The Italian treaty filled the cup of Bismarck's
iniquities fuller than Germany suspected, for Bismarck
had the audacity to assert on April 5 that it was far
from the intention of the King to take active measures
against Austria.
iniquities fuller than Germany suspected, for Bismarck
had the audacity to assert on April 5 that it was far
from the intention of the King to take active measures
against Austria.
Robertson - Bismarck
3.
The rupture with Austria--The Treaty of Prague,
1865-1866
The ten months from the Convention of Gastein to
the final rupture on June 23, 1866, when the Prussian
troops entered Bohemia, make a very complicated chapter
in European history. Full justice to the diplomatic
moves and countermoves would require a large canvas
and elaborate detail. In France, Austria, Italy, and the
German States, the directors of policy continuously en-
visaged contradictory aims and alternative lines of action.
German public opinion was in greater bewilderment than
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
ever: fearing and detesting everything that Prussia did,
yet mastered by an intuition that in Prussian strength
and purposeful egoism alone lay all hopes of a permanent
decision. Germany had indeed dragged its anchors, and
was drifting into the storm.
The main lines of Bismarck's statecraft stand out in
the sharpest relief against the blurred and shifting kaleido-
scope. A letter from the devoted Roon, himself toiling
at full concert pitch, to have the Prussian army ready,
speaks of 'Otto's herculean industry day and night and
his reckless demands on his physical strength. . . . He
has now to reckon with the rebellion of his truest and
most submissive subject, his stomach, and is so irritable
and sensitive, particularly over petty matters, that I am
full of anxiety, for I know what is at stake. ' Roon adds
truly, 'complete freedom of mind, a deranged digestion,
and tortured nerves are hard to reconcile. ' But for all
his difficulties, political, mental, and physical, Bismarck
exhibited the one clear and resolute will, the one clear
and unshakable aim in the universal confusion. He was
determined to settle the fate of Prussia and Germany by
the appeal to the sword.
Roon, Moltke, and the Prussian Staff were of the same
determination. Men then and since have convinced
themselves that the war was inevitable, that it lay in the
alleged logic both of history and the situation, and that
after August 14, 1865, the two major States of Germany,
Prussia and Austria, simply slid slowly down inclined
planes to an unavoidable collision. A close study, how-
ever, of these ten months does not support the general
conclusion that wars are unavoidable, and that this
particular one exemplifies such a philosophy of history or
statesmanship.
It would be a complete misreading of Bismarck's policy,
principles, and methods to assert that either before or
after the Convention of Gastein he so completely lost his
grip on the Prussian rudder that he was forced into
fighting. Bismarck may not have believed in ' preventive
wars,' though the definition of a ' preventive war ' would
have to be very carefully drawn before either he or hii
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? BISMARCK
disciples could accept so complete a repudiation; _he
certainly did not believe in wars merely for conquest or
g'ory, and no statesman of the nineteenth. century had a
deeper sense of the responsibility that plunging a State
into war imposes on those who direct policy. _ But in
1865 and in 1866, as in 1870 or in 1864, he willed the
war and he deliberately worked for it.
The secrets of his statecraft will be completely missed
if we do not recognise two elemental postulates ^first,
that in 1865 he rejected every opportunity by which war
might be avoided; secondly, that he worked with stead-
fast patience to remove the obstacles to war, as the final
conclusion of the matter. He could, for example, have
taken up Napoleon's idea of a Congress, and with the
help of Russia (and certainly of Great Britain) have
opened all the festering abscesses in the operating theatre
of the European Concert. Such a course would ha^c
been welcomed by the best minds in Germany and outside
it. But a Congress would not have given him what he
held with passionate conviction was alone worth winning.
War alone, he concluded, would do his business, and
briefly for three reasons. JDeieaj^jjeremptory and con-
clusive, alone would drive Austria out of Germany and
extort the recognition not of Prussia's parity with herself
--the time for that had passed--but of Prussian supre-
macy; Prussian supremacy in Germany required terri-
torial additions to the Prussian State, (not merely Schleswig
and Holstein),, without which her mastery of the new
German organisation would be incomplete, _and such
annexations could only be secured from the defeated and
i'ustified by victory in war: the constitutional conflict in
'russia and the terms of the new organisation could only
be settled if the Prussian monarchy could dictate its will;
war alone, not diplomacy, would confer the dictatorship.
It was not in 1865 any more than "in 1864 or in 1870 the
-end--the unification of Germany on certain principles
and for certain ends--justifying the means. To Bismarck
the State, whose end is Power, does not justify the means,
that are Force. More correctly, the means are simply the
end in process of realisation. The stages through which
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
the purposive life of an organised community passes, he
would have argued, are not means to an end, they are the
successive manifestations of the purpose. Each successive
manifestation is linked with the preceding one, and the
sum of the manifestations is not separable from the end,
and does not require a justification different from that
for the totality of the result. What justifies life as a
whole justifies its successive manifestations or means of
realising itself, and no other justification is admissible or
necessary. Had Bismarck desired or conceived of a
unified Germany consummating the National State which
stands for Right, his methods would have been as different
as the result would have differed from the Prussia and
Germanv he created. But then he would not have been
the Bismarck of history, and his interpretation of life-
values would have been the opposite of what it was. The
impressive conclusions that his action has stamped ferro
et igni on the Germany and Europe of his generation are
two--first, that when a strong State is determined to
find in war a solution of political difficulties and will
accept no other solution, war will result, however un-
willing other States may be to go to war; and secondly,
that while the Germany of 1865 (and Bismarck knew it)
did not want the Bismarckian solution, the Germany of
1890 had been convinced by Bismarck that no other solution
in 1866 would have succeeded or satisfied what Germany
had been taught to recognise as her real ambitions and
needs. The one problem in statesmanship that Bismarck
did not solve for his or any other generation before or
since his time, and had no desire to solve, was how to
defeat the statecraft (that is force) of the State (that
stands for power) without recourse to force or without
repudiating the principle that the State stands for Right
not Might, or without accepting the poison distilled in
the doctrine that ends justify means.
As previously, his first and permanent difficulty lay
with his sovereign. William's education by his minister
in the gospel of Bismarckianism had to begin over again
after August 1865. Once his sovereign's 'conscience'
had been reilluminated, the King would readily misinter-
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? 194
BISMARCK
pret the appeal of military honour as the categorical
imperative of royal and civic duty.
The Liberal opposition in the Prussian Landtag must,
therefore, be provoked to continue its attacks on the
Crown and its advisers. Surrender, therefore, would be
surrender to 'rebels. ' As on June 13 (before Gastein),
so on February 3, 1866, when there were full-dress debates
on the foreign policy of the government, Bismarck
taunted the Progressive leaders with their political
futility, ineptitude, and parliamentary insolence. Their
criticisms on the conduct of affairs he dismissed as the
interference of ignorant trespassers on the prerogatives
of the Crown. This autocratic attitude in 'The House
of Phrases ' was largely tactical. Not there, but in France
and Italy, were the keys of the major political strategy.
Italy, in August 1865, had signified that jit was_ im-
possible for hex jri_a Jfra^
idle spectator. A Prussian alliance with Italy was danger-
ous; committal to the Italian programme opened serious
questionings; behind Florence lay Rome and the Papal
froblem. The year 1864 had seen the issue of the famous
yllabus which seriously perturbed the intellectuals of
German Liberalism and heated the Clericals in South
Germany and in France. The parties in Germany were,
in fact, marching to the Kulturkampf. Bismarck rightly
feared that Napoleon might, in has resentment_at" a
Prussian treaty with Italy behind his back, come to terms
with Austria, secure Venetia for Italy, in return for com-
pensation in Germany tQ Austria at Prussia's. expense,
and compensation to himself ux the Rhej^sh__pr^yinces.
The possibility of an anti-Prussian coalition was no idle
chimera of an overstrained mind in the Wilhelmstrasse.
Had there been a statesman of the first rank either at
Paris, Florence, or Vienna, a very ugly turn indeed could
have been given to the situation. As it was, Bismarck
had to deal with Napoleon, Drouyn de Lhuys, La
Marmora, and Mensdorff. The price that nations pay
when their destinies are in the hands of the intellectually
second-rate is set out with damning precision in the next
four year*.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
Napoleon had to be brought to a definite understanding.
On October I Bismarck was in Paris, and on October 3
at Biarritz--the third of three momentous visits. By <
November 7 he was back in Berlin. He had threshed out
the difficulties both in the Villa Eugenie at Biarritz, and
at St. Cloud with Napoleon and his ministers, and had
virtually accomplished the difficult task of securing
Napoleon's benevolent neutrality, without any awkward
promissory notes, which could be presented for payment
at sight at some future date. Prosper Merimee has put
on record his personal impression of the Minister-Presi-
dent--of his vigour and power and also of his irresistible
charm (a quality we are apt to forget Bismarck possessed
in a remarkable degree). But even in 1865 Merimee did
not take seriously the political ideas that Bismarck ex-
Sressed with such disarming and genial exuberance. Like
Fapoleon, Merimee thought the Minister-President was
sometimes really not quite sane, a Prussian Gascon whose
judgment was clouded by a misinterpretation of realities.
These momentous conferences at the Villa Eugenie provide
a dramatic contrast between the Prussian, in the zenith
of his physical and intellectual powers, alert, adamantine,
probing every weak point, and masking it all under an
amazing frankness--and, on the other side, the Emperor,
tired, puzzled, disillusioned, indecisive, yet clinging to his
dreams which he mistook for profound insight into the
Time-spirit. He was already suffering from the disease
that killed him; already conscious that the noonday of
the Empire had passed and that the shadows were falling,
the shadows that came from the coup tfttat.
Why Napoleon did not insist on a bargain in black and
white, and on pinning Bismarck down to a definite com-
pensation, is, indeed, a problem. Napoleon had a definite
article to sell, French neutrality, which the purchaser,
Bismarck, needed above all things. The experience of
1864 should have convinced the Emperor that he was
dealing with a man whose verbal promises were worthless,
and he should not have parted with French neutrality
except for a bond in writing. Even if, as is probable,
Bismarck had later repudiated the bond, Napoleon would
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? 196
BISMARCK
have had it to convince France and Europe. Napoleon,
it is true, was in a grave dilemma. He feared that
Bismarck, foiled at Paris, might settle with Austria and
re-establish the Triple Alliance of 1815 against France.
The obvious reply to such a menace was a threat to unite
with Austria and her South German Allies against Prussia.
But the real crux for Napoleon lay, as always, in Italy.
The Clericals would not let him evacuate Rome, and his
own 'nationalism' drove him to desire to complete the
work of 1859 by procuring Venetia for the kingdom of
Italy. It was not so much that Napoleon did not know
what compensation he really wanted as that he could not
openly ask for it--the left bank of the Rhine or Belgium.
The former brought him up against the dead wall of
Prussia--the latter against the dead wall of Great Britain
and the Treaty of 1839. Napoleon therefore postponed
the decision. His 'compensation' was to be defined
later. He jtrusted in his 'star' and on his calculation
that a Prusso-Austrian War would be a bloody and in-
decisive struggle, in which France could intervene . and
dictate her compensation either on both combatants
or on one by allying with the other. But the idea
rested on two fatal errors of judgment, which Napoleon
shared with most contemporary statesmen in Europe--an
exaggerated estimate of Austrian strength and jof_J^Ee
readiness of the French army--a complete ignorance of
the Prussian army as remoulded by the Prussian General
Staff. Bismarck and Moltke were in complete agreement
that if Prussia could not make war she had better go out
of business altogether.
Italy was now invited by Bismarck to conclude a com-
mercial alliance with the Zollverein. Such an economic
understanding, Bismarck told the Italian ambassador,
would have a high political significance for the future.
The negotiations were pressed, and by November 15 the
treaty was ready for the respective ratifications (March 3,
1866).
The next step was to put the screw on Austria.
Austria, of course, was ' behaving very badly ' in Holstein
--she was permitting the Augustenburg agitation to go
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 197
on with Kiel as its headquarters. This was a plain
violation of the Convention of Gastein, disturbing to
Prussia in her occupation of Schleswig, and keeping open
a sore that the Convention had healed. On January 26,
1866, Bismarck sent a rasping protest to Vienna. The
Austrian administration oJJHolstem^was intolerable; the
Augustenburg agitation must be promptly suppressed.
Austria was making herself ' the champion of the Revolu-
tion. ' The Austrian reply of February 9 informed the
Prussian government that the alliance of 1864 was at an
end. The position had reverted to the period before the
"Danish war, and Austrian relations with Prussia were
neither better nor worse than with any other European
Power. On February 28 a secret Council of State was
held in Berlin at which the Crown Prince, the military
chiefs, the Prussian ambassador at Paris, Goltz, specially
summoned, and, of course, Bismarck and the King, were
present. William decided that every diplomatic effort
compatible wrthTPrussian honour and safety must be made
to maintain peace. 'After having prayed to God,' the
King said, cto lead him in the right path, he should
consider the war, if it came, as a just one. '
On March 3 William wrote personally to Napoleon to
propose a definite understanding; next day the project
of an offensive and defensive alliance with Italy was taken
seriously in hand. At the Council of February 28,
Moltke had expressed his considered judgment that with
the neutrality of France, the military aid of Italy, and the
consequent division of the Austrian army by war on two
fronts, victory might be regarded as reasonably certain.
With General Govone, sent from Florence, Bismarck now
worked hard to conclude the Italian treaty. Not with-
out great difficulty. Both sides thoroughly distrusted
each other. The Italians, mindful of 1859, feared that
Prussia would embroil them with Austria, and then either
evade its share or settle the German quarrel at Italy's
expense. Nor had they any confidence in Bismarck's
honesty or honour. Bismarck, on his side, suspected that
Italy intended to utilise Prussia simply to obtain Venetia,
and was quite indifferent to the real issue--Prussian
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? 198
BISMARCK
supremacy in Germany: he desired to tie Italy down to
a specific engagement while leaving a free hand for him-
self. The project very nearly broke down on the crucial
point, which of the partners was to pick the quarrel and
open the fray. Each desired the other to make a war, in
which its ally would then promptly join. But the diffi-
culties were surmounted. Both Italy and Prussia needed
each other too much to allow the negotiations to end in
nothing. On April 8 the treaty was finished. It pro-
vided that, if a Prussian reform of the Germanic Con^
federation failed and Prussia was forced to take up arms,
Italy was to declare war; there was to be no peace pr_
armistice without the consent of both States, but consent
was not to be withheld if Venetia were ceded to Italy
and an equivalent in Austrian territory to Prussia ;^Jthk
Italian navy was to hinder the Austrian ships from reaching
the Baltic; and the treaty was to be valid only. fpr_three
months unless Prussia declared war.
'The treaty imposed on Italy obligations but no rights.
It did not specifically provide for Prussian help if Austria
declared war on Italy and kept the peace in Germany.
But it secured three vital guarantees for Prussia. It
made the casus foederis dependent on the German question
of Federal reform by Prussia (that was for William's
conscience); it blocked Napoleon as protector of Italy
from hostilities with Prussia (that was for the Tuileries);
it reserved to Prussia the right to make war, when and if
it chose (that was for Bismarck). Bismarck, in fact, was
in a similar position to Cavour after the compact of
Plombieres. He had to provoke war within a definite
period or lose the advantages of the treaty.
The international situation was thus cleared up, for
Napoleon had replied to William's letter with an assur-
ance of neutrality, the compensation for which was to
be defined later--always later. Bismarck might well
reflect on royal human nature, when he recalled that ten
years earlier his master at Coblenz had repudiated, as
a dishonourable temptation, the proposal that Prussia
should come to terms with Napoleon, and had pronounced
such an idea to be that of a schoolboy not a statesman.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 199
William's personal letter to the 'man of sin' recalls
Maria Theresa's letter to the ' woman of sin,' the Pompa-
dour, in each case to secure an alliance in order to annex.
To what concessions will not 'conscience' compel
honourable and royal men and women.
Austria had replied to the Council of February 28 at
Berlin by a week of State Councils at Vienna (March 7-13),
at which Benedek, who had prepared his army and cam-
paigns in Venetia, was present. Poor, gallant Benedek,
presently to be transferred from Venetia to Bohemia, in
order that an archduke might win in Italy, while the
general, assigned to command in a Bohemia that he did
not know an ill-organised army that did not know him,
was to be broken for his failure--the scapegoat's last
services to the incompetence of a selfish dynasty. Such
were the sacrifices that the Habsburgs expected and
obtained from their best servants.
The Italian negotiations justifiably alarmed Austria:
they caused consternation in the Conservative, fierce
indignation in the Ultramontane, camp in Germany.
Prussia had allied with ' the Revolution ' at Florence, was
playing fast and loose with 'the Revolution' at Paris,
and was about to plunge Germany in civil war by
a blow at Austria, the champion alike of Conservative
and monarchical principles and of the Roman Catholic
cause.
The Italian treaty filled the cup of Bismarck's
iniquities fuller than Germany suspected, for Bismarck
had the audacity to assert on April 5 that it was far
from the intention of the King to take active measures
against Austria. 1 His next step, the Conservatives pre-
dicted, would be to proclaim 'the Revolution' in
Germany.
1 Still more remarkable is Gramont's telegram (June n, 1866) to his
government that the Queen of Prussia had written to the Emperor of Austria
that the King of Prussia had given his word of honour that he had not con-
cluded a treaty with Italy, and that the ministerial convention left him entire
liberty to conclude a pacific settlement with Austria. Drouyn de Lhuys replied
to Gramont that he knew the Prusso-Italian treaty bore the signature of King
William. The accuracy of Gramont's telegram, denied by Sybel, is apparently
accepted by the editors of Les Origines f)iplomatiques de la Guerre de 1870,
vol. x. p. 117. See their notes on the documents printed by them and al>>o
Ollivier's narrative in L'Empire Liberal, vol. viii. p. 169 et leq.
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? 200
BISMARCK
And it was. On April 9, the day after Italy had been
secured, the Prussian representative brought forward in the
Federal Diet an official resolution of the Prussian govern-
ment for the reform of the Confederation. A national
German Parliament elected by universal suffrage was to
discuss with representatives of the States and dynasties
the establishment of a new Constitution for Germany,
from which it was implied Austria was to be excluded.
The 'drop of democratic oil,' distilled not at Frankfurt
but at Berlin, was to anoint a German Crown for the
King of Prussia. It was the ideal of 1848 disinterred
from the grave over which Bismarck in 1849 had read the
burial service according to the use of Junkertum. The
proposal was an ultimatum to Austria and the middle
States. The issues of the Convention of Gastein had
been transformed by a stroke of the reformer's pen into
a battle for the future of Germany and the settlement of
the German problem. Prussia challenged the Congress
of Princes with an appeal, not to the middle-class Liberals
of the National Verein, but to the democracy of Germany.
She had Russia as her friend, Italy as an ally, France
benevolently neutral--and the Prussian army. There
was indeed a method in the madness of ' the madman of
Biarritz. '
What friends or allies had Austria? None of her own
house, and in Germany only the dynasties and their
disorganised armies. To Prince Hohenlohe's private
comments in his Diary on the military chaos in the
middle States the Prussian General Staff could have
supplied precise footnotes.
It only remained to let loose 'the Revolution' in
Europe. Napoleon's speech at Auxerre (May 8), in
answer to a bitter attack of Thiers in the Corps Legis-
latif on the foreign policy of the Empire, proclaimed his
detestation of the treaties of 1815 and the impossibility
of regarding them as a permanent basis of the foreign
relations of France and her position in Europe. An
expectant France, a bewildered Germany--in hubbub
over the Prussian proposals for Federal reform--and an
alarmed Europe read the words as foreshadowing a French
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 201
onslaught to secure the left bank of the Rhine. But, unlike
Bismarck, Napoleon at cross-purposes with his ministers,
themselves divided in opinion, excited France and alarmed
Europe by proclaiming his ambitions from the mountain-
tops before he had considered whether he could or would
carry them into execution. And in Napoleon's mind at this
moment the lights and shadows were changing as rapidly
as the tints in a Highland sunset that precedes a
storm.
March, April, and May--the preludes to the great
war--were marked by snowstorms of diplomatic notes,
recriminations and counter-recriminations, mobilisations
and counter-mobilisations, and proposals and counter-
proposals for a settlement that would avert hostilities.
On April 21 Austria mobilised in the south against Italy.
The suggestion that Prussia should suspend her war pre-
parations if Austria would do the like was met by Bismarck's
firm demand that the Austrian demobilisation must be
complete; she must cease to threaten Italy as well as
Prussia. And the proposal broke down. Benevolent
intermediaries were prolific in schemes for a general ex-
change of territories. It was suggested that Austria should
cede Venetia to Italy and annex as compensation the
Danubian principalities, where a revolution had broken
out. But the acceptance against his father's wish of the
princedom by Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen
(after an interview with Bismarck) and his rapid departure
for Bucharest checkmated the proposal, and placed, to the
disgust of France and of Austria, a Hohenzollern sentinel
beyond the Carpathians in charge of the destinies of a
Latin race.
Baron von Gablenz drew up an elaborate scheme for a
reconstruction of Germany under the divided leadership
of Prussia and Austria in a reformed Federal Constitution.
The Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were to be placed
under a Prussian prince, while Prussia was to annex Kiel
and liberally indemnify Austria with a money payment.
But all such schemes, including variants on the idea of
ceding Silesia to Austria in return for the Duchies and the
cession of Venetia to Italy, have only a melancholy interest;
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? 202
BISMARCK
they reveal an earnest desire for peace in many quarters,
marred by a complete incapacity, as is usually the case, to
realise the policy of Prussia and the will of her directors.
Had Austria consented to withdraw from Holstein, and
to give Prussia a free hand to reorganise a new Federal
system, in which Austria renounced all membership,
war might have been averted. But the opportunity for
an imaginative statesmanship based on recognition of
Prussia's primacy in North Germany, and on a wholly new
conception of Austria's future and position in Central
Europe, had passed with the Convention of Gastein.
A great State such as Austria still was, with her historic
traditions and imperial memories, could not abandon her
allies in the German middle and petty States and renounce
her past in the spring of 1866 at the threat of a Prussian
mobilisation. The Federal Revolution engineered by
Prussia was fatal to her German presidency. In April and
May Bismarck's one fear was that war might be averted at
the eleventh hour. Early in May Austria made a desperate
effort to detach Italy by the offer of Venetia, through
Napoleon, in return for Italian neutrality. Had the offer
been made in January before the Italian treaty with
Prussia had been concluded, it would have saved the situa-
tion. Sorely tempted, La Marmora refused. Italy was
in honour bound to stand by her treaty. Well might
Bismarck bid Govone good-bye with the words, 'To our
meeting in Vienna! '
Still more serious was Napoleon's next step. With
Russian and British approval the Emperor formally pro-
posed a Congress--magic word--to discuss in particular the
three burning questions--Schleswig-Holstein, Venetia, and
German Federal reform. Bismarck was in a grave dilemma,
for a Congress spelled the ruin of his policy. Nevertheless
with a heavy heart he accepted, trusting to his goddess
Fortune. And she did not desert him. Austria accepted
also, but with the categorical reservation that the parti-
cipating great Powers must renounce in advance all
territorial aggrandisement. The reservation reduced the
proposed Congress to impotence. The neutral Powers
promptly withdrew their support. Benedetti was with
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 203
Bismarck when the telegram announcing the abandonment
came in. The Minister-President sprang to his feet. 'It
is war,' he cried: 'Long live the King! '
His universal unpopularity had been checked by an
attempt at assassination by Cohen-Blind in Unter deu Lin-
den on May 7. The prospect of war had stirred the mili-
tary spirit in Prussia; and next evening Bismarck received
a great ovation from an excited crowd outside the Foreign
Office. The tide of public opinion indeed was turning.
It only needed some Prussian victories to set it swirling as
fiercely in Bismarck's favour as it had hitherto run against
him. Freed from the nightmare of a Congress, Bismarck
now forced Austria to fight. He declared that Prussia, in
consequence of the termination of the Convention of
Gastein, had as much right to Holstein as to Schleswig.
The Prussian troops were ordered to enter Holstein
(June 6). The Austrians retired without resisting, as
Bismarck had desired. A further provocation was there-
fore necessary. On June 10 Bismarck communicated to
the Federal Diet a precise scheme of Federal reform
explicitly excluding Austria and Luxemburg from all
membership in the new organisation to be created. Next
day the Austrian plenipotentiary pressed the Diet for a
mobilisation of the Federal forces, with the exception of
Prussia, on the ground that Prussia had violated the Treaty
of Vienna and the Federal Constitution. In other words,
Prussia was to be the subject of a Federal execution. The
vote was taken on June 14, and the Austrian proposal ac-
cepted by nine votes to six. Baden abstained; three curia
only voted with Prussia--some of the petty States of the
north and the cities of Hamburg, Liibeck, and Bremen:
the rest voted with Austria. The Prussian representative
at once declared that his government considered the
Confederation at an end, and the sitting was raised.
On June 16, after a peremptory ultimatum, the Prussian
troops entered Saxony, Hesse-Cassel, and Hanover; on
JuHe~2o Italy declared war on Austria. Bismarck's fate
ancTThe future of Prussia were now in the hands of the
military chiefs and the Prussian army. 'It is,' says Sybel,
'the one great and simple feature of the Prussian govern-
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? 204
BISMARCK
ment that at last it has always been the material and actual
considerations that have preponderated. ' The King in his
Proclamation of June 18 asserted that 'as known to my
people and to God, Who sees the heart,' the war was a
defensive one, thrust upon him, in defence of Prussia's
honour, independence, and existence. But Moltke told
the simple truth (and gave the lie to his sovereign) when
in a few chiselled sentences he declared subsequently that:
'The war of 1866 did not take place because the existence
of Prussia was threatened, or in obedience to public opinion,
or to the will of the people. It was a war which was fore-
seen long before, which was prepared with deliberation
and recognised as necessary by the Cabinet, not in order to
obtain territorial aggrandisement, but in order to secure
the establishment of Prussian hegemony in Germany. '
Bismarck might be satisfied with his power to convert.
He, too, now opened his Bible and read Psalm ix. 3-5,
which greatly comforted him. Yet he also wrote with
perfect sincerity: 'We have good confidence, but we must
not forget that Almighty God is very capricious (sehr
launenha/t). ' He recognised that he had thrown the iron
dice in a tremendous gamble, and that fate or fortune
might refuse the prize. At Koniggratz in those critical
hours when the Crown Prince and his army had not yet
appeared to turn the Austrian flank, it is related that Bis-
marck reflected bitterly how for four years he had toiled
to secure the international situation that victory required,
and had succeeded beyond all expectation, and now these
infernal generals were going to make a mess of it. He had
decided that if victory fell to the Austrians he would die
in the last charge--a more probable resolve than the other
he is credited with, that he would offer Napoleon the left
bank of the Rhine and call out the Revolution in Germany.
He realised fully that to Germany he appeared a desperate
gambler. 'Had I failed,' he told the Reichstag later,' the
old women would have swept me with a curse and their
besoms from the streets. '
The generals did not make a mess of it, nor did the
Prussian army fail them. The crowning mercy of Konig-
gratz (July 3) was, as Roon said, the gift of the Prussian
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 205
soldier quite as much as cf the Prussian higher command.
Bismarck's inmost thought was revealed in his remark:
'The struggle is decided--the task is now to win back the
old friendship with Austria. ' A week later he wrote to his
wife: 'Things go well; if we do not exaggerate our de-
mands, and do not believe that we have conquered the
world, we shall get a peace worth the efforts we have made.
But we are as easily intoxicated as we are depressed, and I
have the thankless task of pouring water into the foaming
wine, and bringing home the truth that we do not live
alone in Europe, but with three neighbours. ' The long
strain, the concentrated excitement, the renewed pressure
of multitudinous affairs, and the additional task of dealing
with an elated King and triumphant generals, seriously
affected his health. During the campaign Bismarck was
really ill; nothing but his superb constitution and his iron
will kept him from a grave collapse. But intensely irri-
table and overwrought though he was, his judgment
retained its mastery. 'The appreciation and import of
a military victory,' he said, with great truth, 'at the
moment of its decision is one of the hardest tasks that
statecraft imposes. '
The chief obstacles to the settlement that Bismarck de-
sired were two: first, Napoleon; secondly, his sovereign
and the soldiers. Time is the one power with which
statesmanship and strategy trifle at great peril. The
longer the campaign lasted, the easier it would be for the
European Powers to intervene with effect. The argu-
ment for a European Congress was indeed strong. The
war had torn a great rent in the treaties and system of 1815.
The signatory European Powers had as clear a right as,
and an even clearer interest than, in 1856 or 1878 to insist
on reviewing and completing the system to be substituted
for the wrecked fabric. But Bismarck was absolutely
determined to refuse either the arbitration of neutrals, or
the revision of a Congress. Rather than submit to either,
he was ready to provoke a general war. Fortunately for
him Great Britain was in the throes of an internal struggle,
far more interested in Franchise Bills than in the fate
of Austria or Germany; Poland and Schleswig-Holstein
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? 206
BISMARCK
had been severe lessons in the futility of intervention,
unless backed by ships, men, and guns. Russia under the
mortgage created by Bismarck in 1863, was neither willing
nor able to fight on Austria's behalf, was no less willing to
let Napoleon have a severe snubbing, and was soon satis-
fied that Prussia did not intend to let loose democracy and
Liberalism in Germany. Napoleon was the one grave
difficulty, and Bismarck grasped at once that if he could
satisfy or convert William 1. to his idea of a settlement, he
could deal with Napoleon.
The eleven days from July 11, when Benedetti sud-
denly appeared to Bismarck's intense anger at the
headquarters at Zwittau, to July 22, when the armi-
stices of Nikolsburg opened the discussion of prelimi-
naries of peace, are packed with feverish telegrams, to
and fro; but the principles of Bismarck's diplomacy
stand out as clear and unwavering as in the months
preceding the war.
'The world is collapsing,' said Cardinal Antonelli,
watching the issues from an Ultramontane Vatican. 'It
is France that is beaten at Sadowa,' pronounced Thiers
with prophetic accuracy. Extraordinary as it now seems,
Napoleon had concluded a secret treaty with Austria
(June 12). Napoleon undertook to be neutral in the
German war; Austria undertook for an equivalent in
Germany to cede Venetia to Napoleon, and all changes in
Italy or Germany, 'of a nature to disturb the European
equilibrium,' were to be made by Austria and France in
concert. Striking, indeed, that the curse of the later
Bourbons, the secret diplomacy of Louis xv. against the
declared policy, and behind the back, of the royal minister,
should be repeated by the dynasty that claimed to repre-
sent the true France, that Bourbon dynasticism had ruined.
The cunning of the Carbonaro was always unpicking by
night the flimsy web of Us idies Napoleoniennes woven in
the day at the Tuileries. Napoleon, therefore, had faced
the future with the assurance that he had bargained with
both sides and was committed to neither. But the states-
man who has failed to be ready for the collapse of his
calculations commits against his country a graver
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
207
crime than the general who plans an offensive for
victory without providing the line of retreat in the case
of failure.
On July 4 Napoleon suddenly found himself in a terrible
position. France eagerly awaited the coup de mattre, but
the ulcer of Mexico had drained the military resources of
the Empire; the artillery lacked horses and armament, and
the army was not ready; the possible allies in Germany--
the anti-Prussian States, Hanover, Saxony, Wurttemberg,
Bavaria, Hesse--were in as poor a military way as France
herself, and would be crushed before France could assist
them; national passion had flamed up, white-hot, in
Prussia; a neutral observer noted that in all classes there
was one fierce conviction--' no French, no rotten peace. '
Austria was on the verge of collapse, and Napoleon himself
had no plan for immediate action. Worst of all, pros-
trating pain made him incapable of clear thought or
prompt decision. The fate of France turned--that is the
penalty of all autocracies, imperial or otherwise, at all
crises--on the character and capacity of a single man; and
in those July days, that flooded the gardens of the Tuileries
and the Champs Elysees, the orchards of Normandy, and
the vineyards of the Garonne with their mocking sunshine,
the decision had to come from a ruler tortured all his life
by the disease of indecision, tortured now by physical
agony. 'A grain of sand in a man's flesh and empires rise
wanted; he only knew that he did not want war and could
not wage it. Bismarck knew precisely what he wanted;
he was ready to wage war, and knew how to do it. It
is difficult to judge what Napoleon should have done.
Austria, Saxony, Hesse-Cassel were clamouring for the
Emperor to intervene and save them. Thiers and every
critic of the Empire were waiting to drive home the proof
of their accusations; Ultramontanes and Clericals, his only
true if selfish supporters in France, were in consternation
at Austria's downfall. His ministers were as divided as
their imperial master. The weak man who acts on the
principle that' something must be done ' is sure to do the
and fall. '
Napoleon at this
really did not know what he
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1865-1866
The ten months from the Convention of Gastein to
the final rupture on June 23, 1866, when the Prussian
troops entered Bohemia, make a very complicated chapter
in European history. Full justice to the diplomatic
moves and countermoves would require a large canvas
and elaborate detail. In France, Austria, Italy, and the
German States, the directors of policy continuously en-
visaged contradictory aims and alternative lines of action.
German public opinion was in greater bewilderment than
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
ever: fearing and detesting everything that Prussia did,
yet mastered by an intuition that in Prussian strength
and purposeful egoism alone lay all hopes of a permanent
decision. Germany had indeed dragged its anchors, and
was drifting into the storm.
The main lines of Bismarck's statecraft stand out in
the sharpest relief against the blurred and shifting kaleido-
scope. A letter from the devoted Roon, himself toiling
at full concert pitch, to have the Prussian army ready,
speaks of 'Otto's herculean industry day and night and
his reckless demands on his physical strength. . . . He
has now to reckon with the rebellion of his truest and
most submissive subject, his stomach, and is so irritable
and sensitive, particularly over petty matters, that I am
full of anxiety, for I know what is at stake. ' Roon adds
truly, 'complete freedom of mind, a deranged digestion,
and tortured nerves are hard to reconcile. ' But for all
his difficulties, political, mental, and physical, Bismarck
exhibited the one clear and resolute will, the one clear
and unshakable aim in the universal confusion. He was
determined to settle the fate of Prussia and Germany by
the appeal to the sword.
Roon, Moltke, and the Prussian Staff were of the same
determination. Men then and since have convinced
themselves that the war was inevitable, that it lay in the
alleged logic both of history and the situation, and that
after August 14, 1865, the two major States of Germany,
Prussia and Austria, simply slid slowly down inclined
planes to an unavoidable collision. A close study, how-
ever, of these ten months does not support the general
conclusion that wars are unavoidable, and that this
particular one exemplifies such a philosophy of history or
statesmanship.
It would be a complete misreading of Bismarck's policy,
principles, and methods to assert that either before or
after the Convention of Gastein he so completely lost his
grip on the Prussian rudder that he was forced into
fighting. Bismarck may not have believed in ' preventive
wars,' though the definition of a ' preventive war ' would
have to be very carefully drawn before either he or hii
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? BISMARCK
disciples could accept so complete a repudiation; _he
certainly did not believe in wars merely for conquest or
g'ory, and no statesman of the nineteenth. century had a
deeper sense of the responsibility that plunging a State
into war imposes on those who direct policy. _ But in
1865 and in 1866, as in 1870 or in 1864, he willed the
war and he deliberately worked for it.
The secrets of his statecraft will be completely missed
if we do not recognise two elemental postulates ^first,
that in 1865 he rejected every opportunity by which war
might be avoided; secondly, that he worked with stead-
fast patience to remove the obstacles to war, as the final
conclusion of the matter. He could, for example, have
taken up Napoleon's idea of a Congress, and with the
help of Russia (and certainly of Great Britain) have
opened all the festering abscesses in the operating theatre
of the European Concert. Such a course would ha^c
been welcomed by the best minds in Germany and outside
it. But a Congress would not have given him what he
held with passionate conviction was alone worth winning.
War alone, he concluded, would do his business, and
briefly for three reasons. JDeieaj^jjeremptory and con-
clusive, alone would drive Austria out of Germany and
extort the recognition not of Prussia's parity with herself
--the time for that had passed--but of Prussian supre-
macy; Prussian supremacy in Germany required terri-
torial additions to the Prussian State, (not merely Schleswig
and Holstein),, without which her mastery of the new
German organisation would be incomplete, _and such
annexations could only be secured from the defeated and
i'ustified by victory in war: the constitutional conflict in
'russia and the terms of the new organisation could only
be settled if the Prussian monarchy could dictate its will;
war alone, not diplomacy, would confer the dictatorship.
It was not in 1865 any more than "in 1864 or in 1870 the
-end--the unification of Germany on certain principles
and for certain ends--justifying the means. To Bismarck
the State, whose end is Power, does not justify the means,
that are Force. More correctly, the means are simply the
end in process of realisation. The stages through which
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
the purposive life of an organised community passes, he
would have argued, are not means to an end, they are the
successive manifestations of the purpose. Each successive
manifestation is linked with the preceding one, and the
sum of the manifestations is not separable from the end,
and does not require a justification different from that
for the totality of the result. What justifies life as a
whole justifies its successive manifestations or means of
realising itself, and no other justification is admissible or
necessary. Had Bismarck desired or conceived of a
unified Germany consummating the National State which
stands for Right, his methods would have been as different
as the result would have differed from the Prussia and
Germanv he created. But then he would not have been
the Bismarck of history, and his interpretation of life-
values would have been the opposite of what it was. The
impressive conclusions that his action has stamped ferro
et igni on the Germany and Europe of his generation are
two--first, that when a strong State is determined to
find in war a solution of political difficulties and will
accept no other solution, war will result, however un-
willing other States may be to go to war; and secondly,
that while the Germany of 1865 (and Bismarck knew it)
did not want the Bismarckian solution, the Germany of
1890 had been convinced by Bismarck that no other solution
in 1866 would have succeeded or satisfied what Germany
had been taught to recognise as her real ambitions and
needs. The one problem in statesmanship that Bismarck
did not solve for his or any other generation before or
since his time, and had no desire to solve, was how to
defeat the statecraft (that is force) of the State (that
stands for power) without recourse to force or without
repudiating the principle that the State stands for Right
not Might, or without accepting the poison distilled in
the doctrine that ends justify means.
As previously, his first and permanent difficulty lay
with his sovereign. William's education by his minister
in the gospel of Bismarckianism had to begin over again
after August 1865. Once his sovereign's 'conscience'
had been reilluminated, the King would readily misinter-
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? 194
BISMARCK
pret the appeal of military honour as the categorical
imperative of royal and civic duty.
The Liberal opposition in the Prussian Landtag must,
therefore, be provoked to continue its attacks on the
Crown and its advisers. Surrender, therefore, would be
surrender to 'rebels. ' As on June 13 (before Gastein),
so on February 3, 1866, when there were full-dress debates
on the foreign policy of the government, Bismarck
taunted the Progressive leaders with their political
futility, ineptitude, and parliamentary insolence. Their
criticisms on the conduct of affairs he dismissed as the
interference of ignorant trespassers on the prerogatives
of the Crown. This autocratic attitude in 'The House
of Phrases ' was largely tactical. Not there, but in France
and Italy, were the keys of the major political strategy.
Italy, in August 1865, had signified that jit was_ im-
possible for hex jri_a Jfra^
idle spectator. A Prussian alliance with Italy was danger-
ous; committal to the Italian programme opened serious
questionings; behind Florence lay Rome and the Papal
froblem. The year 1864 had seen the issue of the famous
yllabus which seriously perturbed the intellectuals of
German Liberalism and heated the Clericals in South
Germany and in France. The parties in Germany were,
in fact, marching to the Kulturkampf. Bismarck rightly
feared that Napoleon might, in has resentment_at" a
Prussian treaty with Italy behind his back, come to terms
with Austria, secure Venetia for Italy, in return for com-
pensation in Germany tQ Austria at Prussia's. expense,
and compensation to himself ux the Rhej^sh__pr^yinces.
The possibility of an anti-Prussian coalition was no idle
chimera of an overstrained mind in the Wilhelmstrasse.
Had there been a statesman of the first rank either at
Paris, Florence, or Vienna, a very ugly turn indeed could
have been given to the situation. As it was, Bismarck
had to deal with Napoleon, Drouyn de Lhuys, La
Marmora, and Mensdorff. The price that nations pay
when their destinies are in the hands of the intellectually
second-rate is set out with damning precision in the next
four year*.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
Napoleon had to be brought to a definite understanding.
On October I Bismarck was in Paris, and on October 3
at Biarritz--the third of three momentous visits. By <
November 7 he was back in Berlin. He had threshed out
the difficulties both in the Villa Eugenie at Biarritz, and
at St. Cloud with Napoleon and his ministers, and had
virtually accomplished the difficult task of securing
Napoleon's benevolent neutrality, without any awkward
promissory notes, which could be presented for payment
at sight at some future date. Prosper Merimee has put
on record his personal impression of the Minister-Presi-
dent--of his vigour and power and also of his irresistible
charm (a quality we are apt to forget Bismarck possessed
in a remarkable degree). But even in 1865 Merimee did
not take seriously the political ideas that Bismarck ex-
Sressed with such disarming and genial exuberance. Like
Fapoleon, Merimee thought the Minister-President was
sometimes really not quite sane, a Prussian Gascon whose
judgment was clouded by a misinterpretation of realities.
These momentous conferences at the Villa Eugenie provide
a dramatic contrast between the Prussian, in the zenith
of his physical and intellectual powers, alert, adamantine,
probing every weak point, and masking it all under an
amazing frankness--and, on the other side, the Emperor,
tired, puzzled, disillusioned, indecisive, yet clinging to his
dreams which he mistook for profound insight into the
Time-spirit. He was already suffering from the disease
that killed him; already conscious that the noonday of
the Empire had passed and that the shadows were falling,
the shadows that came from the coup tfttat.
Why Napoleon did not insist on a bargain in black and
white, and on pinning Bismarck down to a definite com-
pensation, is, indeed, a problem. Napoleon had a definite
article to sell, French neutrality, which the purchaser,
Bismarck, needed above all things. The experience of
1864 should have convinced the Emperor that he was
dealing with a man whose verbal promises were worthless,
and he should not have parted with French neutrality
except for a bond in writing. Even if, as is probable,
Bismarck had later repudiated the bond, Napoleon would
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? 196
BISMARCK
have had it to convince France and Europe. Napoleon,
it is true, was in a grave dilemma. He feared that
Bismarck, foiled at Paris, might settle with Austria and
re-establish the Triple Alliance of 1815 against France.
The obvious reply to such a menace was a threat to unite
with Austria and her South German Allies against Prussia.
But the real crux for Napoleon lay, as always, in Italy.
The Clericals would not let him evacuate Rome, and his
own 'nationalism' drove him to desire to complete the
work of 1859 by procuring Venetia for the kingdom of
Italy. It was not so much that Napoleon did not know
what compensation he really wanted as that he could not
openly ask for it--the left bank of the Rhine or Belgium.
The former brought him up against the dead wall of
Prussia--the latter against the dead wall of Great Britain
and the Treaty of 1839. Napoleon therefore postponed
the decision. His 'compensation' was to be defined
later. He jtrusted in his 'star' and on his calculation
that a Prusso-Austrian War would be a bloody and in-
decisive struggle, in which France could intervene . and
dictate her compensation either on both combatants
or on one by allying with the other. But the idea
rested on two fatal errors of judgment, which Napoleon
shared with most contemporary statesmen in Europe--an
exaggerated estimate of Austrian strength and jof_J^Ee
readiness of the French army--a complete ignorance of
the Prussian army as remoulded by the Prussian General
Staff. Bismarck and Moltke were in complete agreement
that if Prussia could not make war she had better go out
of business altogether.
Italy was now invited by Bismarck to conclude a com-
mercial alliance with the Zollverein. Such an economic
understanding, Bismarck told the Italian ambassador,
would have a high political significance for the future.
The negotiations were pressed, and by November 15 the
treaty was ready for the respective ratifications (March 3,
1866).
The next step was to put the screw on Austria.
Austria, of course, was ' behaving very badly ' in Holstein
--she was permitting the Augustenburg agitation to go
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 197
on with Kiel as its headquarters. This was a plain
violation of the Convention of Gastein, disturbing to
Prussia in her occupation of Schleswig, and keeping open
a sore that the Convention had healed. On January 26,
1866, Bismarck sent a rasping protest to Vienna. The
Austrian administration oJJHolstem^was intolerable; the
Augustenburg agitation must be promptly suppressed.
Austria was making herself ' the champion of the Revolu-
tion. ' The Austrian reply of February 9 informed the
Prussian government that the alliance of 1864 was at an
end. The position had reverted to the period before the
"Danish war, and Austrian relations with Prussia were
neither better nor worse than with any other European
Power. On February 28 a secret Council of State was
held in Berlin at which the Crown Prince, the military
chiefs, the Prussian ambassador at Paris, Goltz, specially
summoned, and, of course, Bismarck and the King, were
present. William decided that every diplomatic effort
compatible wrthTPrussian honour and safety must be made
to maintain peace. 'After having prayed to God,' the
King said, cto lead him in the right path, he should
consider the war, if it came, as a just one. '
On March 3 William wrote personally to Napoleon to
propose a definite understanding; next day the project
of an offensive and defensive alliance with Italy was taken
seriously in hand. At the Council of February 28,
Moltke had expressed his considered judgment that with
the neutrality of France, the military aid of Italy, and the
consequent division of the Austrian army by war on two
fronts, victory might be regarded as reasonably certain.
With General Govone, sent from Florence, Bismarck now
worked hard to conclude the Italian treaty. Not with-
out great difficulty. Both sides thoroughly distrusted
each other. The Italians, mindful of 1859, feared that
Prussia would embroil them with Austria, and then either
evade its share or settle the German quarrel at Italy's
expense. Nor had they any confidence in Bismarck's
honesty or honour. Bismarck, on his side, suspected that
Italy intended to utilise Prussia simply to obtain Venetia,
and was quite indifferent to the real issue--Prussian
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? 198
BISMARCK
supremacy in Germany: he desired to tie Italy down to
a specific engagement while leaving a free hand for him-
self. The project very nearly broke down on the crucial
point, which of the partners was to pick the quarrel and
open the fray. Each desired the other to make a war, in
which its ally would then promptly join. But the diffi-
culties were surmounted. Both Italy and Prussia needed
each other too much to allow the negotiations to end in
nothing. On April 8 the treaty was finished. It pro-
vided that, if a Prussian reform of the Germanic Con^
federation failed and Prussia was forced to take up arms,
Italy was to declare war; there was to be no peace pr_
armistice without the consent of both States, but consent
was not to be withheld if Venetia were ceded to Italy
and an equivalent in Austrian territory to Prussia ;^Jthk
Italian navy was to hinder the Austrian ships from reaching
the Baltic; and the treaty was to be valid only. fpr_three
months unless Prussia declared war.
'The treaty imposed on Italy obligations but no rights.
It did not specifically provide for Prussian help if Austria
declared war on Italy and kept the peace in Germany.
But it secured three vital guarantees for Prussia. It
made the casus foederis dependent on the German question
of Federal reform by Prussia (that was for William's
conscience); it blocked Napoleon as protector of Italy
from hostilities with Prussia (that was for the Tuileries);
it reserved to Prussia the right to make war, when and if
it chose (that was for Bismarck). Bismarck, in fact, was
in a similar position to Cavour after the compact of
Plombieres. He had to provoke war within a definite
period or lose the advantages of the treaty.
The international situation was thus cleared up, for
Napoleon had replied to William's letter with an assur-
ance of neutrality, the compensation for which was to
be defined later--always later. Bismarck might well
reflect on royal human nature, when he recalled that ten
years earlier his master at Coblenz had repudiated, as
a dishonourable temptation, the proposal that Prussia
should come to terms with Napoleon, and had pronounced
such an idea to be that of a schoolboy not a statesman.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 199
William's personal letter to the 'man of sin' recalls
Maria Theresa's letter to the ' woman of sin,' the Pompa-
dour, in each case to secure an alliance in order to annex.
To what concessions will not 'conscience' compel
honourable and royal men and women.
Austria had replied to the Council of February 28 at
Berlin by a week of State Councils at Vienna (March 7-13),
at which Benedek, who had prepared his army and cam-
paigns in Venetia, was present. Poor, gallant Benedek,
presently to be transferred from Venetia to Bohemia, in
order that an archduke might win in Italy, while the
general, assigned to command in a Bohemia that he did
not know an ill-organised army that did not know him,
was to be broken for his failure--the scapegoat's last
services to the incompetence of a selfish dynasty. Such
were the sacrifices that the Habsburgs expected and
obtained from their best servants.
The Italian negotiations justifiably alarmed Austria:
they caused consternation in the Conservative, fierce
indignation in the Ultramontane, camp in Germany.
Prussia had allied with ' the Revolution ' at Florence, was
playing fast and loose with 'the Revolution' at Paris,
and was about to plunge Germany in civil war by
a blow at Austria, the champion alike of Conservative
and monarchical principles and of the Roman Catholic
cause.
The Italian treaty filled the cup of Bismarck's
iniquities fuller than Germany suspected, for Bismarck
had the audacity to assert on April 5 that it was far
from the intention of the King to take active measures
against Austria. 1 His next step, the Conservatives pre-
dicted, would be to proclaim 'the Revolution' in
Germany.
1 Still more remarkable is Gramont's telegram (June n, 1866) to his
government that the Queen of Prussia had written to the Emperor of Austria
that the King of Prussia had given his word of honour that he had not con-
cluded a treaty with Italy, and that the ministerial convention left him entire
liberty to conclude a pacific settlement with Austria. Drouyn de Lhuys replied
to Gramont that he knew the Prusso-Italian treaty bore the signature of King
William. The accuracy of Gramont's telegram, denied by Sybel, is apparently
accepted by the editors of Les Origines f)iplomatiques de la Guerre de 1870,
vol. x. p. 117. See their notes on the documents printed by them and al>>o
Ollivier's narrative in L'Empire Liberal, vol. viii. p. 169 et leq.
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? 200
BISMARCK
And it was. On April 9, the day after Italy had been
secured, the Prussian representative brought forward in the
Federal Diet an official resolution of the Prussian govern-
ment for the reform of the Confederation. A national
German Parliament elected by universal suffrage was to
discuss with representatives of the States and dynasties
the establishment of a new Constitution for Germany,
from which it was implied Austria was to be excluded.
The 'drop of democratic oil,' distilled not at Frankfurt
but at Berlin, was to anoint a German Crown for the
King of Prussia. It was the ideal of 1848 disinterred
from the grave over which Bismarck in 1849 had read the
burial service according to the use of Junkertum. The
proposal was an ultimatum to Austria and the middle
States. The issues of the Convention of Gastein had
been transformed by a stroke of the reformer's pen into
a battle for the future of Germany and the settlement of
the German problem. Prussia challenged the Congress
of Princes with an appeal, not to the middle-class Liberals
of the National Verein, but to the democracy of Germany.
She had Russia as her friend, Italy as an ally, France
benevolently neutral--and the Prussian army. There
was indeed a method in the madness of ' the madman of
Biarritz. '
What friends or allies had Austria? None of her own
house, and in Germany only the dynasties and their
disorganised armies. To Prince Hohenlohe's private
comments in his Diary on the military chaos in the
middle States the Prussian General Staff could have
supplied precise footnotes.
It only remained to let loose 'the Revolution' in
Europe. Napoleon's speech at Auxerre (May 8), in
answer to a bitter attack of Thiers in the Corps Legis-
latif on the foreign policy of the Empire, proclaimed his
detestation of the treaties of 1815 and the impossibility
of regarding them as a permanent basis of the foreign
relations of France and her position in Europe. An
expectant France, a bewildered Germany--in hubbub
over the Prussian proposals for Federal reform--and an
alarmed Europe read the words as foreshadowing a French
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 201
onslaught to secure the left bank of the Rhine. But, unlike
Bismarck, Napoleon at cross-purposes with his ministers,
themselves divided in opinion, excited France and alarmed
Europe by proclaiming his ambitions from the mountain-
tops before he had considered whether he could or would
carry them into execution. And in Napoleon's mind at this
moment the lights and shadows were changing as rapidly
as the tints in a Highland sunset that precedes a
storm.
March, April, and May--the preludes to the great
war--were marked by snowstorms of diplomatic notes,
recriminations and counter-recriminations, mobilisations
and counter-mobilisations, and proposals and counter-
proposals for a settlement that would avert hostilities.
On April 21 Austria mobilised in the south against Italy.
The suggestion that Prussia should suspend her war pre-
parations if Austria would do the like was met by Bismarck's
firm demand that the Austrian demobilisation must be
complete; she must cease to threaten Italy as well as
Prussia. And the proposal broke down. Benevolent
intermediaries were prolific in schemes for a general ex-
change of territories. It was suggested that Austria should
cede Venetia to Italy and annex as compensation the
Danubian principalities, where a revolution had broken
out. But the acceptance against his father's wish of the
princedom by Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen
(after an interview with Bismarck) and his rapid departure
for Bucharest checkmated the proposal, and placed, to the
disgust of France and of Austria, a Hohenzollern sentinel
beyond the Carpathians in charge of the destinies of a
Latin race.
Baron von Gablenz drew up an elaborate scheme for a
reconstruction of Germany under the divided leadership
of Prussia and Austria in a reformed Federal Constitution.
The Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were to be placed
under a Prussian prince, while Prussia was to annex Kiel
and liberally indemnify Austria with a money payment.
But all such schemes, including variants on the idea of
ceding Silesia to Austria in return for the Duchies and the
cession of Venetia to Italy, have only a melancholy interest;
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? 202
BISMARCK
they reveal an earnest desire for peace in many quarters,
marred by a complete incapacity, as is usually the case, to
realise the policy of Prussia and the will of her directors.
Had Austria consented to withdraw from Holstein, and
to give Prussia a free hand to reorganise a new Federal
system, in which Austria renounced all membership,
war might have been averted. But the opportunity for
an imaginative statesmanship based on recognition of
Prussia's primacy in North Germany, and on a wholly new
conception of Austria's future and position in Central
Europe, had passed with the Convention of Gastein.
A great State such as Austria still was, with her historic
traditions and imperial memories, could not abandon her
allies in the German middle and petty States and renounce
her past in the spring of 1866 at the threat of a Prussian
mobilisation. The Federal Revolution engineered by
Prussia was fatal to her German presidency. In April and
May Bismarck's one fear was that war might be averted at
the eleventh hour. Early in May Austria made a desperate
effort to detach Italy by the offer of Venetia, through
Napoleon, in return for Italian neutrality. Had the offer
been made in January before the Italian treaty with
Prussia had been concluded, it would have saved the situa-
tion. Sorely tempted, La Marmora refused. Italy was
in honour bound to stand by her treaty. Well might
Bismarck bid Govone good-bye with the words, 'To our
meeting in Vienna! '
Still more serious was Napoleon's next step. With
Russian and British approval the Emperor formally pro-
posed a Congress--magic word--to discuss in particular the
three burning questions--Schleswig-Holstein, Venetia, and
German Federal reform. Bismarck was in a grave dilemma,
for a Congress spelled the ruin of his policy. Nevertheless
with a heavy heart he accepted, trusting to his goddess
Fortune. And she did not desert him. Austria accepted
also, but with the categorical reservation that the parti-
cipating great Powers must renounce in advance all
territorial aggrandisement. The reservation reduced the
proposed Congress to impotence. The neutral Powers
promptly withdrew their support. Benedetti was with
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 203
Bismarck when the telegram announcing the abandonment
came in. The Minister-President sprang to his feet. 'It
is war,' he cried: 'Long live the King! '
His universal unpopularity had been checked by an
attempt at assassination by Cohen-Blind in Unter deu Lin-
den on May 7. The prospect of war had stirred the mili-
tary spirit in Prussia; and next evening Bismarck received
a great ovation from an excited crowd outside the Foreign
Office. The tide of public opinion indeed was turning.
It only needed some Prussian victories to set it swirling as
fiercely in Bismarck's favour as it had hitherto run against
him. Freed from the nightmare of a Congress, Bismarck
now forced Austria to fight. He declared that Prussia, in
consequence of the termination of the Convention of
Gastein, had as much right to Holstein as to Schleswig.
The Prussian troops were ordered to enter Holstein
(June 6). The Austrians retired without resisting, as
Bismarck had desired. A further provocation was there-
fore necessary. On June 10 Bismarck communicated to
the Federal Diet a precise scheme of Federal reform
explicitly excluding Austria and Luxemburg from all
membership in the new organisation to be created. Next
day the Austrian plenipotentiary pressed the Diet for a
mobilisation of the Federal forces, with the exception of
Prussia, on the ground that Prussia had violated the Treaty
of Vienna and the Federal Constitution. In other words,
Prussia was to be the subject of a Federal execution. The
vote was taken on June 14, and the Austrian proposal ac-
cepted by nine votes to six. Baden abstained; three curia
only voted with Prussia--some of the petty States of the
north and the cities of Hamburg, Liibeck, and Bremen:
the rest voted with Austria. The Prussian representative
at once declared that his government considered the
Confederation at an end, and the sitting was raised.
On June 16, after a peremptory ultimatum, the Prussian
troops entered Saxony, Hesse-Cassel, and Hanover; on
JuHe~2o Italy declared war on Austria. Bismarck's fate
ancTThe future of Prussia were now in the hands of the
military chiefs and the Prussian army. 'It is,' says Sybel,
'the one great and simple feature of the Prussian govern-
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? 204
BISMARCK
ment that at last it has always been the material and actual
considerations that have preponderated. ' The King in his
Proclamation of June 18 asserted that 'as known to my
people and to God, Who sees the heart,' the war was a
defensive one, thrust upon him, in defence of Prussia's
honour, independence, and existence. But Moltke told
the simple truth (and gave the lie to his sovereign) when
in a few chiselled sentences he declared subsequently that:
'The war of 1866 did not take place because the existence
of Prussia was threatened, or in obedience to public opinion,
or to the will of the people. It was a war which was fore-
seen long before, which was prepared with deliberation
and recognised as necessary by the Cabinet, not in order to
obtain territorial aggrandisement, but in order to secure
the establishment of Prussian hegemony in Germany. '
Bismarck might be satisfied with his power to convert.
He, too, now opened his Bible and read Psalm ix. 3-5,
which greatly comforted him. Yet he also wrote with
perfect sincerity: 'We have good confidence, but we must
not forget that Almighty God is very capricious (sehr
launenha/t). ' He recognised that he had thrown the iron
dice in a tremendous gamble, and that fate or fortune
might refuse the prize. At Koniggratz in those critical
hours when the Crown Prince and his army had not yet
appeared to turn the Austrian flank, it is related that Bis-
marck reflected bitterly how for four years he had toiled
to secure the international situation that victory required,
and had succeeded beyond all expectation, and now these
infernal generals were going to make a mess of it. He had
decided that if victory fell to the Austrians he would die
in the last charge--a more probable resolve than the other
he is credited with, that he would offer Napoleon the left
bank of the Rhine and call out the Revolution in Germany.
He realised fully that to Germany he appeared a desperate
gambler. 'Had I failed,' he told the Reichstag later,' the
old women would have swept me with a curse and their
besoms from the streets. '
The generals did not make a mess of it, nor did the
Prussian army fail them. The crowning mercy of Konig-
gratz (July 3) was, as Roon said, the gift of the Prussian
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 205
soldier quite as much as cf the Prussian higher command.
Bismarck's inmost thought was revealed in his remark:
'The struggle is decided--the task is now to win back the
old friendship with Austria. ' A week later he wrote to his
wife: 'Things go well; if we do not exaggerate our de-
mands, and do not believe that we have conquered the
world, we shall get a peace worth the efforts we have made.
But we are as easily intoxicated as we are depressed, and I
have the thankless task of pouring water into the foaming
wine, and bringing home the truth that we do not live
alone in Europe, but with three neighbours. ' The long
strain, the concentrated excitement, the renewed pressure
of multitudinous affairs, and the additional task of dealing
with an elated King and triumphant generals, seriously
affected his health. During the campaign Bismarck was
really ill; nothing but his superb constitution and his iron
will kept him from a grave collapse. But intensely irri-
table and overwrought though he was, his judgment
retained its mastery. 'The appreciation and import of
a military victory,' he said, with great truth, 'at the
moment of its decision is one of the hardest tasks that
statecraft imposes. '
The chief obstacles to the settlement that Bismarck de-
sired were two: first, Napoleon; secondly, his sovereign
and the soldiers. Time is the one power with which
statesmanship and strategy trifle at great peril. The
longer the campaign lasted, the easier it would be for the
European Powers to intervene with effect. The argu-
ment for a European Congress was indeed strong. The
war had torn a great rent in the treaties and system of 1815.
The signatory European Powers had as clear a right as,
and an even clearer interest than, in 1856 or 1878 to insist
on reviewing and completing the system to be substituted
for the wrecked fabric. But Bismarck was absolutely
determined to refuse either the arbitration of neutrals, or
the revision of a Congress. Rather than submit to either,
he was ready to provoke a general war. Fortunately for
him Great Britain was in the throes of an internal struggle,
far more interested in Franchise Bills than in the fate
of Austria or Germany; Poland and Schleswig-Holstein
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? 206
BISMARCK
had been severe lessons in the futility of intervention,
unless backed by ships, men, and guns. Russia under the
mortgage created by Bismarck in 1863, was neither willing
nor able to fight on Austria's behalf, was no less willing to
let Napoleon have a severe snubbing, and was soon satis-
fied that Prussia did not intend to let loose democracy and
Liberalism in Germany. Napoleon was the one grave
difficulty, and Bismarck grasped at once that if he could
satisfy or convert William 1. to his idea of a settlement, he
could deal with Napoleon.
The eleven days from July 11, when Benedetti sud-
denly appeared to Bismarck's intense anger at the
headquarters at Zwittau, to July 22, when the armi-
stices of Nikolsburg opened the discussion of prelimi-
naries of peace, are packed with feverish telegrams, to
and fro; but the principles of Bismarck's diplomacy
stand out as clear and unwavering as in the months
preceding the war.
'The world is collapsing,' said Cardinal Antonelli,
watching the issues from an Ultramontane Vatican. 'It
is France that is beaten at Sadowa,' pronounced Thiers
with prophetic accuracy. Extraordinary as it now seems,
Napoleon had concluded a secret treaty with Austria
(June 12). Napoleon undertook to be neutral in the
German war; Austria undertook for an equivalent in
Germany to cede Venetia to Napoleon, and all changes in
Italy or Germany, 'of a nature to disturb the European
equilibrium,' were to be made by Austria and France in
concert. Striking, indeed, that the curse of the later
Bourbons, the secret diplomacy of Louis xv. against the
declared policy, and behind the back, of the royal minister,
should be repeated by the dynasty that claimed to repre-
sent the true France, that Bourbon dynasticism had ruined.
The cunning of the Carbonaro was always unpicking by
night the flimsy web of Us idies Napoleoniennes woven in
the day at the Tuileries. Napoleon, therefore, had faced
the future with the assurance that he had bargained with
both sides and was committed to neither. But the states-
man who has failed to be ready for the collapse of his
calculations commits against his country a graver
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
207
crime than the general who plans an offensive for
victory without providing the line of retreat in the case
of failure.
On July 4 Napoleon suddenly found himself in a terrible
position. France eagerly awaited the coup de mattre, but
the ulcer of Mexico had drained the military resources of
the Empire; the artillery lacked horses and armament, and
the army was not ready; the possible allies in Germany--
the anti-Prussian States, Hanover, Saxony, Wurttemberg,
Bavaria, Hesse--were in as poor a military way as France
herself, and would be crushed before France could assist
them; national passion had flamed up, white-hot, in
Prussia; a neutral observer noted that in all classes there
was one fierce conviction--' no French, no rotten peace. '
Austria was on the verge of collapse, and Napoleon himself
had no plan for immediate action. Worst of all, pros-
trating pain made him incapable of clear thought or
prompt decision. The fate of France turned--that is the
penalty of all autocracies, imperial or otherwise, at all
crises--on the character and capacity of a single man; and
in those July days, that flooded the gardens of the Tuileries
and the Champs Elysees, the orchards of Normandy, and
the vineyards of the Garonne with their mocking sunshine,
the decision had to come from a ruler tortured all his life
by the disease of indecision, tortured now by physical
agony. 'A grain of sand in a man's flesh and empires rise
wanted; he only knew that he did not want war and could
not wage it. Bismarck knew precisely what he wanted;
he was ready to wage war, and knew how to do it. It
is difficult to judge what Napoleon should have done.
Austria, Saxony, Hesse-Cassel were clamouring for the
Emperor to intervene and save them. Thiers and every
critic of the Empire were waiting to drive home the proof
of their accusations; Ultramontanes and Clericals, his only
true if selfish supporters in France, were in consternation
at Austria's downfall. His ministers were as divided as
their imperial master. The weak man who acts on the
principle that' something must be done ' is sure to do the
and fall. '
Napoleon at this
really did not know what he
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