Blood Will Tell
5
Battle-born, Bismarck's genius springs from the very fire and
sword of human nature--resembling definitely his iron-headed
barbarian ancestry, whose freedom remained unconquered through
the centuries.
¶ We cannot hope to trace Bismarck to any complete legal basis--any
more than we can defend the complete legitimacy of France, Belgium, or
the United States, countries avowedly harking back to revolutionary
origin. Bismarck's life, likewise, presents unquestioned elements of
anarchistic root. Inherited from battle-born Bismarcks are forces
peculiar to himself, free, and individualistic, profoundly expressive
wherein Mother Nature summoning her ultimate powers endows a colossal
courage in a colossal mind and body.
¶ As far as the Thirteenth Century, the name Bismarck, then styled
Bishofsmarck or Biscopesmarck, is associated with the little river
Biese; but whence the original stock is for antiquarians to debate.
Believe the Bismarcks to be of Bohemian, of Frankish or of Jewish
origin, or of Slavic if you will, you find bespectacled, scholastic
authorities who will open the musty pages and display to you the
truth.
¶ Herbort of Biese became in due course Herbort von Bismarck. The
"von" was unquestionably a mark of geographical origin, rather than a
sign of nobility. The name is borne by other families from Biese; but
the important part is not the name but the men behind that name, what
that name stood for.
¶ Herbort von Bismarck's name is enrolled in the guild papers as
master of the merchant tailors of Stendal, in the old Mark of
Brandenburg; a "Mark" being somewhat equivalent to an English "shire."
¶ But this fact about the tailor-ancestor must not be pressed too
far. Some antiquarian of the year 2700 A. D., let us say, might argue
that President Taft was a steam-shoveler, because the name is found
recorded among the laborers who helped dig the Panama Canal; whereas,
the fact is that the President was enrolled as an honorary member of
one of the labor unions.
Also, after Waterloo, when the British nation was running wild trying
to imagine some distinction that as yet had not been bestowed on
Wellington, the London tailors in a moment of inspiration added the
Iron Duke's name to the great roll of scissor-snippers!
* * * * *
¶ Beginning with Herbort's son, four Bismarcks, in three generations,
were social lepers.
* * * * *
¶ Klaus von Bismarck died about the year 1385, outside the holy favor
of the church--as his father had died before him, and as did two sons,
in their turn. But Klaus, ever shrewd in a worldly way, recommended
himself as a king's fighting man; led the robber gang off with the
loot in the name of his merry monarch, the Margrave of Bavaria.
¶ For this most excellent service as a professional man-killer, Klaus
was rewarded with a knight's fee of forest land, at Burgstal, an
estate that remained in the family for two hundred years. There were
deer, wild boar, wolves and bear in the Bismarck forest, and one day
Conrad of Hohenzollern came that way on a royal hunting expedition.
¶ Conrad could have stolen the Bismarck petty title outright, but
while he confiscated Burgstal forest, he offered Schoenhausen, on the
Elbe, in exchange. However, Schoenhausen did not compare with the
estate that the envious monarch took by force. The Burgstal forest is
to this day one of the great game preserves of the German Emperor.
¶ The Bismarcks also received in the exchange farming land known as
Crevisse, lately confiscated by the Hohenzollerns from the nuns; and
one of the conditions of the transfer to the Bismarcks was that these
nuns should be supported.
6
Strong animal basis of Bismarck's rise to Power--The story is
always the same, "Fight, or die like a dog!"
¶ Thus, from time immemorial, the fighting Bismarcks wrote their title
to a share of this earth with the sword, which in spite of all Hague
Conferences remains the best sort of title man has been able to
devise.
As time sped and what is called Civilization grew somewhat, men took
on chicken-hearted ways; and in every pinch appealed to courts for
decisions formerly decided by individual brawn; till finally, as in
these latter degenerate days, if a fight becomes necessary, society
hires policemen to stop the row.
¶ Klaus von Bismarck preferred to do his own murdering, and
consequently, Klaus stood first in the eyes of honest men of his own
generation; but in this Twentieth Century, instead of putting
incompetents to the test of the sword, society, committed to the soft
doctrine that all life is sacred, burdens itself with lengthening the
days of the daft. A far cry that from the ideals of the early
Bismarcks! It is well to keep these facts in mind, in contemplating
the extraordinary career of the great Otto von Bismarck, king-maker
and unifier of Germany.
* * * * *
¶ Modern timid-hearted folk, reading of the desperate makeshifts of
the old Bismarcks to get on in the world, would say off-hand, "There
must be a strain of madness in the Bismarck brain?"
¶ Unquestionably! This fighting family in each generation had its born
revolutionists, its enormous egotists, its men who lived what orthodox
opinion calls "godless lives"--although in their own philosophy the
Bismarcks are always preaching that God is on their side. When the
Elector decided to steal Burgstal forest, the Bismarcks set up this
pious plea: "We wish to remain in the pleasant place assigned to us by
the Almighty." Four hundred years later we find Otto von Bismarck
using again and again this peculiar reasoning, to justify, at least
to explain, his own career: "If I were not a Christian, I would not
continue to serve the King another moment. Did I not obey my God and
count on Him, I should certainly take no account of earthly masters."
¶ In three great wars of ambition in which 80,000 perished, he
repeated this solemn formula about God; he repeated it on the
blood-drenched field of Koeniggraetz; he repeated it in the Holstein
war, and he repeated it again at Sedan and at Gravelotte.
¶ Bismarck persisted in this peculiar conception of life, down to the
last. While in retirement, after his downfall, one day the bloody past
rose before him like a dream, and he exclaimed to Dr. Busch: "Politics
has brought me vexation, anxiety and trouble; made no one happy, me,
my family nor anyone else, but many unhappy. Had it not been for me,
there would have been three great wars less; the lives of 80,000 would
not have been sacrificed; and many parents, brothers, sisters and
wives would not now be mourners. That, however, I have settled with my
Maker!" Now, once and for all, what we understand this to mean is
merely this: a super-abundance of faith. Many great leaders have had
it--David, Cromwell, Bismarck.
* * * * *
¶ In seeking biographic clues, through hereditary influences, we are
impressed with the astounding animal-basis of strength behind the
Bismarcks, from earliest recorded history. They were a deep-drinking,
prolific gormandizing race, and every mother's son had to do battle by
brawn backed by the sword, or die like a dog! This bred high tempers,
turbulent manners and contempt for the weak.
¶ Soldiers, diplomatists, brow-beaters, characterized the Bismarck
clan down through centuries. Stormy and adventurous Bismarcks fought
for the sheer delight of doing battle;--it mattered not, whether
against the Turks or against some near-by king whose lands the German
robber-knights lusted for and wished to annex by appeal to the sword.
¶ There is a story of a garrison brawl in which a Bismarck slew his
companion in drink, then fled to Russia, then on to Siberia; soldier
of fortune, he fights under any flag that promises a gay life and
plenty of loot. Three hundred years later--how the wheel turns
round!--Otto von Bismarck, as Russian Ambassador to the King of
Prussia, engaged in intrigues for the same old lust of land, the same
old nefarious business, but this time sprayed over by the
high-sounding name, diplomacy.
¶ Dr. Busch, the Saxon press-agent for Prince Bismarck, repeats the
old tale of the winning of Alsace by the French king, through the aid
of Otto von Bismarck's great-great-grandfather, a mercenary soldier;
adding that while one Bismarck helped take Alsace away, another of
that redoubtable family brought it back many years later, with the
added joy of the prodigious money-fine of five billions of francs!
7
Boisterous Col. Bismarck, of the Dragoons; "The Wooden Donkey
dies today!" French Cavalier Bismarck and his mushy
prose-poems.
¶ Burly strength and horse-play, rather than diplomacy, were always
distinctive traits of that part of the Bismarck family immediately
surrounding Otto von Bismarck; and in Otto's case, although the years
gradually taught him that there are more ways of stopping a man's
mouth than by cutting off his head, on the whole we seek in vain,
among ancestral Bismarcks, for any striking characteristics in which
the point does not turn either on gluttony or on deep-drinking.
¶ They were enormous eaters. Bread and meat were not enough. They must
have game, fish, cake, wines, and plenty of each. Hunger put them in a
rage. They were iron men, with stomachs of pigs.
¶ They were unbrooked master spirits, followed the hounds, fought
duels, had noisy tongues, and gloried in personal independence.
When they loved they loved madly; when they hated it was the same.
They drank all night and were out again at dawn.
¶ Yet in their way, they were high-minded gentlemen, devoted
themselves industriously to their duties; and it may be that the
turbulence of their lives borrowed something from the rude clash of
opinion that often divided the best friends, during the stormy periods
of history in which they fought as soldiers of fortune.
¶ Otto von Bismarck's great-grandfather, Augustus, calling his cronies
of the barracks around him, was wont to add zest to the carousal by
introducing the trumpet call after each toast; to heighten the
infernal racket, the boisterous colonel of dragoons ordered a volley
fired in the drink-hall.
¶ This terrible dragoon, master of the hounds, guzzler, companion and
leader in all revels, was generally voted one of the amiable men in
army circles. He was a noted shot. In one year of record his score was
154 red deer and 100 stag.
¶ At the Ihna bridge was a ducking stool, for army punishments; it
took the amusing style of a wooden donkey, and was so called by the
dragoons as a rude joke.
After one of his hard drinking bouts, it was often the colonel's
amusing habit to order his men to march to the bridge; on arriving the
band struck up and the wooden donkey was thrown into the stream. "All
offenders of my regiment are forgiven," Bismarck would bawl, "the
donkey dies today!"
Then with all manner of opera bouffe the offending donkey would be put
overboard--only to be brought out next morning, ready for official
business.
* * * * *
¶ But our fun-loving colonel's good times were now over. As commander
of the gallant Anspach-Bayreuth dragoons, Augustus fought for
Frederick the Great and was severely wounded at Czaslau. Austrian
hussars surprised the transport wagons carrying the wounded to the
rear, and with brutality common to the soldier-business of that rude
day killed the defenseless Prussians, among whom was our Colonel von
Bismarck.
* * * * *
¶ Bismarck's grandfather, Karl Alexander, leaned toward the
namby-pamby intellectual rather than to the social and convivial. He
is remembered for his affected poetical style. Karl, brave soldier,
attracted the eye of no less a judge of valor than the Great
Frederick, who appointed this Karl Alexander von Bismarck an attache
of the Prussian embassy at Vienna.
¶ Karl, like other Germans of the sentimental period, aped the French
poets; but when a German is sentimental, the mush-pots boil over.
Karl's writings show that peculiar over-inflated quality,
"sentimentality," so much admired in the rococo period.
* * * * *
¶ Karl William Ferd., Otto's father, and Louise Wilhelmina, Otto's
mother, born Mencken, lived at Schoenhausen in troublous French times.
Oct. 14th, 1806, the terrible defeat at Jena put Prussia in the hands
of the enemy.
Fortresses surrendered without firing a shot, and the panic-stricken
king fled to the far eastern side of his domains, near Russia.
All this took place within three months after the marriage of Karl and
Louise, who had now set up housekeeping at Schoenhausen.
¶ The Bismarcks tried to escape in a coach, but the French
unexpectedly appeared and ordered Karl back to the house. The French
ransacked every room; Louise fled to the library and locked the
massive oak door; to this day it bears the marks of French bayonets;
the Bismarcks then hid in the forest where they remained all night
with panic-stricken neighbors; at dawn Karl and Louise ventured out,
to find Schoenhausen a scene of destruction.
¶ The one galling fact that Karl could not overlook, in Marshal
Soult's raid, was the desecration of the genealogical tree. This huge
painting with its shields of the Bismarck descent was slashed from end
to end, with bayonets!
¶ Oh, Otto von Bismarck remembered this many, many years later, in
making terms with the French after Sedan--do not for a moment forget
that! Such is the amazing power of hereditary loves and hates;--and
certainly the Bismarcks had no reason to admire the French.