the risk of delaying somewhat in some preliminary explanations of which
a German auditory, full of souvenirs of its "Freischuetz," would have no
need. In this opera of Weber, Max, the good and unfortunate hunter,
borrows a cartridge from Robin, the evil spirit, and immediately kills
an eagle, one of whose feathers he proudly sticks in his cap. He then
asks for some more cartridges, but Robin tells him that they are
"enchanted balls," and that in order to obtain them he must surrender
himself to the infernal spirits, and deliver his soul to them. Max draws
back, and then Robin, sneering, tells him that he hesitates in vain,
that the bargain is made, and that he has already committed himself by
the ball he made use of: "Do you think, then, that this eagle was a free
gift?" Well! when in 1849 the young orator of the Mark of Brandenburg
had to implore the Prussian chamber not to accept for the King of
Prussia the imperial crown which the parliament of Frankfort offered
him, he ended by crying out: "It is radicalism which offers this gift to
the king. Sooner or later this radicalism will stand upright before the
king, will demand of him its recompense, and pointing to the emblem of
the eagle on that new imperial flag, it will say: _Did you think, then,
that this eagle was a free gift?_" A striking image and equally deep and
ingenious! Yes, one cannot use with impunity the "enchanted balls" of
revolution, and one does not make a bargain with the popular demon,
without leaving it some of his soul. Sooner or later there will stand
upright before you the bad genius whose aid you have accepted, Robin of
the woods and the streets. He will come to receive your salute, and tell
you that he did not intend to have worked for the King of Prussia. This
magnificent oratorical burst of the young deputy of the Mark, the
chancellor of Germany might have considered with benefit in more than
one decisive circumstance, for instance on the day when he overthrew the
secular throne, also the day when he gave the signal for the _combat of
civilization_.
The writer does not differ much from the orator, and, in speaking of the
writer, we think above all of those intimate and familiar letters which
have been published in the well known book of George Hesekiel, and which
have had a merited success in Germany. There is always the same
obscurity, the same embarrassment of elocution, the same disorder, from
time to time passages of lively and original expressions, of astonishing
figures, of a bitter, harsh _humor_, which grinds and bites you with
cruel pleasure. These letters are for the great part addressed to his
sister, to "dear Malvina" (married to an Arnim), and we will borrow from
them more than once during the course of this study. One notices in them
certain descriptions of nature, of the brightness of the moon, of the
North Sea, of the view of the Danube from the heights of Buda-Pesth,
which are not wanting in coloring effect, and make up a picture. There
is something of Heinrich Heine in these private _Reisebilder_, and it
has been remarked of them, that there is perhaps something of Hamlet
(and what a Hamlet!) in the following passage, the only melancholy one
which we have met with in the midst of so many sanguine and robust
sallies. "At the mercy of God! Everything is in reality but a question
of time, peoples and individuals, wisdom and folly, peace and war. To
the living, everything upon earth is but hypocrisy and jugglery, and
this _mask of flesh having once fallen off_, the wise man and the fool
resemble each other greatly, and it would be hard to distinguish between
the Prussian and the Austrian, _their skeletons being very carefully
prepared_." These lines fell from the same hand, however, which, since
then, and assuredly by a very specific patriotism, has furnished so many
thousand subjects to the preparers of skeletons!
One sees by these letters that M. de Bismarck handled at an early hour
and with predilection this irony, in which he is without a master; a
cold, crafty irony, and which too often approaches sneering. He used it
later in his speeches, in his conversations with ministers and
ambassadors, and even in diplomatic negotiations, in the most important,
most decisive moments of history. At such moments this irony sometimes
affects a great frankness, sometimes a great politeness, but a frankness
to make you fall on your knees before the first lie, however brazen, a
politeness to make you implore an incivility without forms as a
veritable charity. One day, on the very eve of the war of 1866, Count
Karolyi, ambassador of Austria, and acting in the name of his
government, summoned M. de Bismarck to declare categorically if he
expected to break the treaty of peace, the treaty of Gastein.[15] "No,"
was the reply, "I have not that expectation; _but, if I had, would I
answer you differently_?" There is an example of that frankness which
disconcerts, which confounds, and seems to cry in your ear with that
devil from the "Inferno":
"Tu non pensavi ch'io loico fossi!"
As to the murderous politeness, which sometimes clothes the sarcasm of
M. de Bismarck, let us recall here the _mot_ which he launched later at
the negotiators of Versailles, coming to treat with him concerning the
surrender of famished Paris, and to offer him two hundred millions in
contributions. "Oh," said he, "_Paris is too great a personage_ that we
should treat it in such a shabby manner; let us do it the honor of a
milliard." That is truly an original turn which the rival of Heine
thought to give to the _maxima reverentia_ which one owes to misfortune!
When one is destined in a ripe age to exercise his _humor_ with such
ease at the cost of princes and of peoples, how is it possible when
young not to jest pleasantly about that poor fellow of a peasant in
Pomerania who drank too much water? In one of his letters to his dear
Malvina, the young country gentleman describes with a hilarious spirit
an inundation which swept over his domain which is divided by a little
branch of the narrow river Hampel. This inundation severed him from all
his neighbors, carried off so and so many casks of _eau-de-vie_,
"introduced an anarchical interregnum from Schievelbein to Damm," and he
ends by this stroke: "_I am proud to be able to say_, that in my little
branch of the Hampel a wagoner was drowned with his horse and his whole
load of tar!" How proud in a different degree was this gentleman one day
when, Europe having become his domain, he saw disappearing in the midst
of the billows, billows of blood this time, a whole army and its chief,
a whole empire and its emperor,--_currus Galliae et auriga ejus!_ That
did not prevent, at another time, the young country gentleman from
jumping bravely into the water to rescue his groom and gaining the medal
for saving life. During many years this medal was the only one to
decorate the broad chest of the Prussian minister at Frankfort. Asked
one day by a colleague to the _Bund_ about a decoration to which the
diplomatic corps is but little accustomed, he replied in the tone which
he alone possesses, that he sometimes happened to rescue a man,--in his
leisure moments, be it understood. Probably, if he had been further
pressed, he was capable of adding that he only did it for exercise.
Thus, to resume, from the epoch of his apprenticeship at the gray
cloister and _Georgia Augusta_, Otto de Bismarck carried a literary
burden, which, without being either too heavy or too full, has
nevertheless enabled him to make his tour of the political world with
ease and honor. And also since this epoch his mind disclosed the
precious qualities which still distinguish it; a vivid and powerful
imagination, a rare happiness in his choice of expressions occasionally
grandiose, occasionally vulgar, but always striking; and lastly, a
_humor_ which has no equal, and which, to speak with Jean Paul, is a
true _sirocco_ to the soul. With all this no grace, no charm, no
distinction or delicacy,--not a generous accent, no sweet and
sympathetic cord, a complete absence of that milk of human kindness of
which the poet speaks, an absolute want of that charity which, according
to the great Christian moralist, is like the heavenly perfume of the
soul. As to the art or rather handicraft, as to the work which consists
in arranging his phrases, in connecting and disposing them so as to
introduce harmony and clearness in the different parts of speech, in
effacing its asperities and inequalities, in one word as to the _style_,
M. de Bismarck never learned it or always disdained it. If we dared to
apply to this style one of those trivial but expressive images of which
he himself offers us more than one example, we would willingly compare
it to a certain strange drink, hardly credible, and which, according to
his biographers, the German chancellor has always liked: it consists of
a mixture of champagne and _porter_! The language is in imitation of the
drink: one finds in it the _piquant_, the sparkling, the exhilarating of
the _Ay_ together with the heaviness, the blackness, and above all the
bitterness of the _stout_.
It is a curious fact, that the man who one day was to impose on all the
States of Germany the severe bureaucratic and military laws of Prussia,
"to place Germany in the saddle," to use one of his _mots_, to press it
into the straight jacket of obligatory service,--even to indirectly
train all Europe to new exercises, and to make it leave the plow for the
sword, liberal occupations for the autumn and summer manoeuvres,--this
man, for his part, has never been able to bind himself down to academic
duties, neither to the regular work of the bureau, nor to the severe
discipline of the soldier. He himself has acknowledged having heard but
_two_ hours of lecture during his whole stay at _Georgia Augusta_. The
university course being ended, he tried several times the administrative
or judiciary career; he tried it at Aix-la-Chapelle, at Potsdam, at
Greifswalde, then again at Potsdam, and had to give it up every time,
disgusted by the monotonous labor of the bureau, or by quarrels with his
superiors. On this subject is told the _piquant_ reply of the young
_referendarius_ to a principal who had made him wait an hour in an
antechamber: "I came to request a short leave of absence; but during
this long hour I have had time to reflect, and I demand my dismission."
Thrice he made a trial of the military service, without arriving at a
higher grade than that of lieutenant in the _Landwehr_, a rank which he
appreciated, however, and of which he loved to don the uniform on solemn
occasions, even at the very time when he was already minister at
Frankfort. The reader knows that the day of Sadowa brought him the
insignia of a general. Those ten or twelve years which had passed for M.
de Bismarck since his disputed state examination to his entrance into
the Prussian chamber, the German biographers call by the fine name
"years of storm and trouble," which recalls one of the most brilliant
epochs of their literature.[16] In truth they were stormy, filled with
miscarriages of more than one kind, with travels, financial
embarrassments, perhaps also with an unrequited love. At least that is
the meaning one is inclined to give to the following passage from a
letter addressed to his sister Malvina: "I struggle in vain, I shall end
by marrying ----; the world wishes it thus, and nothing seems more
natural, and then we will both be killed on the spot. She left me
coldly, it is true, but they all do that. It would not be so bad,
however, if one could throw off his feelings with his shirts, no matter
how rarely one changes the latter."
He seems to have had a very sincere affection for this sister; he
overwhelms her with the most tender names. Thus he calls her his little
dear, his Malvina, his _Maldewinchen_, his good little Arnim; he even
calls her once (pardon him, O divinities of Walhalla) simply _and in
French_, "_ma soeur_." In all the letters of this epoch, dated for the
most part from the estates of Kniephof or Schoenhausen (it was not until
later that M. de Bismarck acquired the famous Varzin[17]), by the side
of an always biting and harsh _humor_, one can perceive a certain
disenchantment; by the side of the cares of fortune appear from time to
time projects for the future, very modest, truly, and which seldom aim
at politics. In 1846 he attached a certain importance at being made
surveyor of dikes in the district (_Deichhauptmann_). "The position is
not remunerative, but it offers some interest in regard to Schoenhausen
and other estates, for we would depend on it in a great measure if we
were again without water as in the past year.... Bernard (a friend)
insists on my going to Prussia (to Berlin). I would like to know what he
expects there. He affirms that by my disposition and my inclinations, I
am made for the service of the state, and that sooner or later I will
end by entering it." Suddenly, and on the very eve of the reunion of the
first Prussian parliament, one is surprised by the plan of a voyage to
the Indias,--probably to make his fortune and establish himself
there,--and one thinks involuntarily of Cromwell wishing to embark for
America on the eve of the long parliament. Do not think, however, that
the days passed sadly and morosely at Kniephof and at Schoenhausen: one
lives there, one overlives the life of _Juncker_ (country squire) and
the officers of the neighboring garrison are good and stout fellows, in
whose company one hunts and dances, "one empties great bowls half filled
with champagne, half with porter;" the guests are awakened in the
morning by pistols fired off close to their pillows; on entering the
_salon_ the female cousins are frightened with four foxes, and honor is
paid to the name given by the whole country to the proprietor of the
domain, the name of "mad Bismarck" (_der tolle Bismarck_). They are
madcaps, and blusterers, prompt to draw their swords, to fight with
pistol or steel, and they do not even avoid a pugilistic scene. One day
in a smoking room at Berlin, the former pupil of _Georgia Augusta_ broke
his beer mug on the skull of a stranger disrespectful in his language
towards a member of the royal family; not, however, without having first
addressed a charitable warning to the insolent speaker, nor without
having afterwards, very sedately, very politely, asked of the waiter the
cost of the damage.[18] This happened in 1850; M. de Bismarck had
already been deputy several years, and was on the point of becoming
minister plenipotentiary to the Germanic Confederation.
_Der tolle Bismarck_; it was not only at Kniephof and at Schoenhausen
that the future chancellor of Germany was thus called. The Berlinese
themselves had no other name for him for a long time, during all the
parliamentary period of the young deputy of the Mark, since his maiden
speech and his first appearance on the tribune,--when having provoked
an indescribable tumult by a violent attack against the liberals he
drew from his pocket a newspaper, and quietly commenced reading, while
waiting for the storm to calm,--up to his last speech on December 3,
1850, which completed the exasperation of the chamber, but was worth a
diplomatic post to the orator. Success advances a little like the
aristocratic law of the Chinese: it is necessary to supply glory from
the rear and to throw lustre on the obscure antecedents of the favorite
of fortune. This was, however, more to mistake the time and to misplace
the historical perspective, than to wish to assign to M. de Bismarck in
those years (1847-50) any important _role_ which he did not fill until
fifteen years later. The truth is that this _role_ was not in this first
period either of such eminence, or, above all, sufficiently respected to
be tempted to arrange itself in an abstract, inductive method. An active
and restless member of the group of _Juncker_ in 1847, and of the great
_party of the cross_ which was formed after the revolution of February,
the country gentleman of Schoenhausen was far from having in the bosom
of this party the authority of a Gerlach and a Stahl, or the great
position of a similar feudal lord of Silesia or Pomerania. In spite of
his audacity, his impetuosity, and his _sang-froid_; in spite of his
exceedingly happy sallies with an eloquence unequal and embarrassed in a
very different manner from to-day, M. de Bismarck was at this epoch
nothing but the Hotspur, and the _enfant terrible_ of the sacred phalanx
which defended the throne, the altar, and the conservative principles.
He was in a measure the General Temple of the ill-tempered
light-horsemen, a General Temple joined with the Marquis of Pire. At
any rate he only passed for a successful Thadden-Triglaff, that brave M.
Thadden-Triglaff who declared that he desired the liberty of the press,
on condition, however, "that there was a power by the side of each
journal to hang up the pamphleteers." The speeches of M. de Bismarck,
friend and neighbor of this ingenious legislator of the press, were
often not more reasonable. Did he not say one day, word for word, "that
all the great cities ought to be destroyed and razed to the ground, as
the eternal homes of revolution?"
The Athenians of the Spree[19] laughed at these jests, repeated those
words full of _humor_, and above all admired a certain argument _ad
hominem_ by means of a mug of beer. Occasionally also they criticised
with malice the advances made to the innocent, to the democrats, and
diverted themselves especially over the famous little branch of olive
which the country squire of Schoenhausen showed one day to his colleague
of the chamber, the very radical Doctor d'Ester. This branch, he told
him, he had cut in a recent excursion to Vaucluse, from the tomb of
Laura and Petrarch. He put it carefully in his cigar case and thought of
presenting it one day to the red gentlemen "as a sign of
reconciliation." It was in the strange destiny of this extraordinary man
not to be thought in earnest until the day when he became terrible. _Der
tolle Bismarck_, the Germans said in 1850; at Frankfort the good Count
Rechberg called him scoffingly a _Bursche_, and he was considered a
personage worthy of laughter in the eyes of the French minister, a man
of mind, however, even in 1864. The year after the legendary coast of
Biarritz, he pursued with his projects the Emperor Napoleon III., who,
resting on the arm of the author of "Colomba," whispered from time to
time into the ear of the academician senator those words: "He is crazy!"
Five years later the dreamer of Ham gave up his sword to the crazy man
of the Mark.
"I belong,"--such was the defiant declaration of M. de Bismarck in one
of his first speeches in the chamber,--"I belong to an opinion which
glories in the reproaches of obscurantism, and of tendencies of the
Middle Age; I belong to that great multitude which is compared with
disdain to the most intelligent party of the nation." He wanted a
_Christian State_. "Without a religious basis," said he, "a state is
nothing but a fortuitous aggregation of interests, a sort of bastion in
a war of all against all; without this religious basis, all legislation,
instead of regenerating itself at the living sources of eternal truth,
is only tossed about by human ideas as vague as changeable." It is for
this reason that he pronounced against the emancipation of the Jews, and
repulsed, above all, with horror the institution of civil marriage, a
degrading institution, and one which "made the church the train-bearer
(_Schleppentraeger_) of a subaltern bureaucracy."[20] He was as
_intransigeant_ for the throne as for the altar: he set at defiance the
principle of the sovereignty of the people; universal suffrage (which he
himself was to introduce one day into the whole German empire!) seemed
to him a social danger and an outrage to good sense. He denied the
rights of the nation; the crown alone had rights: the old Prussian
spirit knew but that,--"and this old Prussian spirit is a Bucephalus who
willingly allows his legitimate master to mount him, but who will throw
to the ground every Sunday rider (_Sonntagsreiter_)!"
A resolute adversary of modern ideas, of constitutional theories, and of
all that then formed the programme of the liberal party in Prussia, the
deputy of the Mark combated with the same energy the two great national
passions of this party: the "deliverance" of Schleswig-Holstein and the
unity of Germany. He deplored that "the royal Prussian troops had gone
to defend the revolution in Schleswig against the legitimate sovereign
of that country, the King of Denmark;" he asserted that they were making
a groundless quarrel with this king, that they sought a quarrel with him
"for no cause" (_um des Kaisers Bart_), and he did not hesitate to
declare before an angry chamber, that the war provoked in the Duchies of
the Elbe was "an undertaking eminently iniquitous, frivolous,
disastrous, and revolutionary."[21] As to the unity of Germany, the
young orator of the ultras repulsed it in the name of Right, of the
sovereignty and of the independence of princes, as well as in the name
of patriotism, be it understood. He was Prussian, a _specific_ Prussian,
a hardened Prussian (_stockpreusse_), and cared very little to unite
the good and firm substance "with the dissolved elements (_das
zerfahrene Wesen_) of the South." He called on the army: Does this army
wish to exchange the old national colors, black and white, for this
German tricolor, which was only known to it as the emblem of revolution?
Does it wish to exchange its old Dessauer march for the song of a
Professor Arndt on the _German fatherland_?
We have already spoken of his speech against the imperial crown offered
by the parliament of Frankfort, of the ingenious allusion borrowed from
the libretto of the "Freischuetz." While refusing the imperial crown,
Frederick William IV. did not the less endeavor, during the years 1849
and 1850, to rescue some waifs from this wreck of unitarian ideas; he
tried to group around himself, and with the aid of the liberals, a
notable part of the Germanic body, to create a sort of northern
confederation: "restricted union" became for a moment the _mot d'ordre_
of a programme which General Radowitz was charged to place on the stage
of the parliament of Erfurt. M. de Bismarck condemned without pity or
weakness all these vain attempts; with the great theorician of his
party, the celebrated Professor Stahl, he pleaded for the return to the
_statu quo_ prior to 1848. Like him he demanded "that the overturned
column of right be replaced in Germany," that the _Bund_ be restored on
legal bases, according to the terms of the treaty of Vienna, and that no
cessation should be made in placing Prussian politics on its guard
against any "course of Phaeton" in a region of clouds and thunder.