But apart from the registration of Germany's hegemony,
the Congress raises a pertinent and difficult question.
the Congress raises a pertinent and difficult question.
Robertson - Bismarck
The
secret of the higher command in policy, won by the blood
and sweat of a lifetime, must be kept by the same blood and
sweat. If Germany once allowed the quality of that right
judgment in all things on which her prestige in diplomacy
was built to deteriorate, disaster would follow. No
material strength could compensate for an inferiority in
the higher direction.
The confidence of Germany in the Chancellor as the
director of foreign policy and the guardian of Germany's
place in Europe was implicit. The bitter criticism poured
on the successive phases of his home policy scarcely trickled
into the sphere of foreign affairs. Gone were the days of
1862 and 1863, when professors and pathologists, publicists
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? 33*
BISMARCK
and pamphleteers, arraigned before an audience half-
convinced in advance, the foreign policy of the Minister-
President. The Reichstag listened and obeyed, at the
feet of the Master. Bismarck studied and gave great
weight to the volume of public opinion, as his handling of
the colonial question subsequently showed. His speeches
on the delicate problems of international relations were
invariably stamped with the magisterial note, the recog-
nition of the nation's demand for power, and the subtle
personal appeal for confidence. 'Bismarck has,' said Lord
Odo Russell, 'a prophetic coup HceiV He wove into his
analysis autobiographic reminiscences and tantalising
glimpses of the forces moving behind the scene; and the
vanity and egoism with which they were flavoured reflected
the vanity and egoism of the audience. The German
Reichstag was on these occasions, and it knew it, the
Olympus from which Jove spoke to Europe. He made
Germany feel its unity and grandeur. Such speeches,
with their exposition of the realities, were a tonic and an
inspiration. No German but drew deeper lungs after
hearing these utterances of pontifical infallibility from the
tribune of the Reichstag; the speaker himself--that
gigantic figure of the Chancellor, the civil Prime Minister
of the Empire, in a military uniform with his sword at his
side, the nonlike head, the flashing eyes, the gesture of
command, even the hoarse, rasping, and hesitating voice
that made the barbed phrase or the felicitous apophthegm
more telling--the speaker himself was an arresting in-
carnation of Imperial power and of Prussian militarism.
In reviving the triple entente of the Central and Eastern
monarchies Bismarck securely reckoned on the ill-will of
Russia to Great Britain, so patent in the Washington
negotiations and the Genevan arbitration, and the genuine
fear of Liberal and Radical tendencies in France and
Great Britain. 'The downward course' of England
alarmed Alexander n. , who forgot that England had been
going to perdition since 1815, and that some countries
can even wax strong and prosperous on such perdition,
and can be a far safer home for monarchs than the hearth
of order at Petersburg. 'The sacred cause of Royalty' was
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
declared to be imperilled; 'Germany, Austria, and Russia
should hold together to resist those dangerous and evil influ-
ences of England, if order was to be maintained in Europe. '
Dynasticism and order were to be pitted against republican-
ism and the revolution. The solidarity of European Con-
servatism--the familiar catchword took Bismarck back
to the age of Metternich in which he had grown up, and
the school of Gerlach that now proclaimed him a rene-
gade. Toujours ca change, toujours c'est la meme chose.
Bismarck now exploited the shibboleths of the dynasties to
rivet the Bismarckian conception of Central Europe on
Vienna and Petersburg, as he had exploited the shibboleths
of Gerlach to rivet Prussian supremacy on Germany. The
sovereigns met in 1871 at Gastein and Salzburg--which
was ' the coffin' of Beust, about to be dismissed and re-
placed by Andrassy--and in 1872 at Berlin, exchanged
kisses on both cheeks and showered decorations. Bismarck
entertained the royalties and their staffs with diplomatic
reminiscences; he was particularly pleased to dilate on the
tortures suffered by the French negotiators (1870-1), and
explained with genial humour how he had baited the hooks
to play with the fish before landing it. The Emperor
William returned the visits at Petersburg and Vienna.
Koniggratz was forgotten; the reconciliation prepared
by the peace of 1866 proceeded rapidly. 'No formal
treaty was concluded,' the Crown Prince wrote to his
cousin the ruler of Roumania, but the understanding was
intimate and complete. In 1873 Victor Emmanuel also
came to Berlin. His readiness to join Napoleon in 1870
was forgiven and forgotten by his accession to the monar-
chical entente. Bismarck had secured the vulnerable flank
of Germany in the east; he had withdrawn the consti-
tutional kingdom of Italy from gravitating towards the
sister Latin race; France was without an ally. The Kings
of Holland and Sweden made a pilgrimage to the new
Mecca of royalism and order at Berlin, and Belgium was
compelled to alter her penal code, because Germany did
not think it adequate to deal with Ultramontanes or
Radical journalists. Beyond the Carpathians and in the
valley of the lower Danube stood the Hohenzollern
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BISMARCK
sentinel on guard. The intimate relations between
Bucharest and Berlin, between the Hohenzollern cadet
and the great Hohenzollern Emperor, are written in every
line of the diary of Charles of Roumania. 1 The pacific
penetration of Europe by a Germany, matchless in arms
and science, had begun.
All went as happily as marriage bells, all except the
course of events in the accursed France. Until 1873
France patiently explored the causes of her collapse, and
heroically wrestled with the German indemnity and the
re-making of her army. Thiers, by the Treaty of
March 15, which ended the German occupation, earned
the proud title of ' Liberator of the soil of the patrie,' and
the Monarchical Right promptly rewarded him by hurling
him from power (May 24). Bismarck viewed with pro-
found resentment the recovery of 'the hereditary foe. '
The military and financial convalescence was being speeded
up beyond all anticipation. The restoration of a Catholic
Bourbon royalty, whose legitimacy and lineage dated to an
age when the mushroom monarchism of the Hohenzollerns
had not yet sprouted in the sandy wastes of Brandenburg,
might bring France back into the sacred circle of dynasti-
cism, even become the centre of a Catholic coalition against
Prussia. The Kulturkampf raged in Germany. What if
'Henry v. ,' the 'emigrb of Frohsdorf, proved to be the
'stone' that Pio Nono proclaimed in his visions would
'issue from heaven and break the Colossus'? Mit
der Dummheit kdmpfen Cotter selbst vergebens--one of
Bismarck's favourite quotations--'Against stupidity even
the gods fight in vain. ' 'Henry v. ,' like our 'James in.
and vii1. ' was not of the stuff to recover crowns lost by the
folly of his ancestors. Bismarck's luck did not desert him.
'Henry v. ' refused to make the great renunciation: an
assegai in the South African bush killed the Prince Imperial
(1879); Gambetta died from a poisoned hand in his
forty-fourth year (1882); Skobeleff, who never could
1 'I am here alone,' wrote Prince Charles of Roumania in 1871 to King
William, << a solitary outpost, the sentinel of the frontier against the East . . .
but I am neither so distant nor so wearied but that I can heartily join in the
acclamations for the German Emperor. '
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 335
decide which he desired the more passionately--to lead
the Cossacks into Delhi or into Berlin--died in 1882; and
Harry Arnim, who foretold the Kulturkampf from Rome
in 1869--brilliant, unstable, and cursed with an ambition
and the absence of all the qualities required to achieve it--
was broken and hunted into exile. His place at the
German Embassy in Paris was taken by Prince Hohenlohe,
whose Memoirs reveal how odious to a refined gentleman
was the task of hectoring and bullying France, laid upon
him from the Wilhelmstrasse.
'A republic,' Bismarck decided, 'would find it more
difficult to obtain allies than a monarchy. ' German
diplomacy therefore supported the republicans, while also
aiding every party that would embarrass the republic.
In the republican solution Bismarck saw a Nessus shirt for
France: French Jacobinism clinched the argument pressed
by the royal physicians of Law and Order for keeping the
moral leper in a sanitary isolation.
The war scares of 1874 and l%75 are still an obscure
episode. The argument of German historians and
Bismarck hagiographers that Bismarck did not believe in
'preventive' wars, because he said so in two or three
obscure and probably insincere sentences, is as childish
as Bismarck's own explanation that it was a Stock Exchange
manoeuvre, inflated by the Chauvinism of the General
Staff, the chief of which, Moltke, was a 'street Arab
(gamin) in politics,' and utilised by the vanity of Gort-
schakov to score an empty diplomatic triumph. Moltke
was not a gamin in politics, and Gortschakovs do not win
triumphs over a Bismarck if they have only vanity at their
command. Considering what France had suffered she
was perfectly entitled to make her army as strong as she
could, and in doing so, she only acted on Bismarckian
principles. The Foreign and War Offices in Berlin knew
that a France with a strong army would be an ally worth
having--at Petersburg, for example. The one black fear
that haunted Bismarck--it dated back to 1854--was an
alliance between France and Russia, in which Germany
could not be a third and wrecking partner. Such an
alliance meant the restoration of the Continental Balance
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BISMARCK
of Power which it had been the work of 1866 and 1871 to
destroy. It could be frustrated at the outset by threaten-
ing France with war--compelling her to suspend her re-
organisation and driving her back on the impotence of a
second-rate State. In the winter of 1874-5, Bismarck tried
to pick a quarrel with France because the French bishops
had endorsed the papal encyclical condemning the arrest
of Cardinal Ledochowski, and provoked it by a violent and
inspired press campaign on the menace involved in French
armaments. German armaments, of course, were a proof
of Germany's pacific intentions. Moltke--a real god from
a real machine--was brought from his silence in the War
Office to explain to the Reichstag the serious danger in
which Germany stood. And Moltke explained with an
emphatic brevity that sent a shiver down the patriotic
spine of every German.
It is fairly certain that the famous article in the Post--
'Is War in sight ? '--was inspired by Bismarck, and that
the Emperor had not realised the elaborate manoeuvre
going on behind his back. It is quite certain that the facts
communicated to The Times by De Blowitz, primed by the
Duc Decazes (May 4, 1875), the information sent from
Berlin by Lord Odo Russell, by Lord Lyons from Paris,
and by three German Embassies in three capitals, together
with the information on which Alexander n. and Gort-
schakov acted, and on which Queen Victoria wrote her
famous letter to the Emperor William, were substantially
correct. But Alexander came to Berlin, and by May 10
Gortschakov was able to send his telegram ' Now peace is
assured,' and the British government to say publicly that
it had 'supported, as much as seemed necessary, the ex-
hortations which the Emperor of Russia appeared inclined
to make during his visit. '
Bismarck was very angry. The Prussian General Staff
was quite ready to make a dozen preventive wars, but it is
difficult to believe that the Chancellor meant more than
to drive the Duc Decazes from office, and thus compel
France to reduce her armaments, or possibly to coerce her
into indiscretions in which the chassepots would go off of
themselves. The cause of his anger lay much deeper than
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
resentment at a personal and public rebuff at the hands
of Gortschakov. He had been completely outplayed in
the diplomatic game. The Emperor told Prince Hohen-
lohe ' I do not wish war with France . . . but I fear that
Bismarck may drag me into it little by little. ' The warn-
ings to the Kaiser from the sovereigns of Great Britain
and Russia turned Bismarck's flank. He was confronted
with a European coalition, and Decazes, thoroughly terrified
as he was, as indeed were all the statesmen in France,
managed the episode very neatly. He remembered July
1870 and behaved with studied discretion. 'Decazes,'
Bismarck is reported to have said,' is like a ball--if pricked,
he rolls away; nothing goes in. ' Bismarck knew, for he
had been pricking the ball assiduously in the hope that
it would not roll, but burst. An appeal from the French
government to Russia and Great Britain elicited a very
clear pronouncement that a war thrust on France would' be
an iniquity' which Europe would not tolerate. Bismarck
realised that he was not dealing with the Duc de Gramont
or the European situation of July 1870. The leading strings
woven for the Triple Alliance of the monarchs did not
prevent independent Russian or British action. In a
word, the Europe that Thiers had ' failed to find ' in 1870
Bismarck ' found ' by colliding violently with it. Europe
earnestly desired peace, but not a peace based on the per-
manent obliteration of France. The whole episode was
a culmination of the perpetual bullying of France by
Bismarck, based on the assumption that the French
government must arrange its internal policy to German
dictation. Arnim, for example, on one occasion said to
the French Foreign Minister,' Remember, I forbid you to
take Tunis--yes, I forbid you. ' 'Bismarck,' wrote Lord
Odo to Lord Derby, 'is at his old tricks again . . . his
sensational policy is very wearisome. ' Europe had not yet
grasped that a hectoring foreign policy was continuously
employed by the Chancellor to lash up German public
opinion and influence the Reichstag. In 1874-5 the
Kulturkampf was in a critical stage. But, with all allow-
ances, the weight of the evidence confidentially laid before
the Russian and British governments convinced them that
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? 338
BISMARCK
Germany would pick a quarrel, if it could, with the French
Republic.
The eternal Eastern Question placed a far heavier strain
on Bismarck's system, for at once Great Britain, reluctant
in 1875 openly to take the side of France, stepped into the
centre of the European stage. It proved indeed as critical
as the Greek insurrection had been to Metternich's Holy
Alliance from 1822-30. The revolts of Montenegro,
Bosnia, Serbia, and Bulgaria, and the intervention of
Russia, followed by the Russo-Turkish War and the Treaty
of San Stefano, brought Europe within measurable distance
of a European conflagration. Bismarck had endeavoured
to meet the danger by the Berlin memorandum (May 11,
1876), which broke down because Great Britain, rightly
or wrongly, refused to be a party to it. National passion
was rising fast. It was Nationalism that had brought the
Russian armies to the gates of Constantinople. Neither
Great Britain nor Austria had forgotten Russian action in
1870, and the British fleet also was at the gates of Con-
stantinople. Austria could not keep out of a war between
Russia and Great Britain--her interest in the Balkans was
too deep. What was Germany to do in that case: side
with Austria or with Russia, or cut the sorry figure she
had cut in 1854? H she sided openly with Austria or
Russia it was certain that France would find an ally at
once in Germany's enemy. In the winter of 1877-8 Bis-
marck saw the foundation of his system crumbling away.
National ambitions were riving asunder the identity of
dynastic interest expressed in the Entente of the Three
Monarchies. At all costs, therefore, the war in the Near
East must be localised and ended, and the European
problem settled not by arms but by diplomacy.
Bismarck returned from Varzin on February 14. The
preliminaries of peace between Turkey and Russia had
been signed on January 31; on February 7 part of the
British fleet had entered the Sea of Marmora and was
within sight of the Russian lines. On January 14 the
British government, supported by Andrassy, demanded
the revision of the Russo-Turkish treatv by the Concert
of Europe. On February 19 Bismarck reviewed the situa-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 339
tion for the Reichstag--a masterly performance on a very
slack rope. He emphasised the supreme need of peace, the
justifiability of a European revision, and the disinterested-
ness of Germany. He quietly disclaimed all idea of dic-
tating to any of the great Powers; Germany, however,
could perform one humble and efficient task--' that of the
honest broker'--facilitating business between clients at
cross-purposes, all of whom were the broker's friends.
Beneath the speaker's cool analysis surged the deep bass of
German power. It was because she was so strong that
Germany could be so calm. But if she chose to throw
her incomparable army into the scales, it would be decisive.
Russia had no option but to submit. Her ministers,
however, felt that here indeed was Bismarck's gratitude
for aiding the refusal to submit the Treaty of Frankfurt
to a Congress.
The Congress of Berlin under Bismarck's presidency
testified to the primacy of the German Empire in Europe.
In 1856 Prussia had been kindly allowed the vacant chair
in the Congress of Paris. It was now shared between
France and Turkey. The diplomatic salute that in 1856
had been taken by Napoleon in. was in 1878 taken by
Bismarck. 'The honest broker' did not merely act as a
clearing-house and take a small commission. For two
of the clients at least--Austria and Russia--if not for all,
he wrote out the contract notes and settled the article
to be transferred as well as the price. In 1878 the
principle was quietly laid down that the business of
Continental Europe must henceforward go through the
Berlin Exchange in the Wilhelmstrasse, and transactions
concluded without the Berlin official stamp would always
be at the buyer's or seller's peril.
The details of the Congress belong to general European
history and the particular States immediately concerned.
But apart from the registration of Germany's hegemony,
the Congress raises a pertinent and difficult question. At
what precise point did Germany's and Bismarck's direct
interest in the Near East commence? If we were to
believe the Chancellor's public utterances, that direct
interest did not begin until at least a decade later, if then.
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? 340
BISMARCK
In 1876 (December 7, 1876) he pronounced, in a pictur-
esque phrase, that to Germany the Near East was not
worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier, and he con-
tinued to repeat the disclaimer with a monotony and an
emphasis that convey the quintessence of suspiciousness.
It is, however, not necessary to pick the locks of the
German and Turkish archives to prove that for some
years prior to 1878 German diplomacy had been working
with stealthy and steady persistence at displacing British,
Russian, and French influence with the Sublime Porte, and
quietly substituting a German replica of' the great Eltchi,'
Stratford de Redclyffe, as the most important figure
at Constantinople. By 1878 Turkey had been already
taught to recognise that while Russia was an irrecon-
cilable enemy, Austria at best a very interested friend, and
Great Britain a useless ally or an open foe, Germany would
be ready to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire,
in return for political and commercial control. Such a
control was an essential corollary to a secure Central
Empire, and was perfectly compatible with an ultimate
Austrian advance to Salonica. The argument and the
opportunity were immensely heightened by the sequel
to the Berlin Congress--the blunders, in particular, of
Russian policy in the treatment of Roumania and Bulgaria.
But it is demonstrable that the subsequent and growing
resistance of the Ottoman Empire to the Concert of
Europe rested on German support which did not begin in
1879. The success of the European Concert at Berlin in
averting war, and its failure in assigning the Balkans to
the Balkan peoples, were largely due to Bismarck. A
truer perspective has taught us that not ' der alte Jude'
(Beaconsfield) but 'der alte Junker' (Bismarck) was the
great figure at the Congress of Berlin. 1
It is no less true that in 1878 Bismarck primarily en-
1 To-day we can read many reminiscences by those who took part in the
Congress, and many and vivid are the stories related by eye-witnesses of Bismarck.
His temper throughout, we are assured, was ' vile. ' We have the picture of his
fainting, with Gortschakov, who thought he was going to die, offering him a
glass of water, and the Chancellor's reply,' Pas mort, mon cher, pas encore, mon
cher, pas encore! ' or of his striding up and down at a private session and ex-
claiming--' Settle, gentlemen, settle, I insist--to-morrow I go to Varzin. '
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 341
visaged the problem from an Austrian angle. The assign-
ment to Austria of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the Sandjak
of Novi Bazar, which opened up the road to the valley of
the Vardar, was certainly the result of a secret agreement
between Austria and Russia, and was probably the result
of a prior agreement between Vienna and Berlin. Tatis-
cheff takes it as proved that as early as 1873 Austria was
to secure such compensation in the Balkan peninsula,
with Germany's approval, as would partially make good
Austrian losses in Germany and Italy. Such a policy was
the logical completion of Bismarck's Central Europe,
based on Austria as a Danubian State, expansion of which
would be south-eastwards. Agreements behind the back of
an ally were part of Bismarck's methods, as the reinsurance
of 1884 and 1887 proved. He was always ready to find com-
pensation in territory that did not belong to Germany for
a State that he had mutilated. The understanding of 1873
was a reinsurance against the entente with Russia of 1872.
A Balkan sphere of control was a sop to the Magyar
ascendency, and since Beust's dismissal in 1871 the recon-
ciliation of Germany and Austria rested on an entente with
Andrassy and the Magyars. Vienna and Buda-Pesth com-
bined could be trusted to stem the tide of Panslavism in the
Balkans and hold the passes until Germany had completed
her diplomatic penetration and decided on her policy.
The international situation was very complicated. But
from his central position at Berlin Bismarck by ceaseless
effort and utilising every turn aimed first at maintaining
the national antagonisms of Russia, Austria, and Great
Britain, which enabled him always to have rival groups
to bargain with; secondly, at continuing the isolation of
France. The European Powers were to be grouped round
Berlin, with Germany as the arbiter of their rivalries.
A study of the evidence available suggests the suspicion1
1 The student can study, for example, the evidence derived from the dispatches
and memoranda in Crispi's Memoirs, vol. ii. ; Lord Newton's Life of Lord Lyons,
Lord Fitzmaurice's Life of Lord GraimiUe, Wertheimer's Life of Andrassy,
Busch's Bismarck, some Secret Pages of his History, Gontaut-Biron's Mon
Ambassade en AUemagne and Dernieres Annies de PAmba. 'sade, the letters of
General Le Flo published in the Figaro (1887), Prince Hohenlohe's Memoirs,
and the unpublished documents cited by M. Hanotaux in his chapters on
foreign policy in La France contemporaine (vols- i. -iv. ).
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? BISMARCK
that from 1872 onwards Bismarck continuously passed
on the confidential information obtained from Vienna
or Petersburg or London and used it to poison and
inflame Great Britain against Russia, Austria against
Russia, and all these against France. The Wilhelmstrasse
became a laboratory of international quarrels, fomented
by 'the honest broker. ' 'They dislike me,' as Bismarck
said of the petty Balkan States, 'but by a merciful dis-
pensation of Providence they dislike each other much
more. ' It was the agreeable duty of the Chancellor to co-
operate with Providence for Germany's untold advantage.
The administrative occupation of Bosnia was the first
instalment of a prior agreement, and a pledge of further
favours to come--if Austria behaved properly.
After 1878 Russia, in Bismarck's view, got out of hand.
The Nationalist party, led by Skobeleff and Katkoff, aided
by a great wave of Panslavist feeling, proclaimed that
Bismarck had instigated the Russian attack on Turkey
(which is quite probable), in order to favour Austria and
rob Russia of the fruits of victory. At Paris and Petersburg
the desirability of a Franco-Russian alliance was openly
canvassed. Schuvalov, the chief Russian plenipotentiary
at the Congress, was compelled to resign, and the Tsar
wrote a bitter letter to his relative, Emperor William.
When Bismarck inspired Busch to open a counter-attack
in the German press on Gortschakov and Russian Pan-
slavism, the wire between Petersburg and Berlin was not
broken but made red-hot with recriminations. 'Do not,'
Bismarck said to Gortschakov in 1878, 'Do not compel
me to choose between Austria and you. ' In truth it was
neither Gortschakov nor Austria, but France, that com-
pelled Bismarck to choose- Russia by herself he did not
fear, but France in conjunction with Russia--the war on
the two fronts--weighed like lead on Bismarck and
Moltke's minds.
While the Emperor William, much distressed by the
Tsar's indictment of German ingratitude, met his angry
relative at Alexandrovo, Bismarck met Andrassy at Gastein
(August 27, 1879). From Gastein Bismarck went to
Vienna, where the author of Austria's expulsion from
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 343
Germany received a triumphant ovation. Vienna, like
Petersburg, recognised Germany's services to Austria in
the Balkans. And without German support Francis
Joseph could not face Russia. In a long confidential
letter (September 10) to the King of Bavaria Bismarck
explained the imperative reasons for an alliance with
Austria. It was a dexterous move to invite in ad-
vance Bavarian support, which was given by King
Louis without reserve, but Bismarck was really plant-
ing a powerful breaching battery on the flank of his
own sovereign.
An alliance with Austria, avowedly against Russia, roused
the anger and obstinacy of the Emperor William: for it
was a violation of every precious tradition--the dynastic
connection, the support of Russia in every Prussian crisis,
and the solidarity of 'the system of order on a monar-
chical basis. ' The Emperor roundly dubbed the proposed
treaty a ' perfidy. ' For six weeks the Chancellor wrestled
with the conscience and limited political intelligence of
his master. 1 All my well-weighed arguments,' he writes
in his Memoirs, 'were entirely without effect . . . I was
compelled to bring the cabinet into play, a method of
procedure extremely against my grain. ' The Crown
Prince once . again supported the Chancellor. When the
Emperor finally yielded on October 7, 'he was not con-
vinced by the arguments of policy but . . . only because he
was averse to ministerial changes. ' In the autumn of 1879
Bismarck's place--for the Chancellor was determined to
have the treaty--could only have been filled by Bennigsen.
It was the last of Bismarck's historic struggles with his
sovereign, which stand out with the arresting significance
of obelisks on a straight road across an open plain, and each
marked a momentous decision. In 1862 he had persuaded
the King to fight out the struggle with the Liberal
Landtag; in 1863 he had prevented the King from going
to the Congress of Princes at Frankfurt; in 1866 he had
induced the King to sign 'a shameful treaty' with
Austria; in 1871 he compelled the King of Prussia to
become German Emperor; in 1879 he made the Dual
Alliance. The last was probably the greatest victory of
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BISMARCK
the five, and of a more pregnant import for the future of
the two Empires and the European State system.
The treaty of October 7 was secret, and the text was not
published until February 3, 1888, and then, naturally,
without any of the secret clauses or conventions which
unquestionably were attached to it. The nature and
extent of these can only be estimated by careful inference
from the course of German and Austrian policy after 1879.
In the published text the alliance provided for three even-
tualities: first, if either party were attacked by Russia the
other was to come to its assistance with its whole military
force; if either party were attacked by another Power
than Russia (i. e. France), the other was to observe a bene-
volent neutrality, which, if Russia intervened, was to turn
into an active support; and if Russia increased her
armaments so as to menace either of the contracting
Powers, the Tsar was to be informed that an attack against
either was an attack against both.
The treaty was in form 'defensive'--a distinction in-
tended for the intelligent public that assumes that phrases
are identical with the realities of international conflicts.
But a war in which the formal declaration of hostilities
comes from the side that has been diplomatically man-
oeuvred into a position in which it must either declare war
or accept a diplomatic defeat is technically for the other
side a defensive war. Bismarck had never waged an
'offensive ' war, in the technical sense, and he never in-
tended to bungle so badly as to be obliged to do so. The
casus foederis therefore of 1879 provided precisely what
he required--an ally, should it be necessary to force Russia
to declare war. On the other hand, he could always re-
pudiate his Austrian ally on the ground that she was about
to wage an offensive war, outside the scope and ambit of
the contract. In other words, Bismarck retained the
initiative and secured the control of Austrian policy, for it
is policy that makes wars, not wars that make policy.
'I was not blind,' wrote Bismarck,' to the perplexities
which made the choice (of Austria) difficult. ' All the
evidence available fully bears out this measured judgment.
The Chancellor weighed long and with a remorseless
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 345
scrutiny the case for and against so momentous a decision.
To-day, perhaps, when the Dual Alliance has lasted for
thirty-six years and seems as familiar and inevitable a
phenomenon in the firmament of continental policy as
King Charles's Wain in the heaven of stars, we are disposed
to ignore the problem that Bismarck strove to solve. The
Treaty of 1879 closes a crisis in the evolution of Bismarck's
statecraft. It marks a climax, but, like all climaxes, it
turned a fresh page, the writing in which was determined
by the character of the terminus.
What then were 'the perplexities'? It is clear on the
evidence that Bismarck in 1879 could have turned to
Russia and concluded a similar defensive treaty, with
Austria as the foe to be neutralised. The cordial meeting
of William and Alexander 11. at Alexandrovo, which cleared
up their personal relations, strengthened the German
Emperor's desire to heal the political breach and renew the
liaison established in 1872. William, indeed, failed to see
that Austrian and Russian ambitions were in conflict after
1878, and that Germany could not support both, but must
decide between them. Bismarck's deeper knowledge and
'prophetic coup d'aeil' had penetrated the logic of history,
'more remorseless than the logic of the Prussian audit
office,' and for him the antagonism of Austria and Russia
made the cruelty and inevitability of a choice. But why
not select Russia--the champion of order and monarchical
autocracy, the dynastic and political friend on whose sup-
ort Prussian policy had pivoted since 1862? Why not
y such a master-stroke close the Eastern frontier and
permanently dissolve the nightmare of a Franco-Russian
alliance? Would not such an alliance have before long
coerced Austria into renewing the Triple Entente of 1872?
Powerful critics in 1879 and 6ince have argued this thesis
impressively, and concluded that Bismarck now made his
first and biggest mistake. The road, it is said, to Peters-
burg via Vienna was impossible in reality; but the making
of a road to Vienna via Petersburg was not beyond
Bismarck's great gifts. The alienation of Great Britain
from Ruscia and the Anglo-Austrian entente in 1879 left, it
is also argued, Russia isolated, faced by a hostile Germany,
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BISMARCK
Austria, and Great Britain, the Near East closed, and
France alone as a possible friend. The Treaty of 1879, it
is therefore concluded, made a Franco-Russian entente--
the one result Bismarck feared--only a question of time.
Yet, if Bismarck erred, he did so with his eyes open. He
knew the arguments for a Russian alliance better than his
critics, and he rejected them. Why?
Three central points take us to the heart of the system
enshrined in the Austrian treaty. First, a sentence in the
confidential letter to the King of Bavaria, unaccountably
ignored by many students of Bismarck: 'The German
Empire in alliance with Austria would not lack the support
of England. ' Lord Salisbury, the British Foreign Secretary,
confirmed this prediction by saying that the rumour of such
an alliance was 'good tidings of great joy. ' Would a
British Foreign Secretary in 1879, ^89, or 1899 have
said the same of a Russo-German alliance? Bismarck
knew that an alliance with Russia must commit Germany
to the Russian antagonism to Great Britain, as well as to
the Russian antagonism to Austria. Neither in 1879
nor 1889 was he prepared to place such a wasting mort-
gage on German policy: for Bismarck had a sounder sense
of British strength than many of his critics then or since.
The alienation of Great Britain and of Austria in 1879
would almost certainly have involved a renewal of the
Anglo-Austrian alliance of 1856, to which France in 1879,
as in 1856, would have become a partner. 1
Secondly, was Germany prepared to see Russia at
Constantinople? Apart from any prior promises to
Austria, not involving Constantinople but Salonica, that
was a question of profound import for Bismarck in 1878-9.
His answer as given in his acts is a decisive 'No'; not
1 The Secret Treaty of April 15,185 6, which pledged Great Britain, France, and
Austria to unite in resisting any attempt to tear up the Treaty of Paris of 1856.
1 The extraordinary obiter dictum in the Memoirs (ii. 285) that Bismarck
personally would have 'welcomed ' the 'physical and diplomatic possession of
Constantinople' by Russia cannot be taken seriously. It is contradicted by the
argument in which it is embedded, and is belied by the action of" Germany
prior to, and after, 1879. Written late in life, it probably is a criticism on
German policy in the Near East after the Chancellor's dismissal, and is one of
the many similar 'confessions' suggesting that in matters of high military
policy he was continuously overruled by the Emperor, or the soldiers, or by his
colleagues, or by public opinion. CreJat Judteus Apella.
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 347
because a Russian Constantinople rang out a sharp quietus
to Austrian ambitions, but because it ended all German
ambitions in the Balkans. Austria at Salonica was no bar
--rather a help--to German control of Constantinople and
the Ottoman Empire, the ' integrity' of which Beaconsfield
'consolidated' by annexing Cyprus, securing a tighter hold
on Egypt, and by handing over Bosnia to Austria, half
Bulgaria to a virtual Russian protectorate and the Armenian
frontier fortresses to Russia. But if a Russian alliance did
not mean Germany's acquiescence in the Russian advance
to Constantinople, it meant nothing. It meant, more-
over, that either Germany must support Russia in her
Eastern quarrel with Great Britain or obliterate the
treaty; and if there was an excentric dissipation of German
strength it would be to sacrifice Pomeranian Grenadiers
in Europe that Russia might annex Turkestan or Afghan-
istan. Bismarck was confident that Austrian Chauvinism
could be controlled, but a complete German control of
Russian policy was not a practical proposition. Teuton
and Slav could not work together as Teuton and Magyar
could for a common interest.
Thirdly, a Russian alliance left the main gateway of
Central Europe--the Danube--in neutral, and probably
hostile, hands. The strategical and economic confor-
mation of Central -Europe is moulded by three great river
basins--the Rhine, the Danube, and the Vistula. The
Rhine was now firmly in German hands: a Russian alliance
did not secure Germany the control of the Vistula, and it
left the Danube out of the central German control alto-
gether. Without a control of the Danube basin as com-
plete as the control of the Rhine, the political and economic,
no less than the military, conditions of centralism could not
be adequately realised. Moreover, Bismarck reckoned on
bringing Roumania with Austria's help into the system; and
thanks to Russian bungling, the Treaty of 1879 was promptly
followed by that close understanding between Bucharest
and Vienna which was certainly expressed in a precise con-
tract, the text of which has never been published. The
Austrian alliance, therefore, closed the Danube from source
to mouth: it brought Serbia and Bulgaria on the southern
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? 348
BISMARCK
bank into the sphere of Austrian policy; for it placed
Roumania as a German outpost to the north, and an
Ottoman Empire under German influence on their backs.
secret of the higher command in policy, won by the blood
and sweat of a lifetime, must be kept by the same blood and
sweat. If Germany once allowed the quality of that right
judgment in all things on which her prestige in diplomacy
was built to deteriorate, disaster would follow. No
material strength could compensate for an inferiority in
the higher direction.
The confidence of Germany in the Chancellor as the
director of foreign policy and the guardian of Germany's
place in Europe was implicit. The bitter criticism poured
on the successive phases of his home policy scarcely trickled
into the sphere of foreign affairs. Gone were the days of
1862 and 1863, when professors and pathologists, publicists
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BISMARCK
and pamphleteers, arraigned before an audience half-
convinced in advance, the foreign policy of the Minister-
President. The Reichstag listened and obeyed, at the
feet of the Master. Bismarck studied and gave great
weight to the volume of public opinion, as his handling of
the colonial question subsequently showed. His speeches
on the delicate problems of international relations were
invariably stamped with the magisterial note, the recog-
nition of the nation's demand for power, and the subtle
personal appeal for confidence. 'Bismarck has,' said Lord
Odo Russell, 'a prophetic coup HceiV He wove into his
analysis autobiographic reminiscences and tantalising
glimpses of the forces moving behind the scene; and the
vanity and egoism with which they were flavoured reflected
the vanity and egoism of the audience. The German
Reichstag was on these occasions, and it knew it, the
Olympus from which Jove spoke to Europe. He made
Germany feel its unity and grandeur. Such speeches,
with their exposition of the realities, were a tonic and an
inspiration. No German but drew deeper lungs after
hearing these utterances of pontifical infallibility from the
tribune of the Reichstag; the speaker himself--that
gigantic figure of the Chancellor, the civil Prime Minister
of the Empire, in a military uniform with his sword at his
side, the nonlike head, the flashing eyes, the gesture of
command, even the hoarse, rasping, and hesitating voice
that made the barbed phrase or the felicitous apophthegm
more telling--the speaker himself was an arresting in-
carnation of Imperial power and of Prussian militarism.
In reviving the triple entente of the Central and Eastern
monarchies Bismarck securely reckoned on the ill-will of
Russia to Great Britain, so patent in the Washington
negotiations and the Genevan arbitration, and the genuine
fear of Liberal and Radical tendencies in France and
Great Britain. 'The downward course' of England
alarmed Alexander n. , who forgot that England had been
going to perdition since 1815, and that some countries
can even wax strong and prosperous on such perdition,
and can be a far safer home for monarchs than the hearth
of order at Petersburg. 'The sacred cause of Royalty' was
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
declared to be imperilled; 'Germany, Austria, and Russia
should hold together to resist those dangerous and evil influ-
ences of England, if order was to be maintained in Europe. '
Dynasticism and order were to be pitted against republican-
ism and the revolution. The solidarity of European Con-
servatism--the familiar catchword took Bismarck back
to the age of Metternich in which he had grown up, and
the school of Gerlach that now proclaimed him a rene-
gade. Toujours ca change, toujours c'est la meme chose.
Bismarck now exploited the shibboleths of the dynasties to
rivet the Bismarckian conception of Central Europe on
Vienna and Petersburg, as he had exploited the shibboleths
of Gerlach to rivet Prussian supremacy on Germany. The
sovereigns met in 1871 at Gastein and Salzburg--which
was ' the coffin' of Beust, about to be dismissed and re-
placed by Andrassy--and in 1872 at Berlin, exchanged
kisses on both cheeks and showered decorations. Bismarck
entertained the royalties and their staffs with diplomatic
reminiscences; he was particularly pleased to dilate on the
tortures suffered by the French negotiators (1870-1), and
explained with genial humour how he had baited the hooks
to play with the fish before landing it. The Emperor
William returned the visits at Petersburg and Vienna.
Koniggratz was forgotten; the reconciliation prepared
by the peace of 1866 proceeded rapidly. 'No formal
treaty was concluded,' the Crown Prince wrote to his
cousin the ruler of Roumania, but the understanding was
intimate and complete. In 1873 Victor Emmanuel also
came to Berlin. His readiness to join Napoleon in 1870
was forgiven and forgotten by his accession to the monar-
chical entente. Bismarck had secured the vulnerable flank
of Germany in the east; he had withdrawn the consti-
tutional kingdom of Italy from gravitating towards the
sister Latin race; France was without an ally. The Kings
of Holland and Sweden made a pilgrimage to the new
Mecca of royalism and order at Berlin, and Belgium was
compelled to alter her penal code, because Germany did
not think it adequate to deal with Ultramontanes or
Radical journalists. Beyond the Carpathians and in the
valley of the lower Danube stood the Hohenzollern
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BISMARCK
sentinel on guard. The intimate relations between
Bucharest and Berlin, between the Hohenzollern cadet
and the great Hohenzollern Emperor, are written in every
line of the diary of Charles of Roumania. 1 The pacific
penetration of Europe by a Germany, matchless in arms
and science, had begun.
All went as happily as marriage bells, all except the
course of events in the accursed France. Until 1873
France patiently explored the causes of her collapse, and
heroically wrestled with the German indemnity and the
re-making of her army. Thiers, by the Treaty of
March 15, which ended the German occupation, earned
the proud title of ' Liberator of the soil of the patrie,' and
the Monarchical Right promptly rewarded him by hurling
him from power (May 24). Bismarck viewed with pro-
found resentment the recovery of 'the hereditary foe. '
The military and financial convalescence was being speeded
up beyond all anticipation. The restoration of a Catholic
Bourbon royalty, whose legitimacy and lineage dated to an
age when the mushroom monarchism of the Hohenzollerns
had not yet sprouted in the sandy wastes of Brandenburg,
might bring France back into the sacred circle of dynasti-
cism, even become the centre of a Catholic coalition against
Prussia. The Kulturkampf raged in Germany. What if
'Henry v. ,' the 'emigrb of Frohsdorf, proved to be the
'stone' that Pio Nono proclaimed in his visions would
'issue from heaven and break the Colossus'? Mit
der Dummheit kdmpfen Cotter selbst vergebens--one of
Bismarck's favourite quotations--'Against stupidity even
the gods fight in vain. ' 'Henry v. ,' like our 'James in.
and vii1. ' was not of the stuff to recover crowns lost by the
folly of his ancestors. Bismarck's luck did not desert him.
'Henry v. ' refused to make the great renunciation: an
assegai in the South African bush killed the Prince Imperial
(1879); Gambetta died from a poisoned hand in his
forty-fourth year (1882); Skobeleff, who never could
1 'I am here alone,' wrote Prince Charles of Roumania in 1871 to King
William, << a solitary outpost, the sentinel of the frontier against the East . . .
but I am neither so distant nor so wearied but that I can heartily join in the
acclamations for the German Emperor. '
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 335
decide which he desired the more passionately--to lead
the Cossacks into Delhi or into Berlin--died in 1882; and
Harry Arnim, who foretold the Kulturkampf from Rome
in 1869--brilliant, unstable, and cursed with an ambition
and the absence of all the qualities required to achieve it--
was broken and hunted into exile. His place at the
German Embassy in Paris was taken by Prince Hohenlohe,
whose Memoirs reveal how odious to a refined gentleman
was the task of hectoring and bullying France, laid upon
him from the Wilhelmstrasse.
'A republic,' Bismarck decided, 'would find it more
difficult to obtain allies than a monarchy. ' German
diplomacy therefore supported the republicans, while also
aiding every party that would embarrass the republic.
In the republican solution Bismarck saw a Nessus shirt for
France: French Jacobinism clinched the argument pressed
by the royal physicians of Law and Order for keeping the
moral leper in a sanitary isolation.
The war scares of 1874 and l%75 are still an obscure
episode. The argument of German historians and
Bismarck hagiographers that Bismarck did not believe in
'preventive' wars, because he said so in two or three
obscure and probably insincere sentences, is as childish
as Bismarck's own explanation that it was a Stock Exchange
manoeuvre, inflated by the Chauvinism of the General
Staff, the chief of which, Moltke, was a 'street Arab
(gamin) in politics,' and utilised by the vanity of Gort-
schakov to score an empty diplomatic triumph. Moltke
was not a gamin in politics, and Gortschakovs do not win
triumphs over a Bismarck if they have only vanity at their
command. Considering what France had suffered she
was perfectly entitled to make her army as strong as she
could, and in doing so, she only acted on Bismarckian
principles. The Foreign and War Offices in Berlin knew
that a France with a strong army would be an ally worth
having--at Petersburg, for example. The one black fear
that haunted Bismarck--it dated back to 1854--was an
alliance between France and Russia, in which Germany
could not be a third and wrecking partner. Such an
alliance meant the restoration of the Continental Balance
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BISMARCK
of Power which it had been the work of 1866 and 1871 to
destroy. It could be frustrated at the outset by threaten-
ing France with war--compelling her to suspend her re-
organisation and driving her back on the impotence of a
second-rate State. In the winter of 1874-5, Bismarck tried
to pick a quarrel with France because the French bishops
had endorsed the papal encyclical condemning the arrest
of Cardinal Ledochowski, and provoked it by a violent and
inspired press campaign on the menace involved in French
armaments. German armaments, of course, were a proof
of Germany's pacific intentions. Moltke--a real god from
a real machine--was brought from his silence in the War
Office to explain to the Reichstag the serious danger in
which Germany stood. And Moltke explained with an
emphatic brevity that sent a shiver down the patriotic
spine of every German.
It is fairly certain that the famous article in the Post--
'Is War in sight ? '--was inspired by Bismarck, and that
the Emperor had not realised the elaborate manoeuvre
going on behind his back. It is quite certain that the facts
communicated to The Times by De Blowitz, primed by the
Duc Decazes (May 4, 1875), the information sent from
Berlin by Lord Odo Russell, by Lord Lyons from Paris,
and by three German Embassies in three capitals, together
with the information on which Alexander n. and Gort-
schakov acted, and on which Queen Victoria wrote her
famous letter to the Emperor William, were substantially
correct. But Alexander came to Berlin, and by May 10
Gortschakov was able to send his telegram ' Now peace is
assured,' and the British government to say publicly that
it had 'supported, as much as seemed necessary, the ex-
hortations which the Emperor of Russia appeared inclined
to make during his visit. '
Bismarck was very angry. The Prussian General Staff
was quite ready to make a dozen preventive wars, but it is
difficult to believe that the Chancellor meant more than
to drive the Duc Decazes from office, and thus compel
France to reduce her armaments, or possibly to coerce her
into indiscretions in which the chassepots would go off of
themselves. The cause of his anger lay much deeper than
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
resentment at a personal and public rebuff at the hands
of Gortschakov. He had been completely outplayed in
the diplomatic game. The Emperor told Prince Hohen-
lohe ' I do not wish war with France . . . but I fear that
Bismarck may drag me into it little by little. ' The warn-
ings to the Kaiser from the sovereigns of Great Britain
and Russia turned Bismarck's flank. He was confronted
with a European coalition, and Decazes, thoroughly terrified
as he was, as indeed were all the statesmen in France,
managed the episode very neatly. He remembered July
1870 and behaved with studied discretion. 'Decazes,'
Bismarck is reported to have said,' is like a ball--if pricked,
he rolls away; nothing goes in. ' Bismarck knew, for he
had been pricking the ball assiduously in the hope that
it would not roll, but burst. An appeal from the French
government to Russia and Great Britain elicited a very
clear pronouncement that a war thrust on France would' be
an iniquity' which Europe would not tolerate. Bismarck
realised that he was not dealing with the Duc de Gramont
or the European situation of July 1870. The leading strings
woven for the Triple Alliance of the monarchs did not
prevent independent Russian or British action. In a
word, the Europe that Thiers had ' failed to find ' in 1870
Bismarck ' found ' by colliding violently with it. Europe
earnestly desired peace, but not a peace based on the per-
manent obliteration of France. The whole episode was
a culmination of the perpetual bullying of France by
Bismarck, based on the assumption that the French
government must arrange its internal policy to German
dictation. Arnim, for example, on one occasion said to
the French Foreign Minister,' Remember, I forbid you to
take Tunis--yes, I forbid you. ' 'Bismarck,' wrote Lord
Odo to Lord Derby, 'is at his old tricks again . . . his
sensational policy is very wearisome. ' Europe had not yet
grasped that a hectoring foreign policy was continuously
employed by the Chancellor to lash up German public
opinion and influence the Reichstag. In 1874-5 the
Kulturkampf was in a critical stage. But, with all allow-
ances, the weight of the evidence confidentially laid before
the Russian and British governments convinced them that
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BISMARCK
Germany would pick a quarrel, if it could, with the French
Republic.
The eternal Eastern Question placed a far heavier strain
on Bismarck's system, for at once Great Britain, reluctant
in 1875 openly to take the side of France, stepped into the
centre of the European stage. It proved indeed as critical
as the Greek insurrection had been to Metternich's Holy
Alliance from 1822-30. The revolts of Montenegro,
Bosnia, Serbia, and Bulgaria, and the intervention of
Russia, followed by the Russo-Turkish War and the Treaty
of San Stefano, brought Europe within measurable distance
of a European conflagration. Bismarck had endeavoured
to meet the danger by the Berlin memorandum (May 11,
1876), which broke down because Great Britain, rightly
or wrongly, refused to be a party to it. National passion
was rising fast. It was Nationalism that had brought the
Russian armies to the gates of Constantinople. Neither
Great Britain nor Austria had forgotten Russian action in
1870, and the British fleet also was at the gates of Con-
stantinople. Austria could not keep out of a war between
Russia and Great Britain--her interest in the Balkans was
too deep. What was Germany to do in that case: side
with Austria or with Russia, or cut the sorry figure she
had cut in 1854? H she sided openly with Austria or
Russia it was certain that France would find an ally at
once in Germany's enemy. In the winter of 1877-8 Bis-
marck saw the foundation of his system crumbling away.
National ambitions were riving asunder the identity of
dynastic interest expressed in the Entente of the Three
Monarchies. At all costs, therefore, the war in the Near
East must be localised and ended, and the European
problem settled not by arms but by diplomacy.
Bismarck returned from Varzin on February 14. The
preliminaries of peace between Turkey and Russia had
been signed on January 31; on February 7 part of the
British fleet had entered the Sea of Marmora and was
within sight of the Russian lines. On January 14 the
British government, supported by Andrassy, demanded
the revision of the Russo-Turkish treatv by the Concert
of Europe. On February 19 Bismarck reviewed the situa-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 339
tion for the Reichstag--a masterly performance on a very
slack rope. He emphasised the supreme need of peace, the
justifiability of a European revision, and the disinterested-
ness of Germany. He quietly disclaimed all idea of dic-
tating to any of the great Powers; Germany, however,
could perform one humble and efficient task--' that of the
honest broker'--facilitating business between clients at
cross-purposes, all of whom were the broker's friends.
Beneath the speaker's cool analysis surged the deep bass of
German power. It was because she was so strong that
Germany could be so calm. But if she chose to throw
her incomparable army into the scales, it would be decisive.
Russia had no option but to submit. Her ministers,
however, felt that here indeed was Bismarck's gratitude
for aiding the refusal to submit the Treaty of Frankfurt
to a Congress.
The Congress of Berlin under Bismarck's presidency
testified to the primacy of the German Empire in Europe.
In 1856 Prussia had been kindly allowed the vacant chair
in the Congress of Paris. It was now shared between
France and Turkey. The diplomatic salute that in 1856
had been taken by Napoleon in. was in 1878 taken by
Bismarck. 'The honest broker' did not merely act as a
clearing-house and take a small commission. For two
of the clients at least--Austria and Russia--if not for all,
he wrote out the contract notes and settled the article
to be transferred as well as the price. In 1878 the
principle was quietly laid down that the business of
Continental Europe must henceforward go through the
Berlin Exchange in the Wilhelmstrasse, and transactions
concluded without the Berlin official stamp would always
be at the buyer's or seller's peril.
The details of the Congress belong to general European
history and the particular States immediately concerned.
But apart from the registration of Germany's hegemony,
the Congress raises a pertinent and difficult question. At
what precise point did Germany's and Bismarck's direct
interest in the Near East commence? If we were to
believe the Chancellor's public utterances, that direct
interest did not begin until at least a decade later, if then.
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BISMARCK
In 1876 (December 7, 1876) he pronounced, in a pictur-
esque phrase, that to Germany the Near East was not
worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier, and he con-
tinued to repeat the disclaimer with a monotony and an
emphasis that convey the quintessence of suspiciousness.
It is, however, not necessary to pick the locks of the
German and Turkish archives to prove that for some
years prior to 1878 German diplomacy had been working
with stealthy and steady persistence at displacing British,
Russian, and French influence with the Sublime Porte, and
quietly substituting a German replica of' the great Eltchi,'
Stratford de Redclyffe, as the most important figure
at Constantinople. By 1878 Turkey had been already
taught to recognise that while Russia was an irrecon-
cilable enemy, Austria at best a very interested friend, and
Great Britain a useless ally or an open foe, Germany would
be ready to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire,
in return for political and commercial control. Such a
control was an essential corollary to a secure Central
Empire, and was perfectly compatible with an ultimate
Austrian advance to Salonica. The argument and the
opportunity were immensely heightened by the sequel
to the Berlin Congress--the blunders, in particular, of
Russian policy in the treatment of Roumania and Bulgaria.
But it is demonstrable that the subsequent and growing
resistance of the Ottoman Empire to the Concert of
Europe rested on German support which did not begin in
1879. The success of the European Concert at Berlin in
averting war, and its failure in assigning the Balkans to
the Balkan peoples, were largely due to Bismarck. A
truer perspective has taught us that not ' der alte Jude'
(Beaconsfield) but 'der alte Junker' (Bismarck) was the
great figure at the Congress of Berlin. 1
It is no less true that in 1878 Bismarck primarily en-
1 To-day we can read many reminiscences by those who took part in the
Congress, and many and vivid are the stories related by eye-witnesses of Bismarck.
His temper throughout, we are assured, was ' vile. ' We have the picture of his
fainting, with Gortschakov, who thought he was going to die, offering him a
glass of water, and the Chancellor's reply,' Pas mort, mon cher, pas encore, mon
cher, pas encore! ' or of his striding up and down at a private session and ex-
claiming--' Settle, gentlemen, settle, I insist--to-morrow I go to Varzin. '
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 341
visaged the problem from an Austrian angle. The assign-
ment to Austria of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the Sandjak
of Novi Bazar, which opened up the road to the valley of
the Vardar, was certainly the result of a secret agreement
between Austria and Russia, and was probably the result
of a prior agreement between Vienna and Berlin. Tatis-
cheff takes it as proved that as early as 1873 Austria was
to secure such compensation in the Balkan peninsula,
with Germany's approval, as would partially make good
Austrian losses in Germany and Italy. Such a policy was
the logical completion of Bismarck's Central Europe,
based on Austria as a Danubian State, expansion of which
would be south-eastwards. Agreements behind the back of
an ally were part of Bismarck's methods, as the reinsurance
of 1884 and 1887 proved. He was always ready to find com-
pensation in territory that did not belong to Germany for
a State that he had mutilated. The understanding of 1873
was a reinsurance against the entente with Russia of 1872.
A Balkan sphere of control was a sop to the Magyar
ascendency, and since Beust's dismissal in 1871 the recon-
ciliation of Germany and Austria rested on an entente with
Andrassy and the Magyars. Vienna and Buda-Pesth com-
bined could be trusted to stem the tide of Panslavism in the
Balkans and hold the passes until Germany had completed
her diplomatic penetration and decided on her policy.
The international situation was very complicated. But
from his central position at Berlin Bismarck by ceaseless
effort and utilising every turn aimed first at maintaining
the national antagonisms of Russia, Austria, and Great
Britain, which enabled him always to have rival groups
to bargain with; secondly, at continuing the isolation of
France. The European Powers were to be grouped round
Berlin, with Germany as the arbiter of their rivalries.
A study of the evidence available suggests the suspicion1
1 The student can study, for example, the evidence derived from the dispatches
and memoranda in Crispi's Memoirs, vol. ii. ; Lord Newton's Life of Lord Lyons,
Lord Fitzmaurice's Life of Lord GraimiUe, Wertheimer's Life of Andrassy,
Busch's Bismarck, some Secret Pages of his History, Gontaut-Biron's Mon
Ambassade en AUemagne and Dernieres Annies de PAmba. 'sade, the letters of
General Le Flo published in the Figaro (1887), Prince Hohenlohe's Memoirs,
and the unpublished documents cited by M. Hanotaux in his chapters on
foreign policy in La France contemporaine (vols- i. -iv. ).
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? BISMARCK
that from 1872 onwards Bismarck continuously passed
on the confidential information obtained from Vienna
or Petersburg or London and used it to poison and
inflame Great Britain against Russia, Austria against
Russia, and all these against France. The Wilhelmstrasse
became a laboratory of international quarrels, fomented
by 'the honest broker. ' 'They dislike me,' as Bismarck
said of the petty Balkan States, 'but by a merciful dis-
pensation of Providence they dislike each other much
more. ' It was the agreeable duty of the Chancellor to co-
operate with Providence for Germany's untold advantage.
The administrative occupation of Bosnia was the first
instalment of a prior agreement, and a pledge of further
favours to come--if Austria behaved properly.
After 1878 Russia, in Bismarck's view, got out of hand.
The Nationalist party, led by Skobeleff and Katkoff, aided
by a great wave of Panslavist feeling, proclaimed that
Bismarck had instigated the Russian attack on Turkey
(which is quite probable), in order to favour Austria and
rob Russia of the fruits of victory. At Paris and Petersburg
the desirability of a Franco-Russian alliance was openly
canvassed. Schuvalov, the chief Russian plenipotentiary
at the Congress, was compelled to resign, and the Tsar
wrote a bitter letter to his relative, Emperor William.
When Bismarck inspired Busch to open a counter-attack
in the German press on Gortschakov and Russian Pan-
slavism, the wire between Petersburg and Berlin was not
broken but made red-hot with recriminations. 'Do not,'
Bismarck said to Gortschakov in 1878, 'Do not compel
me to choose between Austria and you. ' In truth it was
neither Gortschakov nor Austria, but France, that com-
pelled Bismarck to choose- Russia by herself he did not
fear, but France in conjunction with Russia--the war on
the two fronts--weighed like lead on Bismarck and
Moltke's minds.
While the Emperor William, much distressed by the
Tsar's indictment of German ingratitude, met his angry
relative at Alexandrovo, Bismarck met Andrassy at Gastein
(August 27, 1879). From Gastein Bismarck went to
Vienna, where the author of Austria's expulsion from
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 343
Germany received a triumphant ovation. Vienna, like
Petersburg, recognised Germany's services to Austria in
the Balkans. And without German support Francis
Joseph could not face Russia. In a long confidential
letter (September 10) to the King of Bavaria Bismarck
explained the imperative reasons for an alliance with
Austria. It was a dexterous move to invite in ad-
vance Bavarian support, which was given by King
Louis without reserve, but Bismarck was really plant-
ing a powerful breaching battery on the flank of his
own sovereign.
An alliance with Austria, avowedly against Russia, roused
the anger and obstinacy of the Emperor William: for it
was a violation of every precious tradition--the dynastic
connection, the support of Russia in every Prussian crisis,
and the solidarity of 'the system of order on a monar-
chical basis. ' The Emperor roundly dubbed the proposed
treaty a ' perfidy. ' For six weeks the Chancellor wrestled
with the conscience and limited political intelligence of
his master. 1 All my well-weighed arguments,' he writes
in his Memoirs, 'were entirely without effect . . . I was
compelled to bring the cabinet into play, a method of
procedure extremely against my grain. ' The Crown
Prince once . again supported the Chancellor. When the
Emperor finally yielded on October 7, 'he was not con-
vinced by the arguments of policy but . . . only because he
was averse to ministerial changes. ' In the autumn of 1879
Bismarck's place--for the Chancellor was determined to
have the treaty--could only have been filled by Bennigsen.
It was the last of Bismarck's historic struggles with his
sovereign, which stand out with the arresting significance
of obelisks on a straight road across an open plain, and each
marked a momentous decision. In 1862 he had persuaded
the King to fight out the struggle with the Liberal
Landtag; in 1863 he had prevented the King from going
to the Congress of Princes at Frankfurt; in 1866 he had
induced the King to sign 'a shameful treaty' with
Austria; in 1871 he compelled the King of Prussia to
become German Emperor; in 1879 he made the Dual
Alliance. The last was probably the greatest victory of
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? 344
BISMARCK
the five, and of a more pregnant import for the future of
the two Empires and the European State system.
The treaty of October 7 was secret, and the text was not
published until February 3, 1888, and then, naturally,
without any of the secret clauses or conventions which
unquestionably were attached to it. The nature and
extent of these can only be estimated by careful inference
from the course of German and Austrian policy after 1879.
In the published text the alliance provided for three even-
tualities: first, if either party were attacked by Russia the
other was to come to its assistance with its whole military
force; if either party were attacked by another Power
than Russia (i. e. France), the other was to observe a bene-
volent neutrality, which, if Russia intervened, was to turn
into an active support; and if Russia increased her
armaments so as to menace either of the contracting
Powers, the Tsar was to be informed that an attack against
either was an attack against both.
The treaty was in form 'defensive'--a distinction in-
tended for the intelligent public that assumes that phrases
are identical with the realities of international conflicts.
But a war in which the formal declaration of hostilities
comes from the side that has been diplomatically man-
oeuvred into a position in which it must either declare war
or accept a diplomatic defeat is technically for the other
side a defensive war. Bismarck had never waged an
'offensive ' war, in the technical sense, and he never in-
tended to bungle so badly as to be obliged to do so. The
casus foederis therefore of 1879 provided precisely what
he required--an ally, should it be necessary to force Russia
to declare war. On the other hand, he could always re-
pudiate his Austrian ally on the ground that she was about
to wage an offensive war, outside the scope and ambit of
the contract. In other words, Bismarck retained the
initiative and secured the control of Austrian policy, for it
is policy that makes wars, not wars that make policy.
'I was not blind,' wrote Bismarck,' to the perplexities
which made the choice (of Austria) difficult. ' All the
evidence available fully bears out this measured judgment.
The Chancellor weighed long and with a remorseless
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 345
scrutiny the case for and against so momentous a decision.
To-day, perhaps, when the Dual Alliance has lasted for
thirty-six years and seems as familiar and inevitable a
phenomenon in the firmament of continental policy as
King Charles's Wain in the heaven of stars, we are disposed
to ignore the problem that Bismarck strove to solve. The
Treaty of 1879 closes a crisis in the evolution of Bismarck's
statecraft. It marks a climax, but, like all climaxes, it
turned a fresh page, the writing in which was determined
by the character of the terminus.
What then were 'the perplexities'? It is clear on the
evidence that Bismarck in 1879 could have turned to
Russia and concluded a similar defensive treaty, with
Austria as the foe to be neutralised. The cordial meeting
of William and Alexander 11. at Alexandrovo, which cleared
up their personal relations, strengthened the German
Emperor's desire to heal the political breach and renew the
liaison established in 1872. William, indeed, failed to see
that Austrian and Russian ambitions were in conflict after
1878, and that Germany could not support both, but must
decide between them. Bismarck's deeper knowledge and
'prophetic coup d'aeil' had penetrated the logic of history,
'more remorseless than the logic of the Prussian audit
office,' and for him the antagonism of Austria and Russia
made the cruelty and inevitability of a choice. But why
not select Russia--the champion of order and monarchical
autocracy, the dynastic and political friend on whose sup-
ort Prussian policy had pivoted since 1862? Why not
y such a master-stroke close the Eastern frontier and
permanently dissolve the nightmare of a Franco-Russian
alliance? Would not such an alliance have before long
coerced Austria into renewing the Triple Entente of 1872?
Powerful critics in 1879 and 6ince have argued this thesis
impressively, and concluded that Bismarck now made his
first and biggest mistake. The road, it is said, to Peters-
burg via Vienna was impossible in reality; but the making
of a road to Vienna via Petersburg was not beyond
Bismarck's great gifts. The alienation of Great Britain
from Ruscia and the Anglo-Austrian entente in 1879 left, it
is also argued, Russia isolated, faced by a hostile Germany,
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BISMARCK
Austria, and Great Britain, the Near East closed, and
France alone as a possible friend. The Treaty of 1879, it
is therefore concluded, made a Franco-Russian entente--
the one result Bismarck feared--only a question of time.
Yet, if Bismarck erred, he did so with his eyes open. He
knew the arguments for a Russian alliance better than his
critics, and he rejected them. Why?
Three central points take us to the heart of the system
enshrined in the Austrian treaty. First, a sentence in the
confidential letter to the King of Bavaria, unaccountably
ignored by many students of Bismarck: 'The German
Empire in alliance with Austria would not lack the support
of England. ' Lord Salisbury, the British Foreign Secretary,
confirmed this prediction by saying that the rumour of such
an alliance was 'good tidings of great joy. ' Would a
British Foreign Secretary in 1879, ^89, or 1899 have
said the same of a Russo-German alliance? Bismarck
knew that an alliance with Russia must commit Germany
to the Russian antagonism to Great Britain, as well as to
the Russian antagonism to Austria. Neither in 1879
nor 1889 was he prepared to place such a wasting mort-
gage on German policy: for Bismarck had a sounder sense
of British strength than many of his critics then or since.
The alienation of Great Britain and of Austria in 1879
would almost certainly have involved a renewal of the
Anglo-Austrian alliance of 1856, to which France in 1879,
as in 1856, would have become a partner. 1
Secondly, was Germany prepared to see Russia at
Constantinople? Apart from any prior promises to
Austria, not involving Constantinople but Salonica, that
was a question of profound import for Bismarck in 1878-9.
His answer as given in his acts is a decisive 'No'; not
1 The Secret Treaty of April 15,185 6, which pledged Great Britain, France, and
Austria to unite in resisting any attempt to tear up the Treaty of Paris of 1856.
1 The extraordinary obiter dictum in the Memoirs (ii. 285) that Bismarck
personally would have 'welcomed ' the 'physical and diplomatic possession of
Constantinople' by Russia cannot be taken seriously. It is contradicted by the
argument in which it is embedded, and is belied by the action of" Germany
prior to, and after, 1879. Written late in life, it probably is a criticism on
German policy in the Near East after the Chancellor's dismissal, and is one of
the many similar 'confessions' suggesting that in matters of high military
policy he was continuously overruled by the Emperor, or the soldiers, or by his
colleagues, or by public opinion. CreJat Judteus Apella.
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 347
because a Russian Constantinople rang out a sharp quietus
to Austrian ambitions, but because it ended all German
ambitions in the Balkans. Austria at Salonica was no bar
--rather a help--to German control of Constantinople and
the Ottoman Empire, the ' integrity' of which Beaconsfield
'consolidated' by annexing Cyprus, securing a tighter hold
on Egypt, and by handing over Bosnia to Austria, half
Bulgaria to a virtual Russian protectorate and the Armenian
frontier fortresses to Russia. But if a Russian alliance did
not mean Germany's acquiescence in the Russian advance
to Constantinople, it meant nothing. It meant, more-
over, that either Germany must support Russia in her
Eastern quarrel with Great Britain or obliterate the
treaty; and if there was an excentric dissipation of German
strength it would be to sacrifice Pomeranian Grenadiers
in Europe that Russia might annex Turkestan or Afghan-
istan. Bismarck was confident that Austrian Chauvinism
could be controlled, but a complete German control of
Russian policy was not a practical proposition. Teuton
and Slav could not work together as Teuton and Magyar
could for a common interest.
Thirdly, a Russian alliance left the main gateway of
Central Europe--the Danube--in neutral, and probably
hostile, hands. The strategical and economic confor-
mation of Central -Europe is moulded by three great river
basins--the Rhine, the Danube, and the Vistula. The
Rhine was now firmly in German hands: a Russian alliance
did not secure Germany the control of the Vistula, and it
left the Danube out of the central German control alto-
gether. Without a control of the Danube basin as com-
plete as the control of the Rhine, the political and economic,
no less than the military, conditions of centralism could not
be adequately realised. Moreover, Bismarck reckoned on
bringing Roumania with Austria's help into the system; and
thanks to Russian bungling, the Treaty of 1879 was promptly
followed by that close understanding between Bucharest
and Vienna which was certainly expressed in a precise con-
tract, the text of which has never been published. The
Austrian alliance, therefore, closed the Danube from source
to mouth: it brought Serbia and Bulgaria on the southern
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BISMARCK
bank into the sphere of Austrian policy; for it placed
Roumania as a German outpost to the north, and an
Ottoman Empire under German influence on their backs.
