A TALK WITH COUNT BISMARCK IN 1866
I
By one of those pieces of good fortune which descend only upon the
undeserving, I came to know Count Bismarck before I left Berlin. I
was advised to present my letter at the Landtag, and as the Count was
said to be in the House, I sent it in. He came out to the
ante-chamber where I was waiting, and there for the first time I
looked into the pale blue eyes whence had flashed the lightnings that
had riven the power of Austria on the field of Sadowa. Now they had
a kindly and welcoming look in them. But, said Count Bismarck:
"I have not a moment. A debate is on, and I am to speak at once.
Come to my house in the Wilhelmstrasse at half-past ten to-night, and
we can have a talk. Meantime you might like to hear the debate."
And he called to an official to take me into the Chamber, shook hands
again, and away he went. I heard his speech, marvelled at the sight
of a Parliamentary chief in full military uniform; marvelled at the
tone of authority, which also was {179} military; marvelled again at
the brevity and directness of the orator who took no thought of
rhetoric and hardly cared to convince, but rather to command. It was
the oratory of the master of many legends. True, the four years'
conflict between him and the Prussian Parliament was over, but true
also that on both Parliament and Minister that conflict had left a
mark. In his voice there was still a challenge, and in the silence
of the Chamber still something sullen. He had won. They had lost in
a struggle upon which, as Herr Loewe told me, they ought never to
have entered; would never have entered had they known. Loewe and his
party of so-called Liberals confessed themselves not only beaten but
wholly in the wrong.
At half-past ten I rang at the outer door--which was more like a
gate--of the palace in the Wilhelmstrasse. It was opened by a
soldier who asked my name, and when he heard it told me I was
expected and asked me to follow him. I was taken upstairs to a large
empty room on the first floor. In a moment out came Count Bismarck's
famous _adlatus_, Herr Lothar Bücher. The Count was engaged with the
Minister of War but if I could wait would see me presently. I waited
ten minutes. Again the door to the left opened, and forth came Von
Roon, the mighty organizer of war, himself of course a soldier since
in Prussia everybody who counted in affairs of State was a soldier,
and still is. You had need to visit Berlin in those warlike days to
understand {180} what was meant by the phrase that Prussia was a
camp. Then you had need to visit it again in time of peace to
understand that whether in peace or war Prussia was still a camp, and
as much in peace as in war. What it is now I cannot say. I have not
been in Berlin these last fifteen years, but between 1866 and 1893 I
was there many times, and every time it was a camp. The garrison of
Berlin and Potsdam was never, I think, less than 40,000 men. The
streets of Berlin were always thronged with officers, and on the
broad sidewalks of the Unter den Linden or the Friedrichstrasse there
was scarce room for anybody else. The youngest lieutenant wanted all
of it to himself. To each other these officers were civility itself
but the civilian had no rights they were bound to respect.
I had already seen something of this all-pervading military spirit
and military supremacy, and sat reflecting on it in this great
_salon_ where I waited for Count Bismarck to be at leisure. When
Herr von Roon came out he recognized me, I suppose, as a stranger,
and, civilian though I was, gave me the greeting he thought due to
Count Bismarck's guest, which I returned. There was almost a halt as
he strode past; his face was turned to me, and I could read in it the
stern record of a long conflict; of vast responsibilities and years
of unceasing toil; a rugged face enough but the light of victory in
his eye. He, too, had fought and won. Curiously enough, among the
men I met at that time in Berlin, the man who, {181} Bismarck
excepted, seemed to have most of the statesman in him, with the
statesman's civic virtues and traits, was this Minister of War. Not
because he was Minister in the sense in which an English Secretary of
State for War is Minister. The English War Minister is never a
soldier; he is a Parliamentary chief, and his authority over the army
denotes the supremacy of Parliament over the whole military hierarchy
from commander-in-chief down to the drummer boy.
But of Parliamentary supremacy there had been for these last four
years in Prussia none whatever. The Minister of War was not
responsible to Parliament; he never has been; he is not now. He was
then responsible to the King of Prussia, as he is now to the German
Emperor. When, in May, 1863, the Chamber protested to the King that
the attitude of the Ministry to Parliament was arbitrary and
unconstitutional (as it was), the King made answer that the Ministry
possessed his confidence, and sent the Parliament about its business.
That is, he prorogued Parliament, announced that he would govern for
the present without a Parliament; and as matters did not mend and the
Chamber again in December refused to vote a war budget, the King
dissolved it. Parliamentary government existed at that time in
Prussia under the constitution, but in name only.
These reflections were cut short by the reopening of the door, and
Count Bismarck entered. {182} Still in uniform, nor did I ever see
him except in uniform, whether in public or private, till I visited
him in his home at Friedrichsruh in 1893, where he wore a black
frock-coat and black trousers, crowned, when he went out, by a soft,
broad-brimmed grey felt hat, quite shapeless. He had, more than any
man I ever met, the manner of the _grand seigneur_, in which
distinction of bearing and a grave, even gentle, courtesy went
together. He was sorry, he said, to have kept me waiting, "but the
business of the State, you know, comes first, and though one crisis
is over another succeeds, and we know not yet what the end is to be."
This I understood to refer not to Austria, for the Treaty of Prague
had been signed in August, but to France, where the Emperor was
brooding over his lost prestige and lost hold on Southern Germany,
and was meditating demands which might compensate him for the loss of
the power of meddling with matters which were none of his business.
As he said this we walked into his private room, or cabinet, the very
centre of the spider's web; a comfortable, plain, workmanlike little
room; a writing-desk the chief piece of furniture, large enough to
fill the whole of the further corner; a sideboard opposite, a small
table with ash trays, a few chairs, and that was all. The curtains
were drawn; the room, German fashion, seemed a trifle close, and as
if old Frederick William's Tobacco Parliament had been held here all
these last hundred and fifty years or more. There was a rug in the
centre which had to do duty for {183} the carpet which in Germany, as
elsewhere on the Continent, never covers the whole floor.
As we were sitting down, the Count behind his desk, a door opened,
opposite to the one by which we had entered, and there appeared a
lady whom I had never seen; the Countess Bismarck. When she saw me
she said to her husband:
"You have not been in bed for three nights. I hope you don't mean to
sit up again."
Of course I rose, saying, "At any rate, he shall not sit up for me."
But the Count laughed, came out from behind his desk, took me by the
shoulders, thrust me down into the chair again, all with an air of
kindly authority not easy to describe, and said:
"Sit where you are. I want to talk to you."
As I thought it over afterward I supposed Count Bismarck had some
object in mind other than the pleasure of my conversation. He knew
that I was the representative of _The Tribune_; my letter to him had
stated that. He knew what the position and power of _The Tribune_
were, and especially of its influence with the Germans in America.
And it seemed to me that, in view of the relations between the
Germans at home and the Germans beyond the seas, he thought it might
be worth while that his view of the situation should be put before
the Germans in America, and before the Americans also, in an
authentic though not an authoritative way. Count Bismarck did not
say that. It was my conjecture, {184} upon which I acted to a
certain extent as I will explain more fully by and by.
Countess Bismarck looked on at this performance which she plainly did
not like, but presently smiled and said to her husband: "Well, if you
will sit up you must have something to drink," went to the sideboard,
mixed a brandy and soda, took it to him, put the glass to his lips,
and stood by him to see that he drank the whole, which he did with no
visible reluctance. He handed the empty tumbler to his wife and
thanked her. She put her arm about him, kissed him, looked at me
reproachfully but amiably, and vanished. A truly domestic, truly
German, altogether charming little scene.
Many years later, after Count Bismarck had become Prince Bismarck and
a greater figure in Germany than the world had seen, I met Princess
Bismarck again at a dinner in Homburg given by Mr. William Walter
Phelps, American Minister at Berlin. Mr. Phelps had long been a
friend of the Bismarck family and on easy terms with the head of that
family, who liked and respected him. It was a case of sympathy
between opposites. No contrast could be more complete than the
contrast between Prince Bismarck and Mr. Phelps; but their relations
were, as so often happens, all the more friendly for that reason. I
was presented to the Princess, and after dinner inquired whether she
remembered this midnight incident in the Wilhelmstrasse. She asked
me to describe it, and I told her what had happened. She had wholly
{185} forgotten it. I asked her if I might some day narrate the
story. "I don't see why you shouldn't," she answered. Years after
that I again saw the Princess at Friedrichsruh, and she asked whether
I had ever repeated my tale. I said no, but that I still meant to
avail myself of her permission, as I now do.
The Princess thought, I imagine, she would like to see the Prince
portrayed in this intimate way and in this relation to his wife. Her
life had always been lived in and for his. She knew well what the
world thought; to the world he was always the Iron Chancellor. But
in private life he was the affectionate loyal husband to whom one
woman had devoted all she had--all her love, truth, worship--an
adoration which perhaps not many men have deserved or received from
any woman.
There is much in Bismarck's _Love Letters_--which are hardly love
letters--about his wife and much in other Bismarck books, notably in
Sidney Whitman's _Personal Reminiscences_, the best of them all. The
Princess will ever live as an amiable figure, and if she had not been
that would still live as the wife of the one great German of his
time; as the woman who had known how to captivate a fancy once
supposed to be wayward, and to make it and him her own. The quality
which distinguished her was sweetness or nature, which she never lost
during a life harassed by many solicitudes and vexed by illness.
{186}
II
The Countess von Bismarck having departed out of the little room, the
King's Minister plunged at once into his subject, which was nothing
less than the history of the last four years during which he had
ruled over Prussia. Much of what he said I repeated in _The Tribune_
no very long time after. All that he said, or all that I could
remember, I put down in writing that night before I slept. It
contained, however, so much that obviously was not meant for print
and could never be printed that, after using as much as I thought
could properly be published, I destroyed my manuscript. I had said
to Count Bismarck as I left that he knew he had been talking to a
journalist and yet had said many things he could not wish made known
to the public. He laughed and answered: "Well, it is your business
to distinguish."
It is, therefore, still my business to distinguish. I may perhaps
say a little more than I could while both the Emperor and the Prince
were alive, but not much. For, in truth, I have never quite
understood why confidences cease to be confidences because those who
imparted them or those whom they concern are dead. A man who quits
this world leaves his reputation, if he has any, behind him.
Indiscretions may affect his memory as they might have affected his
living fame. In this case they would exalt Count Bismarck's fame;
but it might be at the expense of others whom he had {187} no desire
to belittle. So I keep for the most part to generalities.
Of the King he spoke with astonishing freedom, yet never a word to
injure the sovereign whom he served. I will quote once more a
sentence I have repeated before now:
"You are a Republican, and you cannot fully understand the loyalty I
cherish to a King to whose ancestors my ancestors have been loyal for
hundreds of years."
Yet it comes to this--and of this truth History has long since taken
account--that between Count Bismarck and his august master there was
a long-continuing conflict. If the King had won there would have
been no Austro-Prussian War, nor any Franco-German War, nor any
German Confederation, nor any Germany as we know Germany to-day.
When, therefore, the present German Emperor puts forward his
grandfather as the author of these changes, he is making for his
grandfather a false claim. While he was still Prince William of
Prussia he said:
"Whenever I hear a great event in my grandfather's reign discussed I
never hear his name mentioned, but always Bismarck's. When I come to
the throne it is my name you will hear as the author of the policies
and deeds of my reign."
William the Second has kept that pledge, but that is no reason why he
should try to rewrite the history of his grandfather's time or to rob
Prince Bismarck of the renown which belongs to him and {188} which
the world awards him. Powerful as he is, he is not powerful enough
for that.
This is a digression, but it will serve to bring out the main fact
that there was a contest between the King and Bismarck in 1866, and
that not the King but Bismarck came out triumphant. In the long war
with Parliament the King and his Minister were together, and the King
was as loyal to his Minister as the Minister was to the King. But
when the critical moment came it still has to be said that Bismarck's
was the seeing eye and the deciding voice, and his, not the King's,
was the directing mind.
Over the heads of the Parliament and people of Prussia, and against
the wish of the King, who only at the last moment and by one last
argument had been persuaded to consent, did Bismarck pursue his way.
"It was not," said Bismarck, "till I had convinced the King that his
honour as a soldier was involved that he would agree to the war with
Austria. No political argument moved him. The vision of a united
Germany with himself at the head of a German Confederation did not
dazzle him.
"'Austria is my brother,' he said; 'the war would be fratricidal.
The Emperor and I are bound together by many ties, by many interests;
above all by affection and by loyalty. I should think it treacherous
to attack a sovereign who has given me many proofs of good-will and
to I have given pledges. Nothing will induce to do it.'"
{189}
"Yet," continued Bismarck, "he had allowed me to take step after
step, each one of which led inevitably to war. In the long conflict
with the Parliament he was with me. Only by his support was that
conflict maintained or victory possible. No money was voted for four
years. We laid hands on the public revenues, but the Government had
to be carried on in part by money supplied out of that Royal Treasure
Fund which for generations the Kings of Prussia have hoarded for
kingly purposes. The preparations for war were nourished from the
same source. The war with Denmark was paid for to a certain extent
out of the same royal purse. The Landtag never assented to the
Schleswig-Holstein enterprise nor would vote a solitary thaler to
carry it on. Before that, when I became Minister, in September,
1862, my first act was to announce to the Chamber that I proposed to
govern without a budget. The Chamber protested against that as
unconstitutional, which of course it was. Six months later the
Chamber invited the King to dismiss his Ministers. He replied that
his Ministers had his confidence, and a week later instead of
dismissing us announced that he proposed to govern without a
Parliament.
"All this time I was preparing for war with Austria after Denmark.
The King must have known what it all meant, but he did not stay his
hand nor withdraw his confidence from us. After the peace with
Denmark there was no longer any reason for military preparations
except Austria. {190} But the King still allowed me to go on. In
January, 1865, the Parliament again rejected the public budget. The
King rejoined by seizing on the public revenues in the name of the
State. The public knew nothing of what I had in mind. The
Parliament knew nothing. If it had been possible to take Parliament
into my confidence the budget would have been voted. The Liberals
have admitted that. But to take Parliament into my confidence would
have been to take Austria into my confidence. It could not be. It
was necessary to strike suddenly; to strike before Austria could
assemble her reserves, or take advantage of her immense resources, or
bring into line all the discordant races of that great Empire.
"How much did I tell the King? Well, as much as was necessary for
the time being. The great struggle with His Majesty was put off till
the moment of conflict was near; till it was necessary to throw off
the mask. Besides, you must consider that I had to deal not only
with the King but with the various Court influences which surrounded
him. They were almost all hostile to me. Many of them were very
powerful with the King. I might spend six weeks in coaxing him to
assent to a particular measure. When he had promised, in would come
some Grand Duchess and in half an hour undo my six weeks' work."
I interrupt the flow of this speech to remark that, long after this,
Prince Bismarck repeated to the same complaint about grand ducal
interventions. They never ceased. They were never {191} relaxed.
There was no conciliating these great personages. They had policies
and purposes of their own, which were never those of Germany but
always of some German principality with which their personal
interests were bound up. There is nothing so selfish as a
second-class Royalty; a Serenity with a dukedom which a
pocket-handkerchief would cover.
Bismarck continued:
"In the end Austria played my game for me. She demanded in April,
1866, the demobilization of the Prussian forces, which had begun to
put themselves on a war footing in March. Then I knew the Lord had
delivered her into our hands. I laid the demand before the King,
saying: 'I do not know whether Your Majesty is prepared to surrender
the command of your army to your brother of Austria.' He took fire
at once. Then it was that he felt his honour as a soldier was
attacked. From that moment the difficulty was to restrain him. We
were not quite ready. It would have been dangerous to declare war at
once. It was dangerous, perhaps, to let the moment of the King's
anger pass, lest counsels of peace should again prevail. But one
risk or the other had to be taken, and I chose the latter. Two
months later, June 18th, war was declared, and the King issued a
manifesto to his people which was everything that could be wished.
All the rest was in the hands of the God of Battles."
Then a pause and a piercing glance, then on he went:
{192}
"After Königgrätz there were the same difficulties. The King could
not at first understand why this career of victory was to be
interrupted. He was King no longer. He was Field Marshal,
commanding the forces of Prussia. He had won a great battle. The
power of Austria was broken. Vienna lay at his mercy. Germany was
waiting to know whether Austria or Prussia was to be her future
master--well, no, not master, but which of the two was to be the
chief State in Germany and the true leader of the German people.
What other sign of supremacy could be so visible, so convincing, as
the Prussian armies in Vienna, Prussian troops encamped in the
Prater, the Danube bridled and bridged by us Prussians? When an
enemy's capital lay at the victor's mercy, why should he not enter
it? What great soldier ever refrained?
"Thus," said Bismarck, "spoke the King. I ventured to remind His
Majesty of his reluctance to make war on the Emperor of Austria, and
to ask whether, now that he was vanquished, he wished him to be
humiliated also. That seemed to touch him. We talked long. He was
surrounded by generals and princes who urged him on, but in the end
he came round to my view which had been his own view before the war.
So here we are in Berlin and not in Vienna, and please God we shall
all be friends again, and some day there will be one Germany and not
two, or twenty, or fifty, as in times past and to-day. The fruits of
our triumph are yet to gather."
{193}
Twice during this discourse I had risen to go, but Bismarck said:
"No, I have not finished." The third time, it was long past one
o'clock, and I said: "If I don't go now Countess Bismarck will never
let me see you again." This amused him, and he remarked: "I suppose
you think I am getting sleepy!" But sleepy he was not. He had
talked for near two hours with unquenchable energy and freshness, and
with a force of speech in which no man was his rival.
{194}