newspapers private information, Bismarck was soon able to trace him out. We get the impression, both from his letters and from what other information we possess, that all the diplomatists of Germany were constantly occupied in calumniating one another through anonymous contributions to a venal Press.
It is characteristic of the customs of the time that he had to warn his wife that all her letters to him would be read in the post-office before he received them. It was not only the Austrians who used these methods; each of the Prussian Ministers would have his own organ which he would use for his own purposes, and only too probably to attack his own colleagues. It was at this time that a curious fact came to light with regard to Herr von Prokesch-Osten, the Austrian Ambassador at Berlin. He had been transferred from Berlin to Frankfort, and on leaving his house sold some of his furniture. In a chest of drawers was found a large bundle of papers consisting of newspaper articles in his handwriting, which had been communicated to different papers, attacking the Prussian Government, to which he at the time was accredited. Of Prokesch it is that Bismarck once writes: “As to his statements I do not know how much you will find to be Prokesch, and how much to be true.” On another occasion, before many witnesses, Bismarck had disputed some statement he made. “If it is not true,” cried Prokesch, “then I should have lied in the name of the Royal and Imperial Government.” “Certainly,” answered Bismarck. There was a dead pause in the conversation. Prokesch afterwards officially admitted that the statement had been incorrect.
This association with the Press formed in him a habit of mind which he never lost: the proper use of newspapers seemed to him, as to most German statesmen, to be not the expression of public opinion but the support of the Government; if a paper is opposed to the Government, the assumption seems to be that it is bribed by some other State.
“The whole country would rejoice if some of the papers which are supported by foreign sources were suppressed, with the express recognition of their unpatriotic attitude. There may be opposition in the internal affairs, but a paper which in Prussia takes part against the policy of the King on behalf of foreign countries, must be regarded as dishonoured and treated as such.”
Politically his position was very difficult; the Diet had been restored by Austria against the will of Prussia; the very presence of a Prussian Envoy in Frankfort was a sign of her humiliation. He had indeed gone there full of friendly dispositions towards Austria; he was instructed to take up again the policy which had been pursued before 1848, when all questions of importance had been discussed by the two great Powers before they were laid before the Diet. Bismarck, however, quickly found that this was no longer the intention of Austria; the Austria which he had so chivalrously defended at Berlin did not exist; he had expected to find a warm and faithful friend–he found a cunning and arrogant enemy. Schwarzenberg had spared Prussia but he intended to humble her; he wished to use the Diet as a means of permanently asserting the supremacy of Austria, and he would not be content until Prussia had been forced like Saxony or Bavaria to acquiesce in the position of a vassal State. The task might not seem impossible, for Prussia appeared to be on the downward path.
Of course the Diet of Frankfort was the place where the plan had to be carried out; it seemed an admirable opportunity that Prussia was represented there by a young and untried man. Count Thun and his successors used every means to make it appear as though Prussia was a State not of equal rank with Austria. They carried the war into society and, as diplomatists always will, used the outward forms of social intercourse as a means for obtaining political ends. On this field, Bismarck was quite capable of meeting them. He has told many stories of their conflicts.
As President of the Diet, Thun claimed privileges for himself which others did not dare to dispute.
“In the sittings of the military commission when Rochow was Prussian envoy, Austria alone smoked. Rochow, who was a passionate smoker, would also have gladly done so, but did not venture. When I came I did not see any reason against it; and asked for a light from the Presiding State; this seemed to be noticed with astonishment and displeasure by him and the other gentlemen; it was obviously an event for them. This time only Austria and Prussia smoked. But the others obviously held it so important that they sent home a report on it. Someone must have written about it to Berlin, as a question from the late King arrived; he did not smoke himself and probably did not find the affair to his taste. It required much consideration at the smaller Courts, and for quite half a year only the two great Powers smoked. Then Schrenk, the Bavarian envoy, began to maintain the dignity of his position by smoking. The Saxon Nostitz would doubtless have liked to begin too, but I suppose he had not yet received permission from his Minister. But when next time he saw that Bothmer, the Hanoverian, allowed himself a cigar, he must have come to an understanding with his neighbour (he was a good Austrian, and had sons in the Austrian army), for he brought out his pouch and lit up. There remained only the Wuertemberger and the Darmstadter, and they did not smoke at all, but the honour and the importance of their States required it, and so on the following day the Wuertemberger really brought out his cigar. I can see him with it now, a long, thin, yellow thing, the colour of rye-straw,–and with sulky determination, as a sacrifice for his Swabian fatherland, he smoked at least half of it. Hesse-Darmstadt alone refrained.”
On another occasion Thun received Bismarck in his shirt sleeves: “You are quite right,” said Bismarck, “it is very hot,” and took off his own coat.
In the transaction of business he found the same thing. The plan seemed to be deliberately to adopt a policy disadvantageous to Prussia, to procure the votes of a majority of the States, thereby to cause Prussia to be outvoted, and to leave her in the dilemma of accepting a decision which was harmful to herself or of openly breaking with the Federation. On every matter which came up the same scenes repeated themselves; now it was the disposal of the fleet, which had to a great extent been provided for and maintained by Prussian money; Austria demanded that it should be regarded as the property of the Confederation even though most of the States had never paid their contribution. Then it was the question of the Customs’ Union; a strong effort was made by the anti-Prussian party to overthrow the union which Prussia had established and thereby ruin the one great work which she had achieved. Against these and similar attempts Bismarck had constantly to be on the defensive. Another time it was the publication of the proceedings of the Diet which the Austrians tried to make a weapon against Prussia. The whole intercourse became nothing but a series of disputes, sometimes serious, sometimes trivial.
Bismarck was soon able to hold his own; poor Count Thun, whose nerves were not strong, after a serious discussion with him used to go to bed at five o’clock in the afternoon; he complained that his health would not allow him to hold his post if there were to be continuous quarrels. When his successor, Herr v. Prokesch, left Frankfort for Constantinople, he said that “it would be like an Eastern dream of the blessed to converse with the wise Ali instead of Bismarck.”
As soon as the first strangeness had passed off Bismarck became reconciled to his position. His wife and children joined him, he made himself a comfortable home, and his house soon became one of the most popular in the town; he and his wife were genial and hospitable and he used his position to extend his own influence and that of his country. His old friend, Motley, visited him there in 1855 and wrote to his wife:
“FRANKFORT,
“Monday, July 30, 1855.
” … The Bismarcks are as kind as ever–nothing can be more frank and cordial than her manners. I am there all day long. It is one of those houses where everyone does what he likes. The show apartments where they receive formal company are on the front of the house. Their living rooms, however, are a _salon_ and dining-room at the back, opening upon the garden. Here there are young and old, grandparents and children and dogs all at once, eating, drinking, smoking, piano-playing, and pistol-firing (in the garden), all going on at the same time. It is one of those establishments where every earthly thing that can be eaten or drunk is offered you; porter, soda water, small beer, champagne, burgundy, or claret are about all the time, and everybody is smoking the best Havana cigars every minute.”
He had plenty of society, much of it congenial to him. He had given up playing since his marriage, and was one of the few diplomatists who was not found at the Homburg gaming-tables, but he had a sufficiency of sport and joined with the British envoy, Sir Alexander Malet, in taking some shooting. A couple of years later in contradicting one of the frequent newspaper reports, that he aimed at supplanting the Minister, he says:
“My castle in the air is to spend three to five years longer at Frankfort, then perhaps the same time in Vienna or Paris, then ten years with glory as Minister, then die as a country gentleman.”
A prospect which has been more nearly fulfilled than such wishes generally are.
He was for the first year still a member of the Second Chamber and occasionally appeared in it; his interest in his diplomatic work had, however, begun to overshadow his pleasure in Parliamentary debate.
“I am thoroughly tired of my life here,” he writes in May, 1853, to his wife from Berlin, “and long for the day of my departure. I find the intrigues of the House immeasurably shallow and undignified; if one always lives among them, one deceives oneself and considers them something wonderful. When I come here from Frankfort and see them as they really are, I feel like a sober man who has fallen among drunkards. There is something very demoralising in the air of the Chambers; it makes the best people vain without their knowing it.”
So quickly has he outgrown his feelings of a year ago: then it was the intrigues of diplomatists that had seemed to him useless and demoralising. Now it was Parliamentary debates; in the opinion he formed at this time he never wavered.
His distaste for Parliamentary life was probably increased by an event which took place about this time. As so often before in the course of debate he had a sharp passage of words with Vincke; the latter referred contemptuously to Bismarck’s diplomatic achievements. “All I know of them is the famous lighted cigar.”
Bismarck answered with some angry words and at the close of the sitting sent a challenge. Four days later a duel with pistols took place–the only one he ever fought. Neither was injured. It seems that Vincke, who had the first shot, seeing that Bismarck (who had received the sacrament the night before) was praying, missed on purpose; Bismarck then shot into the air.
For these reasons he did not stand for re-election when the Chamber was dissolved in 1852, although the King was very much displeased with his determination. He was shortly afterwards appointed member of the newly constituted House of Lords, but though he occasionally voted, as in duty bound, for Government measures, he never spoke; he was not to be heard again in the Parliament until he appeared there as President of the Ministry. He was glad to be freed from a tie which had interfered with his duties at Frankfort; to these he devoted himself with an extraordinary energy; all his old repugnance to official life had disappeared; he did not confine himself to the mere routine of his duties, or to carrying out the instructions sent to him from Berlin.
His power of work was marvellous: there passed through his hands a constant series of most important and complicated negotiations; up to this time he had no experience or practice in sedentary literary work, now he seems to go out of the way to make fresh labours for himself. He writes long and careful despatches to his Minister on matters of general policy; some of them so carefully thought out and so clearly expressed that they may still be looked on as models. He is entirely free from that circumlocution and involved style which makes so much diplomatic correspondence almost worthless. His arguments are always clear, complete, concise. He used to work long into the night, and then, when in the early morning the post to Berlin had gone, he would mount his horse and ride out into the country. It was in these years that he formed those habits to which the breakdown of his health in later years was due; but now his physical and intellectual vigour seemed inexhaustible.
He never feared to press his own views as to the policy which should be pursued. He also kept up a constant correspondence with Gerlach, and many of these letters were laid before the King, so that even when absent he continued as before to influence both the official and unofficial advisers. He soon became the chief adviser on German affairs and was often summoned to Berlin that his advice might be taken; within two years after his appointment he was sent on a special mission to Vienna to try and bring about an agreement as to the rivalry concerning the Customs’ Union. He failed, but he had gained a knowledge of persons and opinions at the Austrian Court which was to be of much use to him.
During these years, indeed, he acquired a most remarkable knowledge of Germany; before, he had lived entirely in Prussia, now he was at the centre of the German political system, continually engaged in important negotiations with the other Courts; after a few years there was not a man of importance in German public life whose character and opinions he had not gauged.
Further experience only confirmed in him the observations he had made at the beginning, that it was impossible to maintain a good understanding with Austria. The tone of his letters soon changes from doubt and disappointment to settled and determined hostility. In other matters also he found that the world was not the same place it had seemed to him; he had been accustomed to regard the Revolution as the chief danger to be met; at Frankfort he was in the home of it; here for nearly a year the German Assembly had held its meetings; in the neighbouring States of Baden, Hesse, and in the Palatinate, the Republican element was strong; he found them as revolutionary as ever, but he soon learnt to despise rather than fear them:
“The population here would be a political volcano if revolutions were made with the mouth; so long as it requires blood and strength they will obey anyone who has courage to command and, if necessary, to draw the sword; they would be dangerous only under cowardly governments.
“I have never seen two men fighting in all the two years I have been here. This cowardice does not prevent the people, who are completely devoid of all inner Christianity and all respect for authority, from sympathising with
the Revolution.”
His observations on the character of the South Germans only increased his admiration for the Prussian people and his confidence in the Prussian State.
He had not been at Frankfort a year before he had learnt to look on this hostility of Austria as unsurmountable. As soon as he had convinced himself of this, he did not bewail and bemoan the desertion of their ally; he at once accustomed himself to the new position and considered in what way the Government ought to act. His argument was simple. Austria is now our enemy; we must be prepared to meet this enmity either by diplomacy or war; we are not strong enough to do so alone; therefore we must have allies. There was no sure alliance to be had in Germany; he despised the other German States. If there were to be a war he would rather have them against him than on his side. He must find help abroad; Austria had overcome Prussia by the alliance with Russia. Surely the only thing to be done was to seek support where it could be got, either with Russia or with France, if possible with both. In this he was only reverting to the old policy of Prussia; the alliance with Austria had only begun in 1813. From now until 1866 his whole policy was ceaselessly devoted to bringing about such a disposition of the forces of Europe that Austria might be left without allies and Prussia be able to regain the upper hand in German affairs.
The change was in his circumstances, not in his character; as before he was moved by a consuming passion of patriotism; something there was too of personal feeling,–his own pride, his own ambitions were engaged, though this was as nothing compared to love of his country and loyalty to the King. He was a soldier of the Prussian Crown: at Berlin he had to defend it against internal enemies; now the danger had shifted, the power of the Government was established, why waste time in fighting with Liberalism? Other enemies were pressing on. When Jellachich and Windischgaetz had stood victorious by the blood-stained altar of St. Stephen’s, the Austrian army had destroyed the common foe; now it was the same Austrian army and Austrian statesmen who desired to put a limit to Prussian ambition. Bismarck threw himself into the conflict of diplomacy with the same courage and relentless persistence that he had shewn in Parliamentary debates. He had already begun to divine that the time might come when the Prussian Crown would find an ally in Italian patriots and Hungarian rebels.
It was the Eastern complications which first enabled him to shew his diplomatic abilities in the larger field of European politics. The plans for the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire which were entertained by the Czar were opposed by England, France, and Austria; Prussia, though not immediately concerned, also at first gave her assent to the various notes and protests of the Powers; so that the ambition of the Czar was confronted by the unanimous voice of Europe.
Bismarck from the beginning regarded the situation with apprehension; he saw that Prussia was being entangled in a struggle in which she had much to lose and nothing to gain. If she continued to support the Western Powers she would incur the hatred of Russia; then, perhaps, by a sudden change of policy on the part of Napoleon, she would be left helpless and exposed to Russian vengeance. If war were to break out, and Prussia took part in the war, then the struggle between France and Russia would be fought out on German soil, and, whoever was victorious, Germany would be the loser. What interests of theirs were at stake that they should incur this danger? why should Prussia sacrifice herself to preserve English influence in the Mediterranean, or the interests of Austria on the Danube? He wished for exactly the opposite policy; the embarrassment of Austria must be the opportunity of Prussia; now was the time to recover the lost position in Germany. The dangerous friendship of Austria and Russia was dissolved; if Prussia came to an understanding with the Czar, it was now Austria that would be isolated. The other German States would not desire to be dragged into a war to support Austrian dominion in the East. Let Prussia be firm and they would turn to her for support, and she would once more be able to command a majority of the Diet.
For these reasons he recommended his Government to preserve an armed neutrality, in union, if possible, with the other German States. If they were to take sides, he preferred it should not be with the Western Powers, for, as he said,–
“We must look abroad for allies, and among the European Powers Russia is to be had on the cheapest terms; it wishes only to grow in the East, the two others at our expense.”
It shews the advance he had made in diplomacy that throughout his correspondence he never refers to the actual cause of dispute; others might discuss the condition of the Christians in Turkey or the Holy Places of Jerusalem; he thinks only of the strength and weakness of his own State. The opening of the Black Sea, the dismemberment of Turkey, the control of the Mediterranean, the fate of the Danubian Principalities–for all this he cared nothing, for in them Prussia had no interests; they only existed for him so far as the new combinations among the Powers might for good or evil affect Prussia.
The crisis came in 1854: a Russian army occupied Moldavia and Wallachia; England and France sent their fleets to the Black Sea; they determined on war and they wished for the alliance of Austria. Austria was inclined to join, for the presence of Russian troops on the Danube was a menace to her; she did not dare to move unless supported by Prussia and Germany; she appealed to the Confederacy and urged that her demands might be supported by the armies of her allies; but the German States were little inclined to send the levies of their men for the Eastern interests of the Emperor. If they were encouraged by Prussia, they would refuse; the result in Germany, as in Europe, depended on the action of Prussia, and the decision lay with the King.
Was Prussia to take part with Russia or the Western Powers? That was the question which for many months was debated at Berlin.
The public opinion of the nation was strong for the Western Powers; they feared the influence of Russia on the internal affairs of Germany; they had not forgotten or forgiven the part which the Czar had taken in 1849; the choice seemed to lie between Russia and England, between liberty and despotism, between civilisation and barbarism. On this side also were those who wished to maintain the alliance with Austria. Russia had few friends except at the Court and in the army, but the party of the _Kreuz Zeitung,_ the Court Camarilla, the princes and nobles who commanded the _Garde Corps_, wished for nothing better than a close alliance with the great Emperor who had saved Europe from the Revolution. “Let us draw our sword openly in defence of Russia,” they said, “then we may bring Austria with us; the old alliance of the three monarchies will be restored, and then will be the time for a new crusade against France, the natural enemy of Germany, and the upstart Emperor.”
The conflict of parties was keenest in the precincts of the Court; society in Berlin was divided between the Russian and the English; the Queen was hot for Russia, but the English party rallied round the Prince of Prussia and met in the salons of his wife. Between the two the King wavered; he was, as always, more influenced by feeling than by calculation, but his feelings were divided. How could he decide between Austria and Russia, the two ancient allies of his house? He loved and reverenced the Czar; he feared and distrusted Napoleon; alliance with infidels against Christians was to him a horrible thought, but he knew how violent were the actions and lawless the desires of Nicholas. He could not ignore the opinions of Western Europe and he wished to stand well with England. The men by whose advice he was guided stood on opposite sides: Bunsen was for England, Gerlach for Russia; the Ministry also was divided. No efforts were spared to influence him; the Czar and Napoleon each sent special envoys to his Court; the Queen of England and her husband warned him not to forget his duty to Europe and humanity; if he would join the allies there would be no war. Still he wavered; “he goes to bed an Englishman and gets up a Russian,” said the Czar, who despised his brother-in-law as much as he was honoured by him.
While the struggle was at its height, Bismarck was summoned to Berlin, that his opinion might also be heard. At Berlin and at Letzlingen he had frequent interviews with the King. In later years he described the situation he found there:
“It was nothing strange, according to the custom of those days, that half a dozen ambassadors should be living in hotels intriguing against the policy of the Minister.”
He found Berlin divided into two parties: the one looked to the Czar as their patron and protector, the other wished to win the approval of England; he missed a reasonable conviction as to what was the interest of Prussia. His own advice was against alliance with the Western Powers or Austria; better join Russia than England; better still, preserve neutrality and hold the balance of Europe. He had the reputation of being very Russian, but he protested against the term. “I am not Russian,” he said, “but Prussian.” He spoke with great decision against the personal adherents of the King, men who looked to the Czar rather than to their own sovereign, and carried their subservience even to treason. As in former days, courage he preached and resolution. Some talked of the danger of isolation; “With 400,000 men we cannot be isolated,” he said. The French envoy warned him that his policy might lead to another Jena; “Why not to Waterloo?” he answered. Others talked of the danger of an English blockade of their coasts; he pointed out that this would injure England more than Prussia.
“Let us be bold and depend on our own strength; let us frighten Austria by threatening an alliance with Russia, frighten Russia by letting her think we may join the Western Powers; if it were true that we could never side with Russia, at least we must retain the possibility of threatening to do so.”
The result was what we might expect from the character of the King; unable to decide for either of the contending factors, he alternated between the two, and gave his support now to one, now to the other. In March, when Bismarck was still in Berlin, sudden disgrace fell upon the English party; Bunsen was recalled from London, Bonin, their chief advocate in the Ministry, was dismissed; when the Prince of Prussia, the chief patron of the Western alliance, protested, he was included in the act of disfavour, and had to leave Berlin, threatened with the loss of his offices and even with arrest. All danger of war with Russia seemed to have passed; Bismarck returned content to Frankfort. Scarcely had he gone when the old affection for Austria gained the upper hand, and by a separate treaty Prussia bound herself to support the Austrian demands, if necessary by arms. Bismarck heard nothing of the treaty till it was completed; the Ministers had purposely refrained from asking his advice on a policy which they knew he would disapprove. He overcame his feelings of disgust so far as to send a cold letter of congratulation to Manteuffel; to Gerlach he wrote:
“His Majesty should really see to it that his Ministers should drink more champagne; none of the gentry ought to enter his Council without half a bottle under his belt. Our policy would soon get a respectable colour.”
The real weakness lay, as he well knew, in the character of the King. “If here I say to one of my colleagues, ‘We remain firm even if Austria drives matters to a breach,’ he laughs in my face and says, ‘As long as the King lives it will not come to a war between Austria and Prussia.'” And again, “The King has as much leniency for the sins of Austria as I hope to have from the Lord in Heaven.”
It was a severe strain on his loyalty, but he withstood it; he has, I believe, never expressed his opinion about the King; we can guess what it must have been. It was a melancholy picture: a King violent and timid, obstinate and irresolute; his will dragged now this way, now that, by his favourites, his wife and his brother; his own Ministers intriguing against each other; ambassadors recommending a policy instead of carrying out their instructions; and the Minister-President standing calmly by, as best he could, patching up the appearance of a Consistent policy.
It was probably the experience which he gained at this time which in later years, when he himself had become Minister, made Bismarck so jealous of outside and irresponsible advisers; he did not choose to occupy the position of Manteuffel, he laid down the rule that none of his own subordinates should communicate with the King except through himself; a Bismarck as Foreign Minister would not allow a Gerlach at Court, nor a Bismarck among his envoys. He had indeed been careful not to intrigue against his chief, but it was impossible to observe that complete appearance of acquiescence which a strong and efficient Minister must demand. Bismarck was often asked his opinion by the King directly; he was obliged to say what he believed to be the truth, and he often disapproved of that which Manteuffel advised. In order to avoid the appearance of disloyalty, he asked Gerlach that his letters should be shewn to Manteuffel; not all of them could be shewn, still less would it be possible to repeat all he said. If they were in conflict, his duty to the King must override his loyalty to the Minister, and the two could not always be reconciled. To Englishmen indeed it appears most improper that the King should continually call for the advice of other politicians without the intervention or the knowledge of his Ministers, but this is just one of those points on which it is impossible to apply to Prussian practice English constitutional theory. In England it is a maxim of the Constitution that the sovereign should never consult anyone on political matters except the responsible Ministry; this is possible only because the final decision rests with Parliament and the Cabinet and not with the sovereign. It was, however, always the contention of Bismarck that the effective decision in Prussia was with the King. This was undoubtedly the true interpretation of the Prussian Constitution; but it followed from this that the King must have absolute freedom to ask the advice of everyone whose opinions would be of help to him; he must be able to command the envoys to foreign countries to communicate with him directly, and if occasion required it, to consult with the political opponents of his own Ministers. To forbid this and to require that all requests should come to him by the hands of the Ministers would be in truth to substitute ministerial autocracy for monarchical government.
Something of this kind did happen in later years when the German Emperor had grown old, and when Bismarck, supported by his immense experience and success, guided the policy of the country alone, independent of Parliament, and scarcely allowing any independent adviser to approach the Emperor. This was exceptional; normally a Prussian Minister had to meet his opponents and critics not so much in public debate as in private discussion. Under a weak sovereign the policy of the country must always be distracted by palace intrigue, just as in England under a weak Cabinet it will be distracted by party faction. The Ministers must always be prepared to find their best-laid schemes overthrown by the influence exerted upon the royal mind by his private friends or even by his family. It may be said that tenure of office under these conditions would be impossible to a man of spirit; it was certainly very difficult; an able and determined Minister was as much hampered by this private opposition as by Parliamentary discussion. It is often the fashion to say that Parliamentary government is difficult to reconcile with a strong foreign policy; the experiences of Prussia from the year 1815 to 1863 seem to shew that under monarchical government it is equally difficult.
Meanwhile he had been maturing in his mind a bolder plan: Why should not Prussia gain the support she required by alliance with Napoleon?
The Germans had watched the rise of Napoleon with suspicion and alarm; they had long been taught that France was their natural enemy. When Napoleon seized the power and assumed the name of Emperor, the old distrust was revived; his very name recalled memories of hostility; they feared he would pursue an ambitious and warlike policy; that he would withdraw the agreements on which the peace of Europe and the security of the weaker States depended, and that he would extend to the Rhine the borders of France. He was the first ruler of France whose internal policy awoke no sympathy in Germany; his natural allies, the Liberals, he had alienated by the overthrow of the Republic, and he gained no credit for it in the eyes of the Conservatives. The monarchical party in Prussia could only have admiration for the man who had imprisoned a Parliament and restored absolute government; they could not repudiate an act which they would gladly imitate, but they could not forgive him that he was an usurper. According to their creed the suppression of liberty was the privilege of the legitimate King.
It was the last remnant of the doctrine of legitimacy, the belief that it was the duty of the European monarchs that no State should change its form of government or the dynasty by which it was ruled; the doctrine of the Holy Alliance that kings must make common cause against the Revolution. How changed were the times from the days when Metternich had used this as a strong support for the ascendancy of the House of Austria! Austria herself was no longer sound; the old faith lingered only in St. Petersburg and Berlin; but how weak and ineffective it had become! There was no talk now of interference, there would not be another campaign of Waterloo or of Valmy; there was only a prudish reserve; they could not, they did not dare, refuse diplomatic dealings with the new Emperor, but they were determined there should be no cordiality: the virgin purity of the Prussian Court should not be deflowered by intimacy with the man of sin.[5] If there could not be a fresh crusade against Buonapartism, at least, there should be no alliance with it.
From the beginning Bismarck had little sympathy with this point of view; he regarded the _coup d’etat_ as necessary in a nation which had left the firm ground of legitimacy; France could not be governed except by an iron hand. As a Prussian, however, he could not be pleased, for he saw an enemy who had been weak strengthened, but he did not believe in Napoleon’s warlike desires. In one way it was an advantage,–the overthrow of the Republic had broken the bond which joined the German revolutionists to France. He did not much mind what happened in other countries so long as Prussia was safe.
There is no ground for surprise that he soon began to go farther; he warned his friends not to irritate the Emperor; on the occasion of the Emperor’s marriage the _Kreuz Zeitung_ published a violent article, speaking of it as an insult and threat to Prussia. Bismarck’s feelings as a gentleman were offended by this useless scolding; it seemed, moreover, dangerous. If Prussia were to quarrel with France, they would be obliged to seek the support of the Eastern Powers: if Russia and Austria should know this, Prussia would be in their hands. The only effect of this attitude would be to cut off the possibility of a useful move in the game of diplomacy:
“There is no good in giving our opposition to France the stamp of irrevocability; it would be no doubt a great misfortune if we were to unite ourselves with France, but why proclaim this to all the world? We should do wiser to act so that Austria and Russia would have to court our friendship against France than treat us as an ally who is presented to them.”
It is a topic to which he often refers:
“We cannot make an alliance with France without a certain degree of meanness, but very admirable people, even German princes, in the Middle Ages have used a sewer to make their escape, rather than be beaten or throttled.”
An alliance with Napoleon was, however, according to the code of honour professed, if not followed, in every German State, the sin for which there was no forgiveness. It was but a generation ago that half the German princes had hurried to the Court of the first Napoleon to receive at his hands the estates of their neighbours and the liberties of their subjects. No one doubted that the new Napoleon would be willing to use similar means to ensure the power of France; would he meet with willing confederates? The Germans, at least, do not seem to have trusted one another; no prince dared show ordinary courtesy to the ruling family of France, no statesman could visit Paris but voices would be heard crying that he had sold himself and his country. An accusation of this kind was the stock-in-trade which the Nationalist press was always ready to bring against every ruler who was obnoxious to them. It required moral courage, if it also shewed political astuteness, when Bismarck proposed deliberately to encourage a suspicion from which most men were anxious that their country should be free. He had already plenty of enemies, and reports were soon heard that he was in favour of a French alliance; they did not cease for ten years; he often protests in his private letters against these unworthy accusations; the protests seem rather absurd, for if he did not really wish for an alliance between Prussia and France, he at least wished that people should dread such an alliance. A man cannot frighten his friends by the fear he will rob them, and at the same time enjoy the reputation for strict probity.
He explains with absolute clearness the benefits which will come from a French alliance:
“The German States are attentive and attracted to us in the same degree in which they believe we are befriended by France. Confidence in us they will never have, every glance at the map prevents that; and they know that their separate interests and the misuse of their sovereignty always stand in the way of the whole tendency of Prussian policy. They clearly recognise the danger which lies in this; it is one against which the unselfishness of our Most Gracious Master alone gives them a temporary security. The opinions of the King, which ought at least for a time to weaken their mistrust, will gain his Majesty no thanks; they will only be used and exploited. In the hour of necessity gratitude and confidence will not bring a single man into the field. Fear, if it is used with foresight and clearness, can place the whole Confederacy at our feet, and in order to instil fear into them we must give clear signs of our good relations with France.”
He objected to Prussia following what was called a German policy, for, as he said, by a national and patriotic policy is meant that Prussia should do what was for the interest, not of herself, but of the smaller States.
It was not till after the Crimean War that he was able to press this policy. Napoleon had now won his position in Europe; Gerlach had seen with pain and disgust that the Queen of England had visited his Court. The Emperor himself desired a union with Prussia. In this, sympathy and interest combined: he had much affection for Germany; his mind, as his education, was more German than French; he was a man of ideas; he was the only ruler of France who has sincerely desired and deliberately furthered the interests of other countries; he believed that the nation should be the basis of the State; his revolutionary antecedents made him naturally opposed to the House of Austria; and he was ready to help Prussia in resuming her old ambitious policy.
The affair of Neuchatel gave him an opportunity of earning the personal gratitude of the King, and he did not neglect it, for he knew that in the royal prejudice was the strongest impediment to an alliance. In 1857 Bismarck was sent to Paris to discuss this and other matters. Two years before he had been presented to the Emperor, but it had been at the time when he was opposed to the French policy. Now for the first time the two men who were for ten years to be the leaders, now friends, then rivals, in the realm of diplomacy, were brought into close connection. Bismarck was not impressed by the Emperor’s ability. He wrote:
“People exaggerate his intellect, but underrate his heart.” Napoleon was very friendly; his wish to help the King went farther than his duty to follow French policy. He said: “Why should we not be friends; let us forget the past; if everyone were to attach himself to a policy of memories, two nations that have once been at war must be at war to all eternity; statesmen must occupy themselves with the future.”
This was just Bismarck’s opinion; he wrote home suggesting that he might prepare the way for a visit of the Emperor to Prussia; he would like to come and it would have a good effect. This was going farther than the King, grateful though he was, would allow; he told Gerlach not to answer this part of the letter at all while Bismarck was in Paris. Bismarck, however, continued in his official reports and private letters to urge again and again the political advantages of an understanding with France; it is Austria that is the natural enemy, for it is Austria whose interests are opposed to Prussia. If they repel the advance of Napoleon, they will oblige him to seek an alliance with Russia, and this was a danger which even in those days Bismarck never ceased to fear. Prince Napoleon, cousin of the Emperor, was at that time on a visit to Berlin; on his way through Frankfort he had singled out Bismarck, and (no doubt under instructions) had shown great friendliness to him; the _Kreuz Zeitung_ again took the opportunity of insulting the ruler of France; Bismarck again remonstrated against the danger of provoking hostility by these acts of petty rancour, disguised though they might be under the name of principle. He did not succeed in persuading the King or his confidant; he was always met by the same answer: “France is the natural enemy of Germany; Napoleon is the representative of the Revolution; there can be no union between the King of Prussia and the Revolution.” “How can a man of your intelligence sacrifice your principles to a single individual?” asks Gerlach, who aimed not at shewing that an alliance with France would be foolish, but that it would be wrong. Five years before, Bismarck would have spoken as Gerlach did; but in these years he had seen and learnt much; he had freed himself from the influence of his early friends; he had outgrown their theoretic formalism; he had learned to look at the world with his own eyes, and to him, defending his country against the intrigues of weaker and the pressure of more powerful States, the world was a different place from what it was to those who passed their time in the shadow of the Court. He remembered that it was not by strict obedience to general principles that Prussia had grown great. Frederick the Second had not allowed himself to be stopped by these narrow searchings of heart; his successor had not scrupled to ally himself with revolutionary France. This rigid insistence on a rule of right, this nice determining of questions of conscience, seemed better suited to the confessor’s chair than to the advisers of a great monarch. And the principle to which he was asked to sacrifice the future of his country,–was it after all a true principle? Why should Prussia trouble herself about the internal constitution of other States, what did it concern her whether France was ruled by a Bourbon or an Orleans or a Bonaparte? How could Prussia continue the policy of the Holy Alliance when the close union of the three Eastern monarchies no longer existed? If France were to attack Germany, Prussia could not expect the support of Russia, she could not even be sure of that of Austria. An understanding with France was required, not by ambition, but by the simplest grounds of self-preservation.
These and other considerations he advanced in a long and elaborate memorandum addressed to Manteuffel, which was supplemented by letters to the Minister and Gerlach. For closeness of reasoning, for clearness of expression, for the wealth of knowledge and cogency of argument these are the most remarkable of his political writings. In them he sums up the results of his apprenticeship to political life, he lays down the principles on which the policy of the State ought to be conducted, the principles on which in future years he was himself to act.
“What,” he asks, “are the reasons against an alliance with France? The chief ground is the belief that the Emperor is the chief representative of the Revolution and identical with it, and that a compromise with the Revolution is as inadmissible in internal as in external policy.” Both statements he triumphantly overthrows. “Why should we look at Napoleon as the representative of the Revolution? there is scarcely a government in Europe which has not a revolutionary origin.”
“What is there now existing in the world of politics which has a complete legal basis? Spain, Portugal, Brazil, all the American Republics, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Greece, Sweden, England, which State with full consciousness is based on the Revolution of 1688, are all unable to trace back their legal systems to a legitimate origin. Even as to the German princes we cannot find any completely legitimate title for the ground which they have won partly from the Emperor and the Empire, partly from their fellow-princes, partly from the Estates.”
He goes farther: the Revolution is not peculiar to France; it did not even originate there:
“It is much older than the historical appearance of Napoleon’s family and far wider in its extent than France, if we are to assign it an origin in this world, we must look for it, not in France, but in England, or go back even earlier, even to Germany or Rome, according as we regard the exaggerations of the Reformation or of the Roman Church as responsible.”
But if Napoleon is not the sole representative of revolutions, why make opposition to him a matter of principle? He shews no desire of propagandism.
“To threaten other States by means of the Revolution has been for years the trade of England, and this principle of not associating with a revolutionary power is itself quite modern: it is not to be found in the last century. Cromwell was addressed as Brother by European potentates and they sought his friendship when it appeared useful. The most honourable Princes joined in alliance with the States-General before they were recognised by Spain. Why should Prussia now alone, to its own injury, adopt this excessive caution?”
He goes farther: not only does he reject the principle of legitimacy,–he refuses to be bound by any principles; he did not free himself from one party to bind himself to another; his profession was diplomacy and in diplomacy there was no place for feelings of affection and antipathy.
What is the proper use of principles in diplomacy? It is to persuade others to adopt a policy which is convenient to oneself.
“My attitude towards Foreign Governments springs not from any antipathy, but from the good or evil they may do to Prussia.” “A policy of sentiment is dangerous, for it is one-sided; it is an exclusively Prussian peculiarity.” “Every other Government makes its own interests the sole criterion of its actions, however much it may drape them in phrases about justice and sympathy.” “My ideal for foreign policy is freedom from prejudice; that our decisions should be independent of all impressions of dislike or affection for Foreign States and their governments.”
This was the canon by which he directed his own actions, and he expected obedience to it from others.
“So far as foreigners go I have never in my life had sympathy for anyone but England and its inhabitants, and I am even now not free from it; but they will not let us love them, and as soon as it was proved to me that it was in the interest of a sound and well-matured Prussian policy, I would let our troops fire on French, English, Russian, or Austrian, with the same satisfaction.”
“I cannot justify sympathies and antipathies as regards Foreign Powers and persons before my feeling of duty in the foreign service of my country, either in myself or another; therein lies the embryo of disloyalty against my master or my country. In my opinion not even the King himself has the right to subordinate the interests of his country to his own feelings of love or hatred towards strangers; he is, however, responsible towards God and not to me if he does so, and therefore on this point I am silent.”
This reference to the King is very characteristic. Holding, as he did, so high an ideal of public duty himself, he naturally regarded with great dislike the influence which, too often, family ties and domestic affection exercised over the mind of the sovereign. The German Princes had so long pursued a purely domestic policy that they forgot to distinguish between the interests of their families and their land. They were, moreover, naturally much influenced in their public decisions, not only by their personal sympathies, but also by the sympathies and opinions of their nearest relations. To a man like Bismarck, who regarded duty to the State as above everything, nothing could be more disagreeable than to see the plans of professional statesmen criticised by irresponsible people and perhaps overthrown through some woman’s whim. He was a confirmed monarchist but he was no courtier. In his letters at this period he sometimes refers to the strong influence which the Princess of Prussia exercised over her husband, who was heir to the throne. He regarded with apprehension the possible effects which the proposed marriage of the Prince of Prussia’s son to the Princess Royal of England might have on Prussian policy. He feared it would introduced English influence and Anglomania without their gaining any similar influence in England. “If our future Queen remains in any degree English, I see our Court surrounded by English influence.” He was not influenced in this by any hostility to England; almost at the same time he had written that England was the only foreign country for which he had any sympathy. He was only (as so often) contending for that independence and self-reliance which he so admired in the English. For two hundred years English traditions had absolutely forbidden the sovereign to allow his personal and family sympathies to interfere with the interests of the country. If the House of Hohenzollern were to aspire to the position of a national monarch it must act in the same way. At this very time the Emperor Napoleon was discussing the Prussian marriage with Lord Clarendon. “It will much influence the policy of the Queen in favour of Prussia,” he said. “No, your Majesty,” answered the English Ambassador. “The private feelings of the Queen can never have any influence on that which she believes to be for the honour and welfare of England.” This was the feeling by which Bismarck was influenced; he was trying to educate his King, and this was the task to which for many years he was devoted. What he thought of the duties of princes we see from an expression he uses in a letter to Manteuffel: “Only Christianity can make princes what they ought to be, and free them from that conception of life which causes many of them to seek in the position given them by God nothing but the means to a life of pleasure and irresponsibility.” All his attempts to win over the King and Gerlach to his point of view failed; the only result was that his old friends began to look on him askance; his new opinions were regarded with suspicion. He was no longer sure of his position in Court; his outspokenness had caused offence; after reading his last letter, Gerlach answered: “Your explanation only shews me that we are now far asunder”; the correspondence, which had continued for almost seven years, stopped. Bismarck felt that he was growing lonely; he had to accustom himself to the thought that the men who had formerly been both politically and personally his close friends, and who had once welcomed him whenever he returned to Berlin, now desired to see him kept at a distance. In one of his last letters to Gerlach, he writes: “I used to be a favourite; now all that is changed. His Majesty has less often the wish to see me; the ladies of the Court have a cooler smile than formerly; the gentlemen press my hand less warmly. The high opinion of my usefulness is sunk, only the Minister [Manteuffel] is warmer and more friendly.” Something of this was perhaps exaggerated, but there was no doubt that a breach had begun which was to widen and widen: Bismarck was no longer a member of the party of the _Kreuz Zeitung_. It was fortunate that a change was imminent in the direction of the Prussian Government; the old figures who had played their part were to pass away and a new era was to begin.
CHAPTER VI.
ST. PETERSBURG AND PARIS.
1858-1862.
In the autumn of 1857 the health of the King of Prussia broke down; he was unable to conduct the affairs of State and in the month of September was obliged to appoint his brother as his representative to carry on the Government. There was from the first no hope for his recovery; the commission was three times renewed and, after a long delay, in October of the following year, the King signed a decree appointing his brother Regent. At one time, in the spring of 1858, the Prince had, it is said, thought of calling on Bismarck to form a Ministry. This, however, was not done. It was, however, one of the first actions of the Prince Regent to request Manteuffel’s resignation; he formed a Ministry of moderate Liberals, choosing as President the Prince of Hohenzollern, head of the Catholic branch of his own family.
The _new era_, as it was called, was welcomed with delight by all parties except the most extreme Conservatives. No Ministry had been so unpopular as that of Manteuffel. At the elections which took place immediately, the Government secured a large majority. The Prince and his Ministers were able to begin their work with the full support of Parliament and country.
Bismarck did not altogether regret the change; his differences with the dominant faction at Court had extended to the management of home as well as of foreign affairs; for the last two years he had been falling out of favour. He desired, moreover, to see fresh blood in the Chamber.
“The disease to which our Parliamentary life has succumbed, is, besides the incapacity of the individual, the servility of the Lower House. The majority has no independent convictions, it is the tool of ministerial omnipotence. If our Chambers do not succeed in binding the public interest to themselves and drawing the attention of the country, they will sooner or later go to their grave without sympathy.”
Curious it is to see how his opinion as to the duties and relations of the House towards the Government were to alter when he himself became Minister. He regarded it as an advantage that the Ministry would have the power which comes from popularity; his only fear was that they might draw the Regent too much to the left; but he hoped that in German and foreign affairs they would act with more decision, that the Prince would be free from the scruples which had so much influenced his brother, and that he would not fear to rely on the military strength of Prussia.
One of their first acts was to recall Bismarck from Frankfort; the change was inevitable, and he had foreseen it. The new Government naturally wished to be able to start clear in their relations to Austria; the Prince Regent did not wish to commit himself from the beginning to a policy of hostility. It was, however, impossible for a cordial co-operation between the two States to be established in German affairs so long as Bismarck remained at Frankfort; the opinions which he had formed during the last eight years were too well known. It was, moreover, evident that a crisis in the relations with Austria was approaching; war between France and Austria was imminent; a new factor and a new man had appeared in Europe,–Piedmont and Cavour.
In August, 1858, Cavour had had a secret and decisive interview with Napoleon at Plombieres; the two statesmen had come to an agreement by which France engaged to help the Piedmontese to expel the Austrians from Italy. Bismarck would have desired to seize this opportunity, and use the embarrassment of Austria as the occasion for taking a stronger position in Germany; if it were necessary he was prepared to go as far as an alliance with France. He was influenced not so much by sympathy with Piedmont, for, as we have seen, he held that those who were responsible for foreign policy should never give way to sympathy, but by the simple calculation that Austria was the common enemy of Prussia and Piedmont, and where there were common interests an alliance might be formed. The Government were, however, not prepared to adopt this policy. It might have been supposed that a Liberal Ministry would have shewn more sympathy with the Italian aspirations than the Conservatives whom they had succeeded. This was not the case, as Cavour himself soon found out.
After his visit to Plombieres, Cavour had hurried across the frontier and spent two days at Baden-Baden, where he met the Prince of Prussia, Manteuffel, who was still Minister, and other German statesmen. Bismarck had been at Baden-Baden in the previous week and returned a few days later; he happened, however, on the two days when Cavour was there, to be occupied with his duties at Frankfort; the two great statesmen therefore never met. Cavour after his visit wrote to La Marmora saying that he had been extremely pleased with the sympathy which had been displayed to him, both by the Prince and the other Prussians. So far as he could foresee, the attitude of Prussia would not be hostile to Italian aspirations. In December, however, after the change of Ministry, he writes to the Italian Envoy at Frankfort that the language of Schleinitz, the new Foreign Minister, is less favourable than that of his predecessor. The Cabinet do not feel the same antipathy to Austria as that of Manteuffel did; German ideas have brought about a rapprochement.
“I do not trust their apparently Liberal tendencies. It is possible that your colleague, Herr von Bismarck, will support us more closely, but I fear that even if he is kept at Frankfort he will not exercise so much influence as under the former Ministry.”
Cavour’s insight did not deceive him. The Italian question had for the moment re-awakened the old sympathy for Austria; Austria, it seemed, was now the champion of German nationality against the unscrupulous aggression of France. There were few men who, like Bismarck, were willing to disregard this national feeling and support the Italians. To have deliberately joined Napoleon in what after all was an unprovoked attack on a friendly prince of the same nation, was an act which could have been undertaken only by a man of the calibre of Frederick the Great. After all, Austria was German; the Austrian provinces in Italy had been assigned to the Emperor by the same authority as the Polish provinces to Prussia. We can imagine how great would have been the outcry had Austria joined with the French to set up a united Poland, taking Posen and West Prussia for the purpose; and yet this act would have been just of the same kind as that which would have been committed had Prussia at this time joined or even lent diplomatic support to the French-Italian alliance. It is very improbable that even if Bismarck had been Minister at this period he would have been able to carry out this policy.
The Prussian Government acted on the whole correctly. As the war became more imminent the Prince Regent prepared the Prussian army and eventually the whole was placed on a war footing. He offered to the Emperor of Austria his armed neutrality and a guarantee of the Austrian possessions in Italy. In return he required that he himself should have the command of all the forces of the German Diet. Had Austria accepted these terms, either the war would have been stopped or the whole force of Germany under the King of Prussia would have attacked France on the Rhine. The Emperor however refused to accept them; he required a guarantee not only of his possessions in Italy but also of his treaties with the other Italian princes. Moreover, he would accept the assistance of Prussia only on condition that the Prussian army was placed under the orders of the general appointed by the Diet. It was absurd to suppose that any Prussian statesman would allow this. The action of Austria shewed in fact a distrust and hatred of Prussia which more than justified all that Bismarck had written during his tenure of office at Frankfort. In the end, rather than accept Prussian assistance on the terms on which it was offered, the Emperor of Austria made peace with France; he preferred to surrender Lombardy rather than save it by Prussian help. “Thank God,” said Cavour, “Austria by her arrogance has succeeded in uniting all the world against her.”
The spring of the year was spent by Bismarck at St. Petersburg. He had been appointed Prussian Minister to that capital–put out in the cold, as he expressed it. From the point of dignity and position it was an advance, but at St. Petersburg he was away from the centre of political affairs. Russia had not yet recovered from the effects of the Crimean War; the Czar was chiefly occupied with internal reforms and the emancipation of the serfs. The Eastern Question was dormant, and Russia did not aim at keeping a leading part in the settlement of Italian affairs. Bismarck’s immediate duties were not therefore important and he no longer had the opportunity of giving his advice to the Government upon the general practice. It is improbable that Herr von Schleinitz would have welcomed advice. He was one of the weakest of the Ministry; an amiable man of no very marked ability, who owed his position to the personal friendship of the Prince Regent and his wife. The position which Bismarck had occupied during the last few years could not but be embarrassing to any Minister; this man still young, so full of self-confidence, so unremitting in his labours, who, while other diplomatists thought only of getting through their routine work, spent the long hours of the night in writing despatches, discussing the whole foreign policy of the country, might well cause apprehension even to the strongest Minister.
From the time of Bismarck’s departure from Frankfort our knowledge of his official despatches ceases; we lose the invaluable assistance of his letters to Manteuffel and Gerlach. For some time he stood so much alone that there was no one to whom he could write unreservedly on political matters.
He watched with great anxiety the progress of affairs with regard to Italy. At the beginning of May he wrote a long letter to Schleinitz, as he had done to Manteuffel, urging him to bold action; he recounted his experiences at the Diet, he reiterated his conviction that no good would come to Prussia from the federal tie–the sooner it was broken the better; nothing was so much to be desired as that the Diet should overstep its powers, and pass some resolution which Prussia could not accept, so that Prussia could take up the glove and force a breach. The opportunity was favourable for a revision of the Constitution. “I see,” he wrote “in our Federal connection only a weakness of Prussia which sooner or later must be cured, _ferro et igni_.” Probably Schleinitz’s answer was not of such a kind as to tempt him to write again. In his private letters he harps on the same string; he spent June in a visit to Moscow but he hurried back at the end of the month to St. Petersburg to receive news of the war. Before news had come of the peace of Villafranca he was constantly in dread that Prussia would go to war on behalf of Austria:
“We have prepared too soon and too thoroughly, the weight of the burden we have taken on ourselves is drawing us down the incline. We shall not be even an Austrian reserve; we shall simply sacrifice ourselves for Austria and take away the war from her.”
How disturbed he was, we can see by the tone of religious resignation which he assumes–no doubt a sign that he fears his advice has not yet been acted upon.
“As God will. Everything here is only a question of time; peoples and men, wisdom and folly, war and peace, they come and go like rain and water, and the sea alone remains. There is nothing on earth but hypocrisy and deceit.”
The language of this and other letters was partly due to the state of his health; the continual anxiety and work of his life at Frankfort, joined to irregular hours and careless habits, had told upon his constitution. He fell seriously ill in St. Petersburg with a gastric and rheumatic affection; an injury to the leg received while shooting in Sweden, became painful; the treatment adopted by the doctor, bleeding and iodine, seems to have made him worse. At the beginning of July, 1860, he returned on leave to Berlin; there he was laid up for ten days; his wife was summoned and under her care he began to improve. August he spent at Wiesbaden and Nauheim, taking the waters, the greater part of the autumn in Berlin; in October he had to go Warsaw officially to receive and accompany the Czar, who came to Breslau for an interview with the Prince Regent. From Breslau he hurried back to Berlin, from Berlin down to Pomerania, where his wife was staying with her father; then the same week back to Berlin, and started for St. Petersburg. The result of these long journeys when his health was not completely reestablished was very serious. He was to spend a night on the journey to St. Petersburg with his old friend, Herr von Below, at Hohendorf, in East Prussia; he had scarcely reached the house when he fell dangerously ill of inflammation of the lungs and rheumatic fever. He remained here all the winter, and it was not until the beginning of March, 1860, that he was well enough to return to Berlin. Leopold von Gerlach, who met him shortly afterwards, speaks of him as still looking wretchedly ill. This prolonged illness forms an epoch in his life. He never recovered the freshness and strength of his youth. It left a nervous irritation and restlessness which often greatly interfered with his political work and made the immense labour which came upon him doubly distasteful. He loses the good humour which had been characteristic of him in early life; he became irritable and more exacting. He spent the next three months in Berlin attending the meetings of the Herrenhaus, and giving a silent vote in favour of the Government measures; he considered it was his duty as a servant of the State to support the Government, though he did not agree with the Liberal policy which in internal affairs they adopted. At this time he stood almost completely alone. His opinions on the Italian question had brought about a complete breach with his old friends. Since the conclusion of the war, public opinion in Germany, as in England, had veered round. The success of Cavour had raised a desire to imitate him; a strong impulse had been given to the national feeling, and a society, the _National Verein_, had been founded to further the cause of United Germany under Prussian leadership. The question of the recognition of the new Kingdom of Italy was becoming prominent; all the Liberal party laid much stress on this. The Prince Regent, however, was averse to an act by which he might seem to express his approval of the forcible expulsion of princes from their thrones. As the national and liberal feeling in the country grew, his monarchical principles seemed to be strengthened. The opinions which Bismarck was known to hold on the French alliance had got into the papers and were much exaggerated; he had plenty of enemies to take care that it should be said that he wished Prussia to join with France; to do as Piedmont had done, and by the cession of the left bank of the Rhine to France to receive the assistance of Napoleon in annexing the smaller states. In his letters of this period Bismarck constantly protests against the truth of these accusations. “If I am to go to the devil,” he writes, “it will at least not be a French one. Do not take me for a Bonapartist, only for a very ambitious Prussian.” It is at this time that his last letter to Gerlach was written. They had met at the end of April, and Gerlach wrote to protest against the opinion to which Bismarck had given expression:
“After the conversation which I have had with you I was particularly distressed that, by your bitterness against Austria, you had allowed yourself to be diverted from the simple attitude towards law and the Revolution. For you an alliance with France and Piedmont is a possibility, a thought which is far from me and, dear Bismarck, ought to be far from you. For me Louis Napoleon is even more than his uncle the incarnation of the Revolution, and Cavour is a Rheinbund Minister like Montgellas. You cannot and ought not to deny the principles of the Holy Alliance; they are no other than that authority comes from God, and that the Princes must govern as servants appointed by God.”
Bismarck answers the letter the next day:
“I am a child of other times than you. No one loses the mark impressed on him in the period of his youth. In you the victorious hatred of Bonaparte is indelible; you call him the incarnation of the Revolution and if you knew of any worse name you would bestow it upon him. I have lived in the country from my twenty-third to my thirty-second year and will never be rid of the longing to be back again; I am in politics with only half my heart; what dislike I have of France is based rather on the Orleans than the Bonapartist regime. It is opposed to bureaucratic corruption under the mask of constitutional government. I should be glad to fight against Bonaparte till the dogs lick up the blood but with no more malice than against Croats, Bohemians, and Bamberger fellow-countrymen.”
The two friends were never to meet again. The old King of Prussia died at the beginning of the next year, and Gerlach, who had served him so faithfully, though perhaps not always wisely, survived his master scarcely a week.
In the summer of 1860 Bismarck returned to his duties in Russia; and this time, with the exception of a fortnight in October, he spent a whole year in St. Petersburg. He had still not recovered from the effects of his illness and could not, therefore, go out much in society, but he was much liked at Court and succeeded in winning the confidence both of the Emperor and his family. His wife and children were now with him, and after the uncertainty of his last two years he settled down with pleasure to a quieter mode of life. He enjoyed the sport which he had in the Russian forests; he studied Russian and made himself completely at home. Political work he had little to do, except what arose from the charge of “some 200,000 vagabond Prussians” who lived in Russia. Of home affairs he had little knowledge:
“I am quite separated from home politics, as besides the newspapers I receive scarcely anything but official news which does not expose the foundation of affairs.”
For the time the reports of his entering the Ministry had ceased; he professed to be, and perhaps was, quite satisfied.
“I am quite contented with my existence here; I ask for no change in my position until it be God’s will I settle down quietly at Schoenhausen or Reinfeld and can leisurely set about having my coffin made.”
In October he had to attend the Czar on a journey to Warsaw where he had an interview with the Prince Regent. The Prince was accompanied by his Minister-President, the Prince of Hohenzollern, who took the opportunity of having long conversations with the Ambassador to St. Petersburg. It is said that as a result of this the Minister, who wished to be relieved from a post which was daily becoming more burdensome, advised the Prince Regent to appoint Bismarck Minister-President. The advice, however, was not taken.
Meanwhile events were taking place in Prussia which were to bring about important constitutional changes. The success of the Ministry of the _new era_ had not answered the expectations of the country. Their foreign policy had been correct, but they had shewn no more spirit than their predecessors, and the country was in that excited state in which people wanted to see some brilliant and exciting stroke of policy, though they were not at all clear what it was they desired. Then a rift had begun to grow between the Regent and his Ministers. The Liberalism of the Prince had never been very deep; it owed its origin in fact chiefly to his opposition to the reactionary government of his brother. As an honest man he intended to govern strictly in accordance with the Constitution. He had, however, from the beginning no intention of allowing the Chambers to encroach upon the prerogatives of the Crown. The Ministers on the other hand regarded themselves to some extent as a Parliamentary Ministry; they had a majority in the House and they were inclined to defer to it. The latent causes of difference were brought into activity by the question of army reform.
The Prince Regent was chiefly and primarily a soldier. As a second son it had been doubtful whether he would ever succeed to the throne. He had an intimate acquaintance with the whole condition of the army, and he had long known that in many points reform was necessary. His first action on succeeding his brother was to appoint a Commission of the War Office to prepare a scheme of reorganisation. A memorandum had been drawn up for him by Albert von Roon, and with some alterations it was accepted by the Commission. The Minister of War, Bonin (the same who had been dismissed in 1854 at the crisis of the Eastern complications), seems to have been indifferent in the matter; he did not feel in himself the energy for carrying through an important reform which he had not himself originated, and of which perhaps he did not altogether approve. The Prince Regent had set his mind upon the matter; the experience gained during the mobilisation of 1859 had shewn how serious the defects were; the army was still on a war footing and it was a good opportunity for at once carrying through the proposed changes. Bonin therefore resigned his office and Roon, in December, 1859, was appointed in his place.
This appointment was to have far-reaching results; it at once destroyed all harmony in the Ministry itself. The rest of the Ministers were Liberals. Roon was a strong Conservative. He was appointed professedly merely as a departmental Minister, but he soon won more confidence with the Regent than all the others. He was a man of great energy of character and decision in action. The best type of Prussian officer, to considerable learning he joined a high sense of duty founded on deep-rooted and simple religious faith. The President of the Ministry had practically retired from political life and the Government had no longer a leader. Roon’s introduction was in fact the beginning of all the momentous events which were to follow. But for him there would have been no conflict in the Parliament and Bismarck would never have become Minister.
At the beginning of 1860 the project of law embodying the proposals for army reform was laid before the Lower House. It was ordered by them in accordance with the practice to be referred to a small Committee.
The proposals consisted of (a) an increase in the number of recruits to be raised each year, (b) a lengthening of the term of service with the colours, (c) an alteration in the relations of the Landwehr to the rest of the army.
The Committee appointed to consider these reforms accepted the first, but rejected the second and third. They asserted that the three years’ service with the colours was not necessary, and they strongly disliked any proposal for interfering with the Landwehr. The report of the Committee was accepted by the House. It was in vain that the more far-seeing members of the Liberal party tried to persuade their leaders to support the Government; it was in vain that the Ministers pointed out that the Liberal majority had been elected as a Government majority, and it was their duty to support Ministers taken from their own party. The law had to be withdrawn and the Government, instead, asked for a vote of nine million thalers, provisionally, for that year only, as a means of maintaining the army in the state to which it had been raised. In asking for this vote it was expressly stated that the principles of the organisation should be in no wise prejudiced.
“The question whether in future a two or three years’ service shall be required; whether the period with the Reserve shall be extended; in what position the Landwehr shall be placed–all this is not touched by the present proposal.”
On this condition the House voted the money required, but for one year only. The Government, however, did not keep this pledge; the Minister of War simply continued to carry out the reorganisation in accordance with the plan which had been rejected; new regiments were formed, and by the end of the year the whole army had been reorganised. This action was one for which the Prince and Roon were personally responsible; it was done while the other Ministers were away from Berlin, and without their knowledge.
When the House met at the beginning of the next year they felt that they had been deceived; they were still more indignant when Roon informed them that he had discovered that the whole of the reorganisation could be legally carried through in virtue of the prerogative of the Crown, and that a fresh law was not required; that therefore the consideration of the changes was not before the House, and that all they would have to do would be to vote the money to pay for them. Of course the House refused to vote the money; after long debates the final settlement of the question was postponed for another year; the House, though this time by a majority of only eleven votes, granting with a few modifications the required money, but again for one year only.
All this time Bismarck was living quietly at St. Petersburg; he had no influence on affairs, for the military law had nothing to do with him, and the Regent did not consult him on foreign policy. No one, however, profited by Roon’s appointment so much as he; he had once more a friend and supporter at Court, who replaced the loss of Gerlach. Roon and he had known one another in the old Pomeranian days. There was a link in Moritz Blankenburg, who was a “Dutz” friend of Bismarck’s and Roon’s cousin. We can understand how untenable Roon’s position was when we find the Minister of War choosing as his political confidants two of the leaders of the party opposed to the Ministry to which he belonged.
Ever since Roon had entered the Government there had been indeed a perpetual crisis.
The Liberal Ministers were lukewarm in their support of the military bill; they only consented to adopt it on condition that the King would give his assent to those measures which they proposed to introduce, in order to maintain their positions as leaders of the party; they proposed to bring in bills for the reform of the House of Lords, for the responsibility of Ministers, for local government. These were opposed to the personal opinions of the King; he was supported in his opposition by Roon and refused his assent, but he neither dismissed the Ministers nor did they resign. So long as they were willing to hold office on the terms he required, there was indeed no reason why he should dismiss them; to do so would be to give up the last hope of getting the military Bill passed. All through 1861 the same uncertainty continued; Roon indeed again and again wrote to his master, pointing out the necessity for getting rid of his colleagues; he wished for a Conservative Ministry with Bismarck as President. Here, he thought, was the only man who had the courage to carry through the army reform. Others thought as he did. Who so fitted to come to the help of the Crown as this man who, ten years before, had shewn such ability in Parliamentary debate? And whenever the crisis became more acute, all the Quidnuncs of Berlin shook their heads and said, “Now we shall have a Bismarck Ministry, and that will be a _coup d’etat_ and the overthrow of the Constitution.”
Bismarck meanwhile was living quietly at St. Petersburg, awaiting events. At last the summons came; on June 28, 1861, Roon telegraphed to him that the pear was ripe; he must come at once; there was danger in delay. His telegram was followed by a letter, in which he more fully explained the situation. The immediate cause of the crisis was that the King desired to celebrate his accession, as his brother had done, by receiving the solemn homage of all his people; the Ministry refused their assent to an act which would appear to the country as “feudal” and reactionary. A solemn pledge of obedience to the King was the last thing the Liberals wanted to give, just for the same reasons that the King made a point of receiving it; his feelings were deeply engaged, and Roon doubtless hoped that his colleagues would at last be compelled to resign; he wished, therefore, to have Bismarck on the spot.
Bismarck could not leave St. Petersburg for some days; he, however, answered by a telegram and a long letter; he begins in a manner characteristic of all his letters at this period:
“Your letter disturbed me in my comfortable meditations on the quiet time which I was going to enjoy at Reinfeld. Your cry ‘to horse’ came with a shrill discord. I have grown ill in mind, tired out, and spiritless since I lost the foundation of my health.”
And at the end:
“Moving, quarrelling, annoyance, the whole slavery day and night form a perspective, which already makes me homesick for Reinfeld or St. Petersburg. I cannot enter the swindle in better company than yours; but both of us were happier on the Sadower Heath behind the partridges.”
So he wrote late at night, but the next morning in a postscript he added: “If the King will to some extent meet my views, then I will set to the work with pleasure.” In the letter he discusses at length the programme; he does not attach much importance to the homage; it would be much better to come to terms on the military question, break with the Chamber, and dissolve. The real difficulty he sees, however, is foreign policy; only by a change in the management of foreign affairs can the Crown be relieved from a pressure to which it must ultimately give way; he would not himself be inclined to accept the Ministry of the Interior, because no good could be done unless the foreign policy was changed, and that the King himself would probably not wish that.
“The chief fault of our policy is that we have been Liberal at home and Conservative abroad; we hold the rights of our own King too cheap, and those of foreign princes too high; a natural consequence of the difference between the constitutional tendency of the Ministers and the legitimist direction which the will of his Majesty gives to our foreign policy. Of the princely houses from Naples to Hanover none will be grateful for our love, and we practise towards them a truly evangelical love of our enemies at the cost of the safety of our own throne. I am true to the sole of my foot to my own princes, but towards all others I do not feel in a single drop of blood the slightest obligation to raise up a little finger to help them. In this attitude I fear that I am so far removed from our Most Gracious Master, that he will scarcely find me fitted to be a Councillor of his Crown. For this reason he will anyhow prefer to use me at the Home-Office. In my opinion, however, that makes no difference, for I promise myself no useful results from the whole Government unless our attitude abroad is more vigorous and less dependent on dynastic sympathies.”
Bismarck arrived in Berlin on July 9th. When he got there the crisis was over; Berlin was nearly empty; Roon was away in Pomerania, the King in Baden-Baden; a compromise had been arranged; there was not to be an act of homage but a coronation. There was, therefore, no more talk of his entering the Ministry; Schleinitz, however, told him that he was to be transferred from Russia, but did not say what post he was to have. The next day, in obedience to a command, he hurried off to Baden-Baden; the King wished to have his advice on many matters of policy, and instructed him to draw up a memorandum on the German question. He used the opportunity of trying to influence the King to adopt a bolder policy. At the same time he attempted to win over the leaders of the Conservative party. A general election was about to take place; the manifesto of the Conservative party was so worded that we can hardly believe it was not an express and intentional repudiation of the language which Bismarck was in the habit of using; they desired
“the unity of our German fatherland, though not like the Kingdom of Italy through ‘blood and fire’ [_Blut und Brand;_ almost the words which Bismarck had used to describe the policy which must be followed], but in the unity of its princes and peoples holding firm to authority and law.”
Bismarck, on hearing this, sent to his old friend Herr von Below, one of the leaders of the party, a memorandum on German affairs, and accompanied it by a letter. He repeated his old point that Prussia was sacrificing the authority of the Crown at home to support that of other princes in whose safety she had not the slightest interest. The solidarity of Conservative interests was a dangerous fiction, unless it was carried out with the fullest reciprocity; carried out by Prussia alone it was Quixotry; it prevented King and Government from executing their true task, the protection of Prussia from all injustice, whether it came from home or abroad; this was the task given to the King by God.
“We make the unhistorical, the jealous, and lawless mania for sovereignty of the German Princes the bosom child of the Conservative party in Prussia, we are enthusiastic for the petty sovereignties which were created by Napoleon and protected by Metternich, and are blind to the dangers which threaten Prussia and the independence of Germany.”
He wishes for a clear statement of their policy; a stricter concentration of the German military forces, reform of the Customs’ Unions, and a number of common institutions to protect material interests against the disadvantages which arise from the unnatural configuration of the different states.
“Besides all this I do not see why we should shrink back so bashfully from the idea of a representation of the people. We cannot fight as revolutionary an institution which we Conservatives cannot do without even in Prussia, and is recognised as legitimate in every German State.” [6]
This letter is interesting as shewing how nearly his wishes on German affairs coincided with those of the Liberal party and of the National Verein: he was asking the Conservatives to adopt the chief points in their opponents’ programme. Of course they would not do so, and the King himself was more likely to be alarmed than attracted by the bold and adventurous policy that was recommended to him. Bismarck’s anticipation was justified; the King was not prepared to appoint him Foreign Minister. Herr von Schleinitz indeed resigned, but his place was taken by Bernstorff, Minister at London; he had so little confidence in the success of his office that he did not even give up his old post, and occupied the two positions, one of which Bismarck much desired to have.
After attending the coronation at Koenigsberg, Bismarck, therefore, returned to his old post at St. Petersburg; his future was still quite uncertain; he was troubled by his own health and that of his children; for the first time he begins to complain of the cold.
“Since my illness I am so exhausted that I have lost all my energy for excitement. Three years ago I would have made a serviceable Minister; when I think of such a thing now I feel like a broken-down acrobat. I would gladly go to London, Paris, or remain here, as it pleases God and his Majesty. I shudder at the prospect of the Ministry as at a cold bath.”
In March he is still in ignorance; his household is in a bad state.
“Johanna has a cough, which quite exhausts her; Bill is in bed with fever, the doctor does not yet know what is the matter with him; the governess has no hope of ever seeing Germany again.”
He does not feel up to taking the Ministry; even Paris would be too noisy for him.