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LIBRARY

Bought with the income
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BISMARCK

MAKERS OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY
Edited by Basil Williams
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, by Lord Charnwood.
DELANE OF < THE TIMES,' by Sir E. T. Cook.
DIAZ, by David Hannay.
HERBERT SPENCER, by Hugh Elliot.
ABDUL HAMID, by Sir Edwin Pears.
LI HUNG CHANG, by J. O. P. Bland.
Other Volumes in Preparation

BISMARCK

MAKERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Edited by Basil Williams

BISMARCK BY
C. GRANT ROBERTSON, M.A., C.V.O.
FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD

LONDON
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD
1919

Printed in Great Britain

Bpq-^-

GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE
No task is harder for the historian of to-day than to write
in a manner worthy of his great calling on any subject
even remotely connected with the war. It is close to us
at every moment of our lives, our interests are so bound
up with it and our affections are so involved in it, that
the temptation to interpret every recent event solely
according to its supposed influence on the war becomes
nearly irresistible. And real disservice may come to the
cause which we have at heart from yielding to this temp
tation ; for it leads to the selection of facts to accord with
a theory, as opposed to the true historical method of
building up the theory on an accumulation of facts. The
pamphlet or book with a polemical purpose which results
from the former method, however truthful and just, is
never wholly convincing except to the man who requires
no persuasion, and at best succeeds only in heartening
the converted ; whereas the true history gradually moulds
the opinion of the world.
No subject would be found more adapted for an easy
polemic at this time than a life of Bismarck. But this
volume is not of that kind. Mr. Grant Robertson justly
claims that it is not a mere product of the war, but that
it is based on exhaustive study and ideas already formed
in the period of calm before this storm burst upon the
nations. Here is a book that calls up Bismarck as a living
human being, extenuating, it is true, none of his gross-
ness or his arrogance, but nevertheless deeply appreciative

vi GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE
of all that was great in him, and all that was tender and
sincere. Based on such a foundation of insight and
sympathy, it can pronounce a judgment on the value of
his Ufe to Germany and the world, which can no more be
ignored by a German than by an Englishman. Nay more,
history written in this spirit and on such a subject is, in
fact, most illuminating in our attempts to form a sound
judgment on these critical times and the causes of this war.
For the upheaval of the last three years cannot be traced
back simply to the events of a few weeks in July and
August 1914, but to influences extending back for decades.
Of these influences, the most powerful both on German
character and statecraft, and on the conception of German
policy held in other countries, is without question that
of Bismarck. BASIL WILLIAMS.
London,
February 191 8.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE
This book does not profess to be a history of Germany
from 1815 to 1890, nor is it specifically a biography. It
is a study, approximately in biographical form, of Bis
marck's statecraft and of Bismarck himself as one of the
Makers of Modern Europe and of the German nation and
Empire. It is in no sense a product of the war. My study of,
and interest in, Bismarck began many years before there
was a thought of war, and the conclusions and judgments
expressed in the following pages were formed before
August 4, 1 9 14. The war indeed has retarded the
completion of my task by the imposition of much work
in no way connected with the historical research and
literary labour required for a prolonged examination of
the available material.
The origin of the book goes back to the lectures of
Albert Sorel and E. Lavisse that I attended, after I took my
degree, in the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques at Paris
and to various courses in the University of Berlin. Since
then, repeated visits to Germany enabled me to pursue
my investigations, to discuss with many — soldiers and
politicians — who knew Bismarck well, and to study at
first hand, and not merely in Germany, the Bismarckian
system. For no political figure, ancient or modern, does there
exist original material more embarrassingly rich than for
Bismarck. While in no way wishing to underrate the

Vlll

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

help obtainable from the leading secondary authorities,
I have endeavoured throughout to base my conclusions on
an independent study at first hand of the original sources.
As the scope of the Series in which this volume appears
does not admit of elaborate references, I must refer the
reader to the Bibliography in an appendix for information
as to the character, value, and extent of those sources ;
but that bibliography by no means exhausts the evidence
it has been necessary to examine. I have been obliged
also to exclude much matter and to be very sparing of the
critical discussions on which many of my conclusions are
based. Judgments which take a few lines to express have
frequently involved many months of sifting and reflection.
Nor can the problems with which Bismarck was concerned
be fully grasped if attention is confined to State papers,
letters, memoirs, and diplomatic documents.
I much regret that the second volume of Sir A. Ward's
History of Germany did not appear until my MS. was in
the printer's hands, and most of it already in type. I have
therefore only been able to refer to it in the Bibliography.
The Master of Peterhouse will permit me the pleasure
of saying that no living British scholar has a wider or
deeper knowledge of German history (and not merely
in the nineteenth century), and of expressing the
hope that before long his third volume, covering the
last twenty years of Bismarck's Chancellorship, will shortly
be published.
It only remains gratefully to acknowledge the help of
two friends. To Captain Basil Williams, author of the
standard Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and
General Editor of the Series in which this book is included
I am indebted for valuable criticisms and suggestions. Mr

AUTHOR'S PREFACE ix
J. A. R. Marriot, M.P., with whom I was privileged to
collaborate in The Evolution of Prussia, has found time
amidst exacting Parliamentary and national labours to
read my proofs and give me the benefit of his political
and historical knowledge. But while I have profited
much from the help of both these experts, they are not
responsible for the judgments or statements in the pages
they have read. For the Index I am indebted to another
friend and former pupil, Miss M'Call. C. G. R.
All Souls College,
February 1918.

CONTENTS

General Editor's Preface .....
Author's Preface ......
CHAP.
I. Germany and the German Problem, 1815-1848

II. The Junker Politician
§ I. Education and Entry into Politics
§ 2. The Junker Politician, 1 848-1 851
III. The Making of a Statesman, 1851-1862
§ 1. Bismarck at Frankfurt, 1 851- 1859
§ 2. Petersburg and Paris, 1859- 1862 •

PACE V

VII

4848 57
7474
102

IV. The Minister-President, 1862-1867 . . .116
§ 1. The Constitutional Conflict, the Polish
Question, and the German Problem . .116
§ 2. Schleswig-Holstein, the Treaty of Vienna,
and the Convention of Gastein, 1863-1865 156
§ 3. The Rupture with Austria — The Treaty of
Prague, 1865-1866  190
V.. The Chancellor of the North German Con
federation ....... 222
The Making of the North German Confederation —
The War with France, 1866- 1870 — The
Treaty of Frankfurt — The Unification of
Germany, 1 870-1 871.

xii CONTENTS

PAGE

VI. The Imperial Chancellor, 1871-1890 . • • 2%9
§ 1. The Empire, the System, and the Chancellor,
1871-1878  289
§ 2. The Kulturkampf, 1871-1878 . . • 3°9
§ 3. Foreign Policy, 1871-1879 . . • • 327
§ 4. The New Era— Home PoUcy, 1878-1888 . 352
§ 5. Foreign Policy— The Triple Alhance— The
Colonial Problem — France and Russia, 1879-
1888  394
§ 6. The Last Phase — Bismarck's Resignation,
March 1888-March 1890 . . . . 454
Conclusion ........ 475
Appendix A. The Ems Dispatch .... 496
Appendix B. The Reinsurance Treaties of 1884 and 1887 498
Bibliography ........ 506
Chronological Table ...... 513
Index  516

BISMARCK

CHAPTER I
GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM, 1815-1848
Bismarck was born on April 1, 1815, and died on July
30, 1898. His life and political career, therefore, cover
the nineteenth century proper, reckoned from the final
act of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic drama, with its
consummation in the Congress and Treaties of Vienna.
Bismarck as a figure in history has a twofold significance :
by the accomplishment of German unification and the
foundation of a German Empire under Prussian hegemony
he succeeded, where so many had failed, in solving the
German problem of the nineteenth century ; he altered
the fundamental framework of the State system, as well
as the map, of Europe. In 1871 the political capital of
Continental Europe, hitherto either Paris or Vienna, was
established beyond dispute at Berlin, and the European
State system was remodelled by the creation of a Central
German Empire expressed in the supremacy of a mili
tarist and industrialised Prussia over a Germany unified
on a federal basis. Each of these two results was a re
volution. In combination they made a new Europe and
a new world of political relations, thought and action.
Bismarck's life and statesmanship, therefore, provide a
study of the origins, principles, methods and consequences
of this double revolution.
The nature of the historical problem is the essence of
the story. It is easy to see the solution stamped on
Europe in 1871, and to draw out its manifold moral. It is
no less easy, and probably more tempting, to emphasise
the logical character of each stage in the evolution, and

2 BISMARCK
the inevitability of the final result. Our generation forgets
that, until Sedan had been fought and won, until the
dramatic scene in the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles on
January 18, 1871, had been played out and the German
Reichstag with a German Emperor and an Imperial Chan
cellor had met at Berlin, no one, even twenty years before
1871, foresaw or could have foreseen, no one predicted or
could have predicted, the precise form of the final result.
It is easy to ignore the plain truth that the Germany of
1815 or 1848 or 1861 might have been unified at a different
time in a different way with different objects, and with very
different results, both for Germany and for Europe. The
Bismarckian solution was not a predetermined and in
evitable event in world history. The earnest and high-
minded Germans of so many conflicting schools of thought,
who from 18 15 onwards worked so hard and sacrificed so
much to achieve a German unity in fundamental contra
diction to that established in 1871, no less than Bis
marck himself, were aware that it was not the inevitable,
but rather the unexpected, which ultimately came to pass.
Bismarck's career, indeed, illustrates throughout the
truth, not too familiar even to historical students, that
the chief difficulty of a scientific interpretation of events
does not lie in an analysis of the solution, but in a recon
struction of the successive phases of the problem. In
Bismarck's statesmanship, the man and the problem, and
their subtle and continuous reaction each on the other —
these are the marrow of the matter. And by non-German
students who have not inherited the categories of thought
and feeling, the traditions and outlook on life intuitive
in the German mind, or experienced the political con
ditions in which the German people from 18 15 onwards
lived and aspired, the German problem of the nineteenth
century has to be laboriously reconstructed. The lament
able absence of knowledge of the real Germany and the
obsession of preconceived ideas in the France of the
Bourbon Restoration, of the Orleanist Monarchy and the
Second Empire, brought disaster to France. The no less
lamentable ignorance of English statesmen, of our press
that made pubhc opinion, and of the British nation'that

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 3
did not wish to be instructed, if the instruction required
a painful readjustment of accepted beliefs, was responsible
for repeated humiliations, the misuse or loss of unrivalled
opportunities and ultimately for a situation fraught with
peril. The British people, indeed, blind to the unperceived
foundation of the British Empire in the intellectual toil
of its best minds, and to the continuous influence of idea?
on its political evolution, is impatient of all invitations to
correlate, even in outline, the salient features of German
political and philosophical speculation to the political
history of nineteenth-century Germany. Fichte and
Hegel, Humboldt, Savigny and Clausewitz, Novalis,
Schelling and Schopenhauer, Haller, Ranke and Stahl,
the Kreuzzeitung and the men of 1848, Dahlmann, Ger-
vinus, Gneist, Bluntschli, von der Goltz and the young
Treitschke — that vast and repellent mass of ' dead ' meta
physics, law, ethics and political philosophy so copiously
produced by German minds and explored with the
patience and zeal of national science by German erudition,
the British mind instinctively feels has little bearing on Bis
marck, the man of action, the apostle of ' blood and iron,'
who solved by the sword a problem that would have been'
simple but for the metaphysicians, the professors and the
pamphleteers. Bismarck, we are continually reminded,
shared with Napoleon a supreme contempt for 'idealogues,'
who darkened counsel by their nebulous fantasies — children
in politics, fitted for academic class-rooms and the
editorial camera obscura, incapable of governing or making
the policy of States. Yet no one knew better than Bis
marck that the theories and ideals of the aristocracy of
intellect, the political programme of the university chair
and the cry of the class-room made the Germany and the
Germans of his day. The transition from the junker of
1849 to the statesman of 1862 lay in his discovery that the
new Germany was the Germany that counted, and the
new Germany was the Germany somehow to be unified.
The master of a Realpolitik reckoned amongst the realities
— rthe true ponderabilia of each successive situation — the
German mind, as political speculation had made it and as a

4 BISMARCK
statesman responding to the ideals could exploit it. His
debt to the ' idealogues ' was greater than he ever publicly
admitted. Meinecke, for example, in his W eltburgertum
und Nationalstaat — an illuminating study of the evolution
of German pohtical thought from Fichte to the new era
of William n.— has proved how much of the alleged
originality of Bismarck's federal solution in 1866 and 1871
was an adaptation from principles suggested by the despised
Liberal leaders of 1848, and how impossible the Bismarckian
adaptation would have been but for this intellectual
travail of the ' idealogues ' between 1 848 and 1 87 1 . Count
less memoirs, hundreds of pages of reports, the serried
phalanx of Bismarck's letters and speeches, furnish proofs.
From the spring of his irresponsible Junkertum to the
magisterial utterances in the autumn of his Chancellorship
— in the Landtag at Berlin, the Diet at Frankfurt, the
Memoranda from the Embassies at Paris and St. Peters
burg, the Reichstag of the North German Confederation
and the Empire — Bismarck fought, dagger out of sheath,
a truceless battle of ideas and of pohtical and constitutional
principles. He fought impartially with the Jacobins of
the German Revolution, with Liberals, Unitarians and
Federalists, with the conservative cosmopolitanism of the
Holy Alliance and with the Prussianism of his dearest
friends, with CathoUc ultramontanism, secular liberalism
and social democracy, with the conception of political
parochialism (Kleinstaaterei) and local dynasticism, with
Pan - German nationalism, and anti - German cosmo
politanism. These titanic collisions of ideas with ideas,
the contests of informed wills with informed wills, the
fifty years' struggle for the soul and mind of the German
people, cannot be dismissed as an irrelevant battle of blood
less shades for bloodless shadows, nor blown to an empty
air by the trumpets of Rezonville. The German mindi
had to- be made and remade in a prolonged intellectual
travail and an unending pohtical duel before the foundations
of the solid house that Bismarck's Germany acknowledged
he had built for the German nation could be well and
surely laid. Tantae molis erat, indeed. The picture of
Bismarck as simply the demonic man of action is false

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 5
and unjust — unjust because it dwarfs the man and elim
inates much that is most significant in his conception of
hfe and in his work — false because it unduly simplifies the
magnitude and complexity of his task. It is no less false
and unjust to the ideals of the defeated and to the con
quered causes which pleased neither Bismarck nor, in the
end, the high gods.
The German problem, in short, was as much consti
tutional as political — and in the constitutional labyrinth
lurked theories, ideals and formulae more formidable and
intractable than the institutions and machinery which
made the Germany of 181 5.

In 1 815 Germany was constituted as a loose confedera
tion (a Staaten-Bund) of thirty-nine States of very different
sizes, strength and system of government. The Federal
Act which defined the constitution was the result of, and
imposed by, the European Congress of Vienna. The
Settlement was a defeat alike of the unitarian and federalist
schemes of the Nationalists, either Prussian or in close
sympathy with Prussia. Its object was to provide the
Germany of 18 15 with an organisation which would com
bine the preservation of the individual sovereignty,
independence and inviolability of each of the partici
pating States with a guarantee of external and internal
peace for the confederation as a whole. The framework
of the Settlement of 18 15 showed that the authors were
more influenced by the desire to provide securities against
the dangers of the past than to anticipate the evolu
tion of the future. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic
period had proved the complete failure of the defunct
Holy Roman Empire to maintain the security and in
tegrity of that Empire against foreign aggression, to prevent
its members from making war on each other, or from
entering into alliances with foreign Powers, detrimental
to the interests of Germany as a whole. The Empire had
permitted leagues such as the Napoleonic Confederation of
the Rhine, by which two-thirds of Germany passed under

6 BISMARCK
the organised control of a foreign sovereign and placed its
mihtary and economic resources at the disposal of a foreign
dictator. Hence, in the new confederation the Member-
k States were forbidden to make war on each other, to con-
" elude separate alliances with foreign Powers, while their
membership was conditioned by mutual guarantees of the
several territorial possessions included in the Union.
The Federal Act and the Federal Constitution implied
the existence of a common German interest, and the duty
of Germany organised in the League of Thirty-Nine
States to promote and defend it. It was not only a
German but a European duty. The interest of Europe
required the organisation of the German States for
certain common purposes ; the settlement arrived at in
a European congress recognised the interest of Europe in
providing the organisation and maintaining it.
There has always been a German problem. There
always will be. In 1 8 15 the heart of the matter is reached
by two questions : How far did the new confederation
meet the requirements of Germany and of Europe ?
What provision, if any, was made for adaptation to future
and unforeseen needs or demands, either specifically German ;
or more generally European ? i
It is easy to pile up a formidable indictment against the
German work of the Congress of Vienna, particularly from
the relentless criticism of a later generation, which reckons!
the Settlement of 18 15 as one of the injuriae temporum
inflicted by heartless diplomatists and malevolent European
Powers on a hapless and helpless Germany — and to show
that it had every imaginable defect.
It is not difficult to prove that the Settlement was a
galling disappointment to ardent Nationalists so different
as Stein, Humboldt and Arndt, and a cause of rage to
fierce Prussian Particularists such as Bliicher. All these
things and much else — are they not written in the
chronicles of great and small German historians ? It is more
relevant to the purpose in hand to analyse than to indict.
The Federal Diet, whether in the ordinary session of
seventeen delegates, or in the plenum of sixty-nine repre
sentatives in which every sovereign State was represented

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 7
was the one effective federal institution. The Diet was
not a parhament but a congress of diplomatic represen
tatives whose votes as defined by the mandates of their
governments alone could alter the fundamental laws. It
was presided over by the Austrian representative, who
had a casting vote. Austria, therefore, was recognised
as the head of the confederation.
We must further note that : (1) There was no federal
executive to execute the Diet's decrees, a duty which fell
on each Member-State; (2) no federal military force existed
except on paper, and all efforts, notably by Prussia after
18 15, to make a federal army a reality, broke down, not
only in detail but in principle : for the question of the
supreme command raised the insoluble dualism of Austria
and Prussia ; (3) no alteration in fundamental laws, or
ganic institutions, individual rights or religious affairs,
could be made except by a unanimous vote, i.e. a liberum
veto to block change was vested in every State, however
petty; (4) the governments of the States were alone
represented, and the governments meant the ruling
dynasties. The German people were not directly repre
sented, nor, unless they could influence the several govern
ments, had they any voice in federal decisions and policy.
The complete failure of the Federal Diet to reahse even
the most modest aspirations of nascent German national
ism and a growing liberalism, was due as much to the
policy of the German governments as to the inherent
defects of the constitution. Had those governments been
ready to utihse the powers provided in the Federal Act,
the thirty years between 18 15 and the Revolution of 1848
might have witnessed a progressive series of moderate
reforms, which would probably have averted that revo
lution with all its disastrous consequences. In their
anxiety to avert revolution, the governments of Germany
after 1815 stored up the forces which made revolution
inevitable. The Diet fell under the control of Austria,
which meant under the control of Metternich. It came
to be a machine for either doing nothing or dutifully
registering the decree of a reactionary system, based on a
particular interpretation of German, Austrian and Euro-

8 BISMARCK
pean interests. The suspension or mutilation of liberal
constitutions in the German States, the denial of a free
press, the interference with individual liberty and with
the freedom of thought and teaching in the universities,
the hostihty to all change as necessarily democratic and
revolutionary, have damned the Diet with a double dose
of the original sin of Metternich himself. But Metter
nich, who imposed this pohcy on a wiUing Emperor and
a despoticaUy governed Austria, could not have imposed
it on the Federal Diet without the ready comphcity of
the German governments.
The Federal Constitution did not make those govern
ments what they were ; but it provided them with an
effective machinery for carrying out a reactionary, centri
fugal and particularist pohcy. Popular representation and
control were on principle excluded. But had the Federal
Act set up a truly Federal ParUament and a truly Federal
Ministry, it is practicaUy certain that the quarrels between
1 8 15 and 1848 would have been continuous and irrecon
cilable. So deep was the antagonism between the prin
ciples of the dynasties and the popular conception of
government, so profound the economic and constitutional
differences between the several States, so keen the jealousies
and fears of the dynasties — so disunited were the nationalist
or popular parties in political principles and ends — that!
Germany would have been rent by secessions or plunged
into a civU war from which France, Russia and Great
Britain could not have held aloof.
Federalism, as a system of poUtical organisation, it must
be remembered, and as a political solution for the ad
ministrative difficulties of modern States, was in 1815
in its infancy ; Europe in 18 15 had neither thought out
the theory and principles, nor acquired the political ex
perience required for its successful estabhshment. The
literature and experience of 191 7 are relatively rich in
both respects ; but even in 191 7 there are obvious gaps
which the political hfe of the United States, of the;
modern German Empire, of the Dominions of Canada
and Australia, and the Swiss Republic do not auto-|
maticaUy fill. And the Germany of 1815 was not only

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 9
and necessarily poor in the philosophy, literature and
experience of federalism : it had but recently revived its
education in political philosophy and speculation. The
new Germany was henceforward asking with increasing
earnestness and thoroughness fundamental questions :
What under modern conditions is a State ? What is its
basis I What^'are its rights ? Whence does it derive
its authority,t and over whom, and to what extent ?
What are the relations of a State with other States ? What
are the laws or principles of the evolution of States ?
What is nationality ? What are the respective values of-
States based on civilisation (Kulturstaat), States based on
poUtical or governmental unity (Einheitsstaat), States based
on nationality (Nationalstaat) ? What is the ethical and
political import of citizenship based on cosmopolitan
ideals (W eltb'urgertum) as opposed to citizenship con
ditioned and restricted by the claims of race, the terri
torial State and the individual as such ? Hard questions,
indeed, the answering of which might weU tax the best
brains and the ripest political experience of Germany for
two generations to come.
The worst defect of the Federal Constitution was not
its faUure to realise conceptions of German unity, im
mature and limited by the exceptional experience of the
Napoleonic and Revolutionary era, nor its curtaflment
of freedom of thought and political, liberty, but its com
plete failure to provide a sobering and stimulating political
education for 'the educated middle class of a loosely
united German nation. The Germany of 181 5 had
passed through an abnormal ordeal since 1789. But the
men of 1848, inteUectuaUy able, of a high sincerity and
purpose, fired by an inspiring idealism without which no
nation has ever achieved what endures, were as fettered
by political inexperience as were the men who made the
French Revolution. They had not learned what govern
ment demands, because all means for learning the lesson
had been denied them, both on principle and as a fact.
The Germany which produced scholars such as Savigny,
Boeckh, Lachmann, Bopp, the two Schlegels, the two
Humboldts, the brothers Grimm, and Gesenius; in science,

io BISMARCK
Ritter, von Baer, Gauss, Oersted, Liebig, Virchow and
Helmholtz ; in history, Niebuhr, Ranke, Waitz, Pertz and
Bohmer ; in theology, Schleiermacher, Strauss, Baur and
DoUinger ; in art, Rauch, Cornelius and Kaulbach ; in
music, Schubert, Schumann, Spohr, Mendelssohn and
Meyerbeer ; and in philosophical thought, minds so
powerful and original as those of Hegel, ScheUing,
Schopenhauer, Herbart, Clausewitz and List — the Ger
many that witnessed the zenith and sunset of Goethe's
genius and the career of Heine, was singularly deficient
in statesmen of the first order and in the literature, as
distinct from the phUosophy, of poUtics. It was a mar-
veUous spring in a nation's inteUectual growth, with the
pageant of its intellectual summer to come after 1848 —
but the sources and masters of its political wisdom were
English or French.
It is no less striking how German statesmen from
Metternich to Bismarck and von Biilow, while extoUing
the supremacy of German inteUect, have denied to the
mass of their countrymen political capacity — forgetting
that the development of pohtical capacity in a nation is
as much a question of opportunity as of ability. The
science and art of government are more exacting even
than the science and arts of the intellectual and imagina
tive life. If ability is a necessary condition, a free field
for- its exercise, the remorseless tests of criticism, failure and
responsibility are even more indispensable for citizenship j
than for thinkers, scholars and artists. The worst of aU ,1
schools for a nation's political life are irresponsible politi
cians appeaUng to a disfranchised, uninstructed, irrespon
sible and alienated public opinion. Nations generaUy pay
a heavier price for their sins of omission than for their
sins of commission. For the Germany of 1815-48 the
exclusion of its educated middle-class from an active and
corporate share in political life is the gravest indictment
that Metternich and the system of Metternich incur.1
1 Hohenlohe (Mem., i. 109) wrote: 'In south-western Germany the idea
of unity is regarded as a matter of life and death, and is the unceasing object of
anxious thought to politicians and eager excitement to the masses ... the
true cause lies in the fact — more or less consciously recognised — that the greater I
portion of the German nation has no voice in determining its destinies.' (1 84.7 ) 1

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM n
The political problems and difficulties of the German
Confederation after 1815 were further complicated by
the pecuhar character of its component members. Luxem
burg united to the ruling house of the new Netherlands
kingdom was a member of the confederation : the King
of Denmark as Duke of Schleswig-Holstein was repre
sented for Holstein but not for Schleswig : Hanover until
1837 was united to the British Crown, and after 1837,
though the personal union of the Hanoverian and British
Crowns was severed, the connection with the British
royal house was of the closest : Oldenburg was dynas-
ticaUy connected with the reigning house of Russia : the
house of Saxe-Coburg in 1830 provided the new kingdom
of Belgium with its sovereign, and in 1840 the British
Queen with a Prince-Consort, reinforcing the British
interest in and influence on German affairs : the whole
of the kingdom of Prussia was not included in the con
federation : and the Empire of Austria was only repre
sented for ' the German ' parts of the Empire.
The Federal Diet, in consequence, was composed of
diplomatic representatives from States purely Germanic
and from States only partially so, the interests of which
were frequently determined by non-German, or anti-
German, considerations. The Diet, therefore, directly
or indirectly, was brought into close relation with the most
dehcate and difficult problems of European policy.
Apart from the European origin of the Federal Consti
tution, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Great Britain, the Nether
lands, and Denmark had the right and the interest to
intervene effectively in the deliberations and actions of the
Diet, and such intervention would not spring from purely
Germanic considerations. The history of the problems
of Poland, Schleswig-Holstein, Luxemburg, of Slavonic,
or Magyar, or Itahan Austria, are a continuous commen
tary on this anomalous situation. In short, it was im
possible to solve these problems either by the Federal Diet
alone or without its co-operation.
One great European State alone, France, was excluded
from 'all share — and its exclusion pointed unmistakably
to a fresh phase of the historic struggle for the control of

12 BISMARCK
the Rhine. The creation of the German Confederation
registered ' a Germany unredeemed ' and a France un
satisfied. The refusal of the Prussian demand in 1814
for ' the restoration ' of Alsace and Lorraine had been
balanced by the removal of France from the Rhenish
Provinces occupied since 1795. But the French flag on
Strasburg and Metz, the federal flag on the fortress of
Mainz, and the Prussian flag at Coblenz, signalised baffled
ambition and inextinguishable ideals for French and
German patriots. Neither France nor Germany could
regard the Treaties and Settlement of 18 15 as the last
word. Any remodelling, therefore, of the Federal Con
stitution of 1 8 15, any alteration of the composition or
powers of the German Confederation, touched every live -
wire in the European State system.
The Settlement of 1815 had made the German problem
an international problem. The unification of Germany,
even more than the unification of Italy, could not be
effected without a revolution in the European State
system defined by the Vienna treaties.
k No less could it be accomplished without an internal
revolution in Germany and the formation of a new German
mind. The system of Metternich had the merit of clearly
conceived principles adapted to secure precise ends. The
maintenance, moreover, of a status quo has aU the advan
tages of the defensive in war. On the side of the con
servative forces were vested interests, historic traditions,
established institutions, the dynasties, and a bitter ex
perience of revolution. Everywhere in Europe from the
Neva to the Seine, from the Tagus to Copenhagen, fire and
sword had done their feU work. Since 1789, the horror
of war was subtly interlaced with the horror of re
volution. A Europe emaciated in spirit and resources
by twenty-five years of unbroken struggle, felt that
peace was worth having at any price, and that liberty
could be purchased too dearly. And Europe (ex
cluding the Ottoman Empire) had peace for nearly forty';
years. The succeeding thirty years accomplished much in
formulating demands, and clothing them with precision

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 13
and clear objectives, which it is easier to appreciate to-day
than in 1848. The horror of war and the fear of re
volution had slowly evaporated. The young generation
was open to persuasion that there were far worse things
than war : that peace could be purchased by sacrifices
too costly for individual, State and nation, and that when
other means were unavailable or futile, revolution was
justifiable and necessary. The solid achievements of
German brains in .every department of human activity
had implanted in the educated German mind certain
potent convictions : that what had already been accom
plished by German brains in philosophy, classical scholar
ship, in phUology, literature, history, the physical sciences
and the aesthetic arts, was as nothing to what could be
accomplished in all these departments if German brains
could have a freer field and a purer air to work in ; that
in pohtical no less than in the intellectual life, German
brains would show their creative powers ; that the future
lay open to the highest ' kultur ' nation, true to its mission
and the obhgation to reahse its civihsed self ; that the
primacy in science and civilisation, once Italian, French
or British, was unmistakably passing to the German
nation ; and fourthly, that there was a causal relation
between the efficacy of a nation's form of government and
its efficacy in national science (Wissenschafi) in its finest
and broadest sense. No less significant, the renaissance
of the German universities were both cause and effect
of the renaissance of the German people. Prussia, in its
hour of humihation after Jena, founded the University
of BerUn. The firm belief of the Prussian reformers,
building greater than they knew, was that the moral re
generation of the kingdom demanded no less imperatively
an inteUectual regeneration ; Breslau in Silesia was made
a university town in 1815, and the re-hoisting of the
Prussian flag in the enlarged Rhenish Provinces was
emphasised by the reconstitution of the University of
Bonn. The foundation of universities as a memorial of
victory in the field and as indispensable organs of national
strength and unification, remains a remarkable element in
Prussian statecraft.

14 BISMARCK
Outside Prussia, Heidelberg, Gottingen, Jena, Leipzig,
Munich, Tubingen, were especiaUy distinguished. A
fuU generation before the ZoUverein accomplished in 1868
the economic unity of Germany, the universities had
achieved a unity of culture impressive as much for the
solidarity of its foundations as for the tenacity of its grip
on the German mind.
The brotherhood of German learning brought about
the brotherhood of German learners. The Bavarian
who came to Berhn to attend the courses of a Ranke or a
Savigny, the Prussian who had heard Dahlmann at
Gottingen or Droysen at Kiel, the Saxon who went to
Strauss or Baur at Tubingen or DoUinger at Munich had
realised that Germany was not a geographical expression,
and that there were spiritual and inteUectual bonds uniting
all Germans which kings, diplomatists and treaties could
not mar or destroy. In any young generation a settled
conviction that ideas are power, the most potent because
the most pervasive of aU realities, will always develop
a high-explosive political force. Epigrams on professors
are as easy as they are popular ; and the German pro
fessoriate is the unfailing butt of the Philistine of every
nation ; but in an epoch when young Germany was
dreaming dreams and seeing visions, it was an inestimable
service to the German mind that in the class-rooms of the
universities German youth was taught by men who had
a right to be heard the value of knowledge for know
ledge's sake, and learned the lesson that national supre
macy in science, whether of language, literature, history,
or the physical world, could only be acquired by the
severest self-discipline and the most exacting thoroughness
— by toil, silence and endurance. The German pro-
fessor had a German audience, outside his class-room, fit
and certainly not few. Savigny's and Ranke's pam
phlets, France and Germany, The Division and Unity of
Germany, The Great Powers, are examples of the ferment
ing influences that could. distil from an academic pen.
And they could be multiplied at will. Carlyle said that
the skins of the French aristocracy bound the second
edition of Rousseau's works : it was not only the skins of

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 15
French aristocrats which bound the later editions of
many German works of learning.
Through historical research, above aU, the German
nation rediscovered its past and read in it a guarantee
of the future. The German people learned from the path-
making science of the Grimms, Bopp, Pertz, Waitz, Giese-
brecht, von Maurer, Gervinus and Dahlmann, how deep
were their roots in the past, and what great intellectual
and political achievements the German race had wrought.
From the dim centuries of warring tribalism emerged
the iUumination of the Teutonic genius of Charles the
Great, who combined the Central Empire, which formed
the legacy of Imperial Rome, with the gifts of the Teutonic
mind. Germany was bidden to march through the cycle
of the Middle Ages, iUustrious with imperial rulers —
CaroUngian, Saxon, Franconian, Hohenstaufen, Luxem
burg, Habsburg — and to note how a Holy Roman Empire
of the German nation had preserved for civilisation the
religious, moral, political and inteUectual unity of Europe
under the wings of the Teutonic Eagle ; to recaU the
winning for Christ and the German conception of civili
sation from Lithuanian, Wend, Slav and Avar of the Baltic
lands almost to the banks of the Neva ; to ponder on
Vienna and the marches of the East — barriers against
Magyar and Turk. It was re-taught the inexhaustible
services of the German Reformation and German Pro
testantism to the free and critical spirit of man ; it was
invited to contrast the two centuries of internecine strife
and political degradation ushered in by the Thirty Years'
War and the bondage of the German nation to foreign
masters, until Lessing and Winckelmann in the sphere of
mind, Frederick the Great in the sphere of facts, pointed
the way to a promised land beyond the wUderness in
which they had wandered. Poetry, philology, comparative
mythology and folk-lore, the comparative study of insti
tutions, palaeography and the archives, the philosophy of
law — history in its widest streams, explored and mapped
by the severest science — were exhibited to enforce a single
moral — the greatness of the German contribution to the
civilisation of the past, a greatness in proportion to its

16 BISMARCK
fideUty to its racial and national character, and the cer
tainty that a simUar fideUty in the future would produce
no less momentous results for Germany and humanity.
Arndt could proclaim that the healing of the world would
be found in the German spirit.
The grandeur and unity of the German race sank deep
into the hearts of a disiUusioned generation. The German
mind, it concluded, had been at its best when Europe
had been pohticaUy organised round a German Empire,
with West and East duly subordinated to the central
framework. The ' natural frontiers ' claimed by France
were a denial of geography, and an insolent outrage on
the natural rights of the indivisible German nation. Did
not the renaissance of the German spirit require the racial
unity of the German people to be expressed once more in
a national and central poUtical organisation ? Slowly
but surely the mind of the new Germany became imbued
with the doctrine and ideas of nationalism, embedded in the
reinforced concrete of racial origins and the laws of poUtical
evolution, imposing as a coroUary the duty of freeing
all Germans from the servitude of non-German poUtical :
or inteUectual domination. Wherever Germans of a com
mon speech, race, and Uterature lived, whether in the
artificial Confederation of 1815 or outside it, wherever
such Germans were prevented from realising their national
and racial self — that was unredeemed Germany. The
ideal of a national State in a free nation was thus buUt up,
Une upon Une, precept upon precept. The doctrine of
poUtical salvation by fideUty to racial unity— the creed of
the NationaUsts — had its complement in the doctrine of
salvation through poUtical rights and personal freedom — 1
the creed of the Liberals.
In its origins, Uberahsm and the Uberal movement 1
were separate from, and anterior to, the inteUectual re
naissance. French and EngUsh formative influences were
jointly mingled. The theory of natural rights, intrinsic
and superior to any other rights, however acquired, demo-!
cratic government, the basis of the State not in authority,
custom or prescription, but in the indivisible and inahen-
able sovereignty of the nation, law as the expression of an '

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 17
infaUible general wiU — these and kindred basic ideas were
mainly derived from the French Revolution and the
principles of 1789. The study of Enghsh history and the
English Constitution — the development of a kindred
Teutonic race — provided a practical programme : — Limited
State authority, representative institutions, a popular and
statutory suffrage, ministerial responsibility, financial
control of the executive by the representative chamber,
government in accordance with the wiU of a majority,
free to choose, a system of local self-government linked
with the central government, an unfettered press, an
independent judiciary and statutory guarantees for the
liberty of the individual citizen against executive abuse
of power. The liberal movement exhibited many forms
and combinations from the extreme radicalism of the
theoretical Republicans to the moderate programme of
a hmited monarchy of the English type. The move
ment was strongest in the southern States, which had been
most deeply saturated with French revolutionary thought,
but it was remarkably active also in the Rhenish Provinces,
in Hanover and Weimar, and even in West and East
Prussia, whUe the universities generally were centres of a
powerful doctrinaire constitutionalism. English political
development since 1832 was influential in shaping the
ideas of the schools of Bunsen, Stockmar, the elder
von Maurer and Gneist, and subsequently of National
Liberalism. Three characteristics in particular are worth
noting • the demand for a larger measure of personal
liberty, secured by law ; the importance attached to
fundamental constitutional rights (Grundrechte), general
ised as principles but defined in a written constitution
which should settle the character of the State ; the ideals
of unification through a common law, and common and
uniform constitutional rights. The liberal movement,
whatever its variety or its source, thus linked hands with
the nationalist creed. Both were incomplete unless the
unifying forces they both represented were united for
common ends in a common organisation. Unity on a
racial basis required unity in the organs and powers of the
State to satisfy scientific theory and practical needs.
B. P

18 BISMARCK
Combined they met the argument of the earlier thinkers,
such as Humboldt, that the particularism of Germany was
an essential condition of a manifold cultural development,
free from the obstacles of a rigid uniformity. For in
the national and free polity of the future Rhinelander,
Hanoverian, Prussian, Saxon, Bavarian and Franconian
would develop his particular culture far more advan
tageously than in the cramped limits and restricted air
of any single German State, however strong and self-
sufficing. The national and sovereign authority of the
unified German State would be the Universal Ordinary,
dehberately permitting local variety and territorial differ
ences, not incompatible with obedience to the funda
mental laws of the unified whole.
Another and more potent change had been wrought.
The philosophy of thought and action was ceasing to be
purely speculative and becoming more definitely political,
concentrating on political ends and means, as intrinsically
more important and practical. The earlier conception
of the functions and mission of the German race simply
rto be a ' kultur-nation ' and organise a ' Kultur-Staat ' was
steadily superseded by the conception of a mission to be
a pohtical Power vested with the function to organise a
State-polity corresponding to that high purpose : or, more
accurately perhaps, the new conception was superimposed
on the old. The conception of the supreme necessity
a*d worth of the ' kultur '-nation and State was retained,;
but relegated to a secondary place. Deeper analysis and
wider experience did not deny the duty of the German
people to realise this spiritual and inteUectual purpose;:
they enforced the conclusion that in the world-movement
political power and the State as the supreme expression^
of power, right, law and liberty had a higher ethical value,*
and must be first realised in order to provide the full
means for the development of spiritual, inteUectual and
moral exceUence. For Truth, the philosophers em
phasised, is only fully grasped not independently of, but
through, a progressive realisation. Nationalism and
hberalism effected the transition from the old attitude
to the new, and in a reconciling synthesis would bring

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 19
the activities and aspirations of young Germany on to the
plane of development reached by the great political
Nation-States, France and England.
But in the workaday world there were cruel burrs and
briars, and, as Rosalind said, these were in the heart.
First and foremost were the Federal Constitution and the
Federal Diet. When the young Prince Hohenlohe, a
cultivated Roman Catholic Bavarian noble, in 1847 called
the Diet the bed in which Germany had slumbered for
thirty years, when he noted that travels in the East were
a humiliation for a German, because French, English,
Russians, Austrians, even Turks commanded respect as
members of powerful States, whfle the German had no
State and no power as such, when he saw the British and
' French and Russian flags at sea, national flags symbolising
national power, when, as Treitschke said, the German
saUed the sea Uke a pirate without a national flag, he only
voiced the inarticulate cry of miUions of Germans, con
scious of what they were accomplishing, but damned to
impotence by the inertia and meanness of thought which
the Diet incarnated. A fierce sense of political degrada
tion, aU the fiercer because it was combined with this
consciousness of power within, and of achievement, had
gripped the new Germany. Great empires and Uttle
minds indeed go iU together. The littleness of the minds
in the Federal Diet exasperated a Germany aware that
the great minds were everywhere except in the councils
of the nation. The astonishing spring and summer of
1848 are only explicable by a passionate conviction that,
whatever took its place, the Federal Diet and aU it stood
for must go, and go for ever. Germans had the right of
other free nations to a share in their own government, to
make a Germany and place her as a State on an equality
with other States : they had a future and a right to deter
mine it.
Secondly, the national enemy was France. Nothing is
more arresting, alike in the thirty years that foUowed 1815
and the twenty that foUowed 1848, than the continuous
revelation of the hatred and fear of France, ceaselessly
simmering below the surface to break out with boiling

20 BISMARCK
force on the sUghtest provocation. Hatred and fear com
bined, shared by aU classes, and for reasons frequently
contradictory — hatred of what France had done, fear of
what she certainly would do again.
Stein in 1815 wrote of France as ' the hereditary foe,
the eternal, tireless, destructive enemy,' a sentiment
shared by Bliicher, Gneisenau and the Prussians baffled
by Europe in their demand for a humiliating revenge.
But the passions of the War of Liberation, nowhere so strong
as in Prussia, continued to echo in the poetry of Arndt,
Uhland, Uckert, Geibel ; and the map which left Alsace
French vibrated with a perpetual chaUenge. In the inter
national crisis of 1840 Germany was on the verge of war :
three songs, Becker's ' Sie sollen ihn nicht haben, den
freien Deutschen Rhein,' Hoffmann von Fallersleben's even
more famous ' Deutschland, Deutschland iiber AUes,' and
Schneckenburger's ' Die Wacht am Rhein,' passed at once
into the national literature of the barracks, the schoolroom
and the hearth. In 1842 the commencement of the com
pletion of Cologne Cathedral was made a great demon
stration against France. Political thought was no less
anti-French. HaUer, whose Restoration of Political
Science was for a generation the Bible of orthodox conser
vatism, and who restated much of the authoritarian argu
ment of French ultramontanes, such as J. de Maistre and
Bonald, traced to French Jacobinism and French scepticism
most of the sins and all the ills from which Europe suffered :
Stahl, the brilliant Jew, who continued HaUer's work and
whose writings provided a philosophical basis for the
romantic and pietistic conservatism of the Gerlach Circle,
fhe Brandenburg Political Weekly, and the CamariUa of
Frederick WiUiam iv., was no less denunciatory of French
¦ principles. Indeed, to Conservatives of all schools France
was the mother of every social and political heresy, the
architect of soul-destroying revolution. Even in the
south-west the Liberals and Radicals repudiated their
debt to French thought ; and Heine, whose Buch der
Lieder had set aU Germany singing through its tears and
had inspired the marrying of immortal verse to immortal
music, was held to have succumbed to the witchery of the.

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 21
GaUic spirit, and lost his influence when he deserted
Hamburg for Paris.
Germany, brooding over its wrongs, political, civic and
racial, found in the rising forces of nationalism, so subtly
fostered by Teutonic erudition, a fresh justification for
the anti-French sentiment inherited from 18 15. The
glorification of Teutonic achievement involved that
behttiing of aU other achievements, which is an indict
ment framed in self-flattery. History, whether ancient,
mediaeval or modern, recorded for German readers an in
exhaustible catalogue of the wrongs done to Germany by
alien, jealous and, in reality, inferior races and States.
France was the chief author and inspirer of these crimes
against Teutonic nationalism, and so there grew up in the
""heart of the German people the conviction, panoplied
in the armoury of science, that, from the Treaty of Verdun
in 843, which shattered the Carolingian Empire, to the
wars and treaties of Napoleon, France and the French
race were responsible for German disintegration and
impotence : that until the robberies had been won back
and the crimes expiated, Germany could not live in peace
or enjoy her legitimate and God-given development.
Even the most gracious qualities of the French mind were
made items in the accusation : her literature, her philo
sophy and her art savoured of the diabolical. Already,
thirty years before Sedan, a France frivolous, sensual,
immoral, vain, sciolist, bloodthirsty and insindere, was
contrasted with a Germany sober, profound, industrious,
scientific, pious and peaceful, the guardian of the morals
of the family and the hearth. The ever-growing demand
for the extirpation^ofjthe ' Walsch ' element in German
thought, Uterature, the sciences and arts, rested on an
exposure of the Latin races, and above aU of France. Let
two examples suffice : Mommsen's Roman History with its
passionate and iU-concealed sub-current of contempt for
Latin weaknesses, and Sybel's History of the French Revolu
tion, which put the French nation in the dock of the
Weltgericht. Sybel was an ardent Liberal, and Mommsen
was expelled in 1850 from his chair at Leipzig for his share
in the Revolution of 1848. If such was the green tree of

22 BISMARCK
academic science, what did not issue from the dry wood of
journalists, pamphleteers and beer-garden politicians r
The general hatred and fear of France was a strong
sentimental force indirectly making for German unity.
As a practical element in the German problem it was
weakened by one momentous consideration. Previously
and subsequent to 1848 — when the simultaneous revolution
in Paris, Berlin and Vienna created a unique situation in
which France and Austria were helpless, a situation which
alone made the Parliament of Frankfurt possible — a
drastic revision of the Federal Constitution involved a
general reopening of the whole Settlement of 1815, which
was as gaUing to French as to German nationalism.
In the chanceUeries of Europe, and most strongly at
Vienna, the mere prospect created consternation. The
Belgian question in 1831 had been localised and settled
with extreme difficulty by Palmerston's dexterity and
finesse, but Europe had been in measurable distance of a
tremendous war. The avowed object of a general re
vision of the Federal Act was to make Germany stronger ¦
and more united : to prepare for a final and complete;
unification. That this could be carried through without
reopening the question of the Rhine, ' the natural frontiers '
of. France, and the irreconcilable aspirations of Germany,
was impossible. Belgium in 1839 had been placed under
international guarantees. French expansion, blocked to
the north-east, could only find its outlet in (German)
Luxemburg and the Rhenish Provinces on the west bank
of ' the free German Rhine.' One conclusion was certain.
If Germany were strengthened, France would demand
' compensation ' ; and a completion of German unity
without compensation to France spelled the decisive defeat
of French ambitions and the definite elevation of Ger
many to a superior position. That France would accept
such a defeat without war was unthinkable.
German particularism was, however, the obstacle to
unification which contemporary opinion both inside and
outside Germany probably regarded as the most formid
able and insoluble. That particularism was a singular
blend of facts, ideals and sentiments, which can be dis-

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 23
entangled but make a combination elusive and exceedingly
difficult to measure. Already there was a legendary
view of its origin. The German mind had persuaded
itself that the ' Zersplitterung Deutschland's ' was a
comparatively modern fact, and that the mediaeval and
Reformation epoch had known a united and imperial
Germany. The conviction was an erroneous conclusion
from misinterpreted historical premises. And the in-
juriae temporum of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen
turies were injuries largely inflicted on Germany by the
Germans themselves, and due to the irreconcilable racial
and religious and social divisions of the old Reich and
the Germans who composed it.
Particularism, in short, was a historical product and had
the deepest roots in the stubborn characteristics of the
German mind, which were its cause and effect. The re
duction of the 360 principalities which made the map of
1789 to the 39 of the Federal Constitution, had strength
ened rather than weakened the provincial territorialism
which nourished a provincial patriotism ; for the absorption
of the pettier, and the secularisation of the ecclesiastical,
principalities by the larger had enormously stimulated
the ambitions and jealousies of States such as Bavaria,
Wurttemberg, the Hesses, Nassau and Hanover, while the
partition of Saxony was a menace which made the survivors
in 1 8 15 cling with the tenacity born of fear to their
sovereignty and independence. Particularism was not
confined to the south. The passions or prejudices it re
presented were as strong at Herrenhausen, Cassel or
Dresden as at Munich, Karlsruhe and Stuttgart. It
centred in dynasticism and the princely houses.
Bismarck in a famous chapter of his Reminiscences — a
chapter eulogised by distinguished German historians —
emphasised the existence and claims of these separate
dynastic lines, each with a long history and traditions
behind it, as one of the most stubborn forces for statesman
ship to reckon with, and his argument is endorsed by the
whole of German history before and after 18 15.
German dynasticism was solemnly re-baptized at the
font of legitimism in 18 15, with the result that outside

24 BISMARCK
Germany (as weU as within) the maintenance of monar
chical or princely rule was bound up with the principles
of legitimate authority and recognised as providing^ a
common basis for political conservatism in aU countries
and a barrier against revolution. The maintenance of
even a petty German sovereign in his ' rights ' appealed
alike to the autocrat of all the Russias, the Pontiff of the
Vatican, a Bourbon at Naples, and the constitutional
sovereign of Great Britain, whose consort came from
Coburg. But this dynastic particularism was the outcome
and expression of deep-laid racial, cultural and economic
differences. Prussian, Hanoverian, Westphahan, Saxon,
Rhinelander, Franconian, Suabian, represented German
types, the differentiation of whose original features had
been heightened and deepened by the physical configura
tion of the German lands they lived in, internecine
struggles, prolonged political rivalry and opposed economic
needs and claims. The conception of sovereignty ratified
in 1 815, absolutely fatal either to a unitary or a truly
federal Germany, implied the divine right of a Saxon or a
Bavarian government to misgovern as against the iUe
gitimate claim to be governed well by a ' foreign ' though
a German authority, and this principle was endorsed by
the misgoverned.
The greater development of hberalism in the south
west than in any other region sharpened the resentment
and stiffened the determination of more conservative states
and rulers to resist the moral penetration of their territory
by ideas made in Wurttemberg or Baden.
In the south-west and centre the memories of the
Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine were stronger
than of the War of Liberation : although ideas in origin
French did not really imply any desire for the restoration
of French political domination. Prince Hohenlohe main
tained that the undefiled fount of Germanism and of the
present German race lay in Suabia and Franconia ; he
always asserted that 'the true home of the idea of uni
fication ' was in the south-west ; and it was a common
criticism in the south that the best brains of Prussia had
been recruited from non-Prussian territories : Struve, *

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 25
a strong republican and earnest political thinker, pro
phesied in 1847 that Prussia would, and must, disappear
when Germany awaked to a new Ufe. Particularism had
a strong anti-Prussian side. If at Berlin the southern
States were despised as mechanistic creations of Napoleonic
policy, Prussia so radicaUy different in type, structure and
character from every other German State was criticised
as un-German, artificial — the absolutist, militarist and
bureaucratic polity in its most unattractive and dangerous
form. Prussian power was a formidable reality ; her
absorbing capacity and appetite so plainly demonstrable ;
and her rulers, her administrators and her people were so
occupied with justifying and proclaiming their merits and
services to Germany that they forgot modesty, tact and
sympathy. To the inefficient efficiency always makes an
uncomfortable partner, and Prussian efficiency was heavily
framed with an assertive Prussian egoism. The evolution
ary beatitude — Blessed are the strong for they shaU prey
upon the weak — was a perpetual reminder to Prussia's
neighbours that unless Naboth had powerful and dis
interested friends his fate would be the fate of Silesia in
1740, of the Rhinelands and Saxony in 18 15. There was
only one Ahab — but there were so many Naboths whose
vineyards marched with the black and white posts of the
Prussian frontier.
Within the charmed circle of the Bund such a friend
was to be found at Vienna alone. Clear-sighted thinkers
at Stuttgart, Munich, or Karlsruhe recognised that
Austrian policy was probably no less selfish than that
of other States, and that Austrian growth was one long
and historic appropriation clause ; but in the hands of
Metternich the egoism, mendacity, intrigues and du
pUcity of Austrian diplomacy lost through a high-bred
courtesy and tact half their grossness. The King of
Saxony remembered that Metternich had resisted the
absorption of his kingdom and saved one half of it for its
lawful owner ; Bavaria, Wiirttemberg and Baden that their
sovereignty and territorial integrity were dear to the
Austrian heart; The Foreign Office in the Ball-Platz at
Vienna was a cave of Adullam, the doors of which were

26 BISMARCK
always open to aU legitimate German princes in distress
from Jacobin professors, university students afflicted by
the modern disease of reading and thinking, journalists
demanding that the press should be free, and politicians
deranged enough to regard a vote as a passport to the
miUennium— above aU to German princes in distress from
Prussian designs.
For Austria itself— if we could forget Prussia— epitom
ised most of the elements in the German problem. Only
half the Austrian Empire was included in the Bund, and
that not whoUy a German half, for Bohemia, Carinthia and
Carniola were not pure German, while Hungary, Galicia,
Dalmatia and the Italian provinces were excluded. The
Federal Constitution was largely her creation ; its main
tenance on rigidly conservative lines had been one of the
chief objects of Metternich's policy, and the coUapse
of the Federal Diet foUowed automatically when Austria
herself coUapsed in the spring of 1848. Metternich's
copious Memoirs have drawn for posterity a fuU-dress
portrait of a good man consistently struggling with ad
versity — a record of repeated success due to the victory
of high political principles over the forces of evil — of
failure inexplicably caused by the charlatanry of quacks?
(such as Canning) masquerading as statesmen. Austrian
policy in Germany was indeed a subtle mixture of dynastic
pride, historic traditions, international and Europeai!|
ambitions, reactionary political principles and unquench
able Austrian appetites. The unique character of the
Austrian Empire, coupled with the inflexible refusal of the
Habsburg House either to be cajoled by success or driven
by defeat from its determination to make a State out of
a European dynasty, necessitated a unique policy. The
territorial composition of the Empire, the product of a
long evolution, and the medley of races united only by
aUegiance to a common sovereign which made the Austria
of 1 815, brought it into the closest contact with all the
Powers and aU the inteUectual and political forces of
Europe. German, Italian, Pole, Czech, Little Russian,
Magyar, Rouman, Croat and Serb were combined and had
always been combined — and there is a world of significance

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 27
in the ' always ' — ever since there had been an ' Austria.'
Metternich shared none of the ' delusions ' of these races :
an ItaUan or a German who obeyed his Imperial Master
was a good Austrian : a bad Austrian was the Itahan,
Slav or German who opposed the Imperial wiU. Obedi
ence, not race, was the criterion of citizenship. AU the
new ideas from 1789 onwards Metternich regarded as
dangerous nonsense and frauds on a gullible European
pubUc. It was the duty of statesmanship to expose the
fraud and extirpate the poison. But in the psychology
of Metternich's statecraft it is difficult to decide whether
Jacobinism and UberaUsm were bad because they threat
ened to destroy the historic Austria, or were destructive
of Austrian interests because they were intrinsicaUy im
moral. A professed reaUst in poUtics with his eye on the
object — before Realpolitik was the fashionable gospel of
representative assembhes — Metternich founded his pohcy
on the most incontrovertible of aU reaUties — reason of
State — the reason pecuhar to the pecuhar Austrian State.
The interests of Europe were assumed to be identical with
the interests of the historic Austria. Germany was like
Italy, a geographical expression, a poUtical distribution
of States with conflicting interests, and an Austrian hege
mony over which was the form of poUtical rule most
convenient to Europe, if exercised in accordance with
sound principles of conservatism, legitimism, and the
balance of European power.
Accordingly the Federal Constitution and the Diet were
admirably devised to achieve aU these ends. They recog
nised the House of Habsburg in Austria as the heir to the
defunct Holy Roman Empire ; they maintained under
European sanctions the separate sovereignty and terri
torial independence of the German States ; they provided
an effective barrier to the west against France and to the
east against Russia, but without injuring them as great
Powers in the State system of Europe ; and last and not
least, they assigned an adequate but secondary role to
Prussia which shelved her iUegitimate claims to equal
place with Austria in the management of Germany.
But if Austria had the hegemony, she did not demand

28 BISMARCK
the institutions automaticaUy working to impose an
Austrian wiU on Germany. Jealous for her own, she was
no less jealous for the rights of others. In the Diet,
Austria, by herself, was in a hopeless minority. She could
only work through and by the other members of the
confederation. True, she had a veto on changes in the
fundamental laws, but so had the pettiest of the federated
members. Metternich, in short, relied on diplomacy, un
swerving in its aim and unfettered by any scruples as to
methods. His triumph over the German governments:
was complete enough to satisfy his exorbitant vanity.
Most of his predecessors at Vienna had been able to hypno
tise the electors, grand-dukes, landgraves and margraves,
even when they became kings ; but Metternich achieved
what no Austrian statesman, neither Kaunitz, nor Thugutj;
nor Cobenzl, nor Stadion had achieved — he hypnotised
Prussia. That accomplished, the task of imposing an
Austrian . pohcy on Germany was easy, and Metternich:
wisely remained content with the fact. Prussia was
soothingly held up as a model of statesmanhke fidelity
to correct principles. The hypnotisation of the subjects
of the hypnotised governments could safely be left to the
police, the censors of the press, the controlled universities!
and the schools. The revolutionary storm swept Metter
nich away, but not the ambition he represented. Metter
nich's successors strove faithfully to repeat his magic in
cantation ; they even threatened with the magician's rod ;
but the wiU in Prussia to be hypnotised had been exorcised. 1
Metternichism coUapsed at Koniggratz under the blows1
of a Prussia which had deserted ' correct principles ' and
returned to the immoral (Prussian) reason of State taught
by Frederick the Great. In the new situation created in
1867 the parts were reversed. Henceforward Prussia was
the hypnotiser, Austria the hypnotised. How this hap
pened makes the apia-rela of Bismarck.
It was certain that as long as Austria was the Austria of
1 8 15 and a great Power in Europe, no change could take
place in the Federal Constitution without her consent, and
that she would not permit changes which either challenged
her presidential supremacy in Germany, or substantiaUy

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 29
altered the balance of power within the Diet, or intro
duced principles of government into the Germany of the
federation which would detrimentally affect the ad
ministration of Austrian territories not included within
the jurisdiction of the Diet. In the delicately equipoised
system of checks and counter-checks, cogged into the
central dynastic wheel, by which German, Italian, Slav
and Magyar lands were set off against each other, the
introduction into her German territories of representative
institutions or democratic autonomy would create a
demand for simUar concessions in Hungary, Galicia and
Lombardy ; the concession to Germany of rights derived
from the sovereign principles of nationalism involved the
admission that Habsburg rule in Italy or Galicia was a
violation of autonomy based on nationalism. Tested by
a racial nationalism the Habsburg was an alien in three-
fourths of his Empire. His rule could only be nationalised
by identifying the Crown with one race and by oppressing
three-fourths of his subjects in the interests of a single
group. Austrian opposition, therefore, to nationalism
and aU its consequences was irreconcilable; it justified
itself by a flat denial of the premises and conclusions of the
nationalist creed and was compeUed, if chaUenged, to sup
press nationaUsm by force within the Austrian dominions
and to resist its further recognition in the State system of
Europe. The peculiar constitution and position of Austria
confronted German Nationalists with an insoluble dilemma :
the formation of a nationalist State of Great Germany
(Gross-Deutschland) which would bring the whole of the
Austrian dominions into a reorganised Bund, or the
creation of a unitary and small Germany (Klein-Deutsch-
land) from which Austria was excluded. The former
solution violated the logic and sentiment of nationalism
by the introduction of large blocks of non-German races
into a German State ; the latter sacrificed the sacred
rights of the Germans of Tyrol and Austria proper to
non-German and anti-German forces. It was no dilemma
to the Habsburgs, for they denied the legitimacy of the
demand, no less than they resisted either of the solutions
suggested. Austrian interest prohibited the inclusion

30 BISMARCK
of the whole of the Austrian Empire within the jurisdiction
of the [federation, and Austrian interest and Habsburg
pride peremptorily forbade the exclusion of German
Austria from a German federation, however organised;
and the interests of Austria were held to be the interests
of Europe. Austrian policy, therefore, was a defensive
maintenance of the status quo in perpetuity. Against the
champions of every creed which demanded a revision of the
system of 1 8 15, Austria stood forward as the Geist der stets
verneint;1 and she entrenched her immutable negatidn
in an organisation of cosmopolitan conservatism with
common principles of universal validity registered in the
public law and treaties of Europe.
In politics, time is not, as in war, on the side of a weU-
organised defensive, and increasingly is against it when
the defensive is badly organised. The cynical advice of
Prince Eugene to Charles vi. that the best guarantee of
the Pragmatic Sanction was not the public pledges of the
European States, but a well-driUed army and a weU-filled
treasury might have been remembered with profit by
Metternich. The claims of nationalism and liberalism^
if pressed, could not be stemmed by Carlsbad decrees,
by ubiquitous police and obscurantist censors. Metter-";
nich's ignorance and neglect of finance were equaUed by his
ignorance and neglect of mihtary science and adminisj
tration. His blindness to the significance of a Zollverein
under Prussian presidency was significant. Metternich's
ignorant vanity prevented him from seeing the increasing
importance of economic development, that in a policy!
of interests the economic may be the decisive consideration,
that Prussia had stolen many marches on Vienna, and that
in the near future the Austrianised middle and petty'
States would be driven to side with a Prussia they disliked*
rather than with an Austria they liked ; in a word, that
the ZoUverein had placed Prussia at the head of an
1 Beust in his Memoirs tells us (i. 283) : 'For years the German courts were
trained by Vienna and Berlin in the fear of God and of the Czar Nicholas ' ¦ and
again (i. 363): 'I well remember what in the early days of my diplomatic
service was the bugbear of Metternich's policy. In conversation every one
feared to express a liberal opinion, as it might be reported at Vienna and ruin
the speaker's future career.'

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 31
organisation which set the dualism between Austria and
Germany in sharp relief. Within ten years of his ex
pulsion from power the Austrian treasury was bankrupt,
a Russian army had been required to suppress revolution
in Hungary, and the shadows of Magenta and Solferino
were lengthening out to the crowning doom of Sadowa.
The Metternich system pointed a plain moral : conser
vatism and legitimism were identical with inefficiency.
Austrian supremacy in Germany rested on an identity
of interest with the princes and the power of their
governments. Of the deeper forces, running each year
with a swifter current beneath the tessellated bed of the
Diet, Metternich knew little and cared less. Of political
thinkers he had a poor opinion and a poorer knowledge.
They might be useful as the drudges and typists of the
high diplomacy, hereditary in a hereditary aristocracy.
At best, Gentz and Haller were intellectual flies on the
great wheels of statecraft. Metternich was as incapable
of appreciating a Humboldt, a Hegel, a Ranke, a Giese-
brecht, a Grimm or a Pertz as he was of appreciating
Gioberti, Mazzini or Manzoni. Hence, he never saw the
increasing peril that beset the Austrian defensive in the
manifold inteUectual renaissance of Germany outside
Austria, nor the combination of moral fibre and racial
passion which that prolonged inteUectual preparation
was stamping on the German nation. ' They tell me,'
said Napoleon, ' we have no literature. I must speak to the
Minister of the Interior about it.' Literature, other
than the beUes-lettres of high-bred salons, was for Metter
nich an affair of the Minister of Education, working with
a copious Index Expur gator ius. Universities, professors,
pamphleteers, a public which read and thought — ideas as
the forces which can make and unmake States and policies
— scientific knowledge (Wissenschaft) providing the criteria
and ends of political activity — these made the malady
of the time, a time singularly out of joint. That Austria
had lost the inteUectual and moral sympathy of the
Germany which worked outside the palaces and the
bureaux of the princelets, and that Austrian apathy was
daily digging a chasm between the governments and their

32 BISMARCK
subjects, Metternich did not grasp until the roar of the
Viennese crowd shook the windows of his palace and sent
him panic-stricken into exile. The ideal of Germany as
a ' kultur '-nation he interpreted as many who had read^
Madame de Stael's De VAllemagne and nothing else per
sisted in interpreting it tiU 19 14 — a nation blameless^
bourgeois, pedantic and unpolitical — mainly composed
of spectacled professors, philosophers as nebulous as the
smoke of their tobacco, long-haired musicians and univer
sity students singing the ' Wacht am Rhein ' because the
Rhine wine and flaxen-haired Gretchens had got into their
sentimental heads — that old Germany on which Heine
could lay the whip-cord of his affection because he knew
that it no longer, and probably never had, existed. But
to the new Germany the conception of a unified Teutonic
' kultur '-nation meant remorseless struggles for a presi
dential place in the Areopagus of civilisation, and its
realisation was the pre-condition of a unified Machtstaaf
and a unifying Machtpolitik — the State and the policy
that were German power.
Young Germany by 1840 was asking, ' What has Austria
done for our German civilisation ; and what is she doing
now to-day ? What is Austria contributing to our German
literature, our ideas, our knowledge, our political phik>
sophy f What is the share of the University of Vienna
in the intellectual life of Germany, compared with that
of Berlin, Bonn, Heidelberg, Gottingen, Munich and
Tubingen ? ' Vienna, indeed, could point to the drama-.
tists Grillparzer and Benedix, Weber and a home for
Beethoven (who was not an Austrian), the waltzes of the
elder Strauss and Giingl, and the waning reputation
of the Medical School. There was a splendid renascence
in Bohemia and Hungary, but it was national, anti-Aus^i
trian and anti-German. Austria, in the eyes of many in
Germany, contributed nothing of real weight to the serious
criticism of hfe, nothing that guided through the darkness)
to the splendour of the dawn, breaking red on the horizon.
In the majestic march of the German mind to conquest,
Austria lagged with the vivandieres and the camp-sutlers.
Her institutions were obsolete ; her policy and ideas;

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 33
threadbare and poverty-stricken. Rancid reaction and
ultramontanism were a sinister background to the new
Ufe of high endeavour, and not to be exorcised by a per
petual invitation to dance through a summer of roses and
wine. The national and liberal movements craved a leader
and leadership. But past history and present realities
proclaimed that the leader was not to be found at Vienna
and in the House of Habsburg. A liberal Austria was as
unthinkable and as impossible as a liberal Pope. Goethe's
notable description of his youth, which all Germany read
in the autobiography, Wahrheit und Dichtung, that seemed
to sum up the spiritual experience and antinomies of the
German mind, ' Fritzisch nicht Preussisch gesinnt ' (' In
sympathy with Frederick but not with Prussia '), turned
many ardent hearts wistfully to the bleak north. Might
it not be written in the scroU of German destiny that the
mantle of the great Frederick would faU on another and
a greater Hohenzollern f
No German State in the confederation had, since 1789,
suffered more varied vicissitudes, had sunk lower or re
covered more rapidly than Prussia. The Settlement of
1 8 15 restored the Prussian kingdom to the full measure of
strength enjoyed in 1805, but with a significantly different
geographical configuration. Prussia surrendered much
of the Polish territory acquired in the Second and Third
Partitions, and in compensation received a part of royal
Saxony and rich provinces in the west, which made her
the guardian of the Rhine from Dusseldorf to the suburbs
of Jewish and free Frankfurt. Yet her territories were not
compact, for between the new Rhenish Prussia and the
original nucleus of the Brandenburg Electorate in the Elbe
basin lay Hanover and the Westphalian States, while East
and West Prussia with Silesia made two huge sahents
with Poland in the re-entrant of the one and royal
Saxony and (Austrian) Bohemia in the re-entrant of the
other. Prussian patriots regarded the Settlement as an
insult. They had desired to eliminate the Polish and
i Catholic elements of the Province of Posen, to absorb the
1 whole of Saxony, and (with customary Prussian ' modera-

34 BISMARCK
tion ') to reduce their ' compensation ' in the west m return
for a consoUdation in the centre. Prussia was to be a pure
German State, predominantly Protestant, while the black
and white flag and the double eagle would fly on an un
broken Prussian kingdom from Coblenz to Konigsberg,
enveloping the north and making Hanover an enclave in'
Prussian soil. The ambition was frustrated, but it re
mained an inextinguishable ideal in baffled Prussian
hearts. For aU that, Prussia was unquestionably the strongest
German State in the federation. And the consequences
of the Settlement operated at once on Prussian policy..
Much of the new acquisitions had never been Prussian,
and their assimilation into the HohenzoUern system was
essential ; no easy matter, for the Protestant Saxons
resented the enforced separation from their former State ;
on the Rhine a Catholic population with long-established|
memories of the sovereign ecclesiastical princes of Cologne;:
Munster and Paderborn, and saturated by French
thought and administration since 1795, resisted the supre
macy of a sovereign civil state and the categorical
imperatives of the Prussian bureaucracy; in Posen the
aspirations of Catholic and Slav Poles were whoUy with
their brothers across the highly artificial frontier that
divided a dismembered Poland from Prussia. And in
Brandenburg and Prussian Pomerania Junkertum retained
its grip on the government. <
The next twenty-five years were a bitter disappoint^'
ment to the dreams of the men of 1813. The ideal of
Gneisenau and Boyen, bred in the school of Stein, that
Prussia would establish a pre-eminence in Germany on ' the
triple supremacy of her army, her science, and her consti-.
tution,' withered under the blight of a reactionary sove
reign. The royal pledge to complete the reforms of Stein
and Scharnhorst by the grant of liberal self-government,
with its apex in a central representative parliament whici
would unite the whole nation in co-operation with the
Crown, was deliberately broken. Prussia was re-
modeUed into eight administrative provinces and governed
by the central and reorganised executive, a bureaucracy,

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 35
decentralised local estates, and provincial diets so re
organised as to make the land-owning aristocracy supreme.
Law was a royal ordinance ; local, much less national,
control over taxation and expenditure did not exist ; the
ministers and civil service were responsible to none but
their royal master ; the patrimonial manorial jurisdiction
and administration of Junkertum in Brandenburg, Pome
rania, and East Prussia, were practically untouched. Prus
sian unity, in short, was refashioned after 1 8 1 5 on the lines
of the miUtary and feudal tradition, pieced together from
the days of the Great Elector to the fatal day of Jena.
The monarchy re-established its authority on the rocher
de bronze — the prerogative; the bureaucracy was its
executive instrument; the army and the administration
were staffed and controUed by the noble caste, and the
memorable law of 1814 completing the reforms of Scharn-
horst, which made service in the army compulsory for all
Prussian males, stamped on civil allegiance the inefface
able imprint of military obedience to the supreme War-
Lord (Kriegesherr), Lord of the Land (Landesherr), and
the Commander-in-Chief of the Prussian nation in arms.
The world outside promptly decided that the new
Prussia was simply the old Frederician State writ large.
Superficially, this was true. But the new Prussia con
tained elements unknown to the Prussia of the eighteenth
century, and these were developed even under the reaction
of Frederick William in. Education, primary, secondary,
and of the university type, was strenuously reorganised,
and primary education was made as compulsory as military
service. The Prussian universities — Berlin, Konigsberg,
Breslau, Halle, Bonn — were in the forefront of the in
teUectual renaissance ; and by 1848 a professorial chair
at Berlin was the recognised blue-ribbon of the academic
career. Seldom, indeed, has a university had so much
eminence in its professorial staff in so many departments
of knowledge as that in the Prussian capital. The civil
administration, despised by many of the Junkers, became
extraordinarily efficient, and like the army it was carefully
graded : the men at the top had passed by a severe
apprenticeship through each stage in the official hierarchy.

36 BISMARCK
They were experts, trained in obedience, and habituated
to take their initiative from the higher command. _ The
economic Ufe was taken in hand. The ZoUverein or
Customs Union begun in 1819, in order to solve the
difficulties of trade pecuhar to a State with foreign en
claves that broke the Prussian frontier at countless points,
had under Maassen's masterly management included most
of Germany, outside Austria, by direct absorption or by
tariff treaties with similar economic unions. Maassen
was a foUower of Adam Smith, and the tariff was low and
simple, avowedly anti-Protectionist and on Free Trade
lines. The economic advance was remarkable, thanks to
sound economic science, the stability of the government,
and the efficiency of the administration. If the new
Prussia was in type autocratic, mUitarist, and bureaucratic
— a kingdom governed by its Crown and aristocratic
caste — its intellectual and economic activities made its
social structure and political outlook a whoUy different
state to the Prussia of Frederick the Great. Between
the governing nobility and the agricultural and industrial
proletariat had grown up a solid middle class, prosperous;
highly educated, very capable, versed in history, steeped
in political ideas, who knew that their brains were indis
pensable to their country's increasing strength and
mounting ambitions, and who resented their exclusion
from an active share, not in executive tasks, but in shaping
the policy and destinies of Prussia. If they served in the
army, worked in the universities and industries, and paid
more than half the taxation, they had an indefeasible right
to the highest and most responsible duties of citizenship
— a share in the government.
Thirty years of German and European evolution had
reopened not solved the Prussian problem created by
her history and the Settlement of 1815 ; and the diffi
culties shelved then and since remained unanswered.
When Frederick William in. was succeeded in 1840 by
Frederick WiUiam iv., men felt that the dead could bury
their dead, but that a new and critical epoch for the living
was^at hand. Would Prussia now obtain a constitution
that would satisfy the Liberal party in Prussia ? Would

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 37
Prussian ' foreign ' pohcy satisfy Prussian and German
nationaUsm ?
The cleavage in the various parties and schools of ideas
— the reaction of the internal on the external problem —
made a most complex situation. Tradition, social environ
ment, class bias, and the infiltration of new categories
of thought operated with varying strength on varying
groups. Prussia since 18 15 had been brought into direct
touch with Germany at many new points, and the contact
tore gaps in the old tradition. Her political frontiers
vanished in the sphere of knowledge. Her universities were
recruited from the south and centre of Germany ; her own
students went to Gottingen, Heidelberg, Leipzig, Munich
and Tubingen. Trade, commerce, and industry, with the
aid of the ZoUverein, had created economic bonds through
out the length and breadth of the Federation. Railways
were to carry the revolution much further — and it was a
raUway loan that precipitated the constitutional crisis.
Liberals, Radicals, and Nationalists were demanding in
Prussia what Liberals, Radicals, and Nationalists were
demanding in Bavaria and Baden, and for the same
reasons. In the struggle which raged for ten years in
Rhenish Prussia between Catholics claiming the freedom
and independence of their Church from the bondage of a
supreme secular or heretical state — a forerunner of the
great Kulturkampf of Bismarck's chancellorship — Pro
testant Prussia had learned that ultramontanism was a
grave element both in the Prussian and German problem.
The German ' Watch on the Rhine ' was vested in
a Prussia planted by the wiU of Europe as a strong
barrier against French ambition. Polish Posen and East
Prussia were a perpetual reminder of the Russian danger
and the unsolved Polish question. Along the western
flank of Silesia stretched Austria. Neighbours, neighbours
everywhere, and no real frontier except the army and the
Landwehr, with its immortal, if legendary, memories of
1 8 13. Expansion outwards, consolidation within, were
essential. But in what directions ? Save for Dantzig
and Konigsberg and Stettin — windows into a Baltic closed
by Denmark and Sweden— Prussia had no harbours, no

38 BISMARCK
fleet, no colonies. Kiel was Danish, Hamburg a free city,
Bremen another free city, Emden belonged to Oldenburg ;
due north Hanover blocked the way to the German Ocean,
and the mouths of the Rhine were Dutch.
History and the facts of everyday life taught aU Prussians
the unity and sovereignty of the S^ate ; yet how could
Prussia expand in Germany when the Federal Consti
tution guaranteed the inviolability of every German state,
and the Federal Diet was notoriously anti-Prussian ?
Only by smashing the Federal Constitution to pieces in her
own and Germany's interests. The service of the Crown,
in the army, the civil service, or the educational organisation
controUed by and modelled for the needs of the State,
was the ordinary career of both the noble and the
middle class. Hence, the political theory of Hegel and
the Hegelian school, with its insistence on the State as
Power, bit deep into the Prussian mind, Conservative
and Liberal alike. It supphed the philosophical basis for,
and justification of, famUiar facts ; it provided the recon
ciliation between the claims of the individual and of the
community, for each would attain their consummate
realisation through the supremacy of the unifying and
omnipotent State.
No less important was the teaching of Clausewitz — a
formative influence as powerful as the law of Military
Service, which Treitschke has emphasised. War, Mira
beau had said, was Prussia's national industry : that
Prussia had grown by war was a commonplace to every
Prussian schoolboy. Clausewitz's Vom Kriege (On War)
was a severely scientific study of war as a subject of know
ledge, and a manifestation of Ufe through a nation's will
— a treatise based on deep thought and a masterly com
parative method. The substance of his teaching that
war is simply a continuation of the policy of the State by
methods appropriate to its nature and for the achievement!
of the ends of the State, unattainable by the nature of
things in any other way, bit no less deep into the minds
of the governing and middle class. The relations of war
to civil pohcy, and to the form, functions, and end of the:
State ; the exploration of first principles in close con-

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 39
nection with their application ; the severity and lucidity
of the argument and the intellectual power of the author,
made Vom Kriege a classic which marked an epoch in the
scientific study of the subject. If Clausewitz summed
up Prussian thought from Frederick to Scharnhorst, his
mental distinction and grip of method were peculiarly his
own, and they rested on the same characteristic that marked
The Wealth of Nations, the intimate connection between
the truth of the principles and their application in tested
facts. To Scharnhorst he owed the inspiration of that
intrepid and inspiring spirit, and in Napoleon he found
the most convincing proof of the doctrines he expounded ;
but Clausewitz remained a great Prussian, the founder
of the great Prussian school continued by Moltke and
von der Goltz. His writings were never popular, even
in Prussia : few outside Germany before 1871 had read
him. Like our own Bentham he owed his profound in
fluence to his mastery of minds which themselves became
masters of science or affairs — to the brain of the Prussian
army organised in the great General Staff, and to the
appUcation of his conclusions by the professoriate in the
universities. The debates in the Prussian Parliament
from 1858 to 1866 reveal the saturation of both political
parties by Clausewitzian principles in this broader sense.
And the greatest of his disciples was not Moltke, who
acknowledged the debt, but Bismarck, who did not.
Not less significant in another sphere of thought was
the work of List, who committed suicide in 1846, and of
Roscher, first at Gottingen, and then at Leipzig. List's
System of National Economy was the foundation of modern
Protectionism ; Roscher was the pioneer of the historical,
as opposed to the classical deductive school in economics.
The sum of List's teaching that the economic life and
! policy of the community were subservient to, and must
be shaped to express, the will of the national State as
Power, harmonised with Roscher's conclusions, based on
historical analysis, that economic principles and laws had
only a relative, not an absolute, validity, and were de
pendent on, and the exemplification of, national types of
economic structure. Hence the argument that Germany

40 BISMARCK
to reaUse its nationalism must have a German national
economy, and to achieve poUtical freedom must first
attain a national economic independence. List and
Roscher, therefore, and their disciples provided a powerful
antidote to the influence of British thought, so marked in
Prussian Liberalism. Their greatest conquest was not
achieved until a fuU generation later, when Bismarck
broke in 1879 with the economic creed of his youth and
middle age, and the converted Imperial Chancellor hoisted
his flag in the camp of Protection.
Particularism was nowhere stronger than in Prussia,
precisely because aU the essential ingredients of parti
cularism were so highly developed in the Prussian State —
a dynasty the history of which was the history of Prussia
— a definite type of civic character reflected in the form
and character of the institutions — a proud record of
achievement due to the unity of a unified and central
ised State on a racial basis. In a word, Prussia had bought
her freedom in Germany and Europe by fidelity to her
Prussian self, and at a great price. This Prussian parti
cularism provided an obvious policy and programme of
the future. Let Prussia continue a rigid loyalty to her
traditions. By the union of her monarchy, her army, and
her civil service, in unquestioning obedience to the
Crown, she could always maintain her pride of place and
make a greater Prussia. Her duty to Germany was best
fulfiUed by fulfilling her duty to herself — that State
egoism which Bismarck was to preach so effectively. Any
alteration in her historic institutions or principles would
shatter the secret of her strength and success — her Prus-
sianism. The real danger lay in the desire of jealous
friends and baffled foes to ' mediatise ' Prussia, melt her
down in a common German mould, and dissolve a good
Prussian into a flabby German, State. In opposition
to this, Prussian Liberals based their programme on the
reform period of Stein and Scharnhorst and the new
Prussia created in 1815. Their object was to complete-
the edifice begun after the downfall of Jena — a disaster
in their eyes caused by the isolation of Prussia from Ger
many, both in politics, thought, and ideals — to modernise

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 41
the Prussian State, while retaining aU that was best in the
historic Prussia, and to build up a real self-governing
Prussian nation and government, in which all classes could
share. It was foUy, they urged, to ignore the demands of
classes excluded from power, the character of the new
age, and the inteUectual movements in Germany and
Europe. Prussia could lead the German renaissance, but
she must first give practical proof of her identity with its
principles and its objects. If she cut herself off from the
great currents in the life of the German people, she would
cease to be German ; she would unite Germany against
Prussia, and experience a second time the bitter fruits of
isolation. No other State had so strong a claim to be the
successful champion of a German national movement ;
no other State stood to gain so much by accepting, or to
lose so much by refusing, this duty.
A remarkable development of Prussian conservatism,
rather than of Prussian particularism, found its leaders
in the Brandenburg Circle, which took its political philo
sophy from HaUer and Stahl, its religion from a revival
of Evangelical Protestantism, and its sentiment from a
horror and fear of ' the Revolution.' It constituted the
nucleus from which the Camarilla of the Gerlachs was
evolved ; and in touch with it were many of the men
who made the circle of Frederick William iv. both as
Crown Prince and King. It exercised for thirty years a
profound influence on Prussian and German history ; in
its ranks Bismarck served his apprenticeship, and his breach
with its principles was the first great formative fact in his
career. The essential points of this aristocratic and
pietistic creed — an offshoot from the Holy Alhance, tinged
in its dreams and its aversions by the Romantic movement —
can be briefly summarised : the maxim of their party was
J. de Maistre's sentence, ' Nous ne voulons pas la contre-
revolution, mais le contraire de la revolution ' ! The
historic danger to aU states and society lay in ' the Revo
lution ' ; the struggle between the Revolution and con
servatism began long before 1789, and was continually
taking new forms ; France was the main source of revo
lutionary principles, which either placed sovereignty in

\i BISMARCK
the people, or divided it between a hybrid and fictitious
popular wiU and an emasculated monarchy ; the pohtical
revolution was united with the intellectual, which taught
the freedom and sufficiency of the critical reason and sub
jected everything to rational tests. Modern Germany
was deeply infected with both the political and intellectual
revolution, which unchecked would destroy aU authority
in government and be subversive of society and religion ;
hence it was the duty of Prussia to unite with all govern
ments, based on legitimate principles, in order to main
tain those principles and to combat the Revolution.
Conservatism was not local or national ; it transcended the
artificial barriers of poUtical, racial, and geographical
division ; and in practice the aUies of Prussia were Austria
and Russia ; England after 1815 had deserted the true
faith; France after 1830 was only a crowned bourgeois
republic. In fine, the closest poUtical and moral under
standing between Prussia and Austria was the pivot of
a sound German and European system : united with
Russia, Prussia and Austria could save Europe. Separated
from them she was a conspirator in a moral cataclysm.
Such a creed and such a policy differed essentiaUy from
the ideas of Prussian Junkertum ; the Prussian polity was
not justified because it was Prussian, but because it con
formed to the tests of a universalist system, and in any
coUision between Prussianism and this orthodox conser
vatism the former must be sacrificed ; but the Gerlach
school shared with the Junker governing class the antipathy
to aU liberal reform. For Prussia to tread the path of
England or France would be treachery to the cause of
right. Opposed as these several parties were, they had
two points in common. They accepted as an axiom the
claim of Prussia to be a Grossmacht. They were pro
foundly dissatisfied with Prussian inactivity from 1815
onwards, which was an abnegation of her strength and
European position. Prussia was the one German state
in which patriotism was more than a rhetorical figure,
and membership in which was a cause of pride and a basis
of duty and service. Liberals, Particularists, or Conser
vatives demanded that the Prussian king and the Prussian

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 43
sword should play a more independent part in the political
Ufe of Europe. Even to the Gerlachs the Austrian
aUiance, the sine quti non of Prussian policy, caused obstinate
questionings when it involved a submissive subordination
to the secular and selfish statecraft of Vienna. Liberals
felt more strongly the ' shame ' of Prussian obedience to
the Carlsbad decrees, the reactionary measures of 1832,
and the Prussian share in the suppression of the Hano
verian constitution. The aUiance with Austria was in
their eyes a surrender to reaction ; the Bund and the Diet
were a national disgrace, and Prussia which could give the
tone and the Liberal Law to Germany had become the
tool of selfish and reactionary Austrian interests.
Prussian thought of aU schools was inevitably driven
back on the deadlock in the Bund. If Prussia continued
to act with the Diet she was an Austrian instrument ; but
how could she act in defiance of it without forfeiting her
German position, and destroying the whole movement
towards a common and more effective German organi
sation ? Nor could Prussian foreign policy be based on
internal German interests. The Prusso-Russian entente
had its roots in the established traditions of policy,
gratitude to Russia for services in the past, and a deep-
seated fear of Russian power. Since Frederick the Great
had learned the meaning of Russian enmity in the Seven
Years' War, friendship between Berlin and Petersburg was
a postulate of Prussian safety. Poland and the Polish
question drove the conclusion home. The French
danger was no less impressive. In Prussia, the memories
of Rosbach and of Jena, of Napoleonic humiliation and
partition, and of the War of Liberation, were in the
national blood as nowhere else in Germany. The portrait
of Queen Louisa, the royal saint and martyr, hung in the
manor-houses of Junkertum and the cottages of the
peasantry ; her tomb by Rauch at Charlottenburg was a
national vindication of her sufferings at French hands ;
and there were thousands of Prussians on both sides of the
barricades in 1848 who had marched into Paris in 18 14
after having liberated their country from French domina
tion. The new King Frederick William iv. (born in 1795),

44 BISMARCK
and his brother, the Prince of Prussia (born I797)> w^re
boys when the French entered Berlin in 1806, and they
had both served in the Prussian army of 1813. If France
was the hereditary enemy of Germany, she was the hated
and hateful oppressor of Prussia. Prussian Conservatives
and Liberals had common ground in their repudiation of
a French hegemony in Europe. It was the duty of
Prussian intellect to assist the superiority of Prussian
science, as it was the task of Prussian arms to maintain
intact the German territory in the west assigned to their
custody. A black cloud and the warning drops falhng
anywhere in Europe, and Prussia instinctively faced to the
Rhine. War with France — long before Bismarck sat in
the Wilhelmstrasse — would always have set Prussian
nationalism aflame ; for deep and inarticulate in the
heart of every Prussian lay the desire to undo the work of
Louis xiv., which Europe, caUous to Prussian services and
sacrifices, had frustrated in 18 15, when Prussia was
' robbed ' of the fruits of her victories.
Prussian Liberals recognised, but underrated, the
difficulties of Uberal reform. Emphasis on the logical
and historical connection of the new liberal programme
with the reformers of the Stein-Scharnhorst period ignored
the cumulative force of facts. The inertia of the mon
archy and the obstinacy of its ally, Junkertum, were the
real reasons for the failure to complete the reforms of 1808.
The conversion of Prussia into a constitutional state of
the French or Belgian type, with rights guaranteed in a
written constitution, was a reversal of two hundred years
of development in a precisely opposite direction. Yet
the mere demand for the conversion showed the strength
of the new elements in the Prussian State. But it was
clear that it could only be accomplished with the consent
of the monarchy, or by a military disaster, or by revolution/
In 1840 a revolution seemed as improbable as a second
Jena. Hence everything turned on the character of the
new sovereign, Frederick WiUiam iv.
Like his ancestor, Frederick 1., Frederick WiUiam iv.
was ' a Hohenzollern with his back broken,' who be-
wUdered his subjects and himself by the obstinacy and

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 45
contradiction of his convictions. His pride in the army,
his belief in his unfettered prerogative and the divine
right of his Crown, his conviction that the Prussian
sovereign in the scheme of human and divine things was
appointed to be the instrument of his people's good, and
earning their love and admiration, linked him with the
past. Nature had endowed him with an acquisitive, sym
pathetic, and versatile inteUigence, and no smaU share of
oratorical and artistic gifts. Essentially pious, he was
deeply stirred by the new religious forces at work in
Germany ; a strong Protestant, he desired the union of
the Protestant churches both in Prussia and outside, yet
could sympathise with the Roman Catholic revival, for he
regarded religious belief and emotion as the basis and
sanction of political and social development. As Crown
Prince he had gladly cultivated the leaders of politics,
philosophy, literature and art. The friends of the Crown
Prince and King numbered personalities so various and
so different as the Gerlachs with the orthodox Conser
vatives of the Gerlach circle, Radowitz, Bunsen, Rauch,
Cornehus, the Munich leader of the Romantic movement
in art, Stockmar, Humboldt and Ranke.
The rebirth of a national Germany, equipped with
organs rescued from the Middle Ages and reshaped to
express modern ideals, the reunion of Emperor and Church
in a revived Holy Roman Empire, the reconciliation of
modern Liberalism with historic Conservatism in the
spiritual, inteUectual, and political life of the German
people, inspired the vision which haunted and fired his
imagination. Of this Restauratio Imperii combining the
fundamental unity of German culture with the unity of
German religion, Austria and Prussia were marked out by
Providence to be the co-architects and co-guarantors.
The German Imperial Crown must necessarily be recreated
as the hereditary prerogative of the House of Habsburg,
but beside the Imperial Throne would stand the Hohen-
zoUern sovereign as Captain-General and Arch-Cham
berlain of the restored Empire, and round these two
would be grouped the princes, dynasties, governments
and peoples of Germany in an ordered hierarchy.

46 BISMARCK
Frederick WiUiam iv. saw political realities through a
magic and distorting screen of sentiment. His aversion!
were as strong as his ideals. Liberal principles were tainted
at their source by French Jacobinism, and everything
French he abominated. Obstinate and impressionable,
he was always under the spell of characters with dearer
and narrower conceptions and stronger wills than his own.
' I am not a Frederick the Great,' he patheticaUy con
fessed ; and when revolution and then reaction rent the
web of sentiment asunder, he was helpless — the sullen and
disiUusioned victim of fate, the reluctant agent of a policy
which, if it defeated the revolution, no less shattered the
dreams and ambitions of the German and HohenzoUern?
king. The summons to Berlin in 1847 of a united Diet — the
concentration in a single assembly of the unreformedi:
local Estates — brought to a head the issues between the
old Prussia and the new. To the liberal demands the
King replied that the royal creation of the united Diet
redeemed the pledge of his predecessor, and that the con
stitutional reforms were now complete ; he added that
his Crown was his by the grace of God, and that no written
sheet of paper (a constitution) should ever intervene
between his people and himself.
No less significant was the demand at Heppenheim in
October, 1847, for an elected national German Parliament,
repeated in a motion by Bassermann in the Diet at Baden
(February 12, 1848), in which the reform of the obsolete
and obstructive Federal Constitution was to be accom
plished by and according to the will of the German
nation. In Prussia and in the south the two Germanies
— the Germany of princes and governments, the Germany
of their subjects over whom the liberal and nationalist
creeds were daily gaining a clearer mastery — were set in
array. The nationalist issue could not be burked. Poland
and the Poles within and without the German Con
federation were in effervescence. From Schleswig-
Holstein came the imperious demand of ' unredeemed '
Germans to be freed from denationalisation by Danish
' tyranny ' ; and Holstein, as a member of the German,

GERMANY AND THE GERMAN PROBLEM 47
Confederation, was within the jurisdiction of a federal
execution. At Paris and Prague and Buda-Pesth, in
Switzerland and Italy, the storm-cone was being hoisted.
How long could the German princes resist the pressure
from within ? How long could a representative public
opinion acquiesce in an unrepresentative Federal Diet ?
In 1847 Germany rang with the confusion of opposed
creeds and programmes ; distinguished spokesmen there
were in plenty in every state, but as yet neither side had
produced a leader or a programme commanding an un
divided allegiance. WeU might Stockmar write : ' A
new epoch is in fusion, the particular metal and stamp
of which cannot be divined.'
It was into this Germany of 1815-47 that Bismarck was
born, and in it he grew up. It was in this Germany and
Prussia, on the eve of revolution, that, as a member of the
United Diet, he stepped on to the political stage, and into
the political history of his country.

CHAPTER II
THE JUNKER POLITICIAN
§ i. Education and Entry into Politics
Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck-Schonhausen,
born on April i, 1815, in the feverish month of renewed
war that followed Napoleon's escape from Elba, was the
third son of Ferdinand von Bismarck and Wilhelmina
Mencken. Of his two elder brothers only one, Bernhard
(born 1810) survived, and a third brother (born 1819)
did not reach manhood. Of his sisters only one, Malwine
(born 1827) reached womanhood. Schonhausen, the
ancestral home of his forefathers, lies to the west of Berlin-:
in the Old March (Alt Mark) of Brandenburg, which was
the original nucleus of the Electorate and the very core
of the future Prussian kingdom and the cradle of; the
Prussian monarchy.
' Who are these HohenzoIIerns ? ' Bismarck once de
manded. ' We were in the March long before they were.'
The claim that the Bismarcks settled in the March in the
reign of Charles the Great rests only on the pious autho
rity of the genealogical table hanging in the hall of the
manor-house at Schonhausen ; but two hundred years
before the first Hohenzollern, invested with the Electorate
by Imperial hands, set to work to^tame the lawless inde
pendence of noble and Junker in the March, the petty
village of Bismarck gave its name to a Brandenburg family;
and towards the end of the thirteenth century the Bis
marcks were estabhshed in the guild and government of
Stendal, a township hard by. In 1345, as holders of the
fief of BurgstaU, they were definitely registered in the
nobility of the March, and though they never reached
the status of the great aristocracy, they were henceforward!

THE JUNKER POLITICIAN 49
one of the many noble families who constituted the
governing class. In 1562 they were reluctantly obliged to
transfer BurgstaU to the HohenzoIIerns and to take in
exchange Schonhausen. Uninterruptedly in Bismarckian
possession from that date, it gave the family the name —
Bismarck-Schonhausen — which distinguished them alike
from other Bismarcks — noble, middle-class, or plebeian.
On his father's side Otto's family record was that of
most Brandenburg squires — military service in the elec
toral and then the royal army of Brandenburg-Prussia.
AUegiance and devotion to the ruler were the traditional
duty of the manorial lords ; and the ruler's prerogative
was reflected in the territorial prerogative of the servants
of the Crown, who administered the land, led their
peasants in battle, fought an unending struggle with
Nature and their own passions, a caste to whom the State
meant their Hohenzollern master and their own divine
right to govern under his guidance. Otto's father had
served, as usual, in the army ; had seen Schonhausen
(built in 1700 to replace the original manor-house, de
stroyed in the Thirty Years' War) in French possession
after Jena, and the sacred family tree pierced by French
bayonets. Love for the French was not, therefore, a
maxim taught to the young Otto. The Old March
nourished bitter memories of the French invaders, and
inspiriting records of the War of Liberation, and these
the young Otto imbibed as soon as he was breeched.
The tradition of the Menckens was very different.
They were not noble, but they could point in their lineage
to three professors of some celebrity in their day. Wil-
helmina Mencken's father served in the Civil Cabinet of
Frederick the Great and of his successor ; was accused of
Jacobinism and displaced, to return under a more liberal
dispensation as Cabinets-chef of Frederick William in.
His daughter seems to have inherited the civil, literary,
and inteUectual aptitudes of her race ; she combined
them with an extravagant love of building, of Berlin, and
of the dUettante society of salons and fashionable watering-
places— aU of them, save perhaps the building, tastes
detested by her son Otto.
B. ' D

50 BISMARCK
But until 1 8 15 neither Bismarcks nor Menckens had
contributed to the dramatic annals of HohenzoUern
Prussia a statesman, a soldier, or a writer of the first, or
even the second, quality. Both families had a long and
creditable, but essentially parochial, record, research into
which could be safely left to the county antiquarian, had
the boy born in 1 8 15 not made his name illustrious and his
ancestry an interesting study in the origins of genius.
These Bismarcks — and in Mendelian phraseology they
were the dominating strain — for four centuries simply did
their duty as squires and earnest Protestants, and they
planted, tiUed, fought, drank, duelled, married, served as
sheriffs (Landrath), begat sons and daughters, and slept-
their sleep beneath their blazoned arms, ' In Trinitate
Robur,' satisfied with being Bismarcks and Branden-
burger manorial lords. They ended, in the mystery of
human things, by producing a member of their ancient
house to whom they bequeathed in treble measure their
own fierce appetites, loves, and hates, an iron physique, a
brain, ambitions, and a force unique in the history of the
March and of their race.
In 1 8 16 Otto's parents moved to Kniephof, the chief
of a group of family estates, inherited in that year, and at
f Kniephof in Prussian Pomerania the little Otto grew up.
It was the Paradise of his boyhood, and there the heredi
tary Bismarck link with the soU was forged. Towns and
the life of towns neither the lad, nor the ambassador, nor
the Imperial ChanceUor ever liked. Streets were a prison,
townsfolk an unpleasant riddle. Whatever else changed
in Otto von Bismarck, the passion for rural nature— the
hunger for the land and the life of the land, forests, moor,
the blue spaces of an open sky, the wind across the pas
tures, the hard-bitten men who lived, worked, and hunted
on the land— never changed. Pictures and sculpture
do not figure in his letters : he confessed when he was an
old man that once, only once, he had entered the Berlin
Museum ; of books there is singularly little ; there is
- much of good food and good wine ; but the earth and its
unceasing pageantry of beauty are never forgotten. Dawn
and sunset, the maturing sunshine of midday, snow under

THE JUNKER POLITICIAN 51
moonlight, mountains, crags, and wooded dales — these
things he always saw because he felt their message, their
contact with, or memory of, his own home. The grey-
haired ChanceUor, with his wolf-hounds at his heels,
striding with the watchful eye of a master amongst the
sunht glades of his oaks and beeches at Varzin or Fried-
richsruhe, was happier in his freedom from the fetters of
the State than the boy on holiday who gaUoped his pony
over the monotonous demesne of Kniephof, stalked snipe
and wild duck, or hunted hares through deep snow.
Otto's education was of the conventional German
humanistic and literary type. At seven years old he was
sent to a preparatory school (Plamann's Institute), and at
twelve passed on to a gymnasium. At sixteen, as became
a young noble and Protestant, he was confirmed by
Schleiermacher, at the height of his cefebrity, whose
brief injunction : ' Whatever you do, do it with aU your
heart and as from the Lord,' is said to have made a deep
impression. In 1832 he entered the University of
Gottingen, where he spent two years, foUowed by one at
the University of Berhn. Instinct and tradition suggested
the army as a profession, but his mother apparently
desired a civil career for this passionate, self-willed and
robust son ; whether because she feared the life of an
officer, or divined the power in her beloved Otto, is un
certain ; but she had her way, and after passing the neces
sary examinations he entered the civil service on its
judicial side, and was attached for duty at the fashionable
Aix-la-ChapeUe and at Berlin. One year had to be given
to military service, and this he spent with the Rifles of the
Guard (Garde-J'dger).
Until 1839, when ne l°st n^s mother, abruptly ter
minated his State employment and, owing to financial
difficulties of his famUy, took over with his brother Bern-
hard the management of the family properties, his life
had shown little indication either of ambitions or excep
tional abilities. As a university student, though not as
idle as legend subsequently pictured, he had failed to find
in academic studies either inteUectual inspiration or prac
tical utUity. Heeren's lectures made some impression,

52 BISMARCK
but neither Dahlmann, the glory of Gottingen, nor
Savigny at Berlin can be reckoned as formative influences
in his education as they were in the training of his con
temporaries Windthorst and Beust. The truth is that
"then, as throughout his career, Bismarck revolted against
discipleship or subordination of any kind. Life was the
only teacher from whom he was wiUing to learn, and the
lessons of life he hammered out for himself, and he refused
to take them ready-made. He joined a famous dueUing
corps, the Hanoverana. DueUing, beer-drinking, and the
riotous escapades of undergraduate youth, provided an
outlet for his exuberant physical powers. In the punish
ment book of the university his name figures more than
once. Friends he made in plenty, three in particular-^-
Moritz von Blanckenburg, Motley, the American historian,
and Roon, twelve years his senior. Little did either guess
what the latter friendship would signify for the history of
Prussia. There is a story that in 1832 he made a bet with
an American student that Germany would be unified in
twenty years ; but if he made the bet, he lost it. Forty,
not twenty, years hence he could have asked from the
Wilhelmstrasse for repayment. He detested and neglected
his duties as a civil servant. The career of ' the animal
armed with a pen' behind closed windows and under
the orders of domineering, exacting, or iU-bred superiors1,
stirred his Junker pride and independence to mutiny.
At Aix-la-ChapeUe, crowded with fashionable pleasure-
seekers of aU nations, he plunged into gambling, debt, and
dissipation. For four months he broke away altogether;
travelled to Wiesbaden and Switzerland, fell in love with
a pretty English girl, but whether he broke with her or
she with him is uncertain. The sap was running strongly
upwards, and in the dawn of superb physical vigour Bis
marck, like many, sought in physical satisfaction an ano
dyne for an incurable unrest. ' Yesterday,' he wrote to his
wife in 185 1, ' I was in Wiesbaden. May it please God to
fill with His clear and strong wine this vessel in which then
the champagne of youth uselessly foamed and left stale
dregs.' Neither politics nor religion came to his aid.
He had ceased to pray ; he was practically an agnostic

THE JUNKER POLITICIAN 53
with a vague Pantheism simmering in a brain that de
manded positive reality. Republicanism as a political
creed had appealed to him, but the democratic excesses
at the Hambacher Fest (1832) disgusted him with radical
ism and aU its works. Prussia had no public life to offer
him. Service in the bureaucracy of an autocratic crown
and the army were the only two professions available, and
he had rejected the one and was too old now for the other.
He feU back gladly on the career of a landed proprietor.
At Kniephof he was his own master, and his father's
death in 1845 made little difference to his position. He
acquired SchQnhausen and lived there ; but from 1839
onwards he devoted aU his brains and energies to the
famUy estates and restored their prosperity. He studied
the science and practice of agriculture in all its forms,
reveUing in his independence on the land that he loved,
bending men and Nature into obedience to his wiU.
Not the least impressive of the many personal touches
that vibrate in his later speeches, are those which reveal
the lessons he had learned in the management of his
estates. It is instructive to remember that at this time,
south of the Alps, another young noble, Camillo di Cavour,
no less dissatisfied than Otto von Bismarck, was patiently
serving a self-imposed and invaluable apprenticeship in
statecraft on the estates of his ancestry. The Bismarck
of later days, too, would have understood why Walpole
in the most exacting pressure of his premiership always
opened first every morning the report from his game
keeper and bailiff. The Prussia in which the master of
Kniephof and Schonhausen toiled was not the modern and
industriahsed state, whiclrin 1841 was just beginning to
develop a new economic Ufe, but a kingdom of agriculture,
of landed proprietors, farmers and peasants, in which more
than seventy per cent, of the population lived on, and
wrested their food from, the land.
But the cravings and unrest of Cavour and Bismarck
were not, and could not be, satisfied with the breeding of
beasts and making two blades of grass grow where one
had grown before. The countryside of Pomerania rang
with the dare-devil exploits, the dangerous tests of skiU,

54 BISMARCK
nerve, and strength of ' the mad ' and ' wild Junker ' of
Kniephof, ready to swim, shoot, hunt, or ride anywhere
and in any weather ; no less ready and able to drink half a
dozen lieutenants from neighbouring garrisons under the
table. The gossip which represented him as a Herculean
Lothario of coarse amours and a fabulous appetite is cer
tainly exaggerated. But a host who could wake the
tardy guest by pistol-shots through the windows, and
whose irreligious views were more disquieting than his
morals, alarmed the mothers, if they excited the curiosity
of the daughters, in the manor drawing-rooms. Gossip,
however, did not know that the mad Junker was devouring
books — history, philosophy, theology, geography, and
poetry : Feuerbach, Bauer, and Strauss, Schopenhauer,
Lessing, SchiUer, Riickert, Lenau, FreUigrath, Uhland,
and especially Goethe, Shakespeare, and Byron. The
effortless felicity of allusion in his speeches to Goethe
and Shakespeare proves the grip that the imaginative
realism of these two master critics of life had on his spirit.
Yet nothing as yet could fill ' the unfathomable weariness
and emptiness ' of which a letter speaks ; and Bismarck, like
Cavour, left his estates to travel, now to Paris,, now to the
northern sea-coasts, now to England, completing his com
petence in French and English, noting, as always, the
scenery, and storing his impressions of institutions and
society in a retentive memory. ' I feel,' he wrote in 1845,
when his sister Malwine married, ' more than ever my
loneliness in the world.'
The gnawing at his heart, the flux in his ideas, the need
of a sure anchorage in spiritual and moral realities, grew
with the inarticulate ambition for a career wider than
the duties of a manorial lord could provide. The answer
came from an unexpected quarter, and Bismarck owed
it to a woman's ideals. Through the wife, Marie von
Thadden, of his friend, Moritz von Blanckenburg, the
master of Kniephof and Sch6nhausen was gradually ab
sorbed into ' the Trieglaff circle ' — a group that had
Trieglaff, the Thaddens' estate, for its centre. The
Trieglaff circle- linked hands with a more political group
at Berlin, the most important members of which were

THE JUNKER POLITICIAN 55
the Gerlachs and Stahl, the writer on political philosophy,
and in this way he began the memorable political friend
ship with General Leopold and his brother Ludwig von
Gerlach. The blend of evangelical piety, prayer meetings,
conservative politics, and sentimental literary dilettantism,
of spiritual tea-parties and picnics, at first amused and
then interested Bismarck. It was a new type of adventure,
and he was to discover how much a resolute and high-
minded woman can accomplish when she deliberately pits
her strength against the will of a resolute man. Marie
von Blanckenburg had divined the power in this erring,
loyal, and forceful friend of her husband's. She made it
her duty to ' convert ' him. She succeeded, though she
did not live to know her success and its results. Her
premature death deeply affected the young man and com
pleted the conversion. He resumed the habit of prayer
and the study of the Bible ; Bauer and Strauss went into
the wastepaper basket ; his cynical and agnostic Pan
theism melted like snow in the midday sunshine of April.
He returned to the unquestioning Lutheran faith of his
ancestors. His mind was made up, and henceforward
his was a conviction impregnable to all the doubts, fears,
or disiUusionment provided by the life that began in 1 847,
and ended in the homage of a united Germany in 1898.
* I cannot conceive,' he wrote to his wife, ' how a man
who reflects and yet knows nothing of God, and wiU know
nothing, can endure his life for contempt and boredom.
I do not know how I formerly endured. If I lived now
as I did then, without God, without thee, without chil
dren, I cannot think why I should not put life aside like
a dirty shirt.' In 1870 he said : ' I know not whence I
should derive my sense of duty, if not from God : orders
and titles have no charm for me ; I firmly believe in a life
after death, and that is why I am a Royalist : by nature
I am disposed to be a Republican. . . . Were I not a
staunch Christian, did I not stand upon the miraculous
basis of religion, you would never have possessed a Federal
ChanceUor in my person.'
Love, and marriage consummated Marie von Blancken-
burg's work. An attachment to Johanna von Puttkamer,

56 BISMARCK
the daughter of neighbours at Reinfeld, steadily deepenedfj
into passion. The father who ' had heard much evil and
little good ' of the suitor for his daughter's hand, was
reluctant to consent ; but Bismarck was not one to be
thwarted when he had set his heart on success, and he had
Fraulein von Puttkamer on his side. ' All right ' was the
brief announcement in English to his sister of his betrothal
(January 12, 1847). His marriage foUowed on July 25,
and a happy marriage it certainly was. In his domestic
life Bismarck is seen at his best. What his wife was to
him and what he was to her can be read in a correspond
dence which is real literature, and a precious human and
historical document. ' I cannot,' he wrote from Biarritz
in 185 1, ' enjoy seeing so much beauty away from you.'
' My wife,' he said, thirty years later, ' made me what I
am.' That adequately sums up an intimacy into which
we need not pry further. There was a great place in 1846
waiting for a woman to fill. Johanna von Puttkamer
showed her quality simply by filling it.
Fate had already tapped at the door. Between Bis
marck's betrothal and his marriage (April 3 to June 24)
the united Diet had met in Berlin, quarreUed with the
Crown, and been prorogued. Bismarck was one of its
members, confronted in a public capacity for the first
time with the Liberal and National forces, to which in
numerous utterances he opposed a defiant and unbending
Conservatism. He denied that the national rising of. 1813
had any constitutional significance, and had any other
object than the natural Prussian desire to hurl the foreign
invader from the Fatherland. The remark provoked
fierce dissent from the Liberal benches. Bismarck pulled
a newspaper from his pocket and read it, standing, untU
the assembly was quiet. He asserted that the Crown of
Prussia was worn by the grace of God, not by the grace
of the nation ; he denied the right of Jews to hold office
in a Christian State, rejected as irrelevant all paraUels
between Prussia and foreign countries, and maintained that
abandonment of the Christian basis of the State would
reduce it to a fortuitous aggregate of philosophical rights.
The young man of thirty-two was in collision with ideas

THE JUNKER POLITICIAN 57
and with men he disliked on political and social grounds,
and he opposed to them the traditions of the governing
class to which he belonged, and which these rebels would
destroy in the Prussia that the nobles had made. He gave
vigorous expression to the creed of Prussian particularism.
Nationalism was the traditional patriotism of Prussians,
obeying an unfettered Crown ruling as it pleased through
a hereditary aristocracy. Liberalism would destroy the
historic Prussia, which must remain the Prussia of Frederick
the Great, whom Gerlach noted Bismarck had. already
adopted as his model. In all these utterances there is no
recognition that the strength of Liberalism lay in its
mandate to represent forces within and without Prussia
that could not be refuted by the rubric and articles of the
crude conservatism of a caste, there is no appreciation
of the gravity and complexity of the German problem
or of Prussia's duty to Germany. The two impressive
characteristics in these speeches are the unmistakable
sincerity of the speaker's convictions and the undefinable
atmosphere of independence which can grow into leader
ship. Bismarck spoke for himself, but he more than
voiced, and men felt it, his party. He was pointing the
way, and not merely tramping in the footsteps of others.
WeU might the Liberals already caU him the champion
of the Ultras ; weU might Leopold von Gerlach rejoice
that here was an aUy and a disciple after his own heart.
The young Junker had made his mark. At his marriage
enthusiastic friends haUed him as a new Otto the Saxon,
a coming Otto the Great.
Allies and disciples of the old dispensation were needed.
At Venice Frederick William iv. received Bismarck
travelling on his honeymoon. Sovereign and subject next
met after the Barricades in Berlin. Before the united
Diet could renew its rejected demands, the Revolution
of 1848 had swept over Germany and Europe.
§2. The Junker Politician, 1848-1851
The astonishing period from the March days in Berlin
and Vienna to the Convention of Olmiitz and the

5 8 BISMARCK
restoration of the fallen Federal Constitution and Diet of
1 8 15, provides a panorama overloaded with bewildering j
and complicated events. The revolutionary spirit en
graved her record with steel on hearts insurgent and
scorched with fire. In the evolution of Bismarck's per
sonality and the principles of his statecraft ' 1848 ' closed
one chapter and opened another.
The main framework and background can be briefly
disentangled. The first phase lasted from March 10 to
November 1, during which Austria was crippled by con
tinual riots and placed practically out of action. This
gave the simultaneous risings in Germany the upper
hand, and enabled the leaders of the Revolution to con
centrate their efforts on the National Parliament at
Frankfurt, and to work through a national assembly in
Berlin for drastic reforms in Prussia. The fate of the
Revolution depended on the capacity of this movement
to make good its work before the Austrian government
could recover and chaUenge its supremacy. The National-
Assembly met at Frankfurt on May 13, the Prussian
Constituent Assembly on May 22 ; but by the end of
June the revolution in Prague had been mastered, and on
November 1 Vienna was in the hands of Windischgratz,
and the Ministry of Schwarzenberg, a determined foe to
the Revolution, was set up.
A second phase began with November 1, and lasted
until AprU 28, 1849, in which Austria, aided by Prussia,
practically killed the Frankfurt programme. Hungary,
with the aid of Russia, was reduced ; the battle of Novara
(March 23, 1849) virtually crushed the revolution against
Austria in Northern Italy ; in Berlin the National As
sembly, removed from the capital, was dissolved, and a
written Prussian Constitution, drafted by the Crown, was
proclaimed (December 5). This was a blow at the
Frankfurt Constitution-makers, whose success depended
on the acceptance by the German States of the national
unification, nearing completion at Frankfurt. The im
position by the Emperor of a new constitution on Austria
(March 4, 1 849) drove the Prussian stroke home. In
April Austria practically declared war on the Frankfurt

THE JUNKER POLITICIAN 59
party. The Liberals had one chance left — to secure
Prussia and pit her in alliance with Liberal Germany
against Austria. The hereditary Imperial Crown of a
Germany unified on a Liberal basis, guaranteed by
the written constitution drawn up at Frankfurt, was
offered to Frederick WiUiam iv. The Prussian govern
ment rejected the Frankfurt Constitution, and the King
definitely refused the Crown (April 25). The Liberal
Revolution had failed.
In the third phase, which lasted until October 5, 1850,
the interest concentrates on the attempt of Prussia to
make her own solution, an effort mainly influenced by
the pohcy of Radowitz. While Prussian troops were
suppressing the remnant of Republican irreconcilables
in Baden and the south, the Prussian government en
deavoured to form a union of the four kingdoms of
Hanover, Saxony, Wiirttemberg, and Bavaria with the
petty states under Prussian leadership. The Union was
to have a joint Directory, a common Parliament, and
a constitution, to consist only of voluntary members,
and to establish a close understanding with Austria, ex
cluded from the Germany thus unified. The surrender
of Vilagos (August 12) and of Venice (August 22) left
Austria now completely free to deal with the Germany
that would exclude her from all share in the Prussian
Union. The Frankfurt Liberals decided to support
the Prussian scheme, but by October 5 the four kingdoms,
influenced by Austria, had seceded from the League.
Austria had kiUed the original scheme of the Union.
Would and could Prussia, with the petty States, carry the
truncated scheme against the four kingdoms and Austria,
and establish a union of North Germany under her
leadership ?
The fourth phase was closed by the Convention or
Punctation of Olmutz (November 29, 1850). A ParUa
ment of the Union met at Erfurt, approved a draft
Constitution, and adjourned (April 29, 1850)^ Austria
repUed by demanding the revival of the old Diet. The
Elector of Hesse-Cassel was at a deadlock with his sub
jects ; Hesse-Cassel professed to be a member of the

6o BISMARCK
Union, but the Elector appealed to the old Diet, and his
cause was supported by Austria, Bavaria and Wiirttemberg.
A Federal execution was ordered. Resistance by Prussia
meant war with Austria and her allies in the Diet, on
behalf of Liberalism in Hesse-Cassel and the Erfurt
Union. Behind Austria stood the Tsar Nicholas i., the"
spirit incarnate of legitimism and the counter-revolution:
The Prussian Court was divided. Many Prussian Con
servatives, including Prince William, the heir to the
throne, were for war. Much as they disliked Liberalism,
their Prussian pride could not brook the humiliation of
surrender to Austria. The Austrian party at the Berlin
Court, however, only desired to destroy the Revolution
and to work with the cause of legitimism at Vienna. War
by Prussia in alliance with Liberalism meant civil war in
Germany, which must end either in the victory of the
Revolution or the destruction of Prussia. Radowitz's
resignation on November 3 proclaimed Prussia's refusal
to take up the challenge of Austria. The Convention of
Olmutz registered the abandonment of the Union and
the acceptance by Prussia of the Austrian ultimatum.
The Austrian School at the Prussian Court had vanquished
alike the conservative Prussian particularists and Liberalism
within and without Prussia.
The final phase ended on May 16, 1851. Austrian
proposals to modify the old Federal Constitution in her
favour failed. To the exile Metternich's joy, the old
Confederation was revived unaltered. The position had
swung back to that in February 1848, with one important
qualification. Prussia accepted a secret alliance with
Austria, by which in return for the maintenance of her
territorial integrity she guaranteed the whole, and not
merely the German part, of the Austrian Empire. The
triumph of Austrianism was complete. The attempt to
unify Germany through revolution and on the -principles
of Liberalism had collapsed. Nationalism had coUapsed
also. When Frederick vii. in 1848 succeeded to the
Danish throne, the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein
demanded joint admission to the Germanic Confederation.
The Duke of Augustenburg, who claimed to be the heir

THE JUNKER POLITICIAN 61
**¦
to the Duchies, was supported by Prussia, whose troops
overran Schleswig. It looked as if the Duchies were to be
won for Germany ; but Prussia (August 26) made the
truce of Malmo with Denmark. Next year, when the
Revolution had failed, the Danes compeUed Prussia, un
supported by the European Powers or by Austria, to with
draw her troops. The Treaty of London of 1852, drawn
up by a European Conference, guaranteed the integrity
'of the Danish Kingdom, provided for the succession to
the Danish Crown, and restored the status quo in the
Duchies. The attempt, which had the enthusiastic sup
port of the Revolution to liberate ' unredeemed ' Ger
many from Danish control, and establish a German
democratic government in the Duchies, had ended
in a complete failure, for which Prussia was largely
responsible. Throughout these three years Bismarck developed a
fiery energy. Fear was not a word to be found in his
dictionary ; his wiU could dispose of an iron physique in
the prime of manhood. From the March days when he
scribbled a note to the King, urging him to stand firm,
he was always ready to organise resistance, or, if need be,
to head a coup d'Etat. He expressed his views with the
brusque and vivid frankness which shocked and puzzled
the courts and diplomatists ' du vieux pantalon,' and was
a blow in the face of the Liberal benches. He was present
in the Marble HaU of the Palace at Potsdam on that grey
March evening in 1848 when Frederick William iv., pale
and exhausted in mind and body, announced to the
assembled officers, waiting for the command of the War-
Lord to clear the rebel canaille from the streets of the
capital, the order for the withdrawal of the troops — a
capitulation to the Revolution. An angry clatter of half-
drawn swords thrust back into the scabbards, and a growl
of indignant mutiny, swept over the haU, ' such as a King
of Prussia in the midst of his officers had never heard
before and, I hope, will never hear again.' Though he
had no part in the memorable Parliament of aU Germany
in the Church of St. Paul at Frankfurt, Bismarck was a
member of the Prussian United Diet, of the Constituent

62 BISMARCK
Assembly, and the National Assembly at Berlin, and of the
Union ParUament at Erfurt. He spoke often, and always
in uncompromising resistance to the Liberal programme. "
He took part in the so-called 'Junker Parliament' of
August 1848— a conference of the Conservative Ultras
organised in a league for defence of king and country. He
was one of the group which founded and wrote for the
Kreuzzeitung, henceforward the leading organ of the
Conservative Party ; throughout he remained in the
closest touch with the Gerlach Circle, the organisers of
the famous CamariUa, the unofficial secret ministry which
utilised the social position of its members and poUtical.
intrigues to undermine every minister tainted with
LiberaUsm, and to force the vaciUating and impressionable
Frederick WiUiam iv. into obedience to the counter
revolution. No member of the Conservative rank and
file worked harder than Bismarck to defeat the Revolution
of the Barricades, the Liberalism of Frankfurt, or the
Union policy of Radowitz. But he remained in the
rank and file. The efforts of the Camarilla to secure
office for him failed. Frederick William recognised the
unimpeachable loyalty of this Junker subject, but to have
given office to this ' red reactionary, smacking of blood,
only to be employed when the bayonet reigns without
reservation,' would have involved a breach with the
Moderates as well as with the Liberals. The King pro
bably saw in Bismarck the representative of the men who
waged a truceless war on every effort to link the destinies
of Prussia with a Germany from which Austria was ex
cluded. The influence of Radowitz was predominant
until Austria made it clear that the King of Prussia must
choose between war and surrender. It is not improbable
that Frederick William justly feared the influence of
Bismarck's resolute wiU on his own obstinate irresolution'.
Nursing to the end the dream of a monarchical Prussia
which should gather in a free union under its eagle wings
the German kings, grand dukes, and landgraves, and build
a golden bridge to meet an imperial and purified Austria,
Frederick William shrank from the pitiless freelance,
master of the flouting phrase that stuck, who amidst

THE JUNKER POLITICIAN 63
courts and national assembhes superheated with sentiment
sought for realities and realities alone.
' I was a terrible Junker in those days,' Bismarck re
marked long after. ' I grant,' he said in 1847, ' that I am
fuU of prejudices ; I sucked them in with my mother's
milk and I cannot argue them away.' It is a trifle, but a
significant one, that in 1 848 he deliberately inserted in his
public and private letters the ' von ' in front of the Bismarck
in his signature, which hitherto he had not used. As
Frederick WiUiam said at Cologne, ' There are kings still
in Germany, and I am one of them,' so Bismarck conveyed
that there were nobles still in Germany and he was one of
them. ' A terrible Junker,' yes, but not an unattractive
one, though he lacked the higher graciousness. His
superb physical vigour, his courage, his love of meat and
drink and tobacco, his power to drink and enjoy the cup of
life to the dregs, a buoyant geniality, and an amazing
frankness, extorted admiration even from his bitterest
opponents. The trenchancy of his principles was matched
by the unrestrained recklessness of his tongue. He re-
veUed in his irresponsibUity and the power to castigate
everything and every one he disliked. ' A handsome,
muscular, and truly noble figure,' is the description of an
eye-witness, ' in which is revealed in every feature the
chivalrous courage and also the refinement of the landed
aristocracy ' ; ' un gaillard avec le diable au corps,' summed
up another critic. He was, in fact, the Bismarck of
Kniephof and the United Diet, battling now in a Ber
serker lust for the fray with Revolution and anti-Prussians.
To be young was good, to be strong was better, to have
your adversary in your power and crush him was best of all.
' Every courtesy,' he told the Liberal von Vincke at the
buffet in the interval of a heated debate, ' every courtesy
as far as the gallows,' and he meant it. The Minister-
President of the 'sixties, who could not sleep because he
was hating aU night, could assuredly boil with passion
and disdain at thirty-two. Yet Schonhausen and his
wife and the children now being born to him, were always
in his mind. He yearned for his manorial hearth, for the
sonatas of Beethoven, when the day's work in the field or

64 BISMARCK
forest was over, and he could smoke his long pipe in the
corner by the great stove. At Erfurt in the spring of 1 851
he would leave the Parliament to despatch tender inquiries
about measles or headaches, to stroU for hours through the
pine woods in the sunshine, watching the birds, noting
the cattle in the field, and reckoning the value of the
timber, or lie smoking countless cigars staring up' at the blue
sky and reflecting that a landowner's life was freer and far
more enjoyable than these accursed politics, made worse
by the nerveless ministers who ought to drink a bottle
of champagne at every meal to give them some courage
and grit.
His political creed was as lucid as the terms in which he
expressed it. It was idle, he said in April 1848, to regret
the March days. The monarchy had itself thrown the
earth on the coffin. He could have had some sympathy,
he remarked, with the Revolution if it had proposed to
plant the German flag on the cathedral of Strasburg ; it
only proposed to fasten on the healthy body of Prussia
the Nessus shirt of Gallican Jacobinism. SimUarly, the
Prussian Constitution of December 5 (limited as it was)
went further than he wished, but it was a free gift from
the Crown, and it must be accepted and worked because it
came from the Crown and not from the gutter. All at
tempts to deduce from it principles contradictory to the un
fettered prerogative of the sovereign were illegitimate, and
must be resisted. Two points he never tired of pressing :
first, the specific and unique character of the Prussian
State ; secondly, its incompatibility with the Liberalism
which would dissolve the historic independence of
Prussia in a mongrel German unity. ' What has held us
together,' he said on September 6, 1849, 'is exactly our
specific Prussianism. It was the residue of the decried
Prussianism which survived the Revolution — I meanme
Prussian army, our Prussian treasure, the fruit of long
years of intelligent administration and the living instru
ment that stands between the Prussian king and his
people. . . . That people from which this army is drawn*
and of which the army is the truest representative, has no
desire to see its Prussian monarchy drowned in the putrid

THE JUNKER POLITICIAN 65
yeast of South German anarchy. . . . We all desire the
Prussian eagle to spread its guardian and governing wings
from the Memel to the Donnersberg, but free will we see
him, not fettered by a new Parliament at Regensburg, not
sheltering under the feathers of the levelling vulture from
Frankfurt. . . . Prussians we are and Prussians we will
remain. I know that I express in these words the creed
of the majority of my countrymen, and I hope to God we
shaU remain Prussians long after this piece of paper has
been forgotten like a withered autumn leaf.' A dozen
similar passages to the same effect could be quoted. Bis
marck rejoiced over the rejection of the Imperial Crown
offered by the Frankfurt National Parliament.
' The phantoms,' he said, ' of the theorists at Frankfurt
have cost us in six months more blood, money and tears
than thirty-three years of despotism. . . . The Frankfurt
Crown may be very brilliant, but the gold which gives
reality to the brilliance must first be won by melting down
the Prussian Crown, and I have no confidence that the
recasting will fit the form of our Prussian Constitution.
My Prussian patriotism and so-called antediluvian point
of view are as precious to me as a refuge from the flood in
Noah's ark.'
' I fear,' he exclaimed, ' the whimpering sentimentality
of our century, which discovers a martyr in every fanatical
rebel and in every discontented fighter at the barricades.'
And he stated his own theory of political government when
he said : —
' History provides us with the most briUiant and grand,
though not the most beneficial, phenomenon in a special*
degree under the mark of absolutism, but we can find more
numerous examples of lasting political prosperity and
power in States subject to the influence of a hereditary
aristocracy . . . the briUiant memories of the German
Empire point to a powerful Imperial nobUity. The
medueval prosperity of our cities began to wither at the
time when the patrician famihes went down before the
pressure of the Guilds . . . England trod a happier path ;
she had no Richelieu who cut off the heads in which a
hereditary wisdom resides to an exceptional degree. The

66 BISMARCK
character of the English Revolution is Freedom, of the
French, Equality . . . French Equality is the wiU-of-the-
wisp, daughter of Envy and Greed, pursued without
success by that richly gifted nation for sixty years through
blood and madness. Let us refuse to join in that pursuit
on the false supposition that it is popular.'
Radowitz's resignation and the coUapse of his policy
fiUed Bismarck with such joy that he danced on his chair
round his room three times. The humiliating convention
of Olmiitz occasioned the most weighty and remarkable
speech he had yet made. Nothing was easier, he pointed
out, than to make war ; but, with an indirect allusion to
Frederick the Great : —
' The one sound basis of a great Power which differen
tiates it essentiaUy from the petty State, is political egoism
and not romanticism, and it is unworthy of a great State
to fight for what is not connected with its interest. . . .
Woe to the statesman who at this time has not sought a
reason for going to war which after the war will no less
stand the test.'
He rejected the idea that honour required Prussia ' to
play the Don Quixote aU over Germany on behalf of
sickly demagogues, who imagined their local constitutions
in danger.' And then he came to close grips with his real
gravamen against the whole policy of the Erfurt Union.
The Union involved nothing less than the destruction
of Prussia's independence, not by the princes, but by the
parliaments of the petty States. A war by Prussia to main
tain the Union could only recall to his mind the English
man who overpowered the sentinel in order that he might
vindicate the right of every free Briton to commit suicide
in the sentry-box.
In this speech Bismarck, for all its lucid trenchancy of
expression, was groping his way to settled principles of
foreign poUcy. It was not the interest of Prussia to fight
' as the shameful ally of democracy ' against Austria : she
could attain her objects by co-operation with, not by
opposition to, Austria, and the identity of Prussian and
Austrian interests made war unjustifiable in 1850. Bis
marck was also answering in advance the critics who have

THE JUNKER POLITICIAN 67
urged that twenty years later it was this same Bismarck
who practically carried out Radowitz's programme — the
unification of North Germany under Prussia's presidency
—and only carried it out at the price Radowitz was not
aUowed to pay in 1850, war with Austria and her allies,
the German kingdoms. The criticism ignores the deep-
seated grounds of Bismarck's opposition to Radowitz's
policy. In 1850, Prussia's one possible ally was Liberalism
in Germany : a Prussian victory would be not a victory
for Prussia's independence and position as a great state,
but for Liberalism. The Liberals, not Prussia, would give
the law to Prussia and Germany. But war was only a
continuance of policy — a policy based on specific Prussian
interests — to enable Prussia to establish the relations on
which she wished to live in peace with her neighbours and
rivals. The last thing that the Bismarck of 1850 or of
1866 desired or regarded as a real Prussian interest, was
the triumph of Liberalism. Moreover, in 1850 Radowitz,
in Bismarck's judgment, miscalculated. Behind Austria
and her German allies stood the sinister strength of a
Russia which had struck down Hungary, and was about to
impose its will in Schleswig-Holstein. Across the Rhine
was a revolutionary France, ready to intervene. In 1866
France's neutrality had been secured, a crippled Russia
was benevolently neutral, Italy was Prussia's ally. A vic
torious Prussia would annex Schleswig-Holstein and more.
In brief, between the statecraft of Radowitz and that of
Bismarck there was no identity in temper, methods,
principles, or aims. The two men interpreted the interest
of Prussia and of Germany as differently as two opposed
minds could.
In 1850, his whole argument hinged on the conten
tion that the Union of Erfurt was a step in the wrong
direction, and rested on the fundamental and explicit
assumption that the historic Prussia could secure ' her
interests and her honour ' by the loyal co-operation of
Austria and Prussia. The words were Bismarck's, but the
voice was the voice of the Gerlachs and the cosmopolitan
Conservatives who saw in a renewed Holy Alliance with
Austria the salvation of Prussia and the defeat of the

68 BISMARCK
Revolution. In 1850 ' the terrible Junker ' had not pene
trated to the heart either of Germany or of Austria, nor had
he defined for himself, except in a superficial and conven
tional way, ' the interest, the egoism ' which ought to be
the sole basis of Prussian policy. But, as yet, he was not
aware that his knowledge was very limited and his inter
pretation shallow and retarding.
GeneraUy for Germany, the restoration of the old Diet
in 1 85 1 registered two decisive defeats — the defeat of the
Revolution, and of Prussia. Liberalism in alliance with
Nationalism set out, through revolution, to achieve uni
fication, and to create a truly federal organisation with
democratic and responsible parliamentary government,
under an imperial and limited monarchy, the whole de
fined and embodied in a written constitution. The
Liberal majority in the National Assembly at Frankfurt had
rejected the programme of Radical Republicanism. It had
also rejected the programme of the Great German Party
(Gross-Deutschland). The German provinces of Austria,
included in the old Bund, were excluded. The organi
sation of the excluded Austria was left to Austria, and the
political and fiscal relations between the new German
Empire (Klein-Deutschland) and the reconstituted Austrian
Empire were reserved for later diplomatic arrangements.
But the authors of the Constitution of 1848 contemplated
not merely a political alliance, but a spiritual and moral
union wider and deeper than the formal bargain of a
treaty — the creation of a central Germanic Europe, finding
its expression in the material framework of constitutional
and economic organisation, and guaranteed by a com
munity of purpose in the inteUectual and political life of
two self-governing and democratic empires.
This comprehensive scheme, the work of high-minded
and able men, was a noble and imaginative effort in con
structive statesmanship, which bears the stamp of the
idealism and an inspiring belief in the capacities of a race
for achieving salvation when men buUd on the uplands,
and not the lowlands, of human endeavour. What con
structive statesmanship, indeed, has ever achieved per
manent results on the theory that the spiritual and in-

THE JUNKER POLITICIAN 69
teUectual consciousness of nationhood can be satisfied or
stifled by economic and material well-being alone f Had
the unification of 1848 been given a fair trial it would
have moulded the German mind and directed German
destinies and ambitions into paths of self-development
of incalculable benefit to Germany and the world.
Its failure was a tragedy for German and European
civUisation. That failure is commonly ascribed to the academic
amateurism of its authors, who wasted their time in thresh
ing out fundamental rights when apparently they should
have been cutting off heads or shooting down opposition,
or lynching the King of Prussia. Such criticism is really
amateur, Philistine, and ignorant of what revolution by
Liberal methods from an old to a new system implies. As
if the task of devising a federal unification of the Germany
of 1848 and of solving the German problem could have
been accompUshed by any brain or any action in a few
weeks, least of aU by force.
In 1866, Bismarck with the experience of 1848 and
twenty years of earnest constructive thought by many
brains at his disposal, with Austria and her German allies
prostrate, with a Prussian monarch whoUy on his side and
a victorious Prussian army at his beck and call, took ten
months to work out, impose and bring into operation a
unification, not of all Germany, but of the north alone —
and Bismarck had been preparing for the task for four
unrelenting years.
The remarkable feature of 1848, in reality, was the
rapidity with which in the smoke and dust of a bewildering
revolution the liberal majority hammered out by argument
and under the conditions of government by public meeting,
a scheme of unification that probed deeper and was more
complete than the constitution of 1867. The men who
could accomplish that, in spite of their lack of training in
public affairs, were not unfitted to be leaders and teachers
in self-government, or to make the policy and control the
destinies of a great nation.
What they did lack was an army and the executive
organs of government, and before they could create them

yo BISMARCK
they were crushed not by Germany, nor the princes, but
by Russia and Austria — the two foreign States to which
Liberahsm and Nationalism, as Germans understood them,
were anathema. The hero of the reaction was Nicholas i.,
without whose aid Schwarzenberg and Windischgratz
could not have mastered Prague and Vienna, nor dictated
the surrenders of Vilagos, Olmiitz, and Novara. Liberal
ism went down. Radical Republicanism does not appear
again as a force to be reckoned with, except perhaps in
sporadic and convulsive efforts in Wurttemberg. But
Liberalism was not kiUed, neither was its twin, Nationalism.
The defeat and failure of Prussia — also at the hands of
Russia and Austria — was the second outstanding fact in
1 85 1. Prussia, unlike the Liberals of Frankfurt, had both
an army and executive organs of government. Unlike
Austria and almost every other German State, she had not
been mastered by the Revolution. The strength of the
monarchy and the grip of the royal autocracy on the army
and the governing class were as convincingly revealed, as
after the disaster of Jena. But from the March Days until
Olmiitz Prussia was hopelessly divided. The Liberals
under G. von Vincke, the Moderate Conservatives under
Brandenburg, the Constitutionalists led by Radowitz,
the Junker Camarilla, under the Gerlachs, the Militarists
thirsting for a coup d'Etat in the manner of Schwarzenberg,
Windischgratz and Haynau, the pure Particularists exem-
pUfied in Prince WiUiam, ' the Cartridge Prince,' the heir
to the throne, to whom first and foremost Prussia was a
Grossmacht, which must fight for honour and independence,
the Poles in Prussian Poland crying out for national inde
pendence, the clericals from the Rhenish districts to whom
the secular omnipotence of the autocracy was as dangerous
as the secular atheism of the Revolution, and the Com
munists of the Vorw'drts, founded by Karl Marx from
Prussian Trier and Engels from Prussian Barmen— the
men who created both the sociahsm of LassaUe and Bebel
— aU these whirled in vortices of varying strength round
the King, who could have led if he could have made up his
mind, or could have been deprived of a mind to make up.
But Frederick WUliam persistently refused either to frame

THE JUNKER POLITICIAN 71
a policy for himself or to carry through a policy ready-
made by any one else. The result was that Prussia failed
to satisfy any single party at home, or the German dynas
ties and Austria without. The monarchical state cut a
sorry figure in the March Days, in the Schleswig-Holstein
fiasco, in the imposition of a badly drafted, inconsistent,
and mongrel constitution, in the refusal of the Imperial
Crown, in the hasty and iU-prepared Union schemes, in
the Hesse-Cassel business, in the desertion of Radowitz,
in the defiance of, and undignified surrender to, Austria at
Olmiitz. Prussia, in short, failed everybody in turn, and
aU parties had to drink of the bitter cup that her monarch
ceaselessly brewed. Her prestige both at home and abroad
had sunk to a low level, and the fall was not arrested in
1851. These three years had, moreover, laid bare three impres
sive facts : the categorical refusal of Austria to allow
Prussia either to usurp the Austrian leadership or to exer
cise an independent initiative in a hmited and defined
German sphere, the jealousy and fear of Prussia felt by the
middle States in particular, the appeal to Prussia, as the
sole hope, by aU to whom the old system was intolerable.
All three were the expression of forces and ambitions,
separate in their origin and ends from the struggle between
Liberalism and Conservatism, or between the ideals of the
national and the dynastic and territorial State. Hanover,
Bavaria, Wiirttemburg, and Saxony — the four kingdoms
— did not take up and then desert the scheme of the Erfurt
Union from fear of Liberalism or attachment to Conser
vatism. The denunciation of Prussia as aiming at a
League of Secession (Sonderbund) was made, curiously
enough, in the name of German unity — unity through
the dynasties — but Austria and the middle States increas
ingly felt that the Union would only end as the ZoUverein
had done, in an organisation controUed by its most power
ful member. While Bismarck saw in the scheme the stain
of a sinister surrender to democracy, the Four Kingdoms
saw in it the sinister supremacy of the mUitarist police
State of Prussia — an instrument for mediatising the poli
tical independence of the sovereign princedoms ; and the

72 BISMARCK
truculent pride of Prussian Junkertum was more terrifying
than the leveUing doctrines of Prussian Liberals and South
German Democrats. It was not only on the Liberal benches
of the Landtag that Bismarck's stark Prussianism was
neither forgiven nor forgotten, and his defiant prediction
that the day would come when Prussian Junkertum would
justify its claims, was not a day desired at Dresden, Munich,
Herrenhausen, and Stuttgart — least of aU at Vienna. The
Liberals had turned a suppliant appeal for Prussia's
strength. To the profound rehef of the middle States
and of Austria, Prussia refused to fight either for herself
or for anybody else. She meekly agreed to re-enter the
restored confederation, and to accept as a principle of
conduct that co-operation with Austria, which since 1815
had been simply a euphemism for subordination and self-
effacement. The Austrians and the middle States miscalculated,
because they ignored the Revolution and its results. The
Prussia that re-entered the dynastic famUy party, termed
the Federal Diet at Frankfurt, was not the Prussia of 1847.
Since 1851 Prussia had a written constitution, a Parliament
of Two Houses, a franchise, if a restricted one, a budget
which had to be voted by the Lower House, even if she
had not been given a ministry responsible to the Landtag.
In a word, she had the organs through which the consti
tutional party could organise, develop, and focus the shat
tered Liberalism of 1848 and link it up with the shattered
Liberahsm from the Memel to the Donnersberg. And
neither the CamarUla nor the Haynaus, neither the Stahls of
the Kreuzzeitung, nor a Schwarzenberg, nor a Bach could
prevent the Prussian inteUectuals from thinking, or could
muzzle the Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit — the freedom to
teach and to learn — of the universities, or prohibit men
like Gneist, Sybel, Virchow, Vincke, Forckenbeck, Unruh,
from working and corresponding with a Bennigsen, a
Roggenbach, a von der Pfordten, a Bassermann, or a
Stockmar in Hanover, Bavaria, Baden and Coburg. More
dangerous stiU, they could not keep even the Junkers from
reading and thinking, and one Junker in particular, Otto
von Bismarck-Schonhausen.

THE JUNKER POLITICIAN 73
It was no less a miscalculation to infer that the Euro
pean situation would retain the features of 1848-51 — a
happy and ' healthy ' antipathy to revolution and a magic
power to re-estabhsh reaction, that Russian absolutism
would invariably be proof against Austrian ingratitude
and treachery, that Italy would fail to produce a states
man, and always end in a Novara, that the young and new
Emperor of Austria, Francis Joseph, would exchange dy
nastic selfishness for wisdom, that Prussia would always be
governed by a Frederick WUUam iv. and a Manteuffel, and
be hypnotised by a CamariUa, and that the Eastern Ques
tion and Schleswig-Holstein would not again trouble the
Chancelleries. Liberalism and Nationalism were like the
gout, always causing local pains, neglect or mistreatment
of which would drive them into attacking the heart.
In May 185 1, Germany could read that his Majesty the
King of Prussia had been pleased to appoint Herr von
Bismarck-Schonhausen to be Councillor of Legation, and
on July 15 to be the Prussian federal representative and
plenipotentiary, at the Frankfurt Diet. Germany knew
little and cared less about the revived Diet. It was on the
point of forgetting Bismarck. That an irreconcilable
Junker should represent reactionary Prussia in the obsolete
Federal Diet was in the nature of things. The making of
a statesman who would solve the German problem was the
last result Germany looked for from Junkertum, Prussia,
and Frankfurt.

CHAPTER III
THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN, 1 851-1862
§ 1. Bismarck at Frankfurt, 1851-1859
The eleven years from May 1851, when Bismarck was sent
to Frankfurt, to September 1 862, when he became Minister-
President of Prussia, are not great years in the history of
Prussia, but they are great years in the history of Europe,
in which the stage was prepared for the drama in which
Bismarck made himself the leading figure. In the de
velopment of his personality, the crystallisation of the
principles of his statecraft, they are the central, critical,
and decisive period.
Emphasis of this conclusion does not imply that in 1862,
when this second phase ended, Bismarck had already
reached the mastery of technique and the maturity of ex
perience and conviction which high and responsible office
alone could consummate ; nor that in 1862 his develop
ment was arrested and that he had nothing more to learn ;
stiU less that he came into power with a cut-and-dried
programme, and merely required the opportunity and the
poUtical authority to carry it out. Such a conclusion
would ignore the opportunism, which he rightly and
proudly regarded as one of the most conspicuous features
— one of the tikes mattresses of his statecraft — and rob of all
significance another and no less justifiable claim that he
was a learner all his life.
The results of this decade must be sought in the
subtle, gradual, but profound changes in Bismarck him
self. They can only be measured by comparing the man
who went to Frankfurt with the man who deliberate^
accepted the challenge that the Minister-Presidency
thrust upon him in 1862. Frankfurt provided the

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 75
indispensable experience for interpreting the full signi
ficance of the German problem for Germany and Prussia.
The ministerial posts at Petersburg and Paris enabled him
to complete the experience by correlating it to the know
ledge of the political conditions of the European situation.
This knowledge of the tides, rocks, shallows, and winds he
had hitherto conspicuously lacked. To-day we are able
to trace from original and unimpeachable sources the
process of its acquisition and the sediment of conviction
that it slowly deposited. By 1862 he had decided that
there was a German, and not merely a Prussian, problem
to be solved ; that the negative and defensive Junkertum
of 1848-51 would not do, and that Prussia must find a
Prussian solution that was also applicable to Germany.
A new diplomacy, new principles of action, a new atti
tude of mind, and a new interpretation of Prussia's interest
therefore, were imperatively required to rescue her from
the blunders of the past and the menace of the future —
surrender to Liberalism or surrender to Austria.
Last and not least, the man Bismarck became inspired
with the ambition to devise and execute the new policy.
The growth, scope, and quality of a man's ambition are
always as decisive as the increase of his knowledge and the
development of his intellectual powers. In 1862, Bis
marck had attained the supreme conviction that he could
both save his beloved Prussia and solve the German pro
blem, and that no one else could do both. Character and
creed harmonised in a final union.
The European framework throughout this critical, phase
of development is important. In 185 1, the coup d'Etat at
Paris and the proclamation of the Empire in the following
year made a violent rupture in the stratification of Europe.
Henceforward the seismographs of the Chancelleries were
nervously watched for the red record of further upheavals
that would test the stability of every State. The advent
of Cavour to office and the inauguration of the Risorgi-
mento at Turin, were even more important than the down-
faU of the French RepubUc and the inauguration of the
neo-Csesarism at Paris, but ' the man of December,' the
sphinx without a secret, held Europe spell-bound. The

76 BISMARCK
greatness and significance of Cavour were ignored or under
rated and misinterpreted untU his death revealed what
Italy and Europe had lost. The watershed of the nine
teenth century was, in fact, crossed in the Crimean War,
in which the sound British fear of Russian autocracy and
of the terrorism of Europe by Nicholas i. leaped into
flame. The struggle between a Liberal West and the
Russia of 1854, fought out in the Crimea, not merely in
volved Great Britain and Russia in bitter antagonism for
two generations, but thrust the Near Eastern Question
into a prominence that it never again lost ; it broke up
the entente between Austria and Russia ; it brought Great
Britain and Italy together, and, curiously enough, made
an Anglo-French entente very difficult to maintain. Most
important as an immediate result was the cripphng of
Russia's strength and ability to buttress up the monarchies,
legitimism and autocracy of Central Europe ; the Crimean
War, the Treaty of Paris, the death of Nicholas 1., and the
internal situation in Russia deprived Alexander 11. of the
desire or the capacity to repeat the policy of his inflexible
predecessor. At the Congress of Paris the diplomatic salute was taken
by Napoleon in., though Cavour compelled the nervous
diplomatists of 1856 to recognise that the Italian Question
was a malady, caUing for surgery, and not for opiates and
soothing poultices. Every Foreign Office in Europe, in
cluding that of the Vatican, was now ruefuUy aware that
the Near Eastern Question brought the Habsburg dynasty,
ruling over its mosaic of denationalised and submerged
races, in whom the memories of 1848 continued suUenly
to glow, into irreconcilable coUision with Russia. No
Foreign Office was more painfuUy aware than that of the
Vatican (except, perhaps, the series of distracted ministers
who came, tried and failed at the BaU-Platz in Vienna)
that the Italian Question opened up issues far wider and of
deeper import than maintenance of the Treaties of 1815,
the continuance of the Austrian flag on the citadel at
Milan and on the Piazza di San Marco at Venice, or the
barbarism of a Bomba at Naples. Ultramontanism was
the weapon of the Papacy, and was rightly so named, for

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 77
its strength lay beyond the Western Alps, where it had
planted itself in the Tuileries, and had its unofficial legate,
the Empress, at the table and couch of the Emperor ;
beyond the Northern Alps, its roots were deep in the
separatist and clerical Bavaria, in the mediaeval ' Priests'
AUey ' of the Main, in Rhenish Prussia, and in Prussian
Poland, whose nobles rubbed shoulders with the Prussian
Junkers in the cabinet of the King, and whose ladies whis
pered in the drawing-room of the Queen of Prussia.
Across the Eastern Alps, in the city of St. Stephen, what
more devoted son was there than the Habsburg who was
Apostolical King of Hungary ? In these years the offen
sive strategy was being constructed that leads from the
Proclamation of the Immaculate Conception of the
Blessed Virgin in 1854 to the Syllabus of 1864 and the
Vatican Decrees of 1870.
Liberalism and Nationalism, in their slow, but steady
renaissance from the debacle of 1 848, had the constructive
and reconstructed reply of the counter-Reformation to
reckon with sooner or later. Prussia had already crossed
swords with the claims of the Roman Catholic Church as
a cosmopolitan organisation in her Rhenish Provinces in
the decade between 1830 and 1840, and had failed to
secure a decision in favour of the omnipotent and secular
State. The Kulturkampf oi 1873 lay, not in the logic of
history so much as in the logic of the humanist mind, once
Austria and Austrianism had been overthrown and the
Tuileries were in flames, Napoleon an exile at Chislehurst
and the Bourbons nerveless emigre's at Frohsdorf . Liberal
ism, Nationalism, and Prussianism in combination made
the Kulturkampf a foregone conclusion. But it was
Cavour, the Risorgimento, and the Liberal unification of
Italy — with the Rome of the Papacy omitted, but depen
dent henceforward on the stability of the Second Empire
— that opened the battle by chaUenging the alleged right
of an ecclesiastical sovereign to bar the consummation of
Nationalism in a modern State.
The compact of Plombieres led to the Annus MirabiUs
of 1859. Magenta and Solferino, despite ViUa Franca,
foUowed by Garibaldi's expedition of The Thousand, and

78 BISMARCK
the coUapse of the dynasties in Italy, set every Liberal and
Nationalist pulse beating feverishly throughout Europe.
At Kiel and Rendsburg, in the Duchies of Schleswig-
Holstein, at Posen, Warsaw, Cracow, and Lemberg in dis
membered Poland, at Bucharest and Jassy in the Danubian
principalities, at Buda-Pesth in Hungary, no less than in
the universities and capital of a federated but disunited
Germany, the vital spark of faith and hope burned in reply
to the beacons lit in Turin, Florence, and Palermo.
' Italy's year ' coincided with a change of sovereign at
Berlin, when Prince William became regent for his brother
(October 26, 1858), and with the advent of a Liberal
Ministry in Great Britain, whose action quietly but de
cisively checkmated an Austrian counter-stroke against
the unification of the Itahan South with the North.
The intellectual movement was no less impressive. It
was the period when the modern mind of the nineteenth
century was being made. The year 1859 is memorable for
Darwin's Origin of Species, but between the years 1854
and 1870 the annals of Europe are studded with famous
names and remarkable achievements in every department
of inteUectual and imaginative effort — Tennyson, Brown
ing, Swinburne, Stubbs, Herbert Spencer, Carlyle, Lister,
Clerk-MaxweU and the Pre-Raphaelites in England,
Pasteur, Victor Hugo, Taine, Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve and
the Barbizon School in France ; Virchow, Helmholtz,
Mommsen, Sybel, Droysen, Wagner, Brahms and Karl
Marx in Germany. And if the United States had done
nothing but produce Abraham Lincoln, Grant and Lee,
it had accomplished much. Had the United States not
proclaimed in memory of ' its honoured dead . . . that we
here highly resolve . . . that government of the people, by
the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth' ?
Europe since 1849 had been gripped in the years of
Arctic reaction. Warm water was once more steadily
flowing beneath the frozen surface, and great fissures
were now cracking through ; the floes, loosened and
sapped from beneath were grinding, packing, breaking
away, and toppling over. ' The God of battles,' Bismarck
had predicted in 1849, ' would throw the iron dice that

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 79
would decide.' The first casts of those iron dice had been
thrown at Inkerman, the Malakoff Redoubt, and at
Solferino. Prussia since 1851 had endured a drab and fatigued re
action, administered by timid and second-rate ministers.
The hand of the police and the Minister of the Interior
was heavy on personal liberty, the freedom of the press,
and everything and everybody suspected of Liberal views,
which were identified with revolution. But, despite
every discouragement, the constitutional Liberals retained
their hold on the middle class, and in the Lower House of
the Landtag they consolidated a critical and earnest oppo
sition, which in both sections of the party — the Moderates
and the Radicals — was affihated by a common programme
with Liberalism in Hanover, the Saxon principalities,
Baden, and the more democratic South. As in Italy under
the Risorgimento official Liberalism, though without office
quietly shed the idea of reform by revolution.
The dividing lines in the opposition to the dominant
system were determined rather by the differences between
a moderate Liberalism and a drastic Radicahsm ; the old
revolutionary party was substituting economic Socialism
for political Jacobinism, finding its inspiration not in the
school of Mazzini, but in that of Marx, and transforming
the struggle for political rights into the class war, the piti
less contest of an exploited industrial proletariat against
the organisation of society under capitalist direction and
for capitalist ends. Constitutional Liberalism tended more
and more to be the creed of a middle class, the importance
of which was enhanced by economic development ; it
steadily- aimed not at overthrowing the dynasties but at
converting them, at victory by persuasion and moral pene
tration, at unification by agreement expressed through
aU the organs of the national life, the universities, the
parliaments, the press, the machinery of parties, and an
irresistible public opinion, disciplined into the possession
of a common wiU. It was this programme and method on
which Bismarck poured contempt.
Frederick WiUiam iv., who had never owned a wiU, was
now rapidly losing his mind. The Regency of 1858 under

80 BISMARCK
Prince WiUiam, inaugurated the ' new era.' The repres
sive internal administration was relaxed : a ministry with
strong Liberal leanings under Prince Anthony of Hohen
zoUern was formed ; and on August 14, 1859, the German
National Union, founded by Bennigsen of Hanover, issued
from Eisenach an authoritative programme for the united
constitutional and democratic parties. It demanded a
national and independent German foreign policy, a strong
and constitutional central administration for the whole
of Germany in the place of the Diet ; and, most significant
of all, it insisted that this Central Power, vested with mili
tary and diplomatic control, must be in the hands of
Prussia, and that the initiative to establish it must come
from Prussia. All Liberals and Democrats were urged
henceforward to work for the establishment of German
unity on a constitutional basis under Prussian direction
and control — a Prussia to be Liberalised by its assumption
of the directorship.
The Nationalist passion, vibrating, in this remarkable
document, is no less noticeable than its stress on constitu
tional rights. In 1 859, Liberalism and Nationalism looked
with eager hope to the Prussia of the ' new era.' Two
appointments, however, might have given pause to all
' who dreamed of the Prussian army as an instrument for
~*the Eisenach programme. In 1857, General von Moltke
had been appointed Chief of the General Staff — though
not yet the important office it subsequently became — and
Albrecht von Roon, the intimate friend of Bismarck, and
an- unflinching Conservative, replaced (1859) tne Liberal
jGeneral Bonin as Minister of War. Moltke, though the
prubUc did not know it yet, was the ablest of the Clause
witz School. Roon as a minister regarded himself as the
Greek horse introduced by Providence into the Liberal
Troy. And he was determined, like our George 11., to
keep the army free from the interference of the scoundrels
in the House of Commons.
The National Union concentrated public attention on
the urgency of national unification, the abolition of the
Federal Diet, and a national and united foreign pohcy in
view of the danger from France and the attitude of Austria.

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 81
The cry from Schleswig-Holstein was becoming louder
every year. What the Danubian principalities were to the
Eastern Question the Duchies were to the German pro
blem. They concentrated the local malady in a European
framework, and no single European Power could move
without tripping over treaties and conventions, and with
out stirring the jealousy and fear of every other Power.
The Danish Radicals at Copenhagen were bent, like the
Subhme Porte, on playing off the Powers against each
other, and by the equilibrium of a skilfuUy poised selfish
ness achieving their own ends. Bennigsen, Duncker,
Brockhaus, and the other distinguished signatories of the
Eisenach Programme agreed with the diplomatist who
said that the reform of the Diet was like cutting off the
hump on a hunchback — fatal to the hunchback and useless
to the surgeon. By ending and not mending could Ger
many alone obtain a truly national and vigorously executed
foreign policy on behalf of German interests. When the
National Union traced the root of all difficulties to Vienna
they went to the heart of the matter.
Amongst the bad sleepero of Europe none slept so badly
as Francis Joseph, and on his dynastic bed the Habsburg
ruler threshed restlessly from left to right and from right
to left, and could find no repose. Within his dominions
it was indeed constitutions, counter-constitutions, recon-
stitutions, order, counter-order, disorder. The Crimean
War placed Austria at the parting of the ways ; the com
pact of Plombieres and the war of 1859 aggravated the
dUemma. The retention of her supremacy in Italy con
flicted with the retention of her presidency in Germany ;
jealousy of Prussia demanded an understanding with
France ; Milan and Venetia involved her in war with
Turin and Napoleon ; she broke with Russia in order to
keep in close touch with the Western Powers and prevent
a Russian protectorate of the Danubian principalities and
the Balkans ; but German Nationalism demanded oppo
sition to France : the middle German States expected
Austria to save them from a Prussian hegemony ; German
Liberahsm called for the abolition of the Bund and the Diet,
and would only support Austria if she made concessions

82 BISMARCK
fatal to her control in Germany and suicidal in Italy and
Hungary. ' There is only one statesman in Europe,'
Metternich had said in 1856, ' M. de Cavour, and he is
against us.' Cavour was the most briUiant and effective
Liberal statesman in Europe since Canning : his death in
1 86 1 was a tragic blow to the whole cause of Liberalism
on the Continent ; and it came at the unhappy moment
when Liberalism in Germany needed genius outside
Germany as an ally. RusseU and Palmerston were not a
compensation for Cavour. Nor did Cavour's death bring
relief to Austria. Had Metternich lived to 1 861 he might
have repeated his judgment : ' There is only one states
man in Europe, Herr von Bismarck, and he is against us.'
Bismarck asserted more than once that when he went to
Frankfurt in May 185 1, he was 'an Austrian with the
political views that I brought, so to speak from my home,
sharpened by the struggle with the attacks of the Revo
lution of 1848 against principles that I valued ' ; and he
maintained that his personal political convictions coin
cided with his official instructions in the determination to
carry out the policy outlined in his Olmiitz speech (p. 66).
Prussia was to accept the presidential authority of Austria,
and to co-operate loyally on terms of equality with Austria
in aU German affairs, on the basis of common Conservative
principles with common Conservative ends. The char
acter of this union and the calculable results of its efficacy
reconciled him to the ' surrender ' involved in the Con
vention of Olmiitz. But Bismarck in 1851 was not an
' Austrian ' in the sense that he was prepared to sacrifice
the interest of Prussia to Austrian supremacy. His
Prussian Junkertum and the unlimited independence of his
own personality would have forbidden the surrender, even
if he had not clearly indicated that the egoism and interest
of Prussia must be the sole basis of her policy. Equality
with Austria within the Diet was an essential for Prussia ;
she was not a Hanover, a Saxony, or a Bavaria, stUl less a
Baden or a Hesse-Cassel.
The eight years at Frankfurt were for Bismarck a period
of continuous disillusion and enlightenment — disiUusion
as to the interpretation that Austria placed on the co-

iriri MAKING OF A STATESMAN 83
operation of Prussia, enlightenment as to the principles
which Austrian policy implied. The successors of,
Schwarzenberg at Vienna, not unnaturally, calculated on
the humiliated Prussia of 185.1. Austria lived in the past
because it was impossible to live for a new future without
jettisoning the only principles that kept the Empire of
Francis Joseph together. But the Ball-Platz did not
reckon on Bismarck. As early as 1851 a dispatch to Berlin
struck a note of warning. Bismarck was at the outset in
ferior to the Austrian representatives in knowledge of the
ground and in technique ; he had not at his disposal the
public or personal prestige, the machinery and the count
less levers — ultramontane, dynastic, Conservative, and
social — by which Austria, entrenched in an historic ascend
ancy, worked the middle and petty States to her will.
The two famous incidents of the cigar and the shirt
sleeves delighted all the gossip-mongers of the higher dip
lomacy. Hitherto, no one but ' Austria ' dared smoke at
the meetings ; but Bismarck lit his cigar at once, and before
long even the petty States foUowed his example. Re
ceived by Count von Thurn in his shirt-sleeves, Bismarck
puUed off his coat. ' I agree,' he said, ' it is a hot day.'
These were trifles, but precious trifles. What was more
important was the thoroughness with which he mastered
his new profession. As with agriculture so with diplo
macy, he was determined to penetrate to the heart of the
business. ' No human being,' he wrote to his wife, ' not
even the most mahcious sceptic of a democrat, would'
believe the charlatanry and imposture hidden in this
Diplomacy.' His power of work was inexhaustible ; his
physique responded to any strain he chose to put on it,
and his brains were far superior to those of his rivals. It
is clear from his official reports, written with a verve, vivid
ness, and command of the subject-matter that have made
them classical documents in German history, and from
his private correspondence, that he was reading, studying
and reflecting on much outside his official duties.
Frankfurt was not an education in itself ; most of Bis
marck's contemporaries there learned little that they did
not know already, and most of which was useless, or forgot

84 BISMARCK
what they had already learned ; but Bismarck by self-
imposed toU turned the sand of routine into 'the gold
of poUtical experience. He studied everything — men,
women, machinery. His dispatches are fiUed with vivid
vignettes— penetrating miniature and character sketches
of the diplomatists who made the Frankfurt world — de
scriptions of a ball or a reception, in which he wiU note how
-the celebrated actress, Henrietta Sontag, now the Countess
Rossi, has improved her face-powder since he saw her in
Berlin ; or, with brief scorn, point out that the morals of
this or that figure in their society offends his German
standards. Bismarck knew that whatever v the malicious
gossip of idle and irresponsible tongues might say of him
self or his political methods his private life and personal
probity were invulnerable. His zeal and industry set him
tracking down Austrian intrigues in hidden bypaths and
the green-rooms of the political stage. It was at Frank
furt that he learned to look for the ubiquitous and secret
hand of clerical and ultramontane wire-puUers, and to
understand how public opinion could be manipulated
through newspapers, if skilfully worked. This side of his
activities laid bare many sordid secrets, and the acquisition
and the experience weakened his belief — never very
strong — in human nature. The marked contempt of later
years for the sincerity of public opinion, for newspapers,
for journalists, who could always be bought, for aU the
dark magic of an official press bureau, for diplomatic re
connaissances by the circulation of lies, for lashing up
public sentiment by dictated paragraphs inserted in
avowedly independent journals — the whole sinister and
dirty stock-in-trade that .exploited the servility and cun
ning of a Busch or subsidised with appropriated funds a
Counter-Reptile-Press — aU this can be traced to his
Frankfurt period. The vengeance that a poUcy of reality
— Realfolitik — exacts from its disciples is the necessity of
using an unclean world as it would use you, and of assum
ing that the psychology of a nation is that of Tammany
HaU. Yet unquestionably as Bismarck was tainted and
degraded by the development of the coarser and more
brutal fibres in his autocratic personality, he never him-

. THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 85
self mistook intrigue for diplomacy, nor made the coining
of phrases a substitute for a policy. He evinced at Frank
furt one of the most striking and permanent of his char
acteristics. Passionate by nature, with a nervous system
that strung itself beyond the pitch of every affair or crisis,
he always remained uncannily cool in thought. His brain
worked as if packed in ice, when feeling within was red-hot^
and the words were ready to flow, like lava.
He enjoyed his life, and he enjoyed his work, which
sharpened and heightened his physical appetites. Motley,
his Gottingen friend, has described the large and generous
geniality of the Bismarcks' house in Frankfurt — the un
assuming but lavish hospitality, the freedom of the house
where the guest became a member of the family, incited to
caU for meat and drink in any quantities at any hour, the
chUdren running in and out or sprawhng on the floor,
books, papers, music, flowers, scattered about, the hostess
smiUng and self-possessed, and her lord striding in and
out, sitting up half the night at his desk, yet as alert and
buoyant as if he had slept the clock round, always ready
to eat, drink, smoke, discuss politics or the merits of North
or South German cattle, dream through a Beethoven
sonata, or swim in the summer moonUght in the Main.
In a word, the German domesticities set in the atmosphere
of the grand manner. Bismarck did not have to pose in
order to be the aristocrat who belonged to a class born and
bred to command.
His travels were partly official, but largely voluntary.
In three years he saw most parts of non-Prussian Germany.
We find him at Darmstadt, Cassel, Hanover, Dresden and
Munich ; he was twice in Vienna, stayed in Ostend, bathed
on the North German coasts, toured in Northern Italy,
and paid two visits (in 1855 and in 1857) to Paris. He
invariably met the men who had made, or were about
to make, the Europe of his day, and formed his judgment
on their ability and nerve. Gortschakov, Beust, Bach,
Schmerling, Rechberg, the Duke of Augustenburg, Prince
William at Coblenz, Persigny, Napoleon in., and many
others came into the record. He presented himself to
the ex-chancellor, Metternich, at Johannisberg, and the

86 BISMARCK
Princess notes both her own and her husband's pleasure
at the wit and sound Conservative principles of the tall and
soldierly Prussian noble. It was fitting that the veteran
Austrian who had known aU the great men of a wonderful
past should place the wasted hand of the old diplomacy
in the relentless grasp of the new. In that polished
drawing-room, haunted by the ghosts of vanished empires
and the fair women whom its owner had loved and lost,
the Imperial ChanceUor to come paid his homage to the
Imperial ChanceUor faUen and an exile, and listened with
cynical deference to the political wisdom of ' a garrulous
old gentleman.' Cavour was the one European statesman
of the first rank whom Bismarck never met. An Imagin
ary Dialogue between the Minister-President of Sardinia
and the Prussian Plenipotentiary at Frankfurt, with
Austria and Liberalism as its theme, would be a fitting
tribute to Landor. But Napoleon in. he had already
come to know at the Tuileries. They were to meet often,
these two, between 1855 and 1870, and for the last time
at the weaver's cottage on the Donchery road on the grey
morrow after Sedan.
Bismarck's interest in the home politics of Prussia
steadily evaporated. He fought a duel with G. von
Vincke, and presently dechned re-election for the Lower
House ; and though in 1854 ^e was created by the King a
member of the Upper House (Herrenhaus), he did not
often attend its debates. The growing alienation from
the creed and methods of Kreuzzeitung and Gerlach Con
servatism completed his reluctance to waste his nights on
countless cigars in stuffy trains to and from Berlin. Not
in Prussia under Manteuffel were the lessons and the
reahties of life to be found. One official task after another
was laid upon his shoulders. He endeavoured, but with
out success, to persuade the Diet to accept and guarantee
the Protocol of 1852, which settled for ten years the fate
of Schleswig-Holstein, and which Bismarck himself was
later to fling into the waste-paper basket ; he strove to
interest the Diet in the creation of a German Navy, and
.the effort ended in the sale by auction of the ships in
existence ; he wrestled with the question of a Federal Army

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 87
and was defeated by the fear of Prussia and the jealousy
of Austria and her allies. The renewal of the ZoU
verein brought him into the centre of the German
problem. Austria, under the able guidance of Briick, aimed at
either securing her admittance into the Customs Union,
'. which Prussia had formed, or at persuading the Southern
Union to break away and unite with the Austrian Empire.
It was the ever-recurring riddle in an economic form of
German organisation. Austria in the economic, no less
than in the political, sphere demanded that the whole of
the Habsburg dominions must be included or she would
break up the inner unity achieved or demanded by
Prussia. The economic creed of the protectionist Austrian
Empire conflicted both with the free-trade policy of the
ZoUverein and the tightening bonds between the Southern
and Northern Unions. Bismarck had the unravelling of
the tangle, and at Vienna he met the Austrian ministers
in their lair. It was his first struggle in big affairs, and he
won his first victory. The Austrians intended to isolate
and then coerce Prussia, by seducing the South from its
economic union with the North. Bismarck met the
Austrian menace with a courteous, but firm defiance.
Prussia would maintain the ZoUverein at aU costs. The
Southern Union was thereby left to choose between the
Northern Customs Union and Austria. Bismarck cor
rectly reckoned that economic self-interest and not senti
ment would decide the issue. Prussia had more to offer
to South Germany than Austria ; she was strong enough
to stand on her own feet. Headquarters at Berlin were
timid, nervous, and irresolute. Bismarck brushed the
charge of disloyalty and anti-German separatism aside ;
even if the charge were true, which it was not, the interest
of Prussia was the decisive criterion. This plain attempt
to sacrifice Prussia to Austrian manufacturers and agricul
turists, and to rob her of the political influence behind the
ZoUverein, must be defeated. And it was. Prussia made
one concession. Twelve years hence the arrangements
were to be reconsidered. In 1863, Bismarck was Minister-
President, and the power to determine Prussian policy was

88 BISMARCK
in the hands, not of a Manteuffel, but of Austria's most
relentless foe.
The whole affair set Bismarck thinking with renewed
energy on cardinal problems — the principles of Prussian
foreign pohcy, the meaning and consequences of Austrian
ambitions, the relations of Prussia with the middle and
petty States, the defects of the Federal Diet as an organ
isation for Germany. Under the stimulus of events he
was exploring and appreciating the European frame
work, the new groupings of the Powers, the new forces :
manifestly at work. Facts, and reflections always drove
him back on one supreme question : Was it possible for
Prussia to co-operate loyaUy with Austria ? And if it
were not, what must be the consequences of a rupture for
both States ?
There is no need to question the sincerity of Bismarck's
desire in 1 85 1 to maintain an alliance between Austria and
Prussia for common ends. The policy and the principles
of the aUiance satisfied his political creed and outlook ;
antagonism to, and a breach with, Austria involved the
abandonment of a traditional creed and instincts, estrange
ment from the friendships and ideals of his manhood, a
drastic and dislocating rearrangement of his pohtical faith,
and the patient, painful, and perUous groping after a new
policy in an unmapped and shifting future. We can catch
in the more personal documents many glimpses of doubt
and genuine regret. It would be so easy to renounce
inteUectual independence, remain an obedient and un
questioning servant of the monarchy, take the appropriate
reward for obedience in ribbons and stars, or retire to
Schonhausen, and under the blue sky of summer or the
wintry sleets cast off this festering world of politicians and
intrigues and live and die a Bismarck as his ancestors had
done. Opportunity, said Disraeli, is more powerful even
than conquerors or prophets. A demonic time'Spirit
moulded Bismarck's environment and his character. 'I
am not a man,' pronounced Napoleon, ' I am a force.'
Bismarck hacked out his daily way, because he was a fierce
and proud Prussian, and because he was also becoming a
great German. In the air all round him the German

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 89
atmosphere vibrated with indefinable national aspirations,
arid his spirit responded unconsciously to the spiritual
inspiration that fired his heart and steeled his brain. And
it was the decree of Providence. He beheved in a God
Whose will ordered the world and chose the human instru
ments of His purpose.
The Crimean War was a disconcerting searchlight in
an obscure night. The German intellectuals, no less than
the German courts, were bewildered : for in every party
* sentiment was in antagonism to principles. The Conser
vatives were torn between their hatred of the crowned
Jacobin at Paris, their distrust of Great Britain, which
had yielded to democratic reform, their horror of a rup
ture with Conservative and Legitimist Russia, and their
anxiety to be the aUy in shining armour of Austria, the
other great piUar in the Holy Alliance of the Three Mon
archies. War on the side of Austria meant war with
Russia and a hateful aUiance with the Liberal West.
Nationalism clamoured for settling with France and active
support to Austria, the champion of Germanism (Deutsch-
tum), but the opponent of nationalist rights and ideals.
The Liberals, as passionately anti- French as Conservatives
or Nationalists, could not forget Frankfurt, VUagos, and
Olmiitz ; Russia was reaction and autocracy combined ;
yet Austria placed a permanent veto on unification and
constitutional government. The Prussian Court and
government were in the sorest straits. Hohenzollern and
Romanov were linked by the closest dynastic ties : a
breach with Russia imperiUed the eastern frontier, a
breach with Austria imperiUed the southern frontier ; it
involved ' a family civU war ' (Bruderkreig) in Germany ;
yet refusal to join France and Great Britain would be fol
lowed by a blockade of the North German coast by the
British fleet on its way to the Baltic. The ' Watch on the
Rhine ' was met by the demand for a Watch on the Danube
and Vistula.
In this chaos of conflicting opinions, beneath which
surged the demand of a Germany, conscious of its im
potence to make its dynasties obey a national will which
had no organs of expression, and thirsting to be a power

90 BISMARCK
in the world like other nations, Bismarck grew cooler as
German sentiment developed a heated fretfulness. His
diagnosis cut right across aU the parties and creeds. There
was only one question : What was Prussia's interest,
analysed without reference to any obligations of traditional
honour, dynastic family feeling, or sentimental likes or
dislikes of this nation or that ? Prussia had no interest in
the Danubian principalities or the Balkans. Austria had,
but that was Austria's affair ; and Austria was working to
involve Prussia in an Austrian quarrel, success in which
would bring all the credit and the profits to Austria and
nothing to Prussia but Austrian gratitude, a more insidious
danger than her open enmity. Prussia was really asked
to strengthen Austria's power and weaken her own in the
Diet. Why should Prussia break with Russia at Austria's
bidding ? The English blockade was moonshine. Eng
land was not so foolish as to drive Prussia into an offensive
aUiance with Russia, which would compel the British ally,
France, to divert reinforcements for the Crimea to the
Rhine. ' But France meant to attack Germany.' If
Napoleon attacked Prussia, the Prussian army would see
to that, and France would not attack . Germany. Why
not bring ' the man of sin ' to terms ? The relations of
States were determined by interests and not by misin
terpreted and irrelevant ethical considerations. Utihse
the embarrassments of your friends above aU to secure
solid advantage for yourself : do not let those embarrass
ments be a bad reason for sharing in them and adding to
your own. In a word, let Prussia remain rigidly neutral :
hold fast to a real friend, Russia, and by skilful diplomacy
improve her relations with France and let Austria go —
not to the Devil, but to Frankfurt. The indispensability
of Prussia was precisely the opportunity for making
Austria pay Prussia's price.
Bismarck could only argue and advise ; he could not
secure the adoption of his advice. His fear that his
government would be coerced into war on behalf of Austria
against Russia, and thereby mortgage its future and free
dom of action beyond aU chance of liquidation, caused him
many sleepless nights. ' The smart and seaworthy Prus-

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 91
sian frigate,' as he expressed it, ' was to tow in perpetuity
the water-logged and dry-rotted Austrian battleship.'
While Bismarck argued, Prussia vaciUated irresolute,
yet fiery, with the sword half drawn, threatening every
State and giving ground to every minister who threatened
her. She was saved for the time from her tardy and
reluctant adhesion to the Austrian cause by the course of
events, and not by the amateurish inaction and fear of the
Prussian ministers. She earned neither the gratitude of
friends nor the respect of her foes ; and when aU was over
Russia and Austria informed her with contemptuous
politeness, that they would use their respective good offices
to secure her an invitation to the Congress which would
settle the affairs of Europe at Paris in 1856. Manteuffel,
who represented Prussia at the Congress, amused the diplo
matists by his air of the poor relation included at the last
moment, because there was a vacant chair, and it might as
weU be fiUed by Prussia as by any other State. The next
great Congress after 1856 which settled the Near East was
at Berhn in 1878, presided over by Bismarck as Chancellor
of a German Empire.
Bismarck's sketch of a policy and explanation of the
principles underlying it pained and angered his friends.
He threshed it out at length with Prince William at Cob-
lenz — in three years to become the King of Prussia — and
not only failed to convince him, but fiUed him with sus
picion of the adviser's sanity and loyalty. The Prince, as
in 185 1, was ready to fight because the honour of Prussia
was involved : to leave Austria in the lurch was desertion ;
France was an irreconcilable national enemy ; Napoleon
was a Jacobin disguised as a sham Caesar. Bismarck's
advice, he pronounced, was not that of a statesman but of
an ignorant schoolboy.
That ignorant schoolboy was destined to have many
arguments with the simple soldier before he succeeded in
winning -the surrender of the royal conscience ; and the
respect which with Bismarck deepened in thirty years into
a sincere homage, began at Coblenz with this sharp
antagonism. William of HohenzoUern was not a great
inteUect, but he was a man, and he had the strength that

92 BISMARCK
character and simpUcity of aim alone can give. In
Bismarck's eyes that quality atoned for many defects.
Independence he could both hate and love, but it always
earned his respect.
Bismarck's ideas were slowly consolidating into a co
herent system. The issues raised by the Crimean war
were disentangling in his thought three cardinal and
governing considerations—the indispensabihty of an en
tente with Russia, the necessity of coming to an under
standing with France, and the impossibility of co-operation
with Austria. To adopt Napoleonic language, in the
strategy of her diplomacy Prussia was to manoeuvre from
a fixed point, and that fixed point was Russia. Prussia
could safely pivot on that, Central Europe was her
theatre of operations, and movements outside that decisive
theatre were ^eccentric or quixotic. An understanding
with France would first secure the benevolent neutrality
of the most important Continental Power, secondly, pre
vent a coalition between France and Russia, and thirdly,
leave Prussia with undiminished resources to settle her
relations with Austria. Bismarck did not as yet contem
plate an open rupture, stiU less war with Austria. He was
perfectly ready to support Austria, provided that she would
give guarantees, and treat Prussia as an equal and not as a
rather larger Bavaria. He was no less clear that the tradi
tional system continued by Manteuffel involved a humili'
ating and crippling subordination of Prussia to Austria's
needs and supremacy.
' These ideas of policy necessitated a revision of principles
of political action, very clearly revealed in his remarkable
correspondence with Gerlach. The trite image of the
hen in consternation at the chicken^fledged^beneath her
protecting wings now taking to the water because it was
a duckling, is a faint picture of the pain and indignation
with which Gerlach discovered the apostasy of his disciple.
It was easy for Gerlach to concur in the necessity of an
entente with Russia ; but when it was plain that the result
of the aUiance was to be an entente with France and anta
gonism to Austria, he recoiled with horror. ' Cynical '
and ' unprincipled ' were colourless adjectives for such a

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 93
policy. The stability of European society, and of Prussia
in particular, depended, in Gerlach's view, on legitimate
monarchical rule, and on the maintenance throughout
Europe of Conservative principles which were~of universal
validity ; the moral duty of combating ' the Revolution '
was a necessity of existence, no less than an obedience to
divine law and authority. Austria represented every
sound principle as clearly as Russia : France was the
negation of everything sacred and solid — she was ' the
Revolution,' with Napoleon enthroned with a crown picked
from the Jacobin gutters and placed on his head by per
jury and bloodshed. How could it be statesmanship and
right — for a Prussian above all, loyal to his sovereign by
the grace of God and freed from the superstitions of
Liberalism — to desert and impugn Austria and to seek for
an unholy partnership at Paris f
Bismarck took up the chaUenge. In the tactics of
statesmanship, interests, he maintained, were more im
portant than principles : policy demanded flexibility and
not rigidity of principles. Understandings were simply
temporary bargains. Napoleon was not so bad as he was
painted. Austria was a great deal worse than she pro
fessed to be. A bargain with Napoleon was not a surrender
to the Revolution, but an exploitation of it for Prussia's
interest. And, to secure Prussia's interest, if an alliance
with the Devil were desirable, it should be made with a
light conscience. All this high-faluting talk about Conser
vative principles of universal validity was irrelevant and
unreal. There were no such principles, Conservative,
Liberal or Revolutionary. Reason of state — for Bismarck
the reason of the Prussian State — was the one abiding
reality in a world of uncontrollable facts and fluctuating
situations. The true statesman must be prepared to be
Conservative at home and Liberal abroad, or vice versa ;
to be a Jacobin in Paris and an Absolutist at Petersburg, if
necessary, and must seek to wring out of every opportunity
the maximum of advantage for his country, otherwise he
was a doctrinaire or a bungler, a professor or a bureau
cratic automaton.
He invited Gerlach to study history impartiaUy. The

94 BISMARCK
Conservative interpretation of the origin and evolution
of legitimism and revolution would not stand the test of
facts. All thrones and forms of government were in origin
revolutionary or founded on usurpation. Even the Prus
sian monarchy had usurped the rights of those it had
dispossessed. Legitimism was a new-fangled doctrine,
created as a result of the Revolution of 1789, to meet the
conditions of a once existent but now vanished situation.
It was this obstinate obsession of unverifiable assumptions
and this irrational refusal to recognise realities which had
ruined Conservatism in the past, and would ruin it in the
future. It was time for Prussia to free herself from the
fetters of a system which clogged her independence and
to return to the sounder system of Frederick who had made
himself and his State great. If it was right for Frederick
to aUy with France and withstand Austria in season and
out of season, because Prussia's interest required it, the
same reason of State and imperishable interest no less
required it to-day.
The correspondence, in short, widened, while it demon
strated, the gulf between the old Conservatism and the
new. Bismarck had indeed travelled far from the stand
point of his youth : Gerlach had remained unchanged.
And Gerlach was correct in his assertion, that master and
disciple no longer spoke the same language. Bismarck
was content to leave it at that.
The German problem slowly intertwined itself into the
problem of Prussia's true foreign policy. Bismarck's
maturing thought, continuaUy reinforced by freshets of
experience, groped its way through the thickets of youthful
prejudice. The process can be traced in the State papers
(confirmed by his letters) which pressed upon his govern
ment Bismarck's weighed and tested conclusions.
In 185 1 he wrote : ' I do not believe that the Federal
Diet in its present form can be the last word in our politics.;
rather I see in it only a sheU within which can develop all
the sound and practical elements of the union (Erfurt)
policy, a sheU that will drop off when the kernel is ripe.'
In 1853, he pointed out that ' unless Austria renounced
the policy of Schwarzenberg . . . sooner or later the

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 95
federal wagon, pulled by the Prussian horse forwards and
by the Austrian horse backwards, would go to pieces.'
From 1853 onwards dispatch after dispatch emphasised
' the restless effort of Austria to compel Prussia by the
organisation of a majority of votes in the Diet ' to accept
the will of Vienna. Prussia was driven to a defensive
attitude. In the notable ' splendid report,' ' Prachtbericht,'
of 1856 he wrote: 'The Emperor Francis Joseph is not
master of his lands and subjects in the same measure as our
aU gracious Lord. . . . Austria on the defensive I consider
weak, and at the first successful stroke of a rival the whole
of the internal artificial fabric of the centralised scribbling
bureaucracy of Bach and Buol would tumble in like a pack
of cards . . . the traditional policy of Austria and its
jealousy of us cannot be removed, and I would trust the
old fox in his new coat as little as in his summer bristles.
... I wiU express my conviction that in no long time we
shaU have to fight for our existence against Austria, and
that it is not in our power to avoid the fight, because the
course of events in Germany admits of no other develop
ment.' ' Austria,' he wrote in 1857, ' does not wish us to in
crease our importance in Germany, and England cannot
favour our development either on the sea or in trade. In
politics no one acts unselfishly, unless it is his interest to
do so.' ' Your ExceUency is aware,' he wrote in 1858,
' that the Federal Diet and our disadvantageous position
in it is Austria's best weapon . . . the whole of my seven
years' service at Frankfurt has been an unbroken struggle
with efforts of every kind and the relentless attempts to
exploit the Federal Diet as an instrument to aggrandise
Austria and humiliate Prussia.' ' We must,' he urged,
' establish a Customs Parliament . . . our Parliament and
press must discuss tariff policy without reserve from the
Prussian point of view ; it wiU thus divert the exhausted
attention of Germany to itself, and our Prussian Parliament
wUl become a power in Germany.' From Petersburg in
1859 ne wrote to Schleinitz : ' The federal machinery in
normal times is an oppressive, in crises a dangerous, hand
cuff for Prussia. ... I believe we should take up the chal-

o6 BISMARCK
lenge and consider it no misfortune if we found in a
resolution of the majority at Frankfurt ... a breach of
the Federal treaties.' This, is precisely what Bismarck did
in 1866. ' The word " German " for " Prussian " I would
gladly see inscribed on our banners, if we had first a closer
and practical unity with our other feUow-Germans than
hitherto ; it loses aU its charm if it is employed as now to
support the Federal bond. ... I see in our Federal relations
a Prussianynalady which sooner or later will have' to be
healed by iron and fire, if we do not in good time find
another cure for it.'
In 1 861 he wrote : ' The system of the solidarity of the
-Conservative interests of aU countries is a dangerous fiction, »
so long as there is not the most complete and honourable.
reciprocity. Pursued by Prussia alone, it is pure Don'
Quixotism which weakens our King and his government in
the execution of its proper duty. It brings us to the absq.7v
lutely unhistorical, godless and lawless swindle of sove
reignty in the German princes, which employs the Federal
system as its pedestal, and with which the European
Powers play to make it the darling of the Prussian" Conser
vative party ... we protect foreign prerogatives with
more obstinacy than our own, and get enthusiastic for the
paltry sovereignties created by Napoleon and guaranteed
by Metternich. ... So long as the foUy of the present
Federal system lasts, which is simply a forcing-house of
dangerous and republican party struggles ... we need a
stronger consolidation of German arms as much as our
daUy bread ; we need a new and plastic estabUshment in
the sphere of tariff policy to protect our material interests
against the disadvantages arising from the unnatural con
figuration of our German frontiers . . . Moreover I
cannot see why we should so coyly shrink from the idea of
popular representation alike in the Federal League* the
Tariff, and the Union Parliament ; an institution which
has a legitimate validity in every German State, which we
Conservatives in Prussia could not dispense with, cannot
be resisted as revolutionary.' x
1 The student who wishes to master Bismarck's views should study in Preussen im
Bundestag the dispatches of the following dates: — November 19, 1S51, April 23,

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 97
The substance of Bismarck's thought and principles at
this stage can be summarised. Prussia must find her own
solution of the German problem ; she must combine a
satisfaction of the claims of Germany with the satisfaction
of the claims of the historic and characteristic Prussian
State. A radical reform of the Diet brought about by
Prussian initiative must be such as to guarantee beyond
dispute the supremacy of Prussia in Germany and her
position as a great Power. There must be an end to the
system by which Austria could manipulate the middle and
petty States into a permanent and hostile- majority in the
Federal Diet, and by which kingdoms or landgraviates, of
inferior extent, population, military and economic re
sources, voted down Prussia, and ' mediatised ' x her. The
root of the mischief lay in the pretensions of dynastic
particularism to political equality with Prussia and Austria,
based on a ' swindling ' and mushroom theory of legitimist
Sovereignty. Co-operation with Austria, as Austria inter
preted it, was impossible. In the interest of Germany
and of Prussia, Austria must be resisted. Prussian foreign
policy and the German problem were inseparable elements
1852, June 18, 1852, January 13, 1853, August 9, 1853, November 14, 1853,
February 15, 1854, February 11, 1855, April 26, 1856, May 12, 1857, June 2,
1857, March 14, 1858, April 10, 1858. They are all too long to be quoted
in extenso, and they should be compared with the Baden Denkschrift, printed
in Bismarck yahrbuch, iii. 193.
1 ' Mediatised.'' — This term so frequently occurs in Bismarck's writings and
German historians that, as there is no single English equivalent, it is desirable
to explain it for those not familiar with its technical and derivative meaning.
Technically, 'to mediatise' was a term derived from the old Holy Roman
Empire of the German nation which came to an end in 1806. The sovereign
princedoms of that Empire — whether ecclesiastical or secular — were held to be •
immediate vassals of the Emperor. To 'mediatise ' them meant, therefore, to
deprive them of the status of being immediate vassals, and to reduce them to the
position of being ' mediate,' or secondary vassals, i.e. with one or more author
ities between them and the supreme fount of imperial power — a process equiva
lent to reduction from being a tenant-in-chief to subordinate tenancy. By
degrees the term ' to mediatise ' or ' mediatisation ' derivatively came to imply
an act or a result by which a sovereign prince or state retained a titular inde
pendence, but lost, or was deprived of, the rights and powers of sovereignty.
Hence, in Bismarck's time, the term was commonly used of a result by which •
a state lost its true political independence and initiative and became dependent
on some power or powers, sovereign in theory and in fact. ' Mediatisation,*
therefore, broadly implied the retention of a titular sovereignty which conflicted
with the practical political dependence of the ' sovereign ' on other sovereigns
or states.
8. G

98 BISMARCK
of a single and larger unity. The benevolent neutrality
of France must be secured ; with the friendship of Russia
and the goodwiU of Napoleon, Prussia could throw her
individual strength into the decisive theatre — Germany
and Central Europe— concentrate, in short, on the over-
throwal of Austria in Germany.
These were conclusions calculated to dismay Conser
vatives and Liberals alike, for they challenged the dearest
traditions of both parties. Bismarck did not either then
or subsequently speak out the whole of his mind. He did
not wish to alarm friends or cause his opponents to blas
pheme unnecessarUy. Much was deliberately hidden in
his heart. But much also he could not have spoken out,
for he saw, and he recognised it, through a glass darkly.
' The longer I live,' he said later, ' the more incalculable
the future in politics proves to be.' There are no indica
tions of how or when or by whom precisely this programme
could be realised. Not a word of war or annexations. It
is the quintessence of his statecraft that the opportunity
would create the means ; that in policy as in war a lucid
comprehension of ends was the one indispensable pre
requisite, and that the major and minor tactics must be
settled by the situation of the moment and the character
and disposition of the enemy's forces. Success would come
to the side that made the fewest mistakes. Opportunity
was everything. The right stroke at the right moment
would give the decision. A lost opportunity was worse
than a defeat, for it implied a failure of judgment in the
commander. No tactical skill could compensate for in
ferior intelligence in the supreme direction, and the
persistent will to persevere once the policy had been
made. Bismarck's letters and memoranda are like Beethoven's
notebooks. In both we can trace a mind at work, the
patient elaboration of an idea, the jotting down of flashes
of insight which in due time may be developed into a com
pleted composition. Some, however, are never worked
out ; time and life failed, or the idea failed because the
mood that gave it birth never returned : others give us
the genesis of a perfected scheme : others merely indicate

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 99
a thought, a premonition of what will come but in another
form. Genius is talking aloud to itself in the workshop of
the human spirit, and it is the prerogative of genius to be
fertile in contradictions and to nourish its strength on in
consistencies : and the winged word and glory of emotion
may never soar beyond that free, inner mansion of person
ality, never carry its message beyond the chambers of
feeling that divide, into the kingdom of action that unites,
all thought.
Bismarck had divined the real weakness of Austria — the
vulnerability of her European position, the competition in
her councils between the concentrated egoism of the
dynasty and the dissipated interests of the Empire, the
administrative dry rot, the lack of vision and the absence
of moral imagination in her ministers, and the insoluble
antagonism between the ambition for supremacy in
Germany and her historic claims in Italy and Hungary.
No less had he divined the strength of Prussia, economic,
political, and mUitary. Prussia so far had been handi
capped by slavish adherence to a false tradition, by a sick
and irresolute sovereign, and by ministers whose wiUs and
courage were as weak as their intellectual powers. She
had neither developed her strength nor unified it under a
driving control. There already floated in Bismarck's mind
the conception of a reorganised Central Europe in which
Prussia should have superseded Austria in Germany, and
the Austrian Empire would reconsolidate itself as a
Danubian State between the twin capitals of Vienna and
Buda-Pesth. ' Un maitre des indiscretions savantes,' as
M. de la Gorce felicitously terms him, Bismarck was con
tinually expressing ideas which ministers and diplomatists
regarded as a bad jest or the gaucherie of an incurable
amateur, but which were really sincere and intended to
probe a difficulty, or indicate an end. At Vienna he said
outright in 1864 that Austria should transfer its centre of
gravity to Buda-Pesth. ' At Berlin,' he told Rechberg, ' we
Germans do not consider Vienna as a German city, and
what happens at Vienna as related to Germany. Of
course, I know that Vienna is a city on German soil, but it
is the capital o'f a non-German Empire ... it is obvious

ioo BISMARCK
that the Austrian monarchy is scarcely German ... it
would do much better if it rested on its true strength, the
aggregate of the numerous races which compose its Empire,
rather than pursue the dream of a German supremacy
which we dispute, and to which it has no title. What is
German will revert to Germany sooner or later : it is inevit
able. It is not more difficult to govern Vienna from Berlin
than to govern Pesth from Vienna — indeed, it would be
much easier.' And he seriously meant it. There was not
room in Germany for Habsburg and Hohenzollern, and Bis
marck had shed his Great Germany views of 1848-51. He
was now definitely on the side of the Small Germany party,
as the Frankfurt Liberal programme had defined it.
Prussia, in his eyes, needed diplomacy and an army —
precisely what the Liberals of 1848 had needed and failed
to secure. Questions of right (Rechtfragen) in the long run
became questions of might (Machtfragen). But an army
would be as useless without the right diplomacy as diplo
macy without a strong army behind it. ' Diplomacy
without arms,' pronounced Frederick the Great, ' is music
without instruments,' and Bismarck concurred without
reservation in the judgment. But neither in 1859 nor
later did he assert or believe that force alone, or force aided
by a skilful diplomacy, would suffice. The higher state
craft required a subtler sympathy with the motives and
ideals of human beings, a tighter grip on realities, economic
as weU as spiritual. The future Prussia and -the future
Germany could not be brought into existence by force
alone, nor could they live and develop on force alone.
Intuitively and unconsciously, he was separating the
Nationalism with which he sympathised from the Liberalism
which he hated and feared.
The cry for strength — the wiU to power — based on the
ineradicable racial instinct of a/ Germany that was daily
bursting the bonds of the past and cleaving new paths
into intellectual and economic spheres of iUimitable scope,
could and must be satisfied, and Bismarck was at ond with
Prussian, Saxon, Bavarian, or Franconian in the fierce
thirst for power and domination. But the defeat of
Liberalism was the price that Nationalism must pay for its

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 101
satisfaction. Once the new Germany had come into
existence, the German mind would adapt itself to new
categories of thought, and Liberalism, mutilated at the root,
would wither in the original stock, and the life and vigour
of the races would find their self-realisation in the new
National State and the new Nationalist ideals of German
power. For power, not self-government, supremacy not
parUamentary control, would satisfy a Nationalist and
unified Germany. How this again would happen Bismarck
neither knew nor attempted to reckon as yet. But the
certainty that it could and must be done inspired him with
fresh ambition and a perpetuaUy renewed strength. When
Gerlach and the Kreuzzeitung mourned the lost leader
and the disciple's apostasy, they judged from the surface.
Bismarck had not ceased to be a Conservative because he
exposed the unsound foundations of their creed or chal
lenged the erroneous conclusions drawn from vicious pre
mises. Roon had a truer insight. Bismarck now and
subsequently puzzled and pained that unrepentant Junker
and unquenchably loyal friend. But Roon felt that
Bismarck remained in fibre and temper true to the faith
of Prussian Junkertum and his forefathers. The Liberals.
and Radicals were no less right when they distrusted Bis
marck at every step and saw in him the implacable oppon
ent of aU they held dear. The Germany that Bismarck
would make and the Germany they were working for were
in fundamental antithesis. They had their origins in an
antagonistic interpretation of life ; they were rooted -in
contradictory tables of value, standards of judgment, arid
criteria of conduct; and they aimed at opposed ideals
of Statehood, and- the place in, and the relation of, th.e
individual to the organisation of society.
Lastly, Bismarck's programme implied execution byj a
Bismarck, and there was only one. The French ambassa
dor said to him once : ' Your policy and ideas wiU bring
Prussia to another Jena.' Bismarck replied : ' Perhaps,
but why not to Leipzig and Waterloo ? ' ' I wiU make my
own music,' he had said in 1849, ' or I wiU make none at
aU.' But in 1859 it looked as if Fate was to deny him the
opportunity or drive him back to Schonhausen.

102 BISMARCK
§ 2. Petersburg and Paris, 1859-1862
On January 29, 1859, Bismarck was transferred from
Frankfurt to the embassy at Petersburg. On March 6 he
left Frankfurt, and on April 1, his forty-fourth birthday, he
was received in audience by Alexander n. and presented his
credentials. The new appointment had its personal and
political significance. Prince WiUiam had become Regent
on October 26, 1858. ' The new era ' began with his re
gency. The ministry of moderate Liberals, under Prince
Anthony of Hohenzollern and their master the Regent, were
weU aware of Bismarck's views, and it was not unnatural
that, having in contemplation a gradual change in a
Liberal direction both in foreign and home policy, they
should wish to be represented at Frankfurt by an agent
more in sympathy with the new attitude. Bismarck's pro-
Russian sympathies, evinced since 1854, would commend
him to the Russian Court ; his impenitent Conservatism
was very unpopular with the Liberals ; and his advocacy
of better relations with France was distasteful in the high
est degree to the Prince Regent. At Petersburg, in short,
he would be honourably out of the way. The appoint
ment was a mark of disapproval veiled in the customary
pretence of promotion. Bismarck had expected a change.
He wrote to his sister (November 12, 1858) that he was
ready ' to take refuge behind the guns of Schonhausen,
and, as the government were now relying on the majority
in the Left (Liberals), to consider how to do his duty in the
Upper House. Change is the soul of life, and I hope I shall
be ten years younger when I find myself again in the same
position to fight as '48-49. ... It is aU the same to me
whether I play the part of diplomatist or of a country
gentleman (Landjunker), and so far the prospect of a merry
and honourable fight without the clogs of office has as
much charm as the prospect of a continuous regime of
truffles, dispatches and Grand Crosses.' But for aU these
brave words Bismarck was chagrined. He was in the very
prime of his powers ; he was ready for more responsible
work than the duty of executing a policy made by others ;
he resented the veiled censure conveyed in his transfer, and

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 103
he suspected that — as happened — he was to be cut off fiom
confidence at headquarters. The chagrin was deepened
by the course of events.
The year 1859 was a depressing one for Bismarck. Since
January an old injury to his leg, incurred in shooting, was
aggravated by reckless exposure and a chill. His health
gave way, and in June he was seriously ill. His case was
mismanaged, and for some days he sat on Charon's pier,
wondering whether he would be caUed on to cross to the
other side. But his superb constitution came to his aid ;
hke the famous Duchess of Marlborough he refused
' either to be blistered or die ' ; he threw off both the
treatment and the malady, and took instead to punch in
(Bismarckianly) moderate quantities. Removed to Berlin
he feU suddenly ill again, and August had to be spent in
a wearisome convalescence at Wiesbaden and Nauheim.
Like most men who have enjoyed unbroken good health,
Bismarck was a bad patient ; he had taxed strength and
nerves to their utmost, and he resented their refusal to
stand unlimited drafts on their powers. The illness made
a permanent mark in his life. The nervous breakdown,
coupled with rheumatic fever and gastric disorders, seri
ously affected a highly strung system. After 1859 ne was
never the man he had been before. An increased irri
tability and excitability, a morose and violent temper,
aggravated by sleeplessness, became increasingly apparent,
and constant returns of pain emphasised, the unlovely
elements in his character. The old freshness and joy in
life evaporated ; but he refused to alter his habits of life.
Roon in the campaign of 1866 notes how ' Otto ' persisted
in sitting up most of the night at his desk and lay in bed
till midday. Henceforward, particularly after 1862, he
was continually on the edge of a breakdown. With his
habits in eating and drinking, it is a proof of his marveUous
physical vitality that he did not collapse completely.
His recovery was not made easier by his political anxiety.
.His revived interest in the domestic politics of Prussia
testifies to the fear that the renaissance of Liberalism, now
in fuU swing, would wreck his programme. Even more
disquieting was the outlook in foreign affairs. The

104 BISMARCK
Italian war of 1859, witn France openly in the field against
Austria, the French victories, the Austrian defeats, the
demand for a revision of the system of 1 8 15, were blows at
the citadel of Conservatism; they stirred Nationalism
throughout Europe, and Cavour had pinned his flag to the
cause of constitutional and Liberal monarchism. Germany
was in an uproar. Conservatives, Nationalists, Liberals,
the dynasties from Berlin to Munich, felt that the national
enemy in the west was in arms, defeating a German State
in Austria, about to destroy legitimist and sovereign
princes in Italy, and to reopen the question of the Rhine.
' Austria in danger ' was a potent cry. Her sins were for
gotten in the common peril to German supremacy and
legitimist monarchy in Central Europe. It was the crisis
of 1854 repeated in an acute form. For France — a Napo
leonic France — was attacking Austria, and it would be
Prussia's turn next. And in 1859 it was not an affair of the
Danubian principahties, nor of Austrian neutrality. At
BerUn, as usual, government and nation faced at once
front to the Rhine. The Prince Regent mobUised four
corps ; his strong sympathies as a ruler and as a German
with Austria, his desire to prove his German patriotism
and lead Germany in a national struggle, brought a great
European war into sight. Even so cold a head and so self-
controlled a Prussian patriot as Moltke decided on cool
reflection that the time had come for Prussia to intervene
and strike a blow for Austria and Germany.
Bismarck was UteraUy in anguish, and he was helpless.
At Petersburg or Wiesbaden he was removed from the
direct contact with German affairs he had enjoyed at
Frankfurt; he was not consulted ; and he had not the con
fidence either of the Prince Regent or the ministers. The
winds of Liberalism were sweeping from the lemon groves
of SicUy across the Lombardy plains to the sands and
heath of Pomerania, the March of Brandenburg and
East Prussia. War with France would blow his policy to
the limbo of shattered ideals. Prussia would enter it as
the aUy of Austria, and with Prussia would march every
Nationalist and Liberal heart. The issue would, and must
be, the defeat of France. Austria would recover her grip

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 105
on Italy— for what could Piedmont do without the red
trousers ? — and either Austria would impose her wiU on
Germany, and re-rivet her supremacy, or under the stress
of the fray Prussia and Germany would be mastered by the
Liberals, in combination with the Nationahsts, and unified
on the anvil of war by the master spirits of 1848. Which
would be worse — a Germany unified on a Liberal basis, or
an Austria triumphant on the Danube, the Po, and the
Rhine, reorganising the German Confederation beyond
Prussian control ? Germany in the grip either of the
anti-Prussian princelets grouped round Austria, or of
the National Union of the Liberals under Bennigsen,
Duncker, Gneist, and the Coburg pro-English group ?
Everywhere Bismarck saw aU the machinery at work
that he had tracked out at Frankfurt — the Austrian hand
manipulating the middle States, coercing the petty ones ;
the iUuminated princelets dabbling with Liberalism and
striving to combine Nationalism with Particularism ;
Habsburg egoism appealing to Hohenzollern pride and
generosity, but determined that Prussia's army should
extricate Austria from her dilemma, sacrifice Prussian blood
to save Lombardy, Venetia, and Hungary, and receive
the reward of disinterestedness by riveting the Austrian
yoke on>the Confederation; and aU this was to be done in
the name of Conservatism, and the European solidarity of
legitimism against Jacobinism, Caesarism, and the Revolu
tion. ' Our pohcy,' he wrote to his wife, ' daily glides
more and more in the wake of Austria ; a shot on the
Rhine, and it is aU over with the Austro-Italian war, and
in its place wiU come a Franco-Prussian war, in which
Austria, when we have lifted the burden off her shoulders,
wiU support or faU us as her interest dictates. ... As God
wills ! It is only a question of time ; nations and men,
foUy and wisdom, war and peace, come and go like waves,
but the sea remains ; there is nothing in this world but
hypocrisy and the jugglers' tricks.'
It was idle to urge, as he did, that Napoleon could be
secured by tact, or, if need be, by paying blackmail ; that
Austria's necessities afforded an unrivalled opportunity
for re-settling her relations with Prussia to Prussia's advan-

106 BISMARCK
tage, and that if Prussian aid were required Austria must
pay in advance, and that a wedge could be driven in
between the middle and petty States and their Habsburg
aUy ; that Prussia could indicate she and not Austria would
reform the Confederation. Such advice only deepened the
distrust at the Berlin Court, angered the Gerlach Conser
vatives, and stirred the scorn of the Liberals. It was mid
summer MachiaveUianism, destitute of all principle, and
Liberals and Conservatives aUke stood for principles and
the solidarity of their cause with the cause outside Prussia
or Germany.
Bismarck was bitterly attacked from both camps. He
could tolerate Radical denunciations, but the reproaches
of the Kreuzzeitung cut into the quick. ' Write me down
a devil,' he wrote, ' but I am a Teutonic devil, not a Gallic
one.' His idea of securing Napoleon never involved the
surrender of essentials. He had taken Napoleon's measure
already. ' The itch with Napoleon,' he pronounced in
1855, 'to achieve the unexpected amounts to a disease,
and it is nourished by the Empress.' ' He is no general
... he wiU only seek a war when internal necessities
drive him to it,' he wrote in 1857. ' His heart is much
stronger than his head,' he decided in 1861. He meant to
flatter his vanity, encourage him to wander on the misty
peaks of dreamland — les idees Napoleoniennes — commit
nothing to paper ; words could always be disavowed and
unverified verbal promises explained away. In Bismarck's
statecraft, as his advice about Austria revealed, the extor
tion of services from an embarrassed friend only added
contempt for the deluded to dislike. His theory of inter
national relations left no place for gratitude or generosity.
The successful deception of France would only increase
Prussian resentment at obligations incurred to an enemy,
stupid or weak enough to believe in gratitude. Statesmen
lent or borrowed the capital and currency of the political
life. The needy must pay, and the affluent had a right to
exact a high rate of interest because the needy were so
needy. In the remorseless world of inter-State com
petition business was business. Ethical considerations
could not apply in the markets of diplomacy ; for their

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 107
appUcation ignored the real motives of State conduct.
Bismarck wrote to Roon that Prussia was committing the
foUy of being Liberal at home and Conservative abroad.
Such a policy sapped the confidence of the sound elements
in Prussia and flouted the real forces at work in Germany.
Roon agreed in this diagnosis and the mischief of the ' new
era.' But the recommendation of a Conservative policy
at home and a Liberal one abroad, left him wondering
whether iUness had not shaken ' Otto's ' sanity.
Bismarck in the meanwhile could only growl and moan,
and do his best to strengthen the bonds between Prussia
and Russia. The gods decided for him. The crisis of
1859, like that of 1854, was tided over by the action of
France and Austria. Napoleon shrank from the conse
quences of his own intervention in Italy. Magenta and
Solferino had not been victories in the manner of his uncle ;
the idea of a war on the Rhine sent shivers through him ;
Italy was breaking away into unforeseen revolutions ; the
Ultramontanes were applying a pitiless pressure on the
Tuileries ; and France was not prepared for a colossal
struggle. Francis Joseph, with Hungary simmering into
rebeUion, Russia deaf and cold, and Great Britain swinging
over to Italy's side, was prepared to sacrifice Lombardy
rather than imperil Austrian supremacy in Germany. The
armistice of ViUa Franca, which shattered the hopes of
Cavour, brought immediate relief to the tension in Ger
many. The Prince Regent in Prussia could face the
German world. He had mobilised, he had not truckled
to France, he had satisfied German honour and his own
-conscience. The European crisis was over, and Prussia had made
neither mistakes nor concessions. William 1. had now to
face his Liberal subjects. The Liberals no longer hampered
by the cry of ' Austria in danger ' and the ' Watch on the
Rhine,' took up the programme of constitutional reform
with renewed energy, and the war crisis indirectly brought
the domestic issues to a head.
The Prince Regent was a competent soldier, thoroughly
sound in professional technique, and intimately acquainted
with the administration of the Prussian army. As heir

108 BISMARCK
to the throne, and now as virtuaUy king and commander-
in-chief, he had studied military science, and he had at his
elbow first-rate mUitary advisers on aU army questions.
Prince WiUiam had the expert's knowledge and framed his
own judgment. The supreme command was his prero
gative, and he was not prepared to surrender the control
it conferred to any one, least of aU to poUticians and
civiUans who had neither his knowledge nor his mUitarist
principles. The rights of the Crown over the army in
herited from his ancestors and expressly guaranteed in the
Constitution of 185 1, were the rocher de bronze on which
the Prussian monarchy was impregnably based. The
crises of 1854 anc^ °* J^59 ^-a^ revealed defects in the great
mUitary machine, while the economic development of
Prussia had outstripped the system embodied in the law
of 1 8 14.
Three points caUed for immediate attention. First
and least important, the technical and material equipment
required modernisation and extension. Secondly, the
twenty thousand men who annuaUy escaped miUtary ser
vice, because the increase in the population furnished an
annual contingent larger than that originaUy prescribed,
must be brought into training ; thirdly, the relations
between the active army, the reserve, and the Landwehr
— the constitutional mihtia — must be revised. The royal
and ministerial programme, finaUy adopted after earnest
consideration, aimed broadly at (1) increasing the numbers
of the active army by the creation of new regiments ; (2)
remoulding the reserve and the Landwehr so as to give a
larger first reserve for bringing the peace estabhshment
up to war strength on mobilisation, and a second reserve
better trained and more closely incorporated with the
first Une ; (3) a supplemental annual charge in money of
nine miUion thalers. This programme required the assent
of the Landtag because the additional cost must be voted
in the budget, and because the abolition of the old, and
the reorganising of the new, Landwehr involved funda
mental changes in the law of the land. In figures the
situation came to this : the old system approximately gave
Prussia a standing army of 150,000 with a war establish-

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 109
ment (without the Landwehr) of 230,000 men ; and with
the old Landwehr, approximately, 480,000 men. The
new royal plan, with three years' service, would give a war
estabhshment of 450,000 men, and with the remodelled
Landwehr a total of 756,000. The plan of the opposition,
with two years' service, reduced the war establishment,
approximately, to 400,000, and the total, with the Land
wehr, probably to some 600,000.
The Liberals, who were in a substantial majority in the
Lower House, had their chance. They recognised to the
full the desirability of increasing Prussia's military strength
— Prussia was to unify Germany — but they met the royal
programme by demanding (1) the reduction of compulsory
service from three years to two ; (2) revision of the new
Landwehr scheme ; (3) the annual voting of the Army
Budget. For our purpose here the details of a complicated
problem — military, financial, and constitutional — are not
of importance. But the principles in coUision were vital,
and it must suffice briefly and clearly to disentangle them.
Prince WiUiam, as a professional soldier and as a ruler,
resented the criticism of a civihan opposition on the tech
nical aspects of the scheme ; his military advisers and he
himself were convinced that military efficiency could be
secured by the royal programme alone. But these tech
nical questions were completely overshadowed by the
constitutional controversy. The opposition did not dis
pute the prerogative of the sovereign, as commander-in-
chief, or the duty of every Prussian male to be trained in
the army ; but they put forward three claims. • First,
that as the obligation of military service affected every
man in Prussia, the nation had the legal and moral right
through its representatives to decide on what conditions
that service should be performed, and if Parliament chose
to reduce the period with the Colours from three years to
two, it had the right to do so ; secondly, Parliament had
the legal right to vote or to refuse the taxes required for
maintaining the army ; thirdly, the army estimates were
part of the annual budget, and the representatives of _ the
nation had the right annually to review this budget, since
without parliamentary sanction no taxes were legal for the

no BISMARCK
army or any other institution of the State. In so far as
the army was dependent on statute law and taxation for
its existence, the concurrence of Parliament was essential.
The importance of these claims did not lie in their legal
validity, which was undeniable, but in the principles and
consequences they involved. The Prince Regent and
Roon quite correctly grasped that the opposition was
determined to assert, through the annual revision of the
budget, the principle of ministerial responsibility to the
Lower House ; and that through the power of the purse
the establishment of ministerial responsibility would lead
inevitably to a general and unlimited control of policy and
executive ministerial action. Prussia would cease to be a
State in which the King governed through the legislature ;
it would become a State in which ministers, dependent on
the legislature, governed through the King. The army
would be turned into a creation of the Landtag, and the
prerogative of the sovereign would be legislated out of
existence. In a word, the old conception of the monarchy
was in irreconcilable collision with the new conception of
parliamentary Liberalism. For the Crown, the power and
character of the monarchy were at stake ; for the Liberals,
the power and character of Parliament as a national insti
tution of government. An issue had been raised on which
compromise was impossible. Was there, or was there not,
to be parhamentary and constitutional government in
Prussia ? It was recognised that the decision would
affect not merely Prussia, but the whole of Germany.
At the outset the struggle was embittered by an act of
bad faith. The opposition temporarily voted the addi
tional money required on the understanding that the
ministerial scheme should be withdrawn and the whole
question of reorganisation reserved for future consideration.
But the War Office promptly created the new regiments ;
colours were solemnly given them by the Regent ; and
the revised budget assumed that the scheme had been ap
proved. William, who had become king in 1861, peremp
torily refused to disavow the accomplished facts. His
acts as War-Lord (Kriegesherr) were not subject to parha
mentary revision ; the money had been voted, and it was

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN in
within his prerogative to apply it. Rejection of the
budget and a dissolution of Parliament followed, with the
result that the Conservative minority was smitten hip and
thigh. The Conservative party numbered a tiny handful
in the new Landtag. The Crown was apparently con
fronted^ with surrender to the opposition or resort to a
coup d'Etat.
Bismarck rejoiced in the quarrel. He had had nothing so
far to do either with framing the scheme or the crisis that
arose out of it. In his judgment nothing could be better
than to strengthen the army, and it was for the soldiers to
decide how most effectively to do this. But even better was .
the collision between the Crown and the Liberals. The
control of the army by an irresponsible Crown and ministers
responsible to the Crown alone, lay in the essence of his
programme. The demands of the opposition implied
everything that he hated and feared— parliamentary
government, the Landtag as a government-making, policy
making organ, and ministers under the thumb of a majority
composed of professors, lawyers, journalists, and middle-class
amateurs. Even if the scheme were wrong, the Crown
must be supported and the opposition smashed into heel.
The King was desperately unhappy. His Liberal minis
ters saw no solution but to yield. How could the
government continue without a budget ? The country
at the general election had pronounced. The Crown
Prince had the gravest misgivings about a policy which
threatened to destroy national confidence in the sovereign.
perhaps even shatter the throne. Prussia was at this
moment insisting that the incurable autocrat of Hesse-
Cassel must obey his constitution and his legislature, yet
at home was defying the plain rights of the Landtag to vote
taxes and determine their application laid down in the
Prussian law of the land. Roon and the soldiers daily
reminded his Majesty that the army as a monarchical
institution was at stake, and a Hohenzollern who betrayed
the army betrayed himself. Surrender ? Civil war ? A
coup d'Etat ? Abdication ? Which was King WiUiam to
choose ? Roon also suggested that if his Majesty's
ministers refused to do their plain duty and defy Parlia-

112

BISMARCK

ment, there was at Petersburg an experienced diplo
matist who could be trusted to do the King's business.
But William shrank at the thought. _ Bismarck vvould_ be
loyal, but he would insist on carrying out his foreign
policy, an entente with France and opposition to Austria.
His appointment was burning the bridges and blowing
up the magazines. The opposition might stiU be brought
to an honourable compromise, but not by Bismarck.
The ' Baden Memorial ' (Denkschrift), drawn up by
Bismarck for King William in July 1861, repeated the
familiar analysis of the reasons why the existing federal
system was ruinous to Prussia — the continuous deadlock,
Austrian jealousy, the subordination of Prussian initiative
and independence to the votes of petty States, organised by
a non-German Empire at Vienna. Bismarck urged the
King to put Prussia at the head of the unitary movement
and lay before the Federal Diet a proposal to create a
national Parliament, chosen by direct suffrage from all
Germany, which would give Prussia the political direction
that it had already in the Tariff Union. Skilfully devised,
such a Parliament would enlist for Prussia popular sym
pathy throughout Germany and largely heal the internal
strife in Prussia itself. The ' Baden Memorial ' marks an
important stage in the evolution of Bismarck's thought.
It assumed the existence of a strong Prussian army, and
the wiU to employ it at the right moment in imposing a
Prussian solution on aU recalcitrants. ' Make me,' he said,
with reference to the Hesse-Cassel affair, ' an Under-
Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and I will produce for you
in three weeks a civU war of the first quality.'
Throughout 1861 and the spring of 1862 gossip in the
capital was rife with reports that the ambassador at
Petersburg was to be given ministerial office. Roon
kept Bismarck closely informed of aU that was passing.
More than once he was brought ' on sick leave ' to Berhn,
to be ready, but nothing came of it. The King was fas
cinated and repeUed by the idea. Audiences between
Bismarck and his sovereign improved their personal but not
their poUtical relations. WiUiam felt that in this strong,
frank, masterful man's hands he would be dragged whither

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 113
he knew not. ' He goes furthest^.who .knows^not whither
he is going,' pronounced the practical mysticism of Crom
well. And in Bismarck's surveys of the future there was
always a grand and indefinable atmosphere, a conscious
ness of the vastness of Ufe, and the illimitable potencies of
the future floating over the concrete directness of his grip
on realities. He knew not whither he was going — he did
not wish to know. Forces beyond human calculation
were driving Prussia, and he must march with them. The
Time-spirit would provide the golden opportunities and
reveal how they could be used.
Bismarck concluded that his transference (May 29,
1862) to the embassy at Paris signified a definitive refusal
of a ministerial portfoho at BerUn. He had learned much
at Petersburg : sounded and charted the European
situation ; estabhshed a personal friendship with the
Tsar ; and by meekly sitting at the feet of the vain Gort-
schakov had created a credit on which in good time he
intended to draw. ' The hatred of Austria here,' he
wrote from Petersburg, ' exceeds everything I had
beheved possible.' Paris was the pohtical centre of
Europe, and a pleasanter place than Petersburg. The
Court of the Second Empire was at the zenith of its social
brilliance. The Empress Eugenie and her galaxy of fraU
butterflies — fetes, baUs, fashions, and opera — would be
an agreeable background to the serious political work of
exploiting Napoleon. On June 1 he was presenting his
credentials to the Man of Sin at the Tuileries, and before
long intimately discussing the higher statecraft with the
Emperor and his ministers, and suggesting with a dehcious
audacity that a tyro in diplomacy would be grateful for
aU the instructions he could receive from the French ex
perts — Bismarck instructed by a Persigny, a Drouyn de
Lhuys, a Walewski, or a De Moray ! He was also scrib
bling notes to Roon on the iniquities of the Liberal majority
in the Landtag, and letters to his wife and sister describ
ing the Parisian fashions, with touches on the vanity of
French ministers, and the beauty of the Champs Elysees
in a Paris midsummer. He dashed off to London to see
the great Exhibition and met Palmerston and Disraeli at
B. II

ii4 BISMARCK
the P.ussian Embassy. An amusing feUow this Prussian
Ambassador, every one agreed. His verve and racy reck
lessness deUghted the company, and his sketch of how in
a few years he would settle Europe and Germany was more
exhUarating than, and quite as evanescent as, champagne.
Disraeli judged more correctly. ' Take care of that man ;
he means what he says,' was a verdict no less accurate and
prophetic than Bismarck's scribbled comment to Roon.
' I am just back from London. People there are much
better informed about China and Turkey than about
Prussia. Loftus (the English Ambassador in Berhn) must
write to his minister much more nonsense than I imagine.' -
It was tragicaUy true. Neither at the Foreign Office,
nor in Parhament, not even in the office of The Times, or in
the exalted circles of the Court, did they know the truth
about Prussia and Germany, and it is doubtful whether
they wished to know.
From Paris Bismarck visited TrouvUle, and then, rest
less and dissatisfied, went on a tour to the south. Not
even ' the Lafitte, Mouton RothschUd, Pichon, Laroze,
Latour, Margaux, St. Julien, Beaune, ArmiUac, and other
wines ' — the ' other ' is a pretty touch — which he noted as
having drunk at Bordeaux, nor the. .beauty of dawn on the
seashore and of sunset in the Pyrenees, described in letters
to his wife, could appease his feeling that Paris after all
was exile ; that the world of action lay in Berlin, and that
he was shut out from it. Life was slipping away. Was
he to be an ambassador aU his days, and never have the
great pohtical levers in his hands ? Ministerial office
was hateful, yet he could not be happy without it. ' My
furniture,' he wrote on September 12, 1862, ' is stiU at
Petersburg and wiU freeze the^e; my carriages are at
Stettin, my horses at grass near Berlin, my famUy in
Pomerania, and I am on the streets.'
Three days later came a telegram from Roon : ' Come.
The pear is ripe. Periculum in mora' He plucked an
ohve branch as he hurried through Avignon on his way to
Paris, and was in Berlin on the morning of September 20.
In the forenoon of September 22 he had a memorable
interview with the King at Schloss Babelsberg. He per-

THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 115
suaded WiUiam 1. to tear up the abdication he had drafted,
put himself unreservedly at his sovereign's disposal, and
declared his readiness to fight for the rights of the Crown
and the royal scheme of reorganisation of the army to the
last. There could be no surrender. This was a fight for
honour and existence and must be fought to a finish.
Next day (September 23) the Gazette announced the
appointment of Herr von Bismarck-SchOnhausen to office
as temporary Minister-President. On the same day the
budget for 1862, providing for the army in accordance with
the royal scheme of reorganisation, was decisively rejected
in the Lower House of the Landtag by 273 to 68 votes.
.September 23, 1862, is a red-letter day in the Hohenzollern
calendar ; it opened a new chapter, or rather a new
volume, in the history of Prussia and of Europe.

CHAPTER IV
THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT, 1 862-1 867
§ 1. The Constitutional Conflict, the Polish Question, and
the German Problem
On October 8, 1862, Bismarck's provisional appointment
as Minister-President was definitely ratified. He took up
his residence in the WiUielmstrasse, which was to be his
official abode for twenty-eight years. The new minister
was in his forty-eighth year, and he had passed, without
any ministerial experience, direct from an embassy to the
highest office in the State. Both in Prussia and outside it
men naturally asked, What did it mean ? What would
happen next ?
Apart from the constitutional controversy and the dead
lock created by the overwhelming vote of September 23
— a situation grave enough to demand the undivided
energies of the government — a series of critical questions
in foreign policy pressed for solution. Schleswig-Holstein,
the situation in Hesse-Cassel, Poland, the renewal of the
ZoUverein, the proposed commercial treaty with France,
the German problem — each and all of these in combination
threatened to become acute. They involved the relations
of Prussia as a German Power with the middle and petty
States in Germany, and her relations as a European Power
with Austria, France, Great Britain, Russia, and the new
but incomplete kingdom of Italy. Public opinion in Ger
many recognised the gravity of the crisis, and was aware
that a false step in foreign policy would create an inter
national situation which would leave Prussia isolated and
confronted with a hostUe coalition that would reduce her
to a humihating impotence.
Bismarck's appointment was clearly a challenge.' It
116

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 117
provoked in different quarters indignation, amazement,
contempt, amusement. As we look back to-day and deli
berately forget the knowledge of what happened between
1862 and 1 87 1, it is instructive to read in contemporary
literature — the newspapers, memoirs, letters, pamphlets,
caricatures and dispatches — the judgments and inter
pretations expressed in these critical years of 1862-66.
Rechberg at Vienna in 1862 described Bismarck to
Gramont as ' incapable de sacrifier une idee preconcue, un
prejuge, une idee de parti, a n'importe queUe raison d'un
ordre superieur ; il n'a pas le sens pratique de la politique,
c'est un homme de parti dans la force du mot,' adding
truly enough, ' ce n'est pas un ami que nous aurons la.'
The new appointment was so clearly either a jest pour rire
to cover a deliberate ride for a fall, a surrender to the oppo
sition, and perhaps the King's abdication, or it was the
gambler's last throw, the discovery of a Prussian Polignac
which proclaimed a coming coup d'Etat. Capitulation or
revolution ? What else could it mean, when the King
selected this Junker diplomatist, known only too well for
his violent, reckless, and impenitent championship of Prus
sian Conservatism in its most particularist form ? The
constitutional crisis and the international situation de
manded a cool, conciliatory, and experienced statesman.
The King rephed by appointing a red reactionary. In the
chanceUeries of Europe the statesmen du vieux pantalon
shrugged their shoulders and made bets whether Bismarck
would last three weeks or three months. To the Liberals,
above all, in Prussia the King's action was a stinging affront,
and a summons either to make a revolution or to capitulate.
Such judgments — and they could be cited by the page
—were natural under the circumstances, for neither the
official world at London, Paris, Vienna, Dresden, and
Munich, nor the superheated public in Berlin knew the
real Bismarck. They simply saw in him the Junker of
1848-51. When he had practicaUy disappeared at Frank
furt from the public gaze the little that had emerged since
1852 confirmed the assumption that he had not altered,
indeed, that he was more than ever the sworn foe of the
causes he had opposed with such fiery audacity. The

118 BISMARCK
profound change in his views and the breadth and variety
of his experience were unknown to most, and were even
misinterpreted by the few who had the material for
framing a correct judgment. In September 1862 no one
had divined the intellectual power, the cool and calculating
brain, the intensity of conviction, the poUtical nerve, and
the extraordinary strength of character and will stored up
and disciplined in that titanic frame. As with Moltke, so
with Bismarck, the revelation of the next eight years was
to astound and hypnotise Germany and Europe.
And if men did not know Bismarck they were no less
ignorant in 1862 of Prussia and Prussianism. Since 18 15
Prussia as a German state and as a European Power had done
nothing to justify her claim to parity with the other great
Powers. She had produced competent internal adminis
trators, distinguished professors, and ardent but ineffective
politicians. Her statesmen for fifty years were mediocrities ;
her pohcy continuously tarnished by prejudice, timidity,
and irresolution — reaction ruined by spasmodic and in
sincere repentance. The material and economic strength
of the country had been enormously increased since 1815 ;
Nin her organised civil service and her army, no less than
her system of education, Prussia was in 1862 far ahead of
every other German state, and superior not merely to
Austria and Russia but to France and Great Britain. The
generation born in the Napoleonic epoch, under the
shadows of Jena and the sunlight of the great age of reform
— the age of Scharnhorst, Stein, and the War of Liberation
¦ — had been patiently moulded and tempered in the chill
school of work and disappointment to a capacity for sus
tained sacrifice and effort which only required leadership
— a man and a cause- — to evoke a single-minded co-opera
tion. Here lay the secret of the strength of the opposition
in Parliament, for it represented a Prussia which had
broken with the historic tradition because the organs of
that tradition — monarchy, ministers, and the executive —
seemed blind to the greatness of the German renaissance,
and ignorant of the moral and inteUectual forces that com
peUed the true German mind to be Liberal and Nationalist.
Deaf to the call of the future, Prussia had frittered for

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 119
forty years the vigour of the nation on a parochial
prosperity or the ignoble scuffles of the dynasties in the
Federal Diet.
Bismarck was a child of the age that had produced 1848
and the constitutional crisis of 1862 — lived, learned, and
inwardly digested. Like the Liberals whom he detested
he had divined the strength of Prussia, but, unlike the
Liberals, he diagnosed the cause of Prussia's failure in one
vital and fatal omission. The Frederician tradition had
been successfuUy followed in domestic administration, but
had been neglected or betrayed in policy, above all, foreign
poUcy. The time had come at last — and not too late —
to prove what a strong Prussia could do, when her policy
was shaped and directed by a minister to whom nothing
was sacred or unclean, prepared like Frederick, the master,
to devote soul, brain and body to the service of Prussia, and
determined to concentrate unflinchingly the whole force
of the State on one end and one end alone, the greatness
of Prussia — a man to whom parties, causes, principles, con
ventions, were either means to that end or empty phrases.
Prussia herself and Europe had forgotten the principles
and methods of Frederick the Great. The schools of
Metternich and Canning, of Palmerston, Guizot or
Nicholas 1., lingered on in the shibboleths of the middle-
aged, who advised their governments from office desks in
the Foreign Offices ; the school of Cavour had come and
gone with 1861 ; in the west at Paris reigned the sham
Napoleonism of the Second Empire ; at London were the
statesmen of both parties who persisted in interpreting the
Continent, if they interpreted it at aU, in the terms of an
obsolete continental or a complacent insular tradition, no
longer in touch with realities. By 1871 it began to dawn
on Europe that in Bismarck had come to life a reincarnation
of the Frederick who had shattered the Europe of Walpole,
Maria Theresa, and Louis xv., a statesman controlling an
organised Prussia, far stronger relatively than the Prussia
of Frederick the Great — a statesmanship that was a re
created gospel in action. The State as Egoism and the
State as Power, directed by the genius of the illuminated
despot, had made a new Europe and a new Prussia between

120 BISMARCK
1740 and 1786; directed by the illuminated genius of
Bismarck it was to make a new Prussia, a new Germany,
and a new Europe between 1862 and 1890.
It was not therefore either the unrepentant Berserker
of Junkertum or a mere diplomatist trained in the conven
tional manege of Frankfurt, Petersburg, and Paris, who
at Roon's bidding had promised his sovereign in the garden
of Schloss Babelberg to lead a forlorn hope. Bismarck had
studied the men both at Berlin and all over Europe with
whom he would have to de-al ; he was convinced that in
a test of resource, nerve, courage, and tenacity of wiU, or
in mastery of the realities in any situation, it would not be
he who would fail. This bitter quarrel was none of his
making, and his first step, when he met the triumphant
majority of the opposition in ' The House of Phrases,' as
he caUed the Landtag, was quietly to lay on the table the
olive branch that he had plucked at Avignon, with the
remark that it was a present to the progressive party, but
the time for it had apparently not yet come.
Bismarck's desire for an honourable compromise was pro
bably sincere. He desired to be free from internal compli
cations in order to deal with foreign policy. However, it
was a fixed principle of his system, enunciated now and fifty
times in the next twentyrfive years, that government by
a monarchy through a representative assembly must rest
on compromises, and it was the function of statesmanship
• to frame and work them. The external situation was
critical; foreign policy would demand for the next two
or three years sleepless vigilance, and the difficulties,
sufficiently great in themselves, would be aggravated by
an embittered controversy at home. He was new to
office ; his position would be enormously strengthened
if he could inaugurate his minister-presidency by a reason
able settlement. Neither n@w, nor at any time, was it his
habit to close the doors or drive an adversary to open war
until he was convinced that negotiation could not secure
the essentials. But he made his terms perfectly clear.
Let the controversy over rights on both sides be dismissed
as misleading juristic jargon. But the Crown must have
the money for the reorganisation of the army, and the

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 121
control of that army and of policy must rest with the King.
Co-operation with Parliament by aU means, government
by a parliamentary majority — never. If the opposition
chose to make the issue not a question of right but of
might, between government by the monarchy and govern
ment by the Lower House of the Landtag, against the will
of the King and the Upper House, the struggle must be
fought out, and there would only be one end to it — the
defeat of the opposition which usurped the lawful authority
of the State, inalienably inherent in the Crown.
Bismarck calmly explained his interpretation of the con
stitution, and to this he adhered through the period of
conflict. He quietly ignored the overwhelming endorse
ment of the action taken in the previous Parliament by
the general election. The Lower House had the right, he
agreed, to vote taxes or reject the budget, but the veto of
the Lower House was not conclusive, for the budget was
expressed in a law, and laws required the assent of the
Crown and the Upper, as weU as of the Lower, House.
If the consent of any one of these were withheld, a dead
lock was created which could, under the constitution, only
be removed by the voluntary act of the organ concerned
and by no other means. Failing such, the constitution
expressly reserved to the Crown the residual right of
government. The Crown was therefore legaUy entitled
to carry on the administration during the emergency
created by the deadlock. Otherwise it failed in its duty
to itself as the head of the State and to the whole kingdom.
The Crown, therefore, simply was driven to avail itself of
the special powers provided to meet a temporary and ex
ceptional situation. The. King might chaUenge the wisdom
or patriotism of the action which had produced the
deadlock, but in exercising his special powers he was not
denying the legal rights of the Lower House, which was
similarly bound not to deny the legal rights of the Crown.
The action of the Lower House amounted to a claim to
compel the Crown to surrender its prerogative at dis
cretion, and to make the King's government dependent on
the fiat of one chamber of the legislature, or, if the Crown
refused to give way, to make all government impossible.

122 BISMARCK
Bismarck made it no less clear that as a minister he was
not appointed, nor could be dismissed, by Parliament. So
long as he had the confidence of his sovereign he would re
main in office, no matter what Parliament said or voted.
The government of the Crown must and would be carried
on, budget or no budget. The taxes would be levied
under the law of 1861 (as indeed they were from 1861-66) ;
the necessary legalisation of this emergency government
by prerogative could and would be procured later (as it
was in 1866), by a law of indemnity, or — as Bismarck
thought possible in 1863 — by an alteration of the consti
tution. On September 29 he gave expression in debate
to the famous sentence : ' Germany has its eyes not on
Prussia's Liberalism, but on its might. . . . Prussia must
reserve its strength for the favourable moment, which has
already more than once been missed. The great questions
of the day wiU not be decided by speeches and resolutions
of majorities — that was the blunder of 1848 and 1849 —
but by blood and iron.'
Spoken with calm conviction, the phrase burst like a
shell in a powder magazine. It roused a hurricane of in
dignation through Germany. No such language had been
heard from a Prussian minister since 18x5, an<^ i* men
needed convincing that the Landtag was confronted with
the Junker of 1849, the proof was surely there from the
Minister-President's own lips. Later, Bismarck repeatedly
explained that aU he meant was that the German problem
could be solved only by action, and the effective use at the
suitable moment of the Prussian army, and that Konig-
gratz, St. Privat, and Sedan proved he was right ; that
without 'the blood and iron' of military force neither
Austria nor France could have been overthrown and
German unity achieved. But the famous sentence in
1862 went much further, and was intended to go much
further, than this. It was a warning to Germany as well
as to the Prussian Landtag ; it was a concentrated con
demnation of aU, and not merely the Liberal, methods
hitherto employed ; it poured contempt on reform by
' moral 'penetration ' and government by consent of the
governed. It was the summary of the creed that the State

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 123
stood for power, and that in political problems force, not
right, was the sovereign remedy (Macht geht vor Recht).
It was inevitable that the opposition should reject the
olive branch. Holding as they did that the general
election had given them a plain mandate, that the govern
ment demanded more for the army than efficiency re
quired, that the period of service could be safely reduced
from three years to two, that the levying of taxes without
the consent of the Lower House was a plain violation of the
constitution, and that a compromise involved acquiescence
in the iUegal acts of the government, which would perma
nently destroy the power of the Lower House ever again
to modify or refuse the financial demands of any ministry,
— in a word, that the future of parliamentary and constitu
tional government was bound up with the successful
assertion of their principles, the majority could only meet
the chaUenge of the Minister-President by inflexible ad
herence to their decision. A surrender in the autumn of
1862 would have been a victory for reaction and a defeat
for the principle of popular government through represen
tative institutions throughout Germany. Accordingly,
the Lower Chamber by 251 to 36 votes condemned the
iUegal expenditure incurred by the government, and de
manded that the budget for 1863 should be submitted for
approval. When (October 10) the Upper House accepted
the condemned budget of 1862 by 114 to 44 votes, their
action was condemned unanimously by the Lower House
as ' contrary to the clear sense and text of the constitution.'
Parliament was prorogued ; when it met in 1863 (January
27) an address to the Crown, accusing ministers of having
violated the constitution, was passed after a passionate
debate by 255 to 68 votes.
The breach was now complete. The Lower House was
in plain conflict with the Crown, the Crown's ministers
and the Upper House, and the struggle, in which feeling
outside was as violent as within Parliament, soon spread to
other issues than the reorganisation of the army and the
budget. The struggle was no mere juristic controversy over dis
putable and conflicting clauses in the written constitution

124 BISMARCK
of 1 85 1. It focussed in the clearest light the fundamental
and irreconcilable antagonism between the principles
and methods of policy, government, and the character of
the State represented by Bismarck and the opposition.
When Bismarck ignored the undeniable mandate of the
Prussian electorate to its representatives in Parliament,
and when he admitted that the levying of the rejected
taxes was an executive act which would require an
indemnity to bring it within the letter and spirit of the
constitution, he proclaimed that the struggle was not a
question of law, but of power. Was the Crown, as head
of the executive and of the army, to enforce its will on the
nation, and to retain a final and irresponsible judgment
in all questions of policy ?
' The Prussian Monarchy,' he asserted on January 27,
1863. ' has not yet completed its mission ; it is not yet
ready to become a purely ornamental decoration of your
constitutional Parliament House ; not yet ready to be
manipulated as a piece of lifeless machinery of parlia
mentary government.'
Bismarck was fighting with his back to the wall for an
issue more important in his eyes than the preservation of
the legal prerogatives of the Crown in Prussia. The per
sonal monarchy, as an organ of government, was the indis
pensable condition of success in the task he had set himself.
A constitutional sovereign, in the British sense, not only in
volved ministers responsible to Parliament, but a legislature
the chief function of which would be to determine the
ends, the character, and the methods of policy. Hence
his unrelenting opposition now, and to the end of his life,
to government by and through representative institutions
was the subtle product of ingrained personal feehng and
a recognition of the fundamental antagonism between his
political convictions and the champions of parliamentary
government. He could be the loyal servant of a king
whose office incarnated the history and character of a
specific type of State, but to be the servant of a ParUament,
accountable to, and holding his place at the pleasure of,
a fortuitous majority of professors, lawyers, journaUsts,
tradesmen and tinkers, was intolerable to his aristocratic

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 125
pride and independence. He would take orders from no
one save the King and God, and he served God as he served
his royal master, on terms of devotion defined and inter
preted by himself.
On poUtical grounds he both feared and despised his
opponents in Parliament. He told them roundly that
they were ignorant, prejudiced, unpractical — dreamers
without political sense — helpless children in affairs of
State. Had he been perfectly honest he would have added
that diplomacy, as he conceived it, could not be conducted
with the blinds up, and that no representative body of
responsible men of high character would sanction either
his principles or his methods, and that for the realisation
of his aims absolute control of all the resources of the
State and an unfettered discretion were indispensable,
and that it was easier to manipulate and hoodwink a king
than a nation and a Parliament. The reorganisation of
the army, the steady preparation for war by a militarised
bureaucracy, the budget question, the Polish problem,
the conquest of Schleswig-Holstein, the manipulation of
the European situation, the understandings with Russia
and Napoleon in., the Italian Treaty, the breach with
Austria, the campaign and peace of 1866, and the formation
of the North German Confederation — the Bismarckian
solution of the great questions of the day — could never
have been carried out, as Bismarck carried them out, by a
minister under a system of constitutional monarchy and
responsible parliamentary government. The conscience
of Prussia and Germany in 1 862 made, in Bismarck's eyes,
for political cowardice. Nor were the Germans who
created the National Union under Bennigsen as yet pre
pared to sacrifice everything to the State as Power, and to
adopt as their sole criterion of policy the State-egoism
of an unreformed and militarised Prussia.
In 1862 Germany was ripe for great changes. Under
the pressure of the internal development, assisted by the
course of events in Europe, most notably in Italy, the
demand for the extension of political rights on Nationahst
and Liberal lines could no longer be burked or denied. It
was apparent in every quarter, and in every German State.

126 BISMARCK
The dynasties and their ministers from Vienna to Liberal
Coburg or reactionary Hesse-Cassel were responding, re
luctantly or readily, to the movement which had Germany
in its grip. The passionate manifestation of German
public opinion in the Pohsh problem, and the Schleswig-
Holstein question from 1863 to 1866, the execration which
Bismarck aroused in non-Prussian Germany, have an his
toric and tragic significance. Bismarck had divined the
force and direction of the currents now reaching their
flood-tide, and he tacitly agreed with the leaders of the
National Union that the key of the future lay in Prussia.
The failure to secure Prussia in 1848 had destroyed the
Liberal revolution. A second failure to capture Prussia in
1863 would have the same wrecking result. And as in
1 848, so now, success or failure would determine not merely
the fate of Germany and of Prussia, but the German mind
and the future development of Continental Europe.
The strength of the Liberal opposition in the Prussian
Parliament lay, first, in its devotion to constitutional law
and right ; secondly, in a profound belief in the efficacy
of orderly self-government through representative insti
tutions ; thirdly, in the deep Prussian and German
patriotism of the leaders and the rank and file ; fourthly,
in their insistence on the complete identity of Prussian
and German interests alike in home and foreign policy ;
fifthly, in their recognition that the old order in Prussia
and Germany had failed, and would continue to fail, to
satisfy the deepest and most legitimate aspirations of the
German people, and that a new departure on new prin
ciple^ was essential ; and lastly, in their sympathy, partly
conscious, partly unconscious, with the great currents
and forces moving elsewhere than in Germany — in the
United States, in Great Britain, in Italy, in the Austrian
Empire, in south-eastern Europe and the Balkans, in
France, and even in Russia. It was a bitter duty for the
leaders of the opposition openly to chaUenge the King; but
they faced it because they had consciences and a deep love
of Prussia. The ignorance in England of the true char
acter of the German movement, the bUndness of our
statesmen, our press, and our public opinion to the signi-

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 127
ficance for our nation and national destinies of the struggle
fought out between September 1862 and July 1867, were
more damning than the lamentable division in our councils
and the fiasco of our statesmanship in Europe. In these
years Great Britain was given a matchless opportunity to
assert a moral and poUtical ascendency, not based on power,
but on the qualities and elements of national development
of which the British State is the expression and the trustee,
and she threw it away, as she very nearly in the same epoch
threw away her birthright in the issues raised by the
American Civil War.
But the Liberal opposition had two fatal defects, which
Bismarck with a demonic intuition fully realised. The
renunciation of reform by revolution, and of the right of
resistance, and the adhesion to procedure by purely consti
tutional methods reduced his opponents to impotence.
Constitutional weapons are helpless against force : argu
ment is futile against an opponent who derides the im
potence of speeches and pamphlets. Bismarck could not
be driven from office by votes of the Lower House, but
only by a revolution. He calculated that opposition
would be confined to resolutions in the Lower House,
public meetings and the press, and that he would not be
driven to a coup d'Etat by refusal to pay iUegal taxes or to
serve in an iUegal army. We may be quite sure that he
would not have hesitated to employ shot and shell, but a
civil war in Prussia which would have involved the whole
of Germany and of Austria was the one thing that he knew
he need not fear. With consummate irony he subse
quently utilised the reverence for law and order that in
spired the constitutional party as the clinching proof that
German unity could not be achieved by any other methods
than his own. Had the men who overthrew Charles 1.
and James n. limited themselves to passive protests,
recorded in the Journals of the House of Commons, the
house of Stuart would have been reigning to-day in White
hall, and the palace of Westminster would have been
replaced by a national memorial to Strafford and Father
Petre. But Strafford had to work with a Charles 1.
Bismarck had King WiUiam and the Prussia made by the

128 BISMARCK
HohenzoUern sovereigns. In the second place, the oppo
sition were not deaUng with a pure reactionary, determined
to maintain, as Nicholas i. and Schwarzenberg had been
determined in 1848 to maintain, the status quo, and to
stamp out every obstacle to its maintenance. An infuri
ated pubhc opinion saw in the Minister-President the
arch-enemy of unification and the champion of Junker
particularism. It was quite wrong. Bismarck was as
profoundly convinced as every Liberal that the German
problem must be solved and on Nationahst lines ; and his
conviction was steeled by the knowledge that the future
of Conservatism and Prussianism would be permanently
assured by the capacity to achieve such a solution. He was
as passionately in earnest as any Liberal in Germany, and
he despised as strongly as any Liberal the rancid reaction
of the Conservatives. In men, conscious of titanic powers,
personal ambition is an immeasurable driving force, and
everything he cared for, including his own career, was at
stake in the contest to which Bismarck now deliberately
committed himself. He meant to justify himself to the
Prussia which he loved and the Germany which so heartily
hated him. He would succeed because he must. The
one thing that divided him from the Liberals was,his inter
pretation of life, but that was vital and nothing could
bridge or obhterate it. A Prussia and a Germany such as
the Liberals desired to make, and would, unless they were
decisively defeated, succeed in making, were to Bismarck
the negation of everything that made life worth living.
At this stage in Bismarck's career two conclusions are
fairly certain^ He had no cut-and-dried programme when
he came into office ; his difficulties were so formidable as
to be almost insuperable. The marveUous march of
events, in which each stage seems to sUp into its pre
appointed place, stupefied not unnaturally contemporary
opinion, and has perverted both the historical and moral
judgment of German and non-German alike. The quality
and characteristics of his genius are more, not less, impres
sive if we ignore the sequel, and endeavour patiently to
reconstruct the situation from year to year, and reaUse
the essential difference between an opportunism of ends

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 129
and an opportunism of means. When he repeatedly called
himself an opportunist in politics it was the latter, not the
former, that Bismarck really meant.
No man had a clearer conception of the ends he had set
himself to achieve ; no man more deliberately on principle
left the means to be determined by the conditions and
possibUities, the realities and fonder abilia, of each situation
as it arose. He was always playing for the next stroke ;
but it was the stroke of the moment that exacted the con
centration of all his powers. His freedom from scruple
was on the same titanic scale as the rest of his inteUectual
gifts. His conscience never caused him one of the many
sleepless nights which the nervous torture of his brain so
abundantly produced. The fear that he had miscalcu
lated an opponent's strength or misinterpreted the re
sources at his disposal, that the King, the soldiers, or a
subordinate would faU him, or that he himself had let a
chance slip was with him night and day. To errors of
judgment he pleaded guilty with an engaging and disarm
ing frankness ; to the commission of wrong, never ; and for
the simple reason that the ethical standards and criteria of
private life were ruled out of politics by his creed and code
of public conduct. In the sphere of statesmanship right
and wrong were decided for Bismarck by the needs and
interests of the State for whose destinies he was responsible,
and by no other considerations, ethical or material. Hence
he did not do what he plainly regarded as wrong in order
that good might ensue ; he did not salve a seared or re
beUious conscience by the comforting iUusion that ends
justify means. The methods he employed were intrin-
sicaUy justifiable or not at aU, and the appropriate tests
were drawn from the same sources as those properly appli
cable to the ends themselves. In a dozen crucial instances
Bismarck was prouder of the methods than of the results
of his diplomacy. He scornfully rejected the white sheet
in which so many statesmen have appealed to the absolution
of a posterity, grateful for their achievements, but as per
turbed as the statesmen themselves by the immorality of
their statecraft.
Between 1862 and 1866 the Minister-President was a

130 BISMARCK
new man in office for the first time. As with Moltke, his
coUaborator of genius, the prestige and personal ascend
ancy which he enjoyed in increasing measure after 1867
had yet to be won. The constitutional conflict imposed
a terrible responsibility. The opposition fought neither
with small nor with great, save only with the minister who
had intervened to arrest an otherwise certain triumph.
Outside Prussia, the political relations of Berlin with the
other German governments were poisoned by the fear that
his antecedents and utterances aroused. At Paris and
Petersburg he had created credits on which he intended
to draw, but Napoleon and Gortschakov were chary of
committing themselves to this audacious adventurer, whose
fortunes were in so perilous a position. At Vienna, the
BaU-Platz had good reason to know that the new Minister-
President was no friend to Austria. To London Bismarck
was an unknown quantity : in our Court, better informed,
he stirred a deep-seated and justifiable aversion. At
Berlin, the Conservatives, routed at the elections, wel
comed the minister as an instrument to chastise democracy,
but his principles, particularly in foreign policy, caused
the gravest misgivings, and his haughty and brusque inde
pendence alienated and offended the phalanx of the
Kreuzzeitung. The soldiers at headquarters soon dis
covered that to Bismarck the army was an organ of the
State, not an end in itself ; soldiers, in his viewn were bad
masters but good servants ; he had no intention of becom
ing a political tool of the General Staff, and he brooked
no interference with the higher political direction. The
organisation of the army was the soldiers' business, policy
was his. Indeed, in 1862, began the friction between
the civil Minister-President and the army chiefs.
In a State, saturated with militarism, such as Prussia,
in which an unbroken tradition had created an ethos that
dominated the personal monarchy, a civil minister deter
mined to control poUcy was bound to offend the miUtary
chiefs, habituated to regard the claims of the army as
paramount. In Roori he had his one staunch friend. But
Roon was a soldier first and last. He had brought Bis
marck into power to prevent Prussia from being over-

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 131
whelmed ' in the sea of mud called parliamentary govern
ment.' Otto's conduct of affairs sorely tried Roon's loyal
affection and simple Conservative faith. For the scope and
increasing growth of Bismarck's genius were beyond the
limited political vision of Roon. Yet the friendship of
these two, Prussian in every drop of their blood — that in
timate 'du' in their letters — dating from the hot ambitions
of youth, weathering and deepening through aU the crises
of the heroic age from 1848 onwards to the grey maturity
that has achieved, warms and iUumines the stark and
gnarled loneliness of Bismarck's life. His wife, his sister,
his chUdren, Roon and the King — outside these lies a
formal waste fiUed with countless figures, who belong to
Bismarck, but Bismarck does not belong to them.
In 1862, everything turned on the King. The consti
tutional conflict had flooded the royal hearth and the steps
to the throne. The Crown Prince and his circle, in close
touch with the inteUectuals of Liberalism, such as M.
Duncker, Samwer, and Bernhardi, indicated unmistakably
their disagreement with the minister's policy and methods,
and their genuine fear that a reckless gambler was im-
periUing the future of the dynasty, pledging the monarchy
to an irreconcilable breach with the nation, and destroying
the moral primacy of Prussia in Germany.
King William was, indeed, desperately unhappy ; the
pressure of contradictory counsels was almost intolerable ;
adjured on one side to authorise negotiations with the
Landtag over Bismarck's head, which would save his
honour, and satisfy the opposition, on the other to stand
firm and save the Crown and army from the men who in
sulted him by accusations of violating the constitution.
Bismarck has vividly described the King's fear that he would
end like our Charles 1. on a scaffold, erected on the wreckage
of the hereditary monarchy, and his appeal to the King that
if it needs must be so, better to die at his post than sur
render. He, at any rate, would not desert him, for he
preferred the fate of Strafford to a craven submission. It
is one of the many penalties of service under an autocracy
that the security of tenure, assured by a representative
legislature, is dependent on a single personality, and at the

132 BISMARCK
mercy of political intriguers, soldiers, courtiers, priests,
or women : doubly so, if that autocracy has broken with
a legislature that has chaUenged the royal authority.
Bismarck's management of his sovereign for six-and-twenty
years was perhaps his most consummate performance ;
for he never stooped to sacrifice his own, nor demanded
the sacrifice of his master's, independence. His task was
to keep the King's feet firm on a path, the direction of
which he could not, and dare not, define ; and never did
he so sorely and continuously need the magic mixture of
firmness and flexibility, inspired by an unerring intuition,
as in these first few years when he fought, dagger out of
sheath, for a cause and himself. The argument between
King and minister invariably left the final coercion to
William's conscience, vibrating to his deep sense of re
sponsibility to the Divine Ruler for his royal duty to the
kingdom of Prussia.
The personal relations of these two, William and Bis
marck, so momentous in their consequences on two
generations of civilised Europe, are an intensely and
infinitely human background to the grandeur and petti
nesses of the drama in which they are the leading figures.
One example must suffice. When the Crown Pririce at
Dantzig in 1863 was so deeply stirred as to indicate in a
public speech his disapproval of his father's ministry, the
wrath of the King as a soldier and as a father, boiled over.
His son was guilty of plain mutiny : he must be stripped
of his military rank and disgraced. The conciliator was
Bismarck, who had little reason for leniency on behalf of
one who desired his dismissal. He urged the Crown Prince
to admit a grave error of judgment ; he begged the King
to be content with a severe reprimand. Sons, however
erring, had claims on a father's affection ; the struggle
had embittered the feelings of every one, and an open
breach between the King and the heir to the throne would
cause a scandal so serious as irretrievably to damage the
cause of the King and even of the monarchy. Bismarck's
courage won. Nor was the advice simply the adroit tactics
of an inhuman player with the human pawns in a great
game. Bismarck was capable of amazing meanness and

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 133
a card-sharper's trickery, but he was an intensely affectionate
father, and on critical occasions he could always remember
and rise to the dignity due from a great officer responsible
for a great kingdom.
The constitutional conflict that the opposition was con
vinced would make the minister's grave of shame, proved
in the issue, as Bismarck utilised it, a weapon of victory.
The olive branch was put away for the happy day when
the foe had surrendered at discretion. Bismarck after
January 1863 rejected aU compromise. A proposal en
gineered in the autumn of that year by E. von Manteuffel,
the chief of the MiUtary Cabinet, to accept the demand
for two years' service and obtain all the other essentials of
the mUitary reorganisation, was rejected by Bismarck.
The army chiefs were ready to sacrifice the Minister-
President, he inferred, and possibly place a soldier at the
head of the government. Bismarck made it quite clear that
he would fight for the King to the end, but that between
his continuance in office with a free hand and surrender to
the opposition there was no practical alternative. His dis
missal, however wrapped up or plastered over — and he
was right — meant hauling down the flag of the monarchy.
He kept the King steadily pinned to that. And as the poli
tical difficulties steadUy thickened and one storm-cloud
after another roUed up on a darkening horizon, William's
faith in the star of his Minister-President became clearer
and clearer. The success that Bismarck promised, not the
disaster predicted by his foes, was coming slowly but surely.
Meanwhile, Bismarck took care that the breach with
the opposition was widened, and that attacks on the pre
rogative extended to every sphere of governmental action.
When the popular movement flagged, a press ordinance
muzzling the newspaper critics, the purging of the civil
service of aU tainted with Liberal doctrines, an order to the
government officials to put pressure on the electors, a
fresh twist in the sharpness of the police administration,
inspired articles in unsuspected journals revealing indis
creet threats and acts by mUitary Hotspurs, the parade
of votes of confidence from manipulated town councils,
or alleged reports of reactionary remarks by Majesty itself,

134 BISMARCK
and the distribution of ribbons and decorations to avowed
Absolutists could always raise the necessary steam in the
boilers of Liberalism. Foreign policy, finance, and miU
tary administration provided inexhaustible material for
baiting the opposition into violent rhetoric and resolutions
passed by overwhelming majorities. Roon's temper was
of a miUtary shortness when he dealt, as Minister of War,
with civilian amateurs. Bismarck aUowed him to provoke
quarrels in the Landtag, and then with magisterial im
partiality, poured vitriol on the parhamentary critics.
The Minister-President proved that the Junker of 1848,
with his vivid utterance and racy brutality, was a master
of the studied insult, the barbed innuendo, the cynical
contempt, the phrase that cut down to the bone and
stuck. Indignation vexed him as a thing that is raw.
And he could lose his temper, too, when nerves and endur
ance cracked under the burden that he carried, virtuaUy
alone. ' The House of Phrases ' simply provided loqua
cious passengers in a coach, the driving of which without
their ignorant interference imposed an almost impossible
task on the coachman. Bismarck was as httle able as
Frederick the Great or Richelieu to share government
with a representative assembly. He did not understand,
or wish or try to understand, the secrets and mechanism
of a system repugnant to his feelings and a permanent
hindrance to the achievement of his ends. The time
spent in futile debates and logic-chopping controversies
was sheer waste. Every ounce of his strength, every hour
of his overworked day, were needed for the real partner in
government — the King — and the multifarious business of
the State. Not on the floor of the Landtag, but in a
correct judgment of political realities, lay the secret of
statecraft, and for the judgment of his opponents, Conser
vative or Radical, ignorant of the European theatre of
politics, and worshippers at the shrines of all the Idols of
the Tribe and of the Market-Place, he had a pitying con
tempt. Salvation would come from action — the patient
manoeuvring for the strategic points, and then the decisive
stroke — the State as the incarnation of power and statecraft
as the expression of its disciplined force.

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 135
From the very outset he gave Germany a taste of the
' Bismarck touch.' The constitutional and chronic im
broglio at Hesse-Cassel was settled by a curt ultimatum.
The reactionary Elector recognised that the new minister
meant what was said and surrendered. Public opinion
was bewildered at this example of Satan rebuking Sin.
For here was a ruler advised by his reactionary minister,
Hassenpflug, in conflict with a rebel legislature over his
prerogative, and compeUed to admit the claims of the
rebels by a minister who was a Prussian super-Hassenpflug.
It forgot that Hesse-Cassel was not Prussia, that the struggle
was in Bismarck's eyes a nuisance, the continuance of which
strengthened the Progressives in Berlin, and that surrender
on a word from Berhn was a proof of Prussian strength.
That strength was more effectively exemplified in the
matter of the French Commercial Treaty and the renewal
of the ZoUverein's Tariff Treaty with Austria. The
French Treaty was an important step in promoting a
better understanding between Prussia and the Second
Empire. Austria, as in 1851, desired either to break up
the ZoUverein and thereby damage the political and
economic supremacy in non-Austrian Germany exercised
by Prussia, or to secure the inclusion of the Austrian
dominions in the Tariff Union on terms favourable to her
peculiar economic needs. The French Commercial Treaty
had stirred serious opposition within the Tariff Union, and
at Vienna there was good hope of driving one or other,
perhaps both, of the wedges into the Prussian system.
The foundations of Bismarck's system were threatened. In
Delbriick he had the coadjutor he needed, for Delbriick
had first-class ability and a complete mastery of the econ
omic facts, and behind Delbriick stood Bismarck confident
in Prussia's strength. The French Commercial Treaty
must go through. Austria could renew with trifling
modifications the previous agreement. But her inclusion
in the Customs Union was impossible. And if the ZoU
verein refused the Prussian proposals, then it must break
up. Prussia would go her own way and make her own
tariff arrangements, for she was strong enough to stand
by herself. She peremptorily refused to sacrifice her

136 BISMARCK
economic interests to South German particularism or
Austrian selfishness. Let the middle and petty States
choose between a Prussia which desired to be their friend
and aUy and an Austria that aimed at exploiting them.
They chose. Austria secured neither the rejection of
the French Treaty, nor the dissolution of the ZoUverein,
nor her inclusion within the Tariff Union. She had per
force to accept simply a renewal of the fiscal treaty with
the ZoUverein, that included the whole of non-Austrian
Germany and as a fiscal unit to stand outside the German
ring fence. There was more in this settlement than the
incompatibility of Austrian Protectionism with German
economic development, and a correct judgment that
material interests would defeat political sentiment in the
rivalry between Prussia and Austria for the economic
leadership of the middle and petty States. Bismarck had
struck for and obtained three results. First, the inde
pendence of Prussia ; secondly, the right to settle with
France on his own terms ; thirdly, clear proof that Austria
was not, properly speaking, a true German State. The
essential preliminary to a settlement of the political uni
fication of Germany on the lines of the SmaU and not the
Great Germany conception was the establishment of an
economic unification which drew an unmistakable frontier
line between the Austrian Empire and the rest of the
Federal organisation. The Great Germany party, as
Bismarck fully realised, was by no means dead, either at
Berlin or outside it. The first step to the final defeat of
the Great Germans was taken with the successful con
clusion of the comphcated and highly technical nego
tiations in economics, and Bismarck took care to indicate
a helpful moral at Paris. Prussia had deliberately pre
ferred an arrangement with France to an arrangement
with Austria. The identity of interest, he commented,
between France and Prussia was not necessarily confined
to tariff duties and the most-favoured nation clause.
At the snarling criticism on Prussia's anti-German and
unbrotherly Prussian selfishness towards Austria Bismarck
shrugged his shoulders. It was the privilege of the de
feated to snarl. The spring of 1863 enabled the Foreign

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 137
Office in the WiUielmstrasse to provide Germany and
Europe with another example of Prussian independence
and egoism that stirred a tempest of denunciation.
The Pohsh rebellion of January, 1863, precipitated a
European crisis. The sympathy of Western and Central
Europe, alike in the governments and their people, with
the Polish effort to secure national unity and adminis
trative autonomy — freedom as a race from Russian tyranny
— is very remarkable and profoundly significant of the grip
of Liberal and Nationalist ideals on the temper of the age.
In London, Paris, Turin, and Vienna, the Polish cause was
acclaimed with enthusiasm. The Poles were fighting for
the inalienable right of a nation to work out its salvation
and establish its civilisation as a self-governing unit in the
fraternity of European National-States. The disin
tegrated Germany of the Federal Bund and denationalised
Austria were no whit behind the new Italy, France, and
Great Britain in their Polish sympathies. The contrast,
indeed, is striking between the manifestation in 1863 of
public opinion in Prussia and non-Prussian Germany, in
support of the Poles, and in sincere reprobation of the
terrible severity with which the defeated rising was crushed
by the Russian autocracy, and the cold-blooded equan
imity with which Germany and the Magyarised Dual
Empire of 1876 and 1896 condoned, when they did not
positively approve, the more terrible treatment of the
Balkan Slavs and the Armenians by the Ottoman auto
cracy. Only by such a contrast can we realise the
strength of the Liberal movement and of the moral forces
behind it, with which Bismarck wrestled in 1863, and
register in 1 896 the atrophy of a nation's conscience and the
withering of its ideals, when for two generations it has
been drugged by the doctrine that the great questions of
the day can be decided only by blood and iron.
Bismarck at once recognised >the gravity of the Polish
issue and the opportunity that the Polish question pro
vided. His attitude to the problem of Poland, and Prus
sian Poland in particular, never altered since 1848, when
he first denounced the danger of Polonism to the Prussian
State, through the Kulturkampf to the anti-Polish legis-

138 BISMARCK
lation of his chanceUorship that he left as a wasting mort
gage to his successors. He told General Fleury in De
cember, 1863, that the question was one of life and death
to Prussia : ' I would rather die,' he said, ' than permit
our position in Posen to be discussed at a European Con
gress : I would rather cede our Rhinelands.' He had no
sympathy with the Nationahst principle, outside Prussia
and Germany ; it was simply a force in a political situation,
to be exploited as such ; and if a force that threatened
Prussian hegemony one to be extirpated. The eighteenth-
century partitions of Poland were the weU-merited fate
of a State too anarchic to resist the strength of its neigh
bours. The dream of a reconstructed Poland on Liberal
lines in 1863 was simply a childish chimera. The inde
pendence of Russian Poland under the suzerainty of the
Tsar would lead to a demand for the freedom of Prussian
Poland, a result absolutely fatal to the Prussian position
in the East and on the Baltic. The demand for autonomy
and political liberties sprang from the same delusions about
government that tainted the progressive and democratic
parties in Germany. Concessions to Pohsh demands
within Prussia were intrinsicaUy inadmissible, and would
embarrass the good friend, Russia. The Polish rebellion
was a domestic affair of the Tsar's government, interference
with which was an impertinence that the Tsar would
justly resent.
Prussia's interest must be the sole criterion of Prussia's
policy. A rebellion on her borders was a serious danger ;
there were disquieting signs that the conflagration would
spread. The sooner it was stamped out the better for
every one concerned. Bismarck, in short, only cared to
extract the maximum of political advantage from an affair
which he examined with icy impartiality. The blood of
Polish martyrs, for whose sufferings he did not care a
groschen, might become the seed of Prussian domination
in Central Europe. Through General von Alvensleben
he promptly (March 8) concluded a convention with
Russia, by which the two countries undertook to establish
a mUitary cordon on their respective frontiers in order to
stop their respective Polish subjects from aiding the rebel-

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 139
lion, and to prevent the escape of rebels from lawful au
thority. The action of the parhamentary opposition in
the Landtag only confirmed Bismarck's determination.
Interpellations, denunciations of the convention, reso
lutions by sweeping majorities, he brushed aside as irre
levant attempts to interfere with the royal right to con
clude treaties by prerogative, and to make the foreign pohcy
of Prussia conform to the foUy of ignorant idealists or crazy
demagogues. He told the Lower House roundly that the
making of war and treaties was the right of the Crown,
and roused its fury by the emphatic assertion that he would
make war or abstain from it without their approbation or
consent, and that his duty to his sovereign and Prussia
would never be influenced one hair's-breadth by their
votes or their attacks.
When the governments of Great Britain, France, and
Austria, under the pressure of public opinion agreed to
present a joint note formulating six demands 1 to the
Russian government, and invited the concurrence of
Prussia in this diplomatic pressure, Bismarck firmly refused,
and for four chief reasons. A close understanding with
Russia was, and had long been, the sine qua non of his sys
tem. Refusal to sign the note was the most practical
proof he could give of friendship to Russia. The aliena
tion of Russia, stiU suffering from the humiliation of 1856,
and threatened with the boycott of Europe and the moral
condemnation of the civihsed conscience, was for Prussia
in 1863 midsummer madness. Secondly, he disapproved of
the six demands. If Russia conceded them, the National
Union and the Radicals throughout Germany would
utilise the concession to harass the government of Prussia
already plagued with the charlatanry of Progress. Thirdly,
rejection by the Russian government of the joint note
must be foUowed either by more exacting pressure, and if
necessary, war, or by a painful rebuff at Petersburg.
Bismarck did not believe in a diplomacy that invited hu
miliation, and the idea of war on behalf of the Polish rebels
1 The six points were briefly: (i) an amnesty; (2) a Polish parliament ;
(3) a Polish National Executive ; (4.) Polish language in official communica
tions ; (5) religious freedom ; (6) legal recruiting.

140 BISMARCK
was idiotic. Fourthly, he foresaw the failure of this sin
gular union of Great Britain, France, and Austria, and he
desired it to fail. The iU-assorted partners would quarrel,
and from their quarrel Prussia would derive advantages
that could be left for future exploitation. The separation
of Austria and of France from Russia was worth aU the
joint notes and aU the Polish lives in the world. As early
as i860 Bismarck had expressed the fear that France would
aUy with Russia, isolate Prussia, or drive her into a hateful
dependence on Austria. He had laid it down that in a
Franco-Russian aUiance Prussia must be the third member.
Great Britain could be soothed or neglected as circum
stances indicated. The British army did not exist ; and
the British fleet was useless in this business. Fortune had
now given Prussia an unexpected favour. France by her
stupid sentimentalism would alienate Russia. Prussia
could first secure Russian friendship, break up the Franco-
British entente, then work for a French benevolent neu
trality, and Austria would be left to face an irreconcilable
Italy and an independent Prussia secure on both her
flanks. Here, indeed, was a game for the Titans.
Bismarck might weU gaze into the baffling face of the
Time-spirit. The Schleswig-Holstein question was threat
ening an ugly crisis. It is significant of the minister's
exploratory and prescient vigilance that whUe Nation
alists and democrats were crying aloud for Germany and
Prussia to act, he gave no sign that he was earnestly
sounding aU the depths and shallows in a rock-sown sea.
He contented himself with a pointed reminder to the
Danish government that Prussia was a signatory to the
Convention of London of 1852, and a sharp rap on the
heads of the ' noisy ' journalists and politicians who desired
Prussia to go to war with all her neighbours because of
aUeged grievances. Toujours en vedette I The motto of
Frederick, the Master, was more than ever the watchword.
Neither menaces nor caresses from London, Paris, and
Vienna induced Bismarck to modify his refusal to join
in the combined intervention at Petersburg and, as he
foresaw, the joint note was a complete failure. Assured
of Prussia's support, the Russian government in effect bade

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 141
the signatory Powers mind their own business, and pro
ceeded to extinguish the rebeUion in blood and flame.
Napoleon was intensely chagrined at the result, the blame
for which he threw chiefly on Great Britain. Our Foreign
Office had used the strong language that should precede
strong action, but it now covered its retreat to the wired
trenches of a good conscience in the smoke-clouds of a
parliamentary Blue-Book. At the Tuileries the need of a
real diplomatic success somewhere was being seriously
felt. Paris was seething with sentiment and Ul-defined
ambition. Napoleon's disiUusioned eyes turned to Berlin.
In the WiUielmstrasse, not in the BaU-Platz, lay the keys
that could unlock the doors to the Rhine ; and Napoleon
knew that the hunger of France, gnawing at the vitals of
the Second Empire, could be appeased, and only appeased,
by the Rhenish provinces.
The true author of the Polish fiasco was Bismarck. Had
he made Prussia a signatory to the Note of the Six De
mands, the Russia of 1863, isolated and in grave difficulties,
would have been obliged to yield to the Concert of Europe.
Had Prussia been a country with responsible self-govern
ment Bismarck must either have met the overwhelming
demand of the Landtag or been driven from office. With
Prussian support it was well within the compass of practical
diplomacy, without firing a shot, to have extorted a charter
of liberties for Russian Poland and prevented the cruelties
that added one more chapter to the blood-stained record.
The moral and political effect of such concerted action
would have been of incalculable advantage. But a Can
ning in London or a Cavour at Berlin were needed.
Instead, there was Bismarck on the one side, and on the
other Napoleon and the clever mediocrities of the Quai
d'Orsay, the organised hypocrisy of Vienna and a Palmer
ston, no longer the man of 1839, and permanently suspect
to a hostile court. Public opinion in Prussia and Germany
was impotent against Bismarck. While it raged, he sided
with Russia, thereby revealing to the Triple Entente that
without war they were helpless, and that the strategic
position of Prussia and the strength of the Prussian army
made the suggestion of war without Prussia ridiculous and

142 BISMARCK
impossible. It was in Bismarck's power, and he knew it, to
meet the storm in the last resort by an appeal to Prussia
and Germany to forget the exaggerated woes of Poland
and concentrate on the Ahab of Europe — Napoleon.
Bismarck, it must be remembered, in these years was in
a dangerous temper : he was fighting for the life, honour,
and greatness of Prussia, as he interpreted them, and he
had thrown his aU into the struggle. Even more truly
than Cavour from 1852 onwards he was gambling for
tremendous stakes. Not once but fifty times in the next
few years he indicated his determination, if the. gods faUed
him, to move Acheron. What could not be done by the
Conservative forces, could be done by calling in the Revo
lution. His heart within was white-hot with the same
emotion that mastered the German of his day, and no
man could let loose more skilfully the whirlwinds of
national passion, or rejoice more triumphantly in riding
the storm.
But in 1863, as always, he had himself in hand. The
hour assuredly had not come : the situation must be de
veloped much further and with a remorseless caution.
He could not afford to make a single mistake. The Prus
sian army was not ready. Like his diplomacy it needed
time. And it was of the essence of his system, as of
Frederick the Great's, that so far as preparation and cal
culation could ensure it, victory must be a certainty. The
Statecraft that is Force betrays the State that is Power if
it ignores or misunderstands the character and conditions
under which Force works in the world of human things.
Bismarck had secured the friendship of Russia. His
confidence that Prussia could rely on her strength and in
dependence had been justified. The initiative in pohcy,
lost in the period from 18 15 to 1862, was being quietly
recovered. While the members of the temporary Triple
Entente were abusing Prussia, and still more heartily, each
other, Bismarck was drawing up an edifying balance-sheet.
He could remind his royal master of two sound lessons —
the indispensability of the Crown's unfettered control of
policy, the futUity of ' moral penetration,' as a solution
of European problems. The relevance of both to the

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 143
constitutional crisis was obvious, and the sequel was to
drive the argument home with cumulative power. King
WiUiam was, Bismarck discovered, eminently teachable ;
but he eminently required to be taught. Time was even
more necessary for the instruction of the Crown than for
the development of the European situation. An autocrat
who takes the bit in his teeth will dash the chariot of State
to pieces more quickly and disastrously than a nation that
loses its head. If WilUam's conscience or prejudices
drove him to break loose, Bismarck would share the fate
of Metternich.
The quality of Bismarck's judgment was never better
illustrated than in his refusal of Gortschakov's suggestion
that the Russo-Prussian understanding should be converted
into a formal alliance. It was a tempting proposal ; and
we can well believe that he weighed it in every scale before
dechning. Treaties, it is true, were not more sacred than
other, less formal, engagements. They were, in Bis
marck's eyes, no more than the summary of a particular
situation, and their observance was always conditioned by
an implicit clause — rebus sic stantibus — things being as they
were. Nor was it the fear that a treaty would limit his
initiative or freedom of action. A virtual aUiance with
Russia was the fixed point on which Prussian policy
was henceforward to piy,ot. The identity of interest —
dynastic, governmental, political — between the Russia of
the Tsar and the Prussia of William 1., was practically
complete. Nor did Bismarck fear the accusation at home
or elsewhere that the Holy Alliance was being revived.
He had faced that when he made the Alvensleben Con
vention, and proved that he could ignore public opinion
in Prussia and the criticism of foreign governments. His
real reason for the refusal of Gortschakov's offer lays
bare an essential principle of his statecraft. To the
Prussia of 1863, convalescent from a prolonged locomotor-
ataxy, and not yet cured, Russia was more indispensable
than Prussia was to Russia. Bismarck's judgment of
Prussia's strength was extraordinarily sane and impartial.
He shared with Gustavus Adolphus and Richelieu the
sense of limits, which is one of the finest and rarest, if not

144 BISMARCK
the finest and rarest, gift of the highest statesmanship.
Russia, he pronounced with customary vividness, would in
such an alliance sit on the longer arm of the lever. AU
that was needed in 1863 could be distiUed graduaUy from
the informal but close understanding already estabhshed.
Every aUiance, he remarked at another time, implies a
horse and a rider. The function of diplomacy is to secure
that you are the rider and your ally. the horse. Because
he correctly judged that in 1863, Gortschakov would be
the rider and he, Bismarck, the horse, he put the offer
politely and with many assurances of affection, personal
and political, on one side.
While the Polish Rebellion was still running its ap
pointed course, the German question also had developed
a crisis. The demand that something must be done, and
done now, to reshape the indefensible travesty of a political
mechanism, caUed the Bund — that precious monument
the restoration of which in its anachronistic nudity had
marked the grave both of 1848 and of Conservative con
structive statesmanship. For ten years every German
mind had been labouring with the problem and putting on
record, to the embarrassment of that age and the despair
of the seeker after truth in the next two generations, its
perplexities, fears, hopes, dreams and solutions. State-
papers, diaries, letters, pamphlets, caricatures, memorials,
note-books, and minutes of clubs, unions, leagues — the
archives of the chanceUeries, the waste-paper basket of the
patriot, and the scrap-heap of the lecture-room — which
German research has by no means exhausted, testify to the
deep-seated and universal discontent. Nationalists, Radi
cals, Clericals and Ultramontanes, Conservatives, bureau
crats and professors, hummed like bees in the swarming
season from the frontier of Schleswig to the forelands of
the Alps. The flower of the universities, professorial and
undergraduate, linked hands and pens with the politicians
—Bennigsen, Droysen, Samwer, M. Duncker, the Coburg
group, and the unitarian enthusiasm of the Grand-Duke
of Baden. Already the trumpet of the young Treitschke
was blowing its earhest clarion caUs.
When the butchers meet in conclave because something

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 145
must be done for the sheep, we may be sure that it is not
the sheep but the butchers who fear the future. In 1863,
the Habsburg Emperor felt the cruel coercion of a
Germany out of joint, and the unpleasant necessity of
putting it right before worse befeU. The dynasties from
Dresden to Munich leaped to the suggestion from Vienna
that disinterested patriotism could be concentrated in a
Congress of Princes ready to confer benefits on then-
subjects. To the adroit Beust at Dresden, as fertile in
diplomatic resource as in conversational epigram, the
opportunity was exceptional. Beust, Uke every one else,
had his scheme, or rather half a dozen schemes, in pigeon
holes, and another half dozen producible if required, like
the magician's rabbits, for any audience, and from any
diplomatic bag — and Beust was by far the cleverest of all
the political conjurers in the middle States who desired
a tripartite Germany — Austria, the middle States, and
Prussia — regrouped in a new Federal structure. To Beust
and to the Triad party, the supreme merit of this solution,
the detaUs of which were simply a drafting matter, lay in
its recognition of the equality of non-Austrian and non-
Prussian Germany as a coUective unit with Austria and
Prussia. Such equality would fairly meet the Prussian
demand for parity with Austria and the Austrian reluct
ance to surrender her historic hegemony ; it would no less
fairly remove the fatal objection to aU dualistic schemes
which imposed on the middle and petty States an obli
gatory choice of being absorbed either in a Prussian or an
Austrian system, an absorption damaging to the general
interests of Germany, historicaUy unjust, and repugnant
to the legitimist sovereignty of the dynasties.
Concessions must, of course, be made to the people as
weU as to the States of Germany. Bismarck's failure was
assumed to be a practical certainty : Prussia would then
succumb to the liberal majority which would adopt the
programme of the National Union and achieve a unitary
and democratic solution under Prussian leadership. Once
the citadel in Prussia had fallen to the parliamentary
opposition, the rest of Germany would lynch its dynasties
into acceptance of the unitary and liberal plan. And
B. K

146 BISMARCK
Austria, racked on a series of Procrustean beds, caUed con
stitutions, with Italy on one side and Hungary on the other,
and Russia suUenly hostUe, could not expect to repeat in
1864 the miracle of 1849. Now, if ever, was the moment
to drive an Austrian dynastic, anti-Prussian, and particu-
larist programme through.
The problem was first to combine the minimum of real
concession with the maximum of outward homage to
democratic demands ; and secondly, to arrange the Federal
machinery in such a way as to grant in theory the Prussian
claim to parity with Austria, whUe refusing the substance
— an easy matter, for equal voting powers between Austria
and Prussia must always leave Prussia in a minority when
non-Prussian Germany made equal either to Austria or
Prussia voted (as it would) with Austria. The Austrian
government accordingly produced its specious plan. A
new Directorate of six States (Austria, Prussia, Bavaria,
and three others chosen in rotation) under Austrian presi
dency was to be created, together with a Federal Council
of 21 votes, a Federal Tribunal of Law, and a Federal
Assembly of 302 Delegates elected, not by direct suffrage,
but by the various parliaments of the Federated States.
RebeUious German democracy was, in short, to be re-
manacled in a new Federal cage, and Prussia was, through
her King, to mediatise herself for the benefit of Germany
on the altars of dynasticism. The Emperor Francis
Joseph met King WiUiam at Gastein. The crises of
German history always begin or end at a bathing resort.
The two sovereigns talked and agreed that the business
could be settled by a Congress of Princes at Frankfurt.
It was fitting that the rulers, by personal negotiations,
should settle the affairs of Germany in a royal and family
conference ; and their ministers were to be in close attend
ance, but take no part in the august dehberations. While
their princely masters worked, they could copy letters,
dine, dance, and arrange for the exchange of decorations.
On August 16 the Congress met; only one important
sovereign (and his minister) was absent. The surprise and
dismay were universal, for the absentee was the King of
Prussia. They sent to fetch him. The King of Saxony

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 147
was the courier chosen to remind King William that a
Congress of Princes, headed by Caesarean Majesty from
Vienna, begged the honour of his company. Delay and
much anxiety. Then the King of Saxony came back.
The King of Prussia regretted his inabUity to accept the
invitation. Indignation, expostulation, consternation, pre
vailed : then after a few days, the Congress ruefully broke
up. AU that it accomplished was to repeat the invitation
(by letter this time) to Prussia and to ' leave open ' the
question of the Presidency ' for further discussion.' The
proposal to proceed, without Prussia, was indeed suggested,
but crumbled into pieces at once. ' We will have no con
federation without Austria,' said the Bavarian minister,
' but likewise none without Prussia.' A reorganisation of
Germany which omitted Prussia was ridiculous. The
coercion of Prussia would, in the state of public opinion,
probably end in the revolution with the Prussian army at
its disposal. And when the Prussian government officiaUy
published its reasons for abstention — the patent inade
quacy of the proposals of the Princes to meet the rights of
Prussia and the needs of Germany was glaringly and pain-
fuUy evident. ' A national Parliament,' said the Prussian
memorandum of September 15, 'was an essential of any
Federal reform. The interests and claims of the Prussian
people are intrinsicaUy and inseparably identical with those
of the German people.' The argument was repeated in the
Note of September 22, sent to all the members of the Con
gress of Princes. Prussia laid it down that : (1) She, as
weU as Austria, must have a right to veto a declaration of
war by the Confederation ; (2) her position in the Con
federation must be equal to that of Austria ; (3) she could
not accept an enlargement of the functions of the Con
federation limiting Prussian independence ; (4) there must
be a German Parliament, representative of the German
nation, and elected directly by it.
At a word from Prussia the Austrian plan and all others
of the same kind went, unhouseled, unanointed, and
unannealed into the limbo reserved for the acrobatics of
pseudo-statesmanship. The Congress of Princes sum
moned to consecrate the consummation of a new German

148 BISMARCK
Confederation, was suddenly turned into the funeral of
the Greater Germany party.
Henceforward, there were only three possible alter
natives — a unification under Austria imposed on a defeated
Prussia, a unification under Prussia imposed on a defeated
Austria, or the unitary Empire of the National Union, in
which Prussia was dissolved in a Germany, from which
Austria was excluded, a unification to be imposed on Ger
many by the triumph of National LiberaUsm. In the
autumn of 1863, though we to-day find it hard to beUeve
it, and before the year 1864 h3^ revolutionised the Euro
pean situation and German public opinion, the last of the
three alternatives seemed far the most probable. One
conclusion, however, is certain. The author of the fiasco
of the Congress of Princes, the man who administered the
coup de grdce to the Greater Germany party, was Bismarck.
' Lord ! ' says Puck, ' what fools these mortals be.' The
sacred simplicity of the diplomatic or royal ostrich pro
vokes a deeper laughter of Jove than the perjuries of lovers.
The supposition of Rechberg and Beust and all the sham
and pigmy MachiaveUians, princely or ministerial, that the
Minister-President at Berlin, who had served seven gruel
ling years of apprenticeship at Frankfurt, would not see
through the patent trap of the Austrian plan must have
provoked the grimmest humour of Bismarck. The idea
that the Prussian monarchy was meekly to strip to the skin
in the imperial city of Frankfurt, and put on a Nessus shirt
patched up by kings and grand-dukes in the workhouse at
Vienna was too delicious even for the grand diplomacy.
Did Rechberg, Beust, and their company seriously imagine
that the Minister-President was risking aU in the struggle
with the Landtag to sacrifice the cause of Prussianism
at the bidding of a mob of princes ? Their action proves
that if they knew themselves and their tricks, at least they
did not know the Minister-President at Berlin. ' Stripped
of its coat,' Bismarck said, ' the Austrian poodle is dis
tinctly meagre.'
Yet the reality of the German situation was profoundly
disquieting to Bismarck. National LiberaUsm was, and
remained, a tremendous and dangerous force. The time

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 149
had long passed when the German people could be fobbed
off with a hoUow sham and be manipulated in blinkers into
a series of dynastic pens, renamed a Unified Germany.
The essence of the problem lay in the demand in aU parts
of Germany for the nation to be included in the task of
government, so that legislation, taxation, policy would be
expressive of a nation's -wiU, character and ideals — a Ger
many for the Germans by the Germans. Hence any
reconstruction to be practical politics, must be organic.
The Austrian and princely programme was the old Diet
and Federation, with a few new and useless wheels added,
some of the old grit and rust cleaned out, and the whole
recoloured with a thin coat of democratic paint, intended
to fade.
For Bismarck, the problem was not how to combine a
minimum of concession to democracy with a maximum of
princely and particularist independence and autocracy,
but how to combine a maximum of concession to the
demand for self-government with the unity of an efficient
and irresponsible executive. Bismarck had here pene
trated to an abiding reality in the German heart. If the
Germans passionately desired a share in the government
of a unified Germany, they no less passionately desired
power. The National Union and National Liberalism were
the outcome of both desires. The old system satisfied
neither. Germany was impotent in the world. It was
simply shameful, every German felt, that a great country
could not, or would not, prevent a third-rate State like
Denmark from violating its obligations, defined in the
public law of Europe, and could not protect Germans in
Holstein from illegal oppression, and the reason was that
policy was determined by a group of conflicting dynasties,
and power was dissipated in an antiquated and contemptible
poUtical mechanism. Ending, not mending, that system
would alone meet the demand for power — the power of the
National State — and provide the organs of power. The
foreign observer can indeed see in the evolution of National
Liberalism the Nationalism, fierce, deep, and continuous.
It is the Liberalism or the absence of it that puzzles him.
Bennigsen's speech in 1867 on the Luxemburg question,

150 BISMARCK
applauded from one end of Germany to the other, is
saturated with the doctrine of, and demand for, power,
the German National State as the expression of German
power. Yet in 1863 Bennigsen was Bismarck's most for
midable opponent, because Bennigsen was a Liberal as
weU as a Nationahst.
The explanation is reaUy simple. National Liberalism
grew to its strength as a movement for self-government
through representative institutions, and as a national pro
test against the inertia and apathy of the dynastic sove
reignties that ruled Germany. Up tiU 1861 no German
government had evinced any sincere desire to subordinate
dynastic or particularist interests to the cause of Germany
as a whole. The homage of the dynastic and diplomatic
lip in aU the Courts to the cause of Germany was copious ;
but when it came to action, Austria, Prussia, Bavaria,
placed Austrian, Prussian or Bavarian selfishness first, and
Germany was forgotten.- Hence the liberals were con
vinced that, while self-government was intrinsically
desirable, a unification of Germany on a democratic basis,
that swept away the State sovereignties, alone would
provide for the realisation of what the German people
demanded — a single German State, playing its part as a
European Power in the European system. Such a State
would represent the totality of German brains, wills,
ideals, arid material resources ; and it would pursue a
German policy made by the German people. Nothing but
real representative institutions, with a Parliament that made
policy because it was a government- making organ, would
enable the Germans to be a single nation, with a national
wiU working through organs automatically effective.
Hence the stronger the Nationalist passion, the stronger
with the Liberals was the insistence on the necessity of
democratic self-government. Power through represen
tative institutions was the complement to parliamentary
self-government as the instrument of National power.
Bismarck might have said in 1863, 'Almost thou
persuadest me to be a National Liberal.' He did not,
however, beUeve, on principle, in the efficiency of consti
tutional monarchy and responsible parliamentary govern-

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 151
ment. He was convinced that ' the English system ' was
wholly inapplicable to the German character and the his
torical conditions in which it had been developed through
many centuries. And the closer he studied Great Britain
the more strongly he inferred that parliamentary govern
ment did not make for executive efficiency, continuity of
policy and strong administration. The correctness of this
judgment is not the question. That Bismarck thought so
there can be no doubt. Unity achieved by moral penetra
tion and persuasion he regarded as a pure delusion. Neither
the dynasties nor the Liberals would give him the army
that would smash Austria, nor the time, uninterrupted by
party strife, to devise a foreign policy and prepare in
secret for the day of decision. He did not doubt the
German patriotism of the German people. He trusted it
indeed far more than he did the dynasties, as his proposal
for a National Parliament as an essential part of Federal
reform proved ; but what he did doubt most gravely was
the readiness of the Sybels, the Gneists, the Twestens,
Virchows, Laskers, Dunckers, and Bennigsens to wiU the
means no less than the ends of national unity. They
aimed at power, but they shrank from force. They were,
in his judgment, political cowards, and therefore in his
view lacked the higher statesmanship.
The one system that would give him what he wanted
existed already in Prussia. It was being tested now, and
it was standing the test. Its retention, therefore, as the
nucleus of the new Germany was indispensable. Just as
in foreign policy Bismarck's system pivoted on an under
standing with Russia, so in the German problem his solu
tion pivoted on the Prussian monarchy, the irresponsible
director of the Prussian nation in arms.
The National Liberals would mutilate or destroy the
executive nucleus of a policy of power. But Bismarck was
ready now to foreshadow the lines of his own programme.
Once the Congress of Princes was kiUed, the publication
of the official statement of Prussian policy, already cited,
was a tactical move in the higher strategy ; for Bismarck
often acted on Palmerston's dictum: ' I teU ambassadors the
truth, because I know they won't believe it.' The Prussian

152 BISMARCK
memoranda of September 15 and September 22, 1863, were
the last nail in the coffin of Austrian Greater Germanism.
They were also intended to be the first in the coffin of
the National Liberals.
Bismarck's victory over WUliam 1. when he refused the
invitation to Frankfurt, was a signal personal triumph
greater even than the ratification in 1879 of the alliance
with Austria. Of the many struggles with his sovereign,
these two in 1 863 and 1 879 were the most critical and de
cisive, for in each case the central principle of his system
was in jeopardy ; and in 1863 Bismarck had yet to win,
not as in 1879 simply to retain, his ascendancy. WiUiam
wished to go to Frankfurt. Heart and brain, combined
in favour of accepting the invitation. AU his relatives,
male and female, urged him strongly to accept. Indeed,
how could he as the King of Prussia refuse to meet his
brother sovereigns when refusal meant personal discourtesy,
and the rejection of the unique chance of demonstrating
to the German world the unity and patriotism of the
German dynasties, and their earnest desire to make a free
gift of Federal Reform from their united prerogative.
The dynasties as the initiators and executors of Reform !
' Thirty princes,' cried WiUiam, ' sending an invitation and
the courier a king ! How can one refuse f ' Bismarck
guessed that WiUiam would be argued or trapped in
that tainted company into fatal concessions ; his royal
honour would be pledged. A counter demonstration of
the independence of Prussia and the power of the Minister-
President was imperatively required in the summer of 1863.
He appealed to WiUiam' s pride. It was for Prussia to lead,
not to foUow, to impose her own, not to accept the dan
gerous plans of others. The mediatisation of Prussia
would be the result of the Frankfort Congress, brought
about by Prussia's sovereign. But if the King went to
Frankfurt his Minister could not accept the responsi
bility and must retire to Schonhausen. The conflict of
wills, which lasted several days, exhausted ruler and minister.
Bismarck won. His secretary found him after the final
interview with the King, and after he had handed the
letter of refusal to the King of Saxony, alone in his room.

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 153
In reply to a question he hurled a plate and some glasses
to pieces agamst the wall. ' I felt,' he said to the aston
ished subordinate, ' that I must smash something. Now
I can breathe again.'
Germany busied itself in the autumn of 1863 with
feverish activities and plans for unification. Negotiations
arising out of the abortive Congress dragged on between
Berlin, Vienna, and the German Courts. The National
Verein and the Reform Verein discussed with unabated
energy the scheme of the Congress of Princes and the
Prussian memorandum of September 22 ; the honesty of
the latter was contested by all reformers whether of the
Great or the Small Germany camps. The Prussian Land
tag was dissolved ; no budget had been voted, and the
' constitutional conflict ' was quite unsolved ; but despite
the severity of the recent Press ordinance and the electoral
efforts of the bureaucracy the Conservative party could
only increase their numbers from eleven to thirty-eight.
The new Landtag was as solidly hostile in foreign and
home pohcy to the government as the old, that had
rejected the Army Budget ; and the unpopularity of
Bismarck was greater than ever. ' Men spat,' he said,
' on the place where I trod in the streets.'
A graver crisis than any Germany had faced since 1848
was at hand, the problem of Schleswig-Holstein entangled
in all the barbed wire of a complicated international situa
tion. On March 30, 1863, King Frederick vn. separated
Holstein from Schleswig by granting it a separate legis
lature, budget and army. Schleswig was subsequently to
be united by a common constitution with Denmark. This
pohcy, the work of an overwhelming Radical majority at
Copenhagen, angered the Duchies, which claimed to be
autonomous and inseparable, and infuriated Germany,
which saw in it the Danish determination to absorb
Schleswig in the Danish kingdom. The Federal Diet,
which was not a party to the London Convention of 1852,
that regulated the succession to the Danish throne and the
relations of the Duchies to the Danish Crown, passed a
resolution (July 9) caUing on King Frederick to rescind
the ' March charter ' and restore the conditions defined in

154 BISMARCK
the Convention. The Danes ignored the resolution, and
the Danish General Council passed the Joint-Constitution
for Denmark and Schleswig on November 13, 1863.
Frederick vn. declined to sign the Patent, bringing the
constitution into operation, on the ground that he was a
dying man and could not fairly prejudge the action or tie
the hands of his successor in a matter of such gravity. On
November 15 Frederick died. His heir, under the Pro
tocol of 1852, was Christian ix. of Sonder burg-Gluckstein,
who now succeeded to the Danish Crown and to the
dukedom of Schleswig and Holstein, integrally united to
Denmark under the terms of the London Convention.
Christian, threatened by the Danish ministry that refusal
to sign the Patent would cause a Danish revolution and
endanger his throne, signed the Patent (November 15).
At once the Duchies and Germany were in an uproar.
Frederick, Duke of Augustenburg, the son of the claimant
of 1852 whose claims had been ruled out by the Conven
tion, . appeared in the Duchies and proclaimed himself at
Kiel as the lawful duke. His claim was supported with
enthusiasm by the Duchies and by aU Germany. The
National Union — the organisation of Liberalism — and the
Reform Union — the organisation of the ' Great Germany '
party — combined to promote the Augustenburg claims.
The Federal Diet ordered a Federal execution, in the duke's
support, and Hanover and Saxony were commissioned to
carry it out.
All eyes were' turned on Prussia. Germany would now
see whether Prussian declarations of the identity of her
interests with those of Germany were a reality or a sham ;
whether the reactionary Bismarck, who had publicly laid
it down that the German people had a right to be repre
sented in German affairs, was a hypocrite or a German
statesman. Action at once was required, and action
would reveal this Bismarck in his true colours. Bismarck
probably agreed. Action was required, and it would reveal
himself and a good many others in their true colours. The
sharper the chaUenge the more coolly and confidently he
braced himself to pick up the gauntlet flung in his face by
fate. He did not know what Prince Hohenlohe was writ-

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 155

is

ing in his diary at this time : ' Every one in Germany i
conscious of the profound significance the Schleswig-
Holstein question must have for our internal policy.
Every one knows that with that question the German
question, too, wiU be decided. . . . The Schleswig-Hol
stein question is therefore to the people a question of
rights, a question of power to the governments, and a
question of existence to the Confederation, that is the
middle and petty States.' But he would have agreed,
heart and soul, with the judgment. We may be sure also
that another conclusion was recorded with Bismarckian
satisfaction. Fortune had decided that Frederick vn.
should die three months too late for Austria. Had the
unhappy King of Denmark, who had escaped from the
deluge which now threatened to submerge his no less
unhappy successor, died in August 1863 when the Congress
of Princes was in full conclave, Francis Joseph, the kings,
and the princelets would have had such a chance as comes
to a vaulting ambition but once. Not all the king's horses
and aU the king's men could have kept WiUiam 1. from going
to Frankfurt, and from concurring either in compulsion on
Christian ix. to refuse his signature to the Patent or in the
adoption by the Congress of the Duke of Augustenburg,
William's relative, a Coburg Liberal of the circle of the
Crown Prince of Prussia, as the lawful heir to the Duchies
amid the tumultuous applause of dynastic, Conservative,
Liberal, Particularist, and Ultramontane Germany, and the
probable assent of Great Britain and France — perhaps
Russia too. The Austrian programme of Federal Reform
would have slipped into existence as a. by-issue in the
enthusiasm of that happy day. ' What an escape ! ' as
Victor Emmanuel ejaculated, when the warning victories
of Worth and Spicheren cancelled the intention to throw
in his lot with Napoleon in. in 1870. What an escape !
Bismarck's luck became proverbial. In 1863 the stars
in their courses saw the Congress of Princes kiUed and
buried before they released poor Frederick vn. at the right
moment for Bismarck and the wrong one for Austria.
Whom the gods love do not die young. They live to
thank the loving gods for the gift of action in the summer

156 BISMARCK
of their powers, and to meet in the golden autumn of
fame the inevitable summons with the serenity that
achievement alone can bestow.
§ 2. Schleswig-Holstein, the Treaty of Vienna, and the
Convention of Gastein, 1863- 1865
The labyrinth of the historical, legal, and ethical con
troversies buried in the slag-heaps of four centuries has
resulted in a formidable library on Schleswig-Holstein.
Palmerston said with more wit than accuracy that only
three persons in Europe were completely acquainted with
the truth, the Prince Consort who was dead, a German
professor who was in a lunatic asylum, and himself — and he
had forgotten it. Bismarck justly regarded his diplomacy
and achievement in ' the Schleswig-Holstein campaign '
as perhaps his most masterly performance. Genius, mili
tary, political, scientific, or imaginative, as the judge of
its own efforts is always instructive, though not infal
lible. But certainly no other episode in Bismarck's career
more convincingly summarises the pith and marrow of
Bismarckian principles and methods, the union of personal
character and inteUectual gifts, the fixity of aim, and the
inexhaustible opportunism of means, ending in a dramatic
and unexpected triumph than his conduct of Prussian
policy from November 1863 to August 1865. Working on a
larger scale in a grander manner for greater ends, Bismarck
achieved elsewhere and later grander results. But as a
finished model of Bismarckian statecraft it was and remains
a masterpiece, and in the evolution of his career and the
perfecting of his technique the Schleswig-Holstein cam
paign was to Bismarck what the Polish campaigns were
to Gustavus Adolphus, the Silesian wars to Frederick
the Great, and the Egyptian campaign to Napoleon — the
'apprenticeship of genius in the service of its profession.
Stripped of irrelevant detail, the problem of 1863 was
comparatively simple, but it raised issues of far-reaching
consequences and a baffling complexity. The Duchies of
Schleswig and Holstein had been united since 1460 by a
personal union through the Crown of Denmark with the

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 157
Danish kingdom. The King of Denmark was the king-
duke who united in his person the hereditary right to the
Danish Crown and the succession to the combined Duchies.
Europe and Denmark had come to regard the Duchies in
fact as an integral part of the Danish kingdom, while re
cognising, if it was reminded, that the two provinces had
an autonomy and rights arising from an historic existence
independent of Denmark. The dukedom was, in short, a
separate principality contained and governed within a
larger whole. But the prerogative of the king-duke was
conditioned in these Duchies by his authority as duke, and
the Duchies accepted his rule as their duke, not as King of
Denmark. Hence the system of government for Den
mark was determined by the Crown in the Danish Riksdag,
for the Duchies by the duke in the Estates of the Provinces.
The law of Denmark would only be binding if accepted
by the Provincial Estates.
The desirability of a complete incorporation — the
abolition of the personal union and the fusion of the
Duchies with Denmark under a single ruler and a single
parliament — was obvious. But the Duchies clung to their
historic autonomy with tenacity ; the law of succession to
the Danish Crown was not the same as the law of succession
to the dukedom. The underlying cause of this rooted
objection to the extinction of their autonomy was racial.
Holstein was predominantly German, Schleswig probably
(here an insoluble controversy is opened up), though not
so predominantly, Danish. To Holstein incorporation
with Denmark meant de-Germanisation and Danisation,
and, in addition, while the autonomy of Holstein was for
four centuries connected with that of its partner Schleswig
— the two together made the unity of the Duchy — Holstein
had always been part of the Holy Roman Empire of the
German nation, Schleswig had not. This historic anomaly
was confirmed in 1815. The King of Denmark, as Duke
of Schleswig-Holstein was a member of the German Con
federation for Holstein (but not for Schleswig) over which, ^
therefore, the Federal Diet had a limited Federal juris
diction. So long as the dynastic problem was not reopened,
and so long as the Nationalist principle was not inflaming

158 BISMARCK
sentiment, this anomalous tangle of cross purposes and
contradictory aUegiances would work, just because it was
customary. Its maintenance turned on the equipoise of
forces, balanced by the inconsistencies of tradition and
habit. Fate and the developments in Europe after 1815 de
stroyed the equipoise. Fate decided that the male succes
sion in the direct line to the Crown of Denmark should
fail ; the growth of the principle of nationality steadUy
accentuated the ambition of the German and the Dane to
secure the Duchies for the German or the Danish race.
The incorporation of the Duchies, so long associated
with Denmark, was opposed by the German ambition to
sever them from Danish assimilation, and estabhsh them
as an autonomous German principality under a German
duke, and weld them into the unified Germany of the
future. But the ' unredeemed Germany ' was also an ' un
redeemed Denmark.' The dynastic problem was solved
by the Protocol of 1852. The Duke of Augustenburg, re
garded by Germany and the Provincial Estates as the heir
de jure to the Duchies, was compeUed with the other
claimants to surrender his claims in favour of Christian,
later the ixth, who was chosen by the Powers to maintain
the integrity of the Danish kingdom and continue, as king-
duke, the historic association of Schleswig and Holstein
with the Danish Crown. Had the European Powers been
wise, they would have repeated the lesson of Belgium in
1839 : severed then and there German Holstein from
Schleswig, and incorporated the former with Germany
and the latter with Denmark. In aU probability, when
Christian succeeded in 1863 the fifteen years of separation
would have habituated both Germany and Denmark to
the situation, and there would have been no further trouble.
But it was the age of Nicholas 1., who regarded the
Schleswig-Holsteiners as rebels ; and the severance of
Holstein from its legal duke (who was also the legal King
of Denmark) would have required more unity and greater
prevision in the Concert of Europe than the statesmen of
1852 were endowed with.
The maintenance of the historic integrity of the king-

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 159
dom of Denmark was deemed of the greatest importance in
the balance of European power, and the coUapse of the
Revolution 0^1848, with the reaction that foUowed, seemed
to the short-sighted diplomacy of Conservatism to destroy
the forces that had made a crisis out of Schleswig-Holstein.
The Convention of London, by placing the settlement
under the coUective guarantee of the European Powers,
was held to provide an indisputable authority for its
maintenance. But that convention, like the Treaty of Paris of 1856,
had the flaw fatal to all such solemn manifestations of the
pubhc law and wiU of the Powers. It assumed that the
men and the States responsible for its maintenance would
continue to be of the same disposition as those who origin
aUy made it — a large and historicaUy unjustifiable assump
tion. It had also the defect that it was imposed on the
Estates of Holstein and Schleswig, who were not parties
to it ; that the German Diet was not a party to it and
retained its Federal rights in Holstein ; that the son of the
Duke of Augustenburg was not a party to his father's re
nunciation of his rights. It made no aUowance for a more
Nationahst and Radical Denmark or a more Nationalist and
Liberal Germany coming into existence ; it created no
automatic and effective machinery to prevent provisions,
so solemnly defined, from being broken before the vacancy
to the Danish throne, filled by Christian's succession to
Danish Crown and the Duchies, occurred. It left Den
mark a sovereign State, yet with a mortgage on its sove
reignty. It provided neither for the removal of a
Nicholas 1. nor the emergence of a Bismarck.
Two conclusions are fairly clear in 1863. The Conven
tion of London required Denmark to observe the historic
status quo in the Duchies. Dispassionate examination
cannot avoid the verdict that the acts of the Danish
government from 1852 to 1863 were a breach of the Con
vention — certainly of its spirit, and probably of its letter, i
They constituted a cumulative effort to separate the
Duchies and incorporate one of them in the kingdom, and
to present Europe with a fait accompli before the acces
sion of Christian ix. This might have succeeded had

160 BISMARCK
Frederick vn. hved six months longer. Frederick's death
before his signature as the sovereign who was incontestably
dejure king and also dejure duke could be obtained wrecked
the attempt. Secondly, Christian ix., the new King, had
on the day of his succession to decide at a moment's notice
either to provoke a revolution at Copenhagen or a revo
lution at Kiel. Had he been wiser, he would have referred
the issue to the concert of the Powers signatory to the
Convention of London, and invited their decision and
their support, if need be, to carry out that decision. He
was their nominee ; they were bound either to tear up
their own convention or loyaUy to see he did not suffer for
being the instrument of their pohcy. The coercion of
Copenhagen or of Kiel was the moral duty of the concert.
Christian, unhappily for himself and for Europe, did not at
once throw the responsibihty on the Powers. In his
excuse it must fairly be said that the rejection by Great
Britain of Napoleon's proposal for a Congress made it very
difficult for him to do so.
It is not possible here to write the history of Europe nor
to discuss the policy of aU the European States in this com
plicated controversy. We are concerned primarily" with
Bismarck and his policy. But it must not be forgotten
that the Danes and King Christian had a case, for which a
good deal can be urged. In 1852 the Concert of Europe
had decided, on broad grounds, that the integrity of the
historic kingdom of Denmark was an essential element in
the Balance of Power. The severance of the Duchies from
Denmark — apart from the juristic problem in the disputed
succession — was a grave violation of that Balance, for the
strategic position of the Duchies was of immense value.
Schleswig had a large Danish population, and there were
many Danes also in Holstein. If there was a danger that
the Germans might be oppressed by the Danes, there was
no less a danger — which events fully bore out — that the
Danes would be oppressed by the Germans. The forcible
Danisation of Holstein was less likely than the forcible
Germanisation of Schleswig. Schleswig had never been
part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, and
the attempt to annex it to the Germany of 1863 — with

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 161
the avowed object of Germanising it — was neither histori-
caUy defensible, nor raciaUy just, nor politically justifiable.
The claim of the Federal Diet that because it was not a
party to the Convention of 1852 it need not therefore
regard it as binding, was fairly met by the indisputable fact
that the two greatest German States in the Diet — Austria
and Prussia — were solemn parties to the Convention, and
could not therefore support the Diet's repudiation without
violating their signatures and pledges. The Germany there
fore of the Federal Diet was a Germany minus Austria
and Prussia : a Germany, in short, which claimed to have
a more important voice in overriding the public law of
Europe, to which the two most important German States
had publicly agreed, than Europe and those two great
German States. Moreover, the Federal Act of 1815, which
defined the powers of the Diet, gave it no legal or political
right to interfere in cases of a disputed succession, to decide
questions of succession or enforce a decision, if it iUegaUy
attempted to make one. Yet in virtually supporting the
Duke of Augustenburg the Diet was precisely doing this,
and therefore acting ultra vires. PohticaUy, the claim that
one-third of Germany could override the rest of Germany
and aU Europe was absurd.
The succession question had been settled in 1852. In
1863 there was or could be only one lawful successor to the
Danish Crown and the Duchies — Christian ix. Any denial
of this indisputable fact was a declaration that the Con
vention was no longer binding without having obtained the
prior consent of those who made it and were responsible
for its maintenance. The Federal Diet was not a party
to the Convention, precisely because the Federal Diet was
not legaUy entitled to have a voice in deciding the succession
in the Duchies, and still less in the kingdom of Denmark.
The Duke of Augustenburg's claim in 1863 was a declara
tion that the Settlement of 1852, which ruled out his
father and was accepted by him, was a wrong decision to
which he had not been a party, and was therefore not bind
ing on him. But if the sons of fathers against whom a
decision has been given can always plead that the decision
does not affect the son, no throne in Europe would be safe

162 BISMARCK
or secure. Bismarck recognised this from the first. And
the subsequent decision of the Prussian Crown lawyers
(p. 184) clearly laid it down that Christian ix. was the
de jure successor both to the Duchies and the Danish
Crown. The Prussian professors argued from the first
that because the Duke of Augustenburg ought to have been
made the heir in 1852, his son was the heir in 1863, all
law and facts notwithstanding. And the argument, that
because conceivably the Constitution of 1863 was ultra
vires the whole Convention of 1852 became invalid, was as
worthless as an argument that because the Federal Diet
in 1863 acted ultra vires the whole Federal Act of 1815
ceased to be vahd.
The Danes made serious mistakes from 1852-64. But
the responsibihty for those mistakes was largely that of the
European Powers also. Long before the situation of 1863
arose it was the duty of the Powers in concert to teU Den
mark that it was not strictly observing the Convention.
That duty the Powers did not perform. Because they did
not perform it, the Danes naturally inferred that the
Powers would accept the Danish policy — a policy which
" had the support of probably a majority in Schleswig and a
minority in Holstein. Condemnation of Danish ambition
or Danish blunders may be necessary, but that does not
involve approval of German policy and ambition — as inde
fensible as the extreme Danish claim. The sequel proved
up to the hilt that the Powers aUowed Prussia to commit
a wanton aggression, to crush Denmark, to denationalise
Schleswig, and to disregard even the scanty pledges of
justice and fair treatment laid down in the Treaty of
Prague. The Danish case against Prussia — as distinct
from Germany — is so strong as to be practically irrefutable.
The true gravity of the situation lay in the new forces
at work. Public opinion in Germany repudiated the Con
vention of 1852. It was universally regarded as the act of
a reactionary coahtion to which not even the Federal Diet,
arid stiU less Germany, was a party. The reversal of the
decision of 1849, which had destroyed the unification of
Germany and the demand for German self-government,
carried with it the reversal of the Convention. The

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 163
' liberation of the duchies ' was a very precise item in a
far-reaching programme of Germany for the Germans.
The claims, therefore, of the young Duke of Augusten
burg combined with a dangerous felicity the demand for
the autonomy and inseparability of Schleswig and Hol
stein, the principle of hereditary legitimism, the rule of a
German prince, and the new Liberalism of the enlightened
dynasties ; and his programme at Kiel in 1 863 stood for every
thing that Germany now passionately demanded for itself.
AU this was recognised in the chancelleries of Europe.
But the newest and gravest element in the situation — the
Prussia of 1863 — was wholly unappreciated in the autumn
of 1863. The Prussia of 1848 had taken a brave line in
using her leadership of the German cause in the Duchies,
and had then at the first threat of European coercion
coUapsed. Here, as in other matters, the impression per
sisted within and without Germany that Prussia was the
lath painted to look hke iron. Bismarck shared the con
tempt and the indignation. He came into office to prove
what Prussian strength could do when efficiently directed
by a diplomacy that had shed the shibboleths which had
sapped the political and moral efficiency of the kingdom.
The geographical and strategic position of the Duchies
was for Prussia unique. In hostile hands they turned the
mUitary frontiers to east and west ; they opened a back
door by land to the capital at Berhn ; and, more dangerous
stiU, they provided everything that sea power required for
the effective coercion of Prussia : as a bastion both on the
Baltic and the North Sea they were indispensable to Prus
sian power and expansion. The silent chief of the General
Staff, the ' library rat,' as men called him, gnawing his way
in prolonged toil to the heart of strategy, the strategy of
the State as Power, could furnish a memorandum con
vincing in its conciseness of the supreme strategic value of
Schleswig-Holstein to Prussia. Bismarck had studied as
hard as Moltke and with as fruitful results. Let the rat
continue to gnaw. When the time came to put in the
rat, the sharper its teeth the better. Instruction in the
truths of strategy and the inseparable union of strategy
and policy, was not needed in the Wilhelmstrasse. But it

164 BISMARCK
was sorely needed in Downing Street and at the British
Admiralty, at the Quai d'Orsay, in the BaU-Platz, and the
fly-blown offices of the Federal Diet.
Moreover, Bismarck foresaw the character of the coming
struggle — a real trial of strength between the diplomacy
and methods of the statecraft of power against the old
diplomacy of the State as the champion of right ; between
the old system of the Concert of Europe with its ' paradox '
of the Balance of Power and the revival of Prussianism
with its doctrine of . force. The result must indicate
conclusively the efficacy and superiority of the Bismarckian
system ; and Bismarck had this enormous advantage. He
knew the methods of his opponents, but they did not know
his. Obsessed by tradition and misled by ignorance of the
real Germany and Prussia, they were in the position of
generals fighting according to the red-tape of a conven
tional warfare against a foe who had superior science and
used it to devise high explosives and asphyxiating gas.
The true moral of the Schleswig-Holstein campaign, in
which Europe was signally routed, is not that the state
craft of blood and iron must always win — men drew that
false conclusion from imperfectly framed premises — but
first, that the State which stands for right (Der Staat als
Recht) in death-grips with the State which stands for
power (Der Staat als Macht) must have better brains and a
clearer mastery of realities ; and secondly, it must not mix
a sham copy of its rival's methods with its own, and then
bay the moon because real force, applied by genius, beats
sham force that lets ' I dare not wait upon I would.'
When Christian's action precipitated a crisis several
solutions were possible. The Powers might at once
insist on the withdrawal of the March Constitution as a
condition of upholding the Convention ; they might have
decided that the whole situation was so completely altered
as to require a new settlement, and have severed the Duchies
from Denmark and recognised the claims of Augusten
burg ; or they might have severed Holstein from Schles
wig ; or they might have supported Christian and
Denmark at aU costs. AU these and other courses were
possible and arguable in November 1863. But they all

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 165
implied that the Concert of Europe responsible for the
Convention of London would act as a concert, and would
act promptly ; and that was precisely what Bismarck guessed
they would not do, or intended to prevent. Bismarck
started with Russia practicaUy on his side — Russia that in
1852 was responsible for the coercion of Schleswig-Holstein
and the integrity of the Danish monarchy. Four against
one — Prussia against the other European Powers — in 1852
was a hopeless position ; but two against three raised a
practicable issue. When it had been converted into
three against two the business would settle itself.
The two fatal blunders for the Powers to commit were,
first : to aUow an isolated and excited Denmark to be en
tangled in a war with one or more members of the Concert
of Europe which were the guarantors of the integrity of the
Danish kingdom ; and, secondly, to delude Denmark into
resistance by encouraging her behef that she would have
aUies in the last resort, when no aUy was prepared to give
more than the ' moral ' support of diplomacy. Such moral
support is generaUy a euphemism for truly moral cowardice
and selfishness, and always an insulting travesty of the real
strength of the moral element in human affairs. Both
these blunders were committed. And there was a third.
In diplomacy, as in war, the statesman who trifles with
time is a criminal ; doubly so, if he is pitted against an ad
versary who puts time on his side. Throughout Bismarck
reckoned that while Lord John RusseU's pen would be black
ening many sheets of paper, and Napoleon was flickering
from one Napoleonic idea to another, the Prussian army
could cover a good many mUes into Holstein, and it would
not meet the British fleet at Kiel. Both King William
and Queen Victoria had consciences which made them
obstinate, but it was easier to deceive King WiUiam than
Queen Victoria, and to prove to the royal satisfaction
of Prussia that black was white. The Queen of Great
Britain had an alternative to the ministers in office, who
were also not united. King WiUiam had no alternative
to Bismarck (who had really no coUeagues) but surrender
to the opposition. So manifold in Bismarck's view were
the advantages of being the Prussian minister of a Prussian

1 66 BISMARCK
king, who governed as weU as reigned. The appeal of the
Congress of London in May, 1864, to Prussian good feeling
when the Prussian army had fleshed a victorious sword on
the obstinate Danes was as helpful as an appeal to the good
feelings of a terrier with a live rabbit in its mouth. The
Congress simply enabled Great Britain and France to
desert Denmark with aU the phylacteries of diplomatic
Pharisaism unsoiled : it justly incurred the impotent
contempt of Denmark and the very potent contempt of
Bismarck. Worst of aU, it taught Europe that right only
differed from might in the inefficiency of its State-egoism
and selfishness. The nadir of British moral power in
Europe was foreshadowed in the action of our Foreign
Office ; the bankruptcy of the Second Empire was first pro
claimed not at Queretaro nor by the guns of Koniggratz,
but at London in 1864. For us British it is tragic that
the Power which in i860 by a single dispatch sUenced
Austria and enabled Cavour to complete the work of Gari
baldi should have denounced, defied, and deserted in 1864.
Bismarck and Gortschakov took the hint, and enforced the
initial lesson in 1870. Dry powder and disbelief in God,
said Europe, is a better creed than belief in God and no
powder at all ; and Providence, said the cynics, thought
with them. Were the cynics really so wrong ?
The one solution that no one in November 1863 con
templated was the annexation of the Duchies by Prussia :
for Prussia, apart from ' the folly ' of crediting her with
the power to defy Europe, had no better title in law or
history to the Duchies than the President of the United
States or the Negus of Abyssinia. One title she could
create, the title of Frederick the Great to Silesia or Polish
Prussia — the title of the invincible sword, accepted by
Europe because it disbelieved in its capacity to invalidate
„ it. We know that Bismarck from the very first, perhaps
before he took office in 1862, steadUy kept annexation
before his eyes as the most satisfactory solution. Indeed,
his diplomacy is inexplicable otherwise. But prudently
recognising that the ideal is not always the attainable he
was determined to prevent a settlement that would block
the greater ends, to which the annexation was at best only

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 167
a stepping-stone. The worst that could happen would
be the severance of the Duchies from Denmark and their
incorporation under their ' lawful ' duke, the Augusten-
burger, in the tessellated mosaic of Federal Germany.
Another petty State under a Liberal prince, hand in glove
with ' the Coburg gang,' voting in the Diet against
Prussia, and working in Germany as a perpetual balsam of
Liberahsm and a mustard-plaster on the back of Prussia,
was intolerable. The enthusiasm of Austria, the dynasties,
and the National Liberals for the Augustenburger — the
ominous conjunction of everything and everybody anti-
Prussian — was quite sufficient to condemn that solution in
Bismarck's eyes. Better the complete incorporation with
Denmark than that. "N
Yet what easier and more tempting than to proclaim the
leadership of Prussia in a great German affair, and employ
the Prussian army to rip the Convention of London to tatters,
in the sacred name of nationahsm and Germany ? Why not
liberate the Duchies from ' Danish degradation,' and end
the constitutional conflict in Prussia with a demand that
the Prussian Parliament should expunge its votes and ex
piate its rebeUion by a doubled grant to a doubled army,
henceforward whoUy to be at the uncontrolled disposi
tion of the Crown for Germany and Prussia's needs ?
WiUiam 1. would have kissed his minister on both cheeks,
the Crown Prince would have begged his pardon, the
opposition would have voted sackcloth and ashes for them
selves and a laurel wreath for the minister,. and Germany,
now burning Bismarck in effigy, would have kneeled at
his feet, had he announced such a policy. Bismarck de
liberately rejected the temptation, for it meant an alhance
with National Liberalism in which he would be the horse
and the popular forces the rider. Instead, he embarked
on a course bristling with difficulties, and exposed to the
gravest perUs, which drew upon himself a concentration
of hatred and indignation from Conservatives outside ¦
Prussia and Liberals within it. He defied a passionate
public opinion and ran the serious risk of uniting Europe
against Prussia. Every one in Germany was against him
—the leaders of the Federal Diet, the Prussian Landtag,

168 BISMARCK
the Duke of Augustenburg, the Germans of the Duchies
themselves, the Crown Prince and his circle, the princes of
the middle and petty States. The Prussian Landtag re
fused the special grant demanded, whereupon Bismarck
rephed that he would take the money where he could find
it. The Prussian Liberals had concentrated on three
points — the desire to act legaUy and in support of Augus-
tenburg's ' lawful ' claims, the absolute identity of Prussia's
interest with that of aU Germany, and the fear that Bis
marck's opposition to German LiberaUsm and NationaUsm
would isolate Prussia and repeat the humiliation of 1 849. His
royal master, on whom everything turned, was an Augus-
tenburger, gravely perturbed by his minister's tortuous,
halting, and dubious proceedings, and by the arguments
of Bismarck's critics to which he had no satisfying answer.
Y^et he could not dismiss Bismarck and face the cyclonic
onset of the popular forces, concentrated in a Landtag
that regarded the constitution as doubly violated by the
treason to Germany and Prussia expressed in the minister's
foreign policy. Bismarck did not dare to teU his royal
master the truth. Until the inexorable drip of one accom
plished fact after another wore away WiUiam's conscience
it was better he should doubt his minister's sanity than be
convinced of his iniquity.
Bismarck's extreme caution at every stage is remarkable.
More than once he clearly was in grave perplexity as to
the next move, and his own simile of the method of stalk
ing woodcock in marshy ground is iUuminating in its
appositeness. Every step must be tested before the next
is taken. If the ground gives, or a stone waggles, wait
untU a better foothold is found by patient exploration.
Do not fire untU you have both feet ori firm ground ;
otherwise you wiU miss your shot, scare the game, and be
bogged into the bargain.
The successive moves of the next few months, viewed as
a whole, present very clearly the general framework of
Bismarck's strategy. The Danes must put themselves in
'the wrong, and be manoeuvred into remaining in the
wrong : driven to resist and then defeated. Once Prus
sian blood had been spUt, a claim for Prussian compen-

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 169
sation could be set up. Germany as far as possible must
be kept out of it. The Convention of London was an-
international document. It was easier to manipulate the
European than the German situation, and to drive wedges
between the Powers than to create discord in Germany.
Hence the controversy must be pinned down to the Con
vention of London. Once that was torn up, the Powers
resumed — dehcious phrase — their individual liberty of
action, and Bismarck guessed that none of the Powers was
prepared to make a European war on behalf of Denmark.
Why should they ? They could not annex the Duchies..
Prussia could. She had a definite and material gain for
which to fight, in the last resort. Hence, combined action
with Austria was essential. That broke the unity of the
Concert, and the aUiance of Vienna with the middle and
petty States. It left the Federal Diet practically helpless.
A skilful diplomacy working on the strained relations re
sulting from the Polish fiasco, could probably separate
England and France. On a calculation of forces, England '
and Denmark were not strong enough to win. England
would not risk it. The Duchies would be severed from
Denmark. The final disposition of them opened up a
much bigger problem — the settlement with Austria and
the settlement of the German question.
Behind this diplomacy throughout stood silent and
obedient — the Prussian army. The crude Junkertum of
Roon, conscious of Prussian strength, grew very impatient
with Bismarck's finesse and haggling with politicians
armed only with a pen and phrases. ' The question of the
Duchies,' he pronounced, ' is not one of right or law, but
of force, and we have it.' Roon and all his school, who
saw in history nothing but the blessing of Providence on
the big battalions, failed to penetrate the secrets of the
real statecraft of power, Bismarckian or otherwise. Moltke
and Treitschke saw deeper. The big battalions must
first range themselves on the side of Providence, before
they can hope to extort the blessing. The maximum of
effort can only be secured from the monarchical State as
Force when sovereigns and subjects have a good con
science, convinced that their cause is lawful and right.

170 BISMARCK
Bismarck undertook the apparently impossible task of con
vincing his sovereign and countrymen that in 1864, 1866,
and in 1870 they were fighting, not an aggressive, but a
defensive, war. Neither Moltke nor he himself believed
that — quite the contrary. But it was essential that the
King and Prussia — the professors, the lawyers, the bour
geois at his desk and the peasant in the fields — should
believe it. And they did — in the end. The professors,
who backed Augustenburg to a man, were the first and the
most easily converted. For the disciplined and patriotic
inteUect must harmonise appetite with reason, and the
carnal appetites of intellectuals are generally as irrational
as their minds are rational. Bismarck relied on ranging
the moral forces in Germany behind the strength of the
Prussian army. But the moral forces must first be chained
up in the iEolus cellar of the Foreign Office, and only let
loose at the right moment. The key of the ceUars and
of the barracks must not be in the keeping of the Landtag,
but in the pocket of the Prussian monarch, i.e. of his
Minister-President. How could this Bismarckian plan of campaign have been
met f Only by first keeping Denmark in the right ;
secondly, by a complete understanding between France
and Great Britain ; thirdly, by making an Anglo-French
entente the basis for a complete understanding with
Germany other than Prussia. The isolation of Prussia was
the true diplomatic objective, as clearly as for Bismarck was
the isolation of Great Britain. It was essential to inform
Denmark categorically and at once that she must withdraw
from an untenable position, and place her cause unreser
vedly in the hands of her friends, or face Germany by her
self. Nor was it enough to maintain the Convention of
London and the status quo. The ambitions of the Danish
Radicals were a grave danger for the future. The German
demand had to be met frankly and with sympathy ; for
the German population in the Duchies had genuine
grievances ; and effective guarantees must be provided
that the Schleswig-Holstein question did not continue to
poison the situation in Europe. The distinction between
Germany and Prussia (under the control of Bismarck) was

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 171
real and deep. A true alliance with Germany other than
Prussia, and with the powerful anti-Bismarckian forces in
Prussia, was weU within the scope of diplomacy, which could
thus have divided Prussia and isolated her in Germany.
But such a policy implied the sympathy and comprehension
that only knowledge and mastery of the realities could
give. The one thing needful was the one thing con
spicuously wanting. English public opinion condemned
Germany no less than Prussia, just because the Liberals
in Germany were dead against the Convention of 1852.
It broke the hearts of the few Englishmen and the many
Germans who recognised the gravity of the issues at stake
for England and for Germany to see the blindness, apathy,
and ignorance on our side, and the squandering bjj^our
ministers of opportunity after opportunity. Great Britain
deserted much more than Denmark. The alienation from
Great Britain of Nationalist and Liberal Germany and
Prussia — the commencement of the estrangement that
was to deepen into opposition and solidify into an irre
concilable hostility — dates from 1864. Our policy, skil
fully exploited by Bismarck, was the foundation of the
conversion of Prussia and Germany to ' Bismarckianism.
Yet if ever there was a British cause, the defeat of
Bismarckian statecraft in 1864 was that cause.
British statesmanship had gravely handicapped itself.
The rejection by the British government in November
1863 of Napoleon's proposal for a Congress was a criminal
blunder which had greatly angered the Emperor. The
rooted distrust of Napoleon in., and the exaggerated
estimate of his ability and strength, which Bismarck had
long ago abandoned, prevented a sincere Anglo-French
union. Napoleon, as usual, wandered in the twilight of
phrases which he mistook for principles. He was heavily
committed in Mexico, he was not prepared for war, and he
had had one damaging lesson from Poland in the blunder
of empty threats. When Great Britain proposed in June
1864 that France should join with her in an agreed line of
partition in Schleswig and make it an ultimatum, Drouyn
de Lhuys replied that with Poland before their eyes such
a step was, as Napoleon said, to invite another gros soufflet,

172 BISMARCK
and unless Great Britain were ready to go to the bitter end,
i.e. make refusal to accept the ultimatum a casus belli,
France would not join in the proposal. Great Britain was
not ready for that, and the proposal came to nothing.
The conception of Prussia as a representative of national
ism, strengthened in the north to make an equipoise to
Austria in the south, fascinated Napoleon's ebbing imagi
nation. He has received sympathy because Bismarck
blackmaUed him dehberately. But the truth is that
Napoleon, like the gambler who fears the horiest banker
• and borrows from an unscrupulous moneylender, hoped
to get the money and evade the sixty per cent. He de
sired to win an imposing success without striking a blow or
risking a French life. The Danes blew up their bridges
and burnt their boats, and then expected Great Britain
single-handed to intervene in their behalf.
The British Court, as has been revealed, had much
sympathy with the Augustenburg claims ; and the Queen
was absolutely determined that her country should not be
involved in war to save the Duchies for Denmark.1 But the
real cause of the mischief and the real responsibUity for our
failure lay with the nation and its leaders. The ignorance
of ministers throughout the whole business was equaUed
by the ignorance of the organs of pubhc opinion and of
the nation they claimed to instruct. The newspapers —
The Times, in particular — surpassed themselves in the
winter of 1863-4 ^7 the insufficiency of their knowledge
and the self-sufficiency of the lectures they poured out on
Germany and Prussia.2 We were quite unprepared for
war. The nation was not willing to go to war, for it
1 Yet, curiously enough, in 1866 Queen Victoria desired 'to interfere by
force against Prussian designs in the Duchies' (Clarendons Life, ii. p. 311)—
a pretty clear proof of sympathy with Austria and the Augustenburg claims.
The ministers were wholly against the Queen.
2 This is a deliberate judgment based on a careful study of the files of The
Times, and other British newspapers for 1863 and 1864: the cumulative im
pression of such a study cannot be verified from a single reference. But I will
cite three examples of knowledge, political judgment, and prescience as
samples : ' The grievances of her (Denmark's) German subjects seem puerile
or groundless' (Times, November 16, 1863): 'We have ourselves as a nation
little interest in the question ' (November 24, 1863): ' We believe that even
now (February 6, 1864) Prussia is anxious to leave the Danish state un
touched.' How Bismarck must have enjoyed reading that divination of

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 173
scarcely knew where Schleswig-Holstein could be found
on the map, but we were ready to threaten what we had
no intention of performing, and we hectored every one
with the complacent superiority that deserves the title of
insular. The gravity of the German and European situa
tion was quite unappreciated, because there are none so
blind as those who do not wish to see. The language of
responsible public men, and not merely of Palmerston, of
politicians, and of ' Society,' naturally misled the Danes,
who made the pardonable mistake of supposing that
England meant what she said, and of interpreting ignorant
bluster as moral conviction. ' I wasted several years of
my Ufe,' Bismarck remarked, ' by the supposition that
England was a great nation.' The price that we paid then
and subsequently was the price that we deserved to pay. •
A nation with responsible parliamentary government is
not the victim but the author of its government's blunders ;
and if it seeks to transfer the responsibUity to politicians
and a party system, or some other scapegoat, it is guilty
of the lie in the soul.
Bismarck's first step was to secure Austria. It did not
escape his attention that Austria, compared with Prussia,
was in a very unfavourable position for effective military
and political action in the Duchies. Austria, humiliated
by the Polish fiasco and the failure of the Congress of
Princes, was only too ready to listen to the Prussian over
tures. The rejection by the Federal Diet (January 14)
of the Prussian proposal, that Austria and Prussia, in virtue
of their international position, should occupy Schleswig
in order to secure the observance of the Convention, was
tantamount to a declaration that the Diet repudiated the
his policy and aims. The effect of these utterances on public opinion
at Copenhagen, throughout Germany, and at Berlin and Vienna, is not a
question of speculation. Morier and others saw with pain how our newspapers --
encouraged the Danes, angered while patronising the German Liberals, inflamed
the tension, and were carefully studied by Bismarck," who was accurately in
formed of the ignorance and bluster in London. 'England,' said a Prussian
deputy, 'is always full of consideration for those who can defend themselves.'
And the England of 1863-64 also seems to have been convinced that (a) the
British fleet had only to appear and Prussia would retire in humble fear ;
and (b) still more characteristic, that military states would conduct their
military operations as our Government and; War Office had conducted the
Crimean War.

174 BISMARCK
Convention ; it compeUed Austria to accept the Prussian
aUiance. ' We recognise,' said Bismarck, ' in King Chris
tian the heir both of the rights and the wrongs of his
predecessor ; our fidelity to treaties must be open to no
impeachment.' The Treaty of January 16, 1864, bound
Austria and Prussia to determine the future of the Duchies
by joint agreement and to decide the succession question
only by common consent. It ruled out agreements with
a third party, and it made the two States, as guarantors
of the Convention and Protocol of 1852, a single State to
all intents and purposes. Austria could henceforward
only oppose Prussia or act with the Federal Diet, or another
European Power, by tearing up the treaty, which proved,
as Bismarck intended it to be, a miUstone round Austria's
neck. It was to be the connecting link between the
German question and the question of the Duchies. Had
the Danes now accepted the Austro-Prussian ultimatum
of January 16, to withdraw the new constitution and place
the situation in the hands of the Powers, there must have
been at least delay, and time would have been brought on
to the Danish side. The Danish government knew, as
every one did, that Great Britain had previously rejected
the reference to a Congress. The British government was
of opinion that King Christian's claims to the Duchies
could not be questioned. The ultimatum was accordingly
rejected. Bismarck afterwards smilingly admitted that a Danish
acceptance would have been a serious upset to his plans ;
but he added, probably with truth, ' I had ascertained
that the Danes would certainly refuse, otherwise I should
not have taken the risk.' The Danes, moreover, were only
given forty-eight hours to decide, and the Austro-Prussian
army crossed the frontier at once. The Prussian note of
January 31 virtuaUy proclaimed that Danish resistance
had torn the Convention of London to shreds and tatters.
And Danish resistance was openly applauded in England
— which expected to see 1849 repeated in 1864. So much
did England know of Prussia and of Denmark.
The situation was certainly peculiar. Saxon and Hano
verian troops were acting for the Federal Diet, whose

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 175
jurisdiction was limited to Holstein. The Austrian and
Prussian troops, representing two signatories to the
Convention of 1852, could coerce Denmark, for the Con
vention applied to the whole kingdom and not merely to
the Duchies. France, Great Britain, and Russia had an
equal right with Austria and Prussia to intervene ; and
Austria and Prussia by themselves could not draw up a
new, or restore the old, Convention. A Congress was
inevitable. The Prussian General Staff, on its metile,
recognised that the pace must be forced. The storm of
the Diippel lines (April 18) drove the Danes to accept
reference to a Congress at London, and the armistice of
April 18 left Austria and Prussia in practical possession of
the Duchies. Germany was jubilant : 1848 was avenged.
It only remained now for Europe to sever the Duchies
from Denmark, install the Duke of Augustenburg, and the
business was over.
' The business,' Bismarck had decided, was only begin
ning. The Prussian Staff would not be whistled off its
prey by journalists in Printing House Square or Fleet
Street ; the King, who flattered himself that he had faced a
scaffold in Unter Den Linden for the army, felt it was good
to be a Hohenzollern ; and even the most rebeUious
Prussian Radical had pride in the soldiers of Prussia. ' It
wiU not be amiss,' Bismarck concluded, ' if we enter the
Congress in possession of the object in dispute.' But the
floors of European Congresses are notoriously slippery.
Bismarck, represented by Bernstorff in London, was deter- "
mined to make the Congress end in a stalemate. He
could always block what he did not want, and then propose
what he felt sure would be rejected by others. The blood
and iron of the Prussian sword could then bring the curtain
down on the first act.
War was only a continuation of pohcy, a means to give you
the terms on which you wish to live with your neighbours ;
and Bismarck had three fine cards to play. A settlement
against the wiU of the Duchies was no settlement (that
appealed to Napoleon with his itch for plebiscites) ; the
restoration of the Duchies to Denmark would be violently
opposed by Germany, and every Augustenburger in Europe

176 BISMARCK
(that was for the Queen of Great Britain, the widow of a
Coburg prince) ; a partition could probably be wrecked on
its details (that was for himself). Where in the Duchies did
the Danish, fringe end and the German begin ? Bismarck
had a crushing answer to the proposals of his opponents in
London. If he was thwarted he would resign, with the
result that Prussia, in the hands of the overwhelming oppo
sition in the Landtag, would join the Diet and the princes
in supporting the Duke of Augustenburg, and Europe
would be confronted with a united Germany, holding the
Duchies in its possession and determined to fight for their
retention. He kept his hand on German nationalism,
and now opened the throttle to let the superheated steam
out. From the Wilhelmstrasse he invited the journalists
and the professors to lash public opinion into a frenzy.
' Let the whole pack go,' he commanded ; and ' the whole
pack ' let themselves go with German thoroughness and
rhetoric. As a corrective he encouraged Russia to revive
the claims of the house of Oldenburg, passed over in 1852.
Nor — he quietly insinuated — were the dynastic claims of
a Prussian claimant to be whoUy overlooked.
The interest of the Congress does not lie in its tedious
details of proposals1 rejected by one or other of the parties,
but in the steady sapping and countermining by Prussia, so
as to bring about a deadlock. Clarendon penetrated the
blocking tactics. It was then too late. British public
opinion, confronted with a disinterested war by Great
Britain alone for two wretched Duchies on behalf of an un
reasonable Denmark, which rejected every compromise, had
not the vision or the knowledge to graspthe significance for
Europe of Schleswig-Holstein, and the situation had been
so bungled by the British government and so skilfuUy en
gineered by Bismarck that war on behalf of Denmark was
war with Liberal Germany. Our Court was determined to
1 The proposal to return to the position defined in the Convention of 1852
was rejected by Germany, Austria, and Prussia ; the proposal to install the
Duke of Augustenburg in the Duchies, separated from Denmark, made by
Austria and Prussia, was rejected by Denmark and Great Britain ; the British
proposal to divide Schleswig at the line of the river Schlei was rejected by
Germany ; the Danish proposal to make the river Eider the frontier was
rejected by Prussia.

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 177
keep England out of war, and the ministers, divided
amongst themselves, shrank from involving the Crown in
a ministerial crisis, in which it was very uncertain that
pubhc opinion would support them. The government
had not decided in advance whether it was a British interest
to fight, and, if it was not, what line of action would
spare Great Britain from a humiliating rebuff and
treachery to friends it had deceived. Napoleon, ' the
Man of Sin,' was playing with the idea (suggested by
the Arch-Tempter) that the most reasonable solution
was to recognise ''the Nationalist principle and assign
the Duchies to Prussia as the representative of that
principle — of course for a compensation to be defined
later. The policy of disinterested idealism and the
pohcy of pourboires — the policy of the benevolent
heart and the pohcy of the calculating brain — are hard
to harmonise at any time, but the harmony is im
possible for a muddled head and a heart suffering from
valvular disease.
While the Congress wrangled Bismarck was clearing a
difficulty of his own out of the way. Through the Crown
Prince and Max Duncker he gave the Duke of Augustenburg
an interview at Berlin (June 1). The King and the Crown
Prince were apparently confident that it would result in
the adoption by Bismarck of Augustenburg as the candi
date of Prussia. It is impossible to reconcile the narratives
of that memorable scene, which come first hand from
Bismarck and the duke. Recent German critical scholar
ship has held that the duke's story is the more trustworthy,
which is quite probable, but the controversy, thorigh a
fascinating study in evidential sources, does not affect the
result. When the two men parted at midnight of June 1
Bismarck had decided that he had finished with the duke,
and the duke recognised that he would be instaUed in
the Duchies only by Bismarck's expulsion from office.
Bismarck expounded the difficulties, legal and political, of
enforcing the duke's claims ; but if the duke were prepared
to agree to certain conditions, which would place the
Duchies in the military and administrative control of
Prussia, he would work on his behalf. The conditions

178 BISMARCK
were such as to estabhsh a virtual Prussian protectorate,
under which the duke would be nominally sovereign, but
in aU essentials he would simply be the President (Regie-
rungs Oberprasident) of a Prussian province. The Duchies
were, in short, to be the ducal scabbard of the Prussian
sword. The duke rejected the conditions, as incom
patible with his independence as a sovereign prince and his
desire to be an autonomous and Liberal ruler. When he
walked out into the summer night, he was walking out of
history. Upstairs the Minister-President was shrugging
his shoulders. Liberals never would see that half a loaf was
better than no bread. It was now quite clear that annexa
tion to Prussia was the only tolerable solution. Annexa
tion ? How ? Would Austria consent to a Prussian
annexation ?
The Congress broke up on June 25 on the deadlock that
Bismarck desired. Its debates registered three results :
first, that the Convention of 1852 had gone into the waste-
paper basket ; secondly, that no alternative settlement had
been arrived at ; and thirdly, — the really momentous
result — that Bismarck had smashed the Concert of Europe
into fragments. Henceforward one of the main prin
ciples of his pohcy, not merely in the Schleswig-Holstein
affair, was to prevent the* fragments from re-uniting.
German sentiment supported this policy. As long as the
European Powers feU out, Prussia and Germany would
come by their own. The next six years provided the
proof. Beust — the representative of the Federal Diet at '
London — whom defeat always prompted to epigrams, said
happily enough : ' The conference closed after some very
animated debates, as a Black Forest clock sometimes stops
after ticking more loudly than usual.' ' You came,' said
Clarendon to Bernstorff, ' into the conference as masters
of the situation, and as masters of the situation you now
leave it. Have a care how long that wiU last.' Bismarck
appreciated the compliment from an experienced states
man. As for the threat, he had the care to see that ' that '
lasted from 1864 to 1890. The disappointment at Wind
sor Castle was even more bitter than Clarendon's disgust.
The failure of the Congress was a grievous blow to dynastic

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 179
Liberalism in Germany.1 Our Court agreed with another
remark of Clarendon's : ' Je ne veux plus jamais rien avoir
a faire avec cet homme sans foi ni loi qui s'appeUe M. de
Bismarck, ni celui qui est son negre M. de Rechberg
(the Austrian Prime Minister).' Clarendon was to have
another bout later on with the man without faith or law,
and to fare no better.
Hostihties were resumed. The Danes saw the security
of their islands smashed in when Alsen was captured
(June 29) by the skill of the Prussian Chief of the Staff.
The miracle of British help, for which to the last they had
hoped against hope, was not vouchsafed. On August 1,
to avoid the faU of Copenhagen, preliminaries of peace
were signed. The Duchies were handed over in fuU sove
reignty to Austria and Prussia conjointly, who in accord
ance with the treaty of January 16, would now conjointly
determine their ultimate fate. The major military opera
tions were over ; but the major strategy of diplomacy had
simply closed the first phase of the campaign. ' We were
quite ready,' Bismarck remarked later, ' once we had
hberated Schleswig and Holstein to leave poor King
Christian in peace.' For Bismarck the annexation of the
conquered Duchies was only a part, and not the most im
portant part, of the great problem — the solution of the
German question in accordance with Prussian principles
and interests. The enemy in that vast field was Prussia's
ally Austria. And until Austria was as decisively defeated
as Denmark Prussia could not impose her terms.
The Prussian army had had a dress rehearsal in the
Danish campaign. It had justified itself. Let the
soldiers now see to it that the experience was used to pre
pare the army for the much more serious trial that lay
ahead. ' The occasion for such a war,' Bismarck wrote in
December 1862, ' can be found at any moment, when our
position with regard to the great Powers is favourable for
carrying it on.' But the tremendous task imposed on the
director of Prussian policy was how to force a war upon
1 ' The Queen cannot but think that this country ... has no other course
but to withdraw, and to refuse to take any further part in this lamentable
contest.' (Mem. to Lord Granville, June 27, 1864. Life, i. p. 475.)

180 BISMARCK
Austria, and at the same time convince King WiUiam,
Prussia, Germany if possible, and Europe, that it was
Austria forcing the war on Prussia ; how also to link the
interests of Germany with the essential interests of Prussia,
and how to secure the European situation that would
leave Prussia to fight in a closed ring fence with Austria,
and garner undisturbed the fruits of victory. A Congress
of Paris, London, or Vienna to rearrange the map of
Europe and the organisation of Germany would be fatal
to a Prussian settlement. Bismarck's diplomacy in the
next eighteen months reveals his interpretation of the
situation : first, the settlement of the Duchies must be
kept open ; secondly, the key of the international situation
lay at Paris ; thirdly, that so far from quarrelling with
Austria in 1864 the benefits of the aUiance were by no
means exhausted and must be exploited a great deal
further. ' So long,' he said, ' as we — Austria and Prussia
— remain united no one of the great Powers wiU move a
finger to disturb the status quo.' What Bismarck reaUy
intended was that they should not move a finger if Austria
and Prussia feU out — as they were bound to do.
From September 1862 (and earlier) until September
1870 at least, a repetition by Francis Joseph of
the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 was perpetuaUy in
his thoughts. France and Austria had then laid aside
their historic antagonism to unite against the troubler of
the peace — Frederick the Great. Bismarck realised that
in autocracies, such as Austria, Russia, or the Second
Empire (as in the Europe of the ancien rigime) policy
could be shaped by the sovereign entirely against the
popular wish or sentiment, and Bismarck's handhng of
Russia both before and after 1870 explicitly rested on his
hold not on Russian sentiment — as he told the Reichstag
in 1888 — but on the Tsar. Great Britain was quite
different ; for there you had to deal with a nation that
could coerce, and could not be coerced by, its government.
In diplomacy the power of the autocracies had great ad
vantages, but also one great disadvantage. The auto
cratic State might be quickly switched off into a new orbit,
to suit the pohcy of its governor. The psychology of the

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 181
statecraft of power reveals one simple categorical impera
tive of state-reason : never let others do to you what you
would do to them, and it is one of the supreme penalties
of that statecraft, imposed on its disciples, invariably to
expect foul play as the riposte to foul play. Statesmen
who spend half their lives preparing to force war on their
unprepared neighbours invariably spend the other half
in meeting the wars they are convinced their neighbours
intend to force upon them. The incapacity of a de
bauchee autocrat is, therefore, a better security of the
peace of Europe than the ambitions of genius. The sove
reign who covets his neighbour's wife is less harmful in
the long run than the Minister-President of an autocracy
who covets his neighbour's lands.
For Bismarck it was not necessary to secure France as
an accomplice — and he could not have secured France —
but it was essential to secure Napoleon. That the policy
of which Napoleon was to be the accomplice was wholly
opposed to the interests of France, indeed was to be the
basis of France's ultimate ruin, was obvious to Bismarck ;
and, in his mind, ought to have been obvious to Napoleon.
Yet, if the interest of Prussia could only be gained by the
ruin of France, it was the duty of a Prussian- statesman to
ruin France. For Bismarck the ethics were irrelevant :
the real problem was of a whoUy different kind — how to
secure the essential neutrality of Napoleon without paying
for it except in vague promises that could always be
repudiated, or in a good wiU which he did not feel. The
compact of Plombieres could now or at any time be re
peated by the compact of Biarritz. But pride and national
sentiment were far too strong for so simple a solution. He
was not Cavour, nor was Prussia the kingdom of Sardinia.
He said, truly enough, that in listening to Napoleon's over
tures he felt like Joseph tempted by Potiphar's wife ; and
the cession of German territory, even if it did not belong
to Prussia, as the price of French support stirred genuine
and fierce resentment within him. For to Bismarck, as to
aU the Germans of his day, France was the one irreconcil
able foe with whom Prussia and Germany had a long ac
count to settle. For Napoleon himself Bismarck seems

f82 BISMARCK
to have had a liking, dashed with pity and contempt. But
Napoleon was France, and there was a quintessence of
satisfaction now in the task of making France, whoni he
hated, the dupe of his diplomacy, and the engineer against
her wiU of her own downfaU.
While the legal points involved in the Duke of Augusten-
burg's claims were referred to the Prussian Crown lawyers
(who might safely be trusted to examine them with Prus
sian impartiality) Roon was sent to France to attend the
French manoeuvres — a fairly clear hint to Austria that
Prussia had friends elsewhere than at Vienna ; and in
,October Bismarck's health required him to pay the second
of three momentous visits to Bordeaux and Biarritz, where
he met the Emperor, and on his way back discussed the
situation and the future with the French ministers at Paris.
The principles of his policy were subsequently explained
in an elaborate memorandum submitted to Napoleon
(August 1 8, 1865) : ' Continental politics have for a long
time been based on the close union of the three Eastern
Powers, which, in the condition of things resulting from the
Holy Alliance, took the form of a coalition against France
. . . the policy of Prussia had for many years turned in
this direction . . . and has forced her to foUow Austria's
South Germany and ' Entire Germany ' policies. . . . Op
posed to this traditional view there is another doctrine
which is founded upon Prussia's most vital needs. It is
the doctrine of the free and independent development of
Prussia and North German elements into an independent
great power, which may feel itself secure. . . . Can the
Emperor Napoleon consider it his duty to discourage
Prussia . . . and force her back into the old defensive
attitude of the Coalition. . . . This would be a certain
proof that the traditional policy, pursued for fifty years,
was correct, and that it must determine Prussia's conduct
in the future.'
Bismarck was now carefully preparing the way for Napo
leon's acquiescence in the annexation of the Duchies, the
consolidation of Prussia in the north of Germany as an
equipoise to Austria, and some unspecified compensation
to France. But neither Napoleon nor his ministers had

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 183
learned that Bismarck's unconventional frankness marked
a diplomatic reconnaissance. The easiest way to evade
committing yourself was, under the guise of friendship, to
incite the other side to damaging revelations of greed or
conquest. At present, until Austria had categoricaUy
refused a settlement satisfactory to Prussia, any definite
engagement with France was dangerous. Neither the
King nor German public opinion would in 1864 have
tolerated a settlement of the Duchies by concert with
France to the detriment of Austria.
The first step was to clear the Federal forces out of Schles
wig and Holstein. The Saxon and Hanoverian troops were,
therefore, peremptorily required to evacuate the Duchies,
on the ground that they now legaUy belonged to Prussia
and Austria. Moltke's correspondence proves that the
Prussian Staff was ready to turn the Saxons and Hano
verians out by force, if needs be ; but it was not necessary.
The Bund recognised its impotence, declared the Federal
execution at an end, and the Federal troops were with
drawn (December 5). Two days later the triumphal
return of the victorious army of Prussia was celebrated
with much rejoicing in Berlin.
Public opinion both in the Duchies and without cease
lessly clamoured for the instaUation of the Duke of Au
gustenburg. At Vienna the blunder of concluding the
aUiance of January 16 was now fully recognised, and Rech-
berg's dismissal from office (October, 1864) proclaimed
that the BaU-Platz was about to try a new line of poUcy.
Bismarck was determined first to hold Austria tightly to
the aUiance, secondly, to make the administrative condo
minium of the Duchies quite unworkable. ' We stand,'
he said, ' before the question of the Duchies like two guests
before a delicious dish. One of them who has no appetite
and wiU not eat rigorously forbids the other whom the
delicacies tempt.'
The continuous drip of facts was eating away the hard
rock in his sovereign's conscience and Prussian public
opinion. WiUiam had begun to feel that Prussian honour
was involved in a satisfactory settlement, and that ' coer
cion ' by Austria would land Prussia in a second Olmiitz.

1 84 BISMARCK
A very significant memorial, signed by Radicals so pro
nounced as Twesten, Jung, Mommsen, and others, em
phasised the desirability of permanently securing the
Duchies for Germany by incorporation on reasonable terms
with Prussia. The report of the Prussian Crown lawyers
proved first, that the Duke of Augustenburg had no legal
claims ; secondly, that the title to the Duchies had been
unquestionably vested in the King of Denmark ; and
thirdly, that this title had been unquestionably transferred
by the Treaty of Vienna to Prussia and Austria, who were
now the de jure sovereigns of Schleswig and Holstein. If,
therefore, Prussia consented to instaU the Duke of Augus
tenburg by agreement with Austria, the duke would be a
delegate ruling on such conditions as the de jure co-
sovereigns laid down. William's last scruples were thus
removed. The settlement was not a question of the
Augustenburger's ' rights ' but of policy, and the dele
gation of Prussia's rights affected the King's honour and
trusteeship of Prussian interests. How could expert
Prussian Crown lawyers possibly be wrong or biassed even
if they flatly contradicted expert. Prussian professors and
historians ?
On February 22, 1865, Bismarck formaUy stated to
Austria the conditions on which Prussia was prepared to
join with Austria in establishing the Duke of Augusten
burg in the Duchies. They were practically the con
ditions which the duke had rejected on June 1, 1864, and
would have made the Duchies to aU intents and purposes
Prussian provinces, administered by the duke as a Prussian
state official. The Schleswig-Holstein troops were, for
example, to take the oath of aUegiance to the King of
Prussia : while Prussian control of the harbour of Kiel was
guaranteed. The Austrian rejection of these terms was
a foregone conclusion, and (March 27) the request of the
Federal Diet, moved by Austria, for the unconditional
instaUation of the duke was rejected by Prussia, as a matter
beyond the competence of the Diet and also a breach of
treaty by Austria. Bismarck was now able to convince his
sovereign that it was not the Minister-President at Berlin
who stood in the way of an honourable settlement. The

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 185
suggestion of the pro- Austrians at Berlin that WUUam
should purchase Austrian acquiescence in a Prussian annexa
tion by the cession of Silesia was deftly calculated to stir
WiUiam's deepest resentment. The surrender of Prussian
rights in the north, purchased by Prussian blood, was to
be sealed by the surrender of Prussian rights in the south,
purchased by the victories of Frederick the Great and the
immortal heroes of the heroic epoch. WiUiam, in short,
was finding, under guidance, his way to the conclusion
that Austria — with whom he had passionately desired
always to co-operate as a friend and aUy — was utiUsing the
situation to inflict a humiliation on him or drive him into
a ' defensive ' war.
The two secret Councils of State (March 9 and May 3),
at which the Crown Prince and aU the high mUitary and
civU authorities were present, revealed the gravity of the
situation. Such secret councUs in the history of Prussia
are the invariable prelude to momentous decisions, and still
more momentous action. The whole situation was sur
veyed, and the responsible opinion of the Prussian staff
was earnestly canvassed. The Chief of the Staff spoke to
men who knew what war, strategy and policy meant.
The upshot was that the King, satisfied that the soldiers
had correctly estimated the mihtary position, decided that
if Austria threatened war, Prussia would fight and Prussia
would be right.
The tension in Prussia and Germany rapidly became
acute. A civil war (a Bruderkrieg) was in sight, and "all
those influential sections of society to which war between
Prussia and Austria was a disaster, subversion of the
moral and political order, and the first step to ' the Revo
lution ' were aghast at the cynical wickedness of the
Minister-President, who betrayed the Conservative cause.
L. von Gerlach wrote bitterly to the Minister-President
at this cruel treachery to law and order. Bismarck's visit
to France, the trafficking with Napoleon — the Napoleon
of 1865 was generaUy held to be an arch-MachiaveUi
of Jacobin statecraft — the Augustenburg agitation, and the
widening breach with Austria, inflamed and bewildered
public opinion. The caricature literature of these tense

1 86 BISMARCK
years reveals the fears and execrations of Conservatives,
Ultramontanes, Particularists of every shade, Nationalists,
Liberals, and Radicals. Bismarck's pohcy had evoked the
bitter denunciation of every party, and his unpopularity
reached its height in the period from the spring, of 1865
to the climax of the final rupture in July 1866.
But unpopularity did not trouble Bismarck. The crisis
was of his own making. ' We have come,' he said to
Austria, ' to where the road divides . . . our tickets take
us upon diverging routes, nor can we in this trip enter
the carriage that you share with others.' He anticipated
correctly that, if he could achieve his purpose by the
methods he judged suitable, reactionaries and progressives
alike who now were ready to stone him as a traitor, would
hail him as the saviour of Prussia and Germany, and his
methods as the finest expression of efficient German state
craft. It is not surprising that his experience from 1849
to 1890 confirmed his contempt for public opinion,
whether of the upper or the lower classes, and his belief
that kings, princes, and nobles were even more ready than
professors or tinkers to worship success. It is essentially
characteristic of the man and his statesmanship that in the
heated atmosphere of June 1865 he calmly weighed the
forces in the situation, and decided to state, in the terms of
an ultimatum drawn up at a cabinet council at Regensburg,
the heads of a settlement. The Convention of Gastein
(August 14, 1865) was the diplomatic expression of those
terms. It was Austria, not Bismarck, who had given way.
The Convention provided for the transfer of the ad
ministration of Holstein to Austria, and of Schleswig to
Prussia, with a joint share in the harbour of Kiel, the forti
fication of which was to be entrusted to Prussia. Prussia
acquired Lauenburg by a money payment. The division
of the condominium was remarkable. Holstein was now
an Austrian enclave between Prussian Schleswig and the
Prussian kingdom. The Austrian land route to Holstein
was practically controUed by Prussia, and the Austrian fleet
could only reach Kiel by a journey from Trieste to the
North Sea, and before it ever got as far as Brest Bismarck
intended it should be stopped or sunk — by an ally of

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 187
Prussia. The Duke of Augustenburg's claims went into
the wastepaper basket, as also did the sacred and inviolable
principle, which aU German historians, Conservatives and
Liberals, had regarded as a greater certainty than the law
of gravitation, that the Duchies since 1460 were ' one and
indivisible.' The Convention was accepted by William 1. and the
Conservatives with profound relief as ' a bloodless victory '
— peace with honour. The shame of a war with Austria
or of a second Olmiitz had been triumphantly avoided.
But in the Duchies, in the middle and petty States, and
in the Nationalist, Liberal, and Ultramontane parties the
agreement of the two great German Powers roused deep
indignation. The cause of the duke, of Nationalism and
LiberaUsm were surrendered in a common betrayal.
Popular meetings at Frankfurt condemned the Convention
as a violation of pubhc law and right which could not be
binding on the Duchies, whose autonomy was so cynically
overridden — and by Austria, the avowed representative
of moral order and legitimism.
Bismarck's view of the Convention is quite clear. The
Napoleonic military maxim ' Engage everywhere and then
see ' summed up his action. Bismarck had engaged ' the
enemy ' along the whole line ; the Convention enabled
him now ' to see.' On July 13 he had written to M. von
Blankenburg that 'war with Austria is only a question
of time,' and after the Convention had been settled he
remarked : ' I could never have believed that I would find
an Austrian diplomatist who would have signed such a
document.' He was quite wiUing to postpone the struggle
to a more favourable occasion. Neither the Prussian nor
the German nor the European situation was entirely
moulded to his liking. On July 21 he had telegraphed
both to Goltz at Paris to conclude a treaty of neutrality
with France, if the Austrians rejected the ultimatum, and
to Usedom at Florence to inquire officiaUy what the atti
tude of Italy would be in the case of war. France and
Italy — these were the two harassing uncertainties.
Nor was the German question, apart from the Duchies,
adequately worked up. Bismarck had not yet been able

188 BISMARCK
to link up a precise Prussian programme of Federal reform
with the issues raised in Schleswig-Holstein, and thereby
proclaim that Prussia was fighting for greater ends than
the mere acquisition of the Duchies wrested from Denmark.
A letter to his wife briefly aUudes to the cruel and increas
ing burden of work and responsibility that the preceding
twelve months had thrust upon him. Daily dispatches
from and to Rome, Florence, Vienna, Munich, Paris, the
direction of foreign policy aggravated by the internal diffi
culties, the tangle in the Duchies, the military and financial
problems and the necessity of controlling and directing his
ministerial colleagues, and of keeping the King fully in
formed and true to the straight course — such were some
of his chief cares, and the Minister-President found the
task almost beyond even his powers, while behind the un
ending toil lay hke lead the consciousness that a false step,
an error of judgment, a miscalculation would wreck both
Prussia and himself. His irritable and highly strung
nerves conspired with the white-hot passion within to rob
him of sleep, and to make him brusque, dictatorial, and
harsh. Yet he could always find the necessary half-hour,
when away from his home, to scribble a few lines to his
wife, and in these letters his truest thoughts and many
of his happiest descriptions and judgments are enshrined
with a vivid and unforgettable brevity. Bismarck had a
genuinely German contempt for women who meddled '
with politics, and for men who aUowed themselves to be
influenced in political affairs by women, whether wives
or mistresses. But to Frau von Bismarck he wrote
always as to one who had a right to know and on whose
judgment and sympathy he could implicitly rely.
Austria was certainly not ready for war. The Habsburg
primacy in Germany was at stake and could not be risked
simply on the Schleswig-Holstein question. Bismarck, in
the last resort, was determined to buy Napoleon or aUy
with ' the Revolution ' — to fling, if needs be, the whole
' system of 1815 ' — treaties and principles, frontiers, and
balance of power — into the conflagration, conscious that
Prussia by her military strength and the exploitation of
National Liberalism, would emerge master probably of

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 189
Germany, as defined in 1849. But Austria, with a hostile
Russia to the north and a mutinous Hungary in the east,
could not buy Napoleon. StiU less could she face ' the
Revolution.' Austria's two deadliest foes, within anal
without, were Nationalism and Liberalism, and the irony
of the situation in 1865 was summed up in the truth that
Austria's only genuine friend was Bismarck. Since 1849
Francis Joseph, a true Habsburg, blindly foUowing the
star of the dynasty, and sacrificing aU to the principle that
Austria was not a State but a famUy, had thrown away
opportunity after opportunity. As Richard in. was
haunted in the grey hours of the night before Bos worth
by the procession of the victims of his ambition, so now
Francis Joseph, on the eve of Koniggratz, could see the
procession of dismissed minister after minister sacrificed
to a dynastic obsession. The list was by no means com
plete in August 1865 ; the finest spportunities and the
most loyal servants were still to be thrown away. But
had Francis Joseph been gifted with a spark of the imagina
tion without which aU statecraft shrivels at the touch of
reality into the tricks of the diplomatic card-sharper, he
would now have purchased from Bismarck a Prussian
defensive and offensive aUiance against all and sundry.
Except as pieces in the mighty game of Prussian ideals,
Bismarck did not care a groschen for Napoleon, Victor
Emmanuel, and Italian NationaUsm or for Deak and Magyar
autonomy. The withdrawal of Austria from the Duchies,
acquiescence in a Prussian hegemony north of the Main,
together with a real parity in a reconstructed Federal organi
sation would have saved Venetia and much else besides for
the Habsburgs, and anticipated (under far more favourable
conditions for Austria) the system of 1879, perhaps even
have revived in a new form the Triple Alliance of 18 19.
A big brain and a cool recognition of realities could have
made the Convention of Gastein a treaty that created a
system, not an armistice that simply called a halt, and
thus led up to the foundation of a Central Europe, more
justly poised between Berlin and Vienna than the system
of 1 87 1. Whether such a treaty would have been better
for Europe as a whole it is idle to speculate. At least, it

190 BISMARCK
would have spared the Continent the triumphant vindica
tion of force as the sovereign remedy for ' the great
questions of the age ' that the war of 1866 provided ; it
would have left Bismarck to face the difficulties of the
internal situation in Prussia without the conclusive argu
ment that ended the constitutional struggle in Prussia,
and began the steady perversion of National LiberaUsm
from the gospel of Rights to the gospel of Power.
But Francis Joseph, in 1865, did not feel the need of
imagination. He only felt the need of time. Bismarck
needed time too, and he was confident he would make
a better use of the respite than the men who had tried
to bluff him and then shrank back at the counter-threat
of a Prussian mobilisation. Bismarck was neither the
Radowitz nor the Manteuffel of 1850, nor was WiUiam 1.
a Frederick William iv. Austria was no longer repre
sented by a Schwarzenberg. ' The Convention,' Bismarck
pronounced in a memorable phrase, ' simply papered over
the cracks.'
WiUiam was grateful for being spared war — as he
thought — by the achievement of a resounding diplomatic
stroke. On September 15 the Minister-President and
his descendants were promoted to the rank of Counts
(Graf). ' In the four years,' wrote the King, ' that have
passed since I called you to the head of my government,
Prussia has gained a position which is worthy of her
history and promises her further fortune and glory.'
§ 3. The rupture with Austria — The Treaty of Prague,
1865-1866
' The ten months from the Convention of*Gastein to
-the final rupture on June 23, 1866, when the Prussian
troops entered Bohemia, make a very comphcated chapter
in European history. Full justice to the diplomatic
moves and countermoves would require a large canvas
and elaborate detail. In France, Austria, Italy, and the
German States, the directors of policy continuously en
visaged contradictory aims and alternative lines of action.
German public opinion was in greater bewilderment than

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 191
ever : fearing and detesting everything that Prussia did,
yet mastered by an intuition that in Prussian strength
and purposeful egoism alone lay aU hopes of a permanent
decision. Germany had indeed dragged its anchors, and
was drifting into the storm.
The main lines of Bismarck's statecraft stand out in
the sharpest relief against the blurred and shifting kaleido
scope. A letter from the devoted Roon, himself toiling
at fuU concert pitch, to have the Prussian army ready,
speaks of ' Otto's herculean industry day and night and
his reckless demands on his physical strength. . . . He
has now to reckon with the rebellion of his truest and
most submissive subject, his stomach, and is so irritable
arid sensitive, particularly over petty matters, that I am
fuU of anxiety, for I know what is at stake.' Roon adds
truly, ' complete freedom of mind, a deranged digestion,
and tortured nerves are hf.rd to reconcile.' But for all
his difficulties, political, mental, and physical, Bismarck
exhibited the one clear and resolute wiU, the one clear
and unshakable aim in the universal confusion. He was
determined to settle the fate of Prussia and Germany by
the appeal to the sword.
- Roon, Moltke, and the Prussian Staff were of the same
determination. Men then and since have convinced
themselves that the war was inevitable, that it lay in the
aUeged logic both of history and the situation, and that
after August 14, 1865, the two major States of Germany,
Prussia and Austria, simply shd slowly down inclined
planes to an unavoidable coUision. A close study, how
ever, of these ten months does not support the general
conclusion ^that wars are unavoidable, and that this
particular one exemplifies such a phUosophy of history of
statesmanship. It would be a complete misreading of Bismarck's policy,
principles, and methods to assert that either before or
after the Convention of Gastein he so completely lost his
grip on the Prussian rudder that he was forced into
fighting. Bismarck may not have believed in ' preventive
wars,' though the definition of a ' preventive war ' would
have to be very carefully drawn before either he or his

192 BISMARCK
disciples could accept so complete a repudiation ; he
certainly did not believe in wars merely for conquest or
glory, and no statesman of the nineteenth century had a
deeper sense of the responsibility that plunging a State
into war imposes on those who direct policy. But in
1865 and in 1866, as in 1870 or in 1864, he wiUed the
war and he dehberately worked for it.
The secrets of his statecraft will be completely missed
if we do not recognise two elemental postulates — first,
that in 1865 he rejected every opportunity by which war
might be avoided ; secondly, that he worked with stead
fast patience to remove the obstacles to war, as the final
conclusion of the matter. He could, for example, have
taken up Napoleon's idea of a Congress, and with the
help of Russia (and certainly of Great Britain) have
opened aU the festering abscesses in the operating theatre
of the European Concert. Such a course would have
been welcomed by the best minds in Germany and outside
it. But a Congress would not have given him what he
held with passionate conviction was alone worth winning.
War alone, he concluded, would do his business, and
briefly for three reasons. Defeat, peremptory and con
clusive, alone would drive Austria out of Germany and
extort the recognition not of Prussia's parity with herself
— the time for that had passed — but of Prussian supre
macy ; Prussian supremacy in Germany required terri
torial additions to the Prussian State (not merely Schleswig
and Holstein), without which her mastery of the new
German organisation would be incomplete, and such
annexations could only be secured from the defeated and
justified by victory in war : the constitutional conflict in
Prussia and the terms of the new organisation could only
be settled if the Prussian monarchy could dictate its will ;
war alone, not diplomacy, would confer the dictatorship.
It was not in 1865 any more than in 1864 or in 1870 the
end — the unification of Germany on certain principles
and for certain ends — justifying the means. To Bismarck
the State, whose end is Power, does not justify the means,
that are Force. More correctly, the means are simply the
end in process of realisation. The stages through which

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 193
the purposive life of an organised community passes, he
would have argued, are not means to an end, they are the
successive manifestations of the purpose. Each successive
manifestation is linked with the preceding one, and the
sum of the manifestations is not separable from the end,
and does not require a justification different from that
for the totality of the result. What justifies life as a
whole justifies its successive manifestations or means of
reahsing itself, and no other justification is admissible or
necessary. Had Bismarck desired or ; conceived of a
unified Germany consummating the National State which
stands for Right, his methods would have been as different
as the result would have differed from the Prussia and
Germany he created. But then he would not have been
the Bismarck of history, and his interpretation of life-
values would have been the opposite of what it was. The
impressive conclusions that his action has stamped ferro
et igni on the Germany and Europe! of his generation are
two — first, that when a strong State is determined to
find in war a solution of political difficulties and will
accept no other solution, war will result, however un-
wiUing other States may be to go to war ; and secondly,
that while the Germany of 1865 (and Bismarck knew it)
did not want the Bismarckian solution, the Germany of
1890 had been convinced by Bismarck that no other solution
in 1866 would have succeeded or satisfied what Germany
had been taught to recognise as her real ambitions and
needs. The one problem in statesmanship that Bismarck
did not solve for his or any other generation before or
since his time, and had no desire to solve, was how to
defeat the statecraft (that is force) of the State (that
stands for power) without recourse to force or without
repudiating the- principle that the State stands for Right
not Might, or without accepting the poison distiUed in
the doctrine that ends justify means.
As previously, his first and permanent difficulty lay
with his sovereign. WiUiam's education by his minister
in the gospel of Bismarckianism had to begin over again
after August 1865. Once his sovereign's 'conscience'
had been reilluminated, the King would readily misinter-

194 BISMARCK
pret the appeal of military honour as the categorical
imperative of royal and civic duty.
The Liberal opposition in the Prussian Landtag must,
therefore, be provoked to continue its attacks on the
Crown and its advisers. Surrender, therefore, would be
surrender to 'rebels.' As on June 13 (before Gastein),
so on February 3, 1866, when there were full-dress debates
on the foreign policy of the government, Bismarck
taunted the Progressive leaders with their political
futility, ineptitude, and parliamentary insolence. Their
criticisms on the conduct of affairs he dismissed as the
interference of ignorant trespassers on the prerogatives
of the Crown. This autocratic attitude in ' The House
of Phrases ' was largely tactical. Not there, but in France
and Italy, were the keys of the major political strategy.
Italy, in August 1865, had signified that it was im
possible for her in a Prusso-Austrian war to remain an
idle spectator. A Prussian aUiance with Italy was danger
ous ; committal to the Italian programme opened serious
questionings ; behind Florence lay Rome and the Papal
problem. The year 1 864 had seen the issue of the famous
SyUabus which seriously perturbed the intellectuals of
German LiberaUsm and heated the Clericals in South
Germany and in France. The parties in Germany were,
in fact, marching to the Kulturkampf. Bismarck rightly
feared that Napoleon might, in his resentment at a
Prussian treaty with Italy behind his back, come to terms
with Austria, secure Venetia for Italy, in return for com
pensation in Germany to Austria at Prussia's expense,
and compensation to himself in the Rhenish provinces.
The possibility of an anti-Prussian coalition was no idle
chimera of an overstrained mind in the Wilhelmstrasse.
Had there been a statesman of the first rank either at
Paris, Florence, or Vienna, a very ugly turn indeed could
have been given to the situation. As it was, Bismarck
had to deal with Napoleon, Drouyn de Lhuys, La
Marmora, and Mensdorff. The price that nations pay
when their destinies are in the hands of the inteUectuaUy
second-rate is set out with damning precision in the next
four years.

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 195
' Napoleon had to be brought to a definite understanding.
On October 1 Bismarck was in Paris, and on October 3
at Biarritz — the third of three momentous visits. By
November 7 he was back in Berlin. He had threshed out
the difficulties both in the Villa Eugenie at Biarritz, and
at St. Cloud with Napoleon and his ministers, and had
rirtuaUy accomplished the difficult task of securing
Napoleon's benevolent neutrality, without any awkward
promissory notes, which could be presented for payment
at sight at some future date. Prosper Merimee has put
on record his personal impression of the Minister-Presi
dent — of his vigour and power and also of his irresistible
charm (a quaUty we are apt to forget Bismarck possessed
in a remarkable degree). But even in 1865 Merimee did
not take seriously the pohtical ideas that Bismarck ex
pressed with such disarming and genial exuberance. Like
Napoleon, Merimee thought the Minister-President was
sometimes reaUy not quite sane, a Prussian Gascon whose
judgment was clouded by a misinterpretation of realities.
These momentous conferences at the Villa Eugenie provide
a dramatic contrast between the Prussian, in the zenith
of his physical and inteUectual powers, alert, adamantine,
probing every weak point, and masking it aU under an
amazing frankness — and, on the other side, the Emperor,
tired, puzzled, disiUusioned, indecisive, yet clinging to his
dreams which he mistook for profound insight into the
Time-spirit. He was already suffering from the disease
that killed him ; already conscious that the noonday of
the Empire had passed and that the shadows were falling,
the shadows that came from the coup d'Etat.
Why Napoleon did not insist on a bargain in black and
white, and on pinning Bismarck down to a definite com
pensation, is, indeed, a problem. Napoleon had a definite
article to sell, French neutrality, which the purchaser,
Bismarck, needed above aU things. The experience of
1864 should have convinced the Emperor that he was
dealing with a man whose verbal promises were worthless,
and he should not have parted with French neutrality
except for a bond in writing. Even if, as is probable,
Bismarck had later repudiated the bond, Napoleon would

196 BISMARCK
have had it to convince France and Europe. Napoleon,
it is true, was in a grave dilemma. He feared that
Bismarck, foiled at Paris, might settle with Austria and
re-establish the Triple AUiance of 181 5 against France.
The obvious reply to such a menace was a threat to unite
with Austria and her South German AUies against Prussia.
But the real crux for Napoleon lay, as always, in Italy.
The Clericals would not let him evacuate,, Rome, and his
own ' nationalism ' drove him to desire to complete the
work of 1859 by procuring Venetia for the kingdom of
Italy. It was not so much that Napoleon did not know
what compensation he really wanted as that he could not
openly ask for it — the left bank of the Rhine or Belgium.
The former brought him up against the dead wall of
Prussia — the latter against the dead wall of Great Britain
and the Treaty of 1839. Napoleon therefore postponed
the decision. His ' compensation ' was to be defined
later. He trusted in his ' star '' and on his calculation
that a Prusso-Austrian War would be a bloodv and in-
decisive struggle, in which France could intervene and
dictate her compensation either on both combatants
or on one by allying with the other. But the idea
rested on two fatal errors of judgment, which Napoleon
shared with most contemporary statesmen in Europe — an
exaggerated estimate of Austrian strength and of the
readiness of the French army — a complete ignorance of
the Prussian army as remoulded by the Prussian General
Staff. Bismarck and Moltke were in complete agreement
that if Prussia could not make war she had better go out
of business altogether.
Italy was now invited by Bismarck to conclude a com
mercial aUiance with the ZoUverein. Such an economic
understanding, Bismarck told the Italian ambassador,
would have a high political significance for the future.
The negotiations were pressed, and by November 15 the
treaty was ready for the respective ratifications (March 3,
1866). The next step was to put the screw on Austria.
Austria, of course, was ' behaving very badly ' in Holstein
— she was permitting the Augustenburg agitation to go

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 197
on with Kiel as its headquarters. This was a plain
violation of the Convention of Gastein, disturbing to
Prussia in her occupation of Schleswig, and keeping open
a sore that the Convention had healed. On January 26,
1866, Bismarck sent a rasping protest to Vienna. The
Austrian administration of Holstein was intolerable ; the
Augustenburg agitation must be promptly suppressed.
Austria was making herself ' the champion of the Revolu
tion.' The Austrian reply of February 9 informed the
Prussian government that the aUiance of 1864 was at an
end. The position had reverted to the period before the
Danish war, and Austrian relations with Prussia were
neither better nor worse than with any other European
Power. On February 28 a secret Council of State was
held in Berlin at which the Crown Prince, the military
chiefs, the Prussian ambassador at Paris, Goltz, specially
summoned, and, of course, Bismarck and the King, were
present. WiUiam decided that every diplomatic effort
compatible with Prussian honour and safety must be made
to maintain peace. ' After having prayed to God,' the
King said, ' to lead him in the right path, he should
consider the war, if it came, as a just one.'
On March 3 WiUiam wrote personaUy to Napoleon to
propose a definite understanding ; next day the project
of'an offensive and defensive alliance with Italy was taken
seriously in hand. At the Council of February 28,
Moltke had expressed his considered judgment that with
the neutrality of France, the military aid of Italy, and the
consequent division of the Austrian army by war on two
fronts, victory might be regarded as reasonably certain.
With General Govone, sent from Florence, Bismarck now
worked hard to conclude the Itahan treaty. Not with
out great difficulty. Both sides thoroughly distrusted
each other. The Italians, mindful of 1859, feared that
Prussia would embroil them with Austria, and then either
evade its share or settle the German quarrel at Italy's
expense. Nor had they any confidence in Bismarck's
honesty or honour. Bismarck, on his side, suspected that
Italy intended to utilise Prussia simply to obtain Venetia,
and was quite indifferent to the real issue — Prussian

198 BISMARCK
supremacy in Germany : he desired to tie Italy down to
a specific engagement while leaving a free hand for him
self. The project very nearly broke down on the crucial
point, which of the partners was to pick the quarrel and
open the fray. Each desired the other to make a war, in
which its ally would then promptly join. But the diffi
culties were surmounted. Both Italy and Prussia needed
each other too much to allow the negotiations to end in
nothing. On April 8 the treaty was finished. It pro
vided that, if a Prussian reform of the Germanic Con
federation failed and Prussia was forced to take up arms,
Italy was to declare war ; there was to be no peace or
armistice without the consent of both States, but consent
was not to be withheld if Venetia were ceded to Italy
and an equivalent in Austrian territory to Prussia ; the
Italian navy was to hinder the Austrian ships from reaching
the Baltic ; and the treaty was to be valid only for three
months unless Prussia declared war.
The treaty imposed on Italy obligations but no rights.
It did not specifically provide for Prussian help if Austria
declared war on Italy and kept the peace in Germany.
But it secured three vital guarantees for Prussia. It
made the casus foederis dependent on the German question
of Federal reform by Prussia (that was for WiUiam?s
conscience) ; it blocked Napoleon as protector of Italy
from hostilities with Prussia (that was for the Tuileries) ;
it reserved to Prussia the right to make war, when and if
it chose (that was for Bismarck). Bismarck, in fact, was
in a similar position to Cavour after the compact of
Plombieres. He had to provoke war within a definite
period or lose the advantages of the treaty.
The international situation was thus cleared up, for
Napoleon had replied to WilUam's letter with an assur
ance of neutrality, the compensation for which was to
be defined later — always later. Bismarck might well
reflect on royal human nature, when he recalled that ten
years earlier his master at Coblenz had repudiated, as
a dishonourable temptation, the proposal that Prussia
should come to terms with Napoleon, and had pronounced
such an idea to be that of a schoolboy not a statesman.

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 199
WiUiam's personal letter to the ' man of sin ' recalls
Maria Theresa's letter to the ' woman of sin,' the Pompa
dour, in each case to secure an aUiance in order to annex.
To what concessions will not ' conscience ' compel
honourable and royal men and women.
Austria had replied to the Council of February 28 at
Berlin by a week of State Councils at Vienna (March 7-13),
at which Benedek, who had prepared his army and cam
paigns in Venetia, was present. Poor, gaUant Benedek,
presently to be transferred from Venetia to Bohemia, in
order that an archduke might win in Italy, while the
general, assigned to command in a Bohemia that he did
not know an iU-organised army that did not know him,
was to be broken for his failure — the scapegoat's last
services to the incompetence of a selfish dynasty. Such
were the sacrifices that the Habsburgs expected and
obtained from their best servants.
The Italian negotiations 'justifiably alarmed Austria:
they caused consternation in the Conservative, fierce
indignation in the Ultramontane, camp in Germany.
Prussia had allied with ' the Revolution ' at Florence, was
playing fast and loose with ' the Revolution ' at Paris,
and was about to plunge Germany in civil war by
a blow at Austria, the champion alike of Conservative
and monarchical principles and of the Roman Catholic
cause. The Italian treaty filled the cup of Bismarck's
iniquities fuller than Germany suspected, for Bismarck
had the audacity to assert on April 5 that it was far
from the intention of the King to take active measures
against Austria.1 His next step, the Conservatives pre
dicted, would be to proclaim ' the Revolution ' in
Germany.
1 Still more remarkable is Gramont's, telegram (June u, 1866) to his
government that the Queen of Prussia had written to the Emperor of Austria
that the King of Prussia had given his word of honour that he had not con
cluded a treaty with Italy, and that the ministerial convention left him entire
liberty to conclude a pacific settlement with Austria. Drouyn de Lhuys replied
to Gramont that he knew the Prusso-Italian treaty bore the signature of King
William. The accuracy of Gramont's telegram, denied by Sybel, is apparently
accepted by the editors of Les Origines Diplomatique s de la Guerre de 1870,
vol. x. p. 117. See their notes on the documents printed by them and also
Ollivier's narrative in V Empire Liberal, vol. viii. p. 169 et seq.

200 BISMARCK
And it was. On AprU 9, the day after Italy had been
secured, the Prussian representative brought forward in the
Federal Diet an official resolution of the Prussian govern
ment for the reform of the Confederation. A national
German ParUament elected by universal suffrage was to
discuss with representatives of the States and dynasties
the establishment of a new Constitution for Germany,
from which it was implied Austria was to be excluded.
The ' drop of democratic oil,' distiUed not at Frankfurt
but at Berlin, was to anoint a German Crown for the
King of Prussia. It was the ideal of 1848 disinterred
from the grave over which Bismarck in 1849 had read the
burial service according to the use of Junkertum. The
proposal was an ultimatum to Austria and the middle
States. The issues of the Convention of Gastein had
been transformed by a stroke of the reformer's pen into
a battle for the future of Germany and the settlement of
the German problem. Prussia chaUenged the Congress
of Princes with an appeal, not to the middle-class Liberals
of the National Verein, but to the democracy of Germany.
She had Russia as her friend, Italy as an aUy, France
benevolently neutral — and the Prussian army. There
was indeed a method in the madness of ' the madman of
Biarritz.' What friends or allies had Austria ? None of her own
house, and in Germany only the dynasties and their
unorganised armies. To Prince Hohenlohe's private
comments in his Diary on the military chaos in the
middle States the Prussian General Staff could have
supplied precise footnotes.
It only remained to let loose ' the Revolution ' in
Europe. Napoleon's speech at Auxerre (May 8), in
answer to a bitter attack of Thiers in the Corps Legis-
latif on the foreign policy of the Empire, proclaimed his
detestation of the treaties of 18 15 and the impossibility
of regarding them as a permanent basis of the foreign
relations of France and her position in Europe. An
expectant France, a bewildered Germany — in hubbub
over the Prussian proposals for Federal reform — and an
alarmed Europe read the words as foreshadowing a French

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 201
onslaught to secure the left bank of the Rhine. But, unlike
Bismarck, Napoleon at cross-purposes with his ministers,
themselves divided in opinion, excited France and alarmed
Europe by proclaiming his ambitions from the mountain-
tops before he had considered whether he could or would
carry them into execution. And in Napoleon's mind at this
moment the lights and shadows were changing as rapidly
as the tints in a Highland sunset that precedes a
storm. March, April, and May — the preludes to the great
war — were marked by snowstorms of diplomatic notes,
recriminations and counter-recriminations, mobilisations
and counter-mobilisations, and proposals and counter
proposals for a settlement that would avert hostilities.
On April 21 Austria mobilised in the south against Italy.
The suggestion that Prussia should suspend her war pre
parations if Austria would do the like was met by Bismarck's
firm demand that the Austrian demobilisation must be
complete ; she must cease to threaten Italy as well as
Prussia. And the proposal broke down. Benevolent
intermediaries were prolific in schemes for a general ex
change of territories. It was suggested that Austria should
cede Venetia to Italy and annex as compensation the
Danubian principalities, where a revolution had broken
out. But the acceptance against his father's wish of the
princedom by Prince Charles of HohenzoUern-Sigmaringen
(after an interview with Bismarck) and his rapid departure
for Bucharest checkmated the proposal, and placed, to the
disgust of France and of Austria, a HohenzoUern sentinel
beyond the Carpathians in charge of the destinies of a
Latin race.
Baron von Gablenz drew up an elaborate scheme for a
reconstruction of Germany under the divided leadership
of Prussia and Austria in a reformed Federal Constitution.
The Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were to be placed
under a Prussian prince, while Prussia was to annex Kiel
and liberaUy indemnify Austria with a money payment.
But all such schemes, including, variants on the idea of
ceding Silesia to Austria in return for the Duchies and the
cession of Venetia to Italy, have only a melancholy interest ;

202 BISMARCK
they reveal an earnest desire for peace in many quarters,
marred by a complete incapacity, as is usuaUy the case, to
realise the policy of Prussia and the wiU of her directors.
Had Austria consented to withdraw from Holstein, and
to give Prussia a free hand to reorganise a new Federal
system, in which Austria renounced aU membership,
/war might have been averted. But the opportunity for
an imaginative statesmanship based on recognition of
¦Prussia's primacy in North Germany, and on a whoUy new
conception of Austria's future and position in Central
Europe, had passed with the Convention of Gastein.
A great State such as Austria stiU was, with her historic
traditions and imperial memories, could not abandon her
aUies in the German middle and petty States and renounce
her past in the spring of 1866 at the threat of a Prussian
mobiHsation. The Federal Revolution engineered by
Prussia was fatal to her German presidency. In April and
May Bismarck's one fear was that war might be averted at
the eleventh hour. Early in May Austria made a desperate
effort to detach Italy by the offer of Venetia, through
Napoleon, in return for Italian neutrality. Had the offer
been made in January before the Italian treaty with
Prussia had been concluded, it would have saved the situa
tion. Sorely tempted, La Marmora refused. Italy was
in honom- bound to stand by her treaty. Well might
Bismarck bid Govone good-bye with the words, ' To our
meeting in Vienna ! '
Still more serious was Napoleon's next step. With
Russian and British approval the Emperor formally pro
posed a Congress — magic word — to discuss in particular the
three burning questions — Schleswig-Holstein, Venetia, and,
German Federal reform. Bismarck was in a grave dilemma/
for a Congress speUed the ruin of his policy. Nevertheless
with a heavy heart he accepted, trusting to his goddess
Fortune. And she did not desert him. Austria accepted
also, but with the categorical reservation that the parti
cipating great Powers must renounce in advance aU
territorial aggrandisement. The reservation reduced the
proposed Congress to impotence. The neutral Powers
-promptly withdrew their support. Benedetti was with

s

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 203
Bismarck when the telegram announcing the abandonment
came in. The Minister-President sprang to his feet. ' It
is war,' he cried : ' Long live the King ! '
His universal unpopularity had been checked by an
attempt at assassination by Cohen-Blind in Unter den Lin
den on May 7. The prospect of war had stirred the mili
tary spirit in Prussia ; and next evening Bismarck received
a great ovation from an excited crowd outside the Foreign
Office. The tide of public opinion indeed was turning.
It only needed some Prussian victories to set it swirling as
fiercely in Bismarck's favour as it had hitherto run against
ffim. Freed from the nightmare of a Congress, Bismarck |
now forced Austria to fight. He declared that Prussia, in 1
consequence of the termination of the Convention of j
Gasteiri, had as much right to Holstein as to Schleswig.
The Prussian troops were ordered to enter Holstein
(June 6). The Austrians retired without the resistance that
Bismarck had desired. A further provocation was there
fore necessary. On June 10 Bismarck communicated to
the Federal Diet a precise scheme of Federal reform
explicitly excluding Austria and Luxemburg from all
membership in the new organisation to be created. Next
day the Austrian plenipotentiary pressed the Diet for a
mobUisation of the Federal forces, with the exception of
Prussia, on the ground that Prussia had violated the Treaty
of Vienna and the Federal Constitution. In other words,
Prussia was to be the subject of a Federal execution. The
vote was taken on June 14, and the Austrian proposal ac
cepted by nine votes to six. Baden abstained ; three curice
only voted with Prussia — some of the petty States of the
north and the cities of Hamburg, Liibeck, and Bremen :
the rest voted with Austria. The Prussian representative
at once declared that his government considered the
Confederation at an end, and the sitting was raised.
On June, 16, after a peremptory ultimatum, the Prussian
troops entered Saxony, Hesse-Cassel, and Hanover ; on
June 20 Italy declared war on Austria. .Bismarck's fate
and the future of Prussia were now in the hands of the
military chiefs and the Prussian army. ' It is,' says Sybel,
' the one great and simple feature of the Prussian govern-

204 BISMARCK
ment that at last it has always been the material and actual
considerations that have preponderated.' The King in his
Proclamation of June 18 asserted that ' as known to my
people and to God, Who sees the heart,' the war was a
defensive one, thrust upon him, in defence of Prussia's
honour, independence, and existence. But Moltke told
the simple truth (and gave the lie to his sovereign) when
in a few chiseUed sentences he declared subsequently that :
' The war of 1866 did not take place because the existence
of Prussia was threatened, or in obedience tp public opinion,
or to the will of the people. It was a war which was fore
seen long before, which was prepared with deliberation
and recognised as necessary by the Cabinet, not in order to
obtain territorial aggrandisement, but for power in order to
secure the establishment of Prussian hegemony in Germany.'
Bismarck might be satisfied with his power to convert.
He, too, now opened his Bible and read Psalm ix. 3-5,
which greatly comforted him. Yet he also wrote with
perfect sincerity : ' We have good confidence, but we must
not forget that Almighty God is very capricious (sehr
launenhaft).' He recognised that he had thrown the iron
dice in a tremendous gamble, and that fate or fortune
might refuse the prize. At Koniggratz in those critical
hours when the Crown Prince and his army had not yet
appeared to turn the Austrian flank, it is related that Bis
marck reflected bitterly how for four years he had toiled
to secure the international situation that victory required,
and had succeeded beyond aU expectation, and now these
infernal generals were going to make a mess of it. He had
decided that if victory fell to the Austrians he would die
in the last charge — a more probable resolve than the other
he is credited with, that he would offer Napoleon the left
bank of the Rhine and call out the Revolution in Germany.
He realised fuUy that to Germany he appeared a desperate
gambler. ' Had I faded,' he told the Reichstag later, ' the
old women would have swept me with a curse and their
besoms from the streets.'
The generals did not make a mess of it, nor did the
Prussian army fail them. The crowning mercy of Konig
gratz (July 3) was, as Roon said, the gift of the Prussian

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 205
soldier quite as much as of the Prussian higher command.
Bismarck's inmost thought was revealed in his remark :
' The struggle is decided — the task is now to win back the
old friendship with Austria.' A week later he wrote to his
wife : ' Things go well ; if we do not exaggerate our de
mands, and do not believe that we have conquered the
world, we shaU get a peace worth the efforts we have made.
But we are as easily intoxicated as we are depressed, and I
have the thankless task of pouring water into the foaming
wine, and bringing home the truth that we do not live
alone in Europe, but with three neighbours.' The long
strain, the concentrated excitement, the renewed pressure
of multitudinous affairs, and the additional task of dealing
with an elated King and triumphant generals, seriously
affected his health. During the campaign Bismarck was
really ill ; nothing but his superb constitution and his iron
wiU kept him from a grave coUapse. But intensely irri
table and overwrought though he was, his judgment
retained its mastery. ' The appreciation and import of
a military victory,' he said, with great truth, ' at the
moment of its decision is one of the hardest tasks that
statecraft imposes.'
The chief obstacles to the settlement that Bismarck de
sired were two : first, Napoleon ; secondly, his sovereign
and the soldiers. Time is the one power with which
statesmanship and strategy trifle at great peril. The
longer the campaign lasted, the easier it would be for the
European Powers to intervene with effect. The argu
ment for a European Congress was indeed strong. The
war had torn a great rent in the treaties and system of 18 15.
The signatory European Powers had as clear a right as,
and an even clearer interest than, in 1856 or 1878 to insist
on reviewing and completing the system to be substituted
for the wrecked fabric. But Bismarck was absolutely
determined to refuse either the arbitration of neutrals, or
the revision of a Congress. Rather than submit to either,
he was ready to provoke a general war. Fortunately for
him Great Britain was in the throes of an internal struggle,
far more interested in Franchise BUls than in the fate
of Austria or Germany; Poland and Schleswig-Holstein

206 BISMARCK
had been severe lessons in the futility of intervention,
unless backed by ships, men, and guns. Russia under the
mortgage created by Bismarck in 1863, was neither wiUing
nor able to fight on Austria's behalf, was no less willing t:o
let Napoleon have a severe snubbing, and was soon satis
fied that Prussia did not intend to let loose democracy and
Liberalism in Germany. Napoleon was the one grave
difficulty,- and Bismarck grasped at once that if he could
satisfy or convert WiUiam 1. to his idea of a settlement, he
could deal with Napoleon.
The eleven days from July 11, when Benedetti sud
denly appeared to Bismarck's intense anger at the
headquarters at Zwittau, to July 22, when the armi
stices of Nikolsburg opened the discussion of prelimi
naries of peace, are packed with feverish telegrams, to
and fro ; but the principles of Bismarck's diplomacy
stand out as clear and unwavering as in the months
preceding the war.
' The world is coUapsing,' said Cardinal Antonelli,
watching the issues from an Ultramontane Vatican. ' It
is France that is beaten at Sadowa,' pronounced Thiers
with prophetic accuracy. Extraordinary as it now seems,
Napoleon had concluded a secret treaty with Austria
(June 12). Napoleon undertook to be neutral in the
German war ; Austria undertook for an equivalent in
Germany to cede Venetia to Napoleon, and all changes in
Italy or Germany, ' of a nature to disturb the European
equilibrium,' were to be made by Austria and France in
concert. Striking, indeed, that the curse of the later
Bourbons, the secret diplomacy of Louis xv. against the
declared policy, and behind the back, of the royal minister,
should be repeated by the dynasty that claimed to repre
sent the true France, that Bourbon dynasticism had ruined.
The cunning of the Carbonaro was always unpicking by
night the flimsy web of les idkes Napoleoniennes woven in
the day at the Tuileries. Napoleon, therefore, had faced
the future with the assurance that he had bargained with
both sides and was committed to neither. But the states
man who has failed to be ready for the collapse of his
calculations commits against his country a graver

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 207
crime than the general who plans an offensive for
victory without providing the line of retreat in the case
of failure.
On July 4 Napoleon suddenly found himself in a terrible
position. France eagerly awaited the coup de maitre, but
the ulcer of Mexico had drained the military resources of
the Empire ; the artiUery lacked horses and armament, and
the army was not ready ; the possible allies in Germany —
the anti-Prussian States, Hanover, Saxony, Wiirttemberg,
Bavaria, Hesse — were in as poor a military way as France
herself, and would be crushed before France could assist
.them ; national passion had flamed up, white-hot, in
Prussia ; a neutral observer noted that in aU classes there
was one fierce conviction — ' no French, no rotten peace.'
Austria was on the verge of coUapse, and Napoleon himself
had no plan for immediate action. Worst of all, pros
trating pain made him incapable of clear thought or
prompt decision. The fate of France turned — that is the
penalty of aU autocracies, imperial or otherwise, at all
crises — on the character and capacity of a single man ; and
in those July days, that flooded the gardens of the Tuileries
and the Champs Elysees, the orchards of Normandy, and
the vineyards of the Garonne with their mocking sunshine,
the decision had to come from a ruler tortured aU his life
by the disease of indecision, tortured now by physical
agony. ' A grain of sand in a man's flesh and empires rise
and fall'
Napoleon at this point really did not know what he
wanted ; he only knew that he did not want war and could
not wage it. Bismarck knew precisely what he wanted ;
he was ready to wage war, and knew how to do it. It
is difficult to judge what Napoleon should have done.
Austria, Saxony, Hesse-Cassel were clamouring for the
Emperor to intervene and save them. Thiers and every
critic of the Empire were waiting to drive home the proof
of their accusations ; Ultramontanes and Clericals, his only
true if selfish supporters in France, were in consternation
at Austria's downfaU. His ministers were as divided as
their imperial master. The weak man who acts on the
principle that ' something must be done ' is sure to do the

208 BISMARCK
wrong thing, and it is certain that Napoleon now
did it.1
Bismarck was in a very ugly temper, with his back to the
waU, fighting both with his sovereign and the military
chiefs. ' Louis shaU pay for it,' he exclaimed, when
Napoleon's ambassador, Benedetti, unexpectedly appeared.
For he neither forgave nor forgot those who acted on his
own principle of applying the thumbscrews to an adversary
in difficulties. Bismarck, indeed, at first, and not un
naturally, exaggerated both Napoleon's military readiness
and his desire to press mediation at the point of the sword.
The unfortunate Benedetti, however, was in no position
to apply the thumbscrews. Bismarck made it quite
plain that, first, he would not tolerate mediation in the
sense of definition of the terms of peace by Napoleon ;
secondly, that no matter what the terms with Austria were,
Napoleon could not have one inch of German territory as
compensation ; thirdly, that if Napoleon persisted in the
idea of an armed mediation Prussia would take up the
chaUenge. Moltke was ready with his plan of campaign.
He would close the march on Vienna, assume the defen
sive in Bohemia, face front to the Rhine, and take the
offensive on that line. The Chief of the Staff was confident
that he could open the western offensive with a victorious
Prussian army before Napoleon had mobilised and de
ployed the French army, and the Chief of the Staff did not
promise what he could not perform. IncidentaUy the
transference of the major forces of Prussia to the western
theatre would crush the South German States into pulp.
Bismarck went further. He warned Paris that he was

1 On July 4 he telegraphed to King William announcing that Venetia had
been placed in his hands by Austria, and demanding an armistice and negotia
tions, under his mediation, invited by Austria. On July 5 he rescinded his
decision to summon the chambers and intervene as an armed mediator. On
July 6 he formally requested Great Britain and Russia to support ' avec force '
the proposed French mediation. On July 7 he ordered Benedetti to go to the
Prussian headquarters and demand an answer to the telegram of July 4. From
July 7 to July 14 Napoleon wavered between doing nothing, mobilising,
negotiating between Austria and her German allies, despatching a French
squadron to the North Sea, and harassing Victor Emmanuel with requests. On
July 13 he received Goltz, and on the 14th accepted his terms. Cest uncochon !
said Victor Emmanuel when he received the telegram of July 4.

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 209
ready to caU out revolution in Hungary,1 even make peace
on any terms with Austria, and then not crush the South
German States, but demand their aid in a war of a united
Germany against France — France that asked for the left
bank of the Rhine alike from Bavaria and Prussia. This
was not diplomatic rhodomontade, nor the exuberant
defiance of Prussian Junkertum. Bismarck had not
plunged Prussia into war merely to defeat Austria, but to
lay the basis of a unified Germany under Prussian leader
ship. The scheme of June 10 presented to the dissolved
Federal Diet and modelled on the revolutionary Liberalism
of 1849 was not Prussian blackmail to a German democracy
whom he intended to dupe. Through the smoke of
Koniggratz the eyes of faith could see already the dim
dines and shadowy shapes of a united Germany to come —
with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
Prussia, however, must not now embrace more of Ger
many than she could assimilate. The postponement of
the ideal unity would assure to Germany within and with
out the driving power and the inspiration necessary to
overcome the cold reaction that would certainly foUow the
war of 1866. Bismarck could probably have written out
on June 1 his idea of a settlement — the exclusion of
Austria from Germany, the annexation of Schleswig and
Holstein, the formation of a Federal system under Prussia
north of the Main, incorporating ' enemy territories ' (and
the extinction of their dynasties) sufficient to secure an
assured Prussian preponderance, the separation of the
South German States, in an organisation of their own, but
connected with the North by treaty arrangements, the
' gift ' of Venetia to Italy which would make Austria a
purely Danubian State, and facUitate her dependence on
the central German State. It was not by pure chance or
for whoUy mUitary reasons that Hesse-Cassel, Saxony, and
Hanover were selected for ultimatums on June 15. Their
' conquest ' was a political necessity to Prussia. Details
1 On June io (before war was declared) he had seen at Berlin General Tiirr
from Hungary and discussed the possibility of a Hungarian insurrection.
They knew this at Paris, because Bismarck on June 1 1 suggested Tiirr should
go to Paris and discuss the matter with the Emperor, through the mediation of
Prince Napoleon.
B. o

210 BISMARCK
could be left to the stage of negotiations, but the broad
framework was in his mind before the war, and he adhered
to it in aU the comphcated discussions of peace.
King WUUam at General Headquarters was in a fine moral
and military indignation. The uric acid of Prussianism
inherited by every HohenzoUern sovereign had attacked
both his head and his heart. God was on his side ; and it
was his duty to chastise Austria and the German princes
for their presumption and wickedness in forcing war on
peace-loving Prussia. The soldier chiefs — Moltke and
Roon perhaps to a less extent — desired to make a clean
business of the job and to keep Bismarck ' in his place.'
But Bismarck would not be kept ' in his place.' He sub
mitted a programme of peace — not a yard of Austrian
territory, no annexations north of the Main, no depositions
save in the territories necessary to secure a Prussian hege
mony of the North. The proposal angered the King and
the military chiefs. On July 7 the march on Vienna was
resumed. Bismarck had threatened his sovereign with
European complications to no purpose. He now opened
a discussion with Austria ; but — a more decisive stroke —
proceeded to threaten Napoleon with William 1. Goltz
conveyed to the Emperor the substance of Bismarck's
scheme, with the veiled menace that mediation would be
rejected unless the terms were accepted at once. Austria
was to be expeUed from Germany ; Prussia was to have
a free hand in the North ; France would not be faced and
hemmed in by a united German Empire, for the. Southern
States were to be excluded from the new confederation ;
Prussia in the north would be balanced by an intact Austria
(save for the cession of Venetia to Italy) and Southern
Germany. The Prussian annexations were not specificaUy
mentioned. Napoleon, to the indignation of his ministers,
accepted them later as ' mere matters of detail.' As a
special concession to Napoleon, Saxony was not to be
annexed, but to enter the new North German Confedera
tion intact. Napoleon meekly accepted the proposals
(July 14) and then transmitted them as his own to Austria
and to Bismarck, who had inspired Goltz. M. Paul
Matter's comment puts it concisely : ' Napoleon preten-

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 211
dant jouer le role de mediateur, il s'agissait de dresser un
acte de mediation . . . Napoleon in., Empereur des
Francais, en laissa le soin a l'ambassadeur prussien. " C'est
un fait rare dans les annales de la diplomatic " constate
Phistoire officiel de 1' Empire allemand : nul jugement
ne peut &tre plus severe que cette froide constatation.'
Drouyn de Lhuys' comment was no less to the point.
' Maintenant U ne nous reste plus qu'a pleurer.'
Armed with this surrender of Napoleon, Bismarck was
able to withdraw from Austria the more favourable terms
he had previously (July 15) suggested. The Austrian
acceptance had come just an hour too late. Better still,
he now presented his royal master with an ultimatum.
Acceptance of ' Napoleon's terms ' would secure peace at
once ; refusal meant the prolongation of the war, the
possibility of French and neutral intervention and the
hazarding of aU gains of any kind. William consented,1
after a prolonged struggle, in which Bismarck insisted on
resigning, if his policy was rejected. Military head
quarters was on the King's side, but Bismarck found an
unexpected ally in the Crown Prince. On July 22 an
armistice was arranged ; on July 26 the preliminaries were
signed, and ratified on the 28th.
It remained to settle with Napoleon. Hard pressed
by Drouyn de Lhuys, the Emperor consented to renew
the demand for compensation. The episode is instruc
tive, not so much in Napoleon's amazing weakness as in
1 The dramatic narrative in Bismarck's Memoirs has been severely criticised
by German and French scholars. Lenz, Marcks, Oncken, Philippson, Egel-
haaf and Matter have pointed out the impossibility of reconciling the dates
and assertions of Bismarck with the documentary and other evidence, and it is
certain that Bismarck has both misdated and transposed in notable particulars
the order of events. It is difficult to believe that he can have invented the
famous scene in which the Crown Prince intervened. It is no less certain
from the contemporary evidence of Bismarck's and Roon's correspondence,
from the Memoirs of Stosch, Govone, Bernhardi, Abeken, Ernest of Coburg
and other sources, that (a) Bismarck had prolonged difficulties lasting over a
fortnight with the King and the military chiefs ; (b) that the King consented
with great reluctance ; (c) the intervention of the Crown Prince on Bismarck's
side was very influential. William and the soldiers desired in particular
the capture of, or entry into, Vienna, and the annexation of all or most of
Royal Saxony (demanded and refused in 1814), together with Franconia, the
cradle of the HohenzoIIerns, to be ceded by Bavaria, and a heavier chastisement
of Austria.

212 BISMARCK
Bismarck's methods. Benedetti was foohsh enough to write
(August 5) to Bismarck, adding to his letter the projet of
a secret convention. Bismarck then refused point blank
(August 6) any concessions of German territory, and re
vealed the substance of the demand — the Rhenish pro
vinces lost in 1 81 5 — and the exphcit refusal to the French
journal Le Siecle. Its pubhcation proclaimed a fresh
affront to the unhappy Emperor, prostrated at Vichy.
Drouyn de Lhuys resigned ; the Southern States were
furious, and Russia promptly abandoned the suggestion of
a Congress. It would have been weU had Napoleon re
mained content with the two severe rebuffs received since
July 4. But encouraged by Goltz at Paris and other
German agents of Bismarck's, the Emperor decided to
demand Belgium — a demand Goltz asserted as ' legitimate
in principle.' Once again the unfortunate Benedetti
was instructed to submit in writing the project of a
secret Convention (August 16) providing for the acquisi
tion of Luxemburg and the armed aid of Prussia ' should
the Emperor be required by circumstances to invade or
conquer Belgium.' The document in Benedetti's hand
writing was discussed in an interview with Bismarck, and
amended (August 20). Nothing came of the demand,
except that Bismarck carefuUy retained Benedetti's original
draft with the corrections inserted. The damning docu
ment now in his possession would be very useful some day,
when it was necessary to deprive France of the sympathies
of Europe. And its subsequent reproduction in facsimile
(July 25, 1870) in the official Gazette must have satisfied
even Bismarck's implacable determination to punish those
whom he had so completely duped. Napoleon in 1866
could only faU back on a circular to France extoUing her
unity, moderation, and generosity in the crisis. ' C'est bon,'
said a French agent, ' a calmer les estaminets de province.'
WhUe the formal peace with Austria was being made,
Bismarck — a comparatively easy matter — was cleaning
up the business by settling a series of peaces with the
' enemy ' German States. On August 2 hostUities were
suspended in Germany and in Italy. Wiirttemberg
(August 13), Baden (August 17), Bavaria (August 22),

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 213
Hesse-Darmstadt (September 3), obtained peace and the
integrity of their territories on payment of an indemnity,
except that the northern portion of Hesse was incorporated
in the new Northern Confederation. Severally the
Southern States agreed to renew the Tariff Union ; and
to arrange in common with the north their railway system.
Nothing seemed more generous or fair. But the gener
osity had been purchased by separate and secret treaties
(Schutz- und Trutzbundnis). These provided for mutual
guarantees of territory, whUe in the event of war the troops
of the contracting parties were to be united for common
purposes, and placed under the command of the King of
1 Prussia. In these negotiations Bismarck had confronted
the Southern States with a confidential revelation, not
minimised in the communication, of Napoleon's demands
for compensation. He could satisfy Napoleon, if he chose,
by acquiescing in the cession of Bavarian and Hessian
territories to a France which the South had hoped to play
off as a ^protector against HohenzoUern tyranny. The
alternative was stiU more simple. Prussia in return for
the signature of the secret mUitary conventions would re
sist the cession of a single yard of German territory ; and
if Napoleon, now or in the future, threatened Germany the
Southern States would join with the Northern Confedera
tion in a united resistance. The argument was irresistible.
With the miUtary conventions signed, sealed, and delivered,
and Napoleon definitely disposed of, Bismarck could with
an easy mind complete the formal treaty of peace that em
bodied the preliminaries of Nikolsburg.
The Treaty of Prague (August 23) opened a new chapter
in the history of Prussia, of Austria, of Germany and of
Europe. Austria agreed that the old Confederation
should be dissolved and a new one, from which she was
excluded, formed under Prussian leadership. The line of
the river Main was fixed as the southern boundary of the
new organisation. With the exception of Venetia, trans
ferred, through Napoleon, to Italy, the integrity of the
Austrian Empire was maintained. Schleswig-Holstein
and Lauenburg were annexed by Prussia, while the Duke
of Augustenburg subsequently abandoned his claims and

214 BISMARCK
released his ' subjects ' from their aUegiance. Napoleon
secured certain concessions. The kingdom of Saxony,
included in the Northern Confederation, retained its terri
torial integrity, and dynastic crown. The three Southern
States — Baden, Wiirttemberg, Bavaria — and the southern
portion of Hesse-Darmstadt, were prohibited from enter
ing the Northern Confederation, with which they could
make arrangements by treaty ; retaining severaUy their
' international independence ' they were free to unite in
a separate confederation of their own. On the other
hand, Prussia was given a free hand in the North ; and she
promptly prepared to annex Hanover, Nassau, Hesse-
Cassel, the northern portion of Hesse-Darmstadt, and the
former free city of Frankfurt, and to depose their several
ruling houses and governments. These annexations were
justified on the ground that the States in question had
made war as Prussia's enemies, and that ' by reason of their
geographical position they could embarrass Prussia beyond
the measure of their natural power.' In reality their
territories were required for military and strategic reasons,
and in order to secure for Prussia in the new Bund an over
whelming military, political, and economic predominance.
Bismarck desired also to teach a drastic lesson to dynastic
Particularism. Saxony had been spared to humour Napo
leon, Austria and Russia, but the rulers of Hanover, Hesse,
and Nassau must be punished by extirpation. The new
League would contain no dynasty, other than the Saxon,
with either the tradition or the power of independence, and
Saxony after this object-lesson would give no trouble in the
future. In a word, Prussia emerged from the war enlarged
to the extent of some twenty-seven thousand square miles,
and four and a quarter million inhabitants. She had not
merely tightened her grip on the Rhine and consolidated
the connection between Berlin and her Rhenish acqui
sitions of 1 815, but had secured an outlet to the North
Sea and the Baltic of supreme importance for the future.
The harbour of Kiel, in itself, was worth a king's ransom,
and the acquisition of Schleswig-Holstein with Lauenburg
would enable the canal from the Baltic to the North Sea —
so often planned in the middle of the century — to be

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 215
carried out as a Prussian enterprise. The sea-faring popu
lation of the Duchies would provide a splendid nucleus
for the naval and mercantile marine that would complete
Prussia's ambition to be a European Power on terms of
equality with Great Britain and France.
The treaty was a signal triumph for Bismarck's state
craft of ' blood and iron.' Bismarck the man and
Bismarck the statesman were now the foremost figures on
the European stage, and behind Bismarck stood the new
Prussia conscious of its strength. Prussia and the world
were continuously reminded that fidelity to Prussian
ideals was the secret of success. Prussia had saved herself
by her efforts and Germany by her example. In 1867
Treitschke at Heidelberg as editor of the Preussische Jahr-
biicher, could begin to teach the lesson, driven home by his
professoriate at Berlin (1874), that the Empire to come
must be an extended Prussia. The clauses in the treaty
which permitted the Southern States to form a separate
union, and forbade the incorporation of that union or any
member of it with the Northern Confederation were
worthless. No treaty could destroy the inteUectual, moral,
and material bridges across the Main that a common
German civilisation, embedded in a common speech, the
intellectual fraternity of great German universities, and
the economic bonds of an increasing trade aided by the
tariff union, so richly provided, and the military bridges
were already laid by the secret conventions. A German
Empire was practically made by the Treaty of Prague. Its
complete realisation in the future could only be prevented
by destroying the framework which the Treaty of Prague
had created. The first of these conditions was Prussia
and Prussianism as Bismarck interpreted them.
But if the Treaty of Prague had gone a long way towards
stamping on Germany a particular solution of the German
problem— a solution which in 1862 had seemed so im
probable as to be regarded as the fantasy of a political
gambler — it had not solved the two formidable problems
in foreign relations that the guaranteed form of German
unification at once raised.
The new Germany, whether federal or unitary, whether

216 BISMARCK
divided by an arbitrary line of demarcation, the river Main,
or not, had to determine its attitude and policy towards
a new Austria and an old France — an Austria, severed as
the penalty of defeat from its historic membership in the
German organisation, and with no historical or practical
experience to inspire and direct either its policy, its status
in the world of Europe, or its internal polity and frame
work — the old and undefeated France, whose flag flew at
Metz and Strasburg, in whose heart the two most abiding
and cherished convictions were the supremacy of France
in Europe, and the peril embodied in a unified Germany.
Thiers' indictment that Napoleon in 1866 had aUowed the
Empire of Charles v. to be revived was the phrase of a
great phrase-maker, but it crystallised the fears of France
in an epigram. For the Treaty of Prague, while most
assuredly it did not threaten Europe with a revival of the
Empire of Charles v., no less assuredly re-created for
Germany and its neighbours the problem of Central
Europe. On what principles, with what objects, and on
what system of State life ought the territory between the
Rhine and the Vistula, the Vosges and the Carpathians, to
be pohticaUy organised ?
The Empire of Charles v. had attempted to solve that
recurring riddle by the effort to re-adapt to the conditions
of the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery the great
mediaeval conception of the unity of secular European
Christendom under the continuance of the Holy Roman
Empire of the German nation. The effort had coUapsed
with the rupture of the spiritual and moral unity of
Europe, effected by the Reformation, and aggravated by the
pressure of the territorial national State of which sixteenth-
century France was the most potent expression on the
Continent. Napoleon — the heir both of the Bourbons
and the Revolution — had attempted to solve it by the
practical, abolition of Central Europe, the establishment
of the Grand Empire Francais of the West, resting on the
alliance with the Eastern Empire of Russia and the aUot-
ment of the central area to a dismembered Prussia, an
Austria expelled from Germany and cut off from the sea,
and a League of the Rhine, militarily, economicaUy, and

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 217
pohticaUy dependent on the Empire of the West. Napo
leon's structure was destroyed by Nationalism and sea-
power in combination. The Congress of Vienna aimed
at frustrating both Westernism and Centralism by a return
to a modernised interpretation of the old theory of the
Balance of Power. It remade a Germany that mirrored
the European equilibrium ; it sustained the hegemony of
a decentralised Austria, with a sub-centre of gravity at
Berlin, as an effective counterpoise alike to Paris in the
west and Petersburg in the east, and it revived the Concert
of Europe. But the separation of HoUand and Belgium,
the unification of Italy, the renaissance of Prussia and the
defeat of Austria had now wrecked the system of 1815.
The problem re-emerged. What after Koniggratz was
to be the new political framework of Central Europe ?
The Treaty of Prague did not register merely the substi
tution of Berlin for Vienna as the new nodal point of an
old pohtical system. That old system had explicitly re
jected the unified national State as the framework of
Central Europe. The unification of Italy was a victory
for the national State ; and it was with the aid of the Italy
made by Cavour and Napoleon, that Bismarck adminis
tered the coup de grace to the wounded Austria of 1859.
The removal of Austria left the central site clear for the
erection of a national German State, the essence of which
lay in the assumption that Central Europe belonged to
the German race and must be so organised as to put the
claim beyond question. The Italy of Cavour's policy
combined LiberaUsm — government through represen
tative institutions, ministerial responsibility, and a consti
tutional monarchy — with Nationalism — Nationalism as the
foundation of the State that is Law and Right. But the
Prussia that had annexed Schleswig-Holstein, absorbed
Hanover, Nassau, and electoral Hesse, and defeated
Austria was the State that is Power, whose organ is Force.
And in the profound difference between these two ex
pressions of Nationalism — the ItaUan and the Prussian — lay
the deep significance of the emergence of the old problem
of Central Europe. The doctrine of race in Germany had
combined not with the gospel of Law but with the gospel

218 BISMARCK
of Power. The problem for Bismarck — the problem of
Central Europe — was how to impose the new national
German State, based on power, on the European system,
and how to remodel that system to admit the new Ger
many. There now lay before him the task of internal
reconstruction — the making of the new confederation —
and the task of reconstructing Europe on the results of the
victory of 1 866.
The constitution of the new Germany must assist
the solution of the problem imposed on foreign policy.
The new Germany must be national in form and structure,
but it could not be constitutional, parliamentary, or
liberal, as England or Italy interpreted constitutional and
liberal government. Nor could the new Germany
realise its ambitions without a new orientation for Austria
and a drastic alteration in the status and power of France.
Not until Austria had transferred its centre of gravity (as
he had predicted in 1 864) to Buda-Pesth and accepted the
role of a Danubian State, with a front facing to the south
east of Europe ; not- until France had been reduced to
subordination in the west could the new Central Europe,
with Berlin as its capital, be completed. Such a solution
would be a fresh and decisive victory for the principles,
enshrined in Prussian Nationalism, and the final defeat of
the principles antagonistic to the State as Power.
If there was one certainty in 1866 it was that France
would not allow without a struggle the North German
Confederation to absorb the Southern States and ring
France in with a German Empire stretching from the
Memel and the Eider to the Alps. The claims of the old
France could not be reconciled with the ambitions of the
new Germany.
The interest therefore of the next three years in Bis
marck's statesmanship lies in two directions : first, his
determination to secure such a constitution for the North
German Confederation as would practically ensure a State
of the same character and under a similar irresponsible
political control to those existent in Prussia ; secondlv, an
ultimate settlement with France that would establish the
German Empire to come — a unified national State — as the

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 219
dominating power in Central Europe. The connection
between the character of the North German Confederation
and the final victory of the Bismarckian solution of the
German problem was vital. It provides an illuminating
interpretation of the deeper issues and ideals of Bismarck's
statecraft. An ultimate reconciliation with Austria was clearly fore
shadowed in 1866. But reconciliation with France was
impossible in 1867, nor was it desired. Bismarck's policy re
quired the defeat of France. The danger from France was
not purely political or mUitary — in the union of an undefeated
France with a defeated Austria, a revival of the system of
Kaunitz and the Bourbon monarchy of 1756. Rome and
the papacy brought into the political conflict the battle of
ideas. The syllabus of 1864 led logically to the Vatican
Decrees of 1 870. Papal infallibility was a victory of Ultra-
montanism. Against the sovereignty of the modern State,
over aU causes and persons, ecclesiastical as weU as civil,
throughout its dominions supreme, it arrayed the theory
that in spheres of thought and action, defined not by the
State but by the Church, the competence of civil authority
ceased, and that the jus dirigendi and the jus coercendi passed
to spiritual power, intrinsically and in the divine order of
things, superior. France, Austria, and the patrimony of
Peter, were the political strongholds of this creed and
party. The defeat of Austria and France transferred the
struggle to the floors of the Prussian Landtag and the
Imperial Reichstag. What would have been the issue
of this tremendous struggle of principles, cutting down to
the bone of civil life and the fundamentals of society, if
France had won in 1870 ?
For the present Bismarck had to reckon with French
and German national sentiment. On both sides of the
frontier the high explosive of national passion was stored
up in embarassing plenitude, and any political trifle might
detonate the magazines. Napoleon's repeated and vary
ing demands had proved not so much what the Emperor
himself desired as what he knew France expected him to
extort. The extreme irritability of French public opinion
was caused by anger, humiliation, and fear, and the danger

220 . BISMARCK
was aU the greater because Napoleon's failure in Mexico
and in Europe, in combination with the internal discontent,
imperiUed the dynasty and made it imperative for the
Tuileries to re-gild its tarnished prestige with a striking
success in foreign policy. France was corroded with the
worst form of ignorance that can sap a nation's strength,
the ignorance that is steeped in vanity. The boulevards
of Paris and the estaminets de province did not know
Prussia, and they refused to recognise the profound changes
that had made the Germany of 1867 as different from the
Germany of 181 5 as that Germany was from the Germany
of 1789. The France of 1867 was inspired with the
axiomatic conviction that it was still the first country of
Europe, the foyer de civilisation, first in science, letters,
the arts and arms.
The irritabUity of German public opinion was due to
pride and the consciousness of strength. Great things
had been accomplished, but they were only the beginning.
The supremacy in Europe was at last passing into German
hands. The injuries of the past were not yet obliterated,
and the one veto which German Nationalism was not pre
pared to tolerate was a French veto on the completion of
German unity. After 1866 any French or German states
man could have made a war with ease in twenty-four hours.
For things simply could not remain as they were in 1866.
Neither Napoleon nor Bismarck could postpone indefin
itely the collision without abandoning what neither could
abandon. The maintenance of the French Empire and
the imperial dynasty on the throne was Napoleon's, the
completion of German unification was Bismarck's, task.
For Napoleon the tragedy was summed up in the impossi
bihty of refusing war if it was thrust upon him, since refusal
meant another humUiation, and that speUed ruin. The
Treaty of Prague placed the initiative in Bismarck's hands.
Obedient to the opportunism on which his statecraft rested,
he already wiUed the end in 1866; the means and the
moment would be revealed by circumstances that could
not be predicted in advance but might be made. It
was Bismarck's deepest conviction that true opportunism
consisted as much in creating opportunities as in seizing

THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 221
them when they occurred. But as in 1864 or in 1866 the
war that lay ' in the logic of history ' — a logic not made by
chance or a blind caprice, but created by statecraft — must
be strictly and essentially ' defensive.' War must secure,
since policy could not, the conditions on which a German
Central Europe could live for the future with its neigh
bours. The achievement of these conditions could on
Bismarckian principles alone prove its justifiability and
necessity.

CHAPTER V
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE NORTH GERMAN
CONFEDERATION
The Making of the North German Confederation — The War
with France, 1 866-1 870— The Treaty of Frankfurt— The
Unification of Germany, 1870-1871.
The conclusion of the treaties which established peace was
only part of the complicated and exhausting burden of
work that Bismarck had to shoulder. This enormous pres
sure of business could not be delegated, except in its de
tails ; and even if delegation had been possible Bismarck
was not the man to permit, in so critical a situation, the
interference of coUeagues, military or civil. The gigantic
labour fell on a man already worn out, living on shattered
nerves and an adamantine will. He had returned to
Berlin on August 4, and when on September 20 he took
part in the triumphal entry of the army, every one ob
served with concern the weary exhaustion in his face and
figure. He had in fact dragged himself from a sick bed
to ride with the generals, Moltke, Roon, Herwarth von
Bittenfeld, Steinmetz, and Vogel von Falkenstein, to re
ceive the homage of a crowd, delirious with enthusiasm,
and the roses of the girls at the Brandenburg Gate. He
was, and he knew it, the arresting figure in the cavalcade ;
men and women along the route had their eyes on the
civilian in the cuirassier uniform, merely a titular general
of brigade, for he was the magician who had achieved the
miracle. To-day it was roses — roses, roses aU the way
past the statue of his master, Frederick the Great — but
had the Crown Prince arrived too late at Koniggratz, it
would not have been even the besoms of the old women
or the stones of a duped democracy. He would have been
lying, face downwards, after the last charge.
222

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 223
The Landtag had been dissolved at the outbreak of war,
and the elections of July 8 reflected the victories. One
hundred and forty Conservatives had been returned, and
had the dissolution been deferred tiU the end of July it is
probable that the defeat of the opposition would have been
decisive. Junkertum was jubilant. Now was the time to
teach these pestilent Radicals a lesson. The King shared
their views. But Bismarck thought otherwise. It was the
hour for the olive branch that he had plucked at Avignon
in September 1862. The opposition had had their lesson.
National Liberalism — not Junkertum — was the true aUy
in the work of unification to come. Not even in his deal
ings with Austria and the defeated German South did
Bismarck show himself more convincingly a masterly
realist — the statesman who appreciates reahties and bends
them to his wiU — than in his treatment of the Landtag.
' I was in a position to carry out the boldest and most in
cisive policy of reaction,' he told the Reichstag in 1879,
' with the success and eclat which stiU attached to me from
Koniggratz ... if I had thought that absolutism in
Prussia would have better promoted the work of German
unity, I should most decidedly have counseUed recourse
to it.' For himself and for his pohcy the triumph would
be all the more enduring if he could now hypnotise
National Liberalism into servitude as a loyal agent of his
wiU. The King, not unnaturally, resisted, supported by
his military advisers, and Bismarck had a hard task, assisted
.by the Crown Prince, in persuading his sovereign to accept
what he regarded as a personal humiliation and a public
surrender. Bismarck wrote to his wife (August 3) : —
' Great controversy over the speech from the Throne
. . . these folk see nothing but their own nose and practice
their swimming in the stormy flood of phrases. With
our enemies we can settle up, but our Friends ! They all
wear blinkers and see only' a speck of the world.'
The Landtag opened on August 5, and the royal speech
indicated that the government would throw a white sheet
over the blue uniform with the red facings. The bill,
introduced by Bismarck, provided an indemnification for
the absence of a legal budget since 1862, and additional

224 BISMARCK
credits for 1866. The Budget for 1867 would be sub
mitted to the Lower House. It was a frank admission that
the government had acted iUegaUy, but the Minister-
President invited the House to close the constitutional
controversy, and to recognise that if the government had
been ' technicaUy ' wrong it could not have acted other
wise under the circumstances, and that peace and pardon
were now necessary in order to proceed with the great
duties that awaited Prussia. Let bygones be bygones ;
neither Crown nor Landtag in the future would assail each
other's rights. The era of conflict was over — never to
return. ' The government,' he said, later, ' has gladly
grasped the opportunity to bring the conflict to an end,
in the conviction that it serves no purpose in constitutional
life to drive matters to extremities. Constitutional
government cannot be judged by mathematical, nor even
by juristic, rules. It is a continuous compromise . . .
the making of peace never satisfies every wish, never fulfils
every calculation.'
L. von Gerlach pronounced the biU a blow in the face of
Bismarck's best friends. The Conservatives received the
measure in morose sUence, but it passed the Lower House
by 230 to 75 votes, and the Upper House without a
division. The irreconcUables of both camps refused the
ohve branch, and from the Indemnity BiU dates a re
grouping of Prussian and German parties which the or
ganisation of the new Confederation definitely confirmed.
In September 1866 the Progressive party (Fortschritts-
Partei), which had been the core of the opposition, split up.
Fifteen of its important members, with eight from the
left centre, founded a new party, under Bennigsen's leader
ship, which on the dissolution of the Nationalverein,
became the powerful National Liberal party. Its raison
d'Hre was to give the new government firm support in its
foreign policy, and to work for complete unity with free
dom. ' Der deutsche Staat und die deutsche Freiheit
mussen gleichzeitig mit denselben Mitteln errungen
werden.' A similar split took place in the Conserva
tive ranks. On October 27, 1867, the Free Conservative
party was founded on the principle that Prussia had

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 225
now entered ' the class of constitutional States.' ' The
Time of Absolutism had passed.' The Free Conser
vatives pledged themselves to support and work for the
' Constitutional monarchy ' defined in the Constitution
of 1867. How active political thought and movement
had become under the influence of the years 1866 and 1867
can be best judged by two other party manifestations :
first, the notable Eisenach Programme which founded the
•Social Democrats in August 1869 ; secondly, the German
Popular Party (Deutsche V olkspartet) of South Germany
in September 1 868, with its ideal of the complete demo
cratic State and responsible parliamentary government.
The Eisenach Programme, of which much was to be heard
later, aimed amongst other ends at direct legislation by a
popular legislature, substitution of a national militia for
the standing army, separation of Church and State, aboli
tion of ecclesiastical teaching in the elementary schools,
complete independence of the judiciary, abolition of aU
press laws, legal recognition of trades unions, abolition of
aU indirect taxation, substitution of a single progressive
income-tax, and regulation by law of the hours, remunera
tion, and conditions of labour.
During the short autumn session of 1866 Bismarck, ex
hausted as he was, astonished the Landtag by his persua
sive geniality. The old rasping irritability and explosions
of anger were reserved for the ministers of the South and
for Benedetti ; it was aU the more remarkable, as he was in
daily pain and tortured by insomnia. But with Bismarck,
as with the great Napoleon, anger, insolence, and menaces
were storm-cones indicating that the situation was critical ;
they were intended to drive an adversary into indiscretions.
The surer that his grip on a situation became, the politer
became Bismarck's manners.
The princes of the States north of the Main were sum
moned to Berlin to confer (August 4) ; they found a
Prussian minister lavish in the amiability that is easy to the
victorious master of many legions. It was a congress of
roaches presided over by a benevolent pike. The basis of
the new Confederation was laid (August 18) in fifteen
treaties of alliance, in which the contracting parties

226 BISMARCK
guaranteed the inviolability of their territories, and agreed
to refer to a constituent Parliament, chosen as in 1849 by
direct and universal manhood suffrage, the establishment
of a Federal Constitution. One point alone was settled
in advance. The troops of the allies were placed under
the supreme command of the King of Prussia.
The Landtag ratified the annexations permitted by
the Treaty of Prague. In the biU Hanover,1 Nassau,
Hesse-Cassel, Frankfurt, and Schleswig-Holstein were not
' annexed ' but ' taken in possession ' by the Crown. Bis
marck however yielded with grace to the critics and agreed
to annexation pure and simple. After voting a special
military credit the Landtag was prorogued (September 27). 2
Bismarck's endurance had given out. On September 26
he left for Pomerania, and for the next two months was
seriously iU. His constitution and will were as usual better
doctors than the physicians. Late in life he pronounced
that a man should not die tiU he had smoked 100,000
cigars and drunk 5000 bottles of champagne. His wife
haUed with joy the day, after many weary weeks of pain,
sleeplessness, and black depression, when the Minister-
President once more found joy in the MoseUe and Hock
speciaUy selected by a princely host in the island of Riigen ;
and with the appetite for wine and tobacco came back the
lust for work and achievement. Devoted friends had been
toiling in his absence on the new Constitution — Roon,
Delbriick, Abeken — and Bismarck caUed in Hepke, Lothar
Bucher, and Max Duncker. But their drafts faUed to
satisfy. In his solitude he, too, had been toiling to clarify
his ideas, and on his return to Berlin, by a tour deforce at
a single sitting, he dictated to Bucher the scheme of a
Constitution (December 13), copies of which were ready
1 Hanover, like the other annexed principalities, became Prussian territory.
It ceased to be an independent kingdom ; the dynasty was dethroned, and the
reigning king became a ' legitimist ' claimant to a throne he no longer
possessed, who refused to recognise the validity of the treaty and the acts
which destroyed his crown and turned the 'kingdom' into an administrative
Prussian province.
8 Saxe- Weimar, Oldenburg, Brunswick, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg-
Gotha, Anhalt, the two Schwarzburgs, Waldeck, Reuss (younger branch),
Schaumburg-Lippe and Lippe, Lubeck, Bremen and Hamburg. The two
Mechlenburgs adhered on August 21, Saxe-Meiningen, Reuss (elder branch),
and the kingdom of Saxony on October 21.

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 227
(December 15) for the Conference of Plenipotentiaries
from the governments. The Conference lasted until
February 7, 1867, when the amended draft was recom-
mended by the governments for acceptance. The
elections for the Constituent Reichstag were held on
February 12, and on February 24 the Reichstag of the
North German Confederation met to discuss the recom
mended draft. The Constitution was finally passed on
April 17. The several governments accepted it, as
amended by the Reichstag, and it was then submitted
to the Parliaments of the several States. The Prussian
Landtag agreed by June 1 ; the other States followed suit ;
on July 1, 1867, the Constitution was duly promulgated.
The North German Confederation was now in existence ;
, one further act was necessary to complete the work. On
July 14 Bismarck was appointed Federal ChanceUor —
combining the duties of the new office with the Minister-
Presidency of Prussia. The task of making a Constitution
and of unifying North Germany by a victorious Prussia,
undisturbed either by enemies without or within, had
occupied eleven months of continuous and hard work
(August 4, 1866-July 1, 1867). The man of ' blood and
iron ' had been as long over the task as the dilatory and un
practical professors, journalists, and idealists, who had toiled
at a larger task in the Church of St. Paul at Frankfurt from
May 13, 1848, to April 11, 1849. The critics, and they
are not few, who assume that men of action can produce
constitutions as easUy as omelettes, and that the juristic,
moral, political, and institutional problems that even
partial unification of Germany provided could be solved
by a triumphant sword in a few days, have failed to grasp
the elements of history's lessons. One conclusion that is
certain is, that without the noble and masterly work of the
men of 1848, and the earnest co-operation of the finest
minds and characters in Germany from 1849 to 1866, the
establishment of the North German Confederation could
not have been accomplished in double the time. ' There
is spring in Germany to-day,' said a deputy; but the
intoxicating splendour of that spring had its dawn in
the Liberalism of the Revolution.

228 BISMARCK
The North German Confederation was not what National
Liberalism desired, or for which it had worked so long and
with such faith and loyalty. If Max Duncker might weU
remark, ' what a contrast between the seventy articles of
the Constitutional text of 1867 and the twenty articles of
the Federal act of 18 15,' the comparison measures the
profound change in the principles, temper, and ideals of
the Germany made by Metternich and the Germany
made by Bismarck. But what a contrast also between the
Constitution of 1867 and that of 1849. The difference
was due to Bismarck. The North German Confederation
concentrates in lines precise and unmistakable the first
of the two great chapters in the Bismarckian solution of
the German problem. The text of the Constitution is
stamped throughout with the imprint of his personality,
genius, principles, and ideals.
The interest therefore of the eleven months' toil in
constitution-making lies as much in what was rejected as
in what was accepted, in the omissions no less than in the
inclusions, in the extreme rigidity of some, and the ex
treme flexibility of other, parts of the framework. The
three main organs were the Presidency (Praesidium), vested
in the King of Prussia, the Federal Council- (Bundesrat),
and the Parliament (Reichstag). Legislation and taxation
were shared between the Council and the Parliament, the
concurrence of both organs being required for the validity
of laws or taxes. The originality of the Confederation
lay in the functions assigned to, and the relations estab
lished between, the Praesidium, the Council, and the
representative Parliament. As President, the King of
Prussia .was not a sovereign in the ordinary sense. He was
not a member of the Council, nor was his consent necessary
to Federal legislation or taxation. He did not preside
over the Council, the Chairman of which was the Federal
ChanceUor. But as President he summoned and dissolved
the Reichstag, concluded treaties, declared peace and
war, and represented the Bund in aU external relations ;
he promulgated the laws, and in peace and in war was
commander-in-chief of the combined Federal forces, to
whom the oath of aUegiance was taken. The Council was

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 229
not an upper chamber of the legislature. It was a syndi
cate of governmental delegates, appointed in assigned
numbers to the members of the Bund1 who voted as units,
representing the assigned vote, on the instruction of their
respective governments. The Council was thus consti
tuted not over, but out of, the States ; its deliberations
were secret ; its decisions were taken on a majority of
votes ; it had the initiative in legislation, and it could
reject bills passed by the Reichstag. Through its various
committees, deaUng with defined subjects, it acted as a
semi-executive organ. The Parliament was an assembly
of representatives sitting in a single chamber, and chosen
by direct and universal manhood suffrage from equal
electoral districts. It voted the Federal budget, and its
consent^was necessary to aU legislation. The one Federal
minister was the ChanceUor, appointed by the Presidency,
responsible to the Bund as a whole, and in his chanceUery
were concentrated the Federal executive and administration.
The ChanceUor was not responsible directly either to the
Reichstag or the Bundesrat. He could not be dismissed as
the result of a parliamentary vote, but he was intended to
act as the spokesman of the Council in aU matters of policy,
administration, or legislation, and it was his duty to submit
to the Presidency all matters in which the Praesidium was
the executive organ, and to countersign all notifications
in which the Presidency acted on behalf of the Bund.
This Constitution was, broadly, an adaptation of the old
Federal organisation, fundamentaUy modified in four
directions — the increased powers assigned to the PresK
dency, the creation of the Federal ChanceUor, the inclusion
of a popular and representative legislature, and the relations
established between the Council and the Parliament. It
was ingeniously organised to meet the two chief defects of
the old system : the absence of real unity in consequence
of the unimpaired sovereignty of the member-States, and
the limited competence and lack of coercive power of the
Federal organs. The new Federal system was a real unity ;
it could legislate for and impose its Federal wiU on the
1 Seventeen votes were assigned to Prussia ; twenty-six were assigned to the
other twenty-one States which composed the Federation.

230 BISMARCK
whole Bund in aU matters defined in the Constitution as
a Federal concern. It no less ingeniously combined the
demand for popular representation and a share of ^all
Germans in the government of the Confederation with
the claim of Prussia to be the preponderant and directing
power. It gratified the dynasties by the position assigned
to the governments in the Council, which, although not
a Congress of Princes, was a syndicate made from the
princedoms ; it recognised local particularism by leaving
the legislatures of the member-States intact in their diver
sity of franchise and institutions, and their powers only
' impaired by the transfer of defined Federal concerns to the
dual central organ of Bundesrat and Reichstag. Lastly,
and by no means least, it created a chanceUorship with
powers vague and iU-defined enough to satisfy the person
ality and ambition of a Bismarck. The position of Federal
Chancellor was what Bismarck wished to enjoy. The
office was the keystone of the Federal arch, and the whole
structure was pieced together to maintain the keystone in
its central position.
Bismarck's share, in speech, in writing, and in oral con
ferences in the prolonged discussions from December to
June, would make more than a volume. He came to the
creative task, not merely with the glamour of an .acquired
prestige, and the force of an overpowering personality, but
with an experience unrivaUed in Germany of diplomacy,
administration, and knowledge of men and institutions.
Bismarck was in the plenitude of his physical and mental
powers in 1866-7 — only a Titan could have carried the
burden, and even he very nearly coUapsed under it — and
he revealed in the making of the Constitution the inflexible
tenacity of aim and principle, the inexhaustible variety of
resource, the complete absence of scruple, the combina
tion of brutal strength, velvety suppleness, and Prussian
mastery of detail that had marked his ministerial presi
dency. No man knew better that he was fighting now to
impose the Bismarckian solution — to impose himself, his
principles, ideals, and interpretations of life — on Germany.
It was the joy of achieving that supreme ambition, the
consciousness of realising at last aU that made life worth

JNOKi'H GERMAN CONFEDERATION 231
living, aU the full-blooded sense of what it was to be a
German and a Prussian, that inspired him to resist every
party, principle, or proposal opposed to the German State
he desired to establish.
Hence the procedure in the making of the Constitution.
He first concluded affiances, as noted, with the States to
be federated; then drew up the original draft, and on
behalf of Prussia obtained the ratification of the text
through plenipotentiaries by whom the governments were
pledged. The constituent Reichstag was thus confronted
with an agreed scheme, amendment of which in any funda
mental sense was exceedingly difficult, for it must be made
the occasion for re-reference to the governments behind the
Reichstag. The Constitution passed by the Reichstag was
finaUy submitted to aU the legislatures, with the warning
that emendation would involve a re-submission to every
State and the Reichstag as a whole for its concurrence.
Its final acceptance en bloc was thus secured. Apart from
his personal authority in argument, Bismarck had two
great weapons at his disposal. First, the power of Prussia.
If Prussia would not agree, the proposal must come to
naught; and Prussia was practicaUy himself. The Lower and
the Upper House of the Landtag would act as he advised.
They were strong enough to veto where they could not
create. Secondly, the critical external situation which made
rapid decision urgent. Bismarck used this consideration
both privately and in pubhc with great skiU. For while the
Constitution was on the anvil the Luxemburg crisis and
the danger of a war with France had to be faced and sur
mounted. The European situation had indeed the same
driving influence that it had in 1689 on the English Revo
lution and the passing of the Declaration of Rights.
' Work quickly,' Bismarck said in a famous sentence. ' Put
Germany in the saddle and she wiU soon ride.'
German pride, fed on its imperial history, lamented
the absence of a Kaiser and a Reich, a sovereign and an
empire. Prussian Junkertum deplored the emasculation
of the Prussian monarchy, which it desired to see ruling
North Germany as it ruled Prussia, by direct authority
and unquestioned prerogative. The tenderness to the

232 BISMARCK
petty States exasperated the fierce governing class, which
would gladly have treated Prussia's aUies with magisterial
mUitarism. But above aU, Liberals and Radicals strove
to secure fundamental constitutional rights (Grundrechte),
defined in the Constitution, a Federal ministry and an
administration representative of, and responsible to, the
Reichstag. The Bundesrat, dissevered from the Reichs
tag, ought in their view to be an Upper House the com
position and action of which could be conttoUed, in case
of conflict with the representative organ. But against
everything savouring of parhamentary government and
ministerial responsibility, in the British sense, against
everything that would make the Reichstag a policy-making
and government-making organ, Bismarck set his face like
flint, and all such proposals were rejected.
There is not the shghtest doubt that, had Bismarck
so chosen, the Constitution could have conferred on the
new Confederation responsible parhamentary government.
The responsibUity for the rejection, and the consequences
in the history of Germany that foUowed from its rejection,
rests with Bismarck ; and the reason for his refusal is plain.
Parliamentary government in the Confederation would
have involved a drastic re-writing of the Prussian Consti
tution, and a no less drastic reorganisation of the Prussian
system. How could a responsible Federal ChanceUor
combine his office with the Minister-Presidency of Prussia,
responsible only to the Prussian Crown ? Three things
were essential in Bismarck's eyes. Policy and the responsi
bility for poUcy must be vested in organs outside parlia
mentary control ; the army must be withdrawn from
parliamentary interference ; and behind the Federal
ChanceUor must stand a Prussia, the strength of which
would be at the disposal of an unfettered Prussian Crown,
supported by Prussian Junker tradition. He secured the
first through the Bundesrat, the second through the
aUiances that preceded the making of the Confederation,
and the clause in the Constitution that fixed for five years
(i.e. until 1871) the composition and number of the
Federal army, and placed it under the supreme command
of the Praesidium ; the third by incorporating a Prussia

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 233
unreformed, intact, and unrepentant in the Bund. Hence
forward Moltke and the General Staff could work, unim
peded, on the army, and complete its preparation for its
final task ; Bismarck could shape and direct policy, un
hindered by Federal ministerial coUeagues, and controUing
a Bundesrat in which Prussia had seventeen votes out of
forty-three, and the manipulation of which was withdrawn
from pubhc knowledge or parliamentary influence.
The democratic franchise occasioned deep misgivings
in • many quarters. It is very questionable whether
Bismarck's later interpretation — that it was blackmail to
democracy — reaUy represents what he thought in 1866,
or reaUy felt until he retired. It seems more accurate to
infer that he desired a representative assembly which
would mirror as accurately as possible the German people,
enable the government to gauge the currents in the nation
as a whole, and provide an organ for the concentrated expres
sion of national policy and for influencing public opinion.
AU these ends could be achieved with safety if the powers
of the representative body, nominally large, were in reality
checked and circumscribed, as they were in the Constitution
at every point. Universal suffrage conferred a superb
democratic glamour on a truly anti-democratic system.
And Bismarck early in his career was convinced that the
danger of Liberalism came not from the uninstructed
masses but the educated and independent middle and
professional classes. When he wrote his memoirs at the
close of his life the industrial revolution had done its work
and the democracy had largely been transformed into an
urban industrial proletariat ; he wrote with twenty years'
bitter experience of the weapon forged by Windthorst
and the Clerical centre, by Bebel and the Sociahst Demo
crats, from universal manhood suffrage. In 1 867 Bismarck
could understand and sympathise with the Socialism of
LassaUe ; neither Prussia nor Germany were industrial
ised ; seventy per cent, of the population stiU lived in the
country, and the framing and carrying of a restricted
franchise for the Reichstag was, as he said, a matter so
controversial and difficult as to prohibit its consideration.
Universal suffrage was not ideal, but it was simple, popular,

234 BISMARCK
and practical; its adoption in the Federal Constitution
would not involve the demand for its extension to Prussia
or other States, averse from it in principle. 'Direct
election and universal suffrage,' Bismarck pronounced,' I
consider to be greater guarantees of Conservative action
than any artificial electoral law.' Bismarck's conception
of a Parliament was that of our Tudors — a perpetual
royal commission to lay the wishes of the nation at the
feet of the throne ; a national organ with defined powers,
limited by the prerogatives of the Crown. The opinion
of ParUament could be ascertained and neglected, if
need be, but the Legislature could always be made a
grand aUy for affixing the national seal on aU enterprises,
where it was essential the Crown should appear both to
the nation itself, and to foreign states, as the representative
executor of a sovereign national wiU. Between policy
imposed on and endorsed by the nation, and policy
made by the nation, the difference was fundamental
and final.
July I, 1867, when the Constitution was promulgated,
was the Koniggratz of Liberalism in Germany. Foiled in
1848, thwarted in 1862, Liberalism arid the Liberal pro
gramme had practicaUy their last real chance in 1866-7.
The effort to renew the struggle in 1871 was the flash of
powder damped by disuse. The rejection in the Consti
tution of every vital element and principle of the Liberal
programme, coupled with the equaUy decisive failure to
modify the Prussian Constitution, provides a critical date
in the history of Germany and of Europe. For ten years
Germany had been gathering itself at the cross-roads —
for four it had stood expectant, waiting for the decision
that would mark its route, and it now was set marching
towards unification indeed, power, opulence, discipline,
and the high places of the universe, but not towards the
ideals of character and law and self-government that were
the dream of the golden age of aspiration. National
Liberalism was enmeshed in the iron cage of the new
Federal Constitution ; it enjoyed a great political influence,
but neither pohtical authority nor power, which were re
served to the Federal CouncU, and in that Council the

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 235
principles of the governing caste in Prussia achieved an
invincible supremacy.
The real character of the victory won by Bismarck
between 1866 and 1867 was concealed for ten years. And
the reason lay in the dual programme of National Liberal
ism since 1848 — unification and constitutional self-govern
ment through responsible parliamentary administration.
The task of internal unification began with 1 867 when the
framework of the organisation had been completed, and
to the achievement of this task the national Liberal leaders
and their devoted foUowers contributed a driving power,
abihty, and work, that cannot be overestimated. Indeed,
without the unselfish and patriotic labours of men such as
Bennigsen, Lasker, Forckenbeck, Miquel, supporting the
efforts of the ministerial chiefs of departments, Delbriick,
Stephan, Falk, and Camphausen, Bismarck could never have
achieved the remarkable results accompUshed by 1880.
Liberalism was endeavouring partly to find in legisla
tion and executive action a compensation for the failure to
obtain responsible parliamentary government; with the
inevitable consequence that the bureaucracy, the guiding
levers of which were controUed by the governing class,
was enormously strengthened. Public opinion was
steadily imbued with the conviction that liberty and law
as character-building elements in national hfe, would be
more rapidly and efficiently worked out through co-or
dinated governmental action from above, than through
the slow, disappointing, and patchworky progress of
representative institutions and the friction of warring
parties. The Reichstag, thus, was transformed into a
legislative machine and a debating club, banked up against
the dead waU of the Prussian Landtag in which the
administration could always command, if its pohtical
authority was questioned, a solid Conservative majority.
' The Army ' or ' the Crown ' in danger played the part
that ' the Church in danger ' played in the evolution of
constitutional government in England. For in each case
first principles of the established State were the root of
the controversy.
Hence with unification practicaUy completed by 1879,

236 BISMARCK
it was impossible for National LiberaUsm to resume in the
industrialised and soaring Germany of 1879 the programme
of self-government through representative institutions.
It had itself assisted to build the breakwaters and the dams
which barred the parliamentary waters from trickling into
the reservoir of political power where policy was made.
Its old ideals, mildewed by neglect, feU to the impotent
Radicahsm led by Richter, and the economic war of
classes led by Bebel — both, and from one point of view, not
unjustly termed ' enemies of the Empire ' (Reichsfeind-
lich). For the aims of both could only be realised by
taking down the whole imperial engine, riveted into the
chassis of the Prussian State, and rebuilding it on a different
pattern and for whoUy different purposes. The speci
fication of that imperial engine is written out in the text
of the Constitution of the North German Confederation.
The counter-specification had been elaborated in 1849.
One important consequence of the defeat of Liberalism
cannot be omitted. The National Liberalism of 1850-66
had regarded England as its moral aUy — the country which
had inspired its programme and supplied the ideas, the
precedents, and the example of constitutional self-govern
ment — and the Liberals, with no desire to make an Eng
lish Germany, hoped that by realising the same ends in
government and the same type of state as England, looked
forward to a great pohtical entente in which two great
nations, working in their respective spheres and under a
differentiated Nationalism, could achieve common ideals
and purposes. The complete failure of Great Britain to
understand the character of the struggle waged in Ger
many from 1850 onwards, and to grasp the meaning of
1867, the absence of sympathy, the obstacles placed by
British pohcy in the way of German achievement, the
hostUe criticism, and, stiU worse, the patronising approval,
killed the enthusiasm for England in the great Liberal
camp. England, too, presently feU under the hypnotism
of Bismarck in its attitude towards German affairs, in
complete ignorance of what Bismarck and Bismarckianism
reaUy were, or what they meant for Great Britain and
Europe. The old feeling and ideas continued to be con-

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 237
centrated in the court and circle of the Crown Prince and
Princess, but Germany steadily moved away from them.
The Franco-German war completed the disillusionment.
England had failed. Her principles and her ambitions were
as dangerous to the new Empire as the adoption of her
system of government would be disastrous. Industrialism
was superimposed on the political divorce : it made absolute
the decree nisi for the two countries. England and the
British Empire were regarded first as neutrals who had
betrayed, and then as rivals who would bar, the realisation
of the complete German programme. The extirpation of
' English ' influence in every sphere — dynastic, political,
intellectual, and economic — grew to be the ideal of the
Nationalism that laboured for the Empire as the expres
sion of Power — German Power.
The inteUectuals and the universities slowly ranged
themselves on the anti-British side. The conversion of
a Treitschke, a Sybel, and a Mommsen to the new gospel
was far more significant than at first sighTappears ; for in
the new Germany the universities were to be even more
potent in moulding the minds of the young generation
than in the epoch of the German renaissance. The in
fluence of authority in the matters of spirit and intellect
more than kept pace with the increase of authority in
poUtics and administration. The organisation of intellect
came to be regarded as essential as the organisation of the
army, the civU administration, or the tariff union. To a
Realpolitik a Realwissenschaft is an indispensable element of
national power, since it controls the empire of man in the
universe of spirit, and provides the material weapons for
maintaining the control and extending its scope. When
Bismarck finaUy broke with the economic policy of Free
Trade in 1879, tne ^ast °^ tne English chains which
' fettered ' the evolution of a national Germany was
shivered. Cobdenism, Manchesterism, Adam-Smithianis-
mus, and the influence of the British school of individualism
were ehminated from State policy and economic action.
The emancipation of the German inteUect was the corol
lary to the emancipation of the German nation from the
bondage of ' Walsch ' and foreigner. It gave a new

238 BISMARCK
interpretation, and a new sphere, to the conception of
a Teutonic Central Europe. Henceforward Great Britain
— the incarnation of everything inteUectual, political, and
economic that was the antithesis of the German Empire —
could by a subtle and inevitable transition in German
thought be transformed from the rival into the enemy.
Not until that enemy had suffered the fate of Austria
and France would the German Empire be safe and the
continent of Europe purged of political heresies.
Bismarck had not failed to grasp the position established
in 1867. His virtual alliance with, and reliance on, the
National Liberal party demanded great skiU in political
management lest Bennigsen and his coUeagues should
become the riders and he the horse. The Conservatives
of the Kreuzzeitung were angered to bitterness with ' the
lost leader,' and for the ten years after 1867 Bismarck was
exposed to vehement attacks from the Right. The social
and court influence of Conservatism was far greater than
that of any other party, and the ramification and enlace-
ment of its roots enmeshed every organ of authority — the
Crown, the War Office', the General Staff, the Civil Service,
and the local administration, above all, in the agricultural
districts. For many years it was not possible to counter
balance the great industrials, because they were only in the
making, as yet, against the powers vested in tradition, estab
lished institutions, and a social caste that provided the
higher personnel. Bismarck could not shatter the sources
of Junker authority without emasculating the Prussia by
whose brute weight he controlled the Confederation, and,
later, the Empire. His aUy was the Crown, and his weapons
were the doctrine of passive obedience as the life-blood of
Conservatism and unwavering confidence in himself. He
emphasised the principles of his youth. Conservatism, if it
acted against the Crown and its government, was guilty of
intolerable indiscipine, equivalent to mutiny and treachery.
If it came to an open breach the Crown would act — and it
did. In his private correspondence with Roon he could
say what could not be said in public. Some characteristic
and illuminating quotations will be relevant here : ' If the
government has not at least one party in the country

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 239
which does not support its principles and pohcy, then the
constitutional system is impossible : the government wiU
manoeuvre and intrigue against the constitution ; it must
either create an artificial or aim at a transitory majority.
It succumbs then to the weakness of a coalition-ministry
and its pohcy fluctuates, which is pernicious to the State,
and especiaUy so to the Conservative principle.' (Feb
ruary 6, 1868.) ' Every state which values it's honour and
independence must recognise that its peace and security
rests on its own sword — I beheve, gentlemen, we are all
united on that point. . . . Just as a roof protects against
the rain, a dam against inundation, so our army protects
our productivity in its fuU measure.' (May 22, 1869.)
' The form in which our King exercises Imperial rights
in Germany has never been of great importance in my
eyes ; to secure the fact that he exercises them, I have
strained aU the strength God has given me. . . .' (To
Roon, August 27, 1864.)
' I can emphaticaUy maintain this : does not the Prae
sidium of the North German Confederation exercise in
South Germany such an Imperial authority as has not been
in a German Emperor's possession for five hundred years ?
Where is the time since the first Hohenstaufen when there
has been in Germany an unquestioned supreme command
in war, an unquestioned certainty of having in war the
same enemies and the same friends ? The name counts
for something . . . the Head of the North German Con
federation has in South Germany a position such as no
Emperor since Barbarossa has had, and though Barbarossa's
sword was victorious his power was not based on treaties
and generaUy recognised.' (To Roon, February 24, 1 870.)
' It is absolutely certain in my conviction that I have
found the chief influence which I have been privileged to
exercise, not in the Imperial, but in the Prussian Power.
. . . Cut away from me the Prussian root, convert me
into a pure Imperial minister, I beUeve I should have as
httle influence as every one else.' (Reichstag, March 13,
1877.) One other remark reveals much. ' The stronger,'
Bismarck said (March 28, 1867), ' the influence of ParUa-

240 BISMARCK
ment on the State, the more necessary is it to maintain a
stern discipUne in the civil service.' He had learned in the
constitutional conflict what an invaluable weapon the
Prussian civil services could be in counteracting the
Liberal opposition. The assimilation of the annexed pro
vinces, the Prussianisation of the Confederation, was largely
to be achieved through the organised Beamtenstand, dis
ciplined and deployable under the Crown as efficiently as
the army, and kept as free from parliamentary interference.
The classical authority is the royal proclamation of
January 4, 1882, which summarises the position as correctly
in 1867 as in 1882 : ' Executive orders of the King require
the countersignature of a minister . . . but it is incorrect
and tends to obscure the constitutional rights of the Crown
if their execution is represented as dependent on a re
sponsible minister and not on the Crown ... it is the
duty of my ministers to protect my constitutional rights
against doubt or misrepresentation. I expect the same
duty from all officials . . . aU officials who are entrusted
with the execution of my governmental commands and
are removable from their service under the law of dis
cipline are required under the obligation of their oath of
service to maintain the policy of my government even at
elections.' The future relations of the new Confederation with the
South German States were a knotty problem. Bismarck's
views are susceptible of very various interpretation. It
is certain that he contemplated union between south
and north, as the consummation of the work of 1 867. It
is no less certain that he recognised more deeply than
many of his critics the external and internal difficulties
in the realisation of such a union. It has been held by
many then, and since, that the fluid and elastic element in
the Constitution of 1867 was deliberately emphasised to
permit a subsequent incorporation of Bavaria, Wiirttem
berg, Baden, and Hesse-Darmstadt without substantial
modification of the main lines of the Federal structure.
It has, on the other hand, been argued that the Consti
tution- -of-*8<S7""war deliberately provisional;-afid- that-7Bis-
marck intended to recast the whole system "on an imperial

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 241
pattern. Bismarck can be quoted^ for and against both
these intejpre^t^nsT^The truth^would seem to lie that
he* Md^not really ctecided, and could hot 'really''decide,
when and how union with. the_ south would be possible.
The fbrrn^ wouIoTturn on the particular situation, Euro
pean as weU as German. ' It is impossible to see in
advance with sufficient clearness the ways of Divine Provi
dence.' (August 13, 1875.) When Miquel maintained
that ' the Une of the Main is no longer a line of separation,
but simply a stopping station at which we draw breath,
as an engine takes in coal and water, in order to proceed
on our route,' Bismarck could reply that ' we aU carry
national union in our hearts ; but for the calculating
statesman the necessary comes first and then the ideally
desirable ... if Germany attains its goal in the nine
teenth century, I should regard that as a great achieve
ment ; if it were reached in ten or five years it would be
something quite extraordinary, an unexpected crowning
gift from God. ... I have always said to the National
Liberals that I look on the matter with a hunter's eyes.
If I lay a bait for game Ido not shoot at the first doe, but
wait until the whole herd is busy feeding.'
Apart from the obligations 1 implied rather than defined
in the Treaty of Prague — which France regarded as a
positive prohibition of complete union — and in the main
tenance of which in all probability she would have the
support of Austria, Bismarck recognised the grave internal
objections and obstacles to union. Dynasticism, Parti
cularism, Radicalism, and Clericalism were very strong in
the south. The Wittelsbach monarchy in Bavaria had a
historic tradition of independence that made its fusion in
a truly Federal Constitution, and its subordination to a
Hohenzollern presidency, virtually impossible in 1867 ;
the Radicals were predominant in Wiirttemberg and the
Clericals very powerful in Bavaria. Representation of
the south in the Reichstag of 1 867 on the basis of universal
1 Article 4 of the Treaty of Prague ran : ' H.M. the Emperor of Austria
. . . also agrees that the German State to the south of this line shall form a
union, the national connection of which with the Northern Confederacy is
reserved for a more defined agreement between both parties, and which if to
maintain an international independent existence.
b. a

242 BISMARCK
suffrage would have made formidable additions to the
National Liberals and Centre parties, and completely
swamped the Conservatives. The Federal Council would
have had an anti-Prussian majority ; and the parhamen
tary situation was sufficiently difficult already, without
sweUing the volume of discontent created by the dis
possession of the dynasties in Hanover, Nassau, and Hesse-
Cassel, and the overbearing efficiency with which the
administrative incorporation of the annexed territories
was being carried out by the Prussian bureaucracy.
French statesmen, it is true, were congratulating them
selves and France that Germany was now definitely split
into three clearly marked divisions — les trois troncons, of
which Rouher spoke — the North, the South, and Austria,
and calculated that aUies could be found south of the Main
and on the Danube. This view of the south was a pure
iUusion, which sprang from an incurable persistence in
interpreting German thought and feeUng in 1867 by the
light of a history that was as dead as Frederick Barbarossa
or Louis xiv. The conditions that had made the policy
of Richelieu and Mazarin, Louvois and ' the dance of the
Louis d'ors,' even of Napoleon 1. and the Confederation
of the Rhine feasible, had vanished by 1848 — never to
return. It was the same fatal prepossession which had
ruined Napoleon's Italian policy ; for it had led him to
suppose that Italy in 1859 could be really carved out into
a north, a centre, and a south, animated by a common
sentiment of Italian Nationalism, but retaining the
dynastic Particularism which could only exist on de
nationalisation propped up by foreign bayonets. At the
Tuileries, in the Corps Legislatif, on the boulevards, and
in the ' estaminets de province,' Wittelsbach pride, the
clerical press, and the Radical critics and caricatures of the
south were regarded as proofs that the red trousers of the
French army would receive a warmer welcome in Bavaria
than the blue uniform with red facings from the north.
Bismarck entertained no such foolish iUusions. The
south he knew was as German as the north. But it was
much more anti-Prussian. It had never come under the
influence of Prussia to the extent that the non-Prussian

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 243
States north of the Main had ; it had not assimUated the
principles and postulates of the Prussian State, which
were repugnant to aU its traditions and outlook on life.
But that repugnance did not involve any readiness to
accept either French culture or political domination, still
less the principles of the Second Empire. Quite the
contrary. A Ludwig of Bavaria, a Prince Hohenlohe, a
von der Pfordten, a Bray, a DoUinger, a Varnbiiler, a Dal-
wigk, the representatives of the various warring parties
— Unionists, Clericals, Radicals, Particularists, Democrats
— that made the south such a tangle of conflicting
aims and such a confusion of discordant voices, carried
beneath their party robes as stout and patriotic German
hearts as any that beat north of the Main. Because they
were such good Germans they were so anti-Prussian, and
had not yet learned to bow the knee in the house of Hohen
zoUern ; they were not ready yet to accept incorporation
on the terms of the North German Confederation, or to be
de-Germanised in order to be baptized by platoons into
Prussianism. Bismarck on his side was decided in his refusal to sacri
fice the assured Prussian hegemony in the north to South
German dynasticism, Clericalism, and Radicalism. Had
he been wiUing in 1866 to risk a war with France and
Austria he would have overcome the external but not the
internal obstacle to unification ; had Germany been vic
torious in such a war, the unification that would have
crowned the victory would have been very different to
the loosely jointed settlement achieved in 1867. But
Bismarck never took unnecessary risks, particularly to
achieve ends not in themselves absolutely urgent. Every
thing therefore pointed to delay ; but a halt imphed that
everything meanwhile must be done by practical administra
tion and cautious diplomacy to improve the conditions that
made for the ultimate acceptance of the Prussian solution
by the south. The chart of the future was studded with
rocks — many of them sunken, many just awash when the
national tide was at its fuU — but Bismarck's navigation was
in the next three years masterly. He had secured the sub
stance in the offensive and defensive military conventions, in

244 BISMARCK
themselves a shattering refutation of the dreams dreamed
at the Tuileries ; the Unitarians must be sedulously
nursed and continuously denied ; the economic bonds
must be tightened into a halter round the neck of the
south ; France and Austria must be carefuUy cherished in
the conviction that union was neither desired nor possible.
The unitarian force of Nationalism could be trusted to
work of itself, all the stronger if it was drenched from
time to time with Prussian cold water. France, not
Prussia, must be represented ¦ as the obstacle to union ;
France which coveted the Bavarian Palatinate, which
threatened Bavaria and Baden because it was the unlawful
occupant of German Alsace and Lorraine. ' You cannot,'
Bismarck said, ' ripen opinion in the south by holding a
lamp under it,' and when Baden, the most Unitarian of the
Southern States, and the friends of Baden in the Reichstag,
repeatedly pleaded for its incorporation with the North
German Confederation, Bismarck put the demand on one
side with courteous firmness. The Treaty of Prague was
against it ; it would be a breach of faith with Napoleon,
whose heart was hard, and it would annoy Bavaria and
Wiirttemberg, who ought not to be annoyed. ' Why,'
he asked, ' skim off the cream, and leave the rest of the
milk to go sour ? '
But, above all, make Prussia strong. The new Prussia
was not ready. She had to be hammered together.
Time was required for the Prussian bureaucracy to Prus
sianise the north, for the General Staff to impose Prussian
organisation on the Federal forces and screw them up to
the Prussian concert pitch, for Germany to accustom
itself to the Prussian praesidium of the Hohenzollern
monarchy, for himself as Federal Chancellor to acquire
the moral prestige over the north that had taken four
hard years from 1862 to 1866 to acquire in Prussia itself.
When the north was reaUy unified — kneaded, moulded,
and hardened by the Prussian leaven — the anti-Prussian
south could be swallowed — perhaps. The damping down
of Junker Particularism, the quarrels with the Kreuz-
zeitung and the Conservatives, the entente with National
Liberalism that disquieted Roon and angered Prince

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 245
Frederick Charles and the fierce militarist Conservatives
of the old guard, were not without their influence on the
south. Bismarck, like other great Conservative leaders,
whose political imagination is as strong as their fidelity
to the essentials of the Conservative creed, had to educate
a party that did not desire to be educated. He had not
strained soul and body beyond endurance to win victories
for Liberalism. He was leading a rebeUious and incredu
lous Junkertum through the wilderness to the promised
land of an assured supremacy. Their faith faltered ; why
not be content with the flesh-pots of the old Prussianism ?
The Junker camp swarmed with Korahs, Dathans and
Abirams. Round the King the malcontents swarmed,
and the King was at heart as Prussian as the most reaction
ary squire from the old March. He showed it by his
resentment at Junker sedition. When Conservatives
behaved as if they were middle-class parliamentary Liberals
William turned his royal back on them at levees, or rated
the rebels in the language of the Prussian War Book.
The strength of German Nationalist feeling was con
vincingly shown in the Luxemburg affair, that came to a
head while the Constitution was stiU on the anvil. The
establishment of the Confederation of the North had
destroyed the legal and political status of the duchy in
the dissolved Bund of 18 15. Napoleon, obsessed with the
pohcy of pourboires, grasped at the opportunity of acquir
ing Luxemburg, hnked by a personal union with HoUand
through the house of Orange-Nassau. Bismarck main
tained throughout that he would acquiesce in the annexa
tion — it would please Napoleon and be no danger to
Prussia — provided that France would settle rapidly with
HoUand and present him with a fait accompli. But he
warned Napoleon that he could not, and would not, on
behalf of the Confederation formaUy guarantee the trans
action beforehand. In the spring of 1867, with the
Constitution unsettled, he had no desire yet to quarrel
with France, but he could not come to the Reichstag and
confess that he had agreed to the cession of what Germany
regarded as German territory. It is probable that this
Une of action was sincere, and that, in presence of a fait

246 BISMARCK
accompli, he could have persuaded the militant Nationahst
Liberals that a war for Luxemburg was unjustifiable and
not worth the cost. But Bismarck forgot that others had
good reason to distrust his sincerity and his methods.
The King of HoUand, in fear of Prussian aggression on
Limburg, was prepared to close with Napoleon, provided
that the contract had been first approved of by Prussia.
He not unnaturaUy was afraid of making a bargain that
Bismarck could easUy employ as an excuse for attacking
HoUand. And Napoleon, on the principle that the supper
with the Devil must have a long spoon, feared a trap, unless
Prussia formaUy consented prior, and not subsequently,
to the agreement with France. The Quai d'Orsay had had
bitter experience of Bismarck's verbal assurances. This
time they would have a bond.
The negotiations were bruited abroad — perhaps deli
berately by the Prussian Foreign Office — and at once the
National Liberals were up in arms. They found solid
support from Prince Frederick Charles and the Conser
vatives ; Nationalist sentiment was no less stirred in
France, and at the commencement of March Bismarck
was faced with the alternative of yielding to French pres
sure or acting with the German Nationalists and defying
France. He insisted that France and Holland had bungled
the business and put him in a position where he had no
choice but to resist. Be that as it may, he extricated him
self with his usual mixture of menace and skill. On
March 19 he published in the official Gazette the secret
miUtary conventions with the Southern States — a plain
warning that France would meet a united Germany if it
came to war over German soil ; and it is practically certain
that Bennigsen's interpeUation of April 1 in the Reichstag
was arranged by Bismarck with the fuU concurrence of
the Conservative party. Bennigsen's fiery oration spoke
out the thought of Germany, and is an instructive object
lesson in the German Nationalism of the Liberals. Bis
marck's reply was a disavowal of the idea that Prussia
would consent to any infringement of German rights,
coupled with the assurance that a pacific solution, honour
able to aU parties, could be found.

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 247
An International Congress at London devised the solu
tion. Luxemburg had its fortifications razed ; the Prus
sian garrison which had occupied it as a Federal fortress
was withdrawn ; and the duchy itself was neutralised
under the guarantees of the great contracting Powers,
signatory to the treaty. The whole affair was another
rebuff to Napoleon — another feather in Bismarck's cap.
Napoleon did not get his pourboire ; French national
feeling was angered at a fresh humiliation, and the secret
miUtary conventions with the south ; German Nationalism
was, if not triumphant, pacified by the influence it had
exercised. It is not surprising that at the Quai d'Orsay
Bismarck's conduct was interpreted in the most sinister
hght. He had lured France on in order to inflict a fresh
rebuff. This man was neither to hold nor to bind — which
was perfectly true. The Franco-Prussian negotiations, in
fact, from July 5, 1866 to June 1867 explain, though they
do not justify, the determination three years later to wring
from the King of Prussia a categorical renunciation of the
HohenzoUern candidature. StiU more significant was the
revelation of passionate feeling in France and Germany,
which an incident far more trifling than Luxemburg
could fire at any moment into an explosion. France felt
she was being steadily ringed with a German girdle that
only war could break ; Germany desired complete union,
and was perpetuaUy reminded that France vetoed it. In
May 1867 a word from Napoleon or from Bismarck would
have brought about war. But in May 1867 Prussia was
not re"ady, and Napoleon was absorbed in the success of the
universal exhibition, which made Paris the carnival of
Europe. Bismarck was in a genial temper. The Prussian Diet
had assigned a large sum of money for rewarding the
Prussian leaders in the victories of 1866, and the King,
very properly, selected his Minister-President for dis
tinction. He desired that the sum assigned (400,000
thalers) should be invested in an estate, perpetuaUy as
sociated ' with the fame of your name and your family.'
Bismarck bought a property at Varzin, in the north of
Pomerania, some five-and-twenty miles from the Baltic

248 ' BISMARCK
coast, and surrounded by the landed aristocracy which
regarded itself as 'vassals of the Margrave of Brandenburg.'
At Varzin he could live the life he loved, the Ufe of great
spaces, swept by the winds across the heather and through
the woods, the Ufe of the manorial lord, hunter, forester,
agriculturist, the dispenser of a seigneurial hospitality in
the old German manner, more interested, his wife pro
nounced, in turnips than politics. Around him, as at
Schonhausen, were the estates of friends and kinsmen —
the men who made the marrow and bone of Prussianism —
and Bismarck flung himself into the task of ordering and
developing his new property, planting trees, f effing timber,
fencing, draining, manuring, sowing, breeding cattle,
creating outlets for his produce, buying in the cheapest,
and seUing in the dearest, market. The infernal toil of the
Wilhelmstrasse, the perpetual audiences with the King,
the daily flow and ebb of telegrams, deputies, ministers,
ambassadors and the grinding pen-work intensified his
passion for blue sky and the fragrance of the pine- woods with
the salt of the Baltic in the north wind. Varzin was a better
reward than the steady drizzle of crosses, stars, and orders,
now descending on him from German kings or foreign
potentates. But even at Varzin after a day on horseback,
or in the" marshes after snipe and woodcock, when the
lights had been extinguished and the household slept, the
lamp in Bismarck's study burned tiU dawn. The great
Pomeranian boarhounds, asleep, but a symbol of Prussia
toujours en vedette, knew that at his desk their master,
freed from the day's routine, was hammering out, through
cigar after cigar, the practical solution of the problems
with which his brain never ceased to wrestle. It was in
these lonely vigils that Schleswig-Holstein was annexed,
Austria overthrown, Napoleon duped and chastised, the
North German Confederation brazed together, the German
Empire made — in the watches of the night that Bismarck
would open his Bible and find the confirmation of his
faith in a Divine Providence and a God Who ordered the
world and chose the instruments of His inscrutable will.
All the world flocked to Paris. The reconciliation of
France and Prussia was apparently sealed by the visit of

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 249
King Wilham and the princes and elders of the Prussian
congregation. The exhibition of 1 867, like the exhibition in
London of 1862 that preceded the American and Austrian
wars, proclaimed to the Europe and the America that had
witnessed Gettysburg and Koniggratz peace and goodwill,
and an era of beneficent rivalry in the unrestrained quality
of trade, commerce, and the arts. Paris has been, since
the history of France began, a matchless creator of life's
greater ironies. It surpassed itself in the summer of 1867,
when Napoleon received his royal and imperial guests with
baUs, dinners, soirees, reviews, the enchantments of the
exhibition, the galaxy of beauty at the Tuileries, fit to
adorn the creative genius of Worth and the Rue de la Paix,
and over all the carnal gaiety of La Grande Duchesse de
Gerolstein, and the intoxicating romp of Offenbach's in
vitation to dance and dance again. ' Let us laugh, let us
sing, and to-morrow we shall die.' What is hfe but an
opera bouffe, the buzz of pleasure-loving insects in a brief
circle of warm sunshine, the grey but rose- tipped dawn, the
splendour of midday, and the annihilating darkness of night ?
What did it matter that Berejowski tried with his pistol to
avenge the wrongs of Poland, that at Queretaro Maximilian
had been shot, that Garibaldi had risen again and been
wounded at Aspromonte, that the French chassepots had
' wrought marvels ' at the Mentana which denied Rome
to Italy and reaffirmed the temporal power of the Papacy,
that men and women were sweated and starved at -Lyons,
and that the ' red international ' was laying the basis of
the commune in the hungry squalor of the faubourgs of
St. Antoine and Belleville ?
With King William came Moltke and Bismarck, ready
for a brief respite between the task of crushing Austria and
crushing France. Moltke, more silent than ever, spied
out the nakedness of the land, and in his morning walks
studied the artillery positions from which this Paris, like
the Florence of Charles viii. only fit to be looked on in
days of holiday, could be bombarded. It was Moltke's
first visit, and he used it to make the next time a memor
able one for himself and the world. Bismarck knew Paris
well. He shrugged his broad shoulders at the hisses of the

250 BISMARCK
patriots in the crowd. ' I am not surprised at my recep
tion,' he remarked ; ' we politicians cannot please every
body.' But for aU that he conquered Paris by his gaUant
readiness to drain to the dregs the cup that Circe daily
brewed for her guests. He walked and dined, drank and
supped, enjoyed the f eerie at the Hotel de ViUe, laughed
at the gala performances of La Grande Duchesse, with its
raiUery of the morals, vanities, pettinesses, and pipe-clay
militarism of the smaU German courts. He danced.
Madame Carette records in her Souvenirs Intimes her waltz
with the Minister-President. ' Deign, madame,' he said,
offering her the rose from his buttonhole, ' to keep this as
a remembrance of the last waltz I shall dance in my life,
and which I shaU not forget.' Nor did he omit to call at
the Quai d'Orsay, and with the barbed frankness of which
he was a master, half in jest, half in earnest, expose the
blunders that France had made in her diplomacy,, and
suggest how the French Foreign Office could have put a
dozen nasty spokes in the Prussian wheels. Marshal
Lebceuf, immortal for his guarantee in 1870 that France
was ready to the last gaiter-button, divined the Prussian
heart when he solemnly conducted Bismarck and Moltke
round VersaiUes. ' Sire,' he related to Napoleon, ' I have
had a terrible day with two men who hate us with a mortal
hatred.' It was so true. But to Paris Bismarck appeared,
as Marshal Vaillant told him, a very human and fascinating
giant. ' Vraiment, c'est un bon bougre. Un gaiUard qui
n'a pas froid aux yeux.' He promised to return — and
soon. Bismarck's next visit to Paris !
A year of patient work foUowed his return, bringing the
new Federal machinery into operation, but principally
occupied with completing the economic union of Germany.
The military conventions when submitted for ratification
to the Parliaments at Munich and Stuttgart provoked
obstinate criticism and opposition. Bismarck promptly
replied with a stroke at a vital and exposed part of the
Southern States. The renewal of the tariff union between
south and north was declared to be dependent on the
acceptance of the conventions. Threatened with eco
nomic ruin the Parliaments sulkily ratified the defensive

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 251
and offensive military agreements. Bismarck now carried
the ZoUverein far beyond the form and scope of the previ
ous organisation. A Tariff Parliament of deputies, chosen
by direct universal suffrage, and a Tariff Federal Council
(Zoll Bundesrat) on the model of the Federal Council of
the north, were created to authorise the economic legis
lation of the future. The first session was held at Berhn
on AprU 27, 1868, and Germany, including Luxemburg,
had now a representative organisation at work, in which
south and north met in common conference for common
German purposes. The economic, hke the military union,
preceded the political by three years.
That first session of the Tariff Parliament was a notable
illustration of the forces at work for and against the main-'
tenance of the divided Germany of 1867. Ardent union
ists north and south of the Main hoped to dovetail into the
Tariff Parliament powers to discuss political business
common to both Germanies. But the proposal to extend
the economic authority of the new organ was defeated by
a narrow majority. The prickly particularism of the dele
gates from the south took its revenge for the coercion
over the miUtary conventions. Bismarck wisely kept
aloof from the debates. But in private he accomplished
much by frank intercourse with friends and critics. The
economic machinery would have its effect in time. The
inevitable union could be floated meanwhile in a flood of
good German Munich beer and Prussian hock, or en
visaged with the eye of faith through the blue clouds of
after-dinner cigars. A fine chance was given him, and he
grasped it at once. Probst, a deputy from Stuttgart,
warned the Parliament against the union of north and
south, since it would involve a war to the knife with
France. Bismarck replied that he could understand and
sympathise with the argument that the south must not be
coerced by the north — when union came, it must be the
free act of both Germanies — but the argument of fear —
as to that, he concluded with vibrating passion and amid
a hurricane of cheers, ' the appeal to fear wiU never find an
echo in German hearts.' It was the note of power struck
on the keyboard of Nationalism. In Bismarck's political

252 BISMARCK
armoury it derived its tremendous force from the person
ality and achievements of the speaker, one who neither
feared nor flattered flesh.
Since 1867 the barometer of Unionism had been steadUy
faffing. Reaction had inevitably set in, and shaUow de
pression after shaUow depression drenched the two
Germanies. The formation of the Southern States in a
separate union, with an independent international exist
ence, had not been established, and there was no likelihood
of its being carried through. The south felt that such a
union would facilitate incorporation with the north on the
terms' of the north ; Bismarck suspected that it would fall
under Austrian control, while Austria feared that it would
be a fresh sphere of Prussian influence, and France that it
would be a fresh obstacle to French ambition. Hohenlohe
summed the matter up : ' The reason why such a federa
tion has not been consummated has hitherto lain in the
purely negative attitude taken by the governments of
Wiirttemberg, Baden, and Hesse, and in the lack of any
sympathy with this idea among the people . . . and if the
Southern Confederation meets with insuperable difficulties
in Wiirttemberg, you will admit that in Baden impossi
bility stares it in the face ' (Memoirs, i. 226 and 395). The
Bavarian feeling was no less strong in its indifference and
in its attachment to Bavarian autonomy. The failure was
aU in Bismarck's favour. The independence of the four
southern States enabled him later (see p. 283) to negotiate
separately with each state and utilise the separate bargains
to compel acceptance of his terms. Had there been a
southern union in 1870, acting as a single unit, it would
have demanded and obtained far more favourable terms
as the condition of entering the Empire.
The real achievement of Prussia after 1 867 — the patient
manipulation of the Bundesrat, the unifying legislation
begun in the Reichstag, the remorseless assimilation of the
annexed provinces by the Prussian civil service, the solid
concrete of -science, research, and pohtical thought laid by
the inteUectuals of National Liberalism and the flower of
the professoriate — was largely concealed from the foreign
public opinion outside the Confederation, which expects

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 253
to discover the soul, thought, and work of a nation in the
columns of the newspapers with which its women light
their stoves and the men their cigars. The entrenched
Philistia of Great Britain, regarding universities as places
where youths learned either to become gentlemen or book
worms, and science as a harmless recreation for literary
institutes or the finger-staining drudgery of the apothe
cary, persisted in regarding the German universities, where
the renaissance of the German mind was being completed,
as centres of dreamy idealism or the dreary laboratories
of an uninteUigible theology. The apostle of sweet
ness and light, Matthew Arnold, writing the classical
reports in which he foretold the coming supremacy of
Germany because, hke the Italian renaissance, it strove to
combine the humanities with science, with 1866 staring
him in the face, believed that the French army in 1870
would smash the Prussian. So potent even on priestly
rebels of the House of Levi are the Idols of the Market
place and of the Tribe. Colonel Stoffel, a tragic Cas
sandra, if ever there was one, for three years warned his
government at Paris of what Prussia was preparing ; but
the men like Marechal Niel, who had divined the truth,
either perished under the surgeon's knife or were impotent.
The Second Empire had justly forfeited the confidence of
thinking and toiling France ; and the ears of the Tuileries
and the Quai d'Orsay were stuffed with clerical wax.
But the lower the barometer feU, the harder, with
Bismarck's knowledge, did the Great General Staff work.
Thanks to the Federal ChanceUor, it was free from the
interference not merely of journalists or irresponsible
politicians but of a Cabinet which had never studied war
or regarded it as an unexpected disease, to be dealt with on
its symptoms when there could be no doubt it had broken
out. To Bismarck there were two certainties, and only
two, in an inscrutable world — the Prussian Crown and the
Prussian Army. The Prussian King was his affair, and on
him, as on the roc her de bronze, the compass of policy could
swing freely in the dirtiest weather. The time of blood
and iron had not passed. It was truer than ever in his
interpretation that the greatest question of the age, the

254 BISMARCK
settlement with France, would not be settled by resolutions
in the Reichstag and the ZoU Parliament, the speeches of
Thiers, or the manufactured plebiscites of the Minister of
the Interior at Paris. The surgery of war was needed to
let the bad blood out in Germany. When some thousands
of Bavarians and Wiirttembergers had faUen beside Prus
sian, Saxon, Hanoverian, and Nassauer, the Empire would
be made. The iron crown of the Imperial Hohenstaufen
would not be picked up in the gutters of Frankfurt or
Berhn — that was the foUy of 1848 and 1866 — but on a
victorious battlefield in France.
The idea of disarmament had been in the air since 1868,
and Daru at Paris, Virchow and the Radicals at Berlin were
playing with it. But Lord Newton in his Life of Lord
Lyons has kindly lifted the blinds for us, and the instructive
episode in which the British government, inspired from
Paris, confidentiaUy invited in the spring of 1870 Prussia
to join in a European disarmament can now be studied in
its entirety. Bismarck maintained a grave courtesy — he
was never gravely courteous with the realities of statecraft
or of hfe — but the admirable essays of Lord Clarendon
must have stirred ' the irreverent merriment ' that he
aUowed himself when English pacifism was proved by the
sale of an ironclad to Prussia and the readiness to sell
another. These exceUent insulars simply did not live in
the world of facts, and Bismarck put them aside with the
soothing firmness that self-control owes to a weU-meaning
but hysterical woman.
Clarendon in 1864 had protested that he desired no
further intercourse with cet homme, sansfoi et sans loi ; he
now appealed to Count Bismarck — ' I am sure that a
statesman so liberal and far-sighted will admit without
regret ' — a sentence the choice of the epithets in which is
delicious. Bismarck replied quietly, ' that he did not dare
even to name the subject of the letter to the King. . . .
Coming from England it would make the worst impression
on him.' He added 'that any weakening of Prussia's
power, any disturbance of the Balance of Power in Europe,
can hardly be for the interest of England ' — and empha
sised the formidable dangers that Prussia had to face from

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 255
France, Austria, Russia, and — a pretty stroke — Denmark.
' I saw,' wrote our ambassador, ' it was useless to pursue
the question further.' In reality it was useless to have
raised it at all.
This is not a case of superior wisdom after the event.
When our Foreign Office suggested that Prussia should
disarm, it was asking Prussia to cease to be the Prussia of
Frederick the Great and Bismarck ; it was further asking
that Prussia and Germany should abandon the ideal of
unification on Bismarckian lines. There was substantial
truth in Bismarck's contention that France was irrecon-
cUably hostile to German ambitions, and that this hostility
made the armed strength of Prussia a first condition of
security, and, though he did not say so, of attaining her end
in defiance of that hostility. If Lord A. Loftus had not
categoricaUy informed our Foreign Office that north and
south would seize the first opportunity of agreement
between the two parties to unite, he was writing, as
Bismarck said in 1862, ' more nonsense to London than I
suspected.' There was as little chance of the government
at Berlin abandoning this ideal of union, as there was of
England renouncing the union with Scotland and Ireland
on the suggestion of Berlin 'in the interest of European
peace and the Balance of Power,' or of the United States
abandoning American unity in 1861 or 1867, because it
suited the aristocrats of Great Britain and Europe. The
suggestion of renunciation was to the German mind an
impertinence which proved English jealousy. Lord Lyons,
OUivier, Daru, Napoleon in., the Empress Eugenie, Thiers,
the young Gambetta, who had leaped into fame over the
proces Baudouin, could all have told Clarendon that
neither the Second Empire nor France would permit the
union of North and South Germany — the establishment
on their frontier of a military empire, controUed by
Bismarck. Had our. Foreign Office informed the Quai
d'Orsay that the condition of disarmament was the accept
ance by France of a German Empire from the Alps to the
Baltic, the reply would have been truly enough that it was
a command to Napoleon to abdicate. We had no answer
to Bismarck's interpolation that he could have settled

256 BISMARCK
with Napoleon by letting him have Belgium and Luxem
burg — Belgium, Palmerston's creation of 1839. From
1867 to 1870 our Foreign Office, hke every other Foreign
Office, was kept in a perpetual fret and fever by Napoleon's
direct and indirect efforts to pave the way for annexing
Belgium, and Belgium did not settle the problem of the
Rhine. Alsace and Lorraine were to all Germans ' un
redeemed Germany ' ; they were to German Nationalism
what 'Rome was to Italian Nationalism. Nothing but
French bayonets and the chassepots of Mentana kept Italy
out of Rome. Nothing but the chassepots kept the French
flag' flying at Strasburg and Metz ; nothing but German
bayonets would get the Germans across the upper Rhine.
If Lord Clarendon did not recognise these plain realities
he and his colleagues at Downing Street were simply de
ceiving themselves. It was easy for a British minister and
British public opinion — the combined expression of a
triumphant Nationalism — to dismiss these distressing
realities as the symptoms of the diseased mind. The
poultice of disarmament did not and could not pluck from
German and French memory a rooted sorrow, and the
idea that it could was neither statesmanship nor even
common sense.
The error went far deeper and much further back into
the history of the European State system. Bismarck could
smother the proposal in a tangle of detail : but the prin
ciple of disarmament cut down to the bone and marrow
of the Prussian State. A progressive disarmament levied
on the European States like a progressive income-tax, with
a super-tax for all exceeding some fixed limit, ignored the
fundamentals of the situation. Was Prussia expected to
give up, or was she not, the law of 18 14 and the reorganised
military system of 1862-66 by which every Prussian male
was required to receive military training ? How could
Prussia ' disarm ' without abandoning this principle ? The
Prussian army of 1867 was simply a scientific organisation
to realise this fundamental of her civic polity, at a minimum
of cost and friction to the civil population and the civil
state. The Prussian State was the outcome of the prin
ciple — Das Folk in Waff en ; the army was not as in Great

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 257
Britain a state mackintosh that could be thrown off in fine,
and rediscovered from the national cupboard for use in
dirty, weather. Yet Great Britain and Europe persisted
in regarding the Prussian army — the Prussian nation in
arms, achieving national aims by force controUed and
directed by the Crown — as a luxury of the monarchy, and
"a dangerous but superfluous tool in the hands of un
scrupulous ministers. The truest reply to the ( secret
dispatch of Lord Clarendon would have been a volume
of select extracts from the memoranda of Frederick
WiUiam 1., the writings of Frederick the Great, the docu
ments of the Prussian reformers— vom Stein, Scharnhorst,
the Humboldts — bound up with the salient passages from
Clausewitz's Vom Kriege, and the correspondence of Moltke
and Bismarck himself.
The evidence for the principles of Prussianism both in
theory and fact had lain open for more than a generation
to aU who cared to study it. Carlyle's Frederick, which
appeared between 1858 and 1865, was a noble and briUiant
contribution to historical Uterature, but the connection
between the Frederick portrayed by Carlyle and the Prussia
of the age of Bismarck was not grasped by the generation
that read Carlyle. The diplomatists of the Clarendon
School, of Cobden and Bright, of Gladstone and Disraeli,
continued to regard the Continent and the European
State system with the eyes of tradition, insularism, or ideal
ism. Yet Bismarck had been there since 185 1. Since
1862 his speeches were reported and his acts were written
out in language unmistakable. The North German
Confederation was there in full daylight, and the Prussian
General Staff and army had proved their principles and
their power to carry them out. Morier in 1868 drew up
for Lord Stanley a memorandum on the German situation,
in which the truth is told with remarkable accuracy. A
few sentences may be quoted here : —
' The motive power we seek resides, of course, in the Chancellor ;
not however in the office, but in the individual Bismarck who at
present fills the office. . . . The Federal Council, after the fashion
of diplomatic congresses, works underground and away from the
light of day . . . hence the work is bonafi.de got through at the
B. R

258 BISMARCK
green table. Under these circumstances, to those acquainted with
the personal prestige of Bismarck, his complete mastery of the
situation in the Federal Council is no matter of surprise. . . . He
is among his Federal compeers facile princeps, not merely in the
higher branches of statesmanship, but as a skilful workman in the
details of administration. . . . Certain it is that no law and no
measure comes out of the Federal Council in any other shape than
that the Federal Chancellor desires . . . The intrinsic vitality of
the national forces as compared with those opposed to them, the
recognition by Bismarck of this fact, and lastly, the accident of the
latter's Wolseyan lust for power ; for the more we penetrate into
the intricacies of the North German Constitution, the more we
become convinced that its whole framework is built up with refer
ence to the exceptional and extraordinary position of the Chan
cellor . . . and to the concentration into his own hands of the vast
administrative power vested in the Federal Chancellor's depart
ment. . . . The government of North Germany is tending daily
to become as much a personal government as that of France. . . .
No man can be a bona fide leader of a great Liberal party without
faith in Liberal principles, and. not one mustard seed of such faith
exists in Count Bismarck's nature.' — (Life of Morier, ii. pp. 103-23.)
Throughout Morier emphasised the secrets of Bismarck's
power — Prussia and Prussianism, and, secondly, National
Liberalism bent on unification. Morier had been for
fifteen years a voice crying in the wilderness. He was
hated and feared by Bismarck because he knew and told
the truth about Prussianism. He was distrusted in
England at the Foreign Office because he told his chiefs
what they did not wish to hear, and had the embarrassing
gift of predicting failures and the reasons for them.
The real problem for the Europe of 1867-70 lay in the
undeniable antithesis between the State as Power, based
on the nation in arms, carrying out a policy in which might
made right, and the State. as Right, striving to base inter
national relations on law, morality, and the conscience of
self-governing democracies. But the problem was neither
solved nor even simplified by a grotesque and unpardonable
ignorance of Germany's avowed ambitions and the sources
from which it drew its strength, or by the supposition that
Germany standing on the threshold of achievement would
listen for one moment to a suggestion of throwing down

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 259
the one weapon by which achievement could be made
good. Bismarck intended to unify Germany and alter not
merely the Balance of Power but rearrange the Continent
on a different system, the capital feature of which would
be a German hegemony controUed by Prussia. In 1868,
when Morier wrote, Moltke on foot had. examined the
Franco-German frontier from end to end. By 1870 the
reorganisation of the Federal forces was practically com
plete ; the strategic railways carried out ; the military
material collected, and mobilisation could be effected
within three weeks or less. France swarmed with German
spies. At Berhn every move in France was watched with'
the eyes of the hunter on his prey. The war with France
was being, as remorselessly prepared as - the war of 1 866
with Austria, and with all the benefit of the experience of
'64 and '66. The Chief of the Staff knew~that it would
probably come on Prussia like a thief in the night. Char
acter, personality, and power of work — these two men,
Bismarck and Moltke, were the quintessence of Prussianism
in the combination of these qualities. And they had at
their disposal a nation brimming with capacity, fired with
the faith that can move mountains, and ready to work
itself to the bone in disciplined toil.
Two other quotations are relevant to the general situa
tion. Lord Lyons wrote to Lord Clarendon on January
30, 1870 :—
' M. OUivier was particularly alive to the importance
of not exposing France to the appearance of being slighted ;
in fact, he would not conceal from me that under present
circumstances a public rebuff from Prussia would be fatal.
" Un echec," he said, " c'est la guerre ! " ' 'I could see,'
wrote Lord A. Loftus on March 12, 1870, ' that Count
Bismarck has no fear of the Russian policy towards Prussia,
so long as the Emperor lives and Prince Gortchakov re
mains minister.'
After 1867 the external and internal situation was dis
quieting and depressing. In Bavaria Prince Hohenlohe,
manfully ¦ striving against the Ultramontanes and the
Particularists to find a form of union which would

260 BISMARCK V
preserve the autonomy of Bavaria, was obliged to resign
(March 7, 1870), and a clerical administration under Bray
took his place. In Wiirttemberg, a stronghold of Radical
ism and the Deutsche Volkspartei, the anti-union oppo
sition was so democratic that the Tsar Alexander n. was
seriously concerned for the throne of his kinsmen at
Stuttgart. In the Reichstag there was much bitter
criticism. Bismarck was so exasperated that he had re
course to his familiar device of tendering his resignation
on the ground that one man could not reconcile the King,
eight ministers, and three Parliaments. But his chief
difficulties were not with the Reichstag but with the irre
concilable dynasticism of the deposed rulers — the Harlo-
verian in particular. The famous ' Reptile Fund ' derived
its name from the sequestration of a part of the royal pro
perty of Hanover to a fund for counteracting Hanoverian-
ism. ' The reptUes must be pursued into their lairs.'
Junkertum was a continuous stumbling-block. Edwin
von Manteuffel, the chief of the military cabinet, was sup
ported by a powerful party as likely to be a much better
ChanceUor. The Memoirs of Stosch and Bernhardi reveal
the under-currents swirling round the monarchy. Bis
marck retorted by attacks on feminine and Enghsh in
fluence. The jackals round the lion yapped, with the
lion's encouragement, in the press controUed by the
Press Bureau and the Reptile Fund.
Foreign policy and the international situation kept
Bismarck very anxious. The irrepressible Beust had trans
ferred his services from Dresden to Vienna. Beust meant
more mischief than Austria was capable of carrying out.
German historians have sedulously built up the theory
that between 1868 and 1870 Prussia was being steadUy
encircled by three hostile states. Hence the comfortable
conclusion that the war with France was a defensive effort
against an offensive assault, anticipated by Prussia and
thrust upon her against her wiU.
In support of this view there are certain undeniable
facts. In the autumn of 1867 Napoleon met the King of
Wiirttemberg at Ulm, the King of Bavaria at Augsburg,
and the Emperor of Austria at Salzburg. Francis Joseph

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 261
returned the visit at Paris. The entente between Austria
and France was, however, confined to after-dinner toasts.
Menabrea in Italy drew up the project of a triple aUiance,
and in 1868 and 1869 there was much discussion between
Vienna, Florence, and Paris. The general belief at Berlin
that an aUiance between France and Italy had been con
cluded was erroneous. AU that Napoleon had on paper
was (September 1869) a letter from Victor Emmanuel and
another from Francis Joseph approving of the idea of com
mon action at some future date. He showed these letters
in July 1870 to the Council at Paris that had war and peace
in its hands, and they profoundly influenced the decision.
The Council afterwards accepted Napoleon's interpretation
— wholly unjustified, as the events proved — that they were
equivalent to a solemn pledge. The visit of General
Le Flo to Petersburg in 1869 caused much perturbation,
but Le F16 discovered that Russia was only interested in the
question of ' revising ' the clauses in the Treaty of 1856
which closed the Black Sea to Russia. Bismarck truly
told Lord A. Loftus that ' he attributed no importance
to the reports of a Franco-Russian entente.' The per
manent difficulty was Rome. Napoleon declined to give
the one guarantee that would secure Italy's enthusiastic
aid — the withdrawal of the French troops from Rome.
The Archduke Albert, the victor of Custozza, visited Paris
in the spring of 1870, and General Lebrun was sent to
Vienna. Schemes of military co-operation were discussed,
but when (June 15) Lebrun left Vienna no formal aUiance
had been drawn up, nor was there a military convention in
existence pledging either France or Austria to combined
action. No mUitary convention with Italy was in exist
ence nor had a formal political aUiance been made. The
danger of the situation lay in the critical position of the
Napoleonic Empire, summed up in Lord Lyons' letter of
May 6, 1870 :—
' It would be quite a mistake to suppose that this is a
moment at which it would be safe to defy France. On
the contrary, a war unmistakably provoked by Prussia
would be hailed by many as a welcome diversion from
internal difficulties. So far as I can judge, Ollivier

262 BISMARCK
is not the man to shrink from one.' (The italics are Lord
Lyons'.) So far, no evidence has been forthcoming to prove that
Italy, Austria, and France had agreed to unite in an attack
on Prussia or the North German Confederation. The
' conspiracy ' to force an offensive war on an unwffiing
Germany had in fact not been made. The justification of
Bismarck's action, wherever it may be placed, cannot rest
on the defined menace of a Triple AUiance, ready to strike
at an agreed hour for agreed objects by agreed and con
certed action.
Bismarck was perfectly weU informed of these facts.
The inteUigence departments of the Foreign Office and
the General Staff did not accept the gossip of diplomatists
and journalists as- the basis of their policy and strategy,
though they utUised it, with much embroidery, in the
newspapers controlled from the Chancery to organise
German public opinion. On the other hand, the evidence ¦
that Bismarck after 1 866 regarded a war witn f ranee as
inevitable and desirableJ^nverwhelming. andhe has cqm-
pEiinHnisis. own Memoirs . AftexJ,Bj6rTrue!!pQhtical task
was to isolate .Exaj^«w»fe>^^r4w4^H=»fVH4~&taflF deTriandedthfP
isolation of the foe as thejconditfojLof a crushing miUtary
decision. "Bismarck started by giving Moltke the neces-,
sary tTriie. For threeyearTnese^mo1a^y*^arn^e^r°down
the"Chauvinists in the Reichstag. For three years the
ChanceUor breathed peace and goodwiU. The argument
for unification through war was clinched by the course
of events in Germany since 1 866. Without war uni
fication was jekherirnpossible or only attainable by puffirig"
the North German Confederation to pieces and recon
structing it to suit the anti-Prussian "feeling of the south.
In the ReichsFag 'mVNational Liberals', foiling at*Tfrirlyirrg
legislation, had not abandoned the principle of achieving
ministerial responsibility and responsible parliamentary
government in a Federal and united Germany. In March
1869 Twesten and the Radical Left demanded the estab
lishment of four responsible Federal ministers — finance,'
war, the navy, and commerce — to sit beside the Federal
ChanceUor as coUeagues, not as the subordinate executive

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 263
heads of Chancery departments. The proposal, which
meant a re-writing of the Federal Constitution, was only
defeated with the help of the Conservatives by seventeen
votes. For three years Bismarck at Berlin and in the soli
tude of Varzin studied Germany and the problem. War
alone would smash down, he concluded and rightly, the
obstinate obstacles to the Prussian solution. So long as
France was there, the south would be reinforced in its
stubborn reluctance to enter the Confederation except on
its own terms; War was necessary also as much to complete
the defeat of Liberalism as to defeat France. In May 1870
Bismarck spoke in the Reichstag of the embogging of the
work of unification in the sand of Particularism, of the
States, and of parties, and of the German right to crush
under a foot of iron every obstacle to the establishment of
the German nation in aU its splendour and power. The
war of 1870 foretold the nadir of Liberalism in Europe.
Russia was in Bismarck's pocket. After 1867 Bismarck's
system of foreign policy pivoted more surely than before
on a close understanding with Petersburg. It is probable
that in 1 866 Russia's acquiescence in the Treaty of Prague
had been secured by an undertaking to permit the revision
of the Treaty of 1856 at a favourable opportunity. It is
certain that Bismarck secured Russia's benevolent neu
trality in 1870 by inviting Russia to denounce the pro
hibitive clauses : and the undertaking had probably been
given in the spring of 1870, if not earlier. Such a denun
ciation would at once put Great Britain out of action ; it
meant that Austria, a signatory to the Treaty of 1856,
and bound by a secret affiance with England and France,
dating from 1856, to resist the revision of the Black Sea
articles by force, would have Russia on her back if she took
action either against Russia or Prussia. Bismarck's refusal
to intervene in the ItaUan problem was not due to in
difference but to calculation. So long as France kept her
troops in Rome a Franco-ItaUan alliance was out of the
question. If circumstances required, Prussia could, as in
1866, buy Italy for a price ; on the other hand, the
increasing volume of opposition to the Vatican Council
in Germany offered the opportunity to gratify German

264 BISMARCK
Protestants and Catholics by breaking with the- Papacy.
Bismarck therefore held his hand.
The neutrahty of Belgium created a powerful lever on
Great Britain. The General Staff at Berlin preferred for
miUtary reasons that Belgium should remain neutral.
When Bismarck published in The Times on July 25, 1870,
Benedetti's damning letter with its crude revelation of
Napoleon's ambitions and proposals, and foUowed it up
by a Prussian guarantee of Belgium's security, he practicaUy
obtained British neutrality. ' Louis ' was certainly going
to pay dearly for his intervention in 1 866.
So far then from Prussia by the spring of 1870 being
hemmed in and isolated, it was France that was hemmed
in. The only alliances Bismarck required were the mUitary
conventions with the south, and these had been secured
in 1 866. Moltke assured him that, humanly speaking, if
a united Germany fought France in a ring fence victory
was certain. The ring fence was practicaUy complete.
It was not enough, however, to hem France in. She
must be either coerced or lured into declaring war. The
war could then be proclaimed a defensive one, on behalf of
German honour, security, and independence. France the
aggressor, pacific Prussia the victim of her vanity and
ambition. This attitude was essential. King William stiU had a
conscience, even if, as Bismarck said in 1869, ' our master
to-day has changed his tune from that in 1862 ; he has
drunk from the chalice of popularity and refuses to break
it.' But the south must be brought in, fired with the
enthusiasm for ' Germany in danger.' Neutral public
opinion must be influenced from the start to tolerate, per
haps demand, the chastisement of France. Bismarck under
stood as weU as Lord Lyons that the Napoleonic Empire
could not stand another rebuff. He knew the men with
whom he had to deal : Napoleon, iU, vacuolating, swayed
by every group in turn ; OUivier, high-minded, weak, and
not master of his cabinet ; the reckless Due de Gramont,
ultramontane to his finger-tips,, who replaced the cool-
headed Daru in May ; behind them the Empress and the
clerical camariUa, and in Paris the boulevard patriotism

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 265
de cafe-concert, vain, ignorant, the dupe of its government
and. itself.
Spain- could complete the isolation of France. Cer
tainly Bismarck's luck was extraordinary, for just when
Prussia needed a revolution the Spaniards obligingly pro
vided one. In 1868 Queen IsabeUa abdicated. The
Spanish throne was vacant. WKo-was to fill it ?
The complete story of the HohenzoUern candidature
has never been told. It probably never will, for the secret
may be concealed in the archives of Friedrichsruhe, but
more probably was buried with Bismarck. But the main
points are clear, and they conclusively contradict the Prus
sian version accepted for a decade because the refutation was
not available. Whether Prim and Salazar started the idea
of placing Leopold or Frederick of Hohenzollern-Sigmar-
ingen, the elder or the third son of Anthony of Hohen
zoUern, and the brothers of Charles, ruler in Roumania,
or whether the idea was inspired by Bismarck, is of historical
interest but not of political importance. We know now
that in February 1869 Villanueva came from Spain to
Berlin and had a long interview with the ChanceUor ; in
March Th. von Bernhardi left for a special mission to
Spain; in September 1869 Salazar was introduced by
Werthern, the Prussian minister at Munich, to Prince
Anthony, and suggested the throne for Prince Leopold ; in
February 1 870 Salazar returned and pressed the candidature
on King William and Prince Anthony, who were not favour
able to the idea ; Bismarck on February 27 drew up a
confidential report in which he strongly supported the
proposal ; on March 15 a Council was held at which Moltke,
Roon, Schleinitz, Thile, Delbriick, Bismarck, the King,
and Prince Anthony and Leopold were present ; at this
Council Delbriick asked Moltke ' Are we ready if Napoleon
takes it ill ? ' and Moltke simply nodded ; the Hohen-
zoUerns hesitated, attracted by the prospects, repelled by
the dangers of so ambitious a stroke ; Bismarck sent Lothar
Bucher and Major Versen on a secret mission to Spain in
April; to Prince Anthony's deep regret, neither of his avail
able sons would accept ; the affair which seemed to be closed
was renewed in May as the result of Bucher and Versen's

266 BISMARCK
mission, and thanks to a second mission of Bucher's, and
Salazar's importunity, supported by Bismarck's persistent
pressure, Prince Leopold finaUy consented probably by the
end of May, definitely on June 19 ; and, lastly, on June 21,
' after a hard struggle,' King William also consented. So
far the matter had been kept a profound secret. Olozaga,
the Spanish minister at Paris, was quite in the dark ; Prim,
however, instead of carrying the business through and
presenting Europe with a fait accompli, as Bismarck pro
bably intended and Salazar expected, prorogued the
Cortes till October 31. He seems to have lost his nerve at
this point, and to have hoped to talk Napoleon over during
the summer at Vichy. But the secret was either betrayed
or deliberately let out, and on July 3 was definitively
known at Paris.
Bismarck was perfectly well aware that France would
not accept the Hohenzollern candidature. The King of
Roumania duly noted in his diary the certainty of French
opposition, as far back as December 9, 1868, and on the
mere rumour of such a candidature in 1869 Napoleon
(May 1 1) had sent Benedetti to Bismarck to indicate the
attitude of the French government. It is certain that
Bismarck intended to fling down a chaUenge to France,
and that in procuring the acceptance of the candidature by
his sovereign he was deliberately provoking a European war.
The argument that a HohenzoUern prince at Madrid would
drop his Germanism and become a Spaniard when he
crossed the Pyrenees is worthless, and recent events in the
Near East confirm its worthlessness. Bismarck himself can
be put in the witness-box. In his report of February 27
he argued that among many advantages that acceptance
of the Spanish throne would bring — the prestige of the
HohenzoIIerns elevated like the Habsburgs to a European
position, the strengthening of the monarchical principle,
the commercial concessions for German trade (as in Rou
mania) — the mUitary aspect was of great importance : —
' If Germany and France were at war,' he wrote, ' and
the position was that under IsabeUa, and if on the other
hand a government in sympathy with Germany existed,
the difference for us between these two situations may be

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 267
calculated at one to two army corps. In the former,
French troops would be released by Spain and be available
against Germany; in the latter, France would have to
detach an army corps to the (Spanish) frontier.'
In a word, Spain would complete the isolation of France
and open the Mediterranean to Germany. It was a case
of double or quits. If France acquiesced, Spain became
a HohenzoUern satrapy, possibly an aUy in a future war ; if
she refused, she must make the candidature a casus belli,
and force war on Prussia.
' Bismarck's contention that the whole matter was a pure
family and dynastic matter is belied by his conduct and
arguments. If so, why all the secrecy ? Why was it
necessary to discuss a pure family affair of a cadet branch
of the HohenzoUerns at a Prussian Council, at which it was
requisite to include the Federal ChanceUor, the Chief of
the General Staff, the Minister of War, the Director of the
Federal Chancery, and the Under-Secretary of the Foreign
Department ? In Bismarck's confidential report the
candidature was^rgued on grounds of high policy in which
the interests of Germany and Prussia were deeply con
cerned, and refusal of the offer was represented to be
politically detrimental to Germany. Bismarck repeatedly
asserted that he had no locus standi officiaUy to advise the
King in a dynastic concern. Yet for twelve months he
had used all his authority and power as Chancellor and
Minister-President to press Prince Anthony and his sove
reign to accept. Bismarck's denial of knowledge of the
affair was a lie. In what capacity did he receive ViUanueva,
send Bernhardi, Bucher, and Versen to Spain, and corre
spond with the Crown Prince on the subject ? The
original introduction of Salazar to Prince Anthony was
made by Werthern, certainly with Bismarck's consent and
probably at his instigation. Men in the diplomatic ser
vice were broken by Bismarck for implicating the govern
ment, without the Chancellor's authority, in a policy
that committed Prussia. Werthern would not have dared
to do what he did, unless he desired to be treated as
Arnim was later.
Bismarck's conduct throughout the affair, was com-

268 ' BISMARCK
petent, dictatorial, and absolutely unscrupulous, and his
behaviour was indicated in the letter, taken by Bucher to
Spain on June n, the authenticity of which can be
accepted. He would maintain that officiaUy he was not
concerned. Why should the Spaniards not offer the crown
to any one they pleased ? Accordingly, he retired to
Varzin on April 14, and stayed there till May 21. Until
June 8 he was in Berlin and then retired to Varzin to be
^ out of the way, whea ' the Spanish bomb ' burst, and
stayed there till July 12. King WUliam went for a cure
to Ems; and . the HohenzoUerns of Sigmaringen were
,-at their country-house. Thile as under-secretary could
therefore reply to French questions that ' the Prussian
government was absolutely ignorant of this affair, which
did not exist for it.' Thile who had been present at the
Council of March 15 !
It is unnecessary to relate in detail the oft-told dramatic
story of the French government's action when the news
of the candidature became known. From July 3 onwards
French public opinion was in a fever of excitement and
indignation. The government recognised the chaUenge.
By sending Benedetti direct^to King WilUam at Ems they
succeeded in stripping the candidature of its family char
acter. They deliberately fixed the responsibihty on
Prussia, and^ on July 1 2, when Prince Anthony renounced
the candidature, ?with King William's acquiescence,
France had won a striking diplomatic success. King
WiUiam, indeed, confessed that the renunciation removed
.a load of stone from his heart. The French government
feared, however, that Prince Leopold might imitate his
brother Prince Charles in 1866 in the Roumanian affair, re
pudiate his father, and go to Spain. The Due de Gramont
and OUivier knew the character of the Prussian government
and of Bismarck, and were determined to stroke the t's and
dot the i's of the renunciation ; they aimed at inflictirig a
personal as well as a: political humiliation on the Hohen
zollern sovereign and his minister. Like 'a weak man
Gramont did not know where to stop. His insistence
that King William must give a guarantee that the candi
dature would not be renewed, was made on his own re-

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 269
sponsibUity without communication to the Prime Minister,
or the Council of State, or, apparently, Napoleon-himself.
King WiUiam, who had behaved correctly so far, and was
convinced that his acquiescence in the renunciation closed
the whole episode, naturaUy resented the French demand
as an insinuation against his royal good faith and as a deli
berate attempt to pick a quarrel with Prussia. The
message through an aide-de-camp that the incident was
closed, and that he had nothing farther to say, was some
what curt but unobjectionable. It was not insulting nor
intended to be an insult. Gramont had 'by his foUy
pledged France ; much worse, he had giveri Bismarck his
chance. By July 12 Bismarck was very depressed. For the first
time he had been worsted before Europe in a grave affair
of diplomacy ; and it is clear that he had not anticipated
the French success in terrifying Prince Anthony into a re
nunciation. The game as he had intended to play it had
broken down completely. He now had neither a defen
sive war nor the candidature. Public opinion both in
Paris and Germany was very excited, but had the French
government taken a strong and cool line on the 12th of
July, informed France that as the result of French action
the candidature was at an end, that the King of Prussia
acquiesced in the renunciation, and that his royal words
and pacific disposition could be trusted, it is difficult to see
what Bismarck could have done. The Due de Gramont's
irresponsible and criminal levity ruined a great success; '
But it is impossible to acquit OUivier, the Prime Minister,
of culpable neghgence, indecision, and weakness. A close
examination of the evidence leaves an indelible impression
that OUivier wavered between several and contradictory
lines of action, and did not supervise the action of the
Foreign Office as he should have dontet Gramont and
OUivier enabled Bismarck to represent France as insulted..
The French government had now either to'sit down under
the insult or force a war in vindication of French honour. ,
The. famous ' dispatch from Ems ' 1 which brought
1 Late in life Bismarck remarked to Harden, the,editor of Die Zukunft, who
printed it in his paper : 'It is very easy, without falsification, but simply by

270 BISMARCK
' about the final rupture was neither a falsification nor a
forgery. The King left to Bismarck's discretion the re
sponsibility of publishing his intimation to Benedetti tftat
he had nothing further to communicate. Bismarck saw
Gortschakov on July 12 at Berlin, and probably then and
there ratified Russia's benevolent neutrality in the case of
war by agreeing to the denunciation of the prohibitive
clauses in the Treaty of 1856 at a favourable opportunity ;'
he was searching with ferocious earnestness for the oppor
tunity to reopen the issues between France and Prussia,
and drive France into war. The edited version of the
King's narrative which he authorised for publication was
a brutalised and provocative message, true in the bare
facts, -but so worded as to convey a whoUy different con
struction ; it was deliberately intended to be ' a red flag
for the Gallic Bull.' The Bismarckian version gladdened
the gloomy hearts of Roon and Moltke at that memorable
meal on the night of July 13. This meant the war for
which they had prayed and worked. Roon said : ' Our
God of old lives still and will not let us perish in disgrace.'
Moltke smote his hand upon his breast and said : ' If I
may only live to lead our armies in such a war, then the devU
may come directly afterwards and fetch away the old car
case.' That night Bismarck said his prayers with unusual
fervency. On July 14 Germany was singing ' Die Wacht
am Rhein ! ' At Paris delirious crowds on the boulevards
were drying ' A Berlin ! ' On July 15 King William issued
the order for general mobilisation. On July 19 France
declared war.1
Bismarck had won. The British offer of mediation
(July 17) was politely but firmly rejected. France was
isolated. Beust and Victor Emmanuel's efforts to settle
omissions and corrections, completely to alter the tone of a communication. I
have myself once had experience of the task, as editor of the Ems dispatch . . .
when by omissions and compressions I had edited it, Moltke exclaimed : " The
original was an order to retreat (chamade), now it is a summons to charge
(fanfare')" * The text of the King's message and the version, as edited by
Bismarck and sent officially for publication and to all the Prussian diplomatic
representatives, is printed in an Appendix (p. 496), where the exact character
of the ' editing ' can be textually established by every reader for himself.
1 The famous cartoon in Punch (July 30), one of Tenniel's best, in which
the great Napoleon warned Napoleon in. to halt — ' Beware ! ' — published before
the German victories bore the warning out, was a prophecy tragically true.

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 271
the ItaUan problem, with a view to armed mediation and
subsequent active intervention on the side of France, broke
down between July 1 9 and August 2. Even at the eleventh
hour and in the extreme peril of the situation Napoleon
could not, or more probably was not allowed to, bring him
self to renounce Rome. He wavered, consented, and then
¦withdrew his consent. By August 6 the German victories
made the intervention of Austria and Italy or a Triple
Alliance too dangerous to be seriously entertained further.
Bismarck's - pohtical strategy, as in 1866, had given the
German army its chance ; and the soldiers justified his
confidence. Roon told King William on July 15 that
mobUisation was easy, for everything was ready. Marshal
Lebceuf had said the same at St. Cloud. Leboauf 's assertion
was an ignorant boast, Roon's a summary of three years'
relentless preparation. The German mihtary machine
worked with marvellous precision. After July 15 Moltke
could find time to read French novels, until the troops
had reached their appointed stations, when he left Berlin
with his sovereign for Worth, Spicheren, Mars-la-Tour,
St. Privat, Sedan, and Paris.
Bismarck traveUed with General Headquarters through
out the campaign ; his sons were serving in the army and
took part in the desperate battles round Metz ; he himself
was present at Sedan, and there at the weaver's cottage on
the Donchery road, on the morning of September 2, he
met Napoleon. ' An emphatic contrast,' he wrote to his
wife on September 3, ' with our last meeting in '67 at the
Tuileries. Our conversation was "difficult, although I did
not wish to recaU things which would painfuUy affect the
man struck down by God's mighty hand . . . yesterday
and the day before lost France 100,000 men and an
Emperor.' By October 5 Headquarters reached Versailles,
and Bismarck resided in the Rue de Provence till March 6,
1871 — VersaiUes he had last visited with General Lebceuf.
From the declaration of war to the ratification of the
Peace of Frankfurt, May 10, 1871, he was overwhelmed
with work ; and, as in 1866, the strain imposed on his health
and, nerves by the continuous negotiations, the relations
with the European neutrals, the necessity of keeping in close

272 BISMARCK
touch with developments and public opinion in Germany,
and the perpetual crisis created by the war and the military
operations, caused an excessive irritabUity, aggravated by
frequent bursts of violent anger. ' The official files,' he
wrote to his wife, ' make a pile higher than my head.'
' Dead tired as he is,' noted Abeken, ' he cannot sleep.'
Every one from the King downwards had to endure his
dictatorial temper, his explosions of wrath, and his rasping
tongue, with its vivid, direct, unsparing, and bitter
phrases. He was endured, because he was indispensable.
His experience, prestige, inexhaustible resources, and
amazing powers of work, the lucid grip on general prin
ciples and the mastery of detail, the personahty and the
temperament of genius, made him unique. There was
only one Bismarck, and there were no three men at Head
quarters or elsewhere in Germany who could combine his
gifts and his qualities. ' The Bismarck touch ' was re
vealed in the ten months that followed July 19, 1870, not
once but fifty times. In truth, these Prussians, leaders
and subordinates ahke, were an iron race, tough of skin,
lavish in aU the relations of hfe of a stern brutality, and a
fuU-blooded and unrestrained force, and meting out to each
other no little of the militarist and graceless arrogance that
defeated France had to endure. They were the victors,
and they took care to let Europe as well as France feel it.
Through aU the events that make the history of these
months so tragic for France, so intoxicating for Ger
many, so humiliating for Europe, there rings the gospel of
the conqueror's sword. For pity, generosity, sympathy
you wUl look ki vain. The appeal is always to force.
German power had brought the German armies to Paris
— to Babylon — and Babylon was about to faU. Power was
the one and only convincing argument, and Germany had
it. No one else had.
From the commencement to the end of the war Bis
marck's relations with the soldier-chiefs were more sharply
strained than they had been in 1866. The soldiers — ' the
demi-gods,' as Bismarck caUed them — would gladly have
left him behind at Berlin ; his continuous presence at Head
quarters, his ' interference ' with the military direction and

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 273
decisions, his acrid criticisms, and his insistence on accurate
and complete information on all military matters, stirred
professional jealousy and the deepest personal resentments.
The war was a soldier's business ; and the generals wished
to make a military peace. ' It was a shame,' said E. von
Manteuffel, ' that a mere politician should have more
influence than a general.' And the soldiers did their best
to ignore the civilian, an attitude which simply infuriated
Bismarck. General Headquarters was a camp of con
tinuous strife. Bismarck quarreUed with every one from
the Crown Prince downwards, and with Moltke at Ver
saiUes it came to an open breach, which the Crown Prince
failed to close. ' I airi the military adviser of the King,'
Moltke said coldly, ' and I have no other duty to fulfil ;
I will not permit the decisions of Count Bismarck to lead
me into error.' Bismarck has laid down in his Memoirs his
general theory of the relations of policy and strategy — of
the civU and military powers in war — which is difficult to
refute : —
' The object of war is to conquer peace under conditions
which are conformable to the policy pursued by the State. To fix
and limit the objects to be attained by the war, and to advise the
monarch in respect of them, is and remains during the war, just
as before it, a political function, and the manner in which these
questions are solved cannot be without influence on the method
of conducting the war. . . . Still more difficult in the same hne.
is it to judge whether and with what motives the neutral Powers
might be inclined to assist the adversary, in the first instance
diplomatically, and eventually by armed force. . . . But, above
all, is the difficulty of deciding when the right moment has come
for introducing the transition from war to peace ; for this pur
pose are needed knowledge of the European conditions, which
is not apt to be familiar to the military element, and political
information which cannot be accessible to it. The negotiations
in 1866 show that the question of war or peace always belongs,
even in war, to the responsible political minister, and cannot be
decided by the technical military leaders.' — (Reminiscences, ii. 198.)
But in this argument, which practically identifies the
civU power with himself, Bismarck ignores two important
points. The decision, in a personal monarchy, lay with

274 BISMARCK
the sovereign, who held the supreme command of the army.
King WiUiam was the military and civU power in one, and
as a soldier was likely to be profoundly influenced by purely
military considerations. Secondly, the soldiers disputed the
soundness of Bismarck's mihtary judgments. Moltke was
not prepared to admit that the Federal ChanceUor's opinion
should overrule the considered advice of the responsible;
Chief of the Staff. The admission would have reduced
the Chief of the Staff to subordinate office in the Federal
Chancery. He claimed, and not unjustly, that the success
ful conduct of the war frequently required policy to adapt
itself to the mihtary needs rather than strategy to adapt
itself to policy ; the interpretation of the mUitary situa
tion he declined to surrender to any civUian, or indeed
to any soldier other than himself. So long as the King
kept him at his post, Moltke categoricaUy refused to aUow
Bismarck to be both Federal ChanceUor and Chief of the
Staff. He gave Bismarck to understand that interference
would be resisted and then ignored. Supported by aU
the generals, he met Bismarck's outbursts with an impene
trable sUence. Moltke had a dignity and self-control
extraordinarUy disconcerting. He was the one man in
Germany whom Bismarck could neither frighten, hustle,
cajole, or ruin. Bismarck's wrath arose from recognition
of this, and from the bitter knowledge that the King so
often decided for Moltke and against the ChanceUor.
In the conduct of war and the making of peace recon
ciliation of strategy with policy is the most difficult of aU
tasks for the civil power. The eight months from July 19,
1870, to March 6, 1871, furnish the student of the Higher
Command in the sphere of policy with ample material in
the complexity and comprehensiveness of the problem.
As a training in the sifting and appreciation of evidence,
and in the synthetic construction of a fluctuating European
situation, influenced by the military position, and reacting
upon it ; in the function of history to provide a scientific
criticism of life — its ends, its values, and the methods for
realising the. purposes of organised and self-conscious
political communities — the Franco-German war is unsur
passable in the period from 18 15 to 1878.

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 275
The intrinsic difficulties of war and peace were aggra
vated by two different sets of circumstances. Had it
simply been a war and peace between Prussia and a stable
Second Empire, the task would have been formidable
enough. But the war and the peace were to make a
unified Germany, and irrevocably to solve the German
problem ; they were to close one great chapter and settle
the form and contents of another, in advance. Unification
was to be the consummation of victory. No other result
would justify the war in Bismarck's judgment. What kind
of France, therefore, did German unification require ?
Everything turned on the answer to that question.
The coUapse of the Second Empire, and the establish
ment on September 4, after Sedan, of a provisional
government of National Defence, reduced the political
and miUtary situation to a bewUdering flux. Where was
France — at Paris, Metz, or Bordeaux ? It was as difficult
, to find as ' the Europe ' which Thiers sought. What was the
government of National Defence ? With whom was peace to
be made ? Where in France could be found the guarantees,
who could give them, and what were they worth when
given ? The comphcations grew worse with every month,
until they culminated in the struggle between the National
government and the Commune. The tortuous deahngs
with Bazaine, the sinister episode of Regnier, the negotia
tions with Chislehurst, with Jules Favre at Ferrieres, with
Boyer, with the Comte de Chambord, with Thiers, the inter
position of Gambetta, and the establishment of the National
Assembly at Bordeaux, make a paraUel column on the page,
side by side with which the military events make another
column, and the European situation a third. The three
columns had to be daily written up, weighed and harmon
ised at General Headquarters— and all the time Germany,
pressed by Bismarck, was writing a fourth column of greater
importance than the other three in its decisive influence
on the future. It is not surprising that in the Rue de
Provence and in the H6tel des Reservoirs at Versailles
a tense irritabiUty prevaUed, and that these Prussians
quarreUed with each other almost as fiercely as with the
French. But Bismarck's luck was extraordinary. Had

276 BISMARCK
Bazaine with 170,000 of France's finest troops at Metz
fought like Colonel Denfort and the handful of heroes at
Belfort to the last cartridge, man, and horse, France cer
tainly would have obtained a reasonable peace. The
Place Belfort at Paris with its unconquered Lion facing to
the east and the simphcity of the inscription, ' A la defense
nationale ! ' is illuminated to aU time by the Due d' Aumale's
cry at Bazaine's trial — ' Mais il y avait la France ! '
Bazaine betrayed France. He deserved a monument in
the Sieges AUee at Berlin.
Metz surrendered on October 27. The surrender
settled the fate of the armies of the Loire and of Paris.
On October 31 Gortschakov issued the note in which
Russia formaUy declared that the neutrahty of the Black
Sea, defiried in the Treaty of 1856, no longer existed.
' Idiots ! ' Bismarck exclaimed, ' they have begun four
weeks too soon.' But Gortschakov was neither so foolish
nor so vain as Bismarck would have us believe, either in
that or any other transaction. He knew his Bismarck.
He was not going to wait until the war was over, and his
former pupil, with a treaty of peace in his pocket, could
take an unembarrassed part in the Near Eastern question,
and consider whether British and Austrian amity were not
worth more than a pledge to Russia. We may be quite
sure that Bismarck on July 12 had given no undertaking
in writing. The understanding was purely verbal, and
verbal pledges from Bismarck without corroboration were
as difficult to prove as verbal offers of marriage without an
engagement ring. The King of Prussia, the Reichstag, and
German historians could always be trusted to accept, in a
conflict of personal evidence, the word of a German Chan
cellor against aU the words of all the statesmen in the
world. When Bismarck lied, he lied as advised by one of
the greatest of his countrymen — Luther. He lied fortiter,
like a hero.
In reality Gortschakov's bomb burst at the happiest
moment for Bismarck. Austria and Great Britain, con
sidering with their hearts in their boots whether they could
intervene in the west without being publicly insulted or
of being drawn into a war, which they were determined

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 277
to avoid at all costs, were now flung into a whirlpool of
their own, from which it took them three months to ex
tricate themselves with such bedraggled dignity as accept
ance of the Russian ultimatum permitted. The Congress
of London accomplished the reconciliation of two contra
dictory propositions (March 13, 1871). It declared that
a solemn treaty, to which the European Powers were
signatories, could only be altered by and with the consent
of the signatories, and it registered in the Protocol the
successful violation of that principle by Russia. By the
time the Congress met (January 17) to insert the diplo
matic and juristic patch in the document, torn up by
Russia, the German Empire was made and the preliminaries
of peace were practically settled. King William spoke the
truth in his letter to the Tsar, when he emphasised his
own and Germany's gratitude for Russia's invaluable ser-
-vices. Public opinion in England was hopelessly divided
between admiration for Germany, pity for France, con
tempt for the fallen Second Empire and determination to
remain neutral, i.e. the right to condemn both parties
without reserve, and the love of peace that is based on
military impotence. Carlyle's notable letter to The Times
did great service to the German cause. It is not sur
prising that Bismarck was not afraid of serious interven
tion from Great Britain and Austria. He could reply as
the friend of William the Silent replied, when he tested
his dagger on a protocol : ' I wish to see what steel can
do against parchment.'
To the making of peace Bismarck brought four fixed
principles : serious negotiations with any authority in
France that would grant his terms ; no submission of the
terms to a European Congress ; the impotence of France
for a generation to undo the settlement ; the foundation
of German unification on the impotence of France. A
France so bled and mutilated as to be an irreconcilable
enemy, and condemned to stare ' hypnotised at the gap in
the Vosges,' would be an incontrovertible argument for the
continuance of the Empire in arms. What Germany had
taken by force, she could only keep henceforth by force.
National sentiment and pride, and the perpetual danger

278 BISMARCK
would prevent Prussia from ' faffing asleep ' as she did
after 1786 ' on the laurels ' of victory.
The evidence is sound that the first victories decided
Bismarck's intentions to annex Alsace and Lorraine, gUt-'
edged by a swinging indemnity. Where exactly the
frontier line would be drawn would be determined by the
extent of the victories and the advice of the mUitary
experts. Throughout the prolonged negotiations he
never wavered from these two conditions— the indemnity
ancj the annexations. After 187 1 Bismarck 'confessed''
more than once that the soldiers were responsible for the
retention of Metz, and that he himself would have been
content with Alsace and a strip of ' German ' Lorraine.
The sincerity of such obiter dicta is more than questionabh^
The contemporary evidence of 1 870-1 points to a whoUy"
different conclusion. Bismarck' was just as remorseless
as the most truculent mUitarist at Headquarters. His
insistence on the bombardment of Paris, his scorn at ' the
English catchwords of humanity and civUisation,' his
jeers at the sufferings of the civil population and the
children in Paris, the dinner-table ridicule of the appeals
and tears of Favre and Thiers — by these and fifty other
similar self-revealing acts recorded and gloated over by
Busch and the jackals of the back-stairs, he proved that he
neither wished nor intended to be generous. Generosity
would have been an unpardonable weakness. Behind the
impressive record of achievement lies an unforgettable
chronicle of envenomed pettiness and coarse brutality, and
the pitiable part of it is that Bismarck was unaware of the
depths to which he could sink ; and that the Germany of
Bismarck's Chancellorship could read and approve — even
praise — the qualities and traits revealed in these intimate
and degrading chronicles.
It is more probable that he agreed with the criticism
of the Junkers on his foUy in not insisting on taking
Belfort as weU as Metz and Strasburg. His remark that
had Thiers been the minister of an historic monarchy
France would have obtained easier terms, is iUuminating,
but not convincing. In any case, he utilised to the full
the terrible dislocation which the demoralised and demo-

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 279
ralising Second Empire had inflicted on France. Every
twist that the screw could drive home was utihsed to the
fuU. Napoleon, Bourbonism, Orleanism, repubhcanism.
anarchy, the inexorability of Moltke and his sovereign, the
national demand in Germany, the impotence of Great
Britain and Austria, the connivance of Russia, were all in
turn or together pressed on the unhappy French nego_-
tiators. Thiers and Favre had also frequently to suffer
"for the shghts and jealousies of ' the demi-gods ' ; because
Bismarck had lost his temper with the Crown Prince, or
was exasperated at the obstinacy of Wiirttemberg, or the
insolence of Bavaria in the concurrent negotiations for the
unification of Germany. In his hatred and contempt of
France ^Bismarck was the incarnation of Prussia's stored-
-up passion. The prehminaries of VersaiUes and the Peace
of Frankfurt — the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, with
Strasburg and Metz, worth in Moltke's judgment two
army corps and an unrivaUed place d'armes as a pivot for'a'
future offensive, the indemnity of .£200,000,000 and the
occupation of French territory at French cost tiU the- last
franc had been paid, together with the guarantee that
France would always accord to Germany ' the most
favoured nation ' privilege in her tariffs — were the begin
ning of a new Europe.
It is idle to argue the thesis that Bismarck by another
kind of peace could have reconciled France in a few years
no less effectively than he reeoncUed Austria, and that
such a reconciliation in the twenty years that foUowed
1 87 1 would have enabled him to isolate Great Britain as
completely as the most ardent champion of German Welt-
macht could have desired. The ' might have beens ' of
history are only valuable as a help to an interpretation of
the actual. The thesis presupposes a wholly different
Bismarck, and a whoUy different evolution of Germany
since 1 815. Ranke's verdict that the war of 1870 was not
a war with Napoleon in. but with Louis xiv. was the
verdict of every German. There is every reason to
conclude that if the National Liberals had established
a constitutional monarchy and responsible parliamentary
government in 1866 they would have exacted from France

280 BISMARCK
in 1 87 1 terms as severe as those imposed by the prelimi
naries of Versailles. Bismarck correctly maintained that
for the German armies or himself to return to an Imperial
Reichstag without Alsace and Lorraine was impossible.
The annexations were the ' liberation ' of German terri
tories wrested from a divided Empire in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, and without them the new Empire
could not be made. It was not the terms, but the use
made of them, which differentiated Bismarck from the
National Liberals. With the exception of the tiny hand
ful of Socialist Democrats, represented by the two votes
of Bebel and Liebknecht in the Reichstag, every German
man and woman believed that Sedan was the judgment
of God (Gottesgericht), and that but for God and the
German armies Napoleon would have come to Berlin,
annexed the left bank of the Rhine, broken up the 'North
German Confederation, reversed the verdict of 1866, and
thrown back German unification for a century, perhaps
for ever. Moreover, every German man and woman was
convinced in 1870 that to Teutonic civUisation, and not to
the decadent Latin races, belonged the future and the
trusteeship of the higher humanism. Renan's La Rk-
forme intellectuelle et morale de la France and the two letters
to Strauss with their dignified exposition of the qualities
of the French mind and their subtle indictment of the
Teutonic Gospel of Nationalism were as unintelligible to
the German mind, as was their style unapproachable by
any German pen. ' Ce qui nous a manque, ce n'est pas
le cceur,' Renan summed up, ' c'est la t£te.' In the differ
ence between Renan's Letters and Treitschke's pamphlet
What we require from France was concentrated the whole
bitter controversy.
It was easier to make peace than to make the Empire.
The Unitarians had to decide what was to be the form of
the new imperial organisation ; how and by what procedure
it was to be brought about, and by whom ? Was there to
be an Emperor (Kaiser), and if so of what ? What was to
be the Empire (Reich) ? Were the Southern States to be
invited to enter the North German Confederation, and on
what terms ? or was the Northern Confederation to wait for

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 281
the request from the south'? From whom was the initial
request to come, and to whom ? How could Bavarian and
Wiirttemberg ' independence ' be reconciled with the
Praesidium of Prussia and the unity of control in policy and
executive administration ? Or was it desirable to scrap
the Constitution of 1867 and make a whoUy new one,
federal or unitary ? By whom was unification to be
made ? By the King of Prussia direct on his own initiative,
or by the German' princes in solemn congress, or by the
German peoples in a second constituent Parliament at
Frankfurt, Berlin, or even Versailles ? Hard questions,
indeed. So contradictory were the various views of war
ring parties in Germany, so sharp the clash of conflicting
ambitions at mUitary headquarters, so inextricably inter
twined were political principles with personal feeling and
petty intrigues, so entangled was the German problem
with the question of peace with France, that Roon in the
retirement where he mourned the death of his soldier
son felt that not even Bismarck would be able to thread
the labyrinth and reach dayhght.
The south had swung into line on July 19 with im
pressive unanimity. Bavarians, Wiirttembergers, Hessians
and Badeners had fought as fiercely as Prussian, Saxon, or
Hanoverian. Bismarck at Headquarters, watching with
anxiety the effect of the victories on the opinion of the
south, was rapidly convinced that the mould of unification
could be fiUed at once from the molten national passion
and the pride of victory. Postponement until after the
war would bring the inevitable reaction, stiffen the stiff
neck of Particularism, give Liberalism time to organise its
forces, and confront the empire-builder with the justice
of satisfying the national demand for a real unity and
responsible parliamentary institutions.
Behind the military front and in Germany every one was
thinking and talking about unification. The National
Liberals in the Reichstag discussed the idea of an address
requesting the King of Prussia to proclaim the Empire, in
the reconstitution of which a constituent Parhament
would subsequently play the decisive part. Two con
versations in September with the Crown Prince revealed

282 BISMARCK
that the heir to the throne was working for the resur
rection of the Imperial Crown and an Empire with an
Upper House of Princes, and a Lower representative
chamber with an imperial ministry and executive respon
sible to the Reichstag. The North German Confederation'
was strong enough, the Crown Prince held, to ' constrain ' .
the south, if it proved reluctant. The Crown Prince
voiced the ideals of moderate National Liberalism. On
the other hand, the King saw no need of any constitution-
making. The Prussian Crown was more glorious than
any imperial one. AU that was necessary was to tighten
up the military affiances with the south, and secure beyond
all question the prerogative of the Prussian Crown im
policy and the army. An extension of parliamentarism,
or the interference of the German peoples in imperial
poUtics, was a return to the deplorable precedent of '48.
WiUiam had drunk of the chalice of victory as weU as of the
chalice of popularity since 1862, and the military ' demi
gods ' daily reminded him that but for the King's prescient
statesmanship in the constitutional conflict he and his
loyal Prussian army would not be at the gates of Paris.
The King, not Bismarck, the army, not the politicians,
were the authors of the unprecedented triumphs. If
there was to be a revision, it must be in favour of Prussia,
not in favour of parliamentary parties who would have
destroyed the Prussian army in 1 862, and would destroy it
again, if given the power to do so. Bismarck rejected all
these ideas and methods. He was as firmly determined
not to have the Crown Prince's or the Liberals' solution,
as he was to take the settlement out of the hands of the
soldiers and to compel the King to accept the Empire and
the Imperial Crown. The national passion and demands
of Germany were a reality. They could be exploited to
drive through a Bismarckian solution. ' We must have a
contented Bavaria,' he asserted. But how to content
Bavaria, the king of which was more interested in Wagner
and the Decree of Papal Infallibility than in German uni
fication, and who fled from politics to the enchantment of
his castles ?
But if the establishment of a unified and Imperial

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 283
Germany was not to be taken out of Bismarck's hands
either by the military chiefs, the princes, or the popular
forces in Germany, and a direction given which would
permanently affect the final result, it was essential that
Bismarck should get hold of the controUing levers at once.
Bismarck, absent in France, desired first to master the
facts and probe the situation, before committing himself.
He promptly dispatched the ablest of his lieutenants,
Delbriick, on a mission to the south. Delbriick justified
the ChanceUor's confidence in his diplomatic ability and
firmness. In BerUn he first captured Bennigsen and the
National Liberals for unity through the existing Con
federation, and in the south he persuaded Bray, Varnbuler,
and Dalwigk that modifications in that Confederation were
the best way of combining unity with concessions to
Munich and Stuttgart. Action on that line satisfied
Bismarck. Concessions to Bavaria and Wiirttemberg
could be combined with the Praesidium of Prussia, the
continuance of the Bundesrat, and an Empire controUed,
as the North German Confederation had been, by an un-
reformed Prussia. By accepting the basis of the existing
Confederation National Liberalism had in fact cut its
throat. In its eagerness to promote unity, it was building
a tomb for itself in the constitution of the new Empire.
The next step was to persuade the south to foUow the
Liberals and cut its throat also on the altar of patriotism.
The idea of a Congress of Princes broke down on the im
possibility of securing the attendance of the King of
Bavaria. Instead of the princes, however, came their
governments, and by October 26 Bismarck was negotiating
with groups of ministers headed by Bray (Bavaria), Mitt-
nacht and Suckow (Wiirttemberg), JoUy (Baden), and
Dalwigk (Hesse). Once the governments consented to
negotiate at VersaiUes it was not difficult to deal with them
separately, and play one off against the other. The strong
unitarianism of Baden was a useful argument. True, the
web of diplomacy was broken by the King of Wiirttem-
berg's brusque reversal of a provisional agreement. Bis
marck repUed by concluding terms separately with Baden
and Hesse (November 15) ; he isolated Wiirttemberg by

284 BISMARCK
a special convention (November 23) with Bavaria embody-
. ing definite concessions to Bavarian particularism — ' the
free and independent administration ' of the kingdom, the
retention of a separate postal service, the exclusion of the
Bavarian army, in time of peace, from Federal control, and
the presidency of a new Foreign Affairs Committee of the
Bundesrat in which Prussia was not represented. Bavaria
thus mollified with this tribute, iUusory in fact, but im
pressive on paper, to its pride and importance, agreed to
enter a Confederation, rebuilt on the Constitution of 1867.
Bismarck was triumphant. ' Unity is made,' he exclaimed,
' and the Emperor also.' Wiirttemberg could now only
hasten to adhere (November 25), but without obtaining
the special privileges of Bavaria. King Charles's vacil
lating obstinacy had simply prevented his ministers from
exacting the price for agreement that could have been
gained a month earlier.1
The several conventions were submitted to the respec
tive legislatures for ratification. Both in the Reichstag of
the north and the Parliaments at Stuttgart and Munich
opposition to the terms was certain : in the Reichstag
because they diminished the unity demanded by the
National Liberals ; in the south because they conceded too
much to Prussian supremacy. But Bismarck held the
critics of both camps in an insoluble dilemma. Amend
ment or rejection would imperil the diplomatic contracts
and postpone indefinitely a true unification. The con
ventions concluded at VersaiUes were not ideal, but they
were the best obtainable. The Reichstag was accordingly
menaced with larger concessions to southern particularism ;
the south was warned that in a fresh negotiation the north
would insist on far more stringent conditions. A delay
of six months would imperil unification and perhaps ruin
"~ * The evidence that Bismarck used the secret papers from Cercay — captured
by the Germans — to compel the Southern States to accept the Prussian terms, as
alleged by Ruville and others, is not convincing. Such a method of political
blackmail was quite in accordance with Bismarckian methods ; but we do not
know the full contents of the papers, nor how far they were genuine. In the
absence of more proof than has been so far vouchsafed, it is improbable that
the Southern States had seriously negotiated with France in 1867-1870, or that
the Cercay papers contained matter which Bray and others were afraid to see
published.

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 285
the treaty of peace with France. Delbriick's ability in
securing from the National Liberals and the south the
Constitution of 1867 as the basis of the new organisation
had disarmed National Liberahsm completely. It could
now achieve its, programme only by ruining an immediate
unification. The National Liberal leaders consoled them
selves with the argument that unification would prove its
own reward. ' The lady,' Lasker said, ' is very ugly, but
we shall marry her for all that.' The future was to show
whether National Liberalism was justified in the Empire
it had accepted but not made.
Bismarck had stiU two sovereigns to convince — the King
of Bavaria and the King of Prussia. The latter he left to
the last. William was to enjoy the fate of Ulysses in the
cave of Polyphemus. But, acting on a happy suggestion,
Bismarck persuaded the King of Bavaria to write to the
King of Prussia, inviting him in the name of the German
Princes to take the Imperial Crown and exercise as
Emperor his .Praesidial rights in the Confederation. On
December 1, at Schloss Hohenschwangau, King Louis in
bed and suffering from toothache, copied from Bismarck's
draft the formal request ; and to prevent any slips the
letter was dispatched hot-haste by special messenger to
VersaUles, and read to the King of Prussia on December 2.
William proclaimed it to be ' as inopportune as possible,'
and was very ' morose,' as was noted by the Crown Prince
in his Diary : ' As we left the room Bismarck and I shook
hands,' added the diarist ; ' with to-day Kaiser and Reich
are irrevocably restored ; the interregnum of sixty-five
years (i.e. since 1804), the Kaiserless, terrible time is past;
this glorious title is a guarantee.' Bismarck could cordiaUy
shake hands. If the door had shut on a King of Prussia,
indignant at being invited to convert himself into a
German Emperor, it had shut even more decisively on the
Liberal Empire of which the Crown Prince, the iUuminated
princelets of the Coburg group, and the inteUectuals of
Gotha had dreamed so ineffectuaUy. WiUiam's fears
were unfounded. Prussia was not about to be dissolved
in Germany. Nor was the Prussian King to cease to be
War-Lord of the German nation in arms. It was a Prussia,

286 BISMARCK
more Prussian than William himself, that was about to
absorb Germany.
King Louis' letter drove home the argument for rati
fying the conventions. The Reichstag accepted (Decem
ber 9), and the other legislatures followed suit ; Bavaria,
true to its independence, deferring the decision beyond the
day fixed in the Convention (January l). The finishing
touch was a visit to VersaiUes by a delegation from the
Reichstag (December 16) to expound the popular demand
for an Imperial Crown, Simson, the President, twenty-
one years before, in 1849, had headed a similar deputation
from the National Parliament at Frankfurt to Frederick
WiUiam iv. ; but, as M. Matter neatly puts it, ' Entre
1849 etilaS^o, Bismarck, Roon et Moltke avaient passe.'
William boldly told the parliamentarians that the valid
authority for conferring an Imperial Crown was not the
Reichstag, ' but the German Princes and the Free Cities.'
The impUcation that the Reichstag's function was simply
to confirm decisions, made elsewhere, was true in fact. It
wasdndeed the basis of the Empire which the Reichstag had
agreed to accept. To the King, to the miUtary chiefs, to
' the unemployed princes who made " the second step " at
the Hotel des Reservoirs,' and to Bismarck himself, the
Thirty Delegates were either interlopers or superfluous.
They coulcy ratify, ,but they could not originate ; they
could praise famous men but they could not bestow Im
perial Crowns. The dispensations of Providence stopped
at the threshold of the Throne. They did not extend to
the representatives of the nation. The deputies made
known their wishes, and were treated very frigidly by the
King, more warmly by the Crown Prince, and with cavalier
mUitarism by the soldier-chiefs. Bismarck was as ' morose '
as his sovereign, and ' The Thirty ' returned to Germany
effusive in their admiration for the King of Prussia !
For three weeks Bismarck wrestled with his obstinate
sovereign. ' What have I to do with this honorary
title ? (Character-major /),' WiUiam demanded sulkily. On
January 17, when the final details of the coming ceremony
were settled, he was so angry that he turned his back on
those present and, like a spoiled child stared out of the

NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 287
window until the business was settled. ' His reluctance,'
Bismarck wrote later, ' was not unconnected with the desire
to obtain an acknowledgment rather of the superior re-
spectabUity of the hereditary Prussian Crown than of the
Imperial Title.' William indeed was so ' morose ' that he
wrote to the Queen, saying that ' he very nearly abdicated
and handed over everything to Fritz ! ' An Empire and
an Emperor required an Imperial Chancellor. Bismarck/
consented ,to accept the title and the office. 'They will
put me in very bad company,' he said, ' for they wiU turn
me into a Beust ! '
The final ceremony of January 18, 1 871, in the Hall of
Mirrors at VersaiUes — the anniversary of the assumption
of the royal crown by the Electors of Brandenburg at
Konigsberg in 1701 — proclaimed to the world the birth
of a new State. The guns that salute the births of heirs
to royal thrones added their welcome — they were the guns
forcing capitulation on the beleaguered and starving Paris.
The German Empire and German unity had their foun
dations laid in the defeat, dismemberment, and impotence
of France. <
It is commonly said that the Empire was not the creation
of the German people, but of the German princes. For
maUy this is true : but the amended and expanded consti
tution of the North German Confederation was not the
work di the princes. It was not the Empire desired, either
by the King of Prussia, or the soldier-chiefs, or the dynasties.
The compeUing force to unity came from the heart and
labours of the German people, and the princes who crowded
the -dais on January 18 were the last to be converted — a
Mahometan conversion in truth by the sword of the King
of Prussia and his prophet, Bismarck. The structure,
character, principles, and purpose of the new imperial
polity and the new Federal Imperial State were the work of
one man — Bismarck. Delbriick's services cannot be exag
gerated, but he was a superb instrument, not a creator.
The statesman who had defeated alike the dynasties and
the Liberals, the Unitarians and the Particularists, the
soldiers and the professors, was the new Imperial Chan
ceUor. 'His Majesty,' Bismarck wrote in his Memoirs,

288 BISMARCK
' was so offended at the course I had adopted that, on de
scending from the raised dais of the princes, he ignored me
as I stood alone upon the free space before it, and passed
me by in order to shake hands with the generals standing
behind me.' ' Standing alone ' — Bismarck since 1852 had
so often stood alone — in the presence of his sovereign and
Germany, but he had always ended by bending men and
affairs to his relentless wiU. And never so completely as
on January 18, 1871.
On March 21 the Emperor WiUiam expressed the
verdict of Germany and Europe when he raised Count
Bismarck to the title and status of a Prince in the Empire
that he had made.

CHAPTER VI
THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR, 1 871- 1890
§ 1. The Empire, the System, and the ChanceUor, 1 871 -1878
The seven months from July 1870 to January 1871 regis
tered five events of capital importance : the Declaration of
Papal InfaUibility (July 18), the virtual establishment of the
Third Republic in France (September 4), the unification
of Italy by the entry of the Italian troops into Rome
(September 20), the faU of the Temporal Power of the
Papacy, and the establishment of the unified German
Empire (January 18, 1871). Of these five the two most
momentous in their wide-world significance were the
Declaration of Papal Infallibility and the abolition of the
Temporal Power of the Papacy.
With January 18, 187 1, secular Europe entered on the
age of Bismarck. ' Germany in the Age of Bismarck ' was
transformed into ' Europe in the Age of Bismarck,' the
Imperial Chancellor of the new German Empire. From
1 87 1 to 1890 Bismarck was the transcendent figure in Euro
pean poUtics, with an influence akin to, but far surpassing,
the ascendency of Metternich fromi8l5toi 848 . Metter
nich had equals and rivals who contested his supremacy
and defeated his policy — Castlereagh, Canning, Palmerston,
Nicholas 1. Bismarck did not meet a British Canning nor
a Russian Nicholas. Lord Odo RusseU (Lord Ampthill),
who weighed his words, wrote from Berlin in 1880 : ' At
St. Petersburg Bismarck's word is gospel, as well as at Paris
and Rome, where his sayings inspire respect, and his silences
apprehension.' And Lord Odo might have said the same
with equal truth of Vienna, Madrid, and Constantinople.
In 1872 Lord Odo had informed our Foreign Office that
Bismarck's policy was ' the supremacy of Germany in

290 BISMARCK
Europe and of the German race in the world.' When
Bismarck feU in 1890 the author and upholder of a definite
political system ended his career. Every one asked the
question : Could the system continue without a Bismarck ?
Was a new system about to take its place, and, if so, what ?
Two broad conditions after 1871 materiaUy assisted
Bismarck's policy and German supremacy — the weakness
and disorganisation of most of the European States, and
the character of ,the Germany of which he was the Chan
ceUor. Although her recovery from the coUapse of 1870
was astonishingly rapid, France had not securely found her
self when Bismarck feU ; and her internal history during
his chancellorship is a chronicle of crises, from the struggle
with the Commune to the suicide of Boulanger on the
grave of his mistress at Brussels (1891). These were sur
mounted, it is true, but with great difficulty. The Dual
Empire of Austria-Hungary was a continuous prey to the
complications that had produced the Compromise of 1867,
and the consequences of that very provisional settlement.
Russia was swayed successively by the ideas underlying the
reform pohcy of Alexander n. ,• a reversion to the absolutism
of Nicholas 1., Pan-Slavism, the rise of Nihilism, and the
conflicting claims of the Near and the Far East. The
closer that Russian policy, within or without the Empire,
in this epoch is studied, the stronger stands out the lack
of continuity and of insight, due to undeveloped resources,
administrative disorganisation, internal and immature fer
mentation, and contradictory conceptions and indecision in
the successive directors of the autocracy. Italy, ambitious
to be a Great Power at a stroke, but forgetting that though
salvation could not come without unification, it would not
come by unification alone, wrestled ceaselessly with
poverty, and the terrible consequences, moral, political,
and inteUectual, of three centuries of denationalisation and
misgovernment. And Italy suffered more than any other
European State from the inevitable opposition that the
Quirinal found in the Vatican.
Yet Italy, like France, was slowly finding herself, as she
groped her way through the valleys of disillusionment and
indecision. Spain was in no position to mark out an

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 291
independent orbit of policy, and the gravitation of Madrid
to the German system, which would have been accelerated
had Leopold of Hohenzollern crossed the Pyrenees in 1870,
was steadily accentuated between 1870 and 1890. The
Ottoman Empire and the Balkans were the Ottoman
Empire and the Balkans, and they provided in the evolution
of things many opportunities that Bismarck seized with a
cautious but relentless grip.
The one exception to the continental States was Great
Britain. Men of British speech analysing their politics
with a microscope, and forgetting the telescope and per
spective so essential to sane and long views, are prone to
discover in these twenty years of British development
from 1870 to 1890 either nothing but the repellent scuffle
of parochial parties or an expansion of imperialism in
which the insular record is an irritating blot. The critical
function of history, however, like the critical function of
literature, is not summed up in the scheduling and auditing
of mistakes. Mistakes there were in plenty, but the connec
tion between the external ' expansion of England ' and the
internal development was intimate, vital, and decisive.
The Empire that was being expanded and consolidated
after 1870 rested securely, but not without many violent
controversies, within and without the island, on responsible
representative self-government for the heart of the system :
and from that heart it could radiate in time slowly and
surely to every part. It might well have been otherwise.
There were not lacking influential voices within, respond
ing to the powerful influences without, that demanded a
different course leading to a very different result. Great
Britain did not altogether escape the hypnotism of Bis
marckian Europe. But the broad fact remains that she
dehberately continued to toil up the steep and stony stairs
of representative self-government. Though she did not
recognise the fuU significance at the time, Great Britain
preserved and strengthened a polity, an ideal, and an
Imperial State that were the antithesis in every respect
of the German Empire. They were also the negation of
the ultimate efficacy and value of German principles.
Great Britain in the nineteenth, thus accomphshed a

292 BISMARCK
work no less momentous than her achievement in the
seventeenth, century. From 1603 to 1688 she cut herself
adrift from the tremendous swing of tendencies on the
Continent. From 1870 onwards she refused to surrender
or betray the principles which had given her a unique
position. The imphcit antagonism of the British State
to the monarchies of the Continent runs like a red thread
through the diplomacy of Bismarck. Bismarck recognised
the danger, but failed to exorcise or destroy it.
In comparison with Russia, France, Italy, Austria-
Hungary, and Spain, and despite the severity of her in
ternal struggles, Germany revealed a continuity of foreign
policy clean-cut and self-conscious alike in principles and
methods, together with an executive and an administrative
stability, which contributed enormously to the riveting
of a German supremacy on the Continent. The con
tinuity and stability were not whoUy due to iBismarck".
The military, which preceded the political, ascendency of
, Prussia was laid on the granite, hewn and dressed by the
German mind and German science. Bismarck had for
his instrument in completing the political supremacy,
which came last, a nation convinced that national like
individual success must be won by sacrifice and self-
discipline. We may both detest and admire the achieve
ment of Germany, but it is only ignorance that fails to
recognise the solidity of work on which German -ascend
ency was based, and the futility of impeaching it except
by a superiority in toil, concentrated purpose, and sacrifice.
In 1871 the grand lines of German unification and a new
State-system, adjusted to the supremacy of a German
Central Europe, were roughly made, but the mould required
to be fiUed and adapted to use. Time and peace were the
two essential requirements, which the Chancellor must
provide. Foreign pohcy could provide peace — home
policy must see that the time was fully employed.' When
Bismarck described himself as a Friedensfanatiker — a
fanatic for peace — he was not so far wrong. But it was
not peace in and for itself that Bismarck valued ; it was
peace imposed by the armed strength of the Empire, a peace
by which Germany. would develop every quaUty and char-

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 293
actetistic that established the State as Power, carrying out
a policy the criterion of which was superiority in force.
Between 1870 and 1890 Bismarck was not converted to the
beauty and rationality of pacificism. Quite the contrary.
The last of his great speeches, February 6, 1888, was a pas
sionate plea for an invincible German army as the arbiter
in international disputes ; his theory of international
relations assumed that fear, greed, and jealousy were the
main motives of international life, and that a sharp sword
was the true weapon of policy ; and the whole argument
was a coda built up from the leading themes that his state
craft had continuously exemplified since 1862.
Bismarck returned to Berlin on March 9, and took part
'on June 16 in the triumphal entry of the victorious army.
Between March 7 and May 10 the Chancellor's main task
had been to translate the Preliminaries of Versailles into
the definitive Treaty of Frankfurt. On March 21 the
Emperor had opened in state the first Reichstag of United
Germany, to which the new Constitution was submitted.
Bismarck might affect indifference whether the titles of
Empire (Reich) or League (Bund) was to be assigned to the
new polity, but at VersaiUes he had correctly maintained
that the imperial title ' made for unity and centralisation,'
and that ' in the term Praesidium lay an abstraction, in the
word " Emperor " a powerful coercive force ' — and the
sequel proved that he was right. Exception was taken in
debate, more particularly to four points : the concessions
to Bavaria emphasized by the militarists ; the virtual veto
vested in Prussia (objected to by the Southern States), since
rejection by fourteen votes of the Federal Council vetoed all
changes in the Constitution, and Prussia had seventeen votes
out of a total of fifty-eight ; the futility of the new Com
mittee of the Bundesrat on Foreign Affairs (from which
Prussia was excluded) ; and the requirement that for any
but a ' defensive war ' the consent of the Federal Council
must be added to the imperial declaration. The reply to
these criticisms was given in the Reichstag ; the concessions
to Bavaria rested on a treaty ratified by Bavaria, and it was
too late at this stage to impugn its validity or its terms ;
the military convention was more formal than real, since

294 BISMARCK
the Bavarian army would be organised in peace on the
Prussian model and would pass under _ the imperial
supreme command in war ; the Foreign Affairs Committee
was a decorative luxury (as a matter of fact it has only met
four times, in 1875, 1879, 1900, and 1910, and its influence
on. foreign policy has been absolutely nil) ; the negative
veto of Prussia was an inevitable tribute to her complete
predominance in Germany, based on her contribution to
the Empire of from one-half to two-thirds of the total
wealth, area, and population ; and finally, it was argued
with delightful naivete and prescience that Germany
would never wage an ' offensive ' war, since the Foreign
Office would always see to it that a war was, in name at
least, ' defensive.'
The incorporation of Alsace and Lorraine provided an
interesting problem. The anti-German feeling of the
population foreshadowed years of hostility and alienation ;
for, whatever ardent German historians and publicists
wrote about the essentiaUy German character of the
annexed provinces, no one in Germany was ignorant that
a plebiscite would have resulted in an overwhelming
majority against the forcible dismemberment from France
and annexation to Germany. ' French we are,' said the
Alsatians and Lorrainers in the Assembly of Bordeaux,
' and French we will remain.' Treitschke spoke for
German Nationalism when he asserted that ' we Germans
know better what is good for Alsace than the unhappy
people themselves ... we will give them back their
identity against their wiU ... we invoke the men of the
past against the present.' But how was incorporation to
be carried out ? Annexation to Prussia would have stirred
fierce jealousy, and would have planted Prussia on the
flank of Bavaria, Wiirttemberg, and Baden. Annexation
to any others of the federated States was open to grave
and obvious objections. The military chiefs and Bismarck
were united in fearing the tenderer heart of the south in
dealing with ' the unhappy people.' It was dangerous to
split the annexed provinces and divide them amongst the
frontier States which might subsequently compete in the
severity of their coercion or the lenity of their humanity.

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 295
The method of ' giving the Alsatians back their lost
identity ' was therefore found in constituting the two
provinces an Imperial Territory (Reichsland), placed, until
January 1, 1874, under an administrative dictatorship,
confided to the Emperor, whose legislative power was to
be exercised with the assent of the Federal Council. At
that date the Lorrainers and Alsatians were to receive
such a degree of * forced freedom ' as they merited or
circumstances justified.
This solution of the problem satisfied Bismarck, for it
was practicaUy his own. Alsace and Lorraine under Prus
sian administration were safe, and the treatment meted
out would be more a matter of policy than of justice, or
the ' English cant term ' of ' humanity ' and ' civilisation.'
The Reichsland would be a convenient whipping-boy for
the future delinquencies of France. The strategic value of
the annexation justified a multitude of administrative sins to
come. The Prussian staff accordingly set to work at once
to 'construct strategic railways and fortifications based on
Metz; it contemplated a future invasion, pivoting on
the fortress won by Bazaine's military incompetence and
political treachery ; and Metz as the crow flies is only one
hundred and sixty miles from Paris. The retention of an
unwilling Alsace and Lorraine was an irrefragable argu
ment for keeping the new Empire armed to the teeth.
The use that Bismarck made of a French war of revenge
after 1871 is one of the most instructive episodes in his
policy ; for when French feeling flagged, if German
policy required it, he invariably lashed French patriotism
into frontier incidents by a dose of severity to the
Reichsland. Most Germans in 1871 undoubtedly believed that a few
years of German rule would make Alsace and Lorraine as con
tented as Bavaria. The widespread belief in the magic of
their culture was so strong that, when the magic completely
faUed, they could only explain the failure by the assump
tion that the Latin, like the Polish race, was cursed with
a treble dose of original sin. If it be true that anything
can be done with bayonets except to sit on them, it is no
less true that the forcible imposition of an alien civilisation,

296 I BISMARCK
even if it be superior, can never succeed when the subjects
of the imposition can immunise themselves by anti-toxins
from an antagonistic .and Uving civUisation at their doors.
The extirpation of France might in time have enabled a
purely German Alsace and Lorraine to grow up, as the
extirpation of Russian and Austrian Poland^ mighty have
Germanised the province of Posen. The magic of German
culture in Alsace and Lorraine was defeated by the
counter-magic from across the frontiers of a France that
after 1871 renewed the genius of the French mind in a
marveUous renaissance. Germany was placed in a dis
agreeable dilemma. Justice to the annexed simply widened
the door by which French influence entered; injustice
strengthened the hold of the old aUegiance.
Bismarck, probably, never entertained the illusions of
many of his nobler compatriots. He had not annexed
Alsace and Lorraine to convert good Frenchmen into bad
Germans. He accepted the historic argument of an
' unredeemed Germany ' because it was a force in Ger
many that it was dangerous to ignore and useful to exploit.
Alsace and Lorraine were essential to complete the
unified Germany that was to make a Central Europe the
throne of German hegemony. Without Alsace and Lor
raine the Rhine was not secure, nor was France reduced to
the subordination that German Centralism required. The
stubbornness of Alsace and Lorraine probably did not
surprise him ; it certainly neither weakened nor strength
ened his reasons for the policy he subsequently pursued'.
Just as Prussian Poland was an absolute necessity to the
position of Germany in the east, so Alsace and Lorraine
were a consummation of Germany's position in the west.
And if the inhabitants of both territories were so stiff-
necked as to refuse to recognise that Germany's necessities
were Germany's law of existence and justification, so much
the worse for them. The State that was Power could not,
without denying the validity of its own title-deeds, admit
the validity of the title-deeds pleaded by Alsatian or Pole.
Might preceded right, and national safety outweighed all
sentiment. ' You are not a people,' Bismarck told the
Polish deputies to the Reichstag of 1871, 'you do not

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 297
represent a people ; you have not got a people behind you ;
you have nothing behind you but your illusions and
fictions.' The same reply was in substance given to the
Danes iri" Schleswig as to the Alsatians and-Lorrajners.1
The -force of nationality was in Bismarck's eyes ' an illusion
, aiid a fiction ' unless it was backed by a material power
strong enough to enforce its claims, German Nationalism
had produced 1848 and 1870. French Nationalism had
faUed to save Alsace, and would no less fail to recover it. u
Another remark of Bismarck's (April 19) in the consti
tutional debates summed up a very significant view : ' I
see,' he said, ' in the Federal Council (Bundesrat) a kind of
\pallackum for our future, a grand guarantee for the future
of Germany. Do not touch it.' The Reichstag was not
aUowed to ' touch it.' And the Imperial Constitution,
ratified by the Reichstag, was simply a replica of the Consti-,
tution of the North German Confederation with such
modifications as were required to admit the south, practi
caUy on the same terms that the Northern States had
accepted in 1867. With that constitution before us, and
Bismarck's continuous refusal to admit the slightest modi
fication that would facilitate ministerial responsibility, it
is astonishing to read, on Lord Odo Russell's authority,
that ' on more than one occasion Prince Bismarck com
plained (to the British ambassador) of his imperial master
for resisting the introduction of a system of administration
under a responsible Premier, as in England, which he,
Prince Bismarck, considered the best method of developing
the education of the Germans, and teaching them the art
of self-government.' — (Life of Lord Granville, ii. 113.)
There is no reason to suppose that Lord Odo believed
what Bismarck said, but the mendacity of the confession
is very characteristic. When, in 1877, Bismarck had an
opportunity of introducing ' a system of administration
1 The clause in the Treaty of Prague (October 5, 1866) which provided that
'the populations of the districts of the north of Schleswig shall be reunited to
Denmark, if they express the desire by a free vote,' was not carried out between
1867 and 1879, an(^ m I&79 it was expunged, with the consent of Austria,
from the Treaty. It had served its purpose in 1866 — to deceive Napoleon and
Europe. Prussia had never intended to put it into execution, and Denmark
was not able to compel her. The rest of Europe, not being a party to the
Treaty, could only note this violation of a solemn pledge.

298 BISMARCK
under a responsible Premier, as in England,' he showed
what he reaUy thought of such a system. And the elaborate
argument in the Memoirs is the best refutation by Bismarck
himself of this amazing utterance to Lord Ampthill.
The results of the general election for the Reichstag
conclusively revealed the distribution of political opinion
with which Bismarck had to reckon in the next eight years.
The National Liberals, numbering 1 14 out of 382 members,
were thcstrongest party ; Conservatives of various shades
made another hundred votes ; a new party— the Centre
— formed from the Catholics and Clericals under the
leadership of Windthorst, could reckon on sixty votes ; the
remaining hundred members were divided between the
old Progressive Radical Party (Fortschritts-Partei), the
South GermanPopular F 'arty (Deutsche Volks-Partei), under
the leadership of Richter, and the handful of Guelphs, Poles,
and Social Democrats (2). The inveterate tendency of
German parties to split up and re-label their organisations
makes the history of parties very confusing. This was
partly due to the political impotence of the Reichstag as
a government-making organ ; partly to the continuance of
the deep-grained Particularism which gave to local claims
a paramount importance ; partly to the inexperience of the
German nation in political self-government which always
fosters a group-system as distinct from a party-system ;
and partly to the impact of new categories of thought in
collision with the old traditions and names.
From 1871 to his faU Bismarck was confronted in the
Reichstag with opposition and criticism, always strong
and often bitter. A volume could be compiled from the
passages in the ChanceUor's speeches devoted to denun
ciations of the party spirit, the decay of patriotism, and the
wrecking character of the parties represented in the Reichs
tag. The Chancellor was never weary of dilating on his
own freedom from party partisanship, his single-minded
fidelity to one principle — the welfare and interest of a
unified Germany — and his unbroken record of party pre
judice subordinated to the public good. Bismarck's
tenacity of purpose is beyond challenge ; but, dispassion
ately considered, his claim amounts to nothing more than

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 299
a sincere conviction that the policy and measures he advo
cated were, and that the policy and measures of his
opponents were not, identical with the best interests of
Germany and Prussia as he conceived them. For much
of the bitterness in debate Bismarck was himself respon
sible. He said of Windthorst that his oratory was not
oil but vitriol on an open wound ; but as a debater his own
vivid phrase could work like a fret-saw on raw flesh, and he
was a master of the provocative lash and the studied insult.
Above aU, he lacked the sense of gratitude. ' You know,'
he confessed to his wife, ' that my capacity for recognising
services is not very large' (November 17, 1870). It was
painfuUy true. CoUeagues, such as Delbriick, Biilow,
Camphausen, Stephan, Falk, to whom he owed an un
stinted devotion to duty ; opponents such as Bennigsen,
Miquel, Lasker, Forckenbeck, Richter, Windthorst, and
Bebel, to whose criticism many of the Chancellor's most
celebrated legislative achievements owed a large portion of
their success, were usuaUy dismissed, not with faint praise,
but an ugly reminder of their weakest points. Bismarck
could be guilty of incredible pettiness and vindictiveness.1
And outside the Reichstag the journalist hacks were in the
pay of the Chancery Press Bureau to import, at command,
into the discussion of home or foreign politics the temper,
tone, and insinuations of the gutter and the blackmailer.
It is impossible to acquit the Imperial ChanceUor of
frequently having poisoned the wells on the purity of
which the dignity and decency of public life in Germany
depended. Bismarck's theory of government through, and not by,
a Parliament was really very simple. It was based on the
Prussian tradition in which he was born and bred. Tdie
initiative in legislation, as in policy and administration, was
the prerogative of the Crown. The King in Prussia
weighed the needs of his country and devised appropriate
remedies, with the advice of ministers responsible solely to
himself. In the Empire, the functions of the Prussian
1 Witness, for example, the disgraceful refusal of the Chancellor in 1884. to
communicate a message of condolence from Congress to the Reichstag on the
death of Lasker at New York, on the ground that the dead Liberal leader had
criticised Bismarck and the Bismarckian system in a hostile spirit.

300 BISMARCK
Crown were allotted to the Federal Council, which was a
syndicate of the federated governments. The Federal
Chancellor, who was also Minister-President of Prussia,
controUed the Prussian vote, and cast it in accordance with
Prussia's interpretation of her interests. The decisions
of the Council therefore represented the final harmony
of the federated governments and the Prussian Crown;
in a word, the Federal Council was an imperial mechanism
exercising an independent initiative corresponding to the
authority of the Prussian King in Prussia. The Reichstag
as a legislative organ could amend or reject the proposals
emanating from this federalised prerogative ; but it could
not compel the acceptance of an alternative proposal, nor
could it in any way touch the independence of the govern
ments composing the Council (which rested on the treaties
antecedent to the Constitution) nor the position of the
FederaL Chancellor (appointed by the Emperor) ; still less ,
could it impair the prerogative and power of the Emperor
as King of Prussia. Prussia, very nearly two-thirds of
Germany, was beyond the competence of the Reichstag
altogether — except by imperial legislation, to which the
Federal Council (controlled by Prussia) was a necessary
party. A Resolution of the Reichstag, even if unanimous,
had as little influence on the royal prerogative and policy
in Prussia, as tickling the dome of St. Paul's would have
on the Dean and Chapter.
In practice Bismarck argued that the government had a
right to the support of the Reichstag. The Imperial
ParUament was representative of all Germany, i.e. it mir
rored the needs which it was jthe duty of the government
to consider in deciding its measures. But it was for the
Reichstag to foUow the government, not for the govern
ment to foUow the Reichstag. Criticism in the Reichstag
should therefore be limited to criticism of detail, and
amendment should be devoted to improving measures by
practical suggestions, and not extended to disputing prin
ciples or opposing ends. Opposition to principles or ends
Bismarck denounced as proof of a party spirit, hostile to
the Empire. 'The monopoly of disinterested patriotism
was vested in the government, i.e. himself. The charge

THE IMPERIAL CFIANCELLOR 301
of unpatriotic conduct can be dismissed as ungenerous and
ridiculous. From Bennigsen to Bebel the party leaders
were as stout Germans as Bismarck or Moltke. And they
proved it by the ungrudging enthusiasm with which as
representatives of the nation they shouldered the tremen
dous sacrifice that universal military service from 1871
imposed on every German. A close study of the pro
grammes issued by the various German parties between
1 87 1 and 1890 — documentary evidence that fills several
closely printed volumes — reveals a remarkable devotion in
every class to the fundamental postulates of German unity
and solidarity. The Federal Council and Bismarck him
self could rely — as the general elections in 1878 and 1887
conclusively proved — on the patriotism of the whole popu
lation. But the fierce and prolonged controversies from
1 87 1 onwards also showed conclusively that what Bismarck
denounced as partisan parochialism or the1 relics of Parti
cularism was in reality an opposed conception of the kind
of Germany, the type of German citizenship, and the char
acter of political rights and freedom held by German party
leaders as earnest and sincere as himself. Bismarck desired
to make a Germany closely resembling the Prussia that
obeyed its sovereign ; his opponents desired to liberalise .
Prussia. And as soon as any party attempted to touch
the structure of society in Prussia, or the independence of
the Imperial Executive from parliamentary control, it
found itself in danger of being crushed as ' hostile to the
Empire ' (Reichsfeindlich).
Moreover, the ChanceUor's increasing egoism and self-v
will more and more regarded criticism as a personal matter,
which "affected his honour. His position and character
made this inevitable. Every one knew that, in fact, the
government was Bismarck, and Bismarck was the govern
ment. But the sinister chapter of prosecutions for
' Bismarck-defamation ' (Bismarckbeleidigung) is more dis
creditable to the Chancellor than to the prosecuted. And
down to 1880 far the bitterest attacks apart from the
Kulturkampf (discussed in the next section), came from
the extreme right, his old affies, the Junkers' of the
Kreuzzeitung and the Agrarian League.

302 BISMARCK
In 1 87 1 it was clear that an alliance with the National
Liberals was essential, not merely because they were. the
strongest party, but because they were the one party ready
to work with Bismarck in making the formal unity of the
new Empire . a working and living reality. The ability,
knowledge, and enthusiasm of the serried ranks that
foUowed Bennigsen made their co-operation indispensable.
From 1 87 1 to 1878 Bismarck therefore worked through the
National Liberals, aided by one-half of the Conservatives
— the Free Conservatives, who supported the government
on principle — and the varying support of the Prussian and
South German Radical parties. By this coalition the
Chancellor had a good working majority with which the
Centre, the Poles, the Guelphs, and other odds and ends
could be decisively beaten. But the alliance was from
the first a precarious mariage de convenance. Bismarck was
not, and never desired to be, a National Liberal. But so
long as the National Liberal crew were content to man the
ship of State and to work at improving the engines, while
the Chancellor stood on the bridge and directed the navi
gation, it was the most effective way for steering through
the uncharted home waters.
The progress was rapid, allowing for the complexity of
the difficulties. A common imperial currency was estab
lished (1871) ; an Imperial Bank was set up (1873), and
the Banking Law revised and placed on a common statu
tory basis for the whole Empire ; the organisation of the
Imperial Post Office was reformed and extended by
Stephan with great success ; an Imperial Railway Office to
co-ordinate the working of the railways (1873) was set up ;
an elaborate code of Trade Law (Gewerbeordnung) was
enacted in 1 870, as was also a new code of civil and criminal
procedure ; the criminal law was codified (1877), and a
supreme Court of Appeal for the whole Empire established
at Leipzig ; a civil code (Biirgerliches Gesetzbuch) was taken
in hand, and when it finally came into force in 1900 was
a monument of scientific jurisprudence of which its
authors had every reason to be proud. In 1874 me system
of military jurisprudence and of procedure in the military
courts was also codified.

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 303
The driving force in these measures was National Liberal
ism, though their success was partly due to the zeal and
efficiency of the civU service. The result was to give
Germany, what she had never had even in the palmiest days
of the mediaeval Empire and the mighty Hohenstaufen,
a uniform system of law, currency, communications, and
military defence, crowned by a single imperial ruler, con-
troUing a highly educated and organised civil service, and
governing a nation represented by universal manhood
suffrage in a unitary Reichstag. The cumulative effect of
the devoted toil, mainly in the Committees of the Reichs
tag, on the conception and manifestation of the State as
Power cannot be exaggerated, and can be traced in the
debates, and in the speculative treatment of political
philosophy by the universities and the professoriate. The
theory of the State laid down in such works as Treitschke's
Politik is simply an exposition in a philosophical form of
the facts that Treitschke had lived through and saw
developing fresh .activities all round him — an exposition
erected into a system of thought by deducing from the
facts principles held to be inherent in the successive mani
festations of spirit through the realities of Germany's
political life. Treitschke and his school did not anticipate
Bismarck and Bismarckianism. They harmonised the
practical policy of the Chancellor with a philosophical
explanation drawn from that policy and fitted together to
justify and rationalise the experience of the ' average
sensual German ' — and from the acts of Bismarck and the
Bismarckian State they built up a creed, treated as a series
of principles of an universal validity.
The formative influence of this unifying organisation of
a common purpose and a nation's power — intellectual,
moral, economic — on Bismarck's conception of Central
Europe and a system of international State relations for
the Continent, can be traced in many directions in his
foreign policy. The whole conception of centralism,
based on Berlin, acquired a new content and outlook with
the increasing organisation of German Power. If any
man had reason to be grateful to the National Liberals
that man was Bismarck, for the result of their efforts was

304 BISMARCK
to place in the Chancellor's hands a unity of authority and
force, over which the Reichstag had little or no control.
Without the National Liberals the Empire could neither
have been made nor developed, nor could Prussian Parti
cularism, the Centre, and Social Democracy have been
kept in check.
In the alliance of the National Liberals with the govern
ment there were frequently difficulties and hitches.
Bismarck's scheme for acquiring all the railways for the
Imperial State was decisively defeated. The establish
ment of the Supreme Court at Leipzig, and not in the
capital, was against his wishes, and was a deliberate step to
remove the highest judicial authority from the pressure of
the government. It is one of the few clear instances when
the Federal Council defeated the ChanceUor. The pro
posal in 1874 permanently to establish the strength of the
army and to remove from supervision the annual financial
votes was defeated in the Reichstag on the ground that it
seriously diminished the right of the legislature annuaUy
to determine the Budget. The Emperor could not under
stand why the army should not be made as independent
of the Parliament as the judiciary, but the Reichstag
saw that if it surrendered its power to determine the
number of men required and the cost of maintaining them,
it might as weU take a permanent holiday. It looked as if
the constitutional conflict of 1862 was to be revived, and
that in the middle of the Kulturkampf— io? the General
Staff with Moltke at their head were furious at the rebuff
and very insistent. Bennigsen and the National Liberals
saved the situation by a compromise, which granted the
government's demands for seven years, when the system
would come up for a fresh revision. Thus originated the
' Septennates.' As a matter of fact, the government won.
The septennial revisions provided full-dress debates and
much criticism from the Left. But to all intents the
Reichstag might have agreed in 1874 to a permanent
establishment. The relics of right reserved in the com
promise adopted only revealed more teUingly the naked
impotence of the Reichstag to bring either the strength,
or the cost, or the character of the army under national

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 305
control. Gneist, who had been one of the constitutional
opposition in 1862, now calmly admitted that ' annual
revision of the Army Budget was incompatible with the
principles of conscription.' But had Bennigsen and his
coUeagues fought the issue to the bitter end Germany
would have had a more violent constitutional controversy
than Prussia had faced in 1862, one which might in 1874
have shattered the fabric of imperial unity. It was the
votes of National Liberalism that defeated the Centre, the
Progressives, and the Radicals. The party that in 1862
had fought the Crown and failed, now aided the Crown
and disarmed itself.
The National Liberals were in more ways than one
steadily building the tomb of their once powerful party.
The strength they thrust into Bismarck's hands was before
long to be used to destroy them. Bismarck chafed under
the alliance ; but the Conservatives raged. The military
chiefs who looked to E. von Manteuffel, the Court Liberals
who clustered round the Crown Prince, and regarded
General von Stosch as a substitute for Bismarck, derided the
Chancellor's faUures to coerce the Reichstag. The powerful
agrarians from the centre and east of Prussia, to whom the
Empire was only useful if it meant a Prussianised Empire
with themselves in command, regarded Bismarck as a rene
gade who betrayed the interest of the governing class by
truckling to middle-class Liberals. Roon had a hard time
between his devotion to the old friend, his own dislike of
this ' truckling to ' parliamentarism, and the anger of the
Conservative party with which he sympathised. When the
Prussian government so far forgot itself as to introduce into
the system of local government in Prussia the principles of
representation, and to lay profane hands on the sacred
right of Junkertum to govern the country districts, the
Upper Chamber of the Landtag threw the measure out.
The Crown accepted the challenge. Opposition from the
Conservatives to the will of the sovereign was an intoler
able defiance, and the creation of peers to ensure the passing
of the measure brought the ' rebels ' to heel. The Em
peror was very angry and spoke plainly. But the ' rebels,'
unable to touch the sovereign, and smarting under the

306 BISMARCK
prerogative that they professed to regard a« the one sound
institution of the State, turned on the ChanceUor. The
Kulturkampf gave them their chance, and a solemn pro-
nunciamento — the Declaranten as they caUed themselves —
signed by names such as Gerlach, Senfft-Pilsach, Kleist-
Retzow and Blanckenburg, the men and the friends with
whom Bismarck had grown up at Schonhausen, Kniephof,
and Varzin, declared their public reprobation of the Chan
ceUor's pohcy, and publicly withdrew their support from the
government of which he was the chief. The quarrel was
embittered by Lasker's exposure of corruption in railway
concessions in which blue-blooded Junkers were involved,
and which led to the resignation of Graf Itzenplitz, the
Minister of Commerce. The ' Arnim process ' was also
provoking a violent controversy in the press. The Conser
vative party split up, and the press of the Reichsglocke and
the. Kreuzzeitung rang with the recriminations of the old
Conservatives, the ' monarchical-national ' party, ' the
Free ' Conservatives, and ' the German ' Conservatives.
Bismarck himself hit out freely in debate, and his henchmen
replied with scurrility to scurrility under his inspiration.
The unsavoury episode, however, only emphasised the
ChanceUor's unique position. The Emperor had further
signalised his appreciation of unique services by the gift in
1 87 1 to the new Prince of a princely estate — Friedrichsruhe
— in the duchy of Lauenburg, near Hamburg ; and the
development of this noble demesne, together with the
management of Varzin, was a fresh interest to the Chan
cellor worn out by the labours of the nine preceding years.
The only peace that he loved, the peace of a vast country
side, studded with oak and beech, and fretted with clear
streams, by whose pastures the cattle browsed, and where
the smoke, din, and pettiness of the crowded dirty town,
the hoUow shams and splendour of courts and princes, and
the prison-house of parUament and politicians, could be
forgotten — that peace he found at Varzin and at Friedrichs
ruhe. ' When my poUtical acts have long been forgotten,'
he said, pointing to an avenue he had planted, ' these trees
wiU be here to tell the world that I once existed.'
Nature was not cursed with ingratitude or jealousy : she

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 307
was lavish of her bounty to aU who would toil with her —
and she was free. No devilish diplomatists could wash
the blue from the sky, falsify the inspiration of the dawn,
or rob the night of its stars. Bismarck went back and slept
in the room at Schonhausen where he had slept as a boy
and dreamed of his life to come. Schonhausen — Kniephof
—Varzin — Friedrichsruhe, to what an avenue of acts
planted by himself and now attaining their maturity and
splendour in the passage of the relentless years, did not
these homes of Bismarck bear witness. Varzin, in parti
cular, was associated with his wife ; they had made it
together in the period that preceded and foUowed the
triumphs of the Franco-German War. It says much to
those who would penetrate the depths and weaknesses in
that passionately human but lonely heart, that dearly as
he loved Varzin, the Iron ChanceUor could not face its
memories and its desolate hearth after the Princess's death
in 1 894. It was at Varzin that his wife was buried — until
she was brought to share his grave at Friedrichsruhe.
Rest was essential. In 1871 and 1872 the Chancellor
was repeatedly absent from Berlin ; in 1873 he resigned the
Minister-Presidency of Prussia to Roon and retired to
Varzin for ten months. But the experiment was not a
success. Roon, in his fierce old age, could not convert him
self into a supple parliamentary hand, and Bismarck dis
covered the truth of his own prediction that separation of
the ChanceUorship and the Minister-Presidency in Prussia
sterilised his power. At the end of 1873 Roon resigned
the Ministry of War and abandoned pohtical hfe. Bis
marck sorely missed the loyal friend with^whom ' he had
fought shoulder to shoulder from 1862 ' against all the
beasts of Ephesus. The vacant chair in the Council
Chamber where Roon had sat reminded him ' that I once
had a comrade.' He resumed his dual office, but in 1 876 —
embittered by the Conservative split — he sent in his resig
nation, to which the Emperor replied on the margin with
a single word, ' Never ! ' In the autumn of 1876 Bismarck
took long ' leave,' and retired to Varzin for more than a year.
Men said that he was failing — the Clericals that Lucifer
had faUen, never to rise again. He had broken Count

308 BISMARCK
Arnirn for insubordination at Paris ; 1 there had been a
serious quarrel with General von Stosch, the head of the
German Admiralty, in which the Emperor had refused to let
Stosch resign. In Bismarck's eyes the Court was a centre
of ' petticoat plots,' and he continuaUy denounced the
interference of the Empress Augusta, the Crown Princess,
and the Liberal circle gathered round the Crown Prince—
' the royal women ' who intrigued, the Chancellor aUeged,
for Germany's enemies against Germany's interests. In
reality, Bismarck at Varzin was reflecting profoundly on the
whole internal political situation. The Chancery Office
had hitherto been largely organised under Delbriick, but
in 1876 Delbriick, the ablest of Bismarck's coadjutors, his
' Gneisenau,' as he caUed him, resigned for ' reasons of
health.' His resignation was an indication that a change of
policy was at hand in which he could not concur, and he
1 Count ^Harry Arnim had been sent as German Ambassador to Paris in
1 871. His political activities there greatly displeased Bismarck, who charged
him repeatedly with disobeying his instructions and with embarking on lines of
policy opposed to those of the Chancellor. Arnim appealed to the Emperor.
In March 1874 he was transferred from Paris to Constantinople. State
ments in the Viennese paper Die Presse, based on confidential diplomatic
documents, were traced to Arnim's inspiration, and before he went to Con
stantinople he was placed on the retired list. He was then charged with retain
ing important documents belonging to the archives of the Paris Embassy, found
guilty, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. The trial caused great
excitement in Germany owing to the high position of the accused, the nature
of the revelations, and the plain proof of a bitter quarrel between Arnim and
Bismarck. Arnim appealed to the Court of Appeal (1875), which increased
the sentence from three to nine months. A further inquiry in 1876 by the
Imperial Disciplinary Chamber resulted in his dismissal from State service.
Arnim published an anonymous pamphlet Pro Nihilo, for the publication of
which he was again (April 1876) accused and sentenced, as he failed to appear,
to five years' penal servitude in contumaciam, on the ground that he had revealed
State secrets detrimental to the Empire. He subsequently published two other
pamphlets, Der Nuntius Kommt and Siuid Paciamus Nos, and died in exile at Nice,
April 19, 1881. The 'Arnim process' formed part of the bitter controversies
that rent Germany during the Kulturkampf and the Chancellor's struggle with
the Junker Conservatives. Arnim's friends maintained that Bismarck hunted
him down because he was regarded as a strong competitor for the Chancellor
ship. Bismarck asserted at the time, and repeated it in the Memoirs, that had
Arnim been content with being placed on the retired list the matter would have
gone no further ; but that his pamphlets, in which he made use of confidential
State documents, were subversive of all discipline and a grave violation of all
the laws binding public officers of the State. It is certain that Arnim was
guilty of very serious indiscretions. How far Bismarck was responsible for the
prolonged judicial examinations, and was actuated by personal vindictiveness, is
a difficult question, the answer to which will vary with the view taken of
Bismarck's character.

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 309
was too loyal at once to join an opposition. Bismarck was
not failing. On the contrary, he was about to give remark
able proof of an astonishing versatility and vitality. The
year of retirement had renewed the lust of battle within
him. His return to Berlin in the spring of 1878 was not
caused whoUy by the failure of the policy of the Kultur
kampf, nor by the crisis that had developed in the Eastern
Question. He returned to close the first phase of his
Imperial Chancellorship and to open the second and last.

§ 2. The Kulturkampf, 1871-1878
From 1 871 onwards Germany, and above all Prussia,
was involved in the Kulturkampf, a name given by the
ardent Radical and eminent pathologist, Virchow, to the,
struggle between the Papacy and the Civil State in Ger-
inany. It conveniently summed up the deeper issues
involved between two antagonistic conceptions of culture
or civilisation, and between two theories of the basis and
competence of authority in a pohticaUy organised com
munity and society. The abolition of the Temporal Power
and the Declaration of the Infallibility of the Papacy were
the climax to a great and weU-marked chapter in the history
of the Roman Pontificate. When the powerful movement
of Concffiar Reform failed, in the first half of the fifteenth
century, to heal the Great Schism and cure the evils of the
Church of the Latin West, the modern Papacy began.
Under Nicholas v. commenced a development which in the
Council of Trent and the Tridentine Decrees not merely
formulated the reply of the Counter-Reformation to the
Reformation, but gave to the Pontificate a position, an
organisation, and a title that distinguish the Papacy of
the Renaissance and the sixteenth century from the
mediaeval Popes of the undivided Latin Church. The
entry of the Italian troops into Rome on September 20,
1870, ended the poUtical system on which the Papacy
of the Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation rested.
The nineteenth-century Papacy and the Roman Church
throughout the world had now to readjust their title,

310 BISMARCK
organisation, and future— their claim to spiritual supremacy
and to unlimited jurisdiction, and unquestioning obedi
ence within the Roman Communion— not merely to a new
Italy, but to a new Europe and a new world of international
relations and inteUectual and moral ideas. It was not acci
dental, but an essential feature of the processes that had
made that new world, that the Vatican Council coincided
with the world events of 1 870. The first and most rever
berating assertion that the new age had arrived was the
Vatican Decrees. They were a challenge, a programme,
and a publication of title-deeds in one.
The immediate origins of the embittered conflict that
broke out in Germany, the first and severest phase of which
broadly ended in 1878, had, as has been previously in
dicated, its roots in the evolution of thought and political
action two generations prior to the Establishment of the
Empire. For obvious reasons the struggle centred in
Germany, but the issues were raised in all the European
States. Prussia had had a foretaste of the struggle in the
newly acquired Rhenish provinces after 1815, which had
ended in a compromise that did not settle any of the
cardinal points at issue. Since 1848 the controversy had
been concentrated in Bavaria ; but it had also broken out
sharply in Baden, where the control of the schools and of
the training of the clergy raised the central principles in
dispute. The ' war ' — for it was nothing less — was transferred
from Bavaria and Baden to Prussia and the Empire in 1871.
The concurrent promulgation of the Vatican Decrees and
the establishment of the German Empire fused the poli
tical, ecclesiastical, and inteUectual elements in the
controversy into a single but complex whole.
The Declaration of Papal InfaUibility of July 18, 1870,
brought the matter to a head within the Roman Church,
and the refusal of the Roman Catholic Professor DoUinger,
' as a Christian, as a theologian, as a historian, as a citizen,'
to accept the Decrees at once raised the question : Would
the State accept the determination of the Papacy to im
pose obedience on members of its own communion, priests,
and laymen, or would it support those who refused in their

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 311
- right to exercise spiritual functions and jurisdiction, under
\ State protection f When the Archbishop of Munich pub-
Uished the Vatican Decrees without first obtaining the
Regium Placitum required by Bavarian law, and when the
Bavarian government turned to the Imperial government
for assistance in the conflict, the answer was given by an
addition to the Penal Code — the famous Pulpit Paragraph
— forbidding priests in their official capacity to deal with
political matters.
The Imperial government was thereby committed to a
struggle with Ultramontanism. The claim of the In
faUible Papacy- challenged the nature, competence, and
limits of the sovereignty claimed by the secular State over
aU persons and over aU causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil,
throughout its dominions supreme.
DoUinger stated the theoretical issue very clearly : —
' The ultramontane view can be summarised in a single, concise,
and luminous proposition, but out of this proposition are evolved
a doctrine and a view that embrace not merely religion and the
Church, but science, the State, politics, morals, and the social
order — in a word, the whole intellectual and moral life of men and
nations. The proposition runs : The Pope is the supreme, the in
fallible, and consequently the sole authority in all that concerns
religion, the Church, and morality ; and each of his utterances on
these topics demands unconditional submission, internal no less
than external,'
The Decrees involved the concentration of all eccle
siastical powers in the person of the Pope, whose utter
ances ex cathedra were declared by the Vatican Council
to be infallible, and repudiation of which involved excom
munication. They also enforced the claim that on the
secular State was laid the duty of carrying out the decisions
of the infaUible spiritual authority, and that the definition
and decision of what constituted a question of religion or
morals lay in the ultimate resort with the Church, speak
ing through the person and office of the supreme and
infaUible Pontiff, by reason of the intrinsic, inalienable,
and inherent superiority of spiritual to secular authority.
Bismarck and Germany had now to decide whether the

312 BISMARCK
Empire would accept the doctrine and consequences in
volved in the Vatican Decrees. One example will suffice
to illustrate the problem. When the Archbishop of
Cologne excommunicated four ' old Catholic ' professors
of the State University of Bonn for refusal to subscribe to
the Vatican Decrees, was the Prussian State to acquiesce in
this jurisdiction over officers of the university who held
their chairs under the authority of the State ? The
Prussian Constitution (Art. 12) guaranteed ' the enjoyment
of civil and political rights independently of rehgious
belief ' ; it stated (Art. 20) that ' science and its doctrines
are free ' ; it laid down (Art. 22) that ' proofs of moral,
scientific and technical capacity ... to give public in
struction ' concerned ' the State authorities,' and that
(Art. 23) ' public teachers had the rights and duties of
State servants.' The action of the Archbishop implied
that the Prussian State was to suspend or deprive its public
servants of a right conferred on them under legal guarantees
at the bidding of an authority, in itself only exercising
jurisdiction defined by, and drawing emoluments under
the protection of, the State. It followed that the Roman
Pontiffs would, if the State assented unconditionaUy, deter
mine what kind of teaching and by whom it would be
given in every university and school throughout.Germany,
and under what conditions teachers in State universities
and schools, paid for and controUed by the State, would
hold office or he liable to suspension, dismissal, or depri
vation of their rights.
To Bismarck the problem at the outset was primarUy
political. -The Second Empire and Napoleon in. had
been the main supporters of the temporal power of the
Papacy. Bismarck had refused to intervene prior to
or during the Vatican CouncU. There is considerable
evidence that the dominant party at the Vatican had con
templated completing the Decrees of InfaUibility by a
declaration that the retention of the temporal power by
the Papacy should be regarded as a revealed article of faith,
not a revealed dogma, but a truth guaranteed by the doc
trinal body of the Holy Church. But if so, the course of
pohtical events quashed the intention. The immediate

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 313
problem in the autumn of 1870 was whether Bismarck
would take steps to restore the temporal power. True to
his methods, the Chancellor first negotiated with Arch
bishops Ledochowski and Bonnechose. The support of
the French Church, aided by the Papacy, in securing the
peace with France that he desired might be worth buying.
But Bismarck convinced himself in the negotiation that
the Papacy lacked either the power or the goodwill or
both to carry out a suitable bargain, and the general de
velopment of the international situation very soon proved
that the restoration of the temporal power by Prussian
diplomacy or arms would imperil the peace with France,
the new Empire, and the completion of unification. All
the Nationalist and Liberal forces in Germany would have
affied themselves with public opinion in Great Britain and
the Nationalist forces in Italy to repudiate and oppose
such a policy.
There remained, therefore, the issues raised by the
Vatican Decrees, separable from the question of the
Temporal Power. The establishment of the Empire
made a struggle inevitable. It could only have been
avoided had Bismarck accepted the Decrees as binding
on the Roman Catholic subjects of the Empire, and ac
quiesced in their enforcement by the active co-operation
of the civil powers in the Empire and in Prussia. If that
was impossible, as it clearly was, what was the Civil State
to do to protect its authority, and how was it to treat
ecclesiastical and spiritual persons who repudiated that
authority or resisted the execution of its will ? Diplomacy
between Berlin and the Curia could not effect a compro
mise in 1 87 1. Those who controlled the policy of the
Vatican were confronted by serious opposition within their
own communion to the Decrees ; if they failed to enforce
obedience, the Ultramontane interpretation of Papal
power and ecclesiastical unity would be shattered. The
Vatican Council of 1870 was a deliberate step in the policy
of Ultramontanism : once the Roman Curia had pinned
its flag to the Decrees the enforcement of obedience within
its own communion and spiritual jurisdiction was a
question of life and death. It was no less impossible for

3 14 BISMARCK
the Prussian Civil Power to place its secular authority un
reservedly at the disposal of the Vatican and to acquiesce
in the claim of the Roman Church to determine how far
it would obey, and how far it would set aside as invalid,
the law of the land defined by the Civil Power. The
position in 1 871 for Papacy and Empire was not that in
1878 or 1888 ; the validity of the Decrees was impugned
by Catholics of the eminence of Dollinger, Rheinkens, and
others, and in 1871 it was an open question whether the
Vatican would succeed in enforcing its authority within
the Roman communion.
Political and intellectual Liberalism prior to 1871, and
notably since the promulgation of the Syllabus of 1864,
combined in proclaiming the fuU sovereignty of the civil
power ; it could reckon on the strength of the Protestant
forces in a struggle with the Roman See. The opposition'
of the Clerical party to German unification, and its denial
of the unlimited sovereignty of the Crown in Parliament,
strengthened the determination of the Protestant parties
in the broadest sense to impose the acceptance -of that
sovereignty. To- the Liberal leaders, ' the inteUectuals,'
— such as Virchow and Bluntschli — the Vatican Decrees
were iUuminated by the Syllabus of 1864, which not only
condemned, without qualification the inteUectual basis
of modern society, but imperilled the free, critical, and
scientific pursuit of truth ; and in the case of the German
universities, which had made so notable a contribution to
German civihsation, the. policy of Pio Nono and AntoneUi
was, they heldKa demand for the endowment afid pro
tection of obscurantism by thi Prussian State. Because
DoUinger refused to accept the Decrees he was to be
hounded from the university chair that he adorned to die
excommunicate, like a tainted wether of the flock. The
Freilehrheit and Freilehrnheit of the German universities
were challenged by such action.
The Liberal theory of State sovereignty was reinforced
by the party which regarded the State as Power. If
Prussia and the Empire could not be master in their own
house, what was the meaning and vahie of Prussian power ?
In Bismarck the Papal claims stirred the same feeUng as in

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 315
our Henry viii. : ' Use not such language to me, I like it
less than any man.' And Andrassy in 1873 has related how
when Bismarck spoke to him of the Kulturkampf, ' his
eyes flashed, his words poured out, he spoke of the Pope
as a public danger, a revolutionary, an anarchist.' Bis
marck deliberately told the Reichstag in 1874 that the
war of 1870 ' was declared in agreement with Rome which
securely reckoned on the victory of the French, and that
the decision of Napoleon for peace was shaken and undone
by the influence of none but the Jesuits.' After 1871
Bismarck rightly or wrongly feared an Ultramontane
coalition against the Empire.
On the other hand, the Roman Catholics numbered a
third of the German population, and the formation under
Windthorst of the Centre party, of sixty votes, a party
founded .on a confessional basis, was a formidable reaUty,
' the most monstrous phenomenon in politics,' Bismarck
said. The Centre denied the validity of the treaties on
which the Empire was based, and demanded along ^with
a 4 more truly federal State and greater liberty for the
'federated States, the complete freedom and independence
of the Roman Church within the Empire.
After an address to the Emperor, requesting the res
toration of the temporal power, they opposed a resolute
resistance to the unifying legislation and administrative
aetion of the imperial sovereignty. Bismarck decided,
with- the enthusiastic support of the National Liberals,
the Progressives and Radicals, to crush the Clerical oppo
sition. Herr1 von Falk became Minister of Education in
1872, and between that date and 1876 a series of measures
generajly known as ' The May Laws ' (from the date of the
first important batch of May 15; 1873) was passed in the
Prussian Landtag. The Jesuits were expeljed ; civil
marriage was made compulsory; 'the Catholic Bureau in
the Ministry of Education was suppressed ; the inspection
of schools was withdrawn from the Roman priesthood and
placed under the control, of State inspectors ; priests were
forbidden to abuse ecclesiastical punishments, e.g. ex
communication : all ecclesiastical seminaries were placed
under State control ; every priest before being permitted

316 BISMARCK
to exercise office in the church was required to be educated
in a German university and to pass an examination in
German history, philosophy, literature, and classics ; aU
exercise of spiritual office by unauthorised persons was
punishable by loss of civic rights, and the State was
empowered to withhold from recalcitrant bishops the
payment of the State endowment.
These legislative powers were enforced by drastic
executive action. Cardinal Ledochowski, Archbishop of
Posen, was fined, imprisoned, and then dismissed from his
bishopric. The Archbishop of Cologne and the Bishops
of Trier and -Paderborn were imprisoned, and by 1876
more than one thousand three hundred parishes had no
recognised and 'loyal ' Roman Catholic priest. Thousands
of Roman Catholics had been fined or imprisoned, while
the Roman Catholics throughout the Empire refused to
recognise the validity of the penal legislation, and were in
open revolt. Germany, in fact, was rent into two bitterly
opposed camps. The ferocity of the contending parties
can only be appreciated by a prolonged study of the con
temporary literature, the pamphlets, and the caricatures
that flooded Germany from the Baltic to the Alps. ' Do
not fear,' Bismarck had exclaimed (May 14, 1872), ' we will
not go to Canossa either in body or in spirit.' The declara
tion, with its reference to the Investiture Contest with
Gregory vn., rang through Germany. And in thousands
of German homes, even to-day, portraits of the ChanceUor,
with these words as their motto, can be seen in a place
of honour. ' I am,' Bismarck proudly claimed, ' from the
Garonne to the Vistula, from the Baltic to the Tiber, the
best-hated man in aU Europe.' At Kissingen in 1874
KiiUmann, a half-witted journeyman, who belonged to the
Catholic society of Salzwedel, attempted to assassinate the
ChanceUor on the. ground that he had insulted his party,
the Centre. ' You may push away the man from you as
you like,' Bismarck said to the Centre in the Reichstag,
' but he himself clings tightly to your coat-tails ' ; and
the uproar that foUowed the taunt was a miniature of the
internal situation in Germany.
Bismarck's decision to crush the Clerical Centre was

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 317
momentous.1 After 1878 he argued that he was not
responsible for the policy of the Kulturkampf, nor for the
May Laws and their execution. The argument will not
stand the test of facts nor of probability. In 1872, 1873,
and 1875 he spoke repeatedly both in the Reichstag and
the Prussian Landtag in defence of the coercive legislation
and of the general policy of Prussia and the Empire in the
controversy. He complained bifterly in private letters
to Roon of the desertion of the Conservative party in
the ' Catholic controversy ' ; he was responsible for the
appointment of Falk, and supported him until 1878 against
the attacks in Court circles. It is, in the absence of all
corroborative evidence to the' contrary, impossible to
believe that Bismarck as Chancellor and Minister-President
would have aUowed a subordinate coUeague to embark
Prussia and the Empire by legislation and administrative
action in a life-and-death struggle, which involved the^most
delicate and fundamental issues of high pohcy at home and
abroad, without his complete concurrence. It is demon
strable that the correspondence between the Emperor and
the Pope, which stated very tersely the Prussian attitude,
was on the Emperor's side drafted by Bismarck ; the with
drawal of the German mission from the Curia — the rupture,
in fact, of diplomatic relations — was Bismarck's act, and in
the negotiations after 1878 Bismarck assumed that the
May Laws would not be withdrawn unless the Vatican
made substantial concessions. The later assertion (in 1878
and repeated in his Memoirs) that he regarded the struggle
as mainly a recrudescence of the chronic problem of
Poland was an afterthought, and the blame subsequently
laid on Falk, as the author of the mischief and the failure,
was a characteristic trait of ingratitude. A scapegoat had
to be found, and Falk, the hero of the National Liberals
and Radicals, served the convenient purpose of exculpating
the ChanceUor and affronting the parties with which
Bismarck broke between 1878 and 1879.
In 1874 Bismarck' told the Reichstag that since 1 862 his
1 Under-Secretary von Thile told Lord Odo Russell in 1872 ' that Bismarck's
determination to raise the storm and fight the Church was so sudden that he
and Bismarck's private secretaries could mark the day and hour of the change
that came over him like an inspiration.'

318 BISMARCK
previsions and forecasts in aU the great issues had been
wonderfuUy accurate. The remark had a side reference
to the Kulturkampf. But in 1871 Bismarck plainly mis
calculated. The diplomacy with which he had hitherto
crossed swords successfully had not had the traditions,
skill, fertility in resource, and pertinacity of the Vatican.
The Roman Curia could and did puU many wires through
out Europe, and it could afford to wait. It had no capital
that could be stormed, leaving the defence impotent. Its
capital was everywhere, planted in the consciences of
millions of its communion. Heads can be cut off, but the
obedience of heart and wiU cannot be enforced by prison
or the guiUotine. Bullets or wristcuffs cannot kiU ideas.
The extermination of the faithful is not the same thing as
the extirpation of a faith. Indeed, the seven years from
1871 to 1878 were an instructive object-lesson in the limits
of power even when exercised by a State with the executive
strength of Prussia. In the constitutional conflict in 1862
Bismarck had rightly assumed that the Liberals would not
raise barricades, defy the laws, or refuse to pay taxes, and
that, if they did, the whiff of grapeshot would settle the
first outbreak. In 1872 he apparently calculated that the
Catholics would either not resist, or, if they did, would soon
surrender to a rigorous coercion. He was completely
mistaken. When Cardinal Archbishops, with the applause
of their congregations, defied the law and went to prison,
the State as Power could only, as Windthorst remarked,
bring in the guillotine — if it dared. For when a State by
its own action converts law-breakers into martyrs for con
science it loses the sympathy of the law-abiding. The
average German began to think as Pepys did when he saw
oppressed Dissenters going to prison under the Clarendon
code : ' I would to God they would conform or not be so
weU catch'd.' Universal suffrage proved a terrible weapon
in the hands of the Centre party. At the general election
of 1874 tne National Liberals increased their numbers to
over one hundred and fifty, but the Clericals poUed
a miUion and a half votes and returned not sixty but
ninety-one members. Bismarck therefore had to face a
National Liberal party stronger than ever and more

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 319
indispensable to the government, and a Centre opposi
tion enormously encouraged by its success.
It was in the nature of things that on both sides the
struggle should extend far beyond the limits foreseen in
1 87 1 : and the simple original issue, whether the Vatican
should or should not constrain opponents of the Decrees
to obedience, was by 1876 converted into anT illimitable
controversy on the functions, basis, character, and ends of
civil government and its relation to ecclesiastical authority ;
it threatened to divide Germany into two great con
fessional camps, Protestant and Catholic, and to throw
back the newly born Empire of 1871 into the maelstrom
of Charles v. and the epoch of the Reformation, with the
passions of mediaeval Guelph and Ghibelline, and of Empire
and Papacy superimposed. In the welter of conflict the
secession and formation of the ' Old Catholics,' a tiny hand
ful of the combatants, became a neglected by-issue. The
fiery support of religious and political Protestantism, and
of the powerful secularist intellectuals who desired to see a
complete separation of Church and State in every German
State, and the extirpation of denominational endowment
and teaching, was fatal to Liberal CathoUcism. The issues
raised by Vaticanism became an assault in many quarters
on the Roman Catholic Church : and the cry of ' Los von
Rom ' and the establishment of a German national Catholic
Church on Febronian lines, independent of the Papacy,
aided the Papal effort to represent ' the May Laws ' as a
Diocletian persecution, led by Bismarck into whom Satan
had entered.
To the Papacy, indeed, the Kulturkampf proved to
be an unqualified blessing. In 1871 and 1872 the anti-
infaUibiUty movement within the Roman Communion was
a grave danger. But with an unerring eye the directors of
Vatican policy seized the weapon of their adversaries and
turned it against them. They closed the Roman Catholic
ranks as far as possible, and shifted the issue from the
narrower field of ' the May Laws ' to a trial of strength
between the Roman Church as a whole and its opponents
spiritual or secular. - The more eagerly did those oppo
nents mass for attacks on a broad front, the broader the

320 BISMARCK
front on which the Vatican deployed its counter-attacks.
Windthorst proved himself a consummate tactician and a
polished debater. He placed large issues in sonorous
phrases before the electorate in the programmes of the
Clerical Centre— freedom of conscience, the independence
of rehgion, the liberty of the individual German to worship
as reason led him, an Empire based on justice (justitiafunda-
mentum regnorum), taken from the mediaeval law books — and
by provocative taunts he understood how to seduce Con
servatives, Liberals, Radicals, and Progressives into violent
indiscretions. It required courage to stand up to Bismarck,
but Windthorst smilingly removed the gloves and took and
gave teUing punishment with a finished equanimity.
The results by 1878 were disquieting. Lord Odo
Russell's dispatches from 1873-77 indicate Bismarck's de
pression, irritation, and anxiety. The Clericals had built
up a powerful and extraordinarily weU-organised party ;
they had ample funds, an influential press, and a network of
local machinery, It was the Kulturkampf which enabled
the Centre to become in Bismarck's lifetime the best
drilled, most obedient, and strongest single party in
Germany. They drew their strength from every class —
from cardinals and Polish magnates to the industrial
democracy in the old ecclesiastical principalities. The
stronger the executive action against them, the stronger
they reacted against it. The disciplining of Germany for
two generations told immensely in their favour. The
Clericals, and later the Social Democrats, had in the
German voter a man who had been drilled in a great mili
tary machine, to whom obedience to command was life.
Given'an organiser, a party with a real cause had organis-
•able material ready to hand in the German electorate.
The Roman Church was an organisation already made.
Windthorst enjoyed its matchless and unlimited support.
The decadence of National Liberalism after 1878 is largely
accounted for by the absence of an intelligible cause, the
halting and contradictory language of its spokesmen, and
its dependence on a reservoir in a single social stratum, the
middle class. The Clerical party had none of these patent
defects.

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 321
The ministerial conduct of the fight was vitiated also by
serious blunders. The punitive measures against the
inferior clergy — the hard-working priest of the vUlage and
smaU town — threw hundreds of parishes, ignorant of the
deeper issues of Vaticanism, into opposition. The govern
ment made no effort to enlist the sympathy of educated
Catholicism with the cause of freedom of opinion. Instead
of concentrating on the narrower issue of Vaticanism and
assisting the German hierarchy, placed in a grave perplexity
between two aUegiances and influenced by a genuine anti
pathy to the more profound consequences in the Decrees
and by a patriotic reluctance to defy the law binding on
German citizens ; instead of trying to find a compromise for
the bishops coerced by Rome and menaced by the State ;
instead of raUying the Catholic laity to the support of its
episcopate in the struggle with the Curia, the government
struck right and left at high and low with the indiscrimina
tion of brute strength. Falk fought with the ability of a
trained lawyer who assumes that a juristic answer, expressed
in weU-drafted legislation, and backed by executive action,
can settle every problem of life and conduct. Bismarck left
the law to Falk, the administration to the Home Office,
and thought of the higher politics alone. The limitations
in his statecraft were at once exposed. This was not a
case where ' one hand could wash the other.' The subtle
yet deep inteUectual and moral implications in the contro
versy did not interest him, nor had he the time, the inclina
tion, or the accumulated knowledge to master them. And,
as with Napoleon 1. in his struggle with the Papacy, the
ingrained contempt for ideas as ideas, for 'ideologues,' and
for men to whom ideas have a more inspiring import than
material force warped his judgment and bhnded his in
tuition. To Bismarck, as to Napoleon, the Church was a
necessity of an ordered hfe, but its action and position must
be strictly correlated to the ends prescribed by reasons of
State. In the Kulturkampf Bismarck found himself in
deeper water than his strength and skill could manage.
He was to repeat the experience in the struggle with
Social Democracy.
The shrewd Thiers predicted in 1873 that ' the iron

322 BISMARCK
ChanceUor ' would find himself in the position described
in a story of Napoleon I. ' Sire,' said a wag, ' the enemy
has lost thousands of men.' ' Yes,' replied Napoleon, ' but
I have lost the battle.' At Varzin in 1877 Bismarck was
ruefuUy reflecting that hundreds of priests had been driven
from their altars, but that he was on the point of losing the
battle. For twelve months in the solitude of his estate the
Chancellor calculated and probed. The Emperor was
very unhappy, for he was at war with a third of his Empire.
' We have made enough concessions to Liberalism,' he
kept on fretfuUy repeating. The Empress, the powerful
RadziwiUs who represented at Court the Polish cause, the
Crown Prince's circle, and the Conservatives who after
1876 had closed their split, were in different ways and for
different reasons pressing for a cessation of the struggle.
Strong Protestants argued that the State as Power might
apply to the Lutheran Church the Erastian control applied
to the Roman Catholics. The Conservatives hated the
aUiance with National Liberalism. The Centre might be
intolerant and superstitious, but it stood for authority and
social order, for religion and the Christian State, and not
for secularism and a godless education. Bismarck's sup
port of the law imposing civil marriage in the Empire — a
recantation of the principles he had laid down from 1847-
51 — was denounced as a lamentable apostasy, forced on him
by Liberalism. The governing class pressed for a return
to a Conservative policy. In a word, the pressure in aU
the quarters most influential with the Crown was exerted
against the Bismarckian regime from 1871 to 1877.
Bismarck felt the pressure, and lashed out perpetuaUy at
the insolence of the critics. But he recognised that the
whole internal and parliamentary situation was crumbling
into chaos. The financial position was critical. The
unified Empire was proving to be very costly. The system
of ' matricular contributions ' to the Imperial revenue
from the federated States was a burden that aggravated
Particularism. The failure to nationalise the railways cut
off a valuable Imperial revenue. New taxation was im
peratively needed. The government required a large

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 323
expanding income, removed as far as possible from the
control of the Reichstag. There was only one method
available — indirect taxation by a tariff. Failure to provide
the necessary Imperial revenue, except by trenching on the
funds of the federated States, would inevitably cause a
demand for a reduction of military expenditure. Yet, a
comprehensive tariff meant a complete departure from
the Free-Trade system. Would the Liberals — would
Germany — agree to that ?
Since 1873 a series of commercial crises, aided by a wave
of speculation and ' bubble companies ' and the artificial
inflation caused by the miUiards of the French indemnity
swept over Germany. Bankruptcies became as familiar
as funerals. German industry was hard pressed by inter
national, and especiaUy British, competition. The manu
facturing interests cried out for protection, and the for
mation in 1876 of a ' central union of German Industrials '
(Central Verb and deutscher Industrieller) on a Protectionist
basis was a significant symptom. The industrial revolu
tion, that had been coming for a generation, developed
after 1871 with impressive rapidity. It was to convert
Germany in thirty years into a second workshop of the
world, in which the need of raw material and of expanding
export markets, the rise of an industrial ' proletariat,' in
creasing with every decade at a remarkable rate, and the
estabhshment of ' the grand industry,' were to be the de
cisive characteristics. The middle class was throwing up
an industrial aristocracy drawn from the captains of in
dustry — the financier, the manufacturer, the director of
interlocking syndicates, cartels and companies — whose
interests were those of a capitalistic society, freed from
the interference of Parliament. Could not this new
Schlotjunkertum — 'the Junkers of the chimneys' that turned
the romantic banks of the fabled Rhine into the Lancashire
and Midlands of Germany- — be allied with the old agrarian
Junkertum in the struggle with individualist Liberalism
inspired by Cobden, MUI, and the British ? With 1877
agricultural depression set in aU over Europe, caused by the
raising of the European margin of cultivation in conse
quence of competition in agricultural produce from the

324 BISMARCK
two Americas and the cheapness and facffities of oceanic
transit. Rents feU as prices feU. Agrarian Junkertum
was being hard hit ; no less serious was the future of
German agriculture, on which the structure of Prussian
society was based and the supply of the best recruits for
the army depended. Had Bismarck read Adam Smith he
would have agreed that for Germany defence was more
important than opulence, and defence meant the whole
system of government and the governing class.
The Kulturkampf had thrown much more than Vatican
ism into the crucible. Socialist Democracy, fed by the
industrial revolution, and watered by the political con
fusion, was reproducing itself in the tissues, fibres, and
blood stream of the social and political organism with the
rapidity of the anthrax baciUus in an appropriate culture.
The Gotha programme of Social Democracy in 1875 re
wrote the Eisenach programme of 1869 in itaUcs : the
reahsation of its aims was as deadly to the agrarian Junkers
as to the capitalist class ; its secularism menaced Catholic
Clericals, Lutherans, and Calvinists with complete impar
tiality. In 1874 the two Socialist members of the Reichstag
of 1 87 1 had become 9, in 1877 12, representing half a miUion
votes, a third of the Centre vote. If it were not crushed,
what would Socialist Democracy be in 1887 ? Bismarck's
survey in short — the survey of a statesman who based his
pohcy on ' ponderable ' realities — suggested a complete
change of system; and already in 1876 Roon, so often the
conservative periscope, hinted from his retirement that con
servatives could begin to fatten the calf for the prodigal son
of Junkertum, emaciated by the husks of Liberalism.
It was not only in foreign policy that Bismarck's pro
longed sUences caused apprehension. From the woods
and glades of Varzin came rumours that rippled from the
lobbies of the Reichstag to the portico of the Vatican. Two
obstacles — the Kulturkampf and the National Liberals —
barred a bold bid for the governing classes of a future,
rather than the present, Germany, by a new, comprehen
sive and constructive pohcy — a poUcy of pourboires and
power. To Bismarck more than any man the road to
Canossa, the white shirt and shivering in the snow of

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR - 325
Henry iv., were hateful. But if the Papacy would share
the shirt, forgo the snow and trudge half-way to meet
him, a joint Canossa might be found at Kissingen or some
other resort where foreign diplomatists cured their souls
while they washed their bodies. If the Centre could be
secured it would vote solidly and manoeuvre at command
hke a regiment. As for ' the May Laws ' and Falk, ' we
can always,' as Bismarck said to Augustenburg in 1864,
'wring the necks of the chickens we have ourselves hatched.'
The National Liberals were tremendously powerful —
one hundred and fifty votes in the Reichstag — and they
could rely in Liberal issues on the Progressives and
Radicals. The Liberal bloc was at present the master of
the situation, and intended to remain so. They held the
road to Canossa or Protection in force. A hint came from
Varzin. Bennigsen went to the lion's den and returned.
When Bismarck came back to Berlin in the spring of
1878 it was clear what had happened. He had offered
office to the Nationalist Liberal leader, but on condition
of support in a new policy, vaguely outlined. ' I desired,'
wrote Bismarck, in his Memoirs (ii. 198), ' sincerely to per
suade him, as I expressed it, to jump into my boat and
help me steer ; I was drawn up by the landing-stage and
waiting for him to embark.' Bennigsen indicated that, if
places were also found for two or three other prominent
National Liberals, the proposal might be seriously con
sidered. Bismarck refused. There was room for Bennig
sen in the King's Council, but not for Forckenbeck, or
Stauffenberg or any one else. Bennigsen then refused
for himself and the others. When the Emperor, inspired
by the Conservatives and soldiers, angrily remonstrated
against this trafficking with Liberalism behind his Imperial
and Prussian back, Bismarck was able to assure him, with
perfect truth, that the last thing he desired was to ask his
Majesty to confer office on National Liberals. Bismarck
had hoped to split the Liberals by detaching Bennigsen and
the right of the party. Bennigsen desired to introduce
Parliamentary government — ' a ministry a la Gladstone,'
which as in Great Britain would be representative of the
strongest party in the Legislature and make the policy of

326 BISMARCK
the future. The negotiation, however, was a complete
failure. But whUe Bennigsen did not get office, Bismarck
gave the coup de grace to the last effort to introduce the
system of responsible party government into the govern
ment of the Empire. It only remained now to crush the
National Liberals.
It is commonly said that the Bismarckian policy in the
Kulturkampf ended in a complete defeat — proved by the
recantation of the next ten years. Three comments, how
ever, are essential in this connection. First, the Liberal
parties which passed and upheld ' the May Laws ' and the
principles underlying them never recanted nor repented.
On the contrary, they opposed and lamented, with good
reason, the ChanceUor's surrender. Secondly, the Vatican
in 1878 was as tired of the struggle as Bismarck. It had not
been defeated, but it had faded so far to secure amendment,
much less the repeal, of ' the May Laws.' By 1878 the
danger of serious schism within the Roman Communion
had vanished. Ninety-nine Catholics out of a hundred
accepted the Vatican Decrees, but the Roman Church in
Germany was crippled by the Falk code. Had the
National Liberals come into office, determined to fight
to a finish, the Vatican would not have had an aUiance to
sell which gave it so commanding a position in the nego
tiations that foUowed the death of Pio Nono and the ac
cession of Leo xiii. There is every reason to suppose that
a strong National Liberal ministry could have continued
the struggle and imposed a very different compromise to
that dictated from Rome and accepted by Bismarck.
Thirdly, Bismarck deliberately sacrificed victory in the
Kulturkampf to victory in other issues, more important
in his judgment. What those issues were the next twelve
years revealed (see p. 451). The turning-point in the
making of Imperial Germany was reached in 1878. The
Germany of 1890 was essentiaUy the product of Bismarck's
policy in these twelve years imposed on the results pre
viously achieved. But Bismarck was able to evade the
Liberal ultimatum and accomplish the vital transition to
the new era, only because the Reichstag was not a govern
ment-making, policy-making organ. The adroitness and

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 327
intuition with which he created opportunities and
utihsed those provided by fate or fortune are very
remarkable. The years 1878 and 1879 are essentially
years, within Germany and without it, of ' the Bis
marck touch.'
When the ChanceUor returned to the Wilhelmstrasse
in the spring of 1878 his first business was to deal
with the Eastern Question and to preside at the Congress
of Berlin. § 3. Foreign Policy, 1871-1879
The student of Bismarck's foreign policy after 1870 is
perpetuaUy confronted with the difficulty of ascertaining
the truth. Sybel down to 1868 was permitted to rise
freely the Prussian archives, and his classical history, The
Foundation of the German Empire, is written from original
official sources and enriched by precious quotations, not
available in other authorities. But for the period after
1868 Sybel found the archives closed. He was not suffi
ciently impressed with the duty of writing the history of
Germany as a chronicle of HohenzoUern omniscience.
Bismarck was lavish of explanations in the Reichstag, and
in documents intended for pubhcation, but the gaps are
more conspicuous than the inclusions, nor do the ex
planations offered always taUy in substance and fact. It
is true that from British, French, Russian, and Austrian
sources much new light has been shed on dark places, but
the conclusion remains that the interpretation of many
critical episodes rests on inferences from acts and events,
with such other help as can be pieced together from stray
sources. It is significant that Stosch's Memoirs stop at
1872, and that, criticaUy tested, Hohenlohe's Memoirs ob
viously contain many excisions. The furious controversy
over the Crown Prince's Diary, published by Geffcken, is
iUuminated by Bismarck's Immediate Report, the object
of which was to deny its accuracy, combined with a virtual
admission of its authenticity and a denunciation of the
crime of publishing truth so damaging to the official version
of the origin of the Empire. Bismarck's revelation in 1896

328 BISMARCK
of the Re-insurance Treaty and its non-renewal terrified
the Foreign Office. There were, obviously, a great many
more skeletons in the cupboard, the key of which was kept
by the relentless old man ; or, as Bismarck expressed it to
Treitschke, ' you will not find our linen as clean as could
be wished.' The official version of foreign policy for the
public, and above aU the German public, was framed in the
interest of the dynasty and the government— as was its
military history with all its parade of information by the
General Staff. Such a publication as the French Origines
de la guerre de 1870, dating back to 1863 with its complete
set of documents, criticaUy edited and annotated, has
never been, and probably never wiU be, attempted by the
Prussian authorities. Indeed, the closer one works on
German foreign policy after 1871 the more certain is the
conclusion that German official statements cannot be
accepted as substantiaUy true without independent corro
borative evidence. And this is particularly the case with
Bismarck himself.
Bismarck's conception of diplomacy was singularly hke
that of Metternich. Foreign policy should be handled as
a confidential and personal transaction of State affairs by
plenipotentiaries, able to bind their governments. Oral
discussions permitted great freedom of intercourse,, and a
no less unfettered freedom of repudiation. The nego
tiations with Napoleon in. between i860 and 1866 were
models of Bismarckian methods. Similarly, after 1870 his
dealings with Russia rested largely on personal engage
ments to, or from, Alexander n. and Alexander in. Hence
his preference for autocracies ; business could be done
with the autocrat, or, as in his own case, with the minister
who had the autocrat weU in hand. The continuity of the
individual was more important than the continuity of the
policy. Hence, also, his dislike of France after 1871.
French statesmen came and went like partners at a ball,
and the promise of the first might be good reason for in
fidelity in the next. Hence stiU mote his disUke of Great
Britain and the British system of publicity and ministerial
responsibility : the more so because, unlike France,
German threats could not cause the faU of a Gladstone or

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 329
a Beaconsfield, a GranviUe or a Salisbury.1 Above all, he
detested with a fierce detestation the British Blue-Book a
which brought government into the arena of public debate
and enlightened the public not with acts, which was all
that the public was entitled to know, but with methods,
which it was certain to misunderstand. Bismarck's
hatred of the British Blue-Book was a blend of the
patrician superstition that foreign policy was a mystery
only to be mastered by the privileged class with a heredi
tary aptitude for its ritual — a superstition that stUl obsesses
the weU-bred Levites of the cosmopolitan priesthood of
diplomacy — resentment at any government daring to do
anything without his permission, and the fear that if the
bUnds of the temple were perpetuaUy drawn up the plain
man would condemn the result because the methods were
so pecuhar. Bismarck knew well that the diplomacy which
annexed Schleswig-Holstein, which prepared the war of
1866, which laid the long mine of the HohenzoUern candi
dature and the ' defensive ' war of 1 870, and the revision
of the Treaty of 1856 did not cease with the Treaty of
Frankfurt. Peace and those who ensue it have their
victories of lies, stratagems, plots, and counter-plots no
less than have war and the soldiers.
Peace after 1871 was the supreme need for the Empire.
Germany was now a ' satiated ' country. The ' injuries
of time ' had been obhterated at last, and Germany, having
obtained by war the conditions on which she desired to
live with her neighbours, now wished for no more than the
maintenance of those conditions, and their development
into a permanent system. It was inevitable that mutilated
and humUiated France should dream of the day when the
Treaty of Frankfurt would be revised — by a successful war
1 Not that Bismarck did not attempt in Great Britain, this particularly
German method of controlling policy. There is clear evidence that Bismarck
between 1880 and 1885 tried to get both Lord Derby and Lord Granville dis
missed, and their places taken by ministers more amenable to German
dictation. The dismissal of Delcasse in 1905 was the Bismarckian stroke by
Bismarck's disciples.
2 ' It is astonishing,' wrote Odo Russell to Granville, ' how cordially Bismarck
hates our Blue Books. ... If he once takes offence at anything we publish, he
will take his revenge by making himself as disagreeable as possible for the rest
of his days.' — (Life of Granville, ii. p. 367.)

330 BISMARCK
of revenge— but the France of 1871 single-handed could
never accomphsh that. A France without affies was a
France condemned to accept 1871 as the last word in the
great struggle for the Rhine. The task therefore was^ to
keep France isolated. The surest way of accomplishing
this was the organisation of Central Europe with the rest
of the States in subordination to the new German Empire.
The isolation of France and the German hegemony of the
Continent were complementary aspects of the same
problem and were complementary results of a single
aim. Bismarck set to work after 1871 to convince the leading
continental States that it was their interest to accept the
facts of 1871 and keep France isolated. The revival of the
Triple Alliance of the three monarchies of Russia, Austria,
and Imperial Prussia was the first step. ' There is always
a chanceUor in Europe,' says M. de Mazade in his iUumi-
nating study of Metternich. The difference between the
system of Metternich and that of Bismarck lay in the
transfer of the centre of gravity from Vienna to Berlin.
But that was vital. r
The material interests of the Empire, deduced from a
system of political ideas maintained by Germany, with the
nation in arms, as the guardian of both — such was the core
of the ChanceUor's system. Prestige in diplomacy also
was a weapon of incalculable strength in Bismarck's hands.
Prussian prestige after 1 871 rested on two clearly defined
and intelligible elements — a man and a nation's power.
In 1 862 the European chanceUeries had felt like the Prus
sian officers before Jena. ' Your majesty,' they assured
Frederick William in., ' has several generals superior to
M. de Bonaparte.' In 1871 they felt what Goethe said of
Napoleon 1. ' You cannot beat him, the man is too
strong for you.' Personal intercourse with the man
heightened the hypnotism that Bismarck exercised.
His personal diplomacy was a marveUous mixture of
brutality, arrogance, and geniality, of patrician grandeur
aided by the tricks of the card-sharper. A stab in the
back came as easily from his vindictive rancour, as the great
stroke that achieved a long-matured ideal. He might

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 331
pretend to forget, but he could not forgive, and never
pretended that he did.
The invincibility of Prussia, scientifically organised, so
that her strength could be concentrated on a policy
directed by an unflinching fidelity to a single purpose —
on that assumption he had taken office in 1862, and that
assumption after 1871 he taught Europe to regard as the
first and last axiom of the State system of the Continent.
The power of Germany, a Germany perpetually mobilised
and ready to spring at a word from the Wilhelmstrasse,
was burnt into the mind of Europe, and the German
Foreign Office acted on the assumption in every trans
action, great or small. ' Germany,' said Moltke in the
Reichstag in 1875, ' must remain armed to the teeth for
fifty years, in order to keep what took her six months to
win.' The world studied and copied the Prussian army.
Even at our Horse Guards the British military ' demi-gods '
began dimly to realise that the conduct of war required
educated brains, and could not be acquired on the parade
ground in the morning and the hunting or cricket-field
in the afternoon. Moltke, however, was determined that
for aU the slavish copying of Prussian technique by
Prussia's rivals, the real secret, ' the secret of the higher
command ' should remain an inviolable Prussian monopoly.
Other nations would produce soldiers, but Germany alone
would continue to educate generals. And Bismarck in the
Reichskanzlerpalais had the same determination. The
secret of the higher command in policy, won by the blood
and sweat of a lifetime, must be kept by the same blood and
sweat. If Germany once aUowed the quality of that right
judgment in aU things on which her prestige in diplomacy
was buUt to deteriorate, disaster would foUow. No
material strength could compensate for an inferiority in
the higher direction.
The confidence of Germany in the ChanceUor as the
director of foreign policy and the guardian of Germany's
place in Europe was implicit. The bitter criticism poured
on the successive phases of his home policy scarcely trickled
into the sphere of foreign affairs. Gone were the days of
1862 and 1863, when professors and pathologists, publicists

332 BISMARCK
and pamphleteers, arraigned before an audience half-
convinced in advance, the foreign policy of the Minister-
President. The Reichstag Ustened and obeyed, at the
feet of the Master. Bismarck studied and gave great
weight to the volume of public opinion, as his handling of
the colonial question subsequently showed. His speeches
on the delicate problems of international relations were
invariably stamped with the magisterial note, the recog
nition of the nation's demand for power, and the subtle
personal appeal for confidence. ' Bismarck has,' said Lord
Odo Russell, ' a prophetic coup d'ceil.' He wove into his
analysis autobiographic reminiscences and tantahsing
glimpses of the forces moving behind the scene ; and the
vanity and egoism with which they were flavoured reflected
the vanity and egoism of the audience. The German
Reichstag was on these occasions, and it knew it, the
Olympus from which Jove spoke to Europe. He made
Germany feel its unity and grandeur. Such speeches,
with their exposition of the realities, were a tonic and an
inspiration. No German but drew deeper lungs after
hearing these utterances of pontifical infaUibility from the
tribune of the Reichstag ; the speaker himself — that
gigantic figure of the ChanceUor, the civil Prime Minister
of the Empire, in a military uniform with his sword at his
side, the lionlike head, the flashing eyes, the gesture of
command, even the hoarse, rasping, and, hesitating voice
that made the barbed phrase or the felicitous apophthegm
more teUing — the speaker himself was an arresting in
carnation of Imperial power and of Prussian mUitarism.
In reviving the triple entente of the Central and Eastern
monarchies Bismarck securely reckoned on the iU-wiU of
Russia to Great Britain, so patent in the Washington
negotiations and the Genevan arbitration, and the genuine
fear of Liberal and Radical tendencies in France and
Great Britain. ' The downward course ' of England
alarmed Alexander n., who forgot that England had been
going to perdition since 1815, and that some countries
can even wax strong and prosperous on such perdition,
and can be a far safer home for monarchs than the hearth
of order at Petersburg. 'The sacred cause of Royalty' was

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 333
declared to be imperiUed ; ' Germany, Austria, and Russia
should hold together to resist those dangerous and evil influ
ences of England, if order was to be maintained in Europe.'
Dynasticism and order were to be pitted against republican
ism and the revolution. The solidarity of European Con
servatism — the famihar catchword took Bismarck back
to the age of Metternich in which he had grown up, and
the school of Gerlach that now proclaimed him a rene
gade. Toujours ca change, toujours c'est la meme chose.
Bismarck now exploited the shibboleths of the dynasties to
rivet the Bismarckian conception of Central Europe on
Vienna and Petersburg, as he had exploited the shibboleths
of Gerlach to rivet Prussian supremacy on Germany. The
sovereigns met in 1871 at Gastein and Salzburg — which
was ' the coffin ' of Beust, about to be dismissed and re
placed by Andrassy — and in 1872 at Berlin, exchanged
kisses on both cheeks and showered decorations. Bismarck
entertained the royalties and their staffs with diplomatic
reminiscences ; hejvas particularly pleased to dilate on the
tortures suffered by the French negotiators (1 870-1), and
explained with genial humour how he had baited the hooks
to play with the fish before landing it. The Emperor
WUliam returned the visits at Petersburg and Vienna.
Koniggratz was forgotten ; the reconcUiation prepared
by the peace of 1866 proceeded rapidly. ' No formal
treaty was concluded,' the Crown Prince wrote to his
cousin the ruler of Roumania, but the understanding was
intimate and complete. In 1873 Victor Emmanuel also
came to Berlin. His readiness to join Napoleon in 1870
was forgiven and forgotten by his accession to the monar
chical entente. Bismarck had secured the vulnerable flank
of Germany in the east ; he had withdrawn the consti
tutional kingdom of Italy from gravitating towards the
sister Latin race ; France was without an aUy. The Kings
of HoUand and Sweden made a pUgrimage to the new
Mprra nf royjliam and order at Berlin, and Belgium was
compeUed to alter her penal code, because Germany did
not think it adequate to deal with Ultramontanes or
Radical journalists. Beyond the Carpathians and in the
vaUey of the lower Danube stood, the HohenzoUern

334

BISMARCK

sentinel on guard. The intimate relations between
Bucharest and Berlin, between the HohenzoUern cadet
and the great Hohenzollern Emperor, are written in every
line of the diary of Charles of Roumania.1 The pacific
penetration of Europe by a Germany, matchless in arms
and science, had begun.
AU went as happily as marriage beUs, aU except the
course of events in the accursed France. UntU 1 873
France patiently explored the causes of her coUapse, and
heroicaUy wrestled with the German indemnity and the
re-making of her army. Thiers, by the Treaty of
March 15, which ended the German occupation, earned
the proud title of ' Liberator of the soil of the patrie,' and
the Monarchical Right promptly rewarded him by hurling
him from power (May 24). Bismarck viewed with pro
found resentment the recovery of ' the hereditary foe.'
The military and financial convalescence was being speeded
up beyond aU anticipation. The restoration of a Catholic
Bourbon royalty, whose legitimacy and lineage dated to an
age when the mushroom monarchism of the HohenzoUerns
had not yet sprouted in the sandy wastes of Brandenburg,
might bring France back into the sacred circle of dynasti
cism, even become the centre of a Catholic coalition against
Prussia. The Kulturkampf raged in Germany. What if
c Henry v.,' the 'emigre" of Frohsdorf, proved to be the
' stone ' that Pio Nono proclaimed in his visions would
' issue from heaven and break the Colossus ' f Mit
der Dummheit kdmpfen G'dtter selbst vergebens — one of
Bismarck's favourite quotations — 'Against stupidity even
the gods fight in vain/ 'Henry v.,' like our 'James in.
and vin.' was not of the stuff to recover crowns lost by the
folly of his ancestors. Bismarck's luck did not desert him.
' Henry v.' refused to make the great renunciation : an
assegai in the South African bush kiUed the Prince Imperial
(1879) ; Gambetta died from a poisoned hand in his
forty-fourth year (1882) ; Skobeleff, who never could
1 'I am here alone,' wrote Prince Charles of Roumania in 1871 to King
William, ' a solitary outpost, the sentinel of the frontier against the East . . .
but I am neither so distant nor so wearied but that I can heartily join in the
acclamations for the German Emperor.'

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 335
decide which he desired the more passionately — to lead
the Cossacks into Delhi or into Berlin — died in 1882 ; and
Harry Arnim, who foretold the Kulturkampf from Rome
in 1869 — brilliant, unstable, and cursed with an ambition
and the absence of all the qualities required to achieve it —
was broken and hunted into exile. His place at the
German Embassy in Paris was taken by Prince Hohenlohe,
whose Memoirs reveal how odious to a refined gentleman
was the task of hectoring and buUying France, laid upon
him from the Wilhelmstrasse.
' A republic,' Bismarck decided, ' would find it more
difficult to obtain affies than a monarchy.' German
diplomacy therefore supported the republicans, while also
aiding every party that would embarrass the republic.
In the republican solution Bismarck saw a Nessus shirt for
France : French Jacobinism clinched the argument pressed
by the royal physicians of Law and Order for keeping the
moral leper in a sanitary isolation.
The war scares of 1874 and 1875 are still an obscure
episode. The argument of German historians and
Bismarck hagiographers that Bismarck did not believe in
' preventive ' wars, because he said so in two or three
obscure and probably insincere sentences, is as childish
as Bismarck's own explanation that it was a Stock Exchange
manoeuvre, inflated by the Chauvinism of the General
Staff, the chief of which, Moltke, was a ' street Arab
(gamin) in politics,' and utilised by the vanity of Gort
schakov to score an empty diplomatic triumph. Moltke
was not a gamin in politics, and Gortschakovs do not win
triumphs over a Bismarck if they have only vanity at their
command. Considering what France had suffered she
was perfectly entitled to make her army as strong as she
could, and in doing so, she only acted on Bismarckian
principles. The Foreign and War Offices in Berlin knew
that a France with a strong army would be an aUy worth
having — at Petersburg, for example. The one black fear
that haunted Bismarck — it dated back to 1854 — was an
aUiance between France and Russia, in which Germany
could not be a third and wrecking partner. Such an
aUiance meant the restoration of the Continental Balance

336 BISMARCK
of Power which it had been the work of 1866 and 1 87 1 to
destroy. It could be frustrated at the outset by threaten
ing France with war — compeUing her to suspend her re
organisation and driving her back on the impotence of a
second-rate State. In the winter of 1874-5, Bismarck tried
to pick a quarrel with France because the French bishops
had endorsed the papal encyclical condemning the arrest
of Cardinal Ledochowski, and provoked it by a violent and
inspired press campaign on the menace involved in French
armaments. German armaments, of course, were a proof
of Germany's pacific intentions. Moltke — a real god from
a real machine — was brought from his silence in the War
Office to explain to the Reichstag the serious danger in
which Germany stood. And Moltke explained with an
emphatic brevity that sent a shiver down the patriotic
spine of every German.
It is fairly certain that the famous article in the Post —
' Is War in sight ? ' — was inspired by Bismarck, and that
the Emperor had not realised the elaborate manoeuvre
going on behind his back. It is quite certain that the facts
communicated to The Times by De Blowitz, primed by the
Due Decazes (May 4, 1875), the information sent from
Berlin by Lord Odo RusseU, by Lord Lyons from Paris,
and by three German Embassies in three capitals, together
with the information on which Alexander n. and Gort
schakov acted, and on which Queen Victoria wrote her
famous letter to the Emperor WilUam, were substantially
correct. But Alexander came to Berlin, and by May 10
Gortschakov was able to send his telegram ' Now peace is
assured,' and the British government to say publicly that
it had ' supported, as much as seemed necessary, the ex
hortations which the Emperor of Russia appeared inchned
to make during his visit.'
Bismarck was very angry. The Prussian General Staff
was quite ready to make a dozen preventive wars, but it is
difficult to beUeve that the .ChanceUor meant more than
to drive the Due Decazes from office, and thus compel
France to reduce her armaments, or possibly to coerce her
into indiscretions in which the chassepots would go off of
themselves. The cause of his anger lay much deeper than

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 337
resentment at a personal and pubhc rebuff at the hands
of Gortschakov. He had been completely outplayed in
the diplomatic game. The Emperor told Prince Hohen
lohe ' I do not wish war with France . . . but I fear that
Bismarck may drag me into it little by Uttle.' The warn
ings to the Kaiser from the sovereigns of Great Britain
and Russia turned Bismarck's flank. He was confronted
with a European coalition, and Decazes, thoroughly terrified
as he was, as indeed were aU the statesmen in France,
managed the episode very neatly. He remembered July
1870 and behaved with studied discretion. ' Decazes,'
Bismarck is reported to have said, ' is like a baU — if pricked,
he roUs away ; nothing goes in.' Bismarck knew, for he
had been pricking the ball assiduously in the hope that
it would not roU, but burst. An appeal from the French
government to Russia and Great Britain elicited a very
clear pronouncement that a war thrust on France would ' be
an iniquity ' which Europe would not tolerate. Bismarck
reahsed that he was not dealing with the Due de Gramont
or the European situation of July 1 870. The leading strings
woven for the Triple Alliance of the monarchs did not
prevent independent Russian or British action. In a
word, the Europe that Thiers had ' failed to find ' in 1 870
Bismarck ' found ' by colliding violently with it. Europe
earnestly desired peace, but not a peace based on the per
manent obliteration of France. The whole episode was
a culmination of the perpetual bullying of France by
Bismarck, based on the assumption that the French
government must arrange its internal policy to German
dictation. Arnim, for example, on one occasion said to
the French Foreign Minister, ' Remember, I forbid you to
take Tunis — yes, I forbid you.' ' Bismarck,' wrote Lord
Odo to Lord Derby, ' is at his old tricks again ... his
sensational pohcy is very wearisome.' Europe had not yet
grasped that a hectoring foreign policy was continuously
employed by the Chancellor to lash up German public
opinion and influence the Reichstag. In 1874-5 the
Kulturkampf was in a critical stage. But, with aU aUow-
ances, the weight of the evidence confidentially laid before
the Russian and British governments convinced them that
B. Y

338 BISMARCK
Germany would pick a quarrel, if it could, with the French
Republic. The eternal Eastern Question placed a far heavier strain
on Bismarck's system, for at Once Great Britain, reluctant
iii 1875 openly to take the side of France, stepped into the
centre of the European stage. It proved indeed as critical
as the Greek insurrection had been to Metternich's Holy
AUiance from 1822-30. The revolts of Montenegro,
Bosnia, Serbia, and Bulgaria, and the intervention of
Russia, foUowed by the Russo-Turkish War and the Treaty
of San Stefano, brought Europe within measurable distance
of a European conflagration. Bismarck had endeavoured
to meet the danger by the Berlin memorandum (May 11,
1876), which broke down because Great Britain, rightly
or wrongly, refused to be a party to it. National passion
was rising fast. It was Nationalism that had brought the
Russian armies to the gates of Constantinople. Neither
Great Britain nor Austria had forgotten Russian action in
1870, and the British fleet also was at the gates of Con
stantinople. Austria could not keep out of a war between
Russia and Great Britain — her interest in the Balkans was
too deep. What was Germany to do in that case : side
with Austria or with Russia, or cut the sorry figure she
had cut in 1854 ¦ ^ s^e sided openly with Austria or
Russia it was certain that France would find an aUy at
once in Germany's enemy. In the winter of 1877-8 Bis
marck saw the foundation of his system crumbling away.
National ambitions were riving asunder the identity of
dynastic interest expressed in the Entente of the Three
Monarchies. At aU costs, therefore, the war in the Near
East must be localised and ended, and the European
problem settled not by arms but by diplomacy.
Bismarck returned from Varzin on February 14. The
prehminaries of peace between Turkey and Russia had
been signed on January 31 ; on February 7 part of the
British fleet had entered the Sea of Marmora and was
within sight of the Russian lines. On January 14 the
British government, supported by Andrassy, demanded
the revision of the Russo-Turkish treaty by the Concert
of Europe. On February 19 Bismarck reviewed the situa-

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 339
tion for the Reichstag — a masterly performance on a very
slack rope. He emphasised the supreme need of peace, the
justifiability of a European revision, and the disinterested
ness of Germany. He quietly disclaimed all idea of dic
tating to any of the great Powers ; Germany, however,
could perform one humble and efficient task — ' that of the
honest broker ' — facilitating business between clients at
cross-purposes, aU of whom were the broker's friends.
Beneath the speaker's cool analysis surged the deep bass of
German power. It was because she was so strong that
Germany could be so calm. But if she chose to throw
her incomparable army into the scales, it would be decisive
Russia had no option but to submit. Her ministers,
however, felt that here indeed was Bismarck's gratitude
for aiding the refusal to submit the Treaty of Frankfurt
to a Congress.
The Congress of Berhn under Bismarck's presidency
testified to the primacy of the German Empire in Europe.
In 1856 Prussia had been kindly aUowed the vacant chair
in the Congress of Paris. It was now shared between
France and Turkey. The diplomatic salute that in 1856
had been taken by Napoleon in. was in 1878 taken by
Bismarck. ' The honest broker ' did not merely act as a
clearing-house and take a smaU commission. For two
of the clients at least — Austria and Russia — if not for all,
he wrote out the contract notes and settled the article
to be transferred as well as the price. In 1878 the
principle was quietly laid down that the business of
Continental Europe must henceforward go through the
Berlin Exchange in the Wilhelmstrasse, and transactions
concluded without the Berlin official stamp would always
be at the buyer's or seller's peril.
The details of the Congress belong to general European
history and the particular States immediately concerned.
But apart from the registration of Germany's hegemony,
the Congress raises a pertinent and difficult question. At
what precise point did Germany's and Bismarck's direct
interest in the Near East commence ? If we were to
believe the Chancellor's public utterances, that direct
interest did not begin until at least a decade later, if then.

340 BISMARCK
In 1876 (December 7, 1876) he pronounced, in a pictur
esque phrase, that to Germany the Near East was not
worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier, and he con
tinued to repeat the disclaimer with a monotony and an
emphasis that convey the quintessence of suspiciousness.
It is, however, not necessary to pick the locks of the
German and Turkish archives to prove that for some
years prior to 1878 German diplomacy had been working
with stealthy and steady persistence at displacing British,
Russian, and French influence with the Sublime Porte, and
quietly substituting a German repUca of ' the great Eltchi,'
Stratford de Redclyffe, as the most important figure
at Constantinople. By 1878 Turkey had been already
taught to recognise that while Russia was an irrecon
cilable enemy, Austria at best a very interested friend, and
Great Britain a useless ally or an open foe, Germany would
be ready to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire,
in return for political and commercial control. Such a
control was an essential coroUary to a secure Central
Empire, and was perfectly compatible with an ultimate
Austrian advance to Salonica. The argument and the
opportunity were immensely heightened by the sequel
to the Berlin Congress- — the blunders, in particular, of
Russian policy in the treatment of Roumania and Bulgaria.
But it is demonstrable that the subsequent and growing
resistance of the Ottoman Empire to the Concert of
Europe rested on German support which did not begin in
1879. The success of the European Concert at Berlin in
averting war, and its failure in assigning the Balkans to
the Balkan peoples, were largely due to Bismarck. A
truer perspective has taught us that not ' der alte Jude '
(Beaconsfield) but ' der alte Junker ' (Bismarck) was the
great figure at the Congress of Berlin.1
It is no less true that in 1878 Bismarck primarily en-
1 To-day we can read many reminiscences by those who took part in the
Congress, and many and vivid are the stories related by eye-witnesses of Bismarck.
His temper throughout, we are assured, was ' vile.' We have the picture of his
fainting, with Gortschakov, who thought he was going to die, offering him a
glass of water, and the Chancellor's reply, ' Pas mort, mon cher, pas encore, mon
cher, pas encore ! ' or of his striding up and down at a private session and ex
claiming — 'Settle, gentlemen, settle, I insist — -to-morrow I go to Varzin.'

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 341
visaged the problem from an Austrian angle. The assign
ment to Austria of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the Sandjak
of Novi Bazar, which opened up the road to the vaUey of
the Vardar, was certainly the result of a secret agreement
between Austria and Russia, and was probably the result
of a prior agreement between Vienna and Berlin. Tatis-
cheff takes it as proved that as early as 1873 Austria was
to secure such compensation in the Balkan peninsula,
with Germany's approval, as would partiaUy make good
Austrian losses in Germany and Italy. Such a policy was
the logical completion of Bismarck's Central Europe,
based on Austria as a Danubian State, expansion of which
would be south-eastwards. Agreements behind the back of
an aUy were part of Bismarck's methods, as the reinsurance
of 1 884 and 1 887 proved. He was always ready to find com
pensation in territory that did not belong to Germany for
a State that he had mutUated. The understanding of 1 873
was a reinsurance against the entente with Russia of 1 872.
A Balkan sphere of control was a sop to the Magyar
ascendency, and since Beust's dismissal in 1871 the recon-
cffiation of Germany and Austria rested on an entente with
Andrassy and the Magyars. Vienna and Buda-Pesth com
bined could be trusted to stem the tide of Panslavism in the
Balkans and hold the passes until Germany had completed
her diplomatic penetration and decided on her pohcy.
The international situation was very comphcated. But
from his central position at Berlin Bismarck by ceaseless
effort and utilising every turn aimed first at maintaining
the national antagonisms of Russia, Austria, and Great
Britain, which enabled him always to have rival groups
to bargain with ; secondly, at continuing the isolation of
France. The European Powers were to be grouped round
Berhn, with Germany as the arbiter of their rivalries.
A study of the evidence available suggests the suspicion x
1 The student can study, for example, the evidence derived from the dispatches
and memoranda in Crispi's Memoirs, vol. ii. ; Lord Newton's Life of Lord Lyons,
Lord Fitzmaurice's Life of Lord Gran'ville, Wertheimer's Life of Andrassy,
Busch's Bismarck, some Secret Pages of his History, Gontaut-Biron's Mon
Ambassade en Allemagne and Dernieres Annies de I Ambassade, the letters of
General Le F16 published in the Figaro (1887), Prince Hohenlohe's Memoirs,
and the unpublished documents cited by M. Hanotaux in his chapters on
foreign policy in La France contemporaine (vols, i.-iv.).

342 BISMARCK
that from 1872 onwards Bismarck continuously passed
on the confidential information obtained from Vienna
or Petersburg or London and used it to poison and
inflame Great Britain against Russia, Austria against
Russia, and aU these against France. The Wilhelmstrasse
became a laboratory of international quarrels, fomented
by ' the honest broker.' ' They dislike me,' as Bismarck
said of the petty Balkan States, ' but by a merciful dis
pensation of Providence they dislike each other much
more.' It was the agreeable duty of the Chancellor to co
operate with Providence for Germany's untold advantage.
The administrative occupation of Bosnia was the first
instalment of a prior agreement, and a pledge of further
favours to come — if Austria behaved properly.
After 1878 Russia, in Bismarck's view, got out of hand.
The Nationalist party, led by Skobeleff' and Katkoff, aided
by a great wave of Panslavist feeling, proclaimed that
Bismarck had instigated the Russian attack on Turkey
(which is quite probable), in order to favour Austria and
rob Russia of the fruits of victory. At Paris and Petersburg
the desirability of a Franco-Russian affiance was openly
canvassed. Schuvalov, the chief Russian plenipotentiary
at the Congress, was compeUed to resign, and the Tsar
wrote a bitter letter to his relative, Emperor WiUiam.
When Bismarck inspired Busch to open a counter-attack
in the German press on Gortschakov and Russian Pan-
slavism, the wire between Petersburg and Berlin was not
broken but made red-hot with recriminations. ' Do not,'
Bismarck said to Gortschakov in 1878, 'Do not compel
me to choose between Austria and you.' In truth it was
neither Gortschakov nor Austria, but France, that com
peUed Bismarck to choose. Russia by herself he did not
fear, but France in conjunction with Russia — the war on
the two fronts — weighed like lead on Bismarck and
Moltke's minds.
While the Emperor WiUiam, much distressed by the
Tsar's indictment of German ingratitude, met his angry
relative at Alexandrovo, Bismarck met Andrassy at Gastein
(August 27, 1879). From Gastein Bismarck went to
Vienna, where the author of Austria's expulsion from

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 343
Germany received a triumphant ovation. Vienna, like
Petersburg, recognised Germany's services to Austria in
the Balkans. And without German support Francis
Joseph could not face Russia. In a long confidential
letter (September 10) to the King of Bavaria Bismarck
explained the imperative reasons for an alliance with
Austria. It was a dexterous move to invite in ad
vance Bavarian support, which was given by King
Louis without reserve, but Bismarck was reaUy plant
ing a powerful breaching battery on the flank of his
own sovereign.
An alliance with Austria, avowedly against Russia, roused
the anger and obstinacy of the Emperor William : for it
was a violation of every precious tradition — the dynastic
connection, the support of Russia in every Prussian crisis,
and the solidarity of ' the system of order on a monar
chical basis.' The Emperor roundly dubbed the proposed
treaty a ' perfidy.' For six weeks the ChanceUor wrestled
with the conscience and limited political intelligence of
his master. ' AU my weU-weighed arguments,' he writes
in his Memoirs, ' were entirely without effect ... I was
compeUed to bring the cabinet into play, a method of
procedure extremely against my grain.' The Crown
Prince once again supported the ChanceUor. When the
Emperor finaUy yielded on October 7, ' he was not con
vinced by the arguments of policy but . . . only because he
was averse to ministerial changes.' In the autumn of 1879
Bismarck's place — for the ChanceUor was determined to
have the treaty — could only have been filled by Bennigsen.
It was the last of Bismarck's historic struggles with his
sovereign, which stand out with the arresting significance
of obelisks on a straight road across an open plain, and each
marked a momentous decision. In 1862 he had persuaded
the King to fight out the struggle with the Liberal
Landtag ; in 1863 he na^- prevented the King from going
to the Congress of Princes at Frankfurt^ in 1866 he had
induced the King to sign ' a shameful treaty ' with
Austria ; in 187 1 he compeUed the King of Prussia to
become German Emperor ; in 1879 he made the Dual
AUiance. The last was probably the greatest victory of

344 BISMARCK
the five, and of a more pregnant import for the future of
the two Empires and the European State system.
The treaty of October 7 was secret, and the text was not
published untU February 3, 1888, and then, naturaUy,
without any of the secret clauses or conventions which
unquestionably were attached to it. The nature and
extent of these can only be estimated by careful inference
from the course of German and Austrian policy after 1879.
In the pubhshed text the aUiance provided for three even
tualities : first, if either party were attacked by Russia the
other was to come to its assistance with its whole miUtary
force ; if either party were attacked by another Power
than Russia (i.e. France), the other was to observe a bene
volent neutrality, which, if Russia intervened, was to turn
into an active support ; and if Russia increased her
armaments so as to menace either of the contracting
Powers, the Tsar was to be informed that an attack against
either was an attack against both.
The treaty was in form ' defensive ' — a distinction in
tended for the inteUigent public that assumes that phrases
are identical with the realities of international conflicts.
But a war in which the formal declaration of hostilities
comes from the side that has been diplomatically man
oeuvred into a position in which it must either declare war
or accept a diplomatic defeat is technically for the other
side a defensive war. Bismarck had never waged an
' offensive ' war, in the technical sense, and he never in
tended to bungle so badly as to be obliged to do so. The
casus foederis therefore of 1879 provided precisely what
he required — an aUy, should it be necessary to force Russia
to declare war. On the other hand, he could always re
pudiate his Austrian ally on the ground that she was about
to wage an offensive war, outside the scope and ambit of
the contract. In other words, Bismarck retained the
initiative and secured the control of Austrian policy, for it
is policy that makes wars, not wars that make policy.
' I was not blind,' wrote Bismarck, ' to the perplexities
which made the choice (of Austria) difficult.' AU the
evidence available fuUy bears out this measured judgment.
The Chancellor weighed long and with a remorseless

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 345
scrutiny the case for and against so momentous a decision.
To-day, perhaps, when the Dual AUiance has lasted for
thirty-six years and seems as familiar and inevitable a
phenomenon in the firmament of continental policy as
King Charles's Wain in the heaven of stars, we are disposed
to ignore the problem that Bismarck strove to solve. The
Treaty of 1879 closes a crisis in the evolution of Bismarck's
statecraft. It marks a climax, but, like aU climaxes, it
turned a fresh page, the writing in which was determined
by the character of the terminus.
What then were ' the perplexities ' ? It is clear on the
evidence that Bismarck in 1879 could have turned to
Russia and concluded a simUar defensive treaty, with
Austria as the foe to be neutralised. The cordial meeting
of WUUam and Alexander n. at Alexandrovo, which cleared
up their personal relations, strengthened the German
Emperor's desire to heal the poUtical breach and renew the
Uaison estabhshed in 1872. WiUiam, indeed, failed to see
that Austrian and Russian ambitions were in conflict after
1878, and that Germany could not support both, but must
decide between them. Bismarck's deeper knowledge and
' prophetic coup d'oeil ' had penetrated the logic of history,
' more remorseless than the logic of the Prussian audit
office,' and for him the antagonism of Austria and Russia
made the cruelty and inevitability of a choice. But why
not select Russia — the champion of order and monarchical
autocracy, the dynastic and political friend on whose sup
port Prussian policy had pivoted since 1862 ? Why not
by such a master-stroke close the Eastern frontier and
permanently dissolve the nightmare of a Franco-Russian
aUiance ? Would not such an alliance have before long
coerced Austria into renewing the Triple Entente of 1872 ?
Powerful critics in 1879 and since have argued this thesis
impressively, and concluded that Bismarck now made his
first and biggest mistake. The road, it is said, to Peters
burg via Vienna was impossible in reality ; but the making
of a road to Vienna via Petersburg was not beyond
Bismarck's great gifts. The alienation of Great Britain
from Russia and the Anglo-Austrian entente in 1879 left, it
is also argued, Russia isolated, faced by a hostile Germany,

346 BISMARCK
Austria, and Great Britain, the Near East closed, and
France alone as a possible friend. The Treaty of 1879, lt:
is therefore concluded, made a Franco-Russian entente —
the one result Bismarck feared — only a question of time.
Yet, if Bismarck erred, he did so with his eyes open. He
knew the arguments for a Russian alhance better than his
critics, and he rejected them. Why ?
Three central points take us to the heart of the system
enshrined in the Austrian treaty. First, a sentence in the
confidential letter to the King of Bavaria, unaccountably
ignored by many students of Bismarck : ' The German
Empire in alliance with Austria would not lack the support
of England.' Lord Salisbury, the British Foreign Secretary,
confirmed this prediction by saying that the rumour of such
an aUiance was ' good tidings of great joy.' Would a
British Foreign Secretary in 1879, 1889, or 1899 have
said the same of a Russo-German aUiance ? Bismarck
knew that an affiance with Russia must commit Germany
to the Russian antagonism to Great Britain, as well as to
the Russian antagonism to Austria. Neither in 1879
nor 1889 was he prepared to place such a wasting mort
gage on German pohcy : for Bismarck had a sounder sense
of British strength than many of his critics then or since.
The alienation of Great Britain and of Austria in 1879
would almost certainly have involved a renewal of the
Anglo- Austrian alliance of 1856, to which France in 1879,
as in 1856, would have become a partner.1
Secondly, was Germany prepared to see Russia at
Constantinople ? Apart from any prior promises to
Austria, not involving Constantinople but Salonica, that
was a question of profound import for Bismarck in 1878-9.
His answer as given in his acts is a decisive ' No ' ; not
1 The Secret Treaty of April 1 5, 1 85 6, which pledged Great Britain, France, and
Austria to unite in resisting any attempt to tear up the Treaty of Paris of 1856.
2 The extraordinary obiter dictum in the Memoirs (ii. 285) that Bismarck
personally would have ' welcomed ' the ' physical and diplomatic possession of
Constantinople ' by Russia cannot be taken seriously. It is contradicted by the
argument in which it is embedded, and is belied by the action of Germany
prior to, and after, 1879. Written late in life, it probably is a criticism on
Germ an policy in the Near East after the Chancellor's dismissal, and is one of
the many similar 'confessions' suggesting that in matters of high military
policy he was continuously overruled by the Emperor, or the soldiers, or by his
colleagues, or by public opinion. Credat Judaus Apella.

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 347
because a Russian Constantinople rang out a sharp quietus
to Austrian ambitions, but because it ended aU German
ambitions in the Balkans. Austria at Salonica was no bar
— rather a help — to German control of Constantinople and
the Ottoman Empire, the ' integrity ' of which Beaconsfield
' consolidated ' by annexing Cyprus, securing a tighter hold
on Egypt, and by handing over Bosnia to Austria, half
Bulgaria to a virtual Russian protectorate and the Armenian
frontier fortresses to Russia. But if a Russiari alliance did
not mean Germany's acquiescence in. the Russian advance
to Constantinople, it meant nothing. It meant, more
over, that either Germany must support Russia in her
Eastern quarrel with Great Britain or obliterate the
treaty ; and if there was an excentric dissipation of German
strength it would be to sacrifice Pomeranian Grenadiers
in Europe that Russia might annex Turkestan or Afghan
istan. Bismarck was confident that Austrian Chauvinism
could be controUed, but a complete German control of
Russian policy was not a practical proposition. Teuton
and Slav could not work together as Teuton and Magyar
could for a common interest.
Thirdly, a Russian aUiance left the main gateway of
Central Europe — the Danube — in neutral, and probably
hostile, hands. The strategical and economic confor
mation of Central Europe is moulded by three great river
basins — the Rhine, the Danube, and the Vistula. The
Rhine was now firmly in German hands : a Russian alliance
did not secure Germany the control of the Vistula, and it
left the Danube out of the central German control alto
gether. Without a control of the Danube basin as com
plete as the control of the Rhine, the political and economic,
no less than the mUitary, conditions of centralism could not
be adequately realised. Moreover, Bismarck reckoned on
bringing Roumania with Austria's help into the system ; and
thanks to Russian bunghng, the Treaty of 1 879 was promptly
foUowed by that close understanding between Bucharest
and Vienna which was certainly expressed in a precise con
tract, the text of which has never been published. The
Austrian affiance, therefore, closed the Danube from source
to mouth : it brought Serbia and Bulgaria on the southern

348 BISMARCK
bank into the sphere of Austrian policy ; for it placed
Roumania as a German outpost to the north, and an
Ottoman Empire under German influence on their backs.
Moreover, the Austrian bastion in Galicia, from Cracow to
Czernowitz, left Russia controffing the Vistula only from
Thorn to Ivangorod, with Prussia on one, and Austria on
the other, flank, of the Russian Polish salient. In short,
the framework of Central Europe was completed by the
Austrian alliance. A Russian aUiance, and Austria hostUe,
would have destroyed it. Bismarck's diplomacy from
1879 to 1890 aimed at fiUing the mould thus created with
an organic and expanding system of poUtical traditions,
habits, and ideals — the full life of the allied States incor
porate in the environment that gave them blood and air.
There were two other positive advantage's of great
weight — the maintenance of the Austrian monarchy, which
coincided with the maintenance of the Prussian State
regime, and the checking of Slav influence, working then
and since so powerfully against Germanism. The German
aUiance gave to the Habsburg throne a support moral and
political, difficult to exaggerate. How the Habsburgs
would have fared without that support in the next thirty
years can be as easily imagined as can the effect on the
German Empire and the HohenzoUern throne if the
Habsburg monarchy had been crippled as a monarchy.
The aUiance of 1879 was a compact with Buda-Pesth even
more than with Vienna. It set the seal of German approval
on, and assured the promise of German support to, the true
construction of the Compromise (Ausgleich) of 1867 — an
alliance of German and Magyar to crush aU non-German
and non-Magyar elements (about one-half of Austria-
Hungary) into subordination. Was Bismarck not right,
from his point of view, in concluding that, so construed in
action, the Compromise which he supported on principle
in 1867 «vas worth an Emperor's ransom to an Imperial
Germany determined to establish a German hegemony ?
What would have been the result had he in 1879 rejected
Andrassy's overtures, closed the door to Buda-Pesth, and
opened the door that led to the Nevsky Prospect and
Tsarskoe-Seloe ?

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 349
Two obvious disadvantages, however, perplexed Bismarck
— the Polish question and the Austrian future in the
Balkans. The denationalisation of the Poles and the con
tinuity of the tripartite dismemberment of 1795, endorsed
in 181 5, was a question of existence for Prussia. Bismarck
held, as had been already indicated, that the dissolution of
the ancient kingdom of Poland by Frederick the Great and
Catherine was the pre-condition of a safe and strong
Prussia. The Polish problem was with him day and night,
and it had flamed into a fresh crisis with the Kulturkampf.
The relations and policy of the Dual Monarchy to the
Austrian Poles provided a very thorny internal conundrum
for the Ball-Platz, and Bismarck foresaw in 1879 that the
interests of Vienna and Berlin in Polish policy were not
identical, and might easUy become antagonistic. The
Vatican, with its trusteeship for Roman Catholic Poland,
had an influence on Roman Catholic Vienna and Buda-
Pesth that foreshadowed the gravest complications. Nor
could the Dual Monarchy, in face of the Ruthenian popu
lation in Gahcia, treat the Poles as Prussia treated the
province of Posen. A hberal policy at Vienna towards
the Austrian Poles went iU with the drastic oppression of
Polish Prussia by Berlin. If Austria ' got out of hand ' in
this sphere of action the basis of the Treaty of 1 879 might
crumble away entirely.
There was a simUar danger in the Balkans. If we knew
the whole truth of what lay behind the innocent clauses
of the Treaty of 1 879, itself a further instalment of the
system begun in 1 872, it is quite certain that it would con
firm one broad conclusion. Germany endorsed cautiously
but deliberately the Austrian biU of exchange in the
Balkans. The nature and extent of the commitment can
only be roughly inferred from the tangled diplomacy that
preceded 1879 and fills the next thirty years. But in 1879
Bismarck took a great risk — all his public utterances con
firm the guarded language of the Memoirs — and he took it
deliberately. The ' occupation ' of Bosnia and Herze
govina was nominaUy a transitory arrangement : its con
version into an ' annexation ' was a permanent bait to
Austria, but Germany secured a powerful control, for she

350 BISMARCK
could always refuse to support the conversion. He placed
an aUy in shining armour behind Francis Joseph and the
Magyar oligarchy : and the aUy stood there, not in the
interest of Austria but of a Prussianised Germany. The
contention that the Treaty of 1879 made a Franco- Russian
aUiance inevitable rests on arguing back from 1896 to 1879.
It is certain that no alliance between France and Russia
took place before 1890. Diplomatic coquetry and flir
tations are even less convincing evidence of affiances than
glasses of wine and the toasts of monarchs (drafted by their
ministers) at ceremonial banquets. The whole 'point of
Bismarck's criticism of the policy of his successors after
1890 is concentrated in the indictment, that while he
prevented such an aUiance (which was true), his successors,
not merely permitted it, but by their diplomatic bungling
actually brought it about. It is therefore neither fair nor
historical to argue that the Dual Alliance of 1879 made
a Russo-French aUiance inevitable. Bismarck could and
did argue that, so far from that result being inevitable, the
Dual Alliance, properly handled, made an entente between
Paris and Petersburg impossible.
Bismarck was a continentalist, and remained a continen-
talist to the end of his days ; that is, he held as an axiom
that German supremacy must rest on mastery of the
strategical and political situation in Europe. Efforts out
side the central European theatre were an excentric and
unjustifiable dissipation of German strength, the concen
tration of which was required on the major objective.
Secure that, and the rest foUowed ; lose it, and no
gains elsewhere would compensate the loss. Austria-
Hungary and the Balkans— the two could not be separated,
for the problem of south-eastern Europe was the problem
of the Dual Empire — were essential to German hegemony
and the sole avenue of continental expansion. The crisis
of 1875 reinforced the lesson that Europe would not
tolerate a further expansion westwards at the expense of
France and Belgium. But an expansion to the south-east
could secure British neutrality, if not active support, for
it would be at the expense of Russia. To-day we are apt
to forget that in 1879 Great Britain viewed Russia not

TFIE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 351
with the eyes of 1908 or 1914, but of 1856 and 1870.
How — Bismarck might weU ask — was German trade to
expand after 1879 ^ Great Britain, the sea-power par
excellence, were driven by German action into the camp
of Germany's foes ?
Nevertheless the gravity of the risk taken in 1879 is
proved by the insurance against its exploding into an un
limited liabUity. Until 1890 Austria was never aUowed
to get out of hand. How precisely this was done we
cannot say with certainty. But it was done. The control
of the Wilhelmstrasse over the BaU-Platz was effective, for
Bismarck had his personal prestige, unrivalled knowledge,
and experience to help in the difficult task. These are
quahties not acquired by intuition, stiU less by birth or
hereditary succession, but by brains and the travail of a
Ufetime. Control of Austria was also assisted by positive
counterchecks — the aUiance with Italy and the continuous
ring at the Russian front door. It is safe to conclude that
Bismarck prepared for the inclusion of Italy in 1879, ana-
that without the Dual AUiance Italy could not have been
secured. We have Bismarck's word for it, and his judg
ment outweighs a dozen criticisms. For he had the whole
of the facts before him, whereas his critics argue from
edited documents written on one side only.
A further consideration is very relevant. Down to 1879
the isolation of France had been the prime object of
German policy. The policy was breaking down. France,
excluded from the Congress of London in 1870, took part
in the Congress of Berlin in 1 878. After 1 879 the diversion
of France became more important than her isolation : and
with it went the diversion of Russia and the diversion of
Great Britain — in each case the diversion being intended
ultimately to increase the antagonism. But these develop
ments open up a fresh section of Bismarckian policy, with
an intrinsic character of its own. They lead to the Triple
Alliance and the consequences of that consummation of
the ChanceUor's diplomacy.
Gastein in 1 865 saw the making of a new Austria ; Gastein
in 1879 provided the new Austria with an alluring future
and the means of realising it. Vienna was right in welcom-

352 BISMARCK
ing Bismarck with a gratitude which deeply touched that
seared, proud, and sensitive heart. The Treaty of 1879
was a masterpiece.1 It was signed by Bismarck and
Andrassy on October 7. On October 8 Francis Joseph
was graciously pleased to accept Andrassy's resignation —
for reasons of health. The treaty was cordiaUy approved.
But the statesman who made it for Austria received the
reward, of Beust, Benedek, Rechberg, Schmerling, Buol,
and Bach. §4. The New Era— -Home Policy, 1878-1888
The years 1878-80 witnessed a gradual but complete
change in the home policy of the Chancellor, culminating
in the establishment of the system which Bismarck main
tained until his fall. In foreign policy, as has been
already indicated, the development of events prevented
the continuance of the alliance of the Three Monarchies
on the lines originally planned, and imposed on Bismarck
the necessity of a choice. In home affairs the necessity of
a choice was even more urgent. Bismarck practically
said to Bennigsen, ' Do not compel me to choose between
you and Windthorst.' And Bennigsen's reply was vir-
tuaUy to the effect that the choice must be made.
The several elements in the problems by the spring of
1 878 were clear, but together they made a very complicated
situation. First of aU, there was the ChanceUor himself.
His health and strength were no longer capable of bearing
the continuous strain of mastering and directing the foreign
and home policy of a great and expanding Empire, in
which Prussia was the predominant partner. An imperial
ministry did not exist. The imperial executive was
organised as a branch of the Imperial Chancery, the secre
taries of the various departments being simply depart-
1 Prince von Biilow writes in his Imperial Germany (edition of 1916): —
' Prince Bismarck, a second Hercules, accomplished many great labours. . . .
If I were asked which of these is the more admirable from the point of view of
foreign policy I should say without hesitation — the Austrian alliance.' The
whole chapter (v.), as indeed the whole book, bears out Mr. Headlam's con
sidered judgment on its importance as an authoritative exposition of German
principles and a German interpretation of the meaning of Bismarckianism —
a meaning falsified by his successors, of whom Prince von Biilow is the ablest.

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 353
mental and executive officers, appointed by the ChanceUor,
and responsible as managers of sub-departments to him
alone. Bismarck had stoutly resisted every effort to convert
these departments into independent ministerial offices,
with ministerial chiefs, colleagues in an imperial cabinet,
and representing their several departments in the Reichs
tag ; and his reason was not pure autocracy and personal
jealousy — the determination to keep everything in his
own hands — though they accentuated his refusal. The
reasons went far deeper ; an imperial cabinet, such as the
Progressives and the Left Wing of the National Liberals
had advocated since 1867 as an irrevocable advance to
parhamentary government and were urging with persist
ence in 1877, cut at the root of the position of the Federal
CouncU, and the interlocking machinery by which Prussia
maintained her control of policy as a whole. For the
Federal CouncU, Uke the Tudor Privy Council in England,
was the real governing organ in the Empire, and combined
legislative with executive duties (through its committees),
and was essentiaUy the organ which made policy. Al
though we are without exact information as to how
Prussia, behind the closed doors of the Bundesrat, main
tained her control, it is clear that it was exercised and
maintained by the chairmanship of the Imperial Chancellor,
who as Minister-President of Prussia cast the Prussian
vote ; and in the secret deliberations of the Federal
Council, just as in the Tudor Privy Council or the modern
Cabinet in England, there could be perfect freedom of dis
cussion, and a complete representation of different points
of view, whUe the decision arrived at was the decision of
the organ as a whole, and the voting was unknown except
to the initiated. A real Imperial Minister of Finance,
for example, responsible to the Reichstag, would obviously
supersede to a large extent the power and functions of the
Federal Council and transfer them partly to himself and
(no less important) partly to the Reichstag. The creation
of such imperial ministers simply meant that in a few years
the Federal Council would either shrivel into the position
that the British Privy Council has shriveUed into, rela
tively to the Cabinet and the House of Commons ; or, it

354 BISMARCK
would be transformed into a real Upper Chamber of the
Imperial Reichstag, as had been in 1870 the ideal of the
unitarians led by the Crown Prince and the inteUectuals
of the * Coburg and Gotha ' school. But such a trans
formation destroyed the essence of the institution which
was constituted out of, not over, the Federated governments.
No less serious (and to aU Prussians of the Bismarckian
and conservative type, far more serious) would be the
effect on Prussia. The British student is apt to forget
that beside the Federal Council (Bundesrat) and the
Imperial Reichstag existed the Prussian Ministry, presided
over by the Prussian Minister-President, and the Prussian
Parliament (Landtag), and that Imperial Reichstag and
Prussian Parliament were frequently sitting at one and the
same time in Berlin. Indeed, a large number of Reichstag
members (who were Prussians) spent their time between
the two bodies, voting on and fighting the same issues in
two separate legislatures. The Kulturkampf was essen
tiaUy a Prussian affair, and the greater part of the 'May
Laws ' was a Prussian, not an imperial, concern : just as
the administrative execution of those laws was mainly the
duty of the Prussian Minister of the Interior.
Prussia had, like the other federated States, her separate
(and very narrow) franchise, ministry, and bureaucracy,
the only difference being that Prussia was very nearly two-
thirds of the Empire, and that behind ministry and
bureaucracy stood a solid concrete waU of tradition and
conventions, the parapet of which was the royal autocracy.
There was a Prussian Minister, but no Imperial Minister,
of War ; a Prussian Minister of Finance, Education, and so
forth, and the Prussian Foreign Minister was the Minister-
President who was also Imperial ChanceUor : an Imperial
Minister of Finance or War, not directly under the Chan
ceUor's control, involved the dual system in a terrible
dilemma. Either it meant the government of that im
perial department by Prussia, or the government of that
Prussian department by the Empire. The former would
have led to a revolt of every non-Prussian State from the
imperial system, the latter to the dissolution of Prussia
in the Empire. Bismarck plainly told the Reichstag more

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 355
than once that an independent Imperial Minister of
Finance would have for his greatest antagonist the Prussian
Minister of Finance. He might have added with even
greater truth that an Imperial Minister of War would
either have to swallow the Prussian War Office or spend
aU his time in fighting the Prussian Minister of War. Was
the Imperial Minister to exercise the prerogative of the
Prussian Crown, or only the much more restricted power
of the Imperial Praesidium ?
-The duty of correlating this dualism and ensuring its
harmonious working was Bismarck's main task, and he did
it by combining the office of Chancellor and Minister-
President, by controlling the Federal Council, and by the
domination of the conservative majority in the Prussian
Landtag. As Minister-President he took care that the
decisions of the Prussian Ministry broadly coincided with
the policy of the Federal Council ; as Imperial ChanceUor
he took care that the Federal Council's decisions coincided
with the broad requirements of Prussian policy. Further
more, his control of the Prussian Ministry was ensured by
the Cabinet order of 1852 by which the Prussian Ministry
in its relations to the Prussian Crown acted through the
Minister-President alone ; the Minister-President was in
the same constitutional relation to the sovereign that
custom has assigned to the Prime Minister in the British
Cabinet. The Minister-President was the sole channel
of communication with the Crown ; and Bismarck's im
mense prestige, personal gifts, inexhaustible powers of
work, political tact, and commanding influence with the
sovereign enabled him to accomplish a perpetual miracle.
From 1 871 to 1888 it must also be remembered that
Bismarck was the servant of a sovereign rapidly ageing.
William 1. was seventy-four in 1871, and he was content
to leave Bismarck a very free hand. The King was not
capable of doing the amount of work that autocracy and
an intimate personal control implied. The autocracy
was in fact shared by the King-Emperor with Bismarck.
William's governing interest, the army, feU outside the
shared power. Bismarck provided the legal basis and the
money, and left the army to the King and the General

356 BISMARCK
Staff, for in his eyes the army was simply a superb executive
instrument of policy. The General Staff provided him,
through its chief, with the information necessary for a
correct judgment of any political situation, but he would
have resented the intervention of the ' demi-gods ' in the
office of the WiUielmstrasse even more fiercely than Moltke
resented the effort of the Imperial ChanceUor to overrule
in problems of strategy the chief of the General Staff.
The system therefore rested on the individual char
acter and gifts of King-Emperor and Chancellor more
securely than on the legal and constitutional relations
established by the Imperial and Prussian constitutions.
But if we assume that in 1878 the Cabinet order of 1852
had been repealed, and that in the place of WUliam 1., aged
eighty-one, was a sovereign young, active, capable, able
to do the work required, and with his own views of home
and foreign pohcy, not necessarily identical with those of
his Chancellor and Minister-President, the system would.
have begun to show widening fissures that no papering
over by photographs, decorations, and eulogistic letters
would cover. What took place in 1890 might have taken
place at any time between 1878 and 1890. ' The older
one gets,' said Frederick the Great, ' the more convinced
one becomes that His Majesty King Chance does three-
quarters of the business of this miserable universe.' In
1878, when a crisis had been steadily developed and Ger
many and Bismarck had reached the cross-roads of a great
decision, had the buUet of Nobiling ended the life of
WUUam 1. and put the Crown on the head of the Crown
Prince, it is as certain as anything can weU be that the
history of the next ten years in Germany would have been
fundamentaUy different. The fate of Liberalism in
Germany might have been decided with a moderate
Liberal on the throne. ' King Chance ' provided that it
should be decided with an aged and very conservative
sovereign, the two attempts on whose life profoundly
influenced a critical general election. Had the Conser
vatives and the Clericals hired the half-witted miscreant
who fired at the old gentleman to whom age, character,
and service to Germany should have given a perpetual

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 357
immunity, they could not have done a better stroke for
their parties.
In 1878 Bismarck recognised that personaUy he coidd
not carry on as he had done. The law which authorised
the creation of a Vice-ChanceUor (Stellvertreter) to act
for the ChanceUor, if required, was intended to relieve the
strain but retain the system. In 1873 Bismarck had met
it by resigning the Minister-Presidency to Roon, but that
solution had proved a faUure. The Stellvertreter law of
1878 was a dehberate effort to avoid the other solution —
the creation of imperial and responsible ministers, who
could be real colleagues to the ChanceUor, and relieve him
of half his work (and more than half his power). The
debates on the law revealed the issues, and the law passed
because Bismarck, for the reasons previously explained,
categoricaUy refused any other alternative. The Reichs
tag had to choose between Bismarck and an approximation
to parhamentary government. No one in 1878 could face
the possibility of governing the Empire and Prussia with
Bismarck out of office and in opposition ; no one had any
confidence in a foreign policy directed by any one but
Bismarck; for the Congress of Berhn, the antagonism
between Russia and Austria, the renaissance of France, the
policy of Great Britain, and the menacing problems offered
by Italy, the Mediterranean, Greece, and the Ottoman
Empire — unsolved by the Congress — made no other de
cision possible. In 1878 the Reichstag voted first for
the man, and with reluctance, for his system. The life
of States, as of families, was once more proved to be
dependent in the great crises on the individual.
Bismarck now had to keep the system that he had created
efficient.. If it failed in efficiency, his own personal posi
tion would crumble away. It was not enough to direct
foreign policy, anticipate and neutralise hostile coalitions,
and rivet in that German hegemony which, as he said
himself, had to face four fronts at one and the same time.
The German at home must be satisfied by material proofs
that Bismarckian government was the best both in theory
and practice. In 1878 the Germans had begun seriously
to doubt the adequacy of the theory and the benefits of

358 BISMARCK
the practice. It was openly asserted by friends and foes
alike that Bismarck had done his work. The Reichstag was
the crux., The irresponsible autocracy of the Federal
CouncU that made policy must either work with the major
ity in the Reichstag or make a majority for itself. The
Bismarckian system which in theory made the government
independent of party could only achieve its purpose
through the manipulation of the party vote. The per
petual creation of King's Friends in sufficient numbers to
ensure ' the right ' decision in the Lobbies was essential.
The general election of 1877 proved that under no con
ceivable circumstance could the united Conservative
parties command the majority required, or indeed now
nope to win more than one-fourth to one-third of the
votes. The Conservatives must therefore be united with
another strong party. There were only two from which
to choose — the Liberals or the Clerical Centre. Union
with the Centre gave a working, with the Liberals a hand
some, majority. Which therefore was to be secured ?
The whole point lay in the ' securing.' In Great Britain
under similar circumstances there would have been a
Coalition Ministry, representative of the fused parties.
But in Germany the problem for Bismarck was to get the
votes without admitting the voters to the control of policy.
Hitherto, the National Liberals had solidly supported the
government. The negotiations with Bennigsen revealed
two. interesting results : National Liberal support would
be continued if the previous policy were continued, but a
change of policy meant probably a struggle with National
¦ Liberalism. To the Liberals above all the maintenance
of Free Trade, the issues involved in the May Laws, and
ultimately parliamentary government, were the tltree
cardinal items.
Conservatism combined with the Centre involved
marching down the road to Canossa, and it was uncertain
that the Centre would vote for a new fiscal policy. WhUe
Bismarck faced this troubled political situation, accident*
helped him partially to solve it. The death of Pio Nono,
and the elevation to the Pontificate of Leo xiii., created
a new situation at the Vatican. The new Pontiff could,

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 359
without damaging Papal prestige, inaugurate a more
conciliatory attitude ; Bismarck without disinterring a
penitential white sheet could enter on an ' exchange of
views.' Both sides, thoroughly tired of the struggle, in
dicated through appropriate channels that conversations
would at any rate do no harm; and in the autumn of 1878
Bismarck sought a cure at Kissingen, which was also
recommended as the one health resort in Germany that
would help Monsignor MaseUa, the Papal Nuncio to
Bavaria. Nuncio and Chancellor met by an arranged
accident and exchanged views. They were reaUy deter
mining what they could buy or sell, and in 1878 the wares
on either side were simply brought out and handled in a
friendly manner.
More decisive for the present was the attempt (May 1 1)
by Hodel on the Emperor's hfe. The government at
once brought in a very severe bill which practicaUy put
the Social Democrats at the mercy of the Ministry of the
Interior. For years the growing organisation of Social
Democracy had been alarming the Conservative classes.
Argument having failed, force alone remained. But the
bUl was so comprehensive in its severity that it threatened
aU poUtical organisations not approved of by the govern
ment. Despite a denunciation by Moltke of Social Demo
cracy as the enemy of God and society, Bennigsen and
Laskeffrom the Liberal benches tore the measures in pieces, ,
and it was rejected by 251-57 votes, the Centre voting
with the Liberals. A few days later (June 2) Nobiling, a
doctor of philology, attempted to assassinate the Emperor,
and succeeded in wounding him severely. Bismarck heard
the news at Varzin. He struck his staff into the ground.
'iNow,' he cried, ' we wiU dissolve the Reichstag.'
The dissolution was decreed promptly by the Bundesrat
(June 1 1), and the elections were held in all the excitement
of panic, aggravated by indignation. Liberalism was)
aghast at the ChanceUor's stroke : and the result bore out
their fears. They lost thirty-two seats at least, and the
united Liberal and Radical forces numbered 106 as against
176 in the old Parliament. The Centre gained a couple
of seats, but the seats lost by Liberalism went to the

360 BISMARCK
Conservatives, who now disputed with the Clericals the
claim to be the strongest single party in the legislature.
The anti-Socialist law was promptly reintroduced, and}
passed by 221 votes to 149. Bismarck was obhged to
accept some amendments from the National Liberals, for
without their help the measures could not become law,
and the chief concessions were two : first, the operation
of the law was hmited to three years (March 31, 1881) ;
secondly, electoral meetings were excluded from its pro
visions. But, as passed, the discretionary powers granted
to the government were tremendous, for it enabled the
central authorities in the States to prohibit public meetings,
dissolve political associations, -suppress newspapers and
bqoks, and decide who was or was riot a Socialist, what was
or was not Socialist doctrine or objects calculated to under
mine the State. Socialists could be banished "from their
homes, and a whole district could in case of urgent danger,
decided by the authorities, be placed under a state of
minor siege.
The debates >were remarkable for three utterances.
Bebel, in his attack on the bill, revealed the qualities which
in ten years were to make him the most remarkable pohtical
character in Germany, after Bismarck himself. Richter
the Radical leader told the Reichstag that he feared
Social Democracy more under this measure than without
it. The Chancellor, after explaining that Socialism sought
a heaven in momentary and material enjoyment alone,
and confessing that if he lost his own faith in God and a
future life, he could not live a day in any peace of mind,
urged all parties to unite in making a bulwark against the
common enemy to the Empire. He also foreshadowed
the necessity of counteracting the insidious poison of these
pestilential foes by measures of social and economic benefit
to the industrial proletariat.
The Radicals and Progressives, with the left wing of the
National Liberals, gaUantly fought the fight for freedom
of opinion and liberty of political utterance and association
to a finish. But the National Liberals by their action
threw the earth on their own coffin. The programme of
Social Democracy has always terrified middle-class Liberal-

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 361
ism more than any other party. Chastened by the
election the Liberals were in a sad quandary. Fearing
the further loss of public support if they resisted the anti-
"SociaUst law, and surmising that Bismarck could throw
them over and secure the- Clerical Centre, they supported
the measure, not from conviction but on calculation.
Persecution of the Socialists was a lesser evil in their eyes'
than driving the ChanceUor into the arms of Windthorst
and the Vatican. They therefore clung to the broad
principle of supporting the government as the sole means
of retaining their political influence. But in doing so
they sacrificed the essentials of „their Liberalism, and they
virtually buried their party as an instrument of progress
and .pohtical freedom. Bismarck was - quick to recognise-
the weakness. He had forced them against the waU and
they had refused to figrrt. Another sledge-hammer blow
and thee would break up. In political arithmetic that
meant that he would -get half their votes without any
further concessions, and the other half would melt into
coahtion with the Progressives and Radicals. When
National Liberalism had ceased to exist as a solid phalanx
the way would be open for a reactionary Conservatism.
National Liberahsm was to learn the wholesome lesson
that when parties prefer tactics to principles and oppor
tunism to convictions, the funeral service with their
antagonist as the officiating minister is at hand.
The anti-Socialist law was put into operation with
drastic severity. ' Now for the pig-sticking ' (Jetzt geht
die Sauhatz los /) Bismarck is reported to have remarked,
and the Prussian pohce got to work with energies whetted
by their faUure against the Catholics. Everything that a
strong executive can do, when directed by men to whom
Social Democracy was the creed of the canaille, was done.
Berhn was placed under the minor state of siege, as were
later Hamburg, Leipzig, Stettin, and other city fly-belts
of the plague. Every club savouring of SociaUsm was
broken up ; newspapers were prosecuted, pamphlets sup
pressed. The police even forbade subscriptions for the
unfortunates selected for banishment from their homes.
Indeed, everything was done to provoke the broken into

362 BISMARCK
violent outrage, to be used as a justification for further
severity. What the ChanceUor felt about freedom of
speech was shown in his proposal, first, that two Socialist
members of the Reichstag should be delivered over to the
pohce because they had dared to attend the Parliament to
which they had been elected; secondly, that the Reichstag
should by law take power to limit the freedom of speech
within the House itself. Both these proposals were
rejected. Every one, except Bismarck and the Conser
vatives, knew that the ' Muzzling BUI ' (Maulkorhgesetz),
as it was speedUy nicknamed, would be employed by the
governmental majority in crushing all serious criticism.
Criticism that is successful is always ' offensive ' to auto
crats and bureaucrats. It would be better to close the
Reichstag at once. Well might the most distinguished of
living German historians, Mommsen, publicly say in 1881
that 'the Prussia we had, the Germany we believed we
had, are at an end . . . the freedom of Germany wiU be
lost for many years to come.'
The anti-Socialist law was thrice renewed by a compliant
legislature (1881, 1886, 1888), and the results were remark
able. The Social Democratic party, thanks to wonderful
leadership and organisation, grew under persecution. In
1877 it had twelve members in the Reichstag and poUed
half a miUion votes ; in 1893 it had forty-four members
in the Reichstag and polled more than two miUion votes.
Twenty years later it was to be the strongest single party
(one hundred and thirteen members) in the Reichstag,
polhng four and a quarter milUon votes, a third of the
total electorate voting, and owning no less than eighty-
six newspapers. Richter 's prediction in 1878 was more
than verified in Bismarck's lifetime.
The transient victory of 1878 did not solve Bismarck's
problem. He could not reckon on an unsuccessful at
tempt at assassination every year. The anti-Sociahst law
did not give him a working governmental majority, nor
did it bring in money, and he needed the latter more than
the former. The new economic policy that began in 1879
was due to the needs of the imperial revenue. The Im
perial government was not paying its way, and it was

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 363
confronted with a stagnant or declining revenue and ever-
increasing expenditure.
With characteristic thoroughness Bismarck planned a
complete reconstruction of the fiscal and financial prin
ciples and machinery on which the Federal Empire had
hitherto been based, to be foUowed by a new departure
in the objects to which the revenue was to be devoted.
The Reform period lasted from 1879-88, and involved the
abandonment of the Free Trade principle of taxation for
revenue alone ; a return to a Protective tariff, increasingly
severe in its successive emendations ; a halt in the system
of direct taxation and a large substitution of indirect for
direct taxes ; an attempt to establish gigantic State mono
polies in articles of such general consumption as tobacco,
brandy, and sugar, and a comprehensive legislative code
creating for the industrial workers compulsory insurance
by the State against accidents and sickness, and establish
ing old-age pensions. The broad result of these nine years
of feverish effort and strenuous controversy was completely
to alter the economic and political structure of Germany.1
The essential detaUs and progress of this comprehensive
programme are noticed below, but it is desirable to en
visage at the outset the problem as Bismarck evidently
saw it and the solution that he provided.
First and obviously, the provision of an automatically
expanding revenue was his main concern. The existing
system had four main defects. It kept the Imperial
government in dependence on the Reichstag. The
annual Budget was voted by the Reichstag, and the dis
cussion enabled any strong party to hold up the imperial
authorities either by refusing a particular item or by
amending or refusing the specified appropriation. The
greater the need of the government the greater the lever
age of the opposition. Bismarck foresaw that through
the Budget the Reichstag would in time secure by con
tinuous flanking attacks that parliamentary control which
1 On the whole question see the Report (Pari. Papers, CD. 4530, August
1885) drawn up by Mr. Strachey, discussing the fiscal, commercial, political
and other points at great length and with elaborate wealth of detail and
statistics. The evidence for the prosperity of Germany both under a Free
Trade and a Protectionist system is impartially examined.

364 BISMARCK
it had faUed to secure by a frontal onslaught. Secondly,
the requisition that deficits must be made good by matri-
cular contribution from the federated States was very un
popular with the contributories, and the opposition made
itself felt in the Federal Council, where the governments
could outvote Prussia and resist measures of policy that
involved further expenditure with a corresponding in
crease in the pro rata matricular contributions to imperial
revenue from the States. Hence the control of pohcy was
threatened. Thirdly, an increase in direct imperial
taxation was not practical politics. The several budgets
of the federated States were dependent on direct taxation,
and it was impossible for the imperial revenue either to add
an imperial to the State tax or to remove from the State
governments their main source of income. Fourthly,
without much larger sums of money, unification and cen-
traUsation through the imperial executive would come to
a standstiU. Even more pressing was the cost of defence.
Foreign policy and the general principles of the State
poUty necessitated the arming of Germany to the teeth.
An expanding population automaticaUy provided the men,
and the Empire had to pay for their equipment. The
more scientificaUy that an army is organised, the larger
the amount of science that it brought into armaments,
the more costly wiU that army be. Efficiency can only
be purchased by increasing expenditure. If the German
army was no more efficient, better equipped, and in ad
vance of aU rivals in the quality and amount of its materiel,
the basis of Bismarckian foreign policy was shattered.
' It must never be forgotten,' wrote Frederick the Great,
' that distrust is the mother of security.' Bismarck's
system started from profound distrust and fear of foreign
States, and the assumption that distrust and fear made the
foreign policy of all other States. He studied the omens
of the international situation with the superstitious creed
of the augur, profoundly convinced that the gods were
jealous, malevolent, and implacable, and the human beings
they influenced a debased copy of the gods. If the
Socialist Democrat, according to Bismarck, interpreted
life in the terms of a carnal and fleeting hedonism (which

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 365
he did not, for he lived and throve on ideas and ideals),
Bismarck for aU his behef in God, Heaven, and a Hereafter,
seems to have been convinced that the sole justification
of Heaven and an after life lay in importing as much of the
DevU and of HeU into international relations as were neces
sary to provide a deterrent to coaUtions against Germany.
The prestige of Germany depended on the universal con
viction that Bismarck relied on force, and that the German
army could be at the gates of its foe within ten days of
a rupture. The army therefore must be provided with
strategic railways and vast stores ; and on the horizon
there already grew out of the sea the little cloud that fore
told an imperial navy no less efficient and ready. The
navy was an imperial affair. As yet it was in its cradle,
but even cradles are expensive, and those who rock them
must be paid. The most fatal disaster to be apprehended
was a limitation of German armaments imposed by a
Reichstag that refused to tax the Empire any further.
The advantages of a new, were as conspicuous as the
defects of the old, system. Bismarck saw the German
nation, in consequence of its unification, its long intel
lectual preparation, its intoxication from victory, and its
belief in its own disciplined, inteUectual, and moral
strength, growing in wealth, numbers, and sohdarity.
A tariff and indirect taxation would tap the expanding
national reservoir and disguise the withdrawal of the wealth.
In his eyes the supreme adyantage of indirect taxation
lay in the concealment of the tax. It would fall on the
ignorant consumer, not on the taxpayer directly mulcted
by the action of a government. A tariff was an arrange
ment that could not be annually revised, for it would rest
on an economic code enacted for a period of years, or be
largely regulated by treaty beyond the revising power of
the legislature. Hence the revenues derived from indirect
taxation would faU into the same category as the mUitary
Septennates, and pass from parliamentary control into
the hands of government. More than ever pohcy would re
main the monopoly of the Federal Council and Prussia, and
the Reichstag be reduced to a debating society, incapable
of interfering at any point with the central springs of power.

366 BISMARCK
Already in 1879 Bismarck foresaw one further marked
advantage. The existing structure of society was the core
of the Prussian system. The real danger of Social Demo
cracy did not lie in its opinions, for the executive could
always ignore or crush opinions and ideas, but in the
reconstruction of society that the Socialist programme
avowedly contemplated. The Bismarckian system and
the State which stood for Power could not exist on
a different stratification of society to that established in
Prussia. Social Democracy aimed at a social revolution,
the political effects of which would be simply consequential
to the economic and social redistribution. Apart, how
ever, from Social Democracy, the existing structure was in
1878 threatened more insidiously and continuously by the
operation of social and economic changes, not confined to
Germany, though accentuated by the rapid industrial
revolution that set in after 1871. Agricultural depression,
if unchecked, meant that Germany would shortly be
dependent, like Great Britain, on imported food ; but
far more serious pohticaUy was the pauperisation of
agricultural Junkertum. The squirearchy would be trans
formed from an independent landowning and governing
class into a class no longer able to staff the army and the
civil service, but divorced from the land and driven like
the bourgeois to earn a middle-class living. Industrial
ism, too, was throwing up a new aristocracy of brains and
money whose power rested on their capacity, their wealth,
and their potent material interests. Sooner or later they
would usurp the position occupied by the old Junkertum,
because they were quite as able, worked as hard, and com
manded a far greater share of the elements of material
power. It is as hard to argue with the masters of industrial,
as with the master of military, legions.
Bismarck's economic and fiscal policy from 1879 t0 J888
has absorbed the analytical attention of the economist and
the political philosopher, but the major premises from
which he argued and the conclusion to which he marched
with relentless energy, derive their deepest significance
from their relation to the principles of his statecraft. For
by his policy at the critical moment of development he

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 367
graduaUy attracted the allegiance of the new elements
of power to the Prussianised Empire. By so doing he
saved the Bismarckian State, and he prevented aU those
formidable elements from being thrown into revolt against
the existing regime. He did not love industrialism or its
works ; all his sympathies were with agriculture, the
landowner and the farmer and the peasant ; he did not
argue from economic science, or from any devotion to an
economic theory of freedom or otherwise. From first to
last his inspiration and his objective were purely political,
and intensely conservative. Contemporary arid later critics
alike have questioned the sincerity and disputed the mean
ing of Bismarck's ' conversion ' to Socialism. In reality there
was no conversion at aU. Socialism as a theory of society,
or of the economic life and functions of an organised com
munity, he never accepted nor professed to accept. His
view of the true type and character of social and economic
stratification remained constant, and it may be questioned
whether in 1 879 or 1 890 he had altered one hair's-breadth
of the opinions he professed in 1 849. But he was a realist
and an opportunist, and he recognised that change must
continually be taking place. The function of conser
vative statesmanship, if sincere in its aUegiance to a defined
table of social values and a defined social order, must con
tinuously incorporate the ' ponderable ' elements, created
by change, and employ them in shoring up the social
framework and preserving the type. The problem was
essentiaUy one of political judgment, knowledge, delicacy
of method, and an elastic adaptability — a perpetual com
promise which conceded details but never allowed funda
mentals to be questioned or weakened. Hence his deep
contempt for the Metternich school or for the unbending
Conservatism of the Kreuzzeitung type, which would let
^a conservative social order go to ruin because some
conscientious shibboleth was erected into an inflexible
principle. A Conservatism that lacked the political in
stinct and the true political judgment was as useless and
dangerous as the Socialism of Bebel and Liebknecht. Had
Bismarck been a conservative leader in Great Britain
between 1820 and 1850 he would have put Eldon, George

368 BISMARCK
Bentinck, and WeUington in the same category as he put
Gerlach and the tribe of Senfft-PUsachs and Blanckenburgs.
He would not have waited, hke Peel, for the destruction
of the landed aristocracy and a potato famine to be con
verted into a great betrayal and the ruin of his party.
He would have united the miUowners and manufacturers
who were the backbone of Cobden's League in an
affiance with the old aristocracy, and compeUed the
Whigs and the middle-class Liberals "to share the fate
that he meted out to Bennigsen, Lasker, Forckenbeck,
and Stauffenberg.
. Faffing a coup d'Etat, which Bismarck regarded as a con
fession of failure and stupidity, parties in the Reichstag
had to be manipulated. The autocracy was yoked to a
representative legislature and lived under a constitution.
The new pohcy, as Bismarck foresaw, offered unrivaUed
opportunities, first, for splitting the existing party distri
bution, and, secondly, for bargaining. The substitution of
interests for principles as the basis of parties was not the
least important result that accompanied and flowed from
the new system.1 Bargaining over principles is always a
failure. Hence coalitions in a country where party sys
tems rest on principles are usuaUy failures, and always
hated by the country as a whole. But bargaining over
interests is simply an affair of political and economic
arithmetic. Conducted by a strong government with a
resolute chief it resolves itself into a simple problem of the
quantity of the article required conditioned by the price.
Bismarck, though he probably had never read an economic
text-book and could not have explained the meaning of
' final utility ' or ' marginal value,' applied the principle
in the world of parliamentary politics in the same effective
way as M. Jourdain spoke prose. The final political
utility of Clericals, National Liberals, or any other group
was, in his eyes, simply the last quantity of votes that the
buyer was prepared to secure, and the seller wiUing to
1 Cf. Strachey's remark (Report already cited, p. 45) as an example in
1885: 'No reason can be given why spun silk should be excluded from the
blessings of protection, except the conclusive one, that they do not form "a
powerful interest, and that in spun silk, as in other things, " to be weak is to be
miserable." '

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 369
part with, at a given price. And the famous cartel which
secured him a working majority was a political coalition,
arranged precisely on the principles on which a big manu
facturer coalesces with a group of rival but smaller firms.
Bismarck, moreover, started from two fixed points, as in-
teffigible to every one as to himself — he could move the
government levers, and once he had broken with Liberal
ism he could always rely on the Conservative vote. King
and Junkers, the social structure round the throne, and
the Federal CouncU and the governments would fall to
heel. They barked and bit (sometimes) and growled
perpetuaUy, but they knew when their master meant
business. In a word, the new policy of 1879 was';a freshfmani-
festation, moulded by circumstances, of the State as the
incarnation of Power. The Alpha and s Omega of Bis
marck's ' SociaUsm ' were summed up in the determination
to make the Empire self-sufficing, stronger than ever, and
stiU more dependent on the government, still more im
potent to place the control, of pohcy under responsible
parliamentary institutions. Such measures were not reaUy
Socialism, properly defined, at aU — the Social Democrats
saw that from the first — except in the sense that every act
of a State is ' socialistic' It was the renaissance of the
mercantilism of the seventeenth century adapted to the
benevolent and iUuminated despotism of the eighteenth
century and the conditions of a militarist State, remoulded
by the phenomena of modern industrialism. Hence its
ultimate and unequivocal chaUenge to the principle of.
• Free Trade, and the modern State built up on the prin
ciples of which Free Trade was but one plinth in the
whole structure. Its raison d'etre and end were power,
directed by a fusion of the landowning and capitalistic
classes that dominated a social organisation of a definable
type. The so-caUed Socialism of Bismarck was a denial
of the postulates and economic analysis alike of LassaUe,
Marx, or Bebel. The academic Socialists of the Chair —
the Katheder Socialisten, led by Wagner, SchmoUer, and
their school — wrote elaborate volumes on Bismarckian
Socialism, and read into it a mass of theory which Bismarck
B. 2 A

370 BISMARCK
would have faUed to understand, or dismissed as irrelevant
verbiage : so far as it had an ascertainable paternity, the
genealogy of Bismarck's SociaUsm can be found, not in the
writings and teaching of Karl Marx, but in the doctrines
of F. List. But the new programme was a wonderful
iUustration of Bismarck's intuitive sensitiveness to change
and ideas, that he exploited for his own political purposes.
So long as Germany was rent by the Kulturkampf this
comprehensive programme could not be fairly discussed
or embodied in law. The Kulturkampf was essentiaUy a
controversy over principles, which brought the theory and
functions of the civil power into the arena of conflict. The
Clerical Centre, as developed by Windthorst with the aid
of the Roman Curia, was first and foremost a confessional
organisation which united in a single party every class from
the princes and hierarchs of the Church to the industrial
proletariat in the great Catholic centres of industry, and
which subordinated all the separable class interests of its
members to a broad aim, the practical independence of
fthe Roman Church. The new economic programme in
volved a complete breach with Liberalism and Radicahsm.
It could not therefore have any chance of success unless
the Centre were raUied to the side of the government.
The Kulturkampf must therefore be ended, as a prelimi
nary condition to the new era. Bismarck's conversations
with MaseUa at Kissingen cleared up the situation. The
Vatican required the repeal of the May Laws and a return
broadly to the position in 1871. Bismarck required the
Centre vote on all governmental proposals. Both sides
had a valuable article to sell ; both sides were weary of
the struggle, and neither side dared openly to don the
white sheet and publicly reverse their explicit statement
of principles. Each side thoroughly distrusted the other,
and with good reason. Windthorst feared that once
Bismarck had utilised the Centre he would throw them
over and reunite with the Liberals. Bismarck, uncertain
of how far Germany would accept the new programme,
and aware that the Liberal and Protestant forces would
resent an advance to Canossa, and that repeal of the May
Laws was a damaging blow to his prestige, dared not make

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 371
the Centre master of the situation. The exchange of a_
Gerical control for the National Liberals was no gain but
loss. For he wanted to be independent alike of Clericals
and Liberals, and of the two the Clericals were more
difficult to satisfy. Foreign policy entered into his cal
culations. Ultramontanism in France and Austria was a
continuous and disturbing element in the European
situation. Bismarck had to reckon with a possible Ultra
montane supremacy in France upsetting the results
achieved by the Dual AUiance of 1879. And there was
always Poland — the eternal Poland, Catholic and Slav
in one.
It was essentiaUy, therefore, a case for a slow and
gradual reconciliation, every concession being decided by
the situation of the moment and paid for in advance
by positive results. Bismarck began by heartening the Con
servatives. In 1878 Camphausen, the Liberal financial
minister, was replaced by Maybach, a Conservative ; Eulen-
berg, the new Minister of the Interior, was a strenuous
Conservative ; Stolberg, the new Vice-ChanceUor under
the Kanzlervertreter law was not a National Liberal, but
an unbending Conservative. On July 14, 1879, Falk's
resignation was accepted. He left office with aU the in
dications of dismissal. His health had failed ; and to
assist him in his recovery he was given a riband, a eulo
gistic letter, portraits and photographs, while his place
was taken by Puttkamer, a fierce Conservative. On
May 3 the members of the Reichstag who attended the
ChanceUor's parliamentary soirees, where Bismarck, cigar
in one hand and glass in the other, arranged his parlia
mentary plans of campaign, saw with astonishment ' the
pearl of Meppen,' ' the little Chancellor,' Windthorst,
making his bow with the air of a habitue, and witnessed the
genial cordiality with which the ' big ChanceUor ' wel
comed the apparition expected by himself and no one else.
Delbriick, Camphausen, Falk had gone, and in their place
was Windthorst, pohshed, smiling, and epigrammatic.
' Every courtesy as far as the gallows,' Bismarck had said
thirty years before to G. von Vincke. ' Every courtesy
as far as Canossa,' was now Windthorst's silent comment.

372 BISMARCK
It cannot have been a happy evening for Bismarck, though
he made his new guest taste from the huge cask of the
finest Franciscan liqueur sent him by the reconciled monks.
The fruits of the negotiations behind the scenes were
laid on the table of the Prussian Landtag in 1880 in a
governmental biU. The measure was roughly handled and
drasticaUy amended, and in its final form only passed by
four votes (206-202), a convincing proof of the strength of
Liberal feeling and voting power. As amended, the bill
did not repeal any of the fundamentals in the May Laws,
but gave to the government a qualified discretion in the
enforcement of the penal legislation. It had been pre
ceded by a Papal announcement (February 24) authorising
the Roman bishops in Prussia to notify ecclesiastical
appointments in their diocese to the Prussian government
for approval (Anzeigepflicht). The biU was the first step
towards a complete peace. The remaining stages were
covered in the next four years. In 1882 (May 31) Roman
priests were largely dispensed from the necessity and con
ditions of the State examination, prescribed in the May
Laws; in 1883 (July 11) Roman bishops were released
from the obligation to notify ecclesiastical appointments to
the civil authority, which simply retained a power of veto ;
in the same year the Crown Prince visited Rome and had
an audience with the Pope ; in 1884 the Roman bishops
were introduced into the Prussian Council of State ; in
1886 Leo xm. was invited by Bismarck to arbitrate on the
dispute between Germany and Spain over the Caroline
Islands, and in the same year a new law empowered the
government practicaUy to dispense at its discretion with
the penal code set up between 1873 and 1875. On
May 23, 1887, Leo xiii. was able to assure the Consistory
that the Kulturkampf was at an end, and that the Roman
Church had secured the essentials for which it had fought.
Bismarck received the Order of Christ, the first Protestant
to be given this Papal decoration, a portrait of Leo xnr.,
and a copy of the Pope's Latin poems. He did not forward
in return a bound volume of his speeches in which he had
laid it down that he would not go to Canossa either in
body or in spirit.

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 373
'That journey,' as a distinguished German historian
said, ' nevertheless took place.' The argument that
Bismarck was not beaten, and that he did not surrender,
cannot stand the test of indisputable fact. StiU less
tenable is the view that Bismarck made the surrender
wiUingly. He was not the man, after all his stout words
and the violence of the conflict in which Protestant and
Liberal Germany had hailed him as a second Luther,
nailing ' the May Laws,' like the immortal ninety-five
theses at Wittenberg, to the Throne and Parliament of
Prussia. The attempt to enforce the omnipotence of the
Civil State had broken down ; the attempt to assert civil
control over the faith, discipline, and education of the
Roman priesthood had coUapsed. In 1873 Bismarck had
plainly miscalculated the resources of the foe he had chal
lenged, and exaggerated the strength of the weapons at his
disposal. He had beaten a retreat because he could not
hold the position that he had occupied in the battle :
but he had not retreated without securing compensation
adequate to the humiliation. The Clerical vote enabled
him to carry out a policy more important in his eyes than
the principles enshrined in the May Laws, and in the criti
cal controversy in 1887-8 over the Septennate the Centre
came to his aid and secured the victory (see p. 451).
The Chancellor's surrender was a bitter blow to
Liberalism and Radicalism. To both parties the Clerical
Centre was, in Gambetta's phrase, the enemy, for Ultra-
montanism chaUenged every principle of importance in
the Liberal and Radical creed, and to them the victory of
Windthorst and the Vatican was a victory of obscurantism,
not merely in the narrow plot of theology and dogma,
but in the unlimited fields of intellectual and social life.
The far-reaching influence of the ' progress to Canossa '
between 1879 an<^ l^7 on ^ie German mind cannot yet
be fairly estimated, nor do they faU within the scope of
our subject, but its direct and immediate results were
obvious. It opened up an epoch of growing reaction in
home poUtics and administration, and the barometer of
Liberalism steadily fell. The Centre remained at a fairly
constant figure of approximately one hundred votes in

374 BISMARCK
the Reichstag, and Bismarck's action made it the arbiter
of the parhamentary situation. The fuU effect of that
predominance was felt outside the period of Bismarck's
Chancellorship, and he left it as a dangerous inheritance to
his successors. They had to liquidate the biU incurred
between 1879 ana^ 1887-
The smashing of Liberalism was the other conspicuous
result. Here again Bismarck reaped the direct advantage
for himself, and left the aftermath to his successors. But
when Bismarck broke the National Liberal party he left
the Empire with no buffer between the government and
Social Democracy except an uneasy marriage of con
venience between Conservatism, which completely failed
to grow any stronger in voting power, and the Clerical
Centre — a coalition of interests, not a fusion of principles.
The inheritor of the broken Liberahsm was the Socialist
Democratic party, and the growth of that party was a
fresh proof that Bismarck had miscalculated its strength,
the sources from which it drew its recruits, and the
methods by which it could be successfuUy combated.
The gradual degradation of the Reichstag, and with it
the deterioration of political life in Germany, began in
1879 when Bismarck for purely tactical reasons bought
the support of the Centre. That degradation was per
haps inevitable, because the Reichstag under the Imperial
Constitution was simply a part, and not the most important
part, of the legislative machine ; and no representative
body can retain its vitality, its dignity, and its self-respect
— the three qualities essential to a healthy and self-renew
ing political life — when it is deliberately made a House of
Phrases arid nothing else. But unquestionably the de
terioration was materially hastened by Bismarck's policy.
Power and responsibility are correlatives in the life of
organised communities, and the Reichstag was steadUy
deprived of the shreds of both that it once possessed.
When the generation that had produced Bennigsen,
Lasker, Forckenbeck, Miquel, and Richter had passed away,
as they practicaUy did in Bismarck's lifetime, the ideals
and the effort to realise them which had been the life-blood
of the heroic Germany from 1848 to 1870 were no longer

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 375
there to inspire the new generation. An acute observer
remarked at the time when Prince Hohenlohe's Memoirs
were published, the painful disiUusionment in Germany
at the revelation of the atmosphere of intrigue poisoning
the political world in which Hohenlohe had played his
part, with increasing aversion to the setting in which
he found himself. The disiUusionment of the politicians
began long before 1902. The lifting of the curtain on
parliamentary history after 1879 reveals the Reichstag not
as the centre of national life where the principles of a
nation's policy are fought out in argument and open day-
Ught, but as the market-place where an irresponsible
government secured a more or less transient majority by
the sleepless manipulation of the leaders and the purchase
of votes by concessions to the rank and file. The real bar
gaining took place in the Federal Council, and as to its
nature and terms our information is either non-existent
or so scanty as not even to justify the speculative hypotheses
of a Privatdozent. The function of the government was
reduced to securing a majority in the Reichstag in order
to place the legal stamp on decisions arrived at else
where. And this function Bismarck performed with
remarkable skill, because he had an unrivalled personal
prestige, and to the end he exercised a personal hypnotism
over the men with whom he negotiated and the Germany
that they represented.
Here again the results affected his successors more dis
astrously than himself. Surrounded by a network and an
atmosphere of intrigue he was strong enough to defeat it,
simply because he was Bismarck. But Caprivi, Hohenlohe,
and Biilow — to take the story no further — had to wrestle
with the system that Bismarck had created, and they were
the victims of that system. In home as in foreign politics
Bismarck did not wish to look beyond the immediate needs
of the hour. He saw the storms successively roffing up,
arid he added one temporary lightning conductor after
another to divert the destructive force from the main
building. He had definite ends in view, but for their
reahsation he impUcitly relied on the tactical situation,
and even more on his own unrivalled power of extricating

376 BISMARCK
himself from any and every difficulty by an unerring use
of opportunities.
He iUustrated these qualities triumphantly in the great
struggle from 1879 to 1888, which was the climax to his
political career. The first step was the abandonment of
Free Trade and the return to Protection, embodied in the
measures submitted in May 1879. The corn duties were
voted in May, and the new general tariff passed on July 12
by a majority of one hundred, the Centre voting with the
government. Bismarck's interest and share in the policy
was shown by his continuous intervention in debate. He
spoke no less than eight times, and his speeches were a
personal confession and the exposition of a comprehensive
programme. He desired to return to the ' time-honoured
ways of 1823 ' (when Prussia began to abandon its Pro
tectionist system with the organisation of the ZoUverein),
and he asked the Reichstag to believe that in 1862 he had,
to his shame, no ' economic tendencies ' at all ; for fifteen
years he had been so completely absorbed in foreign policy
that he had had no leisure to form independent opinions or
an exhaustive investigation, and he had relied on Delbriick
and others, whose opinions he had accepted. Delbriick's
retirement in 1876 had compeUed him to take up the
matter for himself, and he had discovered that Germany
and himself had been ' the dupes of an honest conviction '
(Free Trade) 'worthy of the honourable capacity for dream
ing in the German race.' In a characteristic passage he
argued that surgery based on experience had made briUiant
progress, whereas medical science, unable to examine the
internal mechanism of the body, had practicaUy stood
stiU : so with economics, ' the abstract doctrines of science
leave me perfectly cold, my only standard of judgment
being experience,' and experience showed him that Pro
tectionist countries prospered and Free Trade countries
were stagnant or retrograde. The unanimity of the pro
fessors for, was in itself an argument against, Free Trade.
He concluded with his customary peroration that party
considerations never influenced his patriotic zeal, and that
in advocating the change he had but one motive, the
prosperity and well-being of the Empire,

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 377
As an account of Bismarck's conversion the speech was
as remarkable for its omissions as for its assertions, ignor
ing as it did the powerful pressure exerted by the agri
cultural and manufacturing interests. The passage on
science must have highly diverted Virchow, and had
Pasteur read it, would have caused him to raise his eye
brows in amused contempt. StiU more naive was the
assertion that Free Trade was a cause of decadence, when
it was precisely a Free Trade Great Britain whose com
petition was so distressing to German manufacturers.
Windthorst, too, must have enjoyed the passionate protest
that party considerations never entered into the Chan
ceUor's calculations, for the night before he had been
haggling with Bismarck over the price for the Clerical vote.
The Chancellor struck the note of irresistible appeal when
he invited the Reichstag to save agriculture and preserve
the German market for German industry at all costs, and
by a large addition to the revenue release the Federated
States from the burden of the increasing matricular con
stitutions. He bid for the material interests, and they
responded manfuUy to the invitation.1
The division was a personal triumph, and the aged
Field-Marshal Moltke could be seen stumbling over his
sword, caught in the rails, as he mounted the steps to the
Chancellor's seat to congratulate him. Yet the triumph
was not unaUoyed. Bismarck had been compeUed to
accept the Franckenstein amendment by which all revenue,
above one hundred and thirty miUion marks, derived from
the new tariff was to be appropriated to the rehef of the
Federated States. His desire to obtain the sole use of the
new revenue for imperial purposes was thereby frustrated,
and this damaging amendment was the beginning of a
series of disappointments and rebuffs.
For eighteen months the economic battle between Free
Trade and Protection had been squarely fought out in
Germany in the press, on public platforms, and in academic
controversy. The vote of July 1879 decided the issue,
1 ' The political constitution of the Empire, the highest personal influences,
the most powerful industrial and commercial forces, some of the principal
press energies, all are on the side of the (Protectionist) system.' — Report already
cited, p. 7 j, •

378 BISMARCK
and the Centre gave the victory to Bismarck. The
National Liberals broke over the controversy ; sixteen
voted with, but the majority against, the government.
Free Trade and a Free ParUament in a united and cen-
traUsed Empire had been their programme since their
formation in 1867, and in the attack on Free Trade the
majority recognised a general assault on the whole Liberal
creed. The suspicion was confirmed by the revision of
the May Laws next year, and the party broke up. The
Secession, which included the ablest and most vigorous
members — Lasker, Forckenbeck, Bamberger, and Bunsen
— endeavoured to estabhsh, like the Peelites in England,
an independent existence between the Conservatives, with
whom the right of the party now acted, and the Pro
gressives under Richter. But the general election of 1 88 1
was a further blow. True, it went badly for Bismarck
and the government, for the Conservatives lost a great
many seats, but it made clear that there was no room for
a divided National Liberalism, and it gave the gains to the
Centre, the Socialists, and the Radicals. Bennigsen, worn
out and disiUusioned, retired from public life in 1883, and
the Secession was driven to unite with the Progressives, and
found under Richter's leadership a new party, the Deutsch
Freisinnige — the German Free Thinkers. The remnant
of the old party continued to exist under the old name,
and to support the government, because it was national
rather than Liberal. But between 1 881 and 1883 the old
National Liberalism reaUy ceased to exist. It became
under a misleading label a party moderately Conservative
at home, and fiercely Nationalist in foreign poUtics.
The old National LiberaUsm had been the most powerful
inteUectual, educative, and political force in forming a
united Germany; but when in 1867 it subordinated free
institutions to unity, when in 1870 it accepted without a
struggle the system of 1867 as the basis of the Empire,
when it persistently helped the government by the Sep-
tennates to ruin the Budget control of Parliament, and
when in 1878 it consented to pass the law against the
Social Democrats, it destroyed itself.
Bismarck treated the party as he treated Napoleon 111. ;

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 379
and he used the support it gave him to be the engine of its
downfaU. The middle class from which it drew its
strength turned either to Protection, from which it could
gain wealth, or to the Progressives who fought a hopeless
battle with the entrenched governing class. Richter's
party had at least an inteUigible creed and an avowed aim
•^¦that of destroying the Bismarckian system and of substi
tuting for it responsible parliamentary government at
home, an economic regime not founded on prosperity for
the landowner and manufacturer and State doles to the
proletariat, and a foreign policy that did not rest on a
continuous expenditure on armaments and the Prussian
sword as the ultima ratio in international relations. After
1878 National Liberalism, as such, had no constructive
policy to offer Germany. It resisted the conversion of
Bismarck, but it had no practical alternative to meet the
needs of the Empire it had largely created. It criticised
with acerbity, and voted with docUity in the government
lobby, and its dissolution was a confession of bankruptcy.
Bismarck and the Radicals acted as joint-receivers, liqui
dated the account, and distributed the business of a once-
flourishing and powerful House into various and hostile
hands. It was, indeed, the end of an old song.
The year 1880 was mainly occupied in opening the road
to Canossa, but from 1881 to 1889 Bismarck laid down the
main framework of the economic legislation that earned
him the title of the Great State Socialist of the nineteenth
century — the measure which provided for Employers'
Liabihty in accidents, for insurance against sickness, and
for the provision of Old Age Pensions. The feverish
energy — alles ging in galopp, as he said — with which these
measures were pressed is very remarkable, and still more
remarkable is the ChanceUor's personal share in their con
struction and in the task of carrying them in the teeth of
bitter opposition in the Reichstag. In the autumn of 1880
he took over the Ministry of Commerce, adding it to the
duties of Minister-President and ChanceUor ; he was then
in his sixty-fifth year, and during aU this period he carried
alone the burden of foreign pohcy, in itself a tremendous
task, and was also engaged in the complicated negotiations

380 BISMARCK
with the Vatican and the Centre which ended the Kultur
kampf. The expression that Bismarck was the govern
ment and the government was Bismarck conveys a very
faint conception of the responsibility and labours that he
shouldered. The Prime Minister of a modern Parlia
mentary State, such as Great Britain, carries no doubt an
onerous burden, but he shares his responsibihty with
coUeagues, while the party system relieves him of the duty
of creating a majority that will loyaUy vote as required ;
because if the country refuses him the majority the burden
of office is transferred across the table to a rival party
leader. But Bismarck had to steer through the rocks,
shaUows, and eddies of the parliamentary seas, finding
' affies where he could get them,' and uncertain whether in a
critical turn if the ministerial ship ' hung in stays ' the crew
might not take to the boats. He had, moreover, as Chair
man of the Federal Council to keep that essential organ
united and compliant, and the Federal Council was not a
Cabinet cemented by the ethos of coUective responsibility
and composed of members in broad agreement on the
current questions of public policy. Mr. Gladstone or Lord
Sahsbury would not have relished working the Parlia
mentary System through a Cabinet of fifty-six members,
only seventeen of which could be implicitly trusted to vote
straight. It is not surprising therefore that Bismarck's
performance from 1879 to 1888, in the autumn of a life,
which had never spared itself from youth to old age, made
an indelible impression on Germany. Compared with the
' Iron ChanceUor ' the other pubhc figures seemed indeed
bloodless and fleeting shades. Every quaUty in the
ChanceUor's person was titanic — the physical frame, the
head carved and moulded by a Berserker's hammer and
chisel, the wiU, the temper, the appetites, the ambitions.
The Empire that was Power was incarnated in that
hypnotic personality.
In 1881, 1884, and 1886, the Trade Law (Gewerbe-
ordnung) was substantially amended and extended ; the
structure and scope of Trade Guilds were reorganised with
a view to strengthening artisans against the capitalist and
the factory (and incidentaUy to minimise the power of

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 381
Trade Unions), and ' in diametrical opposition to the prin
ciple of laissez-faire, the abandonment of the weak to their
own resources and to private help.' The measure pro
viding for compulsory insurance against sickness was
destroyed by criticism in 1881, was reintroduced in 1882,
and carried against the Radicals and Socialists in 1883 ;
it was subsequently extended in 1885 and in 1886. A
biU for insurance against accidents was introduced in
1882 and became law in 1884 (July 6) ; it, too, was
amended and extended in 1885, 1886, and 1887. The
system was completed by the Old Age Insurance Law
of June 1889.
Concurrently with these measures of vast scope Bis
marck was engaged in an effort to recast the whole
system of taxation, and to create an imperial revenue
that would provide the v funds for ' the socialism of the
State.' But he met in this sphere with more defeats
than successes.
The Stamp Tax of 188 1 imposed a duty on Stock Ex
change transactions, and the Usury Law of 1880 intro
duced legal rates of interest. But the proposal to tax all
exemptions from mUitary service was rejected in 1881,
Moltke ostentatiously leaving the Reichstag before the
division. The attempt to establish in 1882 a tobacco
monopoly which was to provide the funds for Old Age
Pensions broke down completely; and though an income
tax was introduced for Prussia, the idea of imposing a
separate Imperial Income Tax was dropped. The sug
gested monopoly in brandy was introduced in 1886 and
decisively defeated, and the failure destroyed the idea of
establishing a ' monopoly in sugar. The principles and
aims of this programme were fully set out in the Royal
Speech of November 17, 1881 : —
' We express our conviction that the cure of social ills must be
sought, not exclusively in the repression of Social-Democratic ex
cesses, but simultaneously in the positive advancement of the wel
fare of the working classes. . . . The finding of the proper ways
and means is a difficult task, yet it is one of the highest of every
Commonwealth which is based on the ethical foundations of a
Christian national life.'

382 BISMARCK
Bismarck's own views can be summarised by a few
quotations from his speeches : —
' In my opinion we are behind all great European States in regard
to the development of our system of Taxation, especially with re
spect to its reaction upon our economic conditions., and we have
much ground to recover in this domain ' (February 22, 1878).
' In regard to exemption from taxation, I hold in general the
principle that the man who has nothing but his two hands, that is
untrained hands that have learned no industry, should be quite
exempted from both state taxes and imperial contributions, and
that the taxation should begin when a further capital exists'
(February 4, 1881).
' You know that I am an opponent of direct and a friend of in
direct taxes . . . my ideal is not an Empire which must collect its
matricular contributions at the door of the individual states, but
an Empire which, having in its hands the principal source of good
finance — indirect taxes — would be in a position to pay contributions
to all the individual states ' (February 26, 1878).
' I regard it as one of the greatest superiorities of our life in
Germany that a large part of our well-to-do classes live all the year
round in the country, carrying on agriculture themselves ... if
you succeeded in destroying this race you would see the result in
the palsying of our entire economic and pohtical life ' (February 14,
1885). ' Give the working man the right to work as long as he is healthy,
assure him care when he is sick, assure him maintenance when he
is old. If you do that and do not fear the sacrifice, or cry out at
State Socialism — if the State will show a little more Christian
solicitude for the working man, then I believe that the gentlemen
of the Social-Democratic programme will sound their bird calls in
vain . . . yes, I acknowledge unconditionally a right to work, and
I will stand up for it as long as I am in this place ' (May 9, 1884).
' I should Uke to see the State which for the most part consists of
Christians — although you reject the name Christian State — pene
trated to some extent by the principles of the religion it professes
... I, the Minister of the State, am a Christian, and as such I am
determined to act as I believe I am justified before God ' (April 2,
1881 and January 9, 1882).
' It is a tradition for the dynasty which I serve that it takes the
side of the weak in the economic struggle. Frederick the Great
said Je serai le roi des gueux, and in his own way he carried out this
precept with strict justice ... my present master is animated
by the lofty ambition to secure to the weakest class of our fellow-

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 383
citizens . . . confidence with which they can contemplate the
future of the State to which they belong ' (January 9, 1882).
' If you believe that you can frighten any one or call up spectres
with the word " Socialism," you take a standpoint which I abandoned
long ago, and the abandonment of which is absolutely necessary for
our Imperial legislation ' (March 1882).
' The popularity of a thing makes me rather suspicious about it
than otherwise, and I am induced to ask myself, if it is also sensible ' ,
(June 12, 1882).
AU these measures were not carried without bitter
controversy, and the most strenuous pressure from the
government. They were attacked from three different
standpoints — individualistic Liberalism which feared the
extension of State functions, and on principle opposed
Protection as an economic system and for its ulterior
political results ; the political school that feared, and
rightly, the immense accession of power to the centralised
imperial executive, vested in irresponsible hands, and the
Socialists who caUed the whole code ' bastard Socialism.'
The latter were savagely attacked because of their oppo
sition. But their answer was effective. Every effort that
they made was futile to amend the legislation so as to
deprive it of its character of being a material sop to the
industrial working classes, and an instrument for diminish
ing the political power of labour by making it dependent
on a State over which they could exercise no control.
To Bebel and his party Bismarck's ' socialistic ' policy was
the minimum of blackmaU that the ruling classes would
pay in order to strengthen their own political power.
Again and again they pressed (with some help from the
Clerical Centre) for essential and complementary reforms
— the regulation of wages and of the hours and conditions
of labour, the amelioration of the status of the chUdren,
the lads, the girls, and the women in the factories and work
shops of the New Germany, and for an extension of the
powers of Trades Unions which would enable the worker
to confront capital on equal terms. Without legislative
regulation of these matters the State. Socialism of the
ChanceUor was, they contended, simply a tax on labour
aggravated by the effect of the Protectionist tariff. But

384 BISMARCK
they pleaded in vain. The principles of the Christian State
which Bismarck set in the forefront of his programme did
not apparently require that women and chUdren should
not be sweated, or that wages should be raised above the
barest minimum of subsistence,1 or that employers and the
State should see that their employees should live under con
ditions which would ensure decency, health, and morality ;
it did not even require that there should be one day of
rest for the workers toihng in the factory. The worker
was assumed to be a Christian and to belong to a Christian
State, but he was not to be assured of the leisure to
worship. The factory was to be his Heaven and his HeU.
The most damning criticism of the blots and defects—
the most effective exposition of the purely political char
acter — of Bismarck's policy was set out in the resolutions of
the International Labour Conference of 1890, the meeting
of which Bismarck did his best to prevent.
The plain truth is that Bismarck's programme was in
spired by the same fear and distrust that underlay his theory
of international relations ; and much of his legislation was
(apart from its money-producing effectiveness) a reinsurance
scheme against the results of the manhood suffrage which
made the electoral law of the Empire. In 1867, when he
said that democracy would be more monarchical than
middle-class Liberalism, he did not foresee the industrial
revolution. He had in his mind an agricultural Germany,
and above aU an agricultural Prussia, where the peasant
had been trained in a position of dependence on the land
owner, with whose interests as a tiller of the soU his own in
many respects coincided. But he never understood the
industrial proletariat, the numbers of which increased by
leaps and bounds after 1871 ; he disliked towns and town-
dweUers ; to the end he regarded industrialism as a
gigantic excrescence to be exploited and emasculated of
its strength, rather than assimilated, and his economics at
bottom were saturated with the postulates of the eigh
teenth-century physiocrats ; while he forgot that the new
1 ' One of the principal secrets of the expansion of the German export trade
is the prevalence of wages, which, in some branches, are hardly two-thirds or half
the British rates.' — Report already cited, p. 75.

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 385
and toiling Germany had no traditions, and no social mould
ready-made and tempered by generations of development,
into which it would steadily flow and be reshaped. On
the contrary, it had its traditions and outlook on life to
make in aU the roar, dust, and fog of a vast economic
revolution. Taking experience and facts alone as his
guide Bismarck probed his way as best he could in the
teeth of opponents who, like himself, thought more of ends
than of means. There was no conservative Shaftesbury
to strop a duUed moral conscience ; the bureaucracy at
his disposal smothered him with figures and facts compUed
in their offices ; he was in the hands of the political
majority on which he rehed, which resented the demands
of labour as subversive of their own power, and his own
system cut him off from utilising the help he might have
got from those who reaUy knew. A close study of his
speeches reveals from time to time the note of despair —
the complexity and ramifications of the problem were so
great and so baffling — and his contempt for economic
science led him into avoidable blunders and many political
rebuffs. The repercussion and incidence of taxation, for
example — subjects engaging some of the best economic
minds in Europe — he more than once angrily brushed
aside as the pastime of professors. The realist had
neither time nor patience for such abstractions. If a tax
would bring in money here and now, it had fulfiUed its
purpose, and the consequences could be dealt with later.
Volumes — a whole library indeed — have grown up round
the economic problems with which Bismarck wrestled,
and it is not possible to discuss issues which require
a separate monograph for adequate treatment. It must
suffice briefly to observe three or four outstanding features.
In two of his main objects Bismarck unquestionably
succeeded — the provision of money, and the preservation
of his political system. Whether the great expansion of
German industry was largely due to the adoption of Pro
tection need not be argued here, for it opens issues too
large and controversial to be summarily decided ; * but,
1 See the report, already cited, where much material is statistically examined
and summed up.
B. 2 B

3 86 BISMARCK
unquestionably, the remarkable industrial expansion pro
vided in the ChanceUor's political Ufetime an expanding
revenue from indirect taxation, which met the exigent
needs of Bismarck's policy. Secondly, the ten years of
social legislation deeply impressed Europe, and in this, as
in other developments of German policy, the great ex
periment was studied, praised, and copied. Germany
flattered itself that it was the pioneer as well as the model
of constructive statecraft, and Bismarck's legislation pro
foundly stimulated economic thought and political
practice far outside the limits of the German Empire.
Bismarck, ' the social reformer,' acquired a prestige devoid
of the dubious elements that discounted the fame of his
other political achievements. A later generation either
in or outside Germany, more accurately acquainted with
the motives, aims, and effects of the ' new era,' has not
been able to accept without serious qualifications the
eulogies so noticeable in the early nineties.
But in two notable respects the failure even in Bismarck's
lifetime was as conspicuous as the success. The spectre of
Social Democracy was not laid. Bebel, who had a good
right to know, told the Reichstag and the ChanceUor that
the effort to put Social Democracy into a siding would
faU, and that the social legislation would be one of the
main causes of the failure. ' The bird call ' became more,
not less, potent in its appeal just because the Christian
State did so Uttle, when it could do so much ; and
he warned the Chancellor that if you could not kill the
Socialist party by the law of 1878 you would not kiU it
by compelling the artisan, with some help from, the
State, to insure against accidents, sickness, and old age.
A compulsory and dilatory distribution of doles could
not extirpate a movement which had its roots deep in a
determination to secure political and social ends — pohtical
and social power — through the economic status of the
worker : and the more the State compeUed the workers
to organise, the more certainly they would use the organi
sation for their own purposes. Bismarck recognised the
failure. But, unlike the Kulturkampf, he could not break
off the action when victory was no longer within his grasp.

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 387
He had committed the Empire to a course from which it
was impossible to recede.
Nor did his fiscal experiments succeed in solving the
problem of imperial finance. Within ten years of 1890
the problem of the matricular contributions and the de
ficits in the Imperial Budget threatened to be no less
serious than in 1878-9. Bismarck could fairly say that
had the Empire become the monopolist that he desired
it to be in tobacco, brandy, sugar, and other articles of
general consumption ; had it nationalised all the railways
and absorbed all the profits, even the great increase in
imperial expenditure might have been met. But he never
explained how in that case the Federated States were to
balance their several budgets, or how a large increase in
direct taxation, which he regarded as pohticaUy inexpedient
and economicaUy indefensible, was to be avoided. Arma
ments and State Socialism were the main causes of the
steady increase in expenditure. Bismarck's system placed
armaments outside the arena of discussion. The policy
and principles were imposed on the nation — whose duty
it then was obediently to pay the bill — and if the nation
resisted, a general election with the main issue of ' The
Empire and Army in danger and War in sight ' invariably
proved decisive.
These ten years from 1879 to 1889 made a decade of
embittered home poUtics. The reactionary character of
the ChanceUor's system was revealed in many ways.
Bismarck seriously suggested, for example, that biennial
budgets and biennial meetings of the Reichstag would be
a desirable reform ; the prosecutions for Bismarck Be-
leidigung steadily increased, and when men like Bunsen and
Mommsen were prosecuted (and happily acquitted) for
indicting the government measures as ' immoral,' every
one who cared for freedom of opinion and freedom of
criticism had just cause for deep misgiving. Bismarck
increasingly regarded opposition as a personal affair ; to
complaints of bribery and intimidation by officials at
elections he invariably retorted by emphasising the char
acter of the Prussian monarchy and the disloyalty of the
Progressives to the Throne. ' I do not believe,' he said,

388 BISMARCK
'in electro-plated royahsm.' In 1886 he concluded one
of his speeches with unmistakable threats : ' We must aim
at becoming stronger ; we must show that we stand not
on feet of clay, but of iron. We must find a means of
becoming independent of the obstruction of the majority
of the Reichstag. I do not advocate such a step, but if
the Fatherland should be endangered I should not hesitate
to propose to the Emperor the necessary measures. The
Minister who wiU not risk his head to save the Fatherland,
even against the will of the majority, is a coward. I will
not allow the achievements of our army to perish by
internal discord, which I wiU find the means of counter
acting.' (January 28, 1886, in the Prussian Landtag.)
Prussian Poland and Alsace-Lorraine were essentiaUy
problems of home policy which illustrate the close con
nection between the internal system and the principles of
Bismarck's foreign policy. The faUure of Prussia to
Germanise her Pohsh provinces inspired the Prussian
government to drastic action. Puttkamer, the Minister
of the Interior, in 1885 pointed out that, whereas the
German element had increased from one to five" per cent.,
the Polish element had increased from eight to eleven per
cent. An Edict of May 5, 1885, expeUed aU Poles not
Prussian subjects, and no less than thirty-four thousand
were so expelled, bag and baggage, on the ground of State
necessity. Next year Bismarck brought in an Expro
priation BiU. He told the Landtag that the incorporation
of the Polish provinces in 18 15 was a strategical necessity,
but that the pledges then given were a blunder, which it
was against Prussia's interest in 1886 to fulfil. The bill
authorised the government to spend five miUion pounds
in acquiring PoUsh estates to be leased to German farmers,
bound to marry German wives ; it also transferred the
supervision of all popular education in the district to the
central executive. The necessity for this colonisation
was due, in addition, to the gradual submerging of the
Germanic element in the Near East, in Bohemia, Hungary,
and elsewhere, and also — a very remarkable statement —
to the ' extraordinary tendency of the Germans to sym
pathise with everything that was not German.' Bismarck's

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 389
speech, breathing fire and fury, and the rapid acceptance
of the bill, were the most conclusive refutation of this
aUeged German sympathy. ' You,' he said to the Poles,
' will never realise your ambitions except as the result of
a war, disastrous to Germany, when Prussia has been
smashed to pieces.'
To Bismarck the international aspect of the Polish
question was as dangerous as the existence within the
Prussian kingdom of an ' ahen ' element that, despite all
persecution, resolutely refused to abandon either its lan
guage, its religion, or its culture. With 1863 in his mind
he told the Reichstag that it could not interfere in a
matter, reserved solely for the prerogative of the Prussian
King ; and, foUowed by aU the Prussian members of the
Bundesrat, he pointedly walked out of the House when
an attempt was made. to interpeUate him. The reference
to Prussian sovereignty was intended for Vienna and
Petersburg quite as much as for the South German Liberals
or the Catholic centre. Poland and the Poles were a con
clusive reason, even if there had not been others equaUy
exigent, why Berlin should have a control of the vassal
State of Austria, and maintain a close understanding with
Russia. But Bismarck's policy of voluntary, and then of
forcible, expropriation was a failure. It rested on three
false assumptions : first, that racialism and nationaUsm
can be extinguished by administrative action, aided by a
culture the superiority of which is not evident except to
those who administer it ; secondly, that the Poles would
not combine to defeat the policy ; and thirdly, that the
government could control completely the economic
situation. Neither Bismarck nor any one else could
obhterate the previous history of Poland. The Germani
sation of Prussian Poland pursued by the government
virtuaUy required that aU Poles should become Protes
tants and German-speaking or remain celibate, and that
those who refused the Germanisation or the celibacy must
be evicted. So long as PoUsh men and women produced
more chUdren than the Germans and brought them up to
be Poles in religion, speech, and ideas, there was no prac
tical alternative between extermination and concihation.

390 BISMARCK
The futility of the law of 1886 was proved in 1906 when
the government confessed that, while ninety thousand
German colonists had been brought into the Polish pro
vinces, the Poles had increased by two hundred thousand,
and that the increase of economic prosperity produced
by the State grants had only strengthened the economic
capacity of the Poles to buy out the German faster than
the State planted him in. Coercion, also, had made the
whole Polish population far more ' disaffected ' than in
1885. Bismarck's nationalism simply came to this : if the
German Empire required for political, strategic, or
economic reasons that certain areas should belong to
Germany, no claim based on previous history, tradition,
race, or religion could countervail the right. Necessity
of State prescribed the end, that power enabled the State
to realise. Condemnation of the iniquity and futUity of
Prussian policy in West Prussia and the province of Posen
ought not, however, to blind the student of statecraft to
the problem with which Bismarck was confronted, and the
serious menace that the Slav race imposed on the German
nation. For there was a measurable risk that in a large
area the German race and language would become the
distinguishing attributes of a dwindling minority.1 The
problem of government by a dominant minority raises
one of the most formidable difficulties that modern states
manship is caUed on to solve. It is immensely intensified
when the minority deals with a majority whose civilisation
is not qualitatively but only quantitatively inferior in
consequence of previous historic injustice, an undeveloped
economic environment, and the complications arising from
the competition of other and more congenial civilisations
across the frontiers. The true indictment of Bismarck's
attempted solution of the Prussian problem of Poland is
concentrated in the assumption that German civilisation
1 In October 19 14 it was authoritatively asserted on behalf of Germany that
but for German • militarism ' German culture would have perished in Europe.
Whether this means that all national civilisations depend on force for their
existence, or that German ' culture ' can only compete with other ' cultures '
when it is enforced by the sword, does not call for decision here. Nor is it
necessary to decide the validity of either or both meanings.

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 391
was superior, while it practically admitted that, unless it
were imposed and maintained by force of the most drastic
character, it could not hold its own. Every decade after
1886 clinched the conclusion that the Pole was successfully
competing with the Teuton in all the qualities that makes
a civilisation worth preserving. So far then from solving
the problem, Bismarck's policy made it more formidable ;
worse stUl, it carried within itself a Nemesis the beginning,
but not the end, of which he witnessed. It made all
Poles, not merely Prussian Poles, the enemies of the
German Empire. In his determination to localise the
purely Prussian problem Bismarck internationalised the
whole Polish question, since the principles on which he
worked were no less disastrous to other races in a similar
position both within and' without the Empire. It was
not only the Poles in whom the conviction deepened that
the destruction of the Bismarckian Empire and its recon
struction on different principles might be essential in the
interests of a true nationalism, of the European system,
and of the whole world : and that without such a recon
struction progress in civilisation and an international
system were impossible. When Bismarck deliberately
pinned the maintenance of Germanism to the brute
capacity of a German State to enforce it, he imperiUed as
weU as degraded the claims of that civilisation whose
champion he was. Nor did he ever seriously attempt
conciliation of the Polish subjects of Prussia, based on an
equahty of rights and opportunity. There was a golden
chance for such a policy in 1871. The Poles had fought
bravely for Germany in 1866 and in 1870. Their reward
was the Kulturkampf, a coercive bureaucracy, and the law
of 1886, leading inevitably to the doubled coercion of 1906,
a fresh crop of legislation, the flogging of school-children, and
similar proofs of the proud claim that German civilisation
aimed at ' freedom for aU in thought and activity.' A
policy of conciliation could not have been more unsuc
cessful than the policy of coercion ; conciliation, indeed,
might have led to detaching to Prussia, ' the Liberator,'
the whole of Poland. The Russian danger, which was a
perpetual nightmare to Bismarck, Moltke, the National

392 BISMARCK
Liberals, and the Radicals, might then have been thrust
back behind the Dwina and the Dnieper, instead of which
it was thrust forward from the Vistula to the Warta and
the Netze. Bismarck's system, which identified the in
terest of Germany with the interest of the Russian auto
cracy, made aU conciliation impossible, and for this the
intensity of his own Prussian Nationalism, with its tradi
tions and interpretation of life, was more responsible than
his conception of the State as Power.
The limitations and dangers of that Nationalism were
no less patent in Alsace-Lorraine than in Prussian Poland.
It is true that in 1874 the mUitary government of the
Reichsland was theoreticaUy ended and Alsace and Lorraine
were represented by fifteen members in the Reichstag.
These fifteen were simply an addition to the opposition ;
and they, might have stayed at home for all the practical
influence that they exerted, while their united hostUity
to the government, a continuous protest against the
annexation and the pohcy of internal coercion, provided
a fresh argument for drastic repression. Edwin von
Manteuffel's appointment as Statthalter in 1879 was a
concession to the demand for autonomy, but Bismarck's
jealousy of Manteuffel marred the use that might have been
made of the Statthalter's great personal gifts. Hohenlohe,
who was transferred from Paris in 1884 to succeed Man
teuffel, had a doubly difficult task ; as a civilian he incurred
the enmity of the governing chiefs of the soldier-caste, as
governor he was continuously overruled by Bismarck.
His Diary, carefully edited as it clearly is, shows that the
Chancellor accepted the militarist view that the object
of the annexations was not to make a contented Alsace-
Lorraine, but to hold the Reichsland as a strategic glacis
of the Empire. There can be little question that Bismarck
had hoped in ten years or so to extort from France a re
nunciation of the idea of recovering the provinces lost in
1 87 1, and the temptation to make such a renunciation had
its part in the bewUdering history of French internal
politics and foreign poUcy from the faU of Thiers to the
presidency of Carnot ; but he failed to secure it, and
Alsace-Lorraine more than ever was employed to coerce

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 393
Germany by a great fear and provoke France by a per
petual humffiation. The German effort to assimilate the
Reichsland broke on two unsurmountable obstacles — the
refusal of France permanently to accept the position de
fined in the Treaty of Frankfurt ; the claim of German
Nationalism to hold by force what it could not hold by any
other means. By 1890 Bismarck's system was steadily
making the problem of Alsace-Lorraine of international
importance. The Europe that had debarred itself in 1871
from intervening in the terms of peace, had begun to realise
that the principles involved cut down to the root of the
whole European system and raised the most fundamental
problems of international relations.
At home after 1884 there was one compensation — the
parliamentary situation became much easier for the
Chancellor. The general election of that year resulted
in a severe defeat for the new and reunited Radicals
(Deutsche Freisinnige), and for the first time Bismarck had
at his disposal a governmental bloc composed of Conser
vatives, the Centre, and the Conservative rump of National
Liberals, which gave him a comfortable majority over all
the other groups combined. This was even more marked
in the Prussian Landtag, where the narrow franchise, ' the
worst in the world,' Bismarck once said, left Progressives,
Radicals, Poles, or Guelphs in an impotent minority.
There was indeed but one shadow. The union of Crown
and Minister-President, of Emperor and Chancellor, was
the corner-stone of the Bismarckian system. In 1884 the
Emperor was eighty-seven years old. Would his suc
cessor, whose accession could not be long delayed, accept
the position developed between 1862 and 1884 ? In 1884
Germany speculated on the consequences of a trial of
strength between the Crown and the Man. The trial
indeed came very shortly, but neither in the form, nor
with the results, anticipated by Germany and Bismarck.

394 BISMARCK
§ 5. Foreign Policy — The Triple Alliance — The Colonial
Problem — France and Russia, 1879- 1888.
' For thirty years,' writes Naumann in his Central Europe,
' politics for us meant Bismarck.' He could have said, with
equal truth, that for twenty years at least politics for the
whole continent meant Bismarck. After 1878 Bismarck's
personal position was unique. The ChanceUor achieved
the aim of the French king who desired that not a cannon-
shot should be fired in Europe without the consent and
knowledge of France and himself. The German hege
mony of the European State system rested on the power
and prestige of Prussia, but it was a power and prestige
interpreted by, and reflected in, the personality of a single
man ; and if the revolving years strengthened the political
ascendency consummated by the Treaty of Frankfurt, the
Congress of Berlin, and the Dual AUiance — the main terms
of which were known before the ink was dry on the signa
tures — they also emphasised the egoism and vanity of the
ministerial autocrat. Bismarck demanded homage, and
he expected incense, from aU the statesmen and aU the
courts. Ambassadors at Berlin informed their govern
ments that they would do well always to consult Bismarck
on every step, for if they acted without asking his advice,
even in matters in which Germany could not be regarded
as directly interested, they would soon discover that the
jealous, suspicious, and vain Chancellor intended to make
them pay for the neglect and the implied personal insult.
' His excessive sensitiveness,' wrote Lord AmpthiU, ' is
incomprehensible in so great a statesman.' He pointed
out what a mistake ' Goschen had made ' in daring to go
on a mission to the Near East without travelling via Berlin
and seeking wisdom at Friedrichsruhe. Goschen rectified
the error by returning via Berlin. ' Prince Bismarck,'
Lord AmpthiU wrote in 1882, ' has never got over or for
given Goschen's departure from the advice he was asked
to giye in the Greek question.' Gambetta therefore, in
1879, was right when he contemplated a secret visit to
' the monster.' The meeting, despite M. Lair's beliefs,
did not take place, but an hour between Gambetta and

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 395
Bismarck might have made a world of difference to the
French statesman. The greatness of great men is indeed
a mysterious paradox. Bismarck's vanity had its paternal
weaknesses. If ' a pleasant truth, a well-deserved compli
ment, publicly uttered by an English statesman had a
magic effect,' still more magic was the effect of flattery or
kindness to a son. In Herbert Bismarck the Chancellor
was training up his successor, and the generous hospitality
offered to the son when he came on special missions to
London deeply touched the father's heart. It probably
smoothed away the friction far more effectively than a
dozen dispatches. Personal kindness to the limited few
for whom he cared — and guns — these were the two argu
ments that Bismarck understood. And those who had
not got the guns, or were afraid to use them, were weU
advised to go confidentially to the Chancellor, place their
case in his hands, and ask for his disinterested offices and
advice. An element of grandeur sublimated this vanity. More
and more the ChanceUor absented himself from Berlin
and conducted the foreign affairs of Europe from Fried
richsruhe or Varzin, and the men who combined business
and homage in a visit to Bismarck enjoyed a patrician
hospitality from the hands of a great patrician, who tried
to forget on his own hearth or in the glades of the avenues
he had planted, the methods so congenial in the Wilhelm
strasse. If, in addition, the visitor could prove that in his
arteries ran the red blood of a fierce virihty — that rich
meat and drink, physical exuberance, and joy in the carnal
framework of life and the passions of nature, appealed as
much as the conclusion of a hard bargain — Bismarck was
ready to make concessions that were not for the anaemic
and the bookworms of the Chancery. The statesmen,
such as Favre and Pouyer-Quertier, who could drain not
their glass but their flagon, earned a personal respect as
strong as the contempt meted out to his jackals such as
Busch, or the spectacled pedant whose amusements were
centred in a Kaffee-Klatsch and the gossip of women.
Statecraft was an excrescence on the natural life of the
healthy man, but as it was inevitable, let men bring into

396 BISMARCK
it not the weaknesses of the physicaUy unfit but the
qualities that made man the lord of the universe and of
his own hearth.
Bismarck was never on the side of the angels — for in a
dirty and sordid world he held that the angels by Divine
wisdom prudently kept clear of human affairs — but he
was never on the side of the apes. He was always ' on the
side of the white man,' not ' the blonde beast,' of which
so much has been written with so much profound igno
rance, but the white man who represented ' his idol,
Authority,' the man of the master races whose very vices
and brutality were the necessary correlatives of his virtues,
and were a proof of his strength of brain, physical vitality,
and appetite for order and discipline.
But beneath the elements of grandeur in Bismarck lay
an inferno of personal feeling as passionate and intense as
the manhood that he admired. His memory was relent
less. Lord Derby in 1884 and 1885 was the Lord Stanley
whose share in the Luxemburg affair of 1867 was remem
bered and requited by Bismarck's determination to chastise
him for thwarting his will. As Beust said, even the
Chancellor's boarhounds turned their backs on the former
Saxon minister and Austrian ChanceUor. And from all
the agents of his instructions and his subordinates in the
Foreign Office Bismarck extorted a submissive obedience,
as Arnim and others discovered, the sanction of which
was dismissal and disgrace. Woe to the ambassador or
the under-secretary who betrayed any independence.
What men such as Holstein, whom many regarded as the
' Eminence grise ' of the Wilhelmstrasse, even in Bismarck's
day, thought the world did not learn until after 1890,
when official Berlin slowly realised that the terrifying
master would no longer emerge from Friedrichsruhe to
castigate and crush those who had dared in his absence to
take their own line.
One chapter of this^personal autocracy has never been,
and never wiU be, fully written for this generation.
Bismarck's devotion to his sovereign was limited to the
King-Emperor. The dignity, self-respect, and patriotism
of those concerned prevented the public, as distinct from

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 397
a narrow circle of the initiated, from knowing the full truth
of the ChanceUor's conduct and relations to the Empress,
the Crown Prince and Princess, their relatives and friends.
But if that chapter is ever written, it wiU assuredly not
weaken the certainty that in the man were elements of
jealousy, vulgarity, meanness, pettiness, insincerity and
unscrupulousness, ineradicable and detestable. And it
is desirable to remember that the material for that chapter
was piled up by Bismarck himself, who knew that it could
not, and would not, be given to the world, in its repellent
entirety, during his lifetime — perhaps never.
The Dual Affiance of 1879 naa- Deen intended to solve
the critical dilemma thrust upon him between 1876 and
1879, and to provide a firm foundation for his system.
But Bismarck doubtless felt that his object was identical
with that expressed in 1872 when he pronounced that he
had ' thrown a bridge across to Vienna, without breaking
down that older one to Petersburg.' In 1879 ' the older
bridge ' was hardly safe for traffic ; but Bismarck was deter
mined to reconstruct it.1 The Dual Alliance steeled this
determination, whUe it provided an immovable point from
which to work. After 1879 a new method is distinctly
discernible, caused by the unexpected introduction of
whoUy new elements. The position and problems of
Russia, to begin with, were fundamentaUy altered after
1878. The effort to effect by diplomacy and intrigue
what the Treaty of San Stefano would have established
by war and a treaty — the Balkan States controUed by
Petersburg, and a Constantinople living under the fiat of
the Tsar— the policy of Kutchuk-Kainardji (1774) and of
Unkiar Skelessi (1833) gave a whoUy new turn to the
Near Eastern question. Such a policy, with Pan-Slavism
behind it, cut right across the Austrian line of develop
ment and was wholly opposed to the ambitions of
1 'I have thus succeeded in carrying out the first stage in my political policy
— that of placing a barrier between Austria and the Western Powers. . . . I do
not despair of realising the second, that of the reconstruction of the Drei Kaiser
Bund ... an idea that I have followed all my life . . . they will never devise
a political system offering greater guarantees for safeguarding all the Conserva
tive elements in the modem world.' — Prince Bismarck to Prince Sabouroff,
quoted in the (unpublished) memoirs by Professor J. Y. Simpson, Nineteenth
Century, December 191 7.

398 BISMARCK
Germany, masked behind the Dual AUiance. It involved
Russia in desperate and tortuous courses in which the
weakness of her statesmanship was continuously revealed,
witness the foUy and blindness of her treatment of Roumania
and Bulgaria, but it made a new and torturing problem
for Bismarck. The antagonism of Great Britain and
Russia was superimposed on the antagonism of Austria
and Russia ; it had been recreated by the events of 1876-8,
and henceforward was a standing menace to both countries.
Russian expansion eastwards into the heart of Asia inflamed
the old quarrel of the Crimean War and of 1875-8, and
for Russia the expansion eastwards into Central Asia was
inevitable, apart from its merits as a riposte to Great
Britain, though it imposed a fresh drain on her resources,
while it restated the old problem : Was Russia to concen
trate on her Eastern Empire, or on establishing her
position in Europe ? Pan-Slavism, voiced by Skobeleff,
Katkoff, Ignatieff, and Pobodonostzev, could not decide
whether it was better to proclaim the Holy War against
the Teuton, and reach Constantinople via Berlin and
Vienna, or ignore Teutonic ingratitude and establish the
Slav in the capital of the Moguls at Delhi, and thereby
destroy the British Empire. Skobeleff at one moment
proclaimed the Eastern ideal, at another denounced the
Germans and deplored the Russians ' as dupes of German
policy, victims to German intrigues, and slaves to German
strength, only to be delivered by the sword from the
baneful influence of Germany.'
After 1878 Nihilism honeycombed Russia, and the
assassination of Alexander 11. on the banks of the Catherine
Canal in 1881 terrified his successor, credited, as heirs to
the throne often are, with Liberal sympathies, into
terrorism. The necessity of an international union of
dynasties and governments against the menace of revo
lution, sharpened by dismay at the unending surrender of
Great Britain to democracy, and detestation of republics
and republicanism, obsessed Alexander in. Nihilism,
more than any other force, held France and Russia apart,
poisoned the relations of Great Britain and Russia, and, in
Bismarck's skilful hands, laid the basis of the compacts of

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 399
1884 and 1887. Alexander, swayed by Nationalism,
rehgion, and ambition, was continually breaking away
from the principle of a modern Holy Alliance of the Three
Monarchies, and continually being lured back by the fear
of revolution into the charmed circle of the magician at
Berlin. WeU-informed statesmen were convinced that in
1880 Russia was on the point of returning to the entente
of 1872, when the assassination of Alexander 11. and
the confusion caused by a change on the throne and the
internal peril to the autocracy, snapped for the time
the ' new wire ' between Berlin and Petersburg. The
opposing schools of policy strove round the person of
Alexander in., but it was not until death removed Gort
schakov, Skobeleff, and Katkoff, and the Nihilist danger
had been comparatively mastered, that Russia and the
Tsar had both ears for Bismarck's arguments. Through
all the evidence available runs a persistent principle — the
desirabUity of uniting the monarchies on a common basis
of resistance to democracy and revolution — the old prin
ciples of the historic Holy AUiance in a modern form.
Apart from the political considerations underlying a
German hegemony of Central Europe, this dynastic unity
was a bulwark of the existing social order, and no one felt
more strongly than Bismarck that his system at bottom in
Germany and without rested on the maintenance of a
defined social structure correlated to, and a guarantee of,
a distribution of political authority and defined political
principles. He could and did cordiaUy agree with
Alexander in. that the political evolution of France and
the ideas underlying the Republic, together with the con
tinuous lapse of Great Britain from aristocratic grace to
democracy, constituted a real peril and set up a perpetual
antithesis between the Liberal west and the Conservative
and Monarchical centre and east. The danger of infection
from the west was serious. For all the facts went to prove
that the west might inoculate and sap the centre and east,
but there was small prospect of the centre and the east
curing democratic Great Britain and France of their
deplorable heresies. Dual or Triple Affiances were of no
avail unless they aimed at ends deeper and more sub-

400 BISMARCK
stantial than a nicely and perpetually readjusted political
equilibrium. A coalition of ideas and principles could be
more fatal to German supremacy than a coalition of fleets
or armies. The return, therefore, to a reactionary Con
servatism, discussed in the previous section, was partly the
reflex, partly the inspiration, of Bismarck's foreign policy.
The disturbing elements in the situation were not con
fined to Russia. Europe in 1880 was on the threshold of
an era with a very different outlook and ambition. Five
other characteristics can be broadly disentangled — the
Eastern Question, the problem of the Mediterranean, the
renaissance of France, the revived activity and policy of
Great Britain, and the colonial movement. Their com
bination provided the problem for Bismarck, and his ex
ploitation of them makes the history of his foreign policy
from 1879 t0 n^s fa^-
After 1878 the Powers were much concerned with the
execution of the terms of the Treaty of Berlin. But the
military occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the
question of Dulcigno — ' Dulcigno far niente,' as was
wittily said — and similar items of the Berlin programme,
very soon faded into much larger issues — the Roumanian,
Serbian, Bulgarian, and Greek questions ; Egypt, Tunis,
Syria and Tripoli. Was the liquidation of the Ottoman
Empire to continue ? Who were the lawful creditors of
the estate, if from any quarter a petition in bankruptcy was
seriously pressed ? What was to be the dividend, and to
whom and. in what shares was it to be assigned ? The
Congress of Berlin had proclaimed the integrity of a
' consolidated ' and reduced Ottoman Empire, which like
the immortal ' Peau de Chagrin ' was always being pegged
out, and was always shrinking in defiance of every effort
to prevent it. Bismarck, therefore, had to decide what
was the interest of Germany in the Near East, and he
found the decision very difficult.
If we may judge from events, everything strengthened
his conclusion in 1 879 that safety lay in a firm control of
Austria-Hungary.1 He could pivot on the Dual AUiance
1 ' Germany in view of her own security could not possibly allow Austria to
have any other alliance than with herself.' — (From the Sabouroff Memoirs.)

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 401
more securely than on any other nodal, strategic, and
diplomatic point. The remarkable analysis at the end of
his Memoirs, with all its obvious omissions and veiled
aUusions, shows how continuously and with what micro
scopic diligence he watched and weighed every symptom
in Austrian policy. Austria was essential to Germany, for
if Austria coUapsed the Near Eastern Question threat
ened a catastrophe. The heart of the problem lay there
fore in this issue : if it was easier to control Austria
than to control Russia — and to secure Russia if Austria
had been first secured — to what extent could Germany
' back the Austrian biU ' ? That Berlin must back the
biU drawn at Vienna broadly was clear. But the analysis
in the Memoirs and the crisis of 1 890 reveal that Bismarck
fuUy recognised very precise limits to the German credit
placed behind the Austrian draft, and showed that he was
not prepared to support ' an unreasonable Austria ' at
the price of a complete rupture with Russia. He decided,
in effect, that Germany and Austria might at some future
date have to part company, under the pressure of events :
and the decision brought him into sharp antagonism with
the new school of policy which made an Austro-German
aUiance, coute que coiite, the basis of German policy in the
Near East. (See Holstein's criticisms in Hohenlohe, ii. 45 1 .)
The main argument of that school was profoundly in
fluenced by the growing ambition to substitute, also coute
que coiite, a German ascendency at Constantinople (with
aU its iUimitable possibiUties) for a Russian, a British, or
French ascendency ; or, in other words, the integrity and
the revival of the shrinking Ottoman Empire could and
ought to be made a primary German interest. The Mayor
of the Sultan and the Sublime Porte was to be the German
Emperor, in close aUiance with Austria. Bismarck between
1879 anc* x^90 was not prepared to go that length. He
recognised that it involved, for aU its advantages, an irre
concilable breach with Russia, and a serious antagonism to
Great Britain. To the end, while recognising a deepening
German interest in Constantinople and Turkey in Europe,
he had his eyes on the West and France. The 'Austrian
School ' at Berlin was really interpreting Centralism in a
B. 2C

402 BISMARCK
way that, in Bismarck's view, might imperil not merely
Germany's interest in the East but the fundamental basis
of German supremacy in Europe. For Bismarck an
alliance of Russia and France, and the closing of the breach
between Great Britain and Russia, speUed the ruin of a
true system of European policy. The younger generation,
in short, was distinguishing between Bismarckian Central
ism and a W eltpolitik. They aspired to make Germany a
Weltmacht — a World-Empire — and not merely a Con
tinental Power, and they saw the main road winding from
Hamburg through Berlin across the Balkans, through a
Constantinople controUed by Germany to Mesopotamia
and the Persian Gulf, with an entry to the seas not so
closely controlled as the routes down the Channel or
north of the Shetlands ; they also saw it reaching across
the Atlantic to the Pacific, expressed in the formula ' ships,
colonies, and commerce.' And for this young generation
the heart of the position lay in the closest offensive aUiance
with Austria. It made Great Britain, not France or
Russia, the great rival of Germany. Bismarck's virtual
reply to such an argument was a paraphrase of Beacons-
field's judgment on Herat and Candahar. ' The Key of
East and West, of Centralism and Empire, was not in
Belgrade or Constantinople or Zanzibar — it was in Metz,
Berlin, and Thorn.' ,
In a more concrete form, the Near Eastern Question
from 1879 to 1890 was summed up in the antagonism of
Austria and Russia in the Balkans, and in the rivalry
between Great Britain and France in Egypt. These two
problems brought the Mediterranean into the main
diplomatic theatre, and kept it there.
By 1 878 the isolation of France was proving exceedingly
difficult. The crisis of 1875 had shown that the European
Powers would not tolerate a further reduction of France
or French power; the International Exhibition of 1878
picturesquely mirrored the remarkable extent of France's
-recovery from the collapse in 1870. Paris, as in 1867,
was still a great, if not the great, foyer de civilisation,
the attraction of which was inextinguishable. The new
France, working so hard to make good the blunders of the

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 403
Second Empire, would soon be, if she was not already, an
aUy worth having. But the Germany that had failed to
crush her or to isolate her completely, and that must fail
to reconcile her because of Alsace and Lorraine, might
divert her gathering strength into directions that would
involve her in a collision with aU the possible affies of the
new France. There were three such possible allies —
Great Britain, Russia, and Italy. The colonial movement
combined with the situation in the Mediterranean to give
Bismarck a fine chance of checkmating the rapprochement
so necessary to France and his diplomacy was equal to it.
After 1879 Colonial questions moved sharply and sud
denly into the forefront of European controversy and
ambition. Africa and the Pacific kept the chanceUeries
busy. For Africa was the one great area, of vast extent,
and unlimited possibilities, a continent not yet properly
explored, and not yet finaUy allotted to, or occhipied by,
any great European Power. With 1880 ' the scramble
for Africa ' seriously began, and it behove the Powers that
had started late in the foundation of colonies to be quick,
or the one fine field left in a limited world would be over
run and mastered by the Powers which had started early,
and weie already settled at various points on the rim of
the Continent. Everything combined to make the
' African appeal ' urgent and critical — the romance of
exploration, the prose of business and trade, missions and
rehgion, coaling stations, hinterlands and doctrines of
international law, struggling to establish principles which
distinguished spheres of influence, protectorates, treaty
rights, and the nature of actual or virtual possession ; and
with these mingled the claims of humanity and the slave-
trade, the rights of races and civilisation, ' the white man's
burden,' and the territorial ambitions that underlay the
conception of the State as the incarnation of Power, or the
State as the incarnation of Right and Law. Darkest and
unknown Africa indeed summed up everything for Europe,
from the selfless heroism of a Livingstone, the stubborn
pertinacity of a Stanley, and the philanthropy _ of a
Lavigerie to the imperialism of a Rhodes or the syndicates
of gold and diamond companies, the provision of raw

404 BISMARCK
materials for the workshops of Europe, or the cruder
claim to sell bad guns and the poison of potato-spirit in
return for rubber extracted by the lash. And in Africa,
with its harbours and mighty rivers and its stepping-
stones, east or west, might not prescient statecraft caU a
new world into existence that would not merely redress,
but completely upset, the balance of the old ? Africa
was the whole which developed the rivalries of other and
more purely local areas — for the Mediterranean was a
locahsed form both of the larger African and the Near
Eastern problems.
The diversion, as distinct from the isolation, of France,
began in 1878. Whether Bismarck first, in the green
rooms of the Berlin Congress, where so many tempting
whispers were uttered, suggested the idea of France occupy
ing Tunis, as a compensation for losses elsewhere, or
whether the suggestion feU from Beaconsfield and SaUs-
bury, may be a nice question in the origin of things, the
evidence for which is still incomplete ; but it is tolerably
certain that France understood after 1878 that, if she did
go to Tunis, Germany and Great Britain would not com
bine to make the occupation a casus belli, or an occasion
for a humiliating rebuff. In 1881 France accordingly
went to Tunis — with the results that Bismarck at any
rate had foreseen and intended. Great Britain was
already hard pressed by difficulties in Egypt ; her relations
with France were becoming strained, and the new Foreign
Secretary at London regretted the virtual pledge of his
predecessor. That France should quarrel with Great Britain was just
what Bismarck desired, and the causes of quarrel could be
extended by judicious diplomacy inflaming further French
colonial ambitions in Africa, in Siam, Cochin-China, and
the Pacific. The more that France spent in men or
money on colonial expansion, the less she would have for
her eastern frontier in Europe ; the more she stared
across the seas the less she would be ' hypnotised by the
gap in the Vosges ' ; she would not find European affies
by expeditions to the Nile, the Mekong, or the Niger,
but European rivals, whose ambitions would be reflected

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 405
and refracted at London, Paris, Rome, Petersburg,
Brussels, and the Hague : colonial policy and colonial
failures have, moreover, always been since 1660 a fine
dissolvent of ministries in most European States. French
and British ministries would come to grief at home because
French or British expeditions met with reverses on the
Nile or the Niger : France must therefore be encouraged
to suffer a perpetual angina pectoris, in which colonialism
would be an irritant, very shattering to the Republic.
No less beneficial to Berlin and Central Europe, Tunis
and French Mediterranean ambitions brought France at
once into sharp collision with the sister Latin race in Italy.
The kingdom of Italy desired colonies and a sure grip on
the Mediterranean. The French occupation of Tunis
was a bitter blow. How was France to be prevented from
adding Tripoli to Tunis F And if she had a condominium
in Egypt, what was there left in the Mediterranean for
Italy ? An isolated Italy studied the map and the diplo
matic constellations. Her position was becoming des
perate. She could not stand alone. But with whom
could she act f A confidential explanation from Berlin
of the terms and meaning of the Dual Alliance of 1879,
made one certainty absolutely clear. ' Unredeemed
Italy' (Italia irredenta) — Trieste and Istria, the Alpine
frontier of the Napoleonic kingdom of Italy of 18 10, the
Balkan littoral of the Adriatic were now postponed to
the German Kalends. If Italy could not get these from
Austria single-handed, she assuredly could not get them
by a war in which Germany stood behind Austria. The
Dual AUiance sponged from the screen of the future the
Italian dream of rounding off the unification of 1859 and
1866 by the incorporation of unredeemed Italy or securing
the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic. And the exposed
shores of the peninsula were vulnerable to sea-power and
to French sea-power, located at Toulon, Corsica, Tunis,
Bizerta — perhaps Egypt. Given the conditions of 1882,
the accession of Italy to the Dual AUiance was — if the invi
tation were held out from Berlin — a foregone conclusion.
On May 20, 1882, Italy's accession turned the Dual
into the Triple Affiance. The text of the treaty has

406 BISMARCK
never been officially pubUshed ; but it is certain that in
1882 Italy joined for five years, and that the treaty was
renewed in 1887 and at subsequent intervals, with which
Bismarck was not concerned. It is practicaUy certain that
the three signatory Powers gave a reciprocal guarantee
for the integrity of their respective territories, undertook
to assist each other in the case of attack by any European
Power (i.e. France), and (probably by secret conventions)
agreed to aUot with precision the nature and amount of
their respective military contribution to a joint effort.
It is practically certain that no guarantee was given to
Italy either by Germany or Austria of support in a colonial
policy in the Mediterranean or elsewhere, and that Italy
was in no way bound to support Balkan or other adven
tures of Germany or Austria. The maintenance of the
existing balance of power in the Mediterranean, or the
nature of any future rearrangement of the Mediterranean
situation, probably did not faU within the scope of the
engagements undertaken in 1882.
The wisdom or the inexpediency of Italy's action in
1882 do not caU for judgment here ; but two other con
siderations, besides those mentioned, unquestionably
weighed with Depretis and his successors. Alliance with
Berlin was a powerful support to the Quirinal against the
Vatican, and in 1882 the relations of Quirinal and Vatican
were severely strained : if the Dual Alliance made ' un
redeemed Italy ' an affair beyond redemption, the Triple
Alliance made the restoration of the temporal power of
the Papacy and the removal of the House of Savoy from
Rome practically impossible. The annoyance and anger
of Ultramontanism in Italy, Austria and France, and also
in Germany, are the best proof of this consequence of the
Triple AUiance. Secondly, it did not prevent Italy from
improving an historic friendship with Great Britain, and
obtaining, if circumstances required, the assistance or
protection of the British fleet, with one of its bases
at Malta. The more strained Anglo-French relations
became, the greater became the likelihood of such assist
ance ; the better Anglo-German relations became, the
better would become the relations of Great Britain and

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 407
Italy. Italy was, and was desired at Berlin to be, a middle
term between Great Britain and the new Triple AUiance.
To Bismarck the conclusion of the Treaty of May 20,
1882, was the culmination of his system. Henceforward
German hegemony in Central Europe moved securely
on the pivotal point of the Triple AUiance, which gradu
aUy and naturaUy grew into the one grand combination
in the European State system, with which all other possible
combinations or ententes had to reckon. And for Bismarck
the accession of Italy had every advantage and no disad
vantages. Italy from 1878 to 1882 was in a restless and
excited state.1 She might indeed precipitate a crisis
which would upset the carefully poised equiUbrium of
Europe. Crises that arise from the action of strong
States are often not as dangerous as the crises provoked
by the recklessness of weak States. Italian policy in 1882
came under the control of the Wilhelmstrasse, and control
was stealthUy and relentlessly foUowed by the moral and
economic penetration of the German bankers, cartels,
syndicates, and commercial traveUers. After 1878 the
Ottoman Empire was simUarly ' penetrated.' How
deeply the penetration had pierced in both cases- — how
enmeshed had become the finance and the springs of trade
by German wheels and cogs and ' controls ' — Italy and
the world learned in 1914. ' Trade followed the alliances,
and the alliances followed trade.'
In 1882 the Kulturkampf -was by no means healed. The
agreement of ' May 20, 1882 ' was a potent schedule to
'the May Laws ' of 1873 and 1875. Prussia now had a
rod, steeped in Itahan brine, which it could use, if required.
Crispi, who figures so prominently in the later phases of
the story, had known and fought under great and hypnotic
men — Garibaldi and Cavour. At Friedrichsruhe he met
another hypnotic personality and succumbed. Bismarck
and Crispi, exchanging their memories over cigars and
wine at Friedrichsruhe, the old revolutionary of the red-
1 ' This whole attitude shows that Italy must not be numbered to-day among
the peace-loving and conservative Powers, who must reckon with the fact. . . .
Every encouragement to Italian policy to join the bellicose and predatory
Powers in Europe is contrary to German interests.' — Bismarck to Prince Reuss
at Vienna, Jan. 28, i8?o.— Busch, Bismarck, iii. p. 221.

408 BISMARCK
shirts and ' The Thousand ' and the veteran Junker who
had denounced the journey to Canossa, overthrown clerical
France and Apostolic Austria, were not a pleasant thought,
we may be sure, in the Apostolic chancery of the Vatican.
But Bismarck, in concluding the Triple AUiance, was
not thinking so much of the Vatican or the British fleet,
as of Central Europe and France. The Triple Alliance
completed Central Europe ; it closed the Alpine passes ;
it barred the great gate to Vienna through which Napoleon
had marched in 1796 ; it opened the Mediterranean to
Germany ; it rent away from France the aUy of the sister
Latin race and made it henceforward necessary for her to
keep two of her best corps to guard against invasion
through the Maritime Alps. Best of aU, it shivered the
serious menace of 1869 and 187 1. France, Austria and
Italy, bound in a common war of revenge, had been a
real danger. Austria had been secured as an aUy in 1879 ;
Italy was secured in 1882. It would take genius on the
one side or bungling on the other to undo the Triple
Alliance. Where were now the possible allies of France ?
Great Britain ? Russia ?
In 1882, with the bombardment of Alexandria, the re
bellion of'Arabi, the faU of Gambetta (January 26), and
the Anglo-Egyptian Campaign, war was more likely than
an aUiance between France and Great Britain. The
Triple Alliance, in fact, largely undid the benefits to
France of the benevolent hint to take Tunis and to take it
at once. In the future Italy's claims in the Mediter
ranean might be much more serious, if Berlin found it
convenient to give them ' moral ' support. Bismarck's
' moral ' support was unlike that of most European
Powers. It was only given because he had decided that,
if need be, behind it lay ' the immoral ' support of
German force.
And there was another supreme advantage in Bismarck's
eyes. If Austria kept Italy in check, Italy could be used
to keep Austria in vassalage. There was little fear that
Italy, the weakest of the three aUies, would break loose,
take the bit in her teeth, and defy Berlin and Vienna,
while France was hostile, and Great Britain vaguely

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 409
friendly. But there was always a real danger that the
men in the BaU-Platz might lose their heads. Megalo
mania and folly were hereditary diseases in the statesman
ship of Imperial Vienna. Modern history was a dreary
record of Austrian blunders — from Charles vi. to Francis
Joseph ; we are almost tempted to add from Charles vi.
to Aerenthal, Hotzendorf and Tisza. Italy provided the
Wilhelmstrasse with a very useful curb for keeping the
BaU-Platz ' in hand.' In that unwritten chapter of the
relations of Berhn and Vienna after 1879 the historical
student of Bismarck's statecraft, provoked by the tempting
ghmpses revealed here and there, sighs indeed for a few
weeks uninterrupted work in the archives of Vienna and
the Wilhelmstrasse with an unrestricted general warrant,
entitling him to examine aU confidential documents.
Such a search would not merely satisfy a hungry curi
osity ; it would be invaluable in the scientific appreciation
of Bismarck's statecraft. The use of Italy's aspirations in
pruning the rank growth of Austrian appetites is an
obscure chapter in Bismarck's system — but would be an
illuminating one. It might, indeed probably would, fur
nish an instructive contrast between Bismarck and the
post-Bismarckians .
Italy in 1882 was like Italy in 1866. She had concluded
a treaty which imposed obligations, but conferred prac
ticaUy no rights. Bismarck had, to a certainty, refused in
any way to endorse in advance the ' Italian draft ' on the
future. How far he had cautiously endorsed a very limited
Austrian ' draft ' is, as has been pointed out, very un
certain ; but Italian claims and aspirations in Albania or
elsewhere, that so obviously conflicted with an Austrian
programme, could be^ and were, used after 1882 to keep
Austria ' in order.' How far Bismarck's successors de
parted from the Bismarckian system — how far they
graduaUy interpreted the articles of association in the very
limited liability company that constituted Bismarck's
Triple AUiance, as constituting a company of unlimited
liabUity, how far they gradually came to regard it as
practicaUy a Dual AUiance in which Italy made a negli
gible third, who would not dare to break away, and at the

410 BISMARCK
worst would observe a sulking and peevish neutrality — •
it is neither necessary, nor possible, to decide here. But
to Bismarck, the Continentalist in feeUng, thought, and
fibre, the Triple AUiance was of supreme importance, for
it secured the Continental position that made the marrow
and bone of Bismarckian Central Europe ; and if it was
never easy from 1882 to 1890 to prevent his two affies
from snarling at, or quarrelling, with each other, such
management caUed for aU the arts and skill which Bismarck
rejoiced to prove that he had. The position of arbiter
was precisely what he desired, and in the exercise of the
office he was consummate. The Triple Alliance, in short,
was an open re-insurance against the liabilities, deliber
ately incurred in 1879. But ^ we may Juc^ge from the
copious criticisms poured out in the Hamburger Nach-
richten after 1890, Bismarck was convinced that very
httle of his mantle and no double portion of his spirit
had faUen on his successors. It is no less certain that
had Count Herbert Bismarck succeeded in due course, as
his father intended, to the vacant desk in the Wilhelm
strasse that Hohenlohe and Biilow could have said with
unanswerable truth that the mantle and the double
portion of the ChanceUor's spirit had not faUen on the son.
The Triple Alliance was, like all Bismarck's strokes,
aimed at France. It was the policy of isolation and diver
sion in one. There is substantial reason for believing
that in 1882 a serious attempt was made to include Spain
in the network of affiances. But the attempt, if it was
made — which would have completed the isolation of
France — did not come to a treaty. Spain was left to
' moral penetration ' by Germany — and it was effective.
Be that as it may, German emphasis was now laid on the
diversion of France. After 1882 the Republic was quietly
or openly encouraged from Berlin to pursue colonial
aims. In 1881 Bismarck compared Gambetta to a
drummer in the sick-room of Europe. But Gambetta's
faU x and death, which soon foUowed, ended the Gambetta
policy of cultivating the gqod-will of Great Britain, uniting
1 ' Gambetta,' says M. Hanotaux, ' had to learn that one cannot in France
defend French interests with impunity.' — La France Contemporaine, 4,629.

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 411
the Latin races, and making a democratic Republic a power
for democracy in Europe, while keeping the lamp of
revenge at home polished and burning with a subdued
and steady light that at the right moment could flame
into a great national beacon. ' Ne parlez jamais de la
guerre,' Gambetta had said, ' mais pensez-y toujours.'
Gambetta's radical republicanism quenched the ardour of
Russian autocracy for a Franco-Russian entente.
After 1882 Ferry's policy in Egypt and the Far East
steadily estranged France from Great Britain. The Nile
and Tonkin, Madagascar and Siam, caused the French to
forget their hostUity to Germany in their hostility to
Great Britain. And Bismarck took care to hold open the
fissure between Great Britain and France. Encourage
ment to England in Egypt was balanced by encouragement
to France in the Far East and the Pacific. The Foreign
Office in Berlin and the German Embassy in Paris were
prolific in their hints of ' the great man's ' sincerity in
wishing France weU, while his magisterial experience
was readUy placed at French disposal. The French
consulted the oracle freely. The Ferry Ministry in 1884
could say publicly that not for two decades had the re
lations of France and Germany been so friendly. Such
friendship with good reasons disquieted the Cabinet at
London. Bismarck certainly hoped that a few years of this con
ciliation by diversion would wring from a French govern
ment a stammering renunciation of revanche. A great
and magnanimous speech in the Reichstag from the
ChanceUor could then have proclaimed that a generous
and brave nation had wisely closed the account and hence
forward with Germany's unqualified goodwiU and assist
ance would march in a common work of civilisation — in
which Great Britain must be compeUed to yield to the
legitimate rights of the new entente. But, instead of
the stammering renunciation came Ferry's faU (April 2,
1885) : a colonial failure sharply awakened France to the
truth that colonies might be colonies, but Alsace and
Lorraine remained the monument of German victory and
French defeat. French ministries henceforward grew

412 BISMARCK
like grass in the green spring and feU hke leaves in chill
October; and in the place of the great and unspoken
speech that Bismarck desired to make, we have the
Bismarckian orations of 1887 and 1888, in which France
was held up to Germany as the hereditary, irreconcilable,
and malignant foe in whose vile heart justice and con
ciliation only whetted the impotent lust of revenge.
Worse still, the colonial movement, Egypt and the diver
sion of Russia to the Middle East brought on a severe
Anglo-Russian crisis and involved Germany in sharp and
dangerous friction with Great Britain. The year 1884
was a momentous one in French history. It was a far
more momentous one in the history of Great Britain, of
Germany and of Bismarck.
The relations of Great Britain and Germany after 1871
and Bismarck's policy are susceptible of various and contra
dictory interpretations. Bismarck's dislike of Gladstone
and Gladstonianism is beyond question, for Gladstone's
principles of foreign policy and theory of international
relations, no less than his system of home politics,
represented everything that Bismarck regarded as danger
ous, detestable or futile,1 and Gladstone's noted radical
distrust of Bismarckianism, which was very apparent
from 1880 to 1885, and was largely, if not mainly* re
sponsible for the refusal of Great Britain to enter the
German net, was no less strong. Bismarck seems to have
held the view, adopted by many continental statesmen,
that Great Britain as essentially a naval, maritime, and
colonial Power was not, and ought not to be, concerned
with the Continent of Europe. If, therefore, Great
Britain actively intervened in ' purely continental affairs,'
she was taking upon herself matters not properly sui juris,
as well as introducing an unwelcome and incalculable
element into a situation, already sufficiently complicated.
Her very disinterestedness could be disconcerting :
because it made it difficult to conclude material bargains
by material bribes. British Liberalism, in particular,
1 ' It is very apparent in the Sabouroff memoirs,' writes Professor Simpson,
who has seen these unpublished papers, ' how uneasy Bismarck was at the
prospects of a Liberal England.' — Nineteenth Century, December 1917,

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 413
introduced also into international relations ' cant ' phrases
and formulae — humanity, the Concert of Europe, the
unity of European moral interests, arbitration, moral
responsibUity, Blue Books, amenabUity to public opinion,
and ' nations rightly struggling to be free ' — and had
always done so from Canning onwards. Great Britain's
intervention in 1875 had been more than disconcerting —
it had led to a serious rebuff : and even more serious had
been the sharp action of the Beaconsfield ministry in the
crisis of 1877-8. A war between Great Britain and Russia
over Constantinople and the Balkans would create an in
soluble dilemma for Austria, and therefore for Germany.
The steady insistence of Mr. Gladstone's ministry in 1880
on fulfilling the pledges and terms of the Treaty of Berlin
was very annoying. A Concert of Europe, manipulated by
the Wilhelmstrasse, was one thing — a Concert of Europe
led by Great Britain was another, and did not make for
German hegemony and for peace as Bismarck under
stood it.
But for aU his gibes or snarling innuendoes Bismarck did
not underrate British strength. The British fleet, unlike
the British army, could not be dealt with by ' calling in the
police.' And Great Britain in some mysterious way had
an uncanny gift for provoking the jealousy yet attracting
the support of European Powers. Bismarck, therefore,
after 1871, aimed mainly at encouraging British goodwill
to Austria and Italy, at keeping France and Great Britain
apart and Russia and Great Britain in strained tension, in
which German good offices could be effectively employed
to maintain the tension, yet prevent a complete rupture.
Down to 1884 Germany and Great Britain could maintain
in theory and phrase the friendhest of relations, for no
direct or serious cause of quarrel between the two Powers
existed. The two Powers might indirectly have divergent
interests in many European questions in which these
European States were largely concerned, but a direct
antagonism in which Great Britain and Germany were
the chief actors had not so far arisen.
The Egyptian question, with aU the embarrassments
arising out of the tangle or created by ministerial policy in

414 BISMARCK
Great Britain, was just what Bismarck could have wished.
It made Great Britain more dependent on German good
wiU, and, properly handled with the requisite air of im
partiality, could separate France and Great Britain and
prevent an Anglo-French aUiance. The evidence that
Bismarck would have welcomed a loose Anglo-German
aUiance or entente between 1880 and 1890 is suggestive,
but neither precise nor conclusive. Such an ' aUiance '
would have been a triumphant codicil to the Triple
AUiance, would have been warmly welcomed in Italy, and
need not have damaged a separate understanding between
Germany and Russia. The interests of Great Britain and
Russia in many respects were not more divergent than
those of Austria and Italy ; and it would have been a
powerful aid in emphasising German arguments at
Petersburg. But if Bismarck went so far as to make
direct or indirect overtures, they broke down on
Mr. Gladstone's radical distrust, and no less on the direct
conflict of interest in colonial policy that came to a head
in 1884. In that year Germany was caught up in the
colonial movement.
It was inevitable after 1871 that Germany should begin
to take an interest in colonial expansion, if for no other
reason than that the most powerful of the Continental
States had no colonies, and that colonial possessions were
a proof and a guarantee of strength. German Nationalism,
after 181 5, as has been emphasised earlier in these pages,
had found its deepest conviction and most stimulating
nourishment in the consciousness of German impotence
relatively to other great national States. The feeUng that
a united Germany could and ought to stand in the world
as a Power, able to stand and speak for Germans as a whole
in the gate of its rivals, and on terms of equality face
France, Austria, Russia, and Great Britain, was overwhelm
ing and reasonable. Germany had now accompUshed
her unification, and the power of the German Empire
after 187 1 was an indisputable fact which satisfied to the
full the passionate craving of the once impotent Germany
of the Federal Diet. After 1871 the German nation, Uke
its Emperor had ' drunk of the chalice of victory and would

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 415
not break it.' It now desired to be an Empire like other
great Empires — and the Empires with a future had colonies
because the future lay with colonies. Leroy Beaulieu's
remark, that colonies may not be signs of strength to-day,
but that they hold the strength of the future, sums up the
inarticulate German ambition. Just as a man who has
made himself a millionaire by his own efforts desires motor
cars, a fine picture gaUery, or historic castles in the country,
not for their intrinsic value, but because they prove that
he is as rich and as powerful as other miffionaires, so the
German nation also. desired colonies as the appurtenances
and apparatus of Empire — to give them the external
position and framework in the world enjoyed by other
imperial nations.
After 1 87 1 a decade was spent in completing unification
into which the best energies of the German nation were
thrown with enthusiasm. By 1880 the increase in popula
tion, wealth, commerce, and maritime trade, no less than the
stability and strength of the administrative and military
fabric was remarkable. The industrialisation of Germany
proceeded by leaps and bounds. A stiU greater future
awaited a further expansion. It was inevitable that the
German trader should seek outlets for capital and markets
outside Europe. He found them and developed them with
the same energy and thoroughness that marked the work
done by Germans at home in science, the army, civil ad
ministration and trade. But there was one humiliating
disadvantage. The German emigrant was lost to Germany
because there was no Germany outside Europe. The
German trader had to explore and develop his trade either
under the protection of a foreign flag or at his own risk.
In Europe he could say ' civis Germanus sum ' — a claim
that no European State was likely to underrate — but in the
Pacific or on the coast of East or West Africa the claim
lost its force. The German found the white ensign of
Great Britain everywhere ; the tricolour of a France
which he had defeated and despised was being planted
steadily outside France ; but the German flag did not fly,
even where trade was in German hands or the unknown
spaces of the earth had been explored by German effort.

416 BISMARCK
Germany had obliterated, since 1815, the ' injuries of two
centuries ' in Europe. Unless she now girt up her
puissant loins the world would be closed and time would
have inflicted fresh and irremovable injuries.
The conversion to Protection at home chnched con
clusively the sentimental and the political argument.
That conversion, as has been pointed out, was a renaissance
of seventeenth-century mercantffism interpreted in the
terms of the later nineteenth century. The Bismarckian
doctrine of power, developed from the renaissance theory
of Reason of State, joined hands with the mercantilist
doctrine of power, founded on a specific economic analysis
of national power, of which F. List in his masterpiece The
National System of Political Economy, a generation earlier,
had given a penetrating and reasoned exposition. Cobden-
ism and Manchesterism, the disciples of List in Germany
argued, had failed. The belief of the Cobdenites and the
builders of the ZoUverein that the future of the great
economic and industrial States lay with Free Trade had
proved a delusion. The world had slowly turned not to
Free Trade but to Protection, to tariffs and tariff treaties,
and Germany had now turned with it. The economic
future lay with a new and scientific Protection, which was
the basis of economic and political Power. The essential
and logical coroUary to the reservation of the home-market,
and the home industries to the natives of the State, was the
opening of the maritime markets to the products of modern
industry on the grand scale. Germany as a workshop of
the world — protected by a ' scientific ' tariff — required
expanding markets and the reservation of the requisite
raw materials which could not be provided in Europe.
Unless these were secured beyond dispute German trade
would either be mutUated in its upward expansion or be
left dependent on the precarious goodwiU and the certain
jealousy of her European rivals. Her most serious
economic competitors were also her most formidable
poUtical rivals. Markets and raw materials could, in
short, only be secured by colonies and a fleet. Without
colonies, the expanding mercantile marine and the nerves
and sinews of German industry were exposed to an in-

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 417
creasing jeopardy. _ Colonies, therefore, on this argument,
the cogency of which was strengthened by every increase
in economic efficiency and prosperity, were not a luxury,
but an absolute necessity of power. In the early eighties
the argument was being driven home by professors, news
papers, the industrial magnates and the increasing scramble
for colonies, so notable after 1871. In 1887 Die Deutsche
Colonial Gesellschaft, the union of two separate colonial
organisations, was a significant proof of the solidarity of
the movement ; and the formation of a ' Colonial group ' in
the Reichstag as early as 1883, to press the demand, was
the political expression of the forces at work.
Bismarck was not convinced. Like most men who have
grown up and achieved great things under the influence of
one set of conditions — men whose characters, convictions,
and principles of action are strong because they are so set
in their fibres and their blood that they are the men them
selves — Bismarck was never very sensitive to new ideas
and new forces which were the result of wholly new con
ditions and a new age. He was hostile to ' colonialism,'
also, because it was not his own idea, the product of his
own original and creative gifts. Unlike many statesmen,
and most of his own countrymen, Bismarck had, with aU his
devouring ambition and pride of, and trust in, power, a
fine and moderating sense of limits. Between the ideal
and the practicable he continually drew a distinction that
is the marrow of his statecraft. He was like Gustavus
Adolphus or Richelieu energy indeed, but energy under
restraint. And he never forgot what he wrote to his wife
after Koniggratz — ' we must not think that we have
conquered the world nor forget that we have to live with
three neighbours.' He recognised that the success of the
German Empire had stirred the deepest jealousies and
resentment ; it might and could be overthrown by
coalitions ; Germany was not able, for "aU her strength, to
defy the world.
His intuitional dislike of colonialism went deeper than
mere sentiment, temperamental indifference to principles
not his own, or a practical calculation of the limits of
German Power. He was and he remained to his death
B. 2 11

41 8 BISMARCK
essentiaUy a continentalist ; that is, he held as the core of
a true system of German policy that the German Empire
must be based on the complete mastery of the continental
conditions of supremacy. Germany must control Central
Europe ; without that control the Empire would either
be dissolved or be reduced to the second rate position of
his youth and early manhood. And the control of Central
Europe imposed the absolute necessity of an invincible
army, superior to that of any likely coalition of forces —
an army in fact on a two-Power or three-Power standard —
together with a foreign pohcy carried out by a vigUant
and invincible Higher Direction, concentrating on the
keys of power in Europe. The German army involved
a severe tax in manhood and money. Any dissipation of
strength on objectives outside the main theatre would
mean a proportionate reduction in the army ; and, no less
pernicious, a dualism in the higher strategy of the Wilhelm
strasse. No one realised more completely than Bismarck
the task that the maintenance of German hegemony in
Europe after 1871 laid on the ChanceUor. Only by
prestige and a sleepless diplomacy had the successive
phases of the European situation been successfully met,
manipulated, and worked into the broad plan. The task
of watching and controlling Austria, France, Russia, Italy,
Spain — of anticipating the complications in the Near East,
in Poland, and the Mediterranean — became harder, not
easier, as the European Powers grew, penetrated or copied
Bismarckian principles and methods. The invitation
therefore to break out on a new objective — a great colonial
campaign — must be resisted. It was excentric to the
central issues, which in the nature of things constituted
the essentials of a true German policy.
Moreover, Bismarck foresaw that a successful colonial
campaign inevitably involved rivalries outside Europe
that would react on the European position. There were
two chief Colonial States in Europe — France and Great
Britain. Was Germany to compete with France, stop the
policy of diversion which dissipated French strength and
drive her back on concentrating on Europe ? And Great
Britain ? Competition here would not drive Great Britain

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 419
back on Europe — it was competition with a Power essen
tially colonial and only secondarily continental. At sea
Great Britain was supreme. What if Great Britain replied
by buUding up a European coalition against Germany ? The
antagonism of Great Britain was not lightly to be provoked.
Bismarck predicted that a reaUy serious German chaUenge
to Great Britain in the colonial and extra -European
sphere would end in a Franco-British aUiance and a deep
penetration of Great Britain into the continental situa
tion — precisely the one object that he desired to prevent.
Bismarck had studied history as a great statesman should
study it — to learn from it the secrets of statecraft. History
was for him a study in statesmanship : precisely as to aU the
great commanders from Csesar to Moltke the study of mUitary
history — the great things in war done by the great soldiers
— is the indispensable apprenticeship in the principles of
their science. And he saw, as his speeches and obiter dicta
prove, in modern European history that Great Britain had
always, and only, been formidable, when, in the task of
buUding and consolidating the British Empire, and in the
pursuit of British ends, she had been driven by the facts
and forces of a given situation to be the backbone and
the reservoir of a European combination. WiUiam in.,
Marlborough, Chatham, Castlereagh — did not these prove
that no European coahtion had ever succeeded of which
Great Britain was not the backbone and the reservoir?
Thus, indeed, had Louis xiv., Louis xv., Kaunitz, and
Napoleon been overthrown. The Great Britain of Lord
North and George in., or of the ministries of 1864, 1866,
and 1870, without European allies, and either refusing to
find them or wilfuUy rejecting them — sulking or ignorantly
rejoicing in a splendid isolation — had brought disaster or
impotence on itself. Put Great Britain, Bismarck virtually
argued, with her back to the wall, because her imperial
interests are threatened, and if she had a statesman to
direct her pohcy, she would make a European coalition
and keep it going until her British ends — outside Europe
— were achieved. A Concert of Europe directed by Great
Britain speUed the end of German supremacy in Central
Europe. Germany would be not the first amongst equals,

420 BISMARCK
but an equal among equals. Could Germany ever hope
to have an army of a , continental three-Power standard
- and also a navy equal or superior to that of Great Britain ?
The first was the essential of Continentalism, the second
the essential of Colonialism. Which was Germany to
choose ?
' Colonies,' said Bismarck in 1873, ' would only be a
cause of weakness, because they couid only be defended by
powerful fleets and Germany's geographical position did
not necessitate her development into a first-class maritime
Power. Many colonies have been offered me. I have
rejected them.' This repeated what he had said in 1871 :
' For us in Germany this colonial business would be just
like the silken sables in the noble families of Poland, who
have no shirts to their backs.' In 1884, in the Reichstag,
Bismarck openly said he was ' no colonial man ' (Kein
Kolonial-mensch) and in 1885 (January 10) he pronounced :
' The last speaker has told us that we must either abandon
our colonial policy or increase our naval strength to such
an extent that we need not fear any naval Power, or, to
speak more clearly, that our navy should rival that of
England herself. However, even if we should succeed
in buUding up a navy as strong as that of England, we
should stiU have to fear an alliance of England and France.
These Powers are stronger than any single Power in
Europe is or ever can be . . . from my diplomatic ex
perience, I cannot see any reasons which can make
hostilities possible between Germany and England, unless
a Cabinet of inconceivable character should be in power
in England, a Cabinet which neither exists nor which
is ever likely to exist, and which criminaUy attacks us.'
And again (January 26, 1889) : ' I absolutely refuse to act
towards the Sultan of Zanzibar in opposition to England
.... English colonial interests compete with ours in
numerous places . . . the preservation of Anglo-German
goodwUl is, after aU, the most important thing. I see in
England an old and traditional aUy. No differences exist
between England and Germany. I am not using a
diplomatic term if I speak of England as our ally. We
have no alliance with England. However, I wish to remain

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 421
in close contact with England also in colonial questions
... if I should discover that we might lose touch with
England I should act cautiously and endeavour to avoid
losing England's goodwiU.' It is asserted on good
authority that German diplomatic agents were in the
Bismarckian epoch instructed to ' Do all in your power to
keep up good relationship with the English. It is not
necessary to cable in cipher. We have nothing to conceal
from the English, for it would be the greatest possible folly
to antagonise England.'
Such an antagonism Bismarck foresaw jeopardised the
Triple Alliance — the basis of his Continental system
and the German control of Central Europe. In 1890
(January 1 3) an article written under Bismarck's inspiration
laid down the following : ' Italy must be able to rely on
the assistance of the English fleet, for the Triple AUiance
cannot protect the Italian coasts. Hence Italy has to
think of England, and consideration of England may con
ceivably Umit Italy's freedom of action. As long as
Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy are united in the
Triple AUiance, and as long as these three States may
reckon on the assistance of English sea-power, the peace
of Europe wiU not be broken.'
So far general principles. Active German intervention
in the acquisition of colonies in 1884 was due to the pres
sure of a combination of forces. German relations with
France were good ; Great Britain was gravely embarrassed
in Egypt ; British relations with France were strained :
Ireland and the Franchise question were additional burdens
on an administration, the credit of which was gravely
undermined, and the internal unity of which was sapped
by ministers themselves ; a quarrel with Russia in the
Middle East was brewing. The British government was
not in a position to resist dexterous pressure. Great
Britain was not able in 1.884 to quarrel with Germany, unless
she were prepared to abandon important commitments in
her policy elsewhere. Public opinion in Germany was
vociferous. It represented powerful material interests.
The government was not too strong in the Reichstag ;
a general election was imminent and the internal measures

422 BISMARCK
of State Socialism had stirred severe criticism in some,
and bitter opposition in other, quarters. The govern
ment had to convince Germany that its policy was based
on true German interests. The closer Bismarck's policy
is studied the more apparent is the vital connection
between a stroke in foreign policy and the home situation.
Bismarck might affect to despise or ignore public opinion
in Germany — he frequently did, when it was essential to
his aims to do so — but he watched its course and weighed
its volume with vigilant care, and he always found a safety
valve to let the steam out and ease the pressure on the
ministerial boilers. As with the Kulturkampf and the
Vatican Decrees, so now with the colonial movement, he
saw the opportunity and gripped it with characteristic
firmness and dexterity. In the spring of 1884 he had been
able, as is indicated below, to secure an important under
standing with Russia, endorsed in the autumn of the same
year. The embarrassment of Great Britain was the
ChanceUor's opportunity to satisfy public opinion at
home, achieve what was necessary to satisfy pubhc opinion
without sacrificing the essentials of his system, and do it
before the faU of Ferry's administration and the renaissance
of the inveterate hostihty between France and Germany
made the opportunity no longer available.
It is not necessary or possible here to trace in detail the
swiftly developed plans by which Germany between 1884
and 1890 acquired Togoland, the Cameroons, South-
West Africa (but without Walfish Bay), the framework of
German East Africa, a third of New Guinea, and a share
of the Samoa group. The Anglo-German agreement of
July 1, 1890 (which brought Hehgoland to Germany, but
ceded German claims on Zanzibar and Witu to Great
Britain) faUs outside Bismarck's period of office, and was
concluded by his successor, Caprivi. The initial and
most characteristic stages in German colonial policy and
the Anglo-German conflict are described at length, and
from authoritative sources, in Lord Fitzmaurice's Life of
Lord Granville. It must suffice here to note that after
1885 a Conservative, not a Liberal, ministry in Great
Britain was responsible for the ' concessions ' and conven-

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 423
tions ; that the German colonial party was by no means
satisfied with the achievements of their government ; that
in 1885 the attempt to secure the Caroline Islands was
abandoned when Bismarck referred the dispute to the ar
bitration of Pope Leo xin., in order to conclude the
Kulturkampf and secure the Clerical Centre ; and that
Bismarck bitterly criticised the agreement of July 1, 1890,
which may be partly due to his determination to condemn
as a blunder everything done after he ceased to be Chan
cellor. But the broad fact remains that the foundations
of Germany's Colonial Empire were laid by Bismarck, and
that unless we are to regard aU his public utterances on
the subject as deliberate insincerity, he accomplished a
limited programme under pressure, with considerable mis
giving and much reluctance.1 . He was severely criticised
in the Reichstag and in the press, inspired by the Colonial
Society, for being so apathetic, hesitating, and absurdly
considerate of Great Britain, no less than for sacrificing
Germany's future across the water to an obsolescent
Continentahsm. In 1883 and the spring of 1884 Lord AmpthiU warned
our government that the pressure of powerful parties in
Germany was greatly influencing Bismarck ' whose interest
(in colonial policy) was increased by the prospect of a
general election this autumn ' (March 15, 1884). The
German government was also indicating with unmis
takable emphasis that German goodwiU in Britain's
Egyptian poUcy was dependent on British goodwiU in
German colonial policy. This plain hint was continually
repeated in the next two years. ' I am in perfect despair,'
AmpthUl wrote (August 2, 1884), ' at Prince Bismarck's
present inclination to increase his popularity before the
general election by taking up an anti-English attitude.
CompeUed by the colonial mania ... he has discovered
1 'For the sake of two million marks I cannot throw myself against the
great impulse of the nation, or offer opposition to the will of the whole country.
To this day I am not "a colonies man," and I entertain the gravest apprehen
sion on the subject ; but I was compelled to decide upon yielding to the general
demand of the nation. ... If the locomotive of Empire has struck out a track
for itself, I shall not be the one to throw stones in its way.' — (Bismarck in the
Reichstag, January 26, 1889.)

424 BISMARCK
an unexplored mine of popularity in starting a colonial
policy, which public opinion persuades itself to be anti-
English : and the slumbering theoretical envy of the
Germans at our wealth and our freedom has awakened
and taken the form of abuse of everything English in the
press.' The remark apart from its special reference is
deeply significant, for it confirms the trend in the develop
ment of German public opinion, emphasised (p. 275)
earUer in these pages. The alienation of Germany from
England, which was in truth the gravest feature for the
future of both countries, had proceeded with great
rapidity since 1870, and though Bismarck regarded it with
misgiving, as he weU might, he would have abandoned
aU the principles and methods of his statecraft had he not
utUised it to the full when his policy required it.
The colonial chapter in his ChanceUorship is, therefore,
of deep interest, for it reveals aU the secrets of his statesman
ship — his eye for realities, his extraordinary mastery of his
own peculiar technique, his recognition that a genuine
and deep-seated German public opinion must not be
ignored, together with an inflexible determination to
maintain his Continental system and not to push the anta
gonism with Great Britain to measurable distance of a
rupture. Great Britain could be harried and badgered ;
she must understand that international relations were the
result of bargains ; she must make concessions that could
be represented as diplomatic victories for Germany ; but
she must not be driven into the enemy's camp. And as
the situation developed from 1884 to 1890, Bismarck
relaxed or increased the pressure on the successive Cabinets
in London, not thinking so much of the Colonies them
selves, as of the prestige of his government, German
relations with France or Russia, and the Triple AUiance,
in which Italy's continued inclusion was not too certain.
The more clearly that the Anglo-German negotiations
are studied in detail, the more clearly stand out those
methods which this biographical study has continuously
emphasised as truly Bismarckian. The German demand
for colonies and the German movement towards expan
sion outside Europe were not intrinsically indefensible and

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 425
were the product of forces beyond the control even of an
Iron ChanceUor. The supposition which underlay much
violent criticism both of Gladstone and Salisbury from
1884-90 that Great Britain could have peremptorily vetoed
aU German colonial acquisitions, and could have done so
without sacrificing British interests in Egypt or in the
Middle or Far East — in a word, that Great Britain was
strong enough between 1884 and 1890 to defy France,
Russia, and Germany, or should have embarked on a
policy which might, and probably would, have ended in a
Triple Coahtion against the British Empire, is not one
which can be sustained by a careful study of a very compli
cated and critical European situation, combined in those
years with a very critical situation at home. Great Britain
had to choose between France and Germany, and France
was practicaUy under German direction. In these pages
we are not primarUy concerned either with explaining
the origins and development of British policy, or with
drawing up a balance-sheet based on a critical survey of
mistakes, alternations and successes ; for the complete
British balance sheet cannot be adequately set out here,
nor the verdict based on the necessary cross-examination
of the very copious evidence.
One conclusion, however, seems fully justified. It
would have been easy for Bismarck, had he chosen to do
so, to have picked a very formidable quarrel with Great
Britain. Such a choice could have been made reaUy
popular in Germany. Bismarck, indeed, in a month, could
have lashed Germany into a war over colonies,* at any
moment after 1884 to. 1890. His prestige savoured of the
miraculous : his knowledge of his countrymen's passions-
was unrivaUed and Germany's mUitary strength was
beyond question. It would have been no less easy to have
lashed Great Britain and colonial sentiment, particularly
in Australia, into the temper that makes either a complete
diplomatic victory or war the only alternatives. The
Pendjeh incident in 1885 proved the readiness of the
country to respond to a strong lead against Russia. ' The
Colonies ' would have been a far more formidable appeal
to national passion than an obscure place on the Afghan-

426 BISMARCK
istan frontier. But neither Bismarck nor the successive
British governments embarked on a course so fraught with
peril. Bismarck deliberately refused indeed to push
Great Britain against the wall and the inference from his
refusal is irresistible. For reasons, that may be bad or
good, but to which he attached the greatest weight,
he was ready to badger, even to insult, while insisting
on concessions, but not to ' antagonise ' Great Britain.
German critics then and since have questioned the accuracy
of his judgment and the validity of his reasons. In this
country we can appreciate the reason for, and ratify the
wisdom of, his decision. For Bismarck was convinced his
policy secured the best interests of Germany. He was
not concerned with the question whether it also made for
British interests. But it made for peace in Europe — and
peace he held was a supreme German interest in those
years. That it was also a British interest, not lightly to be
sacrificed, is demonstrable.
But if Bismarck's ends were and remain defensible, his
methods were and remain quite indefensible. British
ministers must plead guilty to lack of vigilance and errors
of judgment ; the Colonial governments cannot escape
severe criticism ; but whatever their mistakes, our Foreign
and Colonial Offices acted in a straightforward and honour
able manner ; and in the beginning they credited, quite
wrongly, the German government with similar intentions
and methods. It would be, on the facts before us, im
possible to pronounce but one verdict on German diplo
macy. From the negotiations about Angra Pequena to
the annexation of part of New Guinea, Bismarck's methods
were marked by duplicity and a demonstrable intention
to deceive the British government as to the true' aims of
the German government, to present our government
with faits accomplis, snatched in defiance of soothing
assurances or virtual pledges, and thus to make the whole
situation doubly difficult. The German White Books
were an incomplete, misleading, and, in places, positively
inaccurate version of the negotiations ; onr Blue Books,
which threw a very different light on what had happened,
roused Bismarck's deepest wrath, and we can understand

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 427
the reasons for his anger. The ChanceUor utilised his
unique position in Germany to work up carefuUy prepared
explosions in the Reichstag, even publicly to suggest that
the British government was hostile to, and jealous of, any
German colonial acquisitions — which he knew was not true
—and to make charges against both Lord Granville and
Lord Derby which he was quite unable to sustain.1 The
public statements of the ChanceUor were intended for a
credulous German public opinion and an invitation to draw
its own (and quite false) conclusions ; the withdrawal of
the charges was either privately made or slurred over, after
the poison had been aUowed to inflame German feeling.
The missions of Count Herbert Bismarck, whose reception
in England by ministers and society deeply gratified a
sensitive father's heart, were intended to do more than
effect an amicable settlement. ' Count Herbert Bismarck,'
wrote Sir C. Dilke, ' came over again. If at his former
visit he had only tried to get us to dismiss Lord Derby,
on this occasion he wanted us to dismiss Lord GranviUe
and Lord Derby.' He failed. So gross and unwarranted
an interference in our home politics, thoroughly Bis
marckian in character, was calculated to produce precisely
the opposite effect to that which Bismarck desired. All
through this trying period Lord GranviUe, who acted as
an honourable gentleman towards a great statesman, who
in his diplomacy was never a gentleman, suspected that
the cession of Heligoland was at the bottom of Bismarck's
tortuous and dishonest methods. The possibility of the
concession had been confidentiaUy mentioned more than
once to Lord GranviUe, but no formal or open suggestion
on the subject was made, though Lord GranviUe was
1 I.e. the charge that Lord Granville had betrayed confidential communica
tions of Bismarck's to the French government (Granville's Life, ii. p. 370), and
that the British government had failed to reply to an important dispatch of
May 5, 1884, when as a matter of fact the dispatch had, by Bismarck's instruc
tions of which he was well aware, not been communicated to our Foreign Office.
' I had a talk with Munster,' Lord Granville wrote privately to Mr. Gladstone,
'he was frightened out of his wits. He found the famous dispatch, but a
telegram not to act upon it. He begged me to keep this secret.' And this
our government did, to their honour (op. cit., ii. p. 428). Munster was grate
ful. But Bismarck never repudiated his statement, and to this day it is believed
in Germany — along with many other innuendoes and allegations, derived from
Bismarck's speeches which were untrue in fact.

428 BISMARCK
aware ' it was the intention of Germany to open a canal
into the Baltic ... for the security of which it would be
necessary to give a good and fortified harbour to Hehgo-
land.' The concession was ultimately made by Lord
Sahsbury on July I, 1890, as part of the general Anglo-
German agreement of that date.
It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Bismarck
threw away a great opportunity between 1883 and 1885,
and threw it away deliberately. Had he frankly and
openly approached the British government in 1883 with
an explanation of the difficult position the German
government was in, placed aU the cards loyally on the
table, invited our goodwiU while emphasising the neces
sity of concessions on grounds of policy, and his readiness
in return for such concessions to support us against Ferry
and the French government, whose policy was to em
barrass Great Britain everywhere by subservience to
Germany, aU that Germany subsequently obtained might
have been gained and more, without endangering the good
relations of both countries. Bismarck pursued a very
different course : partly because such methods were not
his idea of diplomacy, partly because he could not resist
this opportunity to utffise the difficulties of Great Britain,
partly because he conceived it necessary to mislead Ger
many by representing Great Britain as hostile, whUe
representing that her hostility was only broken down by
the skiU and force of an invincible German diplomacy.
TacticaUy he succeeded. The incompleteness of the
German success was concealed from the German public :
the embittered controversy was left to rankle in the
German mind. StrategicaUy, the campaign faUed. There
can be little doubt that Bismarck desired to draw
Great Britain into the German net and the German
system — to estabhsh a general entente which would have
placed the Triple Alliance beyond question and left
Germany completely master of the European situation
and of British policy, and put the British fleet under
German direction, objects all the more desirable when
the fall of the Ferry Ministry (April 1885) freed our policy
from the continuous onslaught of a French premier,

THE IMPERIAL. CHANCELLOR 429
' determined to stir up trouble for Great Britain in every
quarter of the globe.' * The whole colonial episode left
a deep impression on the minds of Mr. Gladstone, Lord
GranviUe, and Lord Derby, and deepened Mr. Gladstone's
distrust of any general understanding with Germany while
her policy was directed by Bismarck and pursued by such
Bismarckian methods.
Lord Fitzmaurice, for whose judgment and knowledge
all who have worked over the same material must have a
profound respect, is of opinion that ' the Berlin Act,' of
February 24, 1885, ' may some day be considered the most
remarkable event in Lord Granville's long tenure of the
Foreign Office.' That Act finally defined and established
under international guarantees the Congo Free State ;
it also defined the relations between Germany and the
new state and the claims of Portugal and France ; it pro
vided for the suppression of slavery and the slave-trade,
and for religious liberty ; and it was the first international
document formally to recognise ' spheres of influence ' as
distinct from territorial acquisitions. In a word, it went
a long way towards solving some of the acuter problems
of the Partition of Africa — and to solve them by a European
Concert. The Anglo-German Agreement of July 1, 1890, com
pleted the negotiations begun in 1883, and laid the
foundation of German East Africa. It was concluded
by Bismarck's successor Caprivi. Bismarck criticised
the agreement of 1890 with characteristic bluntness :
' Zanzibar,' he told Busch, ' ought not to have been left to
the English. It would have been better to maintain the
old arrangement. We could then have had it at some later
time when England required our good offices against France
or Russia. In the meantime our merchants, who are
clever, and, like the Jews, are satisfied with smaUer profits,
would have kept the upper hand in business. To regard
Heligoland as an equivalent shows more imagination than
1 ' Ferry,' wrote Lord Granville, 'is certainly no loss to us. He arrived at
the Quai d'Orsay quite ignorant of foreign affairs ; and the more he learnt of
them, the more subservient he became to Bismarck, and the more tricky to us.'
—Life, ii. p. 435 ; see also Lord Lyons's Life, passim.

430 BISMARCK
sound calculation. In the event of war, it would be
better for us that it should be in the hands of a neutral
Power.' The criticism contains in a nutshell Bismarck's ideas
and methods. The embarrassments of Great Britain
were to be utUised, as opportunities arose, to extract
concessions which would strengthen the prestige of the
government at home, consolidate Germany's position in
Europe and satisfy powerful sections of public opinion.
German trade would succeed in and for itself, under the
benevolent and careless aegis of the British flag, without
committing the German government to a systematic
colonial policy. Without a fleet adequate to protect the
German colonies, those colonies would simply be exposed
to British attack : and it was a profound mistake to put
Germany in a position in which she might require the goodi.
offices of Great Britain, instead of having her own good
offices to bargain with in a British competition with
France or Russia.
Hence, from the first, Bismarck declined to incur Im
perial responsibility for the administration or develop
ment of the territories acquired. His principle was to
adopt the time-honoured British method of development
by chartered companies, with assistance, not readily
granted, of a subsidy to a steamship line. The Imperial
government did not incorporate the acquisitions, a step
which would have raised very difficult constitutional
and financial problems. Were the colonies, for example,
to be Imperial Territories (Reichsldnder) ? What were
to be their administrative relations to the Imperial
government and the Reichstag ? Who was to be re
sponsible, and to whom for their government ? How
were they to be financed during the long period when
they could not be self-supporting or policed, and so
forth ? Technically during the Bismarckian regime they
were simply ' Protectorates ' (Schutz - Gebiete), i.e. the
Imperial government undertook to ' protect ' them from
foreign aggression — a definition of a ' Protectorate' much
narrower than that commonly accepted. But even, in
Bismarck's day, this guarded and limited liability broke

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 431
down. The Arab Revolt in East Africa of 1888 proved
that the German East African Company (Die Deutsche
Ost- Africa Gesellschaft), mainly financed by the German
traders interested in the vast district, was unable to
' protect ' the ' Protectorate ' from native attacks or re
bellions. Direct Imperial assistance had to be given.
But even without the coercion of internal danger the
Bismarckian policy was bound to fail. Behind the
colonial movement worked the forces of a public opinion
that demanded the fuU status of German sovereignty for
the German ' colonies,' and the creation of a Germany
beyond the seas, to become as essentially and integrally a
part of the German Empire as Alsace or Mecklenburg.
But the later development of German colonial policy,
which led in 1907 to the establishment of a Colonial Office
in the central executive, and the gradual transference of
aU the colonies to direct imperial administration faU
outside the Bismarckian period. How far the develop
ment since 1890 has borne out Bismarck's original reluct
ance to embark on a systematic colonial policy, and how
far it inevitably led to the one result that Bismarck feared
from the first — an irreconcilable antagonism between
Great Britain and Germany, spreading from the Atlantic
and the Pacific to the North Sea and the heart of Europe
— and how far colonial policy has been the main cause of
the creation of a German fleet, sufficiently powerful to
rival that of Great Britain, are questions of the profoundest
significance to all students of the European State system
in the quarter of a century that foUowed Bismarck's faU
from power. But they can neither be discussed with
advantage, stiU less adequately answered, by the student
of Bismarck's statecraft alone.
The colonial movement, as a phenomenon in the revo
lution of the German Empire, does indeed enforce, with
the same clearness that the history of Social Democracy
brings out, one great truth, salutary alike for the pure
historical student and the political researcher into the
springs and causes of national development. The in
dustrialism of Germany, with its concurrent features of a
rapid increase of wealth and a marvellous expansion of

432 BISMARCK
population, was not Bismarck's work, nor did he deliber
ately at any time in his career make it his task to promote
it, in and for itself. He endeavoured in 1862, and still
more in 1879, to utilise the economic ambitions and ex
panding material resources of Germany in achieving his
main political object ; he checked from time to time its
energies or directed them into channels approved by
himself. His success was certainly very limited even in
this limited programme. The forces were too vast,
too ubiquitous, and too complex to be controUed
within the mould of a policy which had originated
and attained a successful issue in a very different field of
action. And by 1890, when Bismarck departed, the
economic and industrial elements that made the new
Germany were beyond the power of any statesman to say
— ' thus far and no farther ; this we will have, but not
that.' Had Bismarck held his place until 1898 this con
clusion would be more apparent than it was in 1890.
The Chancellor was, in short, experiencing the lesson that
eighteenth-century British history drives home. Neither
a Chatham, nor a Clive, nor a Warren Hastings could
prevent the ' expansion of England ' from taking a form,
a volume, or a direction which their policy had not con
templated ; and when the industrial revolution was
superimposed on the originally narrower colonial and
imperial movement, the government at home was obliged
to foUow where the nation, mastered by its own internal
vitality, unconsciously led. England, often reluctantly,
was driven by forces within and without, which were like
the propulsive forces of life within a healthy and growing
human individual. So thin and obscure is the partition
in the lives of individuals and nations between appetites
and ideals. British policy in Europe was graduaUy
coerced by the colonial expansion into a new orientation
and a re-definition of the ends and methods of British
action in Europe.
So with Bismarck. He had taught his nation the
Bismarckian gospel of power and proved its efficacy. The
industrial revolution in Germany, superimposed on
unification and victory, inspired new concepts and a new

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 433
and deeper meaning in the principles of power as the end
and justification of organised State action. The colonial
movement in Germany was at once both the expression
of the new interpretation of power — of which the German
nation was becoming more and more conscious — and a
demand for the realisation of that new power by the old
methods by which Bismarck had taught Germany the
gospel of the State that stood for Power. Bismarck
felt, indeed, intuitively, that the German demand could
not be ignored. What he refused to admit was that
the satisfaction of the demand must in the end result in
a re-interpretation of German policy in Europe and re
sult in a new attitude to the problems of international
relations. And untU he feU he was reaUy wrestling
with an insoluble dUemma. He insisted on maintaining
the Bismarckian conception of Central Europe, with its
strategic and poUtical conceptions, its delicate equipoise
of European State relations, derived from the Europe of
1848 to 1870, and its theory of affiances and preventive
combinations, directed chiefly against France. But, as the
next two decades conclusively indicated, the colonial and
industrial movement in the civUised States of Europe, the
' armed peace ' resting on ' nations in arms,' more or less
Prussianised in their mUitary machinery, and the new ideas
of power in conflict with the new ideas of political Uberty,
law and right, had produced a deadlock in Europe by
1890. The struggle had been shifted from the chancel
leries with their obsolescent political conceptions to the
Europe beyond the seas, reacting on the new industrial
basis at home, and in turn influenced by it. Hence in
1890 Europe as the result of forces, at best only indirectly
created by Bismarckian principles, was on the eve of an
effort to readjust the whole European State system and
the international relations of the armed nations to the
new ideas of power, and of empires based on a modern
colonial mercantiUsm. Colonialism and industrialism
were destined to produce a new Europe and a new world ;
and for Germany in particular they were shortly not to
supersede, but to re-write, the meaning and value of the
fundamental conceptions of German hegemony, and to

434 BISMARCK
re-interpret Central Europe in terms that Bismarck re
garded as a departure, and a blundering departure, from
sound policy.
The ChanceUor, however, to the end adhered with im
pressive tenacity to his fundamental conception, and the
.final decade of his career witnessed a resolute effort to fit
Russia into the system embodied in the Triple AUiance.
The new Tsar, Alexander in., had not the same dynastic
connection with the royal house of Prussia that had so
materiaUy influenced the relations of Alexander n. and the
Emperor WiUiam. He was torn between the desire to
represent a powerful Russia in Europe and his fear of
NihUism, which by the assassination of his father had
brought him to the throne. LiberaUsm and aU its works
were in his eyes only the inclined plane to democracy and
anarchy. Liberal Great Britain and the democratic
French Republic changing its ministries every few months
were a pubhc danger. The solidarity of the Conservative
interest and the monarchical principle demanded the
formation of a ' monarchical international ' to combat
the Socialist international — so formidable in Germany.
Bismarck could work on this line of thought. Lord
GranviUe openly recognised from 1881 to 1885 that a
Liberal ministry, because it was a Liberal ministry,
would be harassed, and that Bismarck would enjoy
harassing it, because the German system required that
the destruction of LiberaUsm in Germany should be
foUowed by the destruction of it elsewhere. The world
could have peace, but only if it first made a Conservative
solitude. Accordingly Bismarck ' got at ' the Tsar in the
autumn of 1 881 in Denmark. The Emperor WiUiam, so
sincere, straightforward, and so eminently admirable in
his simpUcity, could be persuaded to employ the hypo
dermic syringe for ' doping ' the Tsar into sanity. That
autumn there was much discussion in exalted circles about
the desirability of saving a perishing world by an inter
national anti-Nihilist and anti-Socialist league. Great
Britain was the trouble, of course, as Great Britain had
been the trouble under Castlereagh in the earlier form
of the Holy Alliance. Even a Conservative Great Britain

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 435
was never at any time ready, at the dictation of Berlin,
Vienna, or Petersburg, to wreck the constitutional system
and to abolish its freedom of the press or abandon
the right of asylum to political refugees. Fortunately
for Germany Great Britain was in cruel difficulties and
Alexander in. was amenable to influence. When the
Tsar replaced the anti-German Ignatieff by de Giers
(June 12, 1882), and when Skobeleff died, Katkoff lost
influence, and it was clear the German wind was once
more blowing steadily along the repaired wires from the
Wilhelmstrasse to Gatchina and Tsarkoe Seloe. The
Austrians were restive, for they suspected treachery at
Berlin. They had not learned, even in 1 882, that Bismarck
refused affiances or conventions in which he did not sit
on the longer arm of the lever. In the spring of 1884
(March 24) Bismarck could rejoice, for he had made his
first ' reinsurance ' (Ruckversicherungs) treaty. In the
autumn of that year, at a meeting of the three Emperors
at Skierniewice, a verbal endorsement was given to the
written compact of March 24. But, unless the evidence
avaUable is absolutely untrustworthy, there was no written
understanding at Skierniewice. The convention in writ
ing had already been made in the spring, and there was
no adequate reason either for writing it out again or
altering its terms.
The compact apparently was to hold good for three
years : and provided that if one of the three contracting
parties made war on a fourth Power, the other two were to
maintain a benevolent neutrality ; that in the problems of
the Balkan peninsula the contracting parties would consult
their own interests, but in cases of disagreement between
two Powers there was to be a casting vote with the third ;
Turkey was to come under a kind of joint Protectorate
which would be responsible for the execution of the terms
of the Treaty of Berlin; while the occupation of the Balkan
principalities was forbidden to all the three signatories.1
For Bismarck the treaty was a triumph. It is very
1 See Appendix B for a further discussion of the Treaty of 1884-87, and the
questions arising out of it. The Treaty of 1884 had been preceded by a
treaty (dealing with the Near East) in 1881.

436 BISMARCK
difficult to see, if the terms given above broadly represent
the contents of the convention, why Alexander in. should
have consented to become a party to such an undertaking.
He gained on the face of it nothing, while he lost every
thing, including his independence of action. It is true
that in the struggle, now approaching a crisis, in the
Middle East between Great Britain and Russia the Tsar
was freed from the fear of German and Austrian attack,
should it come to war with Great Britain, but cool re
flection should have convinced the Tsar that it was in
conceivable that Germany or Austria would ever attack
Russia to enable Great Britain to win a victory that
would consolidate British power in the Middle or Near
East. Bismarck was not likely to sacrifice the bones of
Pomeranian grenadiers in the interest of a Liberal Great
Britain. And had he been so inconceivably foolish, he
would at once have brought about an aUiance between
France and Great Britain, which he feared even more than
an aUiance between France and Russia. A Franco-British
AUiance meant that Italy would at once desert the
Triple Affiance. Russian diplomacy from 1862 to 1890 (to
proceed no further) is indeed a mysterious and fearful
thing — so bristling with patent miscalculations, glaring
blunders, and the inconsistent idiosyncrasies of mediocre
autocrats, that the student is driven to suspect some
rational but hidden explanation, the nature of which has
never been revealed, to account for the mistakes. The
truth, probably, is that in Bismarck's hands Alexander in.
was a hypnotised stripling. Lord AmpthUl's last letter
to Lord GranviUe (August 16, 1884), however, repeats a
famUiar theme : ' the progress of democracy in England,'
he wrote, ' is the cause of very serious alarm to the sove
reigns and governments ; and they purpose to meet it by
consoUdating the Monarchical League.' If the Tsar was
so impressed with the danger to his person, throne, and
principles from the progress of democracy, led by a pestUent
Great Britain, as to sacrifice his political independence and
initiative and tie himself up in the meshes of the Compact
of. 1 884, no sovereign ever made a more unjustified and
foolish sacrifice to Conservative principles.

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 437
The Tsar interpreted the compact as giving Russia
a free hand in Central Asia ; and certainly as the result of
it he was enabled to conduct, under continuous German
inspiration, the negotiations over the Pendjeh affair in a
way that he could not have done, had he not been assured
of German neutrality. But in so doing he was playing
Bismarck's game to perfection. The diversion of Russia
to Central Asia, a continuous and rasping antagonism
with Great Britain, the diversion of Great Britain in
Egypt or the Middle East, the alienation of Russia from
France, and of France from Great Britain, the with
drawal of Russia from Europe and the Balkans, and the
elimination thereby of a conflict between Austria and
Russia, together with the weakening of Russian and
British influence and the increase of German power at Con
stantinople, were results that in the glades of Friedrichs
ruhe and by the cigars smoked in serene reflection by the
ChanceUor's hearth seemed to be the gifts of Providence to
the wise. There is every reason to believe that Bismarck
supported (for adequate considerations) Great Britain in
Egypt against France, and urged Russia to increase her
Asiatic Empire. It was Great Britain not Bismarck who
suffered from ' Mervousness,' and it is practically certain
that in 1885 Bismarck used aU his unrivaUed influence and
skill to keep open the breach between Russia and Great
Britain, while dexterously suggesting to both parties that
Codlin was the friend, not Short. He did not want an
Anglo-Russian war; but he wanted the highest tension
possible short of war, and if both governments in conse
quence lost prestige, or felt they must secure German
goodwiU in a political world in which they had no friend
but Germany, the Wilhelmstrasse more demonstrably
than ever became the central exchange of European
rivalries. The ' honest broker ' meanwhile took his com
mission in West Africa or New Guinea, best of all in
shutting the doors of the Quai D'Orsay to aU but the
German Ambassador. A Liberal Great Britain, as the
disturber of the peace of the world and the jealous foe of
every one's prosperity, was an effective theme alike at Paris
and Petersburg, and most effective of aU in the Reichstag.

438 BISMARCK
' Bizzimarck here, Bizzimarck there, Bizzimarck, Bizzi-
marck everywhere,' said Punch in a famous cartoon — and
it was so true. Moreover, what an appropriate moral
for sovereigns shivering in panic at Socialism — ' To what
impotence and embarrassments wiU not Liberalism bring
deluded nations and ministers ! ' Gambetta, Ferry,
and Gladstone compared with de Giers, Taaffe, and
Bismarck.
f^The entente of 1884 was, as usual, primarUy directed
against France. The compact provided for the neutrality
of Russia if any of the three partners came to war with a
fourth Power (France). But it did much more than dis
solve the possibility of a Franco-Russian AUiance (with
the war on two fronts for Germany) ; it constituted
Bismarck the arbiter and mediator between Russia and
Austria. A quarrel between Russia and Germany in the
Balkans was very unlikely ; but a quarrel between Russia
and Austria was always on the horizon. Bismarck, by
the compact of 1884, could decide whether he would
support Russia or Austria, and the choice of the alter
native gave him just the leverage he required to keep both
his ' friends ' in order. The absorption of Russia in
Central Asia immensely facilitated the task. But what
Bismarck desired above aU was to secure the requisite
degree of control over Austrian policy. If Austria was
' in hand ' the diversion of Russia or the coercion of Italy
was easy, and it is a fair inference that the compact of
1884 tightened, and was intended to tighten, the control
of the Wilhelmstrasse on the BaU-Platz.
The unscrupulous ingenuity and dexterity of Bismarck's
diplomacy may easily conceal the real source of his success
—German strength. Germany could secure aUies, not
because her minister was a master of the technique of the
higher direction, but because she was a State of such
organised power. The Prussian sword was a permanent
weight in the scales of the international Balance of Power.
Europe in these days was steadily going to school in
Germany. In German universities the foreigner could
learn what organised work reaUy meant, and it was a re
velation that inspired justly a profound admiration and

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 439
a no less wholesome fear. From 1870 onwards the mighty
preparation of, and sacrifice by, trained brains from 1815
to 1870 was bringing its harvest safely home; and surely it
deserved to do so. German science in its broadest sense
had its origin in the universities, but by 1 880 it had gripped
the whole nation. The German mind might be un
political — which is very doubtful — but in commerce as in
the professions it understood, as no other national mind
in Europe understood, the meaning of science and the
vital difference between amateurism and expert know
ledge. The most demonstrable manifestation of that
national science was the German nation in arms — the
German army as a political organ of the State that repre
sented Power. That army was neither a luxury nor a
profession for the weU-to-do and the rank and file who
could not be fitted by an individualistic rule of thumb into
the civU life of trade or agriculture. The foreign soldier
who studied at Berlin became acquainted with a great
national machine, the education and training of which
was based on the severest science co-ordinated to political
ends. Foreign soldiers in Europe realised that the German
army was not merely large in numbers or weU-equipped
with guns and ammunition, but was trained for war.
From the Chief of the General Staff, now one of the grand
old men of Germany and history, to the lads of the Cadet-
tenhaus the German nation recognised, not that the army
must be ready (which it took for granted), but that it
would win not only by its numbers but by its superiority
in science — and that the science of war demands, as does
every science, not merely the devotion of a lifetime but
first-rate brains in politics who have grasped what an army
is and imphes. The chiefs of the German army, whose
education did not cease untU they were on the retired list,
assumed that the political direction was in the hands of one,
to whom war was a familiar subject, and who regarded war
as a necessary manifestation of national life and power and
the indispensable instrument of a national policy. How
Bismarck used the German army to assist his policy, and
how he manipulated his policy to increase the effective
use of the German army is written on the record. What

440 BISMARCK
Europe had not yet grasped was that since 1 862 the Prus
sian army — the nation in arms — was also organised and
employed by Bismarck (in conjunction with the General
Staff) to be a political instrument, not merely for main
taining the HohenzoUern dynasty in power but for main
taining a defined type of polity in Germany, and for
educating the nation in the principles and ethics of that
polity. It would be instructive if we could have trans
ferred him to London and seen how he would have used the
sea-power of Great Britain now as an instrument, and now
an end in itself, of pohcy. British sea-power was unique
in its capacity to satisfy the ends of an Imperial policy and
to achieve the British right to live and achieve national
purposes. Bismarck would have taught us how to adapt
our policy to the instrument, and how policy could have
secured at each stage further and effective opportunities
for obtaining the command of the sea and placing it beyond
dispute. The period from 18 15 to 1890 is fertUe in Ulus
trations of the just criticism that British foreign policy
repeatedly incurs in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen
turies — that the British Cabinets were generaUy ignorant
of naval or any other strategy and the essentiaUy national
and imperial purpose for which the British fleet justifi
ably existed; while the British Admiralty, at last and
reluctantly compeUed to regard (1887) a starved InteUi
gence Department as a necessary equipment of the Brain
of a navy, was no less ignorant of foreign policy and its
vital connection with naval strategy. Had the Wilhelm
strasse been ignorant of the relations of strategy to policy,
and also been kept in one watertight ' political ' compart
ment, and had the great General Staff been ignorant of
policy and shut up in another watertight ' military ' com
partment, Koniggratz, Gravelotte, and Sedan would not
have been won, nor would there have been a German
Central Europe controUing the Continental State system
from the assured basis of the Triple AUiance.
There were, however, two forces that Bismarck could
not control, the national consciousness of France and the
expanding nationalism of the Balkan races. The faU of
Ferry recaUed Alsace-Lorraine to the French memory.

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 441
¦ After the death of the Comte de Chambord (August 23,
1883) the speeches of Manteuffel, the persecution of
Antoine in Alsace, and the insult at Paris by the boulevard
mob to the King of Spain, after he had been made colonel
of an Uhlan regiment, showed what slumbered in the
French heart, even while Ferry cultivated the friendship
of Germany. From 1885 onwards Franco-German re
lations passed from friction to tension and from tension
to serious strain. The theatrical but brief episode of
Boulanger (1886-89) coincided with events elsewhere to
make the years 1887 and 1888 critical.1 In 1887 Boulanger
was Minister of War ; the famous black horse on which he
rode in the Bois de Boulogne and captivated the cafe-
concert patriotism of the Boulevards seemed as formidable
a menace to the Republic as was his advocacy of revanche
and of a Russian alliance, openly discussed at Petersburg,
to the Foreign Office at Berlin. The ' Schnaebele in
cident,' when a French police commissioner was lured
across the frontier in Alsace, arrested and thrown into
prison, almost brought matters to an open rupture.
In the Balkans the union of the two Bulgarias, the
furious anger of the Tsar, the demands of Turkey, the war
between Serbia and Bulgaria, the defeat of Serbia and the
intervention of Austria on Serbia's behalf, the coUapse of
the Russian party in Bulgaria, and the failure of the
German consuls to save the Russophil officers at Rustchuk,
together with the active part played by the British
government, had produced a situation from which, quite
apart from the Franco-German embittered relations, a
European war could easily emerge.
For Bismarck the gravity of the situation lay in
two formidable possibilities : the Triple Alliance might
crumble away — the understanding of 1884 with Russia
might dissolve and be replaced by a Franco-Russian
alliance, linking the quarrel of France with Germany to
the avowed objects of a Russia, humiliated and frustrated,
in the south-east of Europe. Pressure from Paris and
Petersburg was being put upon Italy to detach herself
1 Dilke (European Politics in 1887, p. 16) asserts that in October 1886 France
refused an alliance with Russia and Austria an alliance with Great Britain.

442 BISMARCK
from Germany and obtain her ' national satisfaction ' in
a new Triple Alliance against Germany. Three important
contracts ran out in 1887 : the Dual AUiance of 1879, the
Triple AUiance of 1882, the Compact of 1884 with Russia.
Their renewal was an essential condition of Bismarck's
system, and on their renewal, in Bismarck's view, clearly
depended the peace of Europe, more than ever a German
interest. The crisis in foreign policy coincided with an
embittered and strained situation in home politics.
Bismarck therefore had to satisfy Germany's allies,
Austria and Italy, to satisfy Russia and thereby renew the
isolation of France, satisfy German public opinion, begin
ning to be as excited as opinion in France, Russia, and the
Balkans, — and also to crush the organised parliamentary
opposition at home. Nor could he forget Great
Britain. The retention of Italy was largely dependent
on British goodwiU. Clearly it was not a moment to
harass Great Britain either about Egypt or colonial
acquisitions. The years 1887 and 1888 were therefore the severest
touchstones of a German statesman's statecraft. Bis
marck's performance was, when we appreciate the complex
difficulties, a consummate one. The master proved his
mastery. How seriously the German government viewed the
situation was shown by the introduction (November 25,
1886) of a new Army BiU, augmenting the peace strength
of the army by forty thousand men, the increase to take
effect as from April 1, 1887. The expiration of the
Septennate in AprU 1888 was thereby anticipated by
twelve months. Opposition came from the Centre and
the Liberals. The aged Chief of the Staff addressed the
Reichstag (January 11, 1887) with the deliberate assertion
that if the bUl were rejected ' we shaU most certainly have
war. All political and civil liberty,' Moltke added, ' all
the results of culture, the finances, the State, aU stand or
faU with the army.' Bismarck's speeches in 1887 and 1888
were, as he fuUy realised, delivered quite as much to
Europe as to Germany. As expositions of the Chan
cellor's system and policy they are amongst the loci classici,

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 443
and they deserve to be studied in extenso. Only a few
quotations can be given here :
' Our relations with Russia afford no motives for this bill . . .
we shall have no conflict with Russia unless we go to Bulgaria
for the express purpose of provoking a war. . . . What is Bulgaria
to us ? It is nothing to us who rules in Bulgaria, or even what
becomes of Bulgaria. . . . The difficulty of our position is not
to keep peace with Austria and Russia, but between Russia and
Austria. . . . With words I can do nothing. Words are not
soldiers, nor are speeches battalions. When we have the enemy
in the Fatherland, and read them speeches they will laugh at us.
The possibihty of a French attack, which to-day is not imminent,
will recur as soon as France thinks she is stronger than we are,
either by alliances or being better armed. ... In case of an
unsuccessful war, the peace of 1870 would be mere child's play
as compared with the peace of 1890. We should have the same
French against us whom we met from 1807 to 181 3, and who
would again suck our blood so that we should be paralysed for
thirty years. . . . We have interests which do not affect Austria,
and Austria has interests which are far removed from us, and
each must go therefore its own way.' — (January II, 1887.)
' We cannot trust the existence of the army to a vacil
lating majority. If the status of the army is to depend on
Parliament and Budget grants, we shaU be compelled to
say : " videat Imperator ne quid detrimenti capiat Res-
publica " and " salus Reipublica will become suprema lex "
(January 14, 1887). On January 14, an amendment
limiting the proposed increase to three years was carried
by 1.83 to 154 votes, the Centre voting with the Liberals
in the majority. Bismarck quietly drew a paper from his
portfolio and fiUed in the date. ' I have,' he said to the
Reichstag, excited by the results of the division, ' an
Imperial Message to communicate.' He read from the
piece of paper a decree dissolving the Reichstag.
Six weeks later the elections justified the ChanceUor's
prediction ' that I shaU carry the Army Bill, because the
Progressists are against it.' The Liberal opposition was
badly beaten. The Liberals lost thirty-three seats, the
Sociahsts sixteen, the Clerical Centre only two — but the
reconstituted National Liberals, now really a branch of

444 BISMARCK
moderate Conservatism, gained nearly fifty seats, and
the Government Party of a hundred and fifty-four was
increased to two hundred and twenty. The Army
Bill was reintroduced on March 9 and passed, the
Centre abstaining from voting, for reasons discussed
below. On April 28 Schnaebele was released. There
had been a regrettable misunderstanding. It is diffi
cult to avoid the conclusion that the ' Schnaebele inci
dent ' was deliberately planned, possibly to provoke the
French into a serious indiscretion, certainly to assist the
passage of the Army BiU by driving into the German
elector's mind the perU from France. The British reader
will recaU how in 1 90 1 during the Boer War certain naval
incidents were employed to emphasise the tyranny of
Great Britain, and the impotence of the German Navy,
in order to promote the passage of the Naval Bill, then
before the Reichstag.
In the spring, Bismarck had succeeded in renewing the
Triple AUiance (March 1887). Crispi, who had succeeded
as Premier on the death of Depretis (July) in the early
autumn, ostentatiously paid a visit to Count Kalnoky at
Vienna (September 14), and had then gone on to Friedrichs
ruhe (October 2). On the return journey, he informed a
German journalist of the Frankfurter Zeitung that Italy
wished well to Bulgaria, but ' there can be no doubt that
Italy, like every other European State, has every reason
to fear Russia's advances to Constantinople. We cannot
aUow the Mediterranean to become a Russian lake.' This
carefuUy prepared ' aside ' drew its significance from the
peril that the situation in Bulgaria stiU involved.
The relations of Austria and Russia and of Germany and
Russia were the crucial questions for Bismarck. He had
provoked a storm of criticism at Vienna by deliberately
revealing in the semi-official North German Gazette the
agreement of January 15, 1877, between Austria and
Russia by which the Austrian occupation of Bosnia-
Herzegovina had been provisionaUy arranged in advance.
Europe was as much puzzled as Austrian public opinion at
the revelation. Why should Bismarck select this moment
to let out secrets which embarrassed the Austrian ministry,

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 445
and embittered the relations of Germany and Austria,
and of Austria and Russia, when his avowed policy was to
keep the peace between them — Germany as the tertius
gaudens duobus litigantibus ? Had Bismarck not got the
renewal of the Triple Alliance safely in his pocket ? The
explanation is probably to be found first in Bismarck's
desire to remind Austria-Hungary that her Balkan policy
must be dependent on German goodwill ; secondly, in the
relations of Germany and Russia, and of Bismarck and the
Tsar. Austria had continuously to he kept in control, Russia
convinced that Germany might, under certain eventualities,
prefer a Russian to an Austrian policy in the Balkans.
The Compact of 1884 had run out in the spring of
1887 and had not been renewed. Since 1884 the Pan-
Slavist, anti-German party in Russia had slowly regained
its ascendency, in spite of Katkoff's death in the August
of 1887. Count Tolstoi, General Ignatieff, Pobodonostzev
and General Bogdanovitch (author of the pamphlet which
caused a great stir, L' alliance Franco-Russe et la Coalition
Europeenne), utUising the crisis in Bulgaria and the Tsar's
envenomed hostiUty to Prince Alexander of Battenberg,
and marked disapproval of the election of Prince Ferdinand
of Coburg in Prince Alexander's place, combined to pro
duce a serious anti-German movement in Russia. The
mUitary preparations and movements of Russian troops
on the Austrian frontier, replied to by military prepara
tions and movements of troops in Gahcia and Hungary,
seemed to foreshadow a war between Austria and Russia ;
and when the Tsar, at Copenhagen in September, pointedly
omitted to visit the German Emperor at Stettin the
warfare in the press on aU sides became fiercer. The
Tsar, however, did come to Berlin (November 18), and
Bismarck has related how he convinced Alexander in. that
forged documents were responsible for the Russian mis
interpretation of German policy in Bulgaria. It is pro
bable, indeed almost certain, that the ' Re-insurance
Treaty,' the existence and non-renewal of which were
revealed by Bismarck in 1896, was concluded (November
18, 1887) at this time.1 But the conclusion of this pecu-
1 See Appendix B.

446 BISMARCK
liarly Bismarckian convention, behind the backs of his
aUies, Austria and Italy, did not diminish the tension in
the Near East. The year closed with little relief to the
strained relations of Austria and Russia, while the hostile
relations between Great Britain and Russia were such as
completely to satisfy Bismarck.
The German government took (December 16, 1887)
another characteristic step. Not content with the Army
Law of March 1887, another military Reorganisation BiU
was introduced, which by the recasting of the period of
service in the Reserve and the two classes of the Landwehr
and of the Landsturm was calculated to add 700,000
men to the army, when mobilised on a war footing.
Warned by the chastisement of the General Election of
1887, the opposition was naturaUy shy of resisting these
fresh demands, involving a loan for military purposes of
.£14,000,000 (280,000,000 marks). Bismarck made the
debate on the second reading of the Bill (February 6, 1888)
the occasion for one of the greatest of his speeches — an
elaborate review of German foreign policy and the Euro
pean situation — a demonstration of Germany's unique
mUitary strength and a consummate proof of his own
personal, ascendency. The second reading of the BUI
was passed en bloc without a division on February 6 —
a superb testimony to the Chancellor's unchaUenged
supremacy — and the enthusiasm of a delirious crowd re
peated the homage of the Reichstag by escorting him home
and continuing the demonstration under the windows of
the ChanceUor's residence. The third reading was passed
on February 8, 1888. It was the zenith of Bismarck's
career. Two years later he was on the eve of a com
pulsory resignation, forced on him by a conflict with his
sovereign on the principles of German policy both in
home and foreign affairs, laid down in 1888.
The Reichstag heard, and Europe read, the speech,
ignorant that behind it lay ' the Re-insurance Treaty,'
which guaranteed the reciprocal neutrality of Russia or
Germany in case either should be attacked by a third
Power. This placed Bismarck precisely in the position
that he desired, that of arbiter between Russia and Austria;

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 447
for to Bismarck's diplomatic fertility of resource nothing
was easier than to prevent or secure, as German policy
required it, Austria or Russia being the aggressor in the
Eastern issues that continued to cause military councUs,
movements of troops, and increased armaments on both
sides of theGalician frontiers. The secret convention tight
ened the control over Vienna, without relaxing the frailer
control on Russia. It also prevented a Franco-Russian
aUiance. The third Power contemplated in the secret
convention of November 18, 1887, might not be Austria
but France. The Tsar, in fact, by making the convention
reaUy renounced the possibility of making France an aUy,
should Bismarck force a war on the French Republic.
Yet, in Bismarck's deliberate judgment, a demonstration
of German strength in February 1888 was desirable, and
his speech of February 6 was preceded (February 3) by
the official publication simultaneously at Berlin and at
Vienna of the text of the Austro-German alliance of 1879,
as renewed in 1887. It is significant that the text of the
treaties on which the Triple, as distinct from the Dual,
Alliance, was based, was not published, and it is fair to infer
that the publication in question was not so much a hint to
Russia as a warning to France and a skilful counter-stroke
intended to deceive Austria, perturbed at rumours about
what had passed at Berlin between Bismarck and the Tsar.
Had the BaU-Platz been cognisant of the secret convention
of November 18, 1887, the publication in the Vienna
Gazette of February 3, 1888, would have been ridiculous.
For the Dual AUiance precisely provided against the con
tingency that made the Secret Convention an operative
agreement. The great speech of February 6, 1888, is remarkable, not
merely for its magisterial breadth of view, range of survey,
felicity of phrasing, and pontifical sureness of touch —
the qualities evinced in aU Bismarck's considered ex
positions of principles in foreign policy — but also for its
clear indication of the speaker's mind and temper. Ger
man relations with Russia rested, he told the Reichstag,
not on the press, nor on a guUible and ignorant public
opinion, not even on peace-loving or war-desiring ministers

448 . BISMARCK
but on the Tsar. ' In opposition,' he said, ' to the views
expressed by the Russian press, I have the unqualified word
of the Tsar Alexander himself ' (and, he did not add, his
pledge in writing). France, he pointed out with unmistak
able emphasis, was unreconcUed and irreconcUable. She
was more peaceful in 1888 than in 1887, as was proved
by Carnot's election to the Presidency, but ' no wars are
waged from mere hatred,' for 'otherwise France would have
to be at war with Italy and England and the whole world,
for France hates all its neighbours ' — deliberate words not
intended to pacify France, and a passionate appeal to the
worst passions in the German heart. As for Bulgaria,
Germany's policy was clear. ' If Russia attempts to make
good her rights (in Bulgaria) I should consider it the duty
of a loyal German policy to hold purely and simply to the
stipulations of the Berlin Treaty. ... If Russia makes
official appUcation to us to support steps for the re-estab
lishment of the situation in Bulgaria, as it was created at
the Congress ... I shaU have no hesitation in advising
His Majesty the Emperor to comply with the request.
This is demanded of our treaty — loyalty to our neighbour,
with whom, whatever his prevailing mood, we must still
cherish neighbourly relations, and make common cause
against the foes of Social and Monarchical order in Europe,
a task of which the Sovereign of Russia has a fuU ap
preciation.' The significance of these passages is un
mistakable. They announced publicly Bismarck's share
of the bargain in the Secret Convention — a general support
of Russian policy alike against Great Britain or an un
reasonable Austria.
The peroration was a finely worded summary of
Bismarck's gospel of power, evincing his grip on the
secrets of German strength and the indissoluble unity of
strategy and policy which made its ringing appeal a text
for every German household : —
' The European pond is too full of pikes for Germany ever to
become a carp. . . . Behind our army stand our reserves. It
must not be said " others can do the same." That is just what
they cannot do. We have the material, not only for forming
an enormous army, but for furnishing it with officers. We have

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 449
a corps of officers such as no other Power has. When we under
take a war it must be a people's war which all approve, as in
1870. If we are attacked then the furor teutonicus will flame out,
and no one can make head against that. . . . We base our
alliance on the strength of our army. If we have no cause to
use it, all the better, but we must make our arrangements with
the idea that we do use it. . . . Every country in the long run is
responsible for the windows broken by its newspapers ; the bill
will be presented one day in the ill-temper of a neighbour. We
can be easily influenced by love and sympathy — perhaps too
easily — but by threats, never ! We Germans fear God and
nothing else in the world ; and it is the fear of God that causes
us to love peace and ensue it. . . . He who attacks the German
nation will find it armed to a man, and every soldier with the
firm belief in his heart that " God is with us." '
The most scholarly and accomplished of the French
biographers of Bismarck, M. Matter,1 has held that this
speech was, for aU its resounding success, a proof of faffing
powers in Bismarck, and ultimately responsible for the
breach between Russia and Germany, and for the Franco-
Russian Alliance. ' II avait brise net l'alliance russo-
aUemande et prepare 1' entente franco-russe.' It is difficult
to concur in this judgment. The failure to renew the
secret Reinsurance of 1887 in 1890 was due to the Emperor
and ChanceUor Caprivi, not to Bismarck. As is indicated
further on, Bismarck's quarrel with the Emperor was
partly the result of a fundamental difference in foreign
pohcy. Neither in 1890 nor in 1887 was Bismarck ready
to support Austria at all costs against Russia, nor to throw
away the opportunity of a close (if secret) understanding
between Berlin and Petersburg by backing Austrian policy
in the Balkans without reserve. . The more closely that
the speech of February 6 is studied, the more clearly do its
veUed inferences stand out. It was intended to be, and
remains, a classic and magisterial review by Bismarck at
the end of his life of the principles of his policy that he
had followed since 1871. The action of the German
1 M. Matter (Bismarck et Son Temps, iii. p. 524 et seq.), usually singularly
accurate, gives the date (pp. 538 and 540) of the great speech as February 8.
Bismarck did not speak on February 8 (the third reading). The correct date is
February 6, as is clear from any of the collected editions of Bismarck's speeches
and the accounts in the daily newspapers of that date.
B. 2F

450 BISMARCK
government in 1890 was the first of a series of departures
from the Bismarckian system both at home and abroad.
Those departures may have been justifiable or the reverse,
but Bismarck cannot fairly be held responsible either for
their consequences in the Franco-Russian Entente of 1891
or for making that aUiance inevitable when it is demon
strable that he resisted to the last the policy that in
augurated them.
The years 1887 and 1888, so crowded with crises, had
witnessed another great Bismarckian stroke, belonging both
to home and to foreign policy, which measured by its
results was more momentous than the brilliant strokes that
impressed Europe. In 1887 Bismarck was winding up the
Kulturkampf. Elaborate negotiations in 1886 had con
tinued between Berlin and the Vatican. On January 14,
1887, the Centre under Windthorst agreed with the
Liberals under Richter to vote not for the Septennate, but
for a limitation of the government demands to three years,
and, as has been stated, the Centre and Liberals threw out
the government proposal. If the government were to
carry their measure in the new Reichstag the vote of
the Centre was essential, for without the hundred votes
of the Centre, whatever might be the result of the General
Election, the military policy of the government must be
defeated. It is generaUy supposed that Bismarck ' went
to Canossa ' for the last time, and bought the support of
the Centre by the Law of 1887, which was a fresh set of
concessions to the Vatican, and that the Vatican thereby
won its final victory. The Papacy sold, it is commonly
asserted, the Centre vote for the Septennate in return
for the Law of 1887.
Bismarck, the Curia, and Windthorst could have told
a quite different story. On this occasion Bismarck did
not go to Canossa. Instead the Papacy went to Fried
richsruhe. The Triple Alliance in the early spring of 1 887,
and with it the inclusion of Italy, came up for renewal.
It was notorious in 1886 that the relations between the
Quirinal and the Vatican were severely strained, and that
both the Italian Monarchy and the Papacy were working
against each other, and both in need of allies. And this

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 451
continued aU through 1887. Bismarck saw his oppor
tunity. His objects were purely political — the mainte
nance of his system. He had negotiated with the Vatican
all through 1886, and the word went out from the Vatican
in a diplomatic note (January 3, 1887), from Cardinal
Jacobini, the Vatican Secretary of State, that the Catholic
Centre was to vote for the Septennate. Windthorst
defied the command on January 14, 1887, and the Sep
tennate was defeated. This was rebeUion in the eyes of
the Curia. A second warning note from Cardinal Jacobini
foUowed (January 21). The German Catholic bishops
were ordered to throw themselves into the fray on the
government side against Radicals and Socialists ; and they
did so with exemplary obedience. They organised a great
pro-government campaign. In the new Reichstag the
Centre were again ordered to vote for the government's
BiU. Windthorst had both resisted and resented the
orders from Rome in a purely political matter and the
consequent split between the ecclesiastical and lay forces
of Catholicism within the Empire. But the aUiance of
Bismarck and the Papacy was too strong for him. He
regarded the Bill as fatal to the principles of freedom that
he had represented since 1871, and he distrusted profoundly
the bargain that the Papacy had made, because he dis
trusted Bismarck. Vote for the BiU he would not, despite
the Papal command. Vote against it he dared not ; so
with eighty-three of his ninety supporters he walked out
and took no part in the division.
Only seven of the Centre voted with the government.
Bismarck had won — and won completely. Henceforward
through the Papacy he would command the Centre Party.
The Government BiU of 1887 to end the Kulturkampf
was, as Windthorst knew or guessed, not the complete
repeal that the Vatican desired,1 and Bismarck's speech
of March 23, 1887, in the Herrenhaus of the Prussian
1 The Bill:
1. Empowered the opening of seminaries for priests;
2. Abolished the civil veto on the appointment of parish priests ;
3. Restored the episcopal powers of discipline ;
4. Permitted the return of purely religious, charitable, or contemplative
Orders. The Society of Jesus was not included.

452 BISMARCK
Landtag, in which he reviewed the general situation, is
pervaded with a subdued note of triumph. The con
cessions to the Papacy he argued were reasonable and did
not conffict with the authority of the State. What was
important was that the Papacy had crushed the alliance
of the Centre with the Radicals and had thrown itself on
the side of law and order. ' Pope and Emperor,' he as
serted, ' have an identical interest and must make a
common front against Anarchy and Revolution. ... I
consider the Pope more friendly to Germany than the
Centre. . . . The Pope is not a Guelph, a Pole, or a new
Liberal, nor has he anything to do with Social Democrats.'
The Triple Affiance was renewed. When Bismarck spoke
on March 23 the order of the Black Eagle had been con
ferred on Count di Robilant for his share in the renewed
inclusion of Italy. If the Papacy had hoped by going to
Friedrichsruhe to obtain the complete repeal of the laws
against the Roman Church, the unqualified readmission
of the ecclesiastical orders, and the support of Germany
against the Quirinal in Italy it was bitterly mistaken. The
bargain had been dictated and interpreted by Bismarck,
not the Vatican. No less significant was the undoubted
fact that Great Britain had given specific pledges of pro
tection to the ItaUan Kingdom — the preservation of the
status quo in the Mediterranean and the defence of Italy
from invasion by sea. ' Our position,' Depretis said in
February 1887, ' is now secure both by land and sea.'
' Our friendly relations with England,' said the ItaUan
Foreign Minister, as late as 1896, ' are in our view the
natural complement of the Triple Affiance.'
Bismarck in 1887 might weU feel triumphant. He had
secured Italy on such terms that he virtually secured Great
Britain also.1 At Rome in the allied Itahan Monarchy he
had a powerful check on the Vatican ; he had compeUed
1 See Chiala, 'La Duplice e la Triplice Allianza,' Hansard (1888), vol. 322.
1 172, et seq., and The Times for November 5, 1887. It was generally understood
that the renewal provided, 1. If France 'attacked' Germany or Italy both were
to join in defence ; 2. If Russia 'attacked ' Germany or Austria both were to
unite in defence; 3. If France and Russia attacked any one of the three allies,
all three were to unite in defence. The re-organisation of the Italian army in
1887 and 1888 (particularly after the visit of the Emperor William 11. to Rome
in 1888) was one of the consequences of the renewal of the Triple Alliance.

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 453
the Papacy to win a victory for the German government
in Germany, which enormously increased the power of
the civU and militarist government, and through the
Papacy and the German Catholic bishops he had destroyed
the independent and powerful political opposition of
Windthorst and the Clerical Centre in the Reichstag.
The Chancellor's political cartel was complete; it con
sisted of the Conservatives, the old National Liberals,
and the Centre ; and the union gave him a decisive and
obedient majority.1
The year 1887, therefore, registered the final defeat of
Liberalism, and not merely political but also inteUectual
Liberahsm. Militarism and reaction won all along the line
and the commander-in-chief of Militarism and reaction
was Bismarck. The German Clerical Centre, like the old
National Liberals, shed its last rags of independence, and
became henceforward a party that stood for authority,
despotism, and Pan-Germanism, corrupted by the favour of
the government, demoralised by its dependence on the
Vatican, and aUied with the Pan-German party in Austria.
The Papacy and its parties became the aUies and agents of
Prussianism, as Bismarck understood the term. ' The
Anti-Christ,' denounced by Pio Nono and AntoneUi had
become the champion for whom Popes and Nuncios would
work — and not only in Germany. The ring of interests
that buttressed up the Bismarckian system was now com
pleted by the aUiance between the Conservative Lutherans
of Junkertum and the Conservative Clericals of the Centre.
Success, like misfortune, makes strange political bed
fellows. The ' white international of the dynasties,' true
to the solidarity of legitimate autocracy, was seconded
by ' the yellow international of High Finance,' the
Kaiserjuden and the Industrials (Schlot-Junkertum), and
the ' black international of the Clericals.', After 1887
the penetration and capture of the Curia by the
diplomacy of Bavaria, Prussia, and Austria, was only a
question of time — proved up to the hilt when it became
necessary to elect a successor to Leo xiii. Germany, says
1 ' Peace with the Catholic Church,' Bismarck said,' will strengthen our rela
tions with foreign countries, especially Austria.'

454 BISMARCK
Naumann, became ' a prosperous Spain.' A passage in
Bismarck's speech of March 23 is very significant : ' The
sharpest and bitterest opponents of the government,' he
asserted, ' have been pupils of the German Universities,
not of the Seminaries. ... A seminary under a peace-
loving, weU-disposed bishop, wkh a good German mind,
is far preferable to a course of study at a German Univer
sity, where no one is responsible for the education with all
its influences which uncontrolled mould the student.'
In other words, minds made to order and on a pattern
prescribed by the government for its own political ends
are preferable to minds formed by free and critical in
quiry. It is the prescription and the ideal of reaction and
authority and always will be. But it was a sorry and
sinister ending to the struggle for inteUectual and political
freedom with Vaticanism — an unexpected close to the
conflict that Bismarck had commenced in 1873 — and it
opened a chapter in the inteUectual history of the German
universities and of the German mind, dreaded alike by
Mommsen and Virchow— the two greatest figures in the
German world of inteUect. That chapter was not closed
when Bismarck died in 1898. It is not closed yet. It
was therefore whoUy consonant to Bismarck's policy that
in the spring of 1888 a new anti-Socialist BiU prolonged
the exceptional powers conferred on the Central Execytive
until September 30, 1893. The power to deprive of
civic rights all Socialists convicted under the law was
enlarged, and the Minister of the Interior, Herr von
Puttkamer, announced openly that the German Secret
Pohce extended their efforts to Switzerland, and acted as
voluntary agents in the struggle of Russian absolutism with
Nihilists and refugees. The biU passed on February 17.
On March 9 the change long foreseen took place. The
death of the Emperor William on that day opened the
last phase for Bismarck.
§ 6. The Last Phase — Bismarck's Resignation,
March i8$S-March 1890 "
The death of the Emperor WiUiam 1. removed the
sovereign whom Bismarck had served for twenty-five years

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 455
with a personal devotion, as sincere as it was deep. The
brief speech in which the Chancellor announced to the
Reichstag that the first Prussian Emperor was dead is the
best proof of the grief that the national loss stirred within
him. And even that official effort was too great a strain.
For the first and the last time Bismarck broke down. He
resumed his seat broken with emotion, after a few rugged
sentences, in which both words and strength failed him.
The faUure was a far more impressive tribute to his royal
and imperial master than any funeral oration. The simple
Soldier- King and the mighty Minister-President of Prussia
had worked together through a heroic epoch for great
and heroic ends ; and profoundly as they differed in
character and gifts, sharp as had been on notable occasions
the coUision of their wills, the personal bond of loyalty,
service, and affection, forged at Schloss Babenberg on
September 22, 1862, had deepened and tightened with
every year until it had become indissoluble, except by
death. WiUiam 1. never forgot that the two things in life
which summed up his political creed — the House of Hohen
zoUern and the Prussian army — were the two things which
his minister had saved from ruin and made the two most
puissant and indisputable forces in Germany and Europe.
Bismarck and Bismarck's policy had unified Germany, but
unified it in such a way that the head of the House of
HohenzoUern was the greatest sovereign on the Continent
of Europe, while the power and stability of the dynasty
rested on the unified nation in arms, of which the King-
Emperor was the War-Lord by acknowledged right. In
1888 as he lay dying WiUiam could remember his mother
Queen Louisa and Jena — he could remember 1848 and his
brother, Frederick WiUiam iv. — only forty years ago.
In the spring of 1888 'the March days ' of '48 were as
unthinkable as the recurrence of a Jena or the visit of a
French conqueror to the tomb of Frederick the Great.
WiUiam could die in peace, full of years, with a nation
foUowing him in mourning to his grave. The minister
who had achieved was indeed mighty, but the sceptre and
the prerogative that passed so rapidly to son and grandson
were mightier than the minister, who had made them

456 BISMARCK
what they were. Within two years the Prussian Crawn
had broken the ChanceUor. Bismarck could not work
without the Prussian Crown : but the sequel showed that
the Prussian Crown would and could work without
Bismarck. And it was Bismarck who had made this
possible. Had fate decided differently, the strength of that
Prussian Crown might have been convincingly exem
plified in the reign of the Emperor Frederick. In De
cember 1887, however, sentence of death had in reality
been passed on the Crown Prince, and when the new
Emperor arrived in Berlin on March 12 from San Remo
— unable to reach his capital until three days after his
father's death — he was a dying man. On June 8, Herr von
Puttkamer, the reactionary Minister of the Interior ' re
signed.' On June 15, the Emperor Frederick was dead.
' What a world is this, and how does fortune banter us ! '
It is a commonplace, but one of those commonplaces
that enshrine notable truths, to pronounce the Emperor
Frederick's reign to be a tragedy. The tragedy does not
lie in the physical suffering, so heroicaUy borne, nor in the
premature death of one cut off in the prime of a superb
manhood, but in the misery of frustrated purposes and
baffled hopes. All his life, since the days of a generous
and exultant youth, the Crown Prince had been inspired
by high and noble aims. Through the dreary ' era of
conflict,' through Koniggratz, Worth, Gravelotte, Sedan,
and VersaiUes, through the Kulturkampf 'and the estabhsh
ment of the Dual and Triple AUiance, the heir to the
throne had cherished the ideal of proving to Prussia,
Germany, and the world that a soldier-sovereign of the
HohenzoUern House, who believed in the Prussian army
and had played his part as became a HohenzoUern in the
unification of Germany by victory in the field, could also
be a Uberal and constitutional ruler, whose duty it was to
give to Prussia and Germany a government, a policy, and
an outlook truly Liberal. And when at last Providence
had placed the sceptre in his hands, and a great work
awaited the new ruler which could only be done by
a Liberal sovereign, fate struck him down impotent and

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 457
tortured, yet haunted by the splendours of the ideal that
had made his life an apprenticeship in self-suppression
and a consecration to duty.
Death can be very bitter. Had Frederick's three
months of rule been dogged by prolonged physical pain
and the knowledge of failure to realise his dreams, they
would have been a martyrdom ; but to the bitterness of
pain and defeat were added, in the mystery of human
things, the rebellion and treachery of an ungrateful son,
and the unpardonable tyranny of his Chancellor to all
whom the Emperor loved or cared for — and his own help
lessness to protect or to punish. Insolence, intrigue, de
famation, and defiance are never so detestable as when
they are employed against the dying and by those who
reckon on the security that the Angel of Death at
the door will bring to their authors. There are black
pages in Bismarck's record and black places in his char
acter, but the blackest that no extenuation can obliterate
are recorded in the three months from March 13 to
June 15, 1888. And it is fitting, perhaps, that the
chapter and verse should be supplied in the amazing pages
of Busch's chronicles,1 though Busch's revelations are
only a fragment of the evidence. Richter's speech in the
Prussian Landtag (May 27), evoked by the infamous article
on ' Petticoat Government,' was a scathing exposure of
the campaign of libel opened (certainly with Bismarck's
knowledge, probably at his inspiration) by the Conser
vative and National Liberal parties, and also of the
intimidation and bribery practised by the government
officials. It led to the Imperial rescript enjoining free
dom at the elections, which caused Puttkamer's dismissal
(June 8). Bismarck promptly paid a visit to, and then
entertained the dismissed minister at a dinner at the
Imperial Chancery (June ii).2 The Emperor was known
1 Busch, Bismarck, Secret Pages, see particularly iii. pp. 163-189 (Eng. ed.).
'Circumstances here, notes Hohenlohe laconically on May 26, at Berlin, 'dis
pleased me intensely. It is a pity that I could not retire now as a strong protest
against all these goings on.' Hohenlohe was an honourable gentleman.
2 There is considerable evidence that Bismarck really desired Puttkamer's dis
missal, and characteristically placed the odium on the Emperor, taking care to
represent it as an ' English ' and ' feminine ' intrigue.

458 ' BISMARCK
to be dying — he could not be openly disobeyed, but he
could be insulted and defied, with impunity. Such was
Bismarck's gratitude for the three critical occasions in
which the Emperor, as Crown Prince, in 1866, 1870, and
1879, had supported the Minister's policy against the
obstinacy of the sovereign. The truth was, as Hohenlohe
records (December 15, 1889); 'remarkable to me was
the deep aversion which he (Bismarck) has for the
Emperor Frederick. He declared him an egotistical,
cold man, and said he had.no heart.' Comment on such
verdict is unnecessary. When, as so often, he was mastered
by personal hate, which coincided with a fundamental
political antagonism, there were no limits to Bismarck's
unscrupulous brutality. One subject of bitter controversy,
involving foreign policy, had arisen in these tragic three
months — the proposed marriage between the Princess
Victoria, the Emperor's daughter, and Prince Alexander
of Battenberg. Since the secret Reinsurance Treaty,
Bismarck was determined in every way to keep on good
terms with the Tsar. The envenomed hostility of the
Tsar to Prince Alexander had been proclaimed broadcast
to the world in the preceding two years. In the summer
of 1888 Prince Alexander no longer ruled in the united
Bulgarias, and there was no chance of his ever being in
authority again at Sofia. Bismarck vetoed the marriage,
for the simple reason that it would stir such a ferocity of
resentment in the Tsar as to endanger, if not snap, the
entente of 1887. He chose to represent the proposal in
the press and in official circles as a MachiaveUian effort
of England to control German policy for English ends, to
embroU Germany and Russia for English ends, and to
manipulate the destinies of Bulgaria for English purposes
against the interests of Germany and Russia. The press
under the Chancellor's control and in his pay had instruc
tions to open a savage campaign against English interfer
ence in German affairs and in the Near East. And the
instructions were obeyed with a scurrilous zest. If
Bismarck did not know that this was untrue, he was very
incompetent. But he was not incompetent, and the
inference is obvious and indisputable. The marriage did

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 459
not take place. But this was not a victory of an inde
pendent Germany over an intriguing and unscrupulous
Great Britain. For, as we know now, the influence of
Queen Victoria and Lord Salisbury were exerted precisely
as Bismarck would have Germany believe they were not.
The accession of the Emperor William 11. on June 16,
1888 — the year of the Three Emperors — opened up a
whoUy new situation. The new sovereign was in his
twenty-ninth year, and teeming with energy, ideas, and
masterfulness. Since 1887 he had been carefuUy in
structed, at his grandfather's wish, in the mysteries of
statecraft by Bismarck, and the effusive enthusiasm with
which he proclaimed at the outset his desire to carry out
his grandfather's (not his father's) policy with the aid of
his grandfather's great ChanceUor made the resignation
that Bismarck had contemplated after the death of
WiUiam 1. superfluous. Germany was instructed to
beUeve that the new sovereign would be in all things as
obedient to Bismarck's advice and ripe experience as had
been WiUiam 1.
Bismarck himself beheved it. A year later, in the
autumn of 1889, when the Tsar was in Berhn and Bismarck
emphasised his earnest desire that German policy should
maintain a close co-operation with Russia, the Tsar
pointedly asked, ' Are you sure of remaining in office ? '
' Certainly, your Majesty,' Bismarck replied, ' I am
absolutely sure of remaining in office all my life.' x That
was on October 11. Five months later he had ceased to
be Chancellor, and if any date must be selected for the
commencement of the serious collision between Chan
ceUor and Emperor it would be October 13,2 two days
after Bismarck's confident utterance, when a serious
difference on foreign policy revealed itself. The publi
cation by Geffcken (one of the Emperor Frederick's circle)
of elaborate excerpts from the late emperor's diary in the
Deutsche Rundschau, bearing particularly on the war of
1 Bismarck related this to the NeueFreie Presse, which printed it in its issue of
June 22, 1892. Down to the autumn of 1889, Hohenlohe repeatedly noted that
the Emperor was 'entirely under the influence of the Chancellor.'
2 In the conversation between the two, after the Tsar's departure, as recorded
by Bismarck in the Hamburger Nachrichten, July 24, 1891.

460 BISMARCK
1870, the foundation of the Empire and the Liberalism
of the Crown Prince, created a great stir. Bismarck's
' Immediate Report ' attacked the authenticity of the
document, but as he admitted to Busch, whatever its
authenticity, it must be treated as spurious because the
record was damaging to the official version and the in
terest of the dynasty, and not least to Bismarck himself.
Geffcken's prosecution was ordered, whUe Geffcken himself
was arrested and sent to prison. ' The legend that the
late Emperor was a Liberal, in sympathy with the Pro
gressive party, was dangerous to the whole dynasty and
must be destroyed.'
Geffcken's acquittal (January 4, 1882) by the Supreme
Court was a damaging blow to Bismarck, which roused
him to uncontroUable anger. He wished^ to institute
' disciplinary measures ' against Geffcken in the University
of Strasburg ; or, in other words, to compel the Univer
sity to deprive him of his chair. But, apart from this
high-handed interference with academic and civic rights,
how could a professor be dismissed for an aUeged offence
of which the highest tribunal in Germany had just
acquitted him ? The idea was proved to be legaUy im
possible, but Bismarck's desire to crush Geffcken, as he
had crushed Arnim, simply proved his intolerance of all
opposition and aU inteUectual or political liberty. It
proceeded from the same principles as the unrelenting
pressure that he applied during 1888 and 1889 to the
Swiss government in ' the Wohlgemuth affair,' to coerce
the Federal authorities into collaborating with the German
secret police, planted in Swiss territory, in hunting down
German Socialists, driven out of Germany by the Anti-
Socialist Law. The Swiss government very properly
refused to comply with so unwarranted an intervention
in the internal affairs of a Sovereign State. There
foUowed a menacing correspondence in which Bismarck
went so far as to threaten that Germany might decline to
recognise any further the ' neutrality ' of Switzerland
defined by an international guarantee ; but the Swiss, to
Bismarck's anger, declined to be browbeaten by their
powerful neighbour. ' He,' (Bismarck) Hohenlohe noted

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 461
in the Geffcken affair, ' gave me the impression of a man
not quite sound mentally' (January 25, 1889). He
repeats the remark with reference to the Swiss. ' Even
Herbert Bismarck,' he notes (June 24), ' said he could
no longer understand his father, and many people were
beginning to think that he was no longer quite sane.'
The German soldier chiefs were seriously troubled. All
their mUitary plans for a war in which Germany might be
involved with France were drawn on the assumption of a
friendly and neutral Switzerland. Switzerland driven
into the arms of France would dislocate the strategical
ideas that the great General Staff, in its continuous study
of the European situation, was always working out in
the light of every fresh political development. Bismarck
was, indeed, as sane as was Napoleon 1. in his later years,
but with both men uncontrolled power and overweening
confidence in their genius brought out all the latent des
potism that from the very first was embedded in their
political principles and their interpretation of life ; and
with both resentment concentrated in a personal hatred
of the individual who symbolised the opposition. Bis
marck only desired to treat Geffcken as Napoleon treated
Mme. de Stael or the Due D'Enghien. The world must
be made safe for autocracy.1
The plain truth was that after June 1888 the conditions
which had made the Bismarckian system workable and
possible were suddenly reversed. Bismarck and Germany
had grown accustomed to the rule of an emperor never
fitted by his gifts to be a .great master either of adminis
tration or of policy, who in 1871 was in his seventy-fourth
year, and with every year was obliged to surrender more
and more of power and control to the adviser whose
1 No less characteristic of Bismarckian methods and manners and of the
' anti-English ' campaign was the revival in the controlled German press of the
charge that Sir R. Morier, then British Ambassador at Petersburg, had in 1 870,
when he was British minister at Darmstadt, betrayed to the French at Metz
important military information damaging to the German operations. Morier
publicly refuted this infamous and absurd libel, proving by a letter of Marshal
Bazaine that it was a lie ; but Count Herbert Bismarck, though requested to do
so, declined officially to disavow it, or, when challenged, to produce any evidence
in its support ; with the result that, to this day it is still believed in educated
quarters in Germany.

462 BISMARCK
genius, amazing capacity for work, and complete accord
with his sovereign in the general principles of government
inspired a deep confidence. Bismarck had thus syndicated
in himself both the formidable powers of the Imperial
ChanceUorship and the still more formidable powers of the
Emperor and Prussian King. The new Emperor was
young, versatile, and fired by a devouring activity. Had
he been a constitutional sovereign he would not have
been prepared to step on to the shelf during the best years
of his life. But he was not a constitutional sovereign.
WiUiam n. had been born and bred in the mUitarist
atmosphere of the HohenzoUern Court, and he had been
trained in the theory, sedulously enforced since 1847 by
no one more than by Bismarck himself, that the Prussian
monarch personaUy governed, and that the Prussian
Crown was not the idle ornament of a constitutional
building, but the Uving and operative force in the mechan
ism of the State. ' If a lion knew its own strength,'
Wolsey remarked of the young. Henry viii., ' hard it were
to rule him.' There were, in fact, practically no limits
to what the Emperor, with the help of the Prussian Crown,
could do, if he chose to exercise to its fuU aU the latent
power in the prerogative, prestige, and influence of the
Imperial and Prussian Monarchy. WiUiam n. took some
months to discover what an unexplored and inexhaustible
heritage had faUen to him — a heritage enriched by
Bismarck's efforts for a quarter of a century. Therein lay
the irony of the situation. Had Bismarck been the Parlia
ment-made minister of a constitutional sovereign, whose
ministerial position rested on a national mandate expressed
through a representative assembly to which he was re
sponsible, it would have been William n. not Bismarck who
must have given way. Bismarck had indeed the confidence
of the nation. A plebiscite in 1890 would have retained
him in office tiU death came. But the nation could not
save him in 1890, nor could it bring him back. Once he
had lost the support of the Crown he was powerless. He
could not appeal to the Reichstag nor to the Federal
CouncU, stiU less to the nation by a general election. He
must either resign or be dismissed. He could not even

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 463
advise his Imperial Majesty whom the Crown should
invite to be its chief adviser in his place. And it is in the
record that the man who aU his life had fought against the
conception of an electro-plated royalism, and against a
kingship emasculated by English Liberalism, should later
denounce this subservience to a personal monarchy as
'.Byzantinism and Caesar worship.'
There was also more even than this in the situation
that was bitter. WiUiam 11. was young. He could toil
and travel as only the young can. Age has its com
pensations and its rewards, but not all its maturity of
wisdom and experience can find a substitute for the re
cuperative vigour of manhood and womanhood in their
prime. Bismarck could recaU the fehcity of the time
when after a day at his desk he could swim in the moonlit
waters of the Rhine, snatch a couple of hours of sleep, and
then fling himself into work again or wear out a fiery
horse in the exultant freshness of youth and the joy of life.
He could do it no longer. He told the Reichstag in 1 889
that he was obliged severely to limit his efforts and con
centrate on the important and the essential. He now
fought a losing battle with the Emperor — ebbing forces
on the one side against vitality on the other. For all that,
he was not prepared to let go. The more his grip
slackened, the more fiercely did he demand submissive
obedience to his autocratic wiU. It is a characteristic that
history can exemphfy fifty times over that the strong-
wiUed who have long held unquestioned sway may lose,
as the chariot of time drives remorselessly on, everything
but the strength of their will. The appetite for domina
tion waxes precisely as the capacity to gratify it wanes.
The bitterest punishment indeed that the years can bring
to some men and women is the fear and the resentment of
rivals in power.
A new epoch had arrived in Germany which knew and
reverenced Bismarck, but Bismarck neither knew nor
reverenced it. WiUiam n. was a child of the new epoch.
Bismarck had taught Germany to be strong and how to
be strong. He had placed the Empire on the pinnacle
of Continental power, and new worlds had swum into its

464 BISMARCK
ken. The young Imperial Germany of 1888 desired to
prove that it was as strong, as great, as ambitious, and as
saturated with the realism of life as the Germany that had
overthrown Vienna and the Babylon of France. It was
grateful for Bismarck's achievements ; Bismarck summed
up for it all that was mighty in Germanism ; the ends
that Bismarck defined must pass with Bismarck himself;
but Bismarckian methods and the Bismarckian gospel were
imperishable and could not be superseded. The pro-
foundest homage that could be paid to the master was to.
apply the principles and methods of Bismarckian state
craft to the problems of the future. The Bismarckian
Empire that was the State, incarnating Continental Power,
must be transformed into the World-Empire that incar
nated World-Power. Nothing must happen in the world
within or without Europe in which Germany had not
the deciding voice. Bismarckianism not Bismarck was
the model. In the magician's magic more than in the
magician himself lay the essential secret of success. Round
the Emperor collected the new Germany. Fear, jealousy,
ambition, revenge — the human appetites and carnal forces
that find their most nourishing environment in the court
of a mUitarist personal monarchy added their unlovely
stimulus. Bismarck had made many enemies, whose enmity
was aU the stronger because it had been so impotent.
The ChanceUor was not popular at the Federated Courts —
neither at Stuttgart, Munich, Dresden, nor Karlsruhe —
the soldier ' demi-gods,' the Clericals, the anti-Semites,
the Lutheran Conservatives, the great industrials were
quite ready to salute as they saw the ChanceUor depart ;
the Liberals and Radicals and Socialists had no reason
to love the Minister-President, for fate and Bismarck
had kUled Liberalism. The German people alone was
Bismarck's most loyal ally, and the German people
through its representatives had been the accomplice in
the blunder by which the German people was excluded
from deciding in hours of crisis who should govern in
their name.
In the confidential circles of the monarchy and of the
official civU and military bureaucracy — the men who

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 465
governed and whom Bismarck had taught to regard the
Reichstag as the House of Phrases, a statutory but useless
appendage to the machinery of Power — it became clear
that the iron Titan of Friedrichsruhe planned for the per
petuity of the Bismarckian autocracy. The House of
Bismarck was to hold an unbroken mayoralty of the
palace over, rather than under, the House of HohenzoUern.
Count Herbert Bismarck, carefully trained in affairs of
State, and since 1886 Foreign Secretary under the Chan
ceUor, was obviously destined to sit in the Wilhelmstrasse
in his father's chair. Herbert Bismarck had capacity and
considerable powers of work. He modelled himself on his
father as capable sons of great men are entitled to do.
But he endeavoured to prove, not that he was a chip of
the old block, but the old block itself by imitating and
exaggerating with repeUent fidelity aU the worst defects
in his father's character — his brutality, coarseness, dicta
torial insolence, and unscrupulous disregard of the con
ventions of decent existence. His manners were insuffer
able and a byword.1 Men were prepared to endure much
from the ChanceUor who had genius and achieved miracles.
They were not prepared to endure the intolerable from
one who was not a genius and had done nothing remarkable
(except be outwitted in colonial negotiations by Lords
GranviUe and Rosebery).
During 1888 and 1889 Bismarck was very little in Berlin.
'Most of his time was spent at Varzin and Friedrichsruhe,
and it was at his country seats that the unending visitors
found the ChanceUor and did their business. His absence
from the capital was not whoUy the result of old age.
In Herbert Bismarck at the Chancery the father had a
devoted representative, and the Empire could be governed
on Bismarckian lines almost as easily from Friedrichsruhe
as from the Wilhelmstrasse. The ChanceUor, however,
1 'I never go to Paris except in war time,' Herbert Bismarck is reputed to
have replied to a French diplomatist. One of many examples can be cited. ' H.
Bismarck had had the effrontery to say to the Prince of Wales that an emperor
who could not talk was not fit to reign. The Prince had said that, had he not
valued the good relations between England and Germany he would have thrown
himoutof the room.'— (Hohenlohe Memoirs, June 22, 1888). Herbert Bismarck's
conduct in the controversy with Sir R. Morier is another good example of his
insolence, boorishness, and dishonourable conduct.
8. 2<*

^66 BISMARCK
did not reaUse that under a young Emperor, bent on
probing into every department of State, and leaving an
Imperial imprint upon it, the loss of touch with the
personahties, the ministers and the forces of politics was
a grave disadvantage. Nor did he appreciate the signi
ficance of the growing volume of criticism that found in
these prolonged absences a substantial reason for a change.
Thus by the autumn of 1889 the whole Bismarckian
system was being chaUenged — and by the Emperor. For
WiUiam 11. had inaugurated his reign by a series of travels.
He was indefatigable in visiting aU parts of Germany and
learned much thereby. He went to Petersburg, Vienna,
London, Athens, and most remarkable of all, to Constan
tinople, the first European sovereign to be received as a
guest by an Ottoman Sultan. And in these visits what
he learned about foreign policy caused him to think and
think again. Bismarck resented these continuous journeys,
and expressed his resentment in remarks that traveUed
to the traveUing sovereign. They made the Emperor
more important than Bismarck, and they did not assist
the peculiar methods by which Bismarckian foreign policy
was maintained. The old Emperor had been told just as
much as the ChanceUor thought fit ; the young Emperor
was insisting on knowing what he thought fit — and he
made discoveries, had ideas, and ' interfered.'
Bismarck's foreign policy was never easy to understand.
It certainly needed a great deal of explanation in the last
two years of his ChanceUorship. Although Carnot's
election to the Presidency and the slow pricking of the
Boulanger bubble had greatly eased the situation in France,
Bismarck had continued a deliberate policy of provocation.
The new administrative order forbidding entry into
Alsace-Lorraine except to those provided with a passport,
vised at the German embassy at Paris, coupled with the
semi-official explanation that ' Germany did not desire
war, but only more distant relations with France,' pro
voked a fresh Press campaign on both sides of the frontier.
The order seemed to cool heads a wanton provocation.
The tension in the Near East had also been reheved,
though Russian resentment against Bulgaria continued

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 467
unabated. But Russo-German relations showed no im
provement, despite the secret reinsurance; and the
German Staff, impressed with the exceUence of the French
army and the completeness of French armaments, was
very anxious about the outlook when the exhibition of '89
at Paris was over. Austrian policy was no less disquieting,
for Austria desired to recognise Prince Ferdinand in
Bulgaria, and this might lead to a rupture with Russia.
The quotation of a Bulgarian loan on the Viennese
exchange evoked an explosion of wrath at Petersburg that
was very significant. Count Kalnoky's visit to Friedrichs
ruhe (November 3), shortly after the Tsar had visited
Berhn, and while the Emperor William was at Constan
tinople caused justifiable speculation in every capital.
A crisis had been reached alike in the relations of Austria
and Germany and of Austria and Russia, and Bulgaria, as
usual, was at the bottom of the trouble.
To the Emperor and his circle the position seemed to be
very clear. They professed to be ' perplexed ' by the
ChanceUor's inexplicable leanings now to Austria, now to
Russia, and they convinced themselves that Bismarck, if
it came to a choice between Austria and Russia, would
' desert ' Austria, throw over the Dual AUiance, and let
Austria fight alone with Russia while Germany stood by :
whereas the Emperor was determined to stand by Austria,
even at the cost of a war with both France and Russia.
Bismarck's ' vacillations ' were interpreted as proofs either
of senility or dishonesty. Things were being kept back
from the Emperor — which is very probable.
The ' veerings ' may not have been due either to
senility or to dishonesty. Since 1871 Bismarck's policy
had turned on maintaining a very dehcate equipoise
between Austria and Russia, (just as since 1882 he had
maintained a delicate equipoise between Italy and Austria)
with Germany as the controUer of the levers, and he had
accomplished the difficult task by disregard of scruples, by
prestige and an extraordinary intuition into the shifting
phases of an ever-shifting situation. He had persistently
refused to commit Germany by unlimited pledges to
either side, and he was confident that no one but himself

468 BISMARCK
could achieve the perpetual miracle of preventing a war
in the Near East. Nor could he have a partner in the
task — he must have carte blanche and unUmited trust from
his sovereign.
Apparently now he was ready to let Russia, if need be,
intervene in Bulgaria to reassert her waning authority,
while assuring to Austria her sphere of influence in Serbia.
But he was not ready either to provoke Russia by recog
nising Prince Ferdinand, or to give Vienna a free hand to
drag Germany in to cover Austria's blunders or to win
Austria's battles. The improved relations with Great
Britain, consequent on the Emperor's visit to London,
would result in shifting the odium of vetoing Russia from
Germany on to a joint entente between Great Britain and
Austria. ' We shall begin no war either with Russia or
France,' he exphcitly told Prince Hohenlohe (December
15, 1889). Moreover, Bismarck was gravely perturbed
by the internal condition of Austria. The ' aUy ' might
crack up internaUy, and where would Germany be then ?
It is tempting to infer that a new orientation of German
policy was taking definite shape in the Emperor's circle.
The dynastic connection, sealed by the marriage of the
Emperor's sister with the heir to the Greek throne, the
Duke of Sparta, the much advertised journey to Constan
tinople, with its hint of protection to Abdul Hamid
against aU and sundry, and the recent completion of the
raUways to Salonica and Constantinople, which laid direct
communication via Belgrade from Vienna both to the
^Egean and the DardaneUes, were the beginning of a new
epoch. The plan of substituting Germany for Russia
as the leading power at Constantinople, of drawing the
new Bulgaria slowly and surely into the German sphere
of influence, of assigning Salonica definitely as the Austrian
goal with Serbia under a benevolent Habsburg thumb,
and of a general German protectorate over the Balkans
with Athens as one of its bases and the HohenzoUern in
Roumania as another, had a beginning; and all the evidence
available supports the hypothesis that that beginning must
be placed in 1889. Such a policy, however tentative at
first, meant at some future date something like a breach

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 469
with Russia and a closer co-operation with Austria. The
identification of Austrian and German objects would be
tolerably secure if it were accompanied by a clear under
standing with Great Britain, with its reflex action on Italy,
and its reflex action upon Austria. The Anglo-German
agreement of July 1, 1890, is on record, and Chancellor
Caprivi who concluded it refused to renew the Secret
Insurance Treaty of 1887. What actuaUy lay behind
these two significant facts is a matter of inference, not of
proof. But the new policy was certainly not Bismarckian.
It was a reversal of Bismarck's policy. His resistance to
it was inevitable, if for no other reason than that it was
an abandonment of Centralism as he understood it ; and
it would lead straight to a Russo-French entente, cul
minating in an aUiance. Moreover Bismarck foresaw
that this ' world pohcy,' substituted for the Centralism
that he had created and maintained so successfuUy, would
lead, must indeed lead, if logicaUy pursued, to an antagon
ism between Great Britain and Germany. That was
fatal to the Bismarckian system. Germany, which had
isolated both its friends and its foes, was thereby ensuring
its own isolation by provoking an anti-German coalition.1
The principles of Bismarck's home policy were no less
in grave danger. The Chancellor's last speech in the
Reichstag (though neither he nor his audience dreamed
it would be his last) was on May 18, 1889, on the Old Age
Pension BUI. The whole argument was a concentrated
indictment of Liberalism and SociaUsm, and a defence of
Conservatism, concluding with a menacing chaUenge to the
1 Cp. the significant passage in Hohenlohe Memoirs, ii. p. 413 (March 31,
1890). 'The Emperor told the generals that Russia wished to begin a military
occupation of Bulgaria, and to assure herself of the neutrality of Germany in the
meantime. He said that he had promised the Emperor of Austria to be a loyal
ally and he would keep his word. The occupation of Bulgaria by the Russians
would mean war with Austria, and he could not leave Austria in the lurch.
. , . Bismarck was ready to abandon Austria. . . . From this point of view I
understand Bismarck's statement when he said that the Emperorwas conducting
his policy in the manner of Friedrich William IV. This is the black cloud on
the horizon.' Cp.the entry for January 14, 1895 (ii. p. 462) : 'We (Bismarck
and Hohenlohe at Friedrichsruhe) talked ... of the (secret) treaty with Russia
which Caprivi had not renewed because the policy it led to was too complicated
for him. The difficulty of my position (Hohenlohe was about to become
Chancellor) lay in' the sudden decisions of his Majesty.'

470 BISMARCK
Liberal and Democratic parties : ' To the members of the
Conservative party alone — and I include the National
Liberals and the Centre in the Conservatives— -to these
members alone have I explanations to offer : with all the
others I have to fight — that is another matter ; and I
would beg them especiaUy to cut themselves adrift from
aU common action with Socialists, Poles, Guelphs, Alsatian
Frenchmen, yes, and with the Liberals also.' The solid
cartel that gave him a majority was quite ready to act
on the advice ; it was prepared to vote for aU repressive
measures and to fight with the Chancellor against every
form of Liberalism. What failed Bismarck now was not
the government majority but the Crown.
The ChanceUor spent the autumn of 1889 in the country.
The anti-Socialist law was due for renewal ; and Bismarck
wished it to be made permanent, with added powers to
expel Socialist agitators and to suppress in perpetuity
Socialist papers. He was summoned by telegram from
Count Herbert Bismarck to return to the capital on
January 23, 1890, where he found the ministers very
uneasy at the strong opposition in the Reichstag to the
anti-Socialist law as drafted by the government. On
January 24 he resigned the Ministry of Commerce. The
Emperor desired conciliation with, and concessions to,
the Socialists, and two Imperial rescripts announcing this
policy, to be consummated by an international conference
on Labour and Social Problems, were ready for publication.
They were, in fact, a reversal of Bismarck's pohcy, and
had been prepared in his absence. When they appeared
they lacked the customary ministerial counter-signature
(February 4) — the first official documents for twenty-
seven years published without the counter-signature of
the ChanceUor or Minister-President. On January 25
no official indication was given to the Conservative party
how to vote on the anti-Socialist BiU. The Conservatives,
regarding the measure, from which the expulsion clauses
had been struck out, as too lenient, went into the same
lobby as the Radicals and the Centre, and the anti-Sociahst
law was rejected by 169 to 98 votes. AU Berlin now knew
that it was confronted with a real ' ChanceUor Crisis.'

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 471
Foreign policy, however, was the main cause of the
coffision. The explicit reports of Russian armaments and
movements of troops perturbed Vienna and the German
General Staff. The Emperor was determined to convince
Austria that Germany was on her side — Bismarck stub
bornly resisted any steps to support Austria and thereby
alienate Russia : and the Emperor accused him of sup
pressing information in the Foreign Office.
The quarrel over home policy could have been settled,
but the conflict over foreign policy cut down to funda
mentals. A compromise was impossible. Bismarck's
system was in issue. The general election, however,
turned on the new Social and Labour pohcy. Bismarck
declined to organise a governmental campaign ; he had
quarreUed both with the Emperor and his coUeagues, and
the results were a rout for the cartel. The Conservatives
lost 36, the National Liberals, 52 seats ; the Liberals
gained 30, the Sociahsts, 24 seats. The cartel of 1 887 was
dissolved, although the Clerical Centre returned in un
diminished strength. Bismarck now made a subtle move.
Recognising that the Crown was undermining his presi
dential pre-eminence by uniting the ministers against him,
he demanded that the Cabinet order of September 8,
1852, should be vigorously enforced. This order, requiring
aU ministers to submit their departmental business to the
Minister-President before submitting it to the Crown,
practicaUy forbade aU independent relations between the
ministers and the Crown, and made the Minister-President
the sole constitutional avenue of communication with the
sovereign. Bismarck had always acted on it, though in
the last ten years his frequent absences had required its
relaxation. But such had been his prestige that the re
laxation had not involved any real diminution of his
authority in aU essentials of governmental action. It was
different now, when Bismarck reahsed that the King-
Emperor aimed at uniting the ministerial cabinet against
its constitutional chief. To the Emperor the order was
an odious restriction on his prerogative. It meant that
he could only confer with his ministers by and through a
Minister-President, hostile to his policy and his ideas,

472 BISMARCK
ahke in home and foreign affairs. Accordingly he de
manded that the Minister-President should advise him to
rescind the order. The dispute was a forcible illustration
of Bismarck's warning to the Progressive Party in 1862 :
' Questions of right (Rechtfragen) in the long run become
questions of might (Machtfragen).' The Emperor told
Hohenlohe that February and March were for him ' a
beastly time,' and that it had become ' a question whether
the Bismarck dynasty or the HohenzoUern dynasty should
rule.' For Bismarck the issues were simple, but fundamental.
His whole system was chaUenged. As Minister-President
he was to be reduced to a position of equality with col
leagues placed in complete independence in their relations
with himself and with the Crown ; a policy in home
affairs was to be carried out through the ministers of the
Interior and Finance which reversed aU his principles ; as
ChanceUor he was expected to carry out a foreign policy
in flat contradiction to his convictions and ideas. The
close connection between home and foreign pohcy — the
keystone of his system and his success — was to be snapped ;
alike in the Prussian Landtag and the Imperial Reichstag
he would speak without any control over parties or any
security that the votes would not be influenced by Imperial
intrigues or ministerial pressure, unfavourable to himself.
In the daUy intercourse with the representatives of foreign
governments he could no longer invite their confidence
or express his own. Moltke had resigned his post as Chief
of the General Staff. The new chief, Waldersee, in
Bismarck's judgment was a second-rate soldier and an in
triguing politician in the hands of a ' mUitary ring ' bent
on controUing the civil authority. In a word, the Chan
ceUor and Minister-President would have lost aU his rights
to co-ordinate strategy and policy. The Emperor, he
told more than one confidant, ' now wishes to reign alone
— to be his own ChanceUor and Minister-President.'
It was impossible that Bismarck could accept after twenty-
seven years of power a position that was a personal humUia-
tion, a reversal of his policy, and a reduction to impotence.
' I cannot serve,' he said, ' on my knees ' (Ich kann nicht

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 473
mit Proskynesis dienen). The final touch was given on
March 14. Windthorst who wished to consult the Chan
cellor about the forthcoming session was received ' in
audience ' by Bismarck. What passed between them —
whether Bismarck suggested a coaUtion between the shat
tered Conservatives and the Clericals, cemented by a final
repeal of the May Laws — is uncertain and matters little.
' I come,' Windthorst observed, ' from the political death
bed of a great man.' The next day the Emperor in person
demanded an explanation of what had passed, and Bismarck
was dragged from his sleep to wait upon the unexpected
visitor. ' It was aU that Bismarck could do,' the Emperor
subsequently related, ' to refrain from throwing the ink
pot at my head.' Bismarck was no less certain that the
Emperor lost his temper even more completely than he
did himself. He refused to give the information de
manded. The discussions with Windthorst or other
leaders of parties were personal and confidential, and could
not be controUed by the Crown, not even if the Crown
commanded. According to one source, Bismarck drawing
himself up to his fuU height asserted that he had received
Windthorst as a gentleman had the right to receive his
friends in his own house, and then he added that ' the
orders of the Sovereign stopped at the door of the Princess's
drawing-room.' The phrase may be an invention, but it
exactly expressed Bismarck's attitude. The memorable
conversation was not one between Minister and Emperor,
but between the Prussian Junker of Schonhausen, Varzin,
and Friedrichsruhe, and the Elector of Brandenburg whom
the Junker had made German Emperor.
Repeatedly -pressed, Bismarck at last submitted his
resignation. On March 20 the official Gazette announced
that the Emperor had been graciously pleased to accept
with profound regret the ChanceUor's request to be
reheved of his offices, and in return for his ' imperishable
services ' conferred upon him the title of Duke of Lauen
burg and Colonel-General, with the rank of Field-Marshal
in the army. Punch, in one of the most famous of its
famous cartoons which, curiously enough, delighted both
Bismarck and WiUiam 11., summed up the event with

474 BISMARCK
unerring feUcity. ' The PUot ' who had steered the ship
through so many storms and so many shoals, ' was dropped.
The Emperor henceforward intended to be Captain and
Pilot in one.
Official Berlin heard the news, expected for so many
months, with a sigh of profound rehef : 1 but to Germany
and the German nation the Emperor's dismissal of the
man who summed up German power and represented the
Empire in the Councils of the world — the greatest German
poUtical figure since the Middle Ages — was received with
consternation and genuine sorrow. The old Emperor
was dead ; Moltke in his ninetieth year was no longer the
brain of the German army ; and now Bismarck had gone,
removed neither by death nor incapacitated by sickness.
The German nation knew that in the political sphere there
was ho one in experience, strength of character, prestige,
or inteUect fit to tie the latchet of Bismarck's shoe. With
March 20, 1 890, the heroic age had indeed ended.
Bismarck refused the title of Duke of Lauenburg. ' I
prefer,' he said, ' to bear for the future the name and the
title that I have borne up tiU now.' He paid a final caU
on Moltke and on the Empress Frederick. Prince Hohen
lohe tells us that ' when the Empress asked whether she
could do anything for him he merely said : " I ask only
for sympathy ! " ' In the evening of March 28, a carriage
drove up to the Royal Mausoleum at Charlottenburg
where the Emperor William 1. was buried ; a taU figure
alighted, with some roses in his hand, and paced in the
dusk through the garden in solitary sUence, then entered
the Mausoleum and laid the roses on the Emperor's tomb.
A long pause followed. Thjrfigure slowly left the sanctuary
and drove away. It was Bismarck. He had come to say
farewell to the dead master whom he had served. From
that master's grandson he would not accept a dukedom ;
1 'Each separate personality,' notes Hohenlohe on June i8, 1890, 'is now
conscious of his own value. Formerly the individual was oppressed and restricted
by the dominant influence of Prince Bismarck, but now they have all swelled
out like sponges placed in water. This has its advantages but also its dangers.
There is no unity of will.' On March 24, 1890, he had written! 'Stosch told
me much about his quarrel with Bismarck and was as chirpy as a wren that he
could now speak openly and that the great man was no longer to be feared.
This comfortable feeling is universal here (in Berlin).'

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 475
for his imperial honours he cared nothing. But for
William 1. he had the silence of memories that lay too deep
for words or tears, memories and a handful of roses.
Next day, March 29, accompanied by his wife and his
son Count Herbert, who had resigned with him, he left
Berlin. Ambassadors, ministers, generals, and an enor
mous crowd, were at the station. Every one was aware
that one personage was wanting — the Emperor — and
nobody missed him, least of aU the ex-Chancellor. Could
WiUiam 11. have been on the platform he would have
learned from the homage of the people that emperors
might come and go, but for Germany, indeed for Europe,
there was only one Bismarck, and there never could be
another.

If there could be any doubt that a fundamental differ
ence of opinion on the principles, methods, and objects
of foreign pohcy was the main, though not the sole, cause
of the quarrel between Emperor and ChanceUor the criti
cisms, denunciations, and warnings of Bismarck from the
date of his dismissal practicaUy tiU his last iUness would
convince the most obstinate sceptic. Sometimes made
through interviews to journalists, carefuUy selected for the
purpose, occasionally expressed in public replies to the ad
dresses of ardent admirers or powerful organisations, but
for the most part worked up in newspaper articles by ' in
spired ' pens from material- supplied by Bismarck in his
soUtude at Friedrichsruhe — these utterances constitute a
' Bismarck literature ' in themselves. They merit and repay
a close study ; and German industry has facilitated in the
volumes of Penzler and Hofmann their examination and
coUation. Every one in Germany was aware that in the
columns of the Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, the M'un-
chener Neueste Nachrichten, and especiaUy the Hamburger
Nachrichten (under the able editorship of Julius Hart-
meyer) the ex-ChanceUor was speaking to the Germany that

476 BISMARCK
did not cease to regard him as the supreme oracle on aU
the affairs of Europe and of Ufe. Veneration, gratitude,
and affection heightened the homage to the faUen Titan
in his lonely and morose grandeur.
The range of subjects is amazingly wide, and the treat
ment is rich in autobiographic reminiscences, in valuable
additions to our historical knowledge, and in the matured
criticism stamped with the unmistakable flavour and
quahty that personality tempered in the strife of a Ufe
time with great men and greater issues alone can impart —
that specific flavour and quaUty which have given to
Bismarck's letters and speeches a unique place in German
literature. In many respects indeed the more weighty
items in this remarkable coUection strike a truer note and
convey a more convincing sincerity than the Memoirs
which, under pressure, Bismarck wrote late in Ufe, and the
value of which is somewhat impaired by faulty arrangement,
omissions, contradictions, and, too often, shpshod displace
ment of dates and facts. From Penzler's and Hofmann's
coUections of Bismarckiana after March 1890, judiciously
winnowed and criticaUy pieced together, might easUy be
constructed a Testament Politique, picturing the statesman
in his final stage, and epitomising the marrow and blood of
his statecraft. Some day the scholar, it is hoped, wUl be
found to confer the boon.
It is often asserted that Bismarck's judgments were in
spired simply by hostUity to his successors in the WiUielm
strasse, and that this unquestionable jealousy and hatred
deprive his criticisms of aU weight. It would be truer to
say that Bismarck was defending and explaining the prin
ciples of his policy from 1871 onwards, and that he viewed
with profound misgiving the development of German
pohcy under the ' New Course ' conducted by the Emperor
and his advisers or instruments. He was deliberately pro
viding a paraUel and a contrast which is deeply instructive
for the last decade of the nineteenth century. For ex
ample, shortly after his dismissal, the Hamburger Nach
richten (AprU 26, 1890) wrote : —
Austria cannot hope to obtain Germany's support for promoting
her ambitious plans in the Balkan peninsula. These Austrian

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 477
plans have never been encouraged by Germany as long as Germany's
foreign policy was directed by Prince Bismarck. . . . Least of all
is it Germany's business to support Austria's ambitions in the
Balkans. And again (September 29, 1890) : —
In the past, when the relations between Germany and Austria
and between Germany and Russia were discussed, there were two
points of danger : firstly, that German policy — or what would be
worse, the German army — should be placed at the disposal of
purely Austrian interests in the Balkans against Russia ; secondly,
that Germany's relations with Russia should be endangered and
brought to the breaking-point. . . . The Austro-German alliance
does not demand that Germany should support Austria's Balkan
interests against Russia. It only demands that Germany should
assist Austria if her territories should be attacked by Russia.
And again (January 24, 1892) : —
The Austro-German aUiance of 1879 contemplated only mutual
defence against a possible attack. Hence Germany always pointed
out in Vienna that the Austro-German alliance protected only the
Dual Monarchy itself, but not its Balkan policy. With regard to
the Balkans, Germany had unceasingly advised Austria to find pro
tection by means of a separate treaty with the States interested in
the Balkans, such as England and Italy. ... By following the path
upon which she has entered, Germany is in danger of gradually
becoming dependent upon Austria, and in the end she may have to
pay with her blood and treasure for the Balkan policy of Vienna.
. . . Formerly the Triple Alliance existed as it does now, and its im
portance was increased by the fact that Germany had a free hand,
directed it, and Europe. A crisis in Italy, a change of sovereign in
Austria or the like may shake its foundations so greatly that, in spite
of all written engagements, it will be impossible to maintain it. In
that case Germany's position would become extremely serious, for
in order not to become entirely isolated, she would be compelled
to follow Austria's policy in the Balkans without reserve. Germany
might get into the leading strings of another Power. . . .
These quotations might be indefinitely extended, but
the point is admirably clear ; it is made still clearer by the
foUowing comment on the Triple Alliance (Hamburger
Nachrichten, June 13, 1890) : —
The Austro-Italian Alliance is not equaUy favourable. Between
Austria and Italy there are unadjusted differences, which are parti-

478 BISMARCK
cularly to be found on the side of Italy, such as the anti-Austrian
aspiration of the Irredentists. . . . The maintenance of the present
relations between Austria and Italy must be the principal care of the
diplomatists, especiaUy as, if Italy for some reason or other should
abandon the Triple AUiance, the Austrian army would be compeUed
to protect the Dual Monarchy against Italy ... by the detach
ment of Italy, the Austro-German aUiance would miUtarily lose so
much that its value would become very problematical ... as long
as Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy are united in the Triple
AUiance, and as long as these three States may reckon on the assist
ance of the EngUsh sea-power, the peace of Europe wiU not be
broken. We must take care that friendly relations between Austria
and Italy and between Italy and England shaU be maintained.
Besides, we must see that the Triple AUiance is restricted to its
original scope, and that it is not aUowed to serve those special
interests which have nothing to do with it.
And again (May 18, 1892) : —
England's attitude towards the Triple AUiance depends not
upon the HeUgoland Treaty, but on Italy. If England is opposed
to Germany, we can never reckon upon Italy's help.
In this connection, and also with reference to acute poli
tical controversies at the time (1895) Bismarck said in reply
to an address : —
I wished to acquire Schleswig-Holstein, because unless we had
that province we could not hope, to have a German fleet. ... I
should consider it an exaggeration for Germany to compete with
the French or the English navy. However, we must be strong
enough on the sea to be able to deal with those second-rate powers
which we cannot get at by land.
In September 1897, Maximilian Harden reproduced in
his paper Die Zukunft, the foUowing opinion from
Bismarck : —
I have never been in favour of a colonial policy of conquest simUar
to that pursued by France. As far as one can see, the most import
ant thing for Germany is a strong and reliable army, provided with
the best weapons. I am of Moltke's opinion, that we shall have to
fight on the continent of Europe for the possession of colonies.
And in one of the very latest of his pronouncements

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 479
(Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, December 8, 1897)
Bismarck said : —
Nothing could be more strongly opposed to Germany's interest
than to enter upon more or less daring and adventurous enterprises,
guided merely by the desire to have a finger in every pie, to flatter
the vanity of the nation, or to please the ambitions of those who
rule it. To carry on a poUcy of prestige would be more in accord
ance with the French than the German character. In order to
acquire prestige, France has gone to Algiers, Tunis, Mexico, and
Madagascar. If Germany should ever foUow a similar poUcy, she
would not promote any German interests, but would endanger the
welfare of the Empire and its position in Europe.
The reference to Weltpolitik and Weltmacht is un
mistakable. Let it be simply noted that two years after
Bismarck's death Von der Goltz, who was not the victim
of journahstic Chauvinism but a scientific exponent of
poficy, wrote : —
We must contradict the frequently expressed opinion that a war
between Germany and Great Britain is impossible . . . the
material basis of our power is large enough to enable us to destroy
the present superiority of Great Britain.
Von der Goltz only expressed what the advocates of
colonialism urged : —
The old century saw a German Europe. The new one shaU see
a German world. . . . We do not require a fleet against France or
Russia. . . . We require a fleet only against England.
It is instructive to place such utterances beside those of
Bismarck in the Reichstag in 1885 and in 1889 (quoted on
page 420). The antithesis needs no comment. But if the
ex-ChanceUor could fairly have said that the generation
which succeeded him had forgotten that Germany stiU
had to Uve in Europe with three or more neighbours, and
had disregarded his teaching, his principles, and his sense
of Umits, the neo-Bismarckians could no less fairly retort
that they were only applying to new spheres the principles
and the methods that the master had taught were the only
successful and justifiable weapon of policy. Bismarckian
principles of statecraft and ends of policy cannot be limited

480 BISMARCK
to a defined programme and then denounced as iUegitimate,
because they are held to be equaUy applicable to aU spheres
of action, in which the State is striving to secure the con
ditions on which it wishes to live with its neighbours. If
Bismarck spent his years after 1890 in warning Germany
against the dangers inherent in the doctrine and policy he
had himself enforced, to that extent he did valuable ser
vice. But the young generation of the new Germany, felt
by a true and inexorable logic which it had learned from
the ex-ChanceUor that if a State's needs constitute its
rights, and if the reahsation of those rights can only be
achieved by force, a world-empire could be made, and only
be made, by precisely the same methods as had made the
German Empire, and by none other. The State that is
the incarnation of Power ceases to hold its title to exist if
it places limitations on Power derived from principles
which are the negation of those on which it has been de
liberately based. For power and force are, by implication,
like the sovereignty defined by the j urist, intrinsically iffimit-
able and indivisible, and provide, if at aU, their own law
and justification. Similarly in the warnings against the
perU for Germany of Austria's Balkanism, Bismarck was
largely responsible for the situation out of which Austrian
Balkanism was created. There were mainly two causes in
operation. The unification of Germany gave a tremen
dous impetus to Nationalism, which found its expression
for South-Eastern Europe in the formula of ' The Balkans
for the Balkan peoples.' But unless the Dual Monarchy
controUed those Balkan nationalities their nationalism was
dangerous, if not fatal, to the Austria-Hungarian Empire.
Either Austria must subordinate Balkan nationalism to
Austrianism or the nationalities would disintegrate the
Habsburg Empire in the interests of Balkan, and particularly
Slav, nationalism. The end of the Ottoman Empire in
Europe meant the beginning of a new phase of the Austrian
problem, and the most critical since the Ottoman Turk had
crossed the Danube. Secondly, when Bismarck thrust
Austria out of Germany, and also out of Italy, he made an
Austrian expansion south-eastwards inevitable. Previ
ously to 1866 Austria had always regarded the German

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 481
sphere as her chief concern. But after 1866, the diversion
of Austria was as essential to the maintenance of the
German Empire of 1871 as was the diversion of France or
of Russia. This is only another way of saying that when
Bismarck finaUy abandoned in 1859 the programme of the
Great Germany party, and adopted the programme of the
SmaU Germany party, he left unsolved the problem with
which Germany and Europe wrestled since the dissolution
in 1806 of the old Holy Roman Empire of the German
nation. Bismarck, as we have seen, convinced himself that
the Great Germany solution of the problem was not practi
cable, because it was incompatible with a Prussian supre
macy in a united Germany — and on that argument it is
difficult to prove that his judgment erred — but the solution
which he achieved left the Germany that he had made still
confronted with the original and permanent difficulties.
The Germans in Austria had a broad common interest
with the Germany from which they were excluded ; and
the German Empire which shut the Austrian Germans
out could not, on any argument of policy, interest,
nationalism, or safety, remain indifferent to the destinies
of a German Austria. Bismarck created a safety valve in
the Dual AUiance, which hnked the Habsburg and Hohen
zoUern monarchies, and the divided Germans of the
HohenzoUern and Austrian empires in a united political
co-operation for common German ends. In reality, this
co-operation shelved rather than settled the problem, as the
sequel proved. The Central Europe that Bismarck created
was not purely Germanic. It rested not on German
nationalism, but on a German domination of a strategic
area. It included in its framework alien and suppressed ele
ments alike in Schleswig-Holstein, Alsace-Lorraine, Prussian
Poland, and Austrian Galicia. Above aU, in Hungary and
the relations of the Magyars to the non-Magyar and non-
German races in the Dual Empire, it avowedly identified a
German with a Magyar domination. The inevitable result
was that the safety of the complex and Ul-knit Austrian
Empire became essential to the German Empire. Ger
many was confronted with the dUemma either of letting
Austria go her own independent way and thereby imperU-

482 BISMARCK
ling both the western and eastern fronts of a united
Germany, or of foUowing Austria in a Balkan policy which
entangled Germany in vast issues, outside of, and antagon
istic to, her own specific German interests. To Bismarck's
criticisms of German policy after 1890 there were not
lacking in his own day powerful counter-critics, such as
Holnstein, the silent Eminence grise of the Wilhelmstrasse,
who pointed out that when Bismarck agreed to compen
sate Austria-Hungary with the occupation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina he laid a mortgage on Germany which she
could only repudiate by making Austria an open foe or
only redeem by supporting Austrian Balkanism to the
last reserves of the German army, if need be.
Nor were there lacking those who pointed out that
Bismarck's ' moderation ' in 1866 was the original and de
cisive blunder. Two courses were open then, it was plainly
argued after Bismarck's faU. The first was to have given
the King and the soldiers carte blanche to roU Austria in the
dust and to reduce the Habsburg sovereigns practicaUy to
the kingdom of Hungary, thereby making them the rulers
of a non-German State outside a Greater Germany, with
which an aUiance, not an identity of interests, could have
naturaUy foUowed. The second was to have retained
German Austria, as before, in a reconstructed German
confederation, in which the north, the south, and German
Austria would have made a united but tripartite national
pohty. Such a confederation, it was suggested, would
have kept aU Germans in a single poUtical organisation, so
strong that aU the groupings outside it of non-German States
could not have affected either its stabUity or its capacity to
exist as a power in Europe. What prevented the estabhsh
ment of such a confederation was the refusal of Bismarck
to dissolve Prussia in Germany, no less than his deter
mination to impose Prussianism on as much of Germany
as Prussian power could absorb and dominate. Hence
the conclusion that Bismarck's solution was responsible
for the difficulties that came to a head in 1890, and
never ceased to be a wasting mortgage on Germany after
Bismarck's faU.
Such criticism is not purely academic and dialectical ;

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 483
however much it seems to ignore the practical difficulties
that its execution between 1862 and 1870 would have in
volved. It emphasises the historic truth that the Habs
burg dynasty has been the gravest obstacle to the rational
and natural satisfaction of German Nationalism, as well as
to the formation of a truly German Empire from the age
of the Renaissance and the Reformation to the age of
Bismarck. The mediatisation of the particularist dynasties
in Hanover, Saxony, Wiirttemberg, Baden, and Bavaria
was unquestionably essential to the creation of a federal
and national German State ; but the mediatisation of
the Habsburg dynasty was stiU more essential, and would
have facilitated and federalised a national German State
even more effectuaUy than the reduction of the Guelph,
Wittelsbach, or Saxon princely houses. Had the Austrian-
Hungarian Empire after 1866 been cut into two parts, and
the German part (deprived of its royal ruler) been associ
ated with a new and greater Germany, while the non-
German parts were left to find a new and independent
existence on nationalist lines, Europe after 1866 might
weU have had a happier life. It could certainly not have
had a less happy one than the course of things since 1871
provided. Be that as it may, the full consequences of the
Bismarckian solution of the German problem were only
working themselves out when Bismarck feU ; nor can
Bismarck escape the fuU responsibility for those conse
quences, simply because he warned his successors that
they were making mistakes. It is not always the heirs
to a great legacy who mismanage the property. More fre
quently than is commonly supposed or admitted, the nature
of the property, the methods by which it has been acquired,
and the principles on which it has been administered prior
to the change of ownership impose obligations and involve
efforts, without which the inheritance itself must faU to
pieces. A generation which inherits what it has not made
by its own labours and self-sacrifice can be as reckless in the
ambition to spend as the heirs to a great estate, who have
been rocked, cradled, and dandled in the conviction that a
world they have not made exists for them, and not they for
the world. And in the case of Germany after 1890 the

484 BISMARCK
heirs had been taught that to force, power, and reason of
State miracles were easy.
Bismarck's searchings of heart were by no means confined
to foreign policy. Earnestly meditating at Friedrichsruhe,
and convinced that the directors in the Reichskanzlerpalais
and at Imperial Headquarters were guUty of blunder after
blunder he diagnosed the causes of the mischief in two
plain conclusions — the royal autocracy and the complete
inabUity of a representative legislature to control policy.
The impotence of the Reichstag after 1890 was as con
spicuous as the power of the imperial monarchy. In this
sphere, also, Bismarck pointed the moral very clearly in
more than one trenchant statement.
Thus (December 12, 1891) : —
The most disquieting feature for me is that the Reichstag has
abdicated its position. We suffer everywhere from the bureaucracy
... If the authority of the Reichstag declines, the bonds which
hold Germany together are weakened.
And stiU more emphaticaUy (July 24, 1892) : —
To strengthen the Reichstag the responsibUity of ministers
should be increased . . . the ChanceUor's post may be abused to
such an extent that he becomes a mere secretary. . . . When I
became Minister, the Crown was threatened by the people. . . .
Hence I strove to strengthen the Crown against ParUament. Per
haps I went too far in that direction. We now require a balance of
power within Germany, and I believe that free criticism is indis
pensable to the monarchy. ... If Parliament becomes powerless,
becomes a mere tool in the hands of the government, we return to
the regime of absolutism.
And again, in a reply to an address (July 30, 1892) :—
The basis of a constitutional monarchy is the co-operation of the
monarchical wiU with the convictions of the governed people.
It is a dangerous experiment nowadays to strive after absolutism
in the centre of Europe . . . the wars which united Germany were
necessary ... but Germany cannot conduct aggressive Cabinet
wars. Besides, a nation which can be forced into such wars does
not possess the right constitution ... in buUding up the Empire
some kind of dictatorship was necessary, but that cannot be con-

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 485
sidered as a permanent feature. One's task can be completed only
when Germany possesses a powerful Parliament which embodies
our sense of unity.
Is this Saul among the prophets ? The young German
of 1892 might pertinently ask, as he heard this passage :
who made the Reichstag impotent ? who refused to aUow
ministerial responsibility to be established ? who made
'an aggressive Cabinet war ' in 1864, in 1866, and in 1870,
and ' forced the nation into it ' because it did not ' possess
the right constitution ' ? What indications were there in
1889 that the empire autoritaire created by Bismarck was
intended by him to be a transient prelude to an empire
Uberal ? and finally, how could the Reichstag be made a
truly effective political organ, except by rewriting the
whole text of the Constitution imposed on Germany by
Bismarck in 1866-7, ana^ again in 187 1 ? Was Bismarck
suggesting in earnest that his whole work was to be undone
and the fabric of the Empire reconstructed from top to
bottom ?
The royal absolutism drew from the seer of Friedrichs
ruhe no less emphatic condemnation : —
Absolutism, he wrote in his Memoirs, would be the ideal form of
government for a European State were not the King and his officials
as other men to whom it is not given to reign with superhuman
wisdom, insight, and justice. ... If the King comes to any unfor
tunate decisions, no one can judge whether they are due to his own
will or to the influences which various personalities of male and
female gender — aides-de-camp, courtiers, and political intriguers,
flatterers, chatterboxes, and teU-tales — may have upon the monarch.
In the last resort the royal signature covers everything ; how it has
been obtained no one ever-knows.
On such a matter no one could speak with more inti
mate knowledge than Bismarck himself. Had he told
us exactly how he obtained the royal signature between
1862 and 1888 the dark places in Prussian, German,
and European history would be far less dark than they
are. Or did he mean that autocracy was only useful
when manipulated by a Bismarck ?

486 BISMARCK
Sir Charles Dilke, who visited Friedrichsruhe, has re
corded : —
As Bismarck meUowed with his pipes he told me that, though he
was a high Tory, he had come to see the Uls of absolutism, which
to work weU required the King to be an angel. ' Now,' he said,
' kings even when good have women round them, who, even if
queens, govern them to their personal ends.'
And to Dilke he made another ' confession ' on the same
point : —
People look on me as a monarchist. Were it aU to come over
again I would be repubhcan and democrat ; the rule of kings is the
rule of women ; the bad women are bad and the good are worse.
Allowance must be made for the bitterness of an old man,
reflecting on the experience of a lifetime, who felt with
justice that not once, but a dozen times, when it was in his
power to have converted the HohenzoUern Crown into a
constitutional and limited monarchy, he had resolutely
fought to preserve intact the personal government and pre
rogatives of the Prussian Crown — and the power that he
had preserved had been used to dismiss him and to reverse
his pohcy. - The ' confession,' apart from that, has the
ring of the great Eldon's simUar avowal. Unbending and
stern Tory as he had been, Eldon avowed, in the old age
that saw the triumphant passage of the Reform Act and
the renaissance of Radicalism, that had he to begin aU over
again he would start as an ' Agitator.'
One other judgment of Bismarck's must find a place, in
virtue of its penetrating intuition : ' Cavour, Crispi, even
Kruger,' he told Dilke, ' were greater than myself. I had
the State and the army behind me ; these men had
nothing.' The fact emphasised is indisputable ; but had
Bismarck explained how his predecessors in Prussia no
less than himself had the State and the army behind them
and had achieved nothing, he would have destroyed the
truth of the conclusion. It was not the Prussian State nor
the Prussian army, nor even the Prussian monarchy that
made Bismarck's achievement what it was. If pohtical

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 487
genius could be so easily resolved into the instruments that
it employs, history would shed not only its mysteries and
riddles but aU its power to inspire, to enthraU, and to
instruct. It is neither possible nor desirable here to embark further
on the controversy that has divided Germany since
Bismarck's death in 1898 — the aUuring question whether
his successors deliberately departed from his pohcy, or
whether their course from 1898 to 19 14 was simply the
logical and inevitable development of Bismarck's work.
The issues raised are too complicated and too vast.
Even if the material and the perspective for framing an
impartial judgment were available, a later generation will
be able more dispassionately and with more utihty to
decide ; and a biographical study of statesmanship, that
already belongs to the past, is obhged to avoid the danger
of being warped by the introduction of arguments and
controversies, however fascinating, urgent, and important,
yet demonstrably irrelevant and misleading. So much will
fairly be conceded by aU students whether of Bismarck him
self alone or of German policy under Caprivi, Hohenlohe,
Biilow, and Bethmann-HoUweg. Of Bismarck the man and
the statesman it is possible to write sine ira et studio. It is
no less legitimate to conclude that with his faU from power
a clearly marked epoch was closed, and to express the con
fident judgment that the historian of the future wiU see in
the year 1890 the end of a period, as unmistakably as we
can see now that with Richelieu, with Walpole, with
Frederick the Great, and with Metternich, a system, and
not merely a man, definitely ended. What the character
istics of that system were and how inextricably they were
interwoven with the personality and principles of the man
it has been the purpose of this biographical study to set
forth. It is unnecessary to compile a laboured coda from
characteristics sufficiently emphasised in the preceding
pages. The import, even the value, of Bismarck's achieve
ment wiU be very variously interpreted and judged by
different observers ; nor is it possible for the critic, who
does not belong to Bismarck's race and state, completely to

488 BISMARCK
assimUate the point of view with which the German mind
is saturated. By Europe outside Germany, Bismarck wUl
always be viewed from an angle of vision different from that
of the German. The unification of Germany, the estabhsh
ment of a German hegemony on the Continent, the Central
Europe, the armed peace imposed on and by Nationalism
in arms, the defeat of LiberaUsm and of democratic self-
government, the doctrine of the State as the representative
and incarnation of Might and Force, the principle that
pohcy is the expression of a national wUl for Power to
which aU methods are legitimate, provided that they
achieve their end at a minimum of cost, the gospel that war
is an inevitable and necessary part of the struggle for exist
ence, and that (in Moltke's famous words) the ideal of
universal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful dream,
the principle that Reason of State transcends the code of
ethics, apphcable in the social intercourse of individual
with individual — aU these and many other characteristics
of the Bismarckian system and , the Bismarckian inter
pretation of Ufe and its values Ue embedded in the period
of history which Bismarck made his own for the Germany
and the Europe in which he lived. So much is or ought
to be obvious to-day. It is no less obvious that Bismarck
did not succeed in securing their universal and unques
tioned acceptance, even in the spheres where his immediate
success was. greatest. If it be granted that he imprinted
them on Germany, and thereby solved for his own genera
tion the problem to which he devoted his life, it is clear
that he had not solved the problem for other countries
even in his own lifetime, and that he bequeathed to the
Germany that foUowed him in veneration to his grave
riddles, no less formidable than those which he inherited,
and constituted his life's task to settle. His own solution,
too, by 1890 had caUed into existence and endowed with a
fresh vitality the forces both in thought and action which
chaUenged imperiously the permanent truth of his teach
ing and example. Bismarck, in brief, Uke other makers of
nations was either too successful or not successful enough.
Nor did he escape the peril of founding a school of disciples,
with its inevitable penalty, that the disciples either falsify

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 489
the master's precepts or are driven to employ them in de
stroying the master's work. One conclusion, however, will
be readily accepted by aU, irrespective of creed or race.
No poUtical figure in the nineteenth century leaves a more
indelible impression of force — of that indefinable and
unanalysable union of brain, wiU, and character — than
Bismarck; and the closer he is studied, and the more
remorselessly the historical microscope is applied, the
more exigent and irrefutable is the impression. It is not
easy to be moderate in estimating the sum of his positive
achievement, for the Continent of Europe was his field,
and the map and the State-system testify to what he
wrought, and how he wrought it. But it is impossible
to be moderate in the estimate of his personality. The
force in the man himself surpassed the results that he
stamped on the world. From the age of Luther onwards
no other German poUtical figure is his equal in titanic
power. In German history Bismarck is, and is likely to
remain, unique.
It is striking that like another Prussian genius — Frederick
the Great — with whom he has so often been compared,
Bismarck only seems to have grasped at the close of his life
that with himself an epoch had ended and a new age had
begun. Prince von Biilow, who can speak with authority,
writes in his Imperial Germany : x ' It was Bismarck himself
who pointed out the new way to us by bringing our old
pohcy to a close. ... It is certain that he did not foresee
the course of this new development of Germany, nor the
detaUs of the problems of this new epoch. . . . We seek
in vain in the conclusions of his practical policy for a justi
fication of the steps which our international problems
exacts from us.' And in a later chapter the ex-ChanceUor
relates how Bismarck was taken in his eightieth year to
see the harbour of Hamburg. ' He stopped when he set
foot on a giant steamboat, looked at the ship for a long
time, at the many steamers lying in the vicinity, at the
docks and huge cranes, at the mighty picture presented
by the harbour, and said at last : " I am stirred and moved.
Yes, this is a new age — a new world." '
1 The edition of 1913, not the amended war edition of 1916.

490 BISMARCK
It is always difficult for a man to recognise that the age
in which he has hved has reached a terminus, and that the
forces and ideas and ambitions which have made his world
have changed their character, volume, and direction ; but
when the man himself has been the most puissant expres
sion and manipulator of those forces, ideas, and ambitions,
the difficulty very nearly becomes an impossibihty. The
eight years of hfe that remained for Bismarck after his
dismissal were not happy, nor did they add to his fame.
Bismarck took with him to Varzin and Friedrichsruhe the
profound sympathy, no less than the unstinted homage of
the German people. The nation felt justly that the dis
missal by a young Emperor of the servant whose loyalty to
the Crown was beyond question, and whose services to the
House of HohenzoUern were unexampled in their fideUty
and magnitude, lacked both grace and gratitude. Bismarck
was entitled, it must be frankly conceded, to be bitter and
angry. But even his most unqualified admirers must
admit that his subsequent behaviour provided his severest
critics with material, ample and indisputable, for the
harshest interpretation of his character.
He was not helped by those about him, relatives orhench- '
men. Love and loyalty forgot in the rancour of the
situation the highest duty and interest of the chief ; and
Bismarck lent himself with a zeal and a readiness that
admit of no extenuation to the playing of a part wholly
unworthy of the claim that he had to the admiration and
affection of the nation and the place that he had made for
himself in his country's history. Of magnanimity, genero
sity, reticence, charity, or self-respect he exhibited no trace,
and he seems almost to have rejoiced in exposing to the
world every unlovely fraUty and defect, and to desire to
prove that he could only hate and neither forgive nor forget.
' Le roi me reverra,' he told Richter before he left Berlin ;
but if he believed, as he probably did, that he was indis
pensable and that he would be recalled on his own terms,
he did his best to break down all the bridges and to render
a return to office impossible. In this, and in this alone, he
succeeded. The Emperor, who after 1890 showed com-

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 491
mendable self-restraint under intolerable provocation,
said aU that needs to be said in this connection : ' It is
melancholy to think that such a man can sink so low.'
And when Prince Hohenlohe (June 22, 1892) said point-
blank, ' The only thing that people are afraid of is, that
Bismarck will return.' ' They can make their minds easy,'
replied the Emperor with a laugh, ' he will not return.'
(Memoirs, ii. 432.)
For the first time Bismarck found himself at Varzin and
Friedrichsruhe unemployed ; yet the absolute leisure for
which he had so often craved was framed in political iso
lation, and proved to be a curse. Had he been thirty years
younger he could have flung himself, as he had often con
templated, into the duties of a great landowner, and found
in Nature an outlet for his energies and an anodyne for the
savage pain that ceaselessly tore his heart. To many states
men the opportunity, before the final call comes, to remake
the broken threads of intellectual interests and ambitions, .
or simply to sift and test in serene reflection the lessons
of Ufe matured by the golden sunshine of the ripening
years, has been the boon they have valued most. For them
old age, warmed by the recognition of a people's grati
tude, has been a fruitful and satisfying climax. Through
Leisure with Dignity the men of action have often taught
their richest criticism of Ufe. But Bismarck assuredly was
not one of these. At seventy-six he could neither resume
nor begin a contemplative and inteUectual phase ; and his
ebbing physical forces denied to him the power that he
demanded for the mastery of nature. To him life without
power and the contest for power lost aU its savour. In his
love of Nature, with aU its keen appreciation of beauty
— the dawn on dreaming woods, the blue witchery of
distant hiUs, sunset on lush pastures, a mighty river wave
— charmed by the earnest stars — can be detected from
his boyhood an unconscious craving to make the beauty
his own, and to bend the power it enshrined to his insur
gent will. Nature now faded him, just because he was old
and Nature was young, and could yearly repeat the miracle
of renewing her youth. As he drove or walked on his

492 BISMARCK
estates, foUowed by his dogs as imperious and fierce as him
self, Nature seemed to cry at every turn the mocking truth
that no longer could he find the healing rest or the balm
that had in the past always been the prelude to a mightier
toil. In one place, and one alone, — the Reichskanzler-
palais in the WiUielmstrasse — was the power that would
satisfy. His favourite Goethe had said so truly that no
young man can be a master. Knowledge, judgment, ex
perience, the secrets of the Higher Command — these were
not the prerogatives of youth but of a maturity, fired in the
furnace of a Ufe passed in great affairs. Bismarck knew
that Ufe had made him a master. Yet away there in Berhn
the mastery was torn from him by ingrates and incom
petents, mere novices and apprentices, compared with
himself. The laceration of his heart poured out the
pent-up passion in the revelation of State secrets and
journalist denunciation.
It is not necessary here to follow the minute record.
When Caprivi fell from power (1895), it was Prince Hohen
lohe, not Bismarck, who succeeded to the ChanceUorship.
In 1892, when Herbert Bismarck was married and his
father made a triumphal progress to Vienna, via Berlin, the
German government was driven to forbid the German
ambassador to be present at the wedding. In 1893, when
Bismarck was seriously iU, there was, however, a temporary
reconcihation with the Emperor; and in 1895 when the
Reichstag refused to associate itself by vote with the
national rejoicing to celebrate his eightieth birthday, the
Emperor visited Friedrichsruhe, and repeated the visit in
December of the same year on the eve of the celebrations
for the ' silver wedding ' of the Empire (January 18, 1896).
Bismarck, in the autumn of 1896, repaid the homage by
publishing (October 24) the article that revealed the
'Reinsurance Treaty' of 1887 and its non -renewal in
1890. He was entitled apparently to do with impunity
what had ' justified ' the destruction of Arnim.
In 1894 he had suffered in the death of his wife (Novem
ber 27) the personal bereavement that completed the soli
tude of these years of unquenchable resentment. The
princess was buried at Varzin — the home that he made

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 493
for her, and which was in itself a record of the achieve
ment in which she had played a share, fuUy known only
to Bismarck himself. Johanna von Puttkamer had been
happy in the supreme gifts of love and life to a woman —
the right to be the wife and aUy of the mightiest German
of her and his century ; and of that personal union both
husband and wife could have said with truth that they had
lived with distinction between the torch of marriage and
the torch of death :
Viximus insignes inter utramque facem.
Varzin never beheld its bereaved master again, though to
this day the peasantry teU how in the glades that Bismarck
planted the lonely wayfarer in the dusk has suddenly been
confronted with the famUiar figure, now on horseback,
now on foot — erect and superhuman in mien and stature,
gaUoping or striding with the effortless majesty of power
from one beloved haunt to another — and sometimes halting
to turn on the awed spectator the penetration of eyes, once
seen in hfe, never to be forgotten.
The end came on July 30, 1898, at Friedrichsruhe.
Nations that have beaten out their path through toil,
faUure, controversy, revolution, and civil war to the golden
summits of victorious ambitions frequently anticipate the
verdict of posterity even in the lifetime of the leader and
in aU the asphyxiating and blinding atmosphere of strife.
The Germany of 1890 had already placed Bismarck along
with the other three greatest of German figures since the
Renaissance, with Luther, Frederick the Great, and Goethe,
That first division of the first class, which nations in
tuitively Umit with an unerring and jealous severity,
Germany now opened to admit the Prussian statesman.
It was aware that Bismarck, in common with the other
three, had demonstrable and conspicuous defects. Canoni
sation, however, by a people is a more exacting inquest
than canonisation by a church, for the duty assigned to the
Devil's Advocate, who is none other than the nation itself,
covers the vast field and infinite tests of that whole nation's
endeavour.' Hard as it unquestionably may be, it is easier
to be a saint and to achieve a perfection of individual char-

494 BISMARCK
acter and spirit than to sum up an epoch in a single per-
sonaUty, and thereby create an age in history. The title
to be the maker of a nation and an epoch is, and always
wiU remain, different from the accepted claims that dis
tinguish the national saint or even the national hero. In
the sanctuaries of a nation's ValhaUa there wiU be niches
without number for the heroes and the saints, and they
wiU be perpetual shrines of honour, virtue, and praise ;
but the corner reserved for the Makers of the Nation will
be a scanty and awful plot. The few, the very few, who
lie [there, because they cannot he in any other place,
have made their grave for themselves from the blood,
dust, passions, fears, hates, and dreams of their race,
and their race cannot refuse the privUege, if privUege it
be, in justice to itself rather than to them. Truth, not
honour or reverence or praise, is the Makers' meed, and to
such no tomb and no monument can pay the tribute of the
final judgment. Over what they did, the good that they
bequeathed and the evU that they wrought, men and
women wiU wrangle as long as the nation that gave them
birth retains its ambitions and can keep the flame of its
conscience burning. On the hearts of aU who come after
is graven a testimony which words either falsify or mar,
and from which there is and can be no appeal. Of the
Makers the nation itself is the supreme judge. Germany
or Europe may sternly reject or acclaim with enthusiasm
Bismarck the man and Bismarck's achievement, but the
Prussia and the Germany remain to which he gave himself
with a passion and a loyalty that soar beyond aU the
doubts and aU the praise, and the German people of the
twentieth century faced the future as his memorial.
Bismarck himself knew it and was content. ' I do not,'
he commanded when he was dying, ' I do not want a lying
official epitaph. Write on my tomb,' he added, ' that I
was the faithful servant of my master, the Emperor WUUam,
King of Prussia.' It was the bare truth. But something
more was required, if justice was to be done. The dead
Bismarck was happy in the felicity of those who made his
grave at Friedrichsruhe. Set in the oaks and the beeches
that he loved, far from the roaring Berhn that was for Ger-

THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 495
many but not for him the heart of the German Empire,
was placed a simple chamber, yet massive with Prussian
strength. On the slab that marks his resting-place, beside
the grave of his wife, ' who made him what he was,' is
engraved but one word — and that is enough — ' Bismarck.'

APPENDIX A
THE EMS DISPATCH
The texts of (a) Abeken's dispatch to Bismarck, and (b) Bismarck's
syncopated version for pubhcation are printed in parallel columns
below. It will be observed that the King left to Bismarck's
discretion the pubUc communication of his message, without
sending any instructions as to the form that pubhcation should
take, should Bismarck decide upon this step.
Abeken to Bismarck
Ems, July 13, 1870.
3-40 p.m. Bismarck's Version for Publication
His Majesty writes to me : After the news of the renuncia-
' Count Benedetti spoke to me tion of the hereditary Prince of
on the promenade, in order to HohenzoUern had been officiaUy
demand from me, finaUy in a communicated to the Imperial
very importunate manner, that government of France by the
I should authorise him to tele- Royal government of Spain, the
graph at once that I bound French Ambassador further de-
myself for aU future time never manded of his Majesty, the
again to give my consent if the King, at Ems, that he would
HohenzoUerns should ' renew authorise him to telegraph to
their candidature. I refused Paris that his Majesty, the
at last somewhat sternly, as it King, bound himself for all time
is neither right nor possible to never again to give his consent,
undertake engagements of this should the HohenzoIIerns renew
kind a tout jamais. I told him their candidature. His Majesty,
that I had as yet received no the King, thereupon decided
news, and as he was earUer in- not to receive the French Am-
formed from Paris and Madrid bassador again, and sent the
than myself, he could see clearly aide-de-camp on duty to teU
that my government had no him that his Majesty had
more interest in the matter.' nothing further to communi-
His Majesty has since received cate to the ambassador.
a letter from Prince Charles
496

APPENDIX 497

Anthony. His Majesty, having
told Count Benedetti that he
was awaiting news from the
Prince, has decided, with refers
ence to the above demand, on
the suggestion of Count Eulen-
berg and myself, not to receive
Count Benedetti again, but only
to let him be informed through
an aide-de-camp : ' That his
Majesty has now received from
the Prince confirmation of the
news which Benedetti had al
ready received from Paris, and
had nothing further to say to the
ambassador.' His Maj esty leaves
it to your ExceUency to decide
whether Benedetti's fresh de
mand and its rejection should be
at once communicated to both
our ambassadors, to foreign
nations, and to the Press.

31

APPENDIX B
THE REINSURANCE TREATIES OF 1 884 AND 1 887
The nature and contents of these secret undertakings, which form
so decisive and interesting a feature of Bismarck's poUcy from
1883 to his dismissal in March 1890, stiU remain very obscure.
The texts have never been officiaUy or unofficiaUy published, and
inference from scattered and contradictory statements is aU that
is possible. Certain points, however, are quite clear. In 1884.
Germany concluded with Russia a specific arrangement ; in 1887,
presumably because the arrangement of 1884 had terminated,
Germany concluded a fresh arrangement with Russia. In 1890
the arrangement of 1887 was not renewed by ChanceUor Caprivi.
The pubhc of Europe would probably have never known of the
existence of ' the 1887 Compact ' but for Bismarck's deUberate
revelation of its existence and non-renewal in the Hamburger
Nachrichten of October 24, 1896. It is noticeable that the revela
tion caused much excitement in Germany and a storm of indignant
criticism in Austria. It was very embarrassing to the German
government ; whether it was as great a surprise to the Foreign
Office in the BaU-Platz as it obviously was to the Austrian pubUc is
one of the points in controversy, on which precise information is
stiU lacking. The Austrian pubhc mind, as a study of the Viennese
newspapers of November 1896 proves, was seriously upset, and
there was much excited comment on Bismarck's betrayal of the
Dual AUiance by the secret arrangements with Russia. But the
Austrian government maintained an official discretion and re
served its indignation, if it felt any, for confidential communica
tion to the Wilhelmstrasse at BerUn. Nor did the debate in the
Reichstag (November 16, 1896) add anything to our knowledge.
The official Reicbsanzeiger had pubUshed (October 27) a curt note,
pronouncing the ' revelation ' to be a ' violation of the most con
fidential secrets of State which constituted a blow at the grave
interests of the Empire ' ; but neither the ChanceUor, Prince
Hohenlohe, nor Foreign Secretary Baron MarschaUv on Bieberstein,
though they spoke at considerable length in reply to the interpeUa-
tion of Graf Hompesch, gave any new information, except to admit
the bare fact that a compact had been made in 1887 and not re-
498

APPENDIX 499
newed in 1890. Prince Hohenlohe took refuge in the necessity of
official secrecy and reasons of State. The Foreign Secretary indeed
pointed out that a diplomacy which rested on a series of engage
ments, possibly conflicting in their terms, was of doubtful value,
and that the worth of any single engagement was not increased by
the number of other contracts. What the precise meaning of
this cryptic utterance was, it is impossible to decide ; but it clearly
was intended to convey — whether truly or not, we cannot say —
that the German Foreign Office had not docketed in its cupboard
other secret treaties of ' a reinsurance character,' together with
an assurance for the world in general and Vienna in particular,
that the German government of 1896 was, and intended to
remain, free to fulfil loyaUy the terms of the Dual or Triple
Alliance. Both ministers, however, also spoke casuaUy of ' negotiations
between 1887 and 1890.' Negotiations with whom or for what
they did not explain, but presumably they referred to negotiations
with Russia between 1887 and 1890 for the renewal of ' the
Compact of 1887 ' or a simUar treaty; No explanation was
offered of the reasons why ChanceUor Caprivi did not renew the
Compact of 1887 — e.g. was it, as Hohenlohe suggests in his Diary
(January 14, 1895, ii. 462), ' because the poUcy it led to was too
compUcated,' or because Russia raised her terms, or because the
Emperor had embarked on a serious attempt in 1890 to bring
Great Britain into the Triple Alhance, or because ' the reinsurance '
was judged to be a betrayal of Austria f It is tempting to connect
the non-renewal in 1890 with the dismissal of Bismarck ; for we
know that Bismarck's poUcy was regarded as a betrayal of Austria
by the Emperor and his mUitary entourage. Another inference
is stUl more tempting. Hohenlohe twice (e.g. ii. 429, and 452)
succinctly states the contents of ' the reinsurance ' as he understood
them to be (i.e. before he became ChanceUor and had free access
to confidential documents, when his sUence is instructive) :
'When I told him (Caprivi) that Schuvaloff had described him
as a trop honnete homme, he said that was because Bismarck had
concluded a treaty with Russia, under which we guaranteed
Russia a free hand in Bulgaria and Constantinople, while Russia
undertook to observe a neutral attitude in the Franco-German War.
This treaty had lapsed when Caprivi assumed office, and he had
not renewed it, because its pubhcation would have shattered the
Triple AUiance. I fear that Austria wiU not be grateful to us.'
And to the same effect (u. 452) : with the addition, ' Russia
pledged herself to remain neutral in case of a war with France,
even though Austria should lend a hand in the East.'

500 BISMARCK
These passages are apparently expUcit enough ; in reality they
are fuU of difficulties. Caprivi took office in March 1890 ; if,
as we seem bound to assume, ' the reinsurance ' was made in
November 1887, it did not lapse when Caprivi assumed office, but
ten months later. Are we to beUeve that ' the reinsurance '
lapsed in March 1890, i.e. that it was made in March 1887 ?
If so, what happened in November 1887 ? For if the Compact
of 1884 was renewed in the spring of 1887, what is the explanation
of the strained Russo-German relations from March to November
1887, and of the arrangement with the Tsar in that month at
BerUn ? ' The publication ' would have ' shattered the Triple
AUiance ' (sic) — but who was going to ' pubUsh ' it ? If it was a
secret treaty, why should it be ' pubUshed ' ? Did Hohenlohe
intend to convey that Austria (as was probable) knew nothing
of the ' reinsurance,' but that if she learned (from Russia or whom?)
of its existence, the Triple AUiance would be shattered f Why
should ' Austria not be grateful? ' Because she had been told
(between 1890 and 1892) that she had been betrayed between
1887 and 1890, but would not be betrayed any more ? And how
was ' Austria to lend a hand in the East,' detrimental to Germany ?
By tearing up the Triple AUiance and attacking Germany ? By
making an aUiance with France or how ? Without the text of the
document it is impossible to answer these and other conundrums.
But if Hohenlohe is correct, the inference is certain that (a) ' the
reinsurance ' of 1887 at least was concluded behind Austria's
back ; (b) that its contents gravely imperiUed the Dual and Triple
AUiances ; and (c) that the poUcy involved was condemned in 1890
and renounced.
What was that poUcy ? Clearly ' a free hand for Russia ' in the
Near East, and Bismarck said as much in his big speeches in 1887
and 1888, as noted in the text (see p. 446). That such ' a free hand '
was in conflict with Austrian ambitions is no less certain. But,
in 1890, the inference is irresistible that the Kaiser had already
embarked on the Weltpolitik which aimed ' not at a free hand for
Russia in Bulgaria and Constantinople ' but ' at a free hand for
Germany.' The heir to Constantinople, with Bulgaria as his
washpot, was to be the German Emperor, not the Emperor of
Russia ; whUe, concurrently, Austria was to throw the Habsburg
shoe over Serbia, the vaUeys of the Morava and Vardar and
Salonica, meeting on a Macedonian frontier, to be deUmited later,
the Kaiser's brother-in-law, the Duke of Sparta, the ' Tino ' of
imperial telegrams and recent history. The non-renewal of ' the
reinsurance ' was the categorical pre-condition of such a policy,
with which the Kaiser, flushed with super-Teutonic ambitions,

APPENDIX 501
returned from his pilgrimage in the East, to pledge himself to
Austria and to dismiss Bismarck, who regarded ' the new course '
as midsummer madness. It is at any rate very noticeable that
in 1896 neither Hohenlohe nor Baron Marschall attempted to
meet the chaUenge of the Hamburger Nachrichten, that the Kaiser's
and Caprivi's poUcy had driven Russia into the arms of France,
and that the authors of the Franco-Russian alhance were the men
who broke with Russia and supported Austria, coiite que coute.
It is no less certain that the non-renewal of the ' reinsurance ' was
made with the full knowledge and approval of the Kaiser.
A writer, M. Andre Mevil, in the Revue Hebdomadaire for June
1907 gives a very confident and detailed account of the ' reinsur
ance ' treaties. He does not give his authorities, but he writes as if
he had had access to information that could not be precisely stated.
Briefly, according to M. MevU, the first secret treaty was made
at Berlin on February 24, 1884, and was verbaUy ratified (and not
in writing, as not being necessary) in September 15, 1884, at
Skierniewice. The contents were known to Austria, or Austria was
a party to it. The Pan-Slav party under Katkoff worked un
ceasingly to prevent the renewal of the agreement, and in 1887
it was not renewed. This coincided with a dangerous crisis in
Franco-German relations. Alexander dechned to give a pledge
to remain neutral in case of a war on the Rhine, and M. Mevil
thinks that ' the Schnaebele incident ' was closed by Bismarck
because he could not rely on Russian neutrahty. Subsequently,
when Bismarck had exposed certain forgeries misrepresenting
Germany's policy in Bulgaria, the Tsar, when in BerUn, November
18, 1887, concluded the ' reinsurance ' which was not renewed in
1890. The agreement pledged Russia or Germany to neutrality
in the event of either being attacked by a third party (i.e. pre
sumably a Franco-German, or an Austro-German war). M. Mevil
draws a clear distinction between the Compact of 1884, to which
Austria was a party, and that of 1887, to which she was not. He
asserts that it was Russia's unwillingness in 1887 to include Austria
in the renewal that caused the Compact of 1884 to be dropped.
Hohenlohe spoke in the debate of November 16, 1896, ' of 1887
when Boulangism reached its height, and threatened a danger
that disappeared with the disappearance of Boulangism,' i.e. a
clear suggestion that the raison d'etre of ' the reinsurance ' was
the possibiUty of a Franco-German war, and the urgent desirabiUty
of securing Russia's neutrahty against that, eventuality (as was
done by Bismarck in 1870).
The Hamburger Nachrichten also suggested (October 24, 1896)
that the agreement was for six years, and M.( MevU seems to

502 BISMARCK
support this. But in view of the assertion in the same paper,
that it had not been renewed in 1890, this seems impossible,
unless it is meant that it was the treaty of 1884 which was for
six years and that the agreement of 1887 was a separate convention,
whoUy independent of that of 1884 — a hypothesis that only opens
up fresh queries and difficulties.
MarschaU and Hohenlohe positively asserted that the agreement,
that was not renewed, was a secret one, to be kept secret. Against
this the Hamburger Nachrichten of November 1, 1896, asserted
that its tenor had been communicated both to Austria and to
Italy ! How in that case it could be a secret arrangement, and
what value it would have, and why its non-renewal should have
been such a grave blunder, and why the revelation of what was
known both by the Austrian and ItaUan governments, as weU as
by the Russian government, should have caused the flurry of
excitement in 1896 and been denounced as equivalent to a lese-
majesti, I confess I cannot understand.
In conclusion, I am driven to infer that : (1) the agreement of
1884 was for three years ; (2) Austria may have been a party to it ;
(3) it pledged the signatories, possibly of three States, i.e. Bismarck,
Szechenyi, and Sabouroff to a benevolent neutrahty in the case of
any of the three being attacked ; (4) this tripartite arrangement
lapsed in 1887 ; (5) Bismarck, behind the back of Austria, con
cluded a secret and private 'reinsurance' with Russia in 1887;
(6) this ' reinsurance ' was for three years, and pledged each
signatory to neutrahty in the event of either being attacked by
a third party, i.e. France or Austria ; (7) this was not renewed by
Caprivi in 1890 ; (8) in consequence Russia felt isolated and
graduaUy drifted into an entente and then an aUiance with France.
It is noticeable, further, that the British Standard and the
German Zukunft in 1884 duly notified their readers with the
information that Germany had come to an understanding with
Russia. So far as I know, no other newspaper discovered or pub
Ushed the fact. But the information passed practicaUy unnoticed
in 1884.
Secondly, German public criticism in 1896 represented Bismarck's
' reinsurance ' of 1887 as a masterpiece of German statecraft —
that is to say, German pubhc opinion hailed with enthusiasm
the conclusion of a secret understanding by Germany with Russia,
at the expense and behind the back of their ally, Austria ; and it
regretted that Caprivi had failed to continue this Bismarckian
method of pledging his country to one aUy, while the value of the
pledge was being secretly whittled away in favour of that aU/s
avowed enemy. Such a mental attitude is instructive in the

APPENDIX 5o3
thoroughness with which the German public had assimilated
Bismarckian principles. What would German pubUc opinion
have said had Austria behind the back of Germany, and in violation
of the Dual AUiance, made a secret reinsurance with Russia to the
detriment of Germany ? Would that have been Austrian ' per
fidy ' or a masterpiece of Austrian statecraft ?
The articles in the Hamburger Nachrichten and other papers, and
a fuU report of the Debate of November 16, 1896, wiU be found in
Penzler, Bismarck nach seiner Entlassung, vol. vii. and in vol. iii.
of the Bismarck Jahrbuch. While this book was in the press,
Professor Simpson's second article (Nineteenth Century, January
1918) on the Sabouroff Papers became available. Professor Simpson,
unfortunately, does not throw any more hght on the secret agree
ment of 1884, or of 1887 — except to say (p. 75) : ' as a matter of
fact the understanding became closer with Germany, especiaUy
as Bismarck was endeavouring to negotiate a " reinsurance "
treaty with Russia, unknown to Austria, providing for neutrahty
in case either Power was attacked by a third. In this he succeeded.
" Then came Caprivi in place of Bismarck " — the words are
M. Sabouroff' s — " and said that it was not necessary to make
a separate treaty with Russia, because Germany was on good
relations with her. Then foUowed stiU other councUlors who
began to smUe towards France, but whether it began with Russia
or with France I do not know." '
The main thesis of Professor Simpson's article is to summarise
from the Sabouroff MSS. the negotiations by which Austria,
Germany, and Russia came to conclude a treaty in 188 1, arranging
for an agreed poUcy in the Near East. This treaty was signed on
June 18, 1881 : in 1884 ' it was renewed for a further term of three
years, subject to one shght modification,' but not renewed in 1887.
The whole article with the preceding one (Nineteenth Century,
December 1917) fuUy bears out the general Une of interpretation
of Bismarck's poUcy and methods maintained in the text (chapter vi.
§§ 3, 5, and 6). Some quotations are so relevant as to justify their
presence here. ' Bismarck was a rough man even in poUtics, but
Hs conservative convictions were very sincere ; he was opposed to
Liberalism in any form. " There are five great Powers ; I must
always strive," Bismarck said, " to be one of three against two."
Gortschakov in 1870 " consulted the Emperor to take immediate
steps, whatever the risk, to annul the clauses of the Treaty of
Paris rather than wait the definitive victory of Prussia before doing
so." In 1875 apropos of "the crisis" in May — "I confess that
aU my admiration went to Prince Gortschakov ; he showed himself
superior in self-command, courtesy, precise and, I ought to add,

504 BISMARCK
breadth of view." The Grand Duke Nicholas in 1877 " did not
occupy Constantinople in accordance with the instructions tele
graphed to him, and the Emperor never forgave him." In 1880,
Bismarck said : " Thus at last we shaU be able to form that solid
monarchical bloc, and feel no longer any concern about the internal
convulsions with which the Western Powers may be troubled.
The three Emperors are strong enough to defy aU the agitations
abroad, and sufficiently great lords to hve content with the patri
mony of their ancestors." '
Bismarck said on two occasions to M. Sabouroff : ' I do not
share the prejudices of the other cabinets on the subject of the
danger of handing over Constantinople to Russia ' : and again :
' I flatter myself that I was the first in Europe to break with the
old tradition with which the Westerners inoculated aU the Cabinets,
viz., that a Russian Constantinople would be a European danger.' As
to these utterances it is relevant to point out that Bismarck's obiter
dicta and ' confessions ' are always interesting, but generaUy, unless
confirmed by specific acts, whoUy untrustworthy. Bismarckian
thinking aloud, in the presence of another person, had invariably
a concealed objective. Had Bismarck carried out aU the ' con
fessions ' and ' thinking aloud ' that he made to Napoleon in,
between 1858 and 1867, Central Europe would never have been
reconstructed as it actuaUy was. Napoleon, Lord AmpthiU,
M. Sabouroff, and many others learned that between Bismarck's
ideas and confessions and Bismarck's acts there lay a substantial
world of difference. Words with Bismarck were generaUy in
tended to mask his own, or unmask the thoughts of those with
whom he conversed, and his aUuring geniality was one of his
finest and most deceptive diplomatic gifts. Hohenlohe records
how Alexander in. after 1890 said that in doing business with
Bismarck, even when the arrangement was satisfactory, he always
felt ' qu'il me tricherait.'
Austria required much pressure in 1881 to come into the pro
posed arrangement. ' Throughout the Sabouroff Memoirs' writes
Professor Simpson, ' nothing is so obvious as the disdain that
both the negotiators feel for " the ramshackle Empire," and yet
it is always Bismarck who says the reaUy brutal things.' ' It is
abundantly clear, however, that the vital significance of the Dual
AUiance had not been disclosed to the Tsar.' The arrangement
of 1 88 1 was for three yeara. ' When Austria,' Bismarck said,
with one of his usual vivid touches, ' has worn that flannel
next her skin for three whole years, she won't be able to take
it off without running the risk of catching cold.' That was
what happened in 1890 in the matter of the reinsurance treaties.

APPENDIX 505
Caprivi threw off the flannel that Bismarck had made Germany
wear next her skin for six years — and Germany caught cold. One
other Bismarckian touch is too deUciously characteristic to be
omitted. ' We shaU make a mistake if we keep Austria from compromising
herself by committing to writing these demands of hers (i.e. the
annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, plus the Sandjak of Novi
Bazar and some other acquisitions of a Uke character), which wiU
only embroil her with the Western Powers, and furnish proofs
of complicity with us in any future Eastern crisis.'
The negotiator who had lured Benedetti to state his proposals in
writing, and then pubUshed them in The Times, knew weU the
value of promissory notes with the signature of the promissor
attached. Bismarck liked a cupboard fuU of such compromising
stuff — to be revealed, when he chose — and he took good care
to leave as httle of his own ' paper ' in other persons' hands as
possible. In Bismarckian ethics the moraUty of the betrayal of a
confidence was decided by the difference between the betrayer and
the betrayed. If you were the former, reason of State could ad
minister a plenary absolution; but if you were the latter, then let the
welkin ring with the iniquity of the act. But the best comment
on Bismarckian methods and aU of the same character was supphed
by Bismarck himself to his wife, when he first became initiated in
the grand diplomacy at Frankfort : ' Not even the most scoun-
dreUy democrat or sceptic could conceive the charlatanry and
fraud that lies in this diplomacy.'

BIBLIOGRAPHY
This BibUographical Appendix is not, nor does it profess to be,
a bibhography of German history for the period of Bismarck's
lifetime. Such would require a separate volume. Nor does it
profess to be an exhaustive bibhography of the historical Uterature
on Bismarck himseU. Attention here is necessarUy confined to the
chief original sources available, together with the leading secondary
authorities, and brief critical comments based on the author's
study. For a more complete catalogue reference should be made
to Dahlmann-Waitz, Quellenkunde der deutschen Geschichte (8th
edition, ed. Kohler, 191 2), and R. Charmatz, Wegweiser durch
die Literatur der Osterreichischen Geschichte (1912), also to the
bibliographies in vols, x., xi., and xii. of The Cambridge Modern
History ; and to the bibliographies in Sir A. Ward's History of
Germany (vols i. and ii.), the third volume of which, dealing with
the period from 1871 onwards, has stiU to be published.
The chief original authorities that are indispensable are :
Bismarck Brief e (ed. Kohl), 18 36- 1872.
Neue Bismarckbriefe (ed. Poschinger).
Fiirst Bismarck's Briefe an seine Braut u. Gattin (ed. H. von
Bismarck) (Eng. transl., 1901).
Die Politischen Reden (ed. H. Kohl, 14 vols).
Briefwechsel zwischen Kaiser Wilhelm und Fiirst Bismarck.
Briefwechsel mit dem Freiherrn von Steinitz.
Briefwechsel mit Leopold von Gerlach.
Bismarck, The Man and the Statesman (Eng. transl. of the
Gedanken und Erinnerungen, cited as The Memoirs in the text).
The German edition contains an ' Anhang ' in two volumes. 1. Of
Letters to the Emperor WiUiam. 2. Of other Letters and docu
ments. This ' Anhang ' has not been translated.
Preussen in Bundestag (4 vols.). These contain the dispatches
from Frankfurt, 185 1- 1859. They have been translated into
French (ed. Funck-Brentano) but not into Enghsh.
Neue Berichte aus Frankfurt (ed. Poschinger. A supplement
to the above).
The foUowing also' edited by Poschinger are coUections of
original sources :
606

BIBLIOGRAPHY 507
Fiirst Bismarck und der Bundesrat (2 vols).
Fiirst Bismarck und die Diplomaten (2 vols).
Fiirst Bismarck und die Parlamentarier (3 vols).
Fiirst Bismarck als Volkswirt (5 vols., 2 of which are documents).
None of these have been translated.
The documents and letters in the Bismarck Jahrbuch (ed. H.
Kohl, 6 vols.), coUected from many stray sources, make a valuable
coUection. The various books by M. Busch are fuU of curious
information : Tagebuchblatter (3 vols.) ; Bismarck, Some Secret
Pages of his History (3 vols. Eng. transl.) ; Unser Reich skanzler,
(2 vols. Eng. transl.) ; Bismarck in the Franco-German War
(Eng. transl. 2 vols.). The official pubhcation of original docu
mentary material can be found in : Mgidi, L. K. and A. Klauhold.
Sammlung der qffiziellen Aktenstiicke, continued by L. Worthmann
and other editors (34 vols.). H. Kohl's Fiirst Bismarck Regesten
zu einer wissenschaftlichen Bibliographie (2 vols.) is an indis
pensable aid to Bismarck's hfe.
Some very convenient monographs on sources are to be found
in the Quellen Sammlung zur Deutschen Geschichte, edited by
E. Brandenburger : e.g. Briefe und Aktenstiicke zur Geschichte
der Griindung des Deutschen Reiches (ed. Brandenburger, 2 vols.) ;
Die Deutschen Parteiprogramme, 1844-1900 (ed. F. Salomon, 2 vols.) ;
Briefe u.s.w. zur Geschichte der Hohenzoll. Kandidatur (ed. R. Fester,
2 vols.) : with this latter should be placed R. Fester's Neue Beitrage
zur Geschichte der Hohenz. Thronkandidatur ; E. Marcks, Bismarck
und die Hohenzollern Kandidatur; and Delbriick's essay on the
subject in Preuss. Jahrbucher, vol. 82.
Of the numerous Biographies, that by E. Marcks wiU probably
be, when finished, the most complete ; but so far only one volume
(to 1848) has appeared. It contains much new and valuable
information with excerpts from many unpubhshed letters and docu
ments. L. Hahn's Biography in five volumes is enriched with much
original documentary material, but is not very readable. M. Lenz's
Bismarck in one volume (a reprint of the article in the Allgemeine
Deutsche Biographie) is a masterly piece of work, but not very fuU
for the period after 1871. G. Egelhaaf's Biography, in one volume,
is a scholarly study, and much fuUer on the period after 1871, but
not so weU written as Lenz's book. Of the others, D. Klein-
Hattingen, Bismarck und seine Welt, is weU worth reading. But the
best biography so far is that by P. Matter (in French, 3 vols.),
whose knowledge of the sources is complete — a book marked
by French artistry and scholarship and very judicial in tone and
judgment. In EngUsh there is a one volume biography by
G. W. Headlam, admirable, but unhappily not very full on the

508 BISMARCK
period after 1871. The biography in two volumes by C. Lowe is
readable, but not very critical, and now out of date.
For some other aspects of Bismarck's work : A. Singer, Bismarck
in der Literatur is indispensable. (This is a yearly register and
catalogue of aU the contemporary pamphlets, satires, and books
bearing on Bismarck.) York, Graf von Wartenburg, Bismarck's
dussere Erscheinung in Wort und Bild (with ninety portraits) is an
interesting study of the portraits, etc. Grand-Carteret, Bismarck
en caricatures (a study of the caricature Uterature) ; and with this
should be examined G. Hochstetten, Bismarck, Historische Kari-
katuren (with text by Max. Harden) ; Senfft von PUsach, Aus
Bismarck's Werkstatt (a critical and stimulating study of Bis
marckian principles) ; W. Blume, Von Politik u. Strategie, Bis
marck und Moltke (a valuable study by a Prussian General of
Bismarck's principles of poUcy in relation to strategy).
Apart from the criticism in the standard biographies, three
monographs by weU-known German historians on the historical
value of Bismarck's reminiscences are real contributions to know
ledge and scholarship : G. Kammel, Kritische Studien zu Fiirst
Bismarck's Gedanken ; M. Lenz, Zur Kritik der Gedanken, u.s.w. :
E. Marcks, Versuch einer kritischen Wurdigung der Gedanken, u.s.w.
For the period after 1890 the foUowing supply fuU material :
P. Liman, Bismarck nach seiner Entlassung (2 vols) ; H. Hofmann,
Bismarck, 1890- 1898 (2 vols.) ; P. Penzler, Fiirst B. nach seiner
Entlassung (7 vols.).
On Bismarck's financial poUcy after 1878, see O. Schneider's
monograph in Schmoller's Jahrbuch for 1910 and 1912 : for the
Kulturkampf, see G. Goyau, Le Kulturkampf, P. Majunke, Der
Kulturkampf, and Lefebre de Behaine, Lion XIII. et le Prince de
Bismarck. For some other aspects of Bismarck, see H. Poschinger, Die
Tischgesprache des Reichskanzlers (Eng.' transl. with introd. by
S. Whitman), and Neue Tischgesprache (1 vol.), and Also sprach
Bismarck (2 vols.).
Of the secondary authorities for the period up to 1848, see
the German history chapters in A. Stern, Geschichte Europa's seit
1815 (vols, i.-vu.) ; and generaUy for the whole period, H. Oncken,
Das Zeitalter Kaiser's Wilhelm I. ; H. v. Zweideneck-Siidenhorst,
Deutsche Geschichte (from 1806-1871) 3 vols. ; and H. Friedjung,
Der Kampfum die Vorherrschaft in Deutschland (1857-1866), 2 vols.;
H. v. Sybel (Eng. transl. by G. Perrin), Die Begrundung des
Deutschen Retches, 7 vols. Sybel's work down to 1868 is based on
material in the Prussian archives : it has been supplemented by
Sybel himself in the later editions and criticised by various writers

BIBLIOGRAPHY 509
subsequently, but in spite of omissions' .it remains indispensable.
Of the works of H. v. Treitschke, the Deutsche Geschichte does not
deal with the period of or after 1848 ; but his Zehn Jahre deutscher
Kampfe ; the Histor. und politische Aufsatze (2 vols.), the pamphlet
Was fordern wir von Frankreich, and the Politik (Eng. transl.)
are more than instructive ; they are essential for understanding
the German point of view. Much the best history in Enghsh is that
by Sir A. Ward, Germany, 1815-1871 (2 vols., Camb. Hist. Series —
taking events down to 1871).
For the more recent history: H. Blum, Das Deutsche Reich
zur Zeit Bismarck's ; G. Egelhaaf, Geschichte der neuesten Zeit ;
H. Miinz, Von Bismarck bis Biilow ; and P. Rohrbach, Bismarck
und Wir; and C. Andler (and others), Les origines du Panger-
manisme (a series of volumes in French, which with their lengthy
quotations from German writers, the critical annotations, and the
scholarly bibliographies constitutes a valuable introduction to the
later phases of German poUtical development from 1870 onwards).
For the Schleswig-Holstein affair it must suffice to cite K.
Jansen-K. Samwer, Schleswig-Holstein' s Befreiung. (AU the lead
ing authorities deal with the copious controversial literature.) A
brief statement of the Danish case wUl be found in a short Mono
graph by A. D. Jorgensen ; reference may also be made to W. R.
Prior, North Sleswick under Prussian Rule. The standard biography
of the Emperor WUUam 1. is that by E. Marcks, and of his son,
' the Crown Prince,' and Emperor Frederick in. by M. Philippson.
For the period 1 870-1 and the making of the German Empire,
I have found far the most useful W. Busch, Die Kampfe urn
Reichsverfassung und Kaisertum ; to which may be added O. Lorenz,
Kaiser Wilhelm und die Begriindung des Reiches, 1866-1871, which
contains much valuable original material — derived largely from the
Grand-Duke of Baden and the unitarian group of which he was
the head.
On Austrian history, the most useful general guides aretwo works
by R. Charmatz, Geschichte der auswdrtigen Politik Osterreich's
im iq Jahrhundert (2 vols.) ; and Osterreich's innere Geschichte von
184.8 his icjoy (2 vols.) : two others may be mentioned, T. v.
Sosnosky, Die Balkanpolitik Osterreich-Ungarns seit 1866 (2 vols.),
and L. Eisenmann, Le Compromis. The weU-known works by
Cheradame and Seton- Watson do not specifically bear on Bismarck.
For general purposes K. Meinecke, Weltbiirgertum und National-
Staat, is an iUuminating phUosophical treatise in historical form
on the development of poUtical thought and principles in Germany
from the French Revolution to Bismarck. It is not easy reading
for those unacquainted with German philosophy, but its treatment

5io BISMARCK
is clear and masterly. P. Rohrbach, Der Deutsche Gedanke in der
Welt, is a good statement of German ambitions in the period,
1871-1914. Of the original Memoirs the foUowing are invaluable : this
selected Ust is intended to convey different points of view.
KeudeU. (Personal recoUections.) Fiirst und Furstin Bismarck
(French transl., Bismarck et sa Famille).
Abeken. Ein Schlichtes Leben (also in an Eng. transl.). (Abeken
was one of the most devoted of Bismarck's official staff.)
Wagener, H. Erlebtes (in 2 parts. Wagener was editor of the
Kreuzzeitung). Mittnacht, Freiherr von. Erinnerungen an Bismarck.
Beust, Count. Drei viertel Jahrhunderten, 2 vols. (Eng.
transl. by Baron de Worms, 2 vols.) An entertaining and valuable
contribution. Roon, A. von. Denkwiirdigkeiten aus dem Leben (absolutely in
valuable). 3 vols.
Andrassy, Count JuUus. Sein Leben u. seine Zeit (by E. von
Wertheimer). 3 vols. This contains a great deal of original
material, particularly in vols. 2 and 3.
Bernhardi, T. von. Aus dem Leben T. v. B., 9 vols, (a work
of great value, particularly after 1862).
Stosch, A. von. Denkwiirdigkeiten, Briefe und Tagebuch Blatter
(unfortunately does not go beyond 1872).
Unruh, H. V. von. Erinnerungen (ed. H. v. Poschinger).
Delbriick, R. Lebenserinnerungen (2 vols).
Bennigsen. Life by H. On.cken (with original papers and letters,
not translated).
Simson E. v. Erinnerungen.
La Marmora. Un po' piu di Luce (mainly on affairs in 1866).
Karl v. Rumanien. Aus dem Leben Konig Karl's von Rumanien
(also in an Eng. transl.). Of great importance.
Ernst v. Sachsen-Coburg. Aus meinem Leben und aus meiner
Zeit (gives the ' Coburg ' School point of view).
Lasker, E. Aus E. Lasker's Nachlassungen. Ed. W. Cahn.
(The National Liberal who became a Radical.)
Bebel, A. My Life (Eng. transl. of the German autobiography).
Windthorst, L. Ein Lebensbild by P. Majunke. Ausgewahlte
Reden, ed. A. L. Meyer (4 vols.).
Richter, Eugen. Im alten Reichstag, Erinnerungen. (The leader
of the South German Radicals.)
Tiedemann, C. Erinnerungen. (Tiedemann was Chef der Refchs-
kanzlei under Bismarck for six years.)
Bamberger, L. Erinnerungen. (A leading National Liberal and

BIBLIOGRAPHY 511
Secessionist.) Also his striking Bismarck Posthumus (pubUshed in
1899). Freytag, G. Erinnerungen (Eng. transl. in 2 vols.) ; Der Kron-
prinz und die Deutsche Kaiserkrone (Eng. transl. in 2 vols.).
Gerlach, Leopold v. Denkwiirdigkeiten (2 vols.).
Gerlach, E. Ludwig von. Aufzeichnungen aus seinem Leben
(2 vols.).
Hohenlohe-SchUhngsfurst. Denkwiirdigkeiten (EngUsh transl.
in 2 vols.).
Meding, O. Memoiren zur Zeitgeschichte (3 vols.).
Bucher, Lothar. Leben und Werke (by H. von Poschinger 3 vols.).
(L. B. had a varied career from revolutionist to henchman of
Bismarck.) Stockmar, C. F. von. Denkwiirdigkeiten (Eng. transl. 2 vols.).
Hansen, J. Les Coulisses de la diplomatie.
For the French side, the foUowing original sources are indis
pensable : Les origines diplomatiques de la Guerre de 18JO-1 (a
complete collection of the sources in the French archives, com
mencing with 1862, and criticaUy edited and annotated. Ten
volumes so far have been pubhshed, reaching July 12, 1866.) With
these must be noted — Napoleon, Les idees NapoUoniennes ;
Rothan, G., La Politique Francaise en 1866 ; Souvenirs diplo
matiques ; La France et sa politique exterieure en 186 J (2 vols.) ;
V Allemagne et I'ltalie, 1870-1 (2 vols.), Count Benedetti, Essais
Diplomatiques ; L'Empereur Guillaume et le Prince de Bismarck ;
Ma Mission a Ems ; La Triple Alliance ; La Paix Arm&e et ses
Consequences ; Gontaut-Biron, E. de, La Mission de G. B. a Berlin
and Dernieres annies de V Ambassade d Berlin ; Due de Gramont,
La France et la Prusse avant la guerre ; Thiers, A., Notes et Souvenirs.
Valuable letters from General Le Flo were published in the
Figaro for 1887 : the Revue Historique and the Revue de Paris
contain many critical articles after 1880 on the period. Of the
secondary authorities it is only necessary to cite here : P. de la
Gorce, Histoire du Second Empire (7 vols.) ; OUivier, E., U Empire
Liberal (16 vols.) ; Sorel, A., Histoire Diplomatique de la Guerre
Franco-Allemande (2 vols.) ; Hanotaux, G., Histoire de la France
Contemporaine (4 vols., with much original material from MS.
sources ; Eng. transl.) ; and Denis, E., La Fondation de I'Empire
Allemand (a chef-d'oeuvre of French historical scholarship) ; Des-
chaumes, E., Gambetta, Le Grand Patriote ; and Debidour, Histoire
diplomatique de P Europe, 18 14- 1878 (a classical text book) ; the
supplementary volume, 1878-1904 is useful, but somewhat dis
appointing, though its bibliographies, particularly of French
sources, are valuable.

512 BISMARCK
For the British side the foUowing Parliamentary Papers and
Blue Books contain diplomatic correspondence and other papers :
Schleswig-Holstein, 1863, No. 74; 1864, Nos. 64 and 65 ; 1865,
No. 57 ; Luxemburg, 1867, Nos. 74 and 415 ; 1870, No. 70 ;
Africa, 1884-5, No. 54; 1890, No. 51; Poland, 1863, No. 75;
1864, No. 76 ; Russia, 1871, No. 72.
And the foUowing biographies and memoirs : Morier, Sir
Robert, Memoirs and Letters, 2 vols. ; Lord J. RusseU (Life by Sir
S. Walpole) ; Acton, Lord, Historical Essays and Studies ('Essay on
the Causes of the Franco-German War ') ; GranviUe, Earl (Life,
by Lord Fitzmaurice) ; Clarendon, Earl, Life of, by Sir H. Max-
weU, in 2 vols. ; Crowe, Sir J. A., Reminiscences ; Loftus, Lord A.,
Diplomatic Reminiscences, second series ; Prince Consort, The,
Life, hy Sir T. Martin (particularly vols. 3-5) ; Vitzthum von
Eckstadt, Count, London, Gastein und Sadowa ; SaUsbury, Marquis
of, Essays on Foreign Policy (reprinted from the Quarterly Review) ;
Dilke, Sir C, The Present Position of European Politics (i.e. in 1886) —
a most valuable study ; and Life of Dilke, by Miss TuckweU, in
2 vols. ; Lord Lyons, Life of, by Lord Newton ; Gladstone, W. E.,
Life of, by Lord Morley.
The Annual Register throughout is very helpful ; and can be
coUated with Schulthess, H., Europaischer Geschichts-Kalender
(annuaUy produced after i860). H. Egerton, British Foreign
Policy — A Rough Outline, is very stimulating and helpful on the
problems for British policy from 1850 onwards.
The foUowing by W. H. Dawson are also very helpful :
German Socialism and F. Lassalle ; Bismarck and State Socialism ;
The Evolution of Modern Germany ; German Fiscal Policy during
the Nineteenth Century ; Social Insurance in Germany, 1 883- 191 1.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
1815. April 1. Otto von Bismarck-Schonhausen born.
1821-27. Bismarck at Plamann's School in Berlin.
1827-30. „ at Friedrich-Wilhelms Gymnasium in Berlin.
1830-32. „ at the Gymnasium zum grauen Kloster.
1832. „ a student at the University of Gottingen.
1834. „ a student at the University of Berlin.
1835. » enters the State Civil Service.
1838. „ serves for one year in the Garde- Jiiger.
1839. Death of Bismarck's mother. He takes over (with his brother) the
family estates.
1 841. Bismarck settles at Kniephof.
1842-43. Travels in England, Switzerland, France, and North Germany.
1845. Death of Bismarck's father. Bismarck takes over Schonhausen.
1847. Bismarck attends the United Diet of the Estates (April 11).
Bismarck marries Johanna von Puttkamer.
1848-49. The years of Revolution in Germany.
1849. The Imperial Crown voted to the King of Prussia by the National
Parliament at Frankfurt March (29), and rejected by him
(April 28).
1850. Convention or Punctation of Olmiitz.
1851. Re-establishment of the Federal Constitution of 1815 (May 16).
Bismarck appointed Minister Plenipotentiary for Prussia at Frank
furt (July 15).
1851-59. Bismarck Minister at Frankfurt.
1852. The Treaty of London settles the Danish Succession and the question
of the Duchies (Schleswig-Holstein).
1854-56. The Crimean War. The Treaty of Paris (March 30, 1856).
1858. October 26. Prince William becomes Regent in Prussia.
1859. January 29. Bismarck transferred to the Embassy at Petersburg.
April 29. War between Austria and Piedmont (with France).
November 10. Treaty of Zurich ends the Italian War.
i860. May 5. Garibaldi's Expedition of ' The Thousand.'
1861. January 2. The Prince Regent becomes King of Prussia as
William 1.
1862. Bismarck appointed Ambassador at Paris (May 22).
. September 23. Bismarck appointed Minister-President of Prussia. Re
jection of the Military Budget. 'The Constitutional Conflict.'
1863. Rebellion in Poland. The Alvensleben Convention (February 8).
August 17. Congress of Princes at Frankfurt.
November 15. Death of Frederick vn. of Denmark. Opening of
the Schleswig-Holstein Conflict.
1864. January 16. Alliance of Prussia and Austria.
(April 25-June 25. Failure of the London Conference to settle
"*" the Schleswig-Holstein Question.
October 24. Treaty of Vienna. The Duchies ceded to Austria and
Prussia.
1865. The Convention of Gastein (August 14).
1866. April 8. Prussia concludes an alliance with Italy.
B. 2K

5 14 BISMARCK
1866. "-June 14. Prussia declares the Federal Diet dissolved.
June 15. Austria and Prussia at War.
July 3. Battle of Koniggratz.
August 23. Treaty of Prague.
September. The Constitutional Conflict ended.
Bismarck is created a Count.
1867. February 12. The Constituent Reichstag of the North German
Confederation meets.
March and April. The Luxemburg Question.
May 11. The Conference of London neutralises Luxemburg.
July 1. The Constitution of the North German Confederation comes
into operation.
July 14. Bismarck appointed Federal Chancellor.
1868. April 27. The Customs Parliament for Germany meets.
September. Queen Isabella of Spain abdicates.
1869. April n. Benedetti at Berlin inquires as to a Hohenzollern Candi-
^- dature for the vacant Spanish Throne.
The Vatican Council meets (December 8).
^1870. June 21. King William agrees to the Hohenzollern Candidature.
July 12. The Hohenzollern Candidature abandoned.
„ 14. Bismarck publishes the 'Ems telegram.'
j „ 15. Prussian mobilisation ordered.
', ,,-19. France declares War on Prussia.
"„ 25. Bismarck publishes the Draft Treaty of August 1866.
September 1. Battle of Sedan.
„ 4. Fall of the Second Empire.
„ 20. Italian Troops enter Rome.
October 27. Surrender of Metz.
„ 31. Russia denounces the Black Sea Articles of the Treaty
of 1856.
1871. January 18. William 1. proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles.
Bismarck becomes Chancellor of the German Empire.
March 13. Conference at London revises the Treaty of 1856.
April 1 . Bismarck created a Prince.
L___, May 10. Treaty of Frankfurt.
1872. Entente of the Three Empires and the Three Emperors (September).
The Kulturkampf begins in Prussia.
18^3. — May 15. 'The May Laws.' The German occupation of France
terminates. Bismarck resigns the Minister-Presidency to Roon.
1 874. Increasing friction with France.
1875. Franco-German Crisis. Intervention of Russia and Great Britain
(April to May).
Revolts in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
1876. Split in the Conservative Parties in Prussia.
Serbia and Montenegro declare war on Turkey (July).
Turkish Massacres in Bulgaria.
1877. February 20. Leo xiii. succeeds Pius IX. as Pope.
Russia declares war on Turkey (April 24).
1878. March 3. Treaty of San Stefano.
May 30. Secret Convention between Great Britain and Russia.
. June 13. Congress of Berlin. The Treaties of Berlin (July 13).
r&£9»--The Dual Alliance between Germany and Austria (October 7).
Bismarck commences to end the Kulturkampf and breaks with the
National Liberals.
VjEommencement of the New Protectionist and Socialist Policy.
1880. A Liberal Ministry in Great Britain.
1 88 1. Assassination of the Tsar Alexander 11. (March 13).

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 515
1 88 1. Fall of the Gambetta Ministry in France.
1882. May 20. The Triple Alliance. Italy joins the Dual Alliance.
Foundation of Die Deutsche Kolonial-Gesellschaft.
1883. The New Socialistic Legislation in Germany.
1884. March. The Secret 'Reinsurance' Convention with Russia, con
firmed (September) at Skierniewice.
Anglo-German Colonial friction. Germany acquires Togoland, the
Cameroons, part of New Guinea, and other Colonies.
The Conference at Berlin to delimit spheres of the European
Powers in Africa. Foundation of the Congo Free State.
Fall of the Ferry Cabinet at Paris (April).
Anglo-German Colonial Agreement.
Eastern Roumelia joins Bulgaria. War between Bulgaria and Serbia.
1886. January 7. Boulanger becomes Minister of War in France.
August 21. Alexander of Battenberg kidnapped in Bulgaria.
Russia and Austria-Hungary in prolonged disagreement over the
Balkans.
1887. Renewal of the Triple Alliance.
Franco-German Crisis over 'The Schnaebele Incident' (April 20).
The Boulangist Movement at its height.
Pope Leo xm. arbitrates between Germany and Spain. End of the
Kulturkampf.
Great increase in German armaments. Renewal of the Reinsurance
Treaty.
1888. February 6. Bismarck's Review of the European situation.
Death of the Emperor William 1. (March 9).
Accession (March 9), and death of the Emperor Frederick in. (June 15).
Accession of the Emperor William 11. (June 15).
1889. Commencement of the quarrel between Bismarck and the Emperor
(September).
1890. March 20. Bismarck 'resigns' the Chancellorship.
General von Caprivi appointed Chancellor.
July 1. Anglo-German Colonial Agreement. The Emperor declares
that 'our future lies on the water' (September).
1898. Death of Bismarck.
Foundation of the German Navy League.

INDEX
Note. — Treaties, Battles, and Laws are indexed under single collective headings

Alexander ii., 76, 260, 342, 398.
Alexander in., 398-9, 434 seq., 445.
Alsace-Lorraine, 12, 278-9, 294-7,
392-3, 466.
Alsen, 179.
Alvensleben, General von, 138.
Andrassy, Count, 338, 341, 342, 352.
Antonelli, Cardinal, 206, 314.
Arndt, 6, 16.
Arnim, Count, 308, 335.
Arnold, Matthew, 253.
Augustenburg, Frederick, Duke of,
154. '63. i75. 2'3-
Austria, policy of, 25, 33, 58-61, 71,
81, 8'/, 104, 139, 146, 183, 197
seq., 206, 219, 341, 344, 349,
351, 408, 444. See also Prussia
and Austria, relations of; Ger
many and Austria, relations of.
Auxerre, Napoleon's speech at, 200.
Baden, 203, 212, 310.
'Baden Memorial,' the, 112.
Battles of, or at —
Koniggratz, 28, 166, 204.
Magenta, 77, 107.
Novara, 58.
Sedan, 122, 271.
Solferino, 77, 107.
Spicheren, 155, 271.
Worth, 155, 271,
Bavaria, 71, 207, 212, 241, 259, 282,
285, 310.
Bazaine, Marshal, 276.
Bebel, August, 236, 360, 383, 386.
Belgium, 11, 196, 212, 333.
Benedek, 199.
Benedetti, Count, 202, 206 seq., 264,
268.
Bennigsen, R. von, 80, 150, 246, 325,
343. 352.378-
Berlin, Congress of, 91, 339-40.
516

Bernstorff, Count, 175.
Beust, Count, 52, 145, 178, 260, 270,
333-
Biarritz, Bismarck at, 182, 195.
Bismarck, Count Herbert, 410, 427,
461,465,492.
Bismarck-Schonhausen, Prince Otto
von —
and William I., 13 1-2, 152-5, 190,
193, 285-8, 343, 355-6,454-6,474.
and William n., 459, 461-75 pas-
. sim.
attitude of, to Kreuzsceitung (or
Gerlach) Conservatism, 56-7, 62,
86, 92-4, 101, 106, 130, 185, 238,
245. 283, 305-6, 367-8. _
attitude of, to National Liberalism,
56, 127-8, 150-2, 223, 234-5,
238, 283-5, 3°=-5> 322. 325-6.
358. 361. 373-4-
character of, 50 seq., 63, 83-5, 103,
188, 195, 225, 248, 278, 299,
306, 317, 330, 394-7, 457-8,
489-92.
Colonial policy of, 417-34.
Economic policy of, 135, 237, 250-2,
322-3, 357, 362-70, 376-88.
Foreign policy of, 66-8, 88-101,
'37-55, 163-221 passim, 260-71,
276-80, 282-6, 292, 295-7, 303,
327-52, 37i, 394-414, 42 1,434-5°,
466-9, 471, 476-84.
Home policy of, 80, 120-5, 13J-'h
223, 292, 313-27, 352-93, 442-4,
446, 450-4, 469-73.
political creed of, 61-6, 74-5, 98, 106,
112, 117, 119-25, 127-9, 'V-J»
232-4, 293, 297, 328, 331, 375,
390, 461, 484-6.
'Socialistic' policy of, 380-6.
speeches of, 332, 382, 442, 447-9.
454-

INDEX

517

Bismarck-Schonhausen,! ^Prince Otto
von —
theory of government of, 66, 121,
124, 139, 238-40, 273, 299, 485.
use of the Press^by, 176, 260, 299,
458.
Blanckenburg, Marie von, 54.
Blanckenburg, Moritz von, 52, 54.
Bluntschli, 314.
Bohemia, 190, 199.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, 341, 349,
400, 482.
Brandenburg, 34, 48.
Bray, Count, 260, 283.
Brack, 87.
Bucharest, 201, 347.
Bucher, Lothar, 226, 268.
Biilow, Prince von, 352 note, 375.
' Bund,' Germanic, 5 seq., 213.
'Camarilla,' the Gerlach, 41, 62.
Caprivi, Count von, 375, 429, 469, 492.
Carlsbad Decrees, the, 43.
Carlyle, Thomas, 257, 277.
Cavour, Count, 53, 75-6, 82, 86, 217.
Christian ix., King of Denmark, 154,
158 seq.
Clarendon, Earl of, 176, 178-9, 254-6.
Clausewitz, 38-9.
Clerical (or Centre) party, the. See
Germany.
Concert of Europe, the, 160, 164, 178,
217, 340-
Constantinople, 346, 401.
Crimean War, the, 76, 81, 89.
Crispi, Signor, 407, 444, 486.
Crown Prince of Prussia, Frederick,
132, 204, 211, 273, 282, 305,
343, 456 seq-
Dalwigk, 283.
Danubian Principalities, the, 81, 201.
Daru, 254, 264.
Deak, 189.
Decazes, Due, 336, 337.
Delbriick, 135, 226, 283, 308, 376.
Denmark, 153, 157 seq.
Depretis, 406, 444.
Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, 114,
340, 347.
Dollinger, 14, 310 seq.
Dual Alliance, the, 343-5, 397 "?•
Duncker, Max, 81, 226.
Eastern Question, the, 76, 338-50,
397-8, 400-2, 441, 480.
Egypt, 41 3-

Eisenach Programme, the, 80, 81, 225,
324.
'Ems Dispatch,' the, 269-70, 496.
Erfurt, Union of, 66-7.
Eugenie, Empress, the, 113.
Falk, von, 315, 321, 371.
Federal Constitution, the, 6 seq., 19,
27-8, 60, 68.
Federal Diet, the, 161, 173, 184, 200,
203.
Ferry, J., 411, 428, 440.
Fichte, 3.
Fleury, General, 138.
France, policy of, 11-12, 104, 139,
171, 195-6, 218, 219, 242, 290,
334, 404-5. See also Germany
and France, relations of; Prussia
and France, relations of.
Francis-Joseph, Emperor of Austria,
73, 81, 146, 189, 190, 261.
Franco-German War, the, 270-6.
Frankfurt, Parliament of, 22, 58-9.
Frederick the Great, 15, 28, 94, 180,
489.
Frederick vn., King of Denmark, 153
seq.
Frederick William m., 35.
Frederick William iv., 36, 41 seq., 62,
79-
Friedrichsruhe, Bismarck at, 306-7.
Gablenz, Baron von, 202.
Gambetta, 225, 334, 394, 411.
Garibaldi, 77, 166.
Gastein, 146, 342, 351.
Gastein, Convention of (1865), 186-7,
189, 190, 197, 200.
Geffcken, 459 seq.
Gerlach, Leopold von, 55, 57, 92,
101, 185.
Germany, and Austria, relations of,
338, 340-52, 400-2, 408-9, 438,
444-50, 476-8.
and France, relations of, 334-8, 402,
404, 410-12, 421, 438, 440-1.
and Great Britain, relations of, 338
seq., 412-14, 421-30.
and Italy, relations of, 290, 351,
405-10, 444, 45°-2-
and Russia, relations of, 290, 342-52,
397, 434-8, 443-5°-
army of, 439-40, 442, 446.
Clerical (or Centre) party in, 315,
320, 358 seq., 373, 450 seq.
Colonial policy of, 414-17, 422. See
also Bismarck.

5i8

BISMARCK

Germany — Constitution of (187 1),
293-4, 297, 352-5-
Industrial Revolution in, 323, 384,
432.
Internal affairs in, after 187 1, 302,
322, 415, 442-4, 446.
National Liberalism in, 126-8, 148-50,
224, 234-6, 285, 298, 302 seq.,
320 seq., 378, 450 seq.
National Union of, 80, 125, 149.
Social Democracy in, 324, 359 seq ,
362, 366, 376, 386.
Universities of, 13-14, 32, 237, 314,
438-9.
Gladstone, Mr., 412-13.
Gneisenau, 34.
Gneist, R. von, 304.
Golz, von der, 187, 197, 208 note,
210, 212.
Gortschakov, 85, 113, 143, 166, 270,
276, 336.
Gotha programme, the, 324.
Govone, General, 197, 202.
Gramont, Due de, 199 note, 264 seq.
Granville, Lord, 427 seq.
Great Britain —
Colonial policy of, 404-5, 411-14.
Foreign policy of, 76, 78, 107, 119,
126-7, J39, I4°, '60, 166, 171-3,
176-7, 205, 236-8, 254-6, 277,
291-2, 332. See also Germany
and Great Britain, relations of.
Haller, 3, 20, 41.
Hambacher Fest, the, 53.
Hamburg, 203.
Hanover, 11, 17, 23, 71, 203, 207, 226.
Hegel, 3, 10, 38.
Heine, 10, 20.
Hesse-Cassel, Elector of, 59-60, 135.
Hesse-Darmstadt, 213.
Hohenlohe, Prince, 19, 24, 154, 200,
259, 375, 392, 492-
Hohenzollern Candidature, the, 247,
265-9.
Holstein. See Schleswig-Holstein.
Holy Alliance, the, 4, 182.
Holy Roman Empire, the, 5, 27.
Humboldt, 3, 6, 18,45.
Hungary, 26, 28, 209.
Italy. See Germany and Italy, re
lations of; Prussia and Italy,
relations of.
Kaunitz, 28, 219.
Kiel, 184, 197, 201, 214.

Kreuzzeitttng, the, 3, 62, 101, 130, 238.
Kulturkampf, the, 37, 77, 137, 194,
309-27, 370, 372, 450 seq.
La Marmora, 194, 202.
Lauenburg, Duchy of, 186, 213, 214.
Laws —
Anti-socialist laws, 360-2, 454.
Banking law, 302.
Civil Marriage law, 322.
Criminal law, codification of, 302.
•May Laws,' the, 315, 317, 319,
326, 370 seq.
Military law (1888), 446.
Old Age Insurance, 381.
' StelUvertreter'' law, 357.
Trade law, 302, 380.
Usury law, 381.
Lebceuf, Marshal, 250.
Lebrun, General, 261.
Leo xiii., Pope, 358.
Lhuys, Drouyn de, 171, 194, 199
note, 211, 212.
List, F., 10, 39, 370,416.
Loftus, Lord A., 114, 259, 261.
London, Bismarck in, 1 14.
Congress of (1864), 166, 175.
Congress of ( 1 871), 277.
Lorraine. See Alsace.
Liibeck, 203.
Luxemburg, 11, 22, 203, 212, 245-7.
Lyons, Lord, quoted, 259, 261.
Maassen, 36.
Manteuffel, Edwin von, 133, 260, 273,
392.
Manteuffel, Otto T. von, 86, 91, 92.
Marx, Karl, 70, 79, 370.
Mediterranean Problem, the, 402 siq.
Mencken, Wilhelmina, 49.
Mensdorff, Count, 194.
Merimee, Prosper, 195.
Metternich, Prince, 7-31 passim, 82,
85, 289, 328, 330.
Mexico, 171, 207.
Moltke, Helmuth Karl Bernard von,
39, 80, 104, 118, 130, 163, 169,
1 91-210 passim, 249, 274, 331,
442, 472-
Mommsen, 184, 362, 387.
Morier, Sir Robert, quoted, 257-8.
Motley, 85.
Munich, 117.
Napoleon iii., 76, 85, 106, 141, 160,
171, 181-2, 194-214 passim, 220,
249, 260 seq.

INDEX

5^9

Nassau, 23, 242.
National Liberalism. See Germany.
Nicholas 1., 70, 76, 128, 216.
Nikolsburg, Preliminaries of, 206, 211,
213-
North German Confederation, Con
stitution of, 227-34, 240-42.
Ollivier, Emile, 261 seq.
Olmiitz, Convention of, 57, 59, 82.
Palmerston, Lord, 82, 141,156,173.
Paris, Bismarck in, 113, 195, 249-50.
Paris, Congress of (1856), 76, 91.
Pius ix., Pope, 314.
Plombieres, Compact of (1859), 77,
81, 181, 198.
Poland, u, 33, 137-44, 349, 388-92.
Posen, 33, 34.
Princes, Congress of (1863), 146-53.
Protection, Bismarck's conversion to,
376-9.
Prussia and Austria, relations of, 27-8,
58-61, 70-1, 87, 135-6, 145-52,
J73, I79, '82-7, 191, 196-211,
213, 219, 276.
and France, relations of, 135-6, 181,
187, 194-6, 211-12, 218, 245-9,
264-80.
and Italy, relations of, 187, 194-202,
217, 263.
and Russia, relations of, 43, 89, 107,
138-44, 206, 212, 259, 263, 270,
276-7.
and the Middle German States, re
lations of, 71, 145, 209, 226.
and the South German States, re
lations of, 212-14, 240-4, 250-2,
281, 282-5, 293.
army of, 107-10, 112, 179, 183,
196, 204, 256-7, 331.
collapse of, in 1 85 1, 68-72.
constitutional conflict in, 107-12,
120-5, 131-4, 153, 167, 223-4.
development of, after 1 8 1 5,35-7, 118.
political parties in, 224-5, 298, 315,
320.
political thought in, 38-43, 79.
position of, in the Germanic 'Bund,'
25, 33-4-
United Diet of (1847), 46, 56.
universities of, 13, 35, 37, 72.
Puttkamer, Herr von, 454, 457.
Puttkamer, Johanna von, 55-6, 492.
Radowitz, 59, 62, 66, 67.
Radziwills, the, 322.

Ranke, 3, 14, 45.
Rechberg, Count, 179, 183.
Regensburg, 186.
Renan, 280.
' Reptile Fund,' the, 260.
Revolution, in Germany (1848), 7, 9,
57 seq., 68 seq.
Rhine, Confederation of the, 5, 2+.
Richter, 236, 260, 278-9.
Risorgimento, the, 75, 79.
Rome, 194.
Roon, Count von, 52, 80, 101, in seq.,
130, 169, 182, 191, 210, 270, 281,
3°5, 307, 324-
Roscher, W., 39-40.
Roumania, Prince Charles of, 202, 334.
Russell, Lord John, 82, 165.
Russell, Lord Odo, quoted, 289, 297.
Russia. See Germany and Russia, re
lations of; Prussia and Russia, re
lations of.
Salisbury, Lord, 346.
Savigny, 9, 14, 52.
Saxony, 23, 33, 71, 203-14 passim.
Scharnhorst, 34, 35, 39.
Schleswig-Holstein, 11, 60-1, 81, 86,
'4°, 1 53-8 7, T 96, 202, 203, 2 1 3, 478.
Schwarzenberg, 58, 70, 128.
Septennates, the, 304.
Silesia, 185, 201.
Simson, E., 286.
Smith, Adam, 36, 324.
Social Democracy. See Germany.
Spain, 265 seq., 411.
Stadion, Count, 28.
Stahl, F., 20, 41.
Stein, Baron vom, 6, 20, 34.
Stephan, Herr, 302.
Stockmar, Baron, 17, 45, 47.
Stosch, General, 305, 308.
Struve, 24.
Sybel, 21, 203, 327.
Syllabus, Papal, the (1864), 77, 194,
219, 314.
Tariff Parliament, the, 251.
Thiers, A., 200, 207, 321, 334.
Thile, von, 265, 268.
Treaties —
Austro-German (1879), 343"5-
Frankfurt (1 871), 271,279, 329, 339.
London (1852), 61, 159-78 passim.
Paris (1856), 76, 263.
Prague (1866), 213-15, 217, 226,
241, 297 note.
Prusso- Austrian (1864), 174.

520

BISMARCK

Treaties —
Prusso-Italian (1866), 198, 199.
'Reinsurance' (Russo-German, 1884),
435 seq., 445, 498-505.
San Stefano (1878), 338, 397.
Vienna (18 15), 1, 12, 184, 203.
Treitschke, 19, 38, 169, 215.
Trieste, 186, 405.
Triple Alliance, the, 330, 337, 405 seq.,
421, 442, 444, 477.
Ultramontanism,4, 75,219, 311 seq.,
37i, 373, J87-
Usedom, 187.
Varzin, Bismarck at, 247-8, 306.
Vatican Decrees, the, 77, 219, 309 seq.,
321.
Venetia, 194 seq., 201 seq.
Versailles, Preliminaries of (1871),
279, 293.

Victoria, Queen, 165, 172, 459.
Victor Emmanuel 1., 155, 189, 208 note,
261, 273, 333.
Vienna, Congress of (1815), 5 seq., 217.
Villa Franca, armistice of, 77, 107.
Virchow, Prof., 254, 309, 314.
Werthern, 267.
William 1., 91, 107, 109, 143, 146,
183, 197 seq., 210, 245, 282, 434,
454:6. See also Bismarck and
William 1., relations of.
William 11. See under Bismarck.
Windischgratz, 58, 70.
Windthorst, 52, 298, 315 seq., 320,
.. 370, 37i, 451, 473-
Wiirttemberg, 23, 71, 207, 212.
Zoll'verein, the, 14, 36, 71, 87, 135,
196, 251.

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