HOW THE PRUSSIANS AFTER SADOWA CAME HOME TO BERLIN
There is much more to say on this subject of cabling which I touched
on, perhaps prematurely, in the last chapter, but it can wait till
certain incidents in Berlin have been described. Ever memorable to
me was this visit to Berlin in 1866, and for two things. I saw
something of the two greatest forces in Prussia, or two of the three
greatest: the Prussian army and Count Bismarck. The third, whom I
saw, but only saw, was the King; whom his grandson has since
rechristened William the Great. The Seven Weeks' War was just over.
There were Generals of the army who expected to enter Vienna in
triumph, as, four and a half years later, the German armies were to
enter Paris. But Count Bismarck had vetoed this project; by no means
desiring to leave an indelible scar of defeat and humiliation on a
kindred German capital. He wished, and the King wished, that in the
future, and in the near future, Berlin and Vienna should be friends.
In the interest of that wise policy the purely military ambitions of
these Generals, the Red Prince perhaps among them, who were soldiers
and nothing {171} else, were repressed. A consolation was allowed
them in the shape of a triumphal re-entry into Berlin.
So on the 20th and 21st of September the garrison of Berlin and
Potsdam, fifty thousand strong, but dividing their strength between
the two days, marched through the Brandenburger Gate, and up the
Unter den Linden to the Opera Platz. By good luck I had rooms in the
Hotel du Nord, then the best hotel in Berlin, midway in the great
avenue of Berlin; and being on the second floor I could look well
over the trees and along almost the whole stretch of this fine
street, a hundred yards wide.
It was such a spectacle as presents itself but seldom to the human
eye, German or other. All things considered, it cannot often have
been surpassed. The whole world was looking on. For here was
Prussia, but three months ago a second-class European Power, which
had suddenly stepped into the front rank. So dazzling was her rise
that the Emperor Napoleon, looking out of the Tuileries windows upon
a transformed Central Europe, was already demanding "compensation"
for Sadowa, and demanding vainly. The leadership of Germany had
passed in a night from Austria to Prussia. The Germanic
Confederation had been dissolved and the North German Confederation,
with Prussia the all-powerful head of it, had come into existence.
With the refusal of Count Bismarck to listen to the demands of
Napoleon, Prussia stood out in Central Europe as the German {172}
State which at last was to resist all attempts from beyond the Rhine
to impose the will of a French ruler upon the German people. It was
a Declaration of Independence; and of something more than
independence.
When the head of that great column of victorious troops emerged from
the great Gate, what Berlin saw was the instrument by which these
vast changes had been brought about. There were men of prophetic
mind who saw in it the instrument of greater changes yet to be. But
sufficient for the day was the glory thereof. All Berlin was in the
streets; or in this one street; or in the windows and on the
housetops of the Unter den Linden. As they cheered I did not think
the volume of sound comparable to what one hears in London on great
days of public rejoicing. There was rejoicing, of course, and there
was enthusiasm, but it was of the grave German kind; none the less
deep for being less resonant. I cannot remember being much impressed
by these demonstrations, nor by the flags and other decorations. The
Prussian flag, with its black and red, was a less cheerful piece of
bunting than the Tricolour or the Union Jack. The Germans have,
nevertheless, ideas of ornament and of art values; perhaps mid-way
between the French, who are supreme in such matters, and the English,
who have no ideas at all except to hang out all the flags they
possess and trust to luck for harmony and effect. None the less was
the Unter den Linden garlanded with banners, and the better houses or
larger buildings {173} were glowing with colour and contrasts. But
the military display was the important thing, and it was magnificent.
The King came first, riding a little in front of his headquarters
staff and of the Generals who were in his suite. Whether he might be
called William the Great or not, he was on that day a kingly figure.
The officers with him numbered, I should think, perhaps a hundred and
fifty, mostly well mounted, in uniforms which, whatever they might be
singly, were splendid in the mass. They were perhaps too splendid.
One would have liked to see these men in the clothes in which they
had marched and fought; with the stains of war upon them. But that,
I suppose, would have been abhorrent to the German mind, and
especially to the German military mind, with its deep devotion to
etiquette and its worship of routine and all forms of military
technique. But the echoes of Austrian battlefields had not yet sunk
into silence, and we knew well enough that these were no holiday
warriors.
They rode slowly. When the King and his staff had passed there came
a surprise. The procession seemed for one moment to have come to an
end. There was an open space of perhaps fifty yards. In the centre
of it rode three men The three were: Von Roon, Minister of War;
Moltke; and between them Bismarck in a white uniform as Major of
Cuirassiers. It was when they came into view that the cheering rose
highest. The King was popular and the greeting of his {174} people
had been cordial. But the three men behind him were the real heroes.
Von Roon had organized the forces of Prussia; Moltke had guided them
to victory; Bismarck had planned and brought on the war. The Carnot
of Prussia; the soldier of all soldiers of Prussia next after the
great Frederick; the brain and will and directing force of Prussia,
these three; and in all Europe no other three comparable to them,
singly or together.
So here they rode, these Three by themselves; apart, as if all that
had gone before and all that was to come after were there in homage
to them. The King and his headquarters staff were but the
advance-guard to these Three. The five-and-twenty thousand troops
who followed were but their rear-guard. These servants and priceless
possessions of the State were encompassed about by all that was
brilliant and all that was useful in the State themselves excepted.
They bore themselves as befitted their services and their places,
with a dignity, a serene disregard of everything but their duty,
which belong to real greatness. Berlin hailed them with cheers of a
kind which had been given to no other. I do not know that any of the
three was precisely what might be called Popular. Popularity was not
what Von Roon or Moltke or Bismarck had sought. But Berlin knew, and
Prussia knew, that but for these three there would have been no day
of victory for the Fatherland.
The troops came past in the formation known {175} as company front,
and as the Prussian companies were a hundred strong or more, the
effect was admirable. Berlin was thronged with soldiers for days
after this, and the individual Prussian soldier was not then a very
imposing object. He was well set up, but he and his uniform were not
always on good terms; in short, he was too often slovenly or
slouching. He had, moreover, a stiffness of bearing which reminded
you of Heine's bitter account of him in earlier days; that "he looked
as if he had swallowed the ramrod with which he had been thrashed."
But in the mass you saw nothing slovenly, and the stiffness perhaps
helped his officers to dress that company front in a straight line
across the broad street. The front was, in fact, perfection, and so
was the marching, and as these bodies of drilled men moved up the
Linden they looked like what they had proved themselves,
irresistible. They swept on with a movement as of some great natural
force. Regiment after regiment swung past. There was never a break
or halt. The machine was in its best working order. The men carried
their heads high, crowned with victory. And so the tide of war
poured through this peaceful street.
The Prussian uniform was not a brilliant one. In point of mere
costume these troops were not comparable to many others. The
Austrians were far more smartly dressed; and the English, and the
French. But this blue and red looked workmanlike, while as for
ornament--well, what ornament was needed beyond the word Sadowa,
which {176} might have been, but was not, embroidered on the collars
of their tunics? You saw also that this was a citizen army: the
German people were in these ranks, as the Prussian people. The words
have since become almost convertible, though there are millions of
Germans who will not agree to that.
The regimental officers were well enough mounted and, so far as one
could judge from a parade like this, were good horsemen. They sat
well down in their saddles. A good seat and good hands go together,
or ought to go together, but do not always, and the hands seemed
heavy if a horse turned restive. But another thing became clear as
you looked. The officers were of the elect. The Prussian
aristocracy was in the saddle. There has never been a time since the
Great Elector of Brandenburg when it was not in the saddle, actually
and figuratively. To adopt Bismarck's phrase at a much later day, in
a great speech at Jena, this country of Prussia has never been ruled
from below. It was not in 1866. Nor have the Junkers and the
nobility of Prussia ever failed to pay with their persons when the
need arose. In that murderous cavalry charge at Mars-la-Tour, the
ranks were crowded with the sons of Princes, and Dukes, and Counts,
and all the rest; they rode, no small part of them, to death, and
knew they were riding to death, but no thought of rank or riches
stayed them, nor did any one falter.
It is impossible not to think of these later things as the memories
of these September days in 1866 come back. I looked on then at the
beginnings {177} of what was foreordained to happen. This was the
army, these were the very men who were to close about Sedan in that
other September of 1870. Long after that I was to see them again in
the Opera Platz and Unter den Linden when the King who now rides with
his grave gallantry of bearing at their head was to be buried, on one
of the coldest and perhaps the blackest day Berlin ever saw. The
splendour had departed. The triumph of 1866 had given way to
mourning and gloom. And on the architrave of the Brandenburg Thor,
draped and shrouded, like all Berlin, in black, stood out in white
letters the last greeting of Berlin to its old-time King, "Vale,
Senex Imperator."
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