Phaeton" was brusquely arrested by the hand of that great Austrian
minister, who himself only traversed, like a luminous meteor, the most
elevated regions of power to disappear suddenly and to leave behind him
eternal regrets. Prince Felix de Schwarzenberg recalls in some respects
those statesmen of whom England lately offered the astounding example,
those Peterboroughs, those Bentincks, and those like them, who knew how
to interrupt, almost suddenly, a life given up to pleasures and to the
frivolous follies of the world, to reveal themselves in a trice like
veritable political geniuses, and to die before their time, after having
exhausted the intoxication of easy good fortune and of glory, arduous in
a very different degree. It is known with what a firm and steady hand
the prince seized the helm of affairs in Austria, and in how short a
time he succeeded in lifting up a monarchy placed on the brink of an
abyss. Was his conduct in every particular irreproachable; was it even
provident to the end? That is not the question for us. Let us limit
ourselves in saying that rarely has a minister met with more good luck
in his short career, found so much assurance in success, and spoken in a
loftier or prouder tone in vexatious necessities. This time Prince
Schwarzenberg spoke with all the authority which right gave him. Perhaps
he spoke even too harshly, and Prussia seemed for a moment ready to pick
up the glove. Frederick William IV. demanded of the chambers a credit of
fourteen million thalers for the armament, and made a warlike speech.
Europe became attentive, the national assembly of France was on the
point of ordering a new levy of troops, and, fatidical prelude of a
tragedy which was not to be played till fifteen years later, in 1850 as
in 1866, Louis Napoleon thought that he ought to encourage the cabinet
of Berlin, encourage it with aid, and in direct opposition to the
general sentiment of the country! While the national assembly in France
pronounced itself very plainly for neutrality and the minister of
foreign affairs was even inclined in favor of Austria, the president of
the republic sent an intimate friend to Berlin, M. de Persigny, with the
mission to engage the King of Prussia as much as possible in the war.
War appeared inevitable. The troops were already disposed in two parts;
there had already been encounters between the advanced guards. All of a
sudden, and before a menacing ultimatum from Vienna, strengthened by a
friendly notice from St. Petersburg, M. de Manteuffel, president of the
Prussian council, proposed to that of Austria to hold an interview at
Oderberg, on the frontier of the two States. Some hours after having
sent this proposition, he announced by telegraph (a proceeding then very
rare), that, on positive orders from the king, he should go as far as
Olmuetz, without waiting for the reply. He went there, and signed (29
November, 1850) the preliminaries of peace, the famous "punctuations" by
which Prussia yielded to the demands of Austria on every point.
It is not astonishing that such a profound humiliation,--preceded by a
measure of distress up to that time unheard of in the annals of
diplomacy, and immediately followed by an Austrian dispatch which very
uselessly did nothing but irritate the wound,[22]--filled liberal
Prussia with grief and indignation. It was in vain that M. de Manteuffel
endeavored to justify his conduct before the national mind. He affirmed
that he would rather be placed "in front of conical balls than pointed
speeches" (_lieber Spitzkugeln als spitze Reden_); the chamber of Berlin
expressed with passion the griefs of the country, and M. de Vincke
closed one of the most vehement philippics with these words: "Down with
the ministry!" A single orator dared to undertake the defense of the
ministry, and to make in the same moment the apotheosis of Austria.
Already in the preceding year M. de Bismarck had desired for his country
the _role_ of the Emperor Nicholas in Hungary. Since then he had never
neglected an occasion to resent in behalf of the empire of the Hapsburg
the insults which German liberalism had heaped on him, and he remained
true to this policy even in the most extraordinary circumstances, and in
the midst of the indescribable clamors of the assembly. He maintained
that there could be no possible or legitimate federation in Germany
without Austria. One of the greatest griefs of the Teutons against
Austria has been in all times its not forming a state purely German, its
containing in its bosom different populations and of an "inferior" race.
This was the principal argument of the parliament of Frankfort in favor
of the constitution of a Germany without the empire of the Hapsburg, and
M. de Bismarck did not fail to reproduce it in 1866, in a memorable
circular. In 1850 the deputy of the Mark did not share this opinion; he
was convinced that "Austria was a German power in the full force of the
term, although it also had the good fortune to exercise its dominion
over foreign nationalities," and he boldly concluded that "_Prussia
should subordinate itself to Austria_ to the end that they might combat
in concert the menacing democracy." Truly, in recalling that session of
the Prussian chamber on the 3d December, 1850, one can, in the words of
Montesquieu, observe the spectacle of the astounding vicissitudes of
history; but the irony of fate commences to take its truly fantastic
proportions, when one remembers that it was precisely this speech of the
3d December, 1850, which decided the vocation of M. de Bismarck and
opened to him the career of foreign affairs. Forced to consent to the
restoration of the _Bund_, and resigned to the preponderance of the
empire of the Hapsburg, the Prussian government thought in truth that it
could give no better pledges of its disposition than in choosing for its
plenipotentiary to the Germanic Confederation the ardent orator whose
devotion to the cause of the Hapsburg was even able to resist the proof
of the humiliation of Olmuetz. And it was as the most decided partisan of
Austria that the future conqueror of Sadowa made his entrance into the
arena of diplomacy!
The chamber was prorogued in consequence of this stormy discussion. The
rupture with the national party was consummated, and M. de Manteuffel,
whose cold and bureaucratic mind sympathized in reality but very
slightly with the ultras, thought it nevertheless useful to strengthen
the government by making them some advances. Several prominent posts in
the civil service were conferred on members of the extreme right: M. de
Kleist-Retzow, among others, held the presidency of the Rhenish
provinces. One could hardly dream of utilizing in the same manner the
talents of the former _referendarius_ of Potsdam and Greifswalde, who
had shown so little disposition and taste for the administrative career:
on account of the considerations already mentioned, it was first thought
of sending him to Frankfort as first secretary of the legation, but with
the assurance of being made real representative at the end of some time.
This choice produced some surprise. It was an entirely new proceeding
(they have become accustomed to it there and in other places since) to
reward a deputy with a diplomatic mission for his attitude or his vote
in the chamber. It was asked if the eccentric and impetuous cavalier of
the Mark would be the right man in the right place in the midst of such
delicate circumstances. The timid and overscrupulous M. de Manteuffel
was not without apprehension on this head, and the very ardor with which
M. de Bismarck accepted the position only augmented the uneasiness of
the president of the council. King Frederick William IV., who personally
had a very high regard for the ardent "Percy" of the _party of the
cross_, had nevertheless some doubts. "Your majesty can try me," said
the aspirant for diplomacy; "if matters go wrong, your majesty will be
at perfect liberty to recall me at the end of six months or even
before."
It was only, however, at the end of eight years that he was recalled by
the successor of Frederick William IV. And still, after the first days
of his mission (June, 1851) he expressed himself thus in a confidential
letter concerning the men and the affairs he was charged to deal with:
"Our relations here consist in distrust and mutual _espionage_. If we
only had something to spy out or to hide! But these are merely silly
trifles, for which these people torment their minds. These diplomats who
retail with an air of importance their _bric-a-brac_, seem to me much
more ridiculous than a deputy of the second chamber draping himself in
the feeling of his dignity. If exterior events do not unexpectedly
arise, I know from to-day exactly what we shall have done in two, three,
or five years, and what we can dispatch in twenty-four hours, if we wish
to be sincere and reasonable for one day. I never doubted that all these
gentlemen did their cooking in water; but a soup so watery and insipid
that it is impossible to find in it a trace of fat does not cease to
astonish me.... I have made very rapid progress in the art of saying
nothing with many words; I write several sheets of reports, plain and
round, like the leading articles, and if, after having read them,
Manteuffel understands a jot, he is cleverer than I am. No one, not even
the most malicious of democrats can have any idea what nonsense and
charlatanisms diplomacy hides."
Some years later, during the complications of the Orient, he wrote to
his sister Malvina: "I am at a session of the _Bund_; a very highly
honored colleague is reading a very stupid speech on the anarchical
situation in Upper Lippe, and I think that I cannot better improve this
opportunity than in pouring out before you my fraternal sentiments.
These knights of the _round table_ who surround me in this ground floor
of the Taxis palace are very honorable men, but not at all amusing. The
table, twenty feet in diameter, is covered with a green cloth. Think of
X---- and of Z---- in Berlin; they are entirely of the calibre of these
gentlemen of the _Bundestag_. I have the habit of approaching all things
with a feeling of innocence which gapes. My disposition of mind is that
of a careless lassitude after I have succeeded in bringing little by
little the _Bund_ to the desolating consciousness of its profound
nothingness. Do you remember the _Lied_ of Heine: _O Bund, o chien tu
n'es pas sain_, etc.? Well! that _Lied_ will soon, and by a unanimous
vote, be raised to the rank of national hymn of Germany."
The lassitude, the disgust as well as the contempt for the _Bund_
increased from year to year. In 1858 he thought of leaving the career
forever. He had enough of "this _regime_ of truffles, of dispatches and
of grand crosses." He spoke of withdrawing "under the guns of
Schoenhausen," or still better of "growing young by ten years, and once
more taking the offensive position of 1848 and 1849." He wished to
fight, without being hindered by relations and official courtesies, to
throw off the uniform, and to "go into politics in swimming drawers (_in
politischen Schwimmhosen_)."
What is there astonishing in it? Of all imaginable political men, M. de
Bismarck was certainly the least fitted to have a regard and liking for
a deliberative body essentially moderated and moderating, where
everything was discussed in private, in elaborated speeches, thought
over at length and still more freely discussed, and where the gashes and
thrusts actually amounted to nothing. A great congress of peace could
scarcely have any attraction for the ardent Percys whom the smallest
conference of Bangor[23] caused, enraged, to jump out of their skins;
and the _Bundestag_, as we have said, was a permanent congress of peace
called to maintain the _statu quo_ and to remove every cause for
conflict. The little incidents, the little manoeuvres and the little
struggles for influence were not wanting, it is true, in this company,
more than in any other; they served to maintain the good humor of the
ordinary diplomats, and were generally considered as useful stimulants
for the good management of affairs and good digestion of dinners. But
they must have seemed paltry in the eyes of a man of action and of
combat; they must have irritated, at times even exasperated him! To
observe the affairs of the world from this post on the Main, which
allowed them to be grasped in their _ensemble_; to profit by abundant
information, to compose therefrom brilliant dispatches, fit to instruct
and above all to amuse an august master; to utter occasionally a very
_spirituel_, very malicious _mot_, and to rejoice at it; to make others
enjoy it, even to carry it perfectly warm to Stuttgart, and to confide
its further expedition to a gracious Grand Duchess,--that was an
occupation which might content Prince Gortchakof, even charm the leisure
hours of a man educated in the school of Count Nesselrode and grown old
in the career. But how was it possible to make such an existence
agreeable to a cavalier of the Mark, improvised into a minister
plenipotentiary, or to shut up in such a narrow circle, though a
pleasant one, a "_fiance_ of Bellona," still foaming from battles
delivered without cessation for four years on a resounding stage! In
order to find a fitting compensation in the new circle in which he was
placed, he needed at least some great European combination, some great
negotiation capable of exercising his faculties, and of making them
known,--and they talked to him of _bric-a-brac_, of Upper Lippe! A
negotiation as insignificant as that with the poor Augustenburg, brought
to a happy end in 1852, could certainly not be counted among the
triumphs worthy of a Bismarck,[24] and this was nevertheless the single
and pitiful "bubble of fat" which he was able to discover in the soup
cooked during several years at Frankfort!
It is true that the question of the Orient did not delay in breaking
out, and that at first it even seemed to open vast perspectives. Prussia
was well disposed towards Russia. The secondary States of Germany showed
themselves still more ardent, and sometimes even went so far as to have
the appearance of being willing to draw their swords; so much the worse
for Austria if she persisted in making common cause with the allies;
that might bring about important territorial modifications, and all to
the advantage of the House of Hohenzollern! And the representative of
Prussia to the Germanic Confederation ("his excellency the lieutenant,"
as he was then called on account of the Landwehr uniform which he liked
to wear) gave a warm and firm support in this crisis to his colleague of
Russia, who had become his most intimate friend. He was not, however,
long in seeing that the Germanic Confederation would not desert its
neutrality; that the secondary States, in spite of all the agitations in
the conferences of Bamberg, would not take an active part either in one
sense or in the other, and that the war would be localized in the Black
Sea and the Baltic. He conceived a profound disdain for the _Bund_, was
"conscious of its unfathomable nothingness," and hummed over the green
cloth of the Taxis palace the _Lied_ of Heine on the Diet of Frankfort.
In addition, he experienced on this occasion a grief, which he never
forgot, which he recalled many years afterwards in a confidential
dispatch which has become celebrated. During the Oriental complications,
he wrote in 1859 to M. de Schleinitz, "Austria overcame us at Frankfort
in spite of all the commonalty of ideas and desires which we then had
with the secondary States. These States, after each oscillation, always
indicate with the activity of the magnetized needle, the same point of
attraction." Nothing more natural, however; it was not from the empire
of the Hapsburg that Hanover and Saxony had to dread certain annexation,
as events have since proved only too clearly. But the man who can one
day desire the destruction of great cities, as the hot-beds of
revolutionary spirit, did not hesitate to condemn in his soul and
conscience the small States as the inextinguishable hearths of the
"Austrian spirit."
Austria, in truth, was not slow in taking in the thoughts and the
resentments of the cavalier of the Mark the place which the revolution
had lately held there, and the ardent champion of Hapsburg in the
chambers of Berlin became little by little their most bitter, most
implacable enemy in the _Bundestag_. Moreover, all the great men of
Prussia, commencing with the great elector and Frederick II., and
without excepting William I., have always had, as regards Austria, "two
souls in their breasts" like Faust, or, like Rebecca, "two children
conflicting with one another in her bosom;" in a word, two principles,
one of which imbued them with an almost religious respect for the
antique and illustrious imperial house, while the other urged them to
conquest and spoliation at the cost of this very house. In the month of
May, 1849, the honest and poetical King Frederick William IV. declared
to a deputation of ministers from the Germanic States,[25] "that he
should consider that day as the most happy one of his life when he
should hold the wash basin (_Waschbecken_) at the coronation of a
Hapsburg as Emperor of Germany;" that did not prevent him later from
smiling from time to time at the work of the parliament of Frankfort,
and from working for the "restricted union" under the auspices of
General de Radowitz. And even M. de Bismarck was certainly very sincere
as deputy of the Prussian parliament in his "Austrian religion," when in
the name of conservative principles he undertook the energetic defense
of the Hapsburg against the attacks of German liberalism; but he was now
the representative of his government in the Taxis palace, encountered
Austria on its way to a struggle for influence with the secondary
States, to a struggle of interests concerning the affairs of the Orient,
and he began to engage in an order of ideas, at the end of which he was
to take up the policy of "heart blow." It was thus that on the occasion
of the war in the Orient and in the very city of Frankfort there arose
in the hearts of the two future chancellors of Russia and of Germany
that hatred of Austria which was to have such fatal consequences, for,
that the reader may not be deceived, it was the connivance of these two
political men,--the fatal ideology of the Emperor Napoleon III. aiding
them largely, it is just to add,--which rendered possible the
catastrophes of which our days have been the witnesses: the calamity of
Sadowa, and the destruction of the _Bund_, and the dismemberment of
Denmark as well as of France! With Prince Gortchakof, this sentiment of
hostility burst forth suddenly in consequence of an erroneous
appreciation of events, but which his whole nation shared with him. With
M. de Bismarck, the hatred of Austria had not an origin so spontaneous;
it had not, for instance, as an origin, the grievances of Olmuetz, which
the deputy of the Mark had on the contrary been able to easily overcome;
it was slow in forming, it developed, consolidated itself in consequence
of a long and daily struggle in the heart of the _Bund_, in consequence
of an experience acquired at the end of several years of vain attempts,
and from the definite conviction that Hapsburg would never of its free
will, abandon the secondary States, and he defended them against every
effort at absorption. Resuming the instruction which his sojourn of
eight years at Frankfort had given him, the representative of Prussia to
the Germanic Confederation wrote in 1859, in his often quoted dispatch
to M. de Schleinitz, those remarkable words: "I see in our federal
relations a fault which sooner or later we must cure _ferro et igne_."
_Ferro et igne!_ that is the first version of the received text "iron
and blood," which one day the president of the council laid down in an
official manner in a speech to the chamber.
At the same time that the ancient "Austrian religion" underwent with its
former ardent confessor a transformation so radical, a no less curious
change was wrought in his mind in regard to several other articles of
the _credo_ of his party. Removed from the _melee_ and participating no
longer in the parliamentary struggles, he began to observe more coldly
certain questions important in those times, and to temper more than one
antipathy of past days. Since 1852, on returning from a trip to Berlin,
he writes: "There is something demoralizing in the air of the chamber;
the best men of the world become vain there and cling to the Tribune as
a woman to her toilet.... I find parliamentary intrigues hollow and
unworthy of any notice. While one lives in their midst, one has
illusions concerning them, and attaches to them I do not know how much
importance.... Every time that I arrive there from Frankfort, I
experience the feelings of a temperate man who falls among drunken
people." Many things in old times disgraceful and abhorred, take now a
less repulsive aspect to the eyes of the statesmen maturing great
projects for the future. "The chamber and the press can become the most
powerful instruments of our external policy," wrote in 1856 the former
despiser of parliamentarism and friend of M. Thadden-Triglaff, and it is
thus that one finds in the correspondence of these times the vague idea
of a national representation of the _Zollverein_, even a pronounced
desire for universal suffrage itself, provided that these means could
become the _instrumenta regni_. The example of the second empire
exercised then an influence which the historian should carefully bear in
mind. This system of absolutism tinged with popular passions, "spotted
with red," to employ a characteristic expression of M. de Bismarck,
seduced the imagination of more than one aspirant for _coups d'etat_ and
_coups d'eclat_, and the former colleague of the Doctor d'Ester must
have opened his cigar case more than once and contemplated there the
little sprig of olive plucked from the tomb of Petrarch and Laura.
Yet the goal seemed distant, and how veiled was the future, still
indistinctly seen! It was not under King Frederick William IV., whose
mind became more and more clouded, that he was permitted to think of
action; even the accession of the regent, the present King William,
seemed at first to make no change in the exterior situation. The new
ministers of the regent, the ministers of the _new era_, as was said
then, were honest doctrinarians who spoke of the development of conceded
liberties and of the strengthening of the representative _regime_. The
good and _naif_, they even allowed William I. to proclaim solemnly one
day that "Prussia need only make _moral conquests_ in Germany!"
Evidently the _new era_ was not yet the era of M. de Bismarck. During
the years which passed after the war of the Orient until his embassy in
Russia, one sees the representative of Prussia to the Germanic
Confederation in constant motion, on continual journeys across Germany,
France, Denmark, Sweden, Courland, and Upper Italy, seeking subjects for
distraction, or perhaps also subjects for observation, and each time
returning to Frankfort only to raise a difficulty, break some
_bric-a-brac_, and to press to the utmost the nervous and bilious Count
Rechberg, Austrian representative and president of the _Bundestag_. His
frequent excursions to Paris caused him to have a presentiment of the
events which were preparing in Italy; he only became more aggressive,
and there was a time when his recall was considered at Frankfort as
indispensable for the maintenance of peace. It was at this moment that
he thought of definitely abandoning this career, of throwing off the
uniform, and of going into politics in his "swimming drawers." He
consented, however, to do it in "a bear-skin and with caviar," as he
expressed himself in one of his letters; in other words called to
exchange his post at Frankfort for that at St. Petersburg. One hoped
thus to remove him from the burning ground, to "put him on ice" (another
expression of M. de Bismarck); as for himself, he perhaps attached other
hopes to this removal, and in any case found consolation in seeing his
former colleague of Frankfort become principal minister of a great
empire, and with whom he was always on such good terms. The 1st of
April, 1859, "the anniversary of his birth," M. de Bismarck arrived in
the capital of Russia.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Plutarch, Theseus, _initio._
[2] _Aus der Petersburger Gesellschaft_, vol. ii. p. 156.
[3] Expressions from the Russian circular of the 6th July, 1848,
addressed by Count Nesselrode to his agents in Germany.
[4] The Germanic Confederation was formed in 1816. Frankfort was chosen
as its seat, whither delegates were sent from all the States of Germany
retaining sovereign rights. These delegates formed the assembly called
the Diet.