de la Gorce felicitously terms him, Bismarck was con-
tinually expressing ideas which ministers and diplomatists
regarded as a bad jest or the gaucherie of an incurable
amateur, but which were really sincere and intended to
probe a difficulty, or indicate an end.
tinually expressing ideas which ministers and diplomatists
regarded as a bad jest or the gaucherie of an incurable
amateur, but which were really sincere and intended to
probe a difficulty, or indicate an end.
Robertson - Bismarck
Prussia
could safely pivot on that. Central Europe was her
theatre of operations, and movements outside that decisive
theatre were eccentric or quixotic. An understanding
with France would first secure the benevolent neutrality
of the most important Continental Power, secondly, pre-
vent a coalition between France and Russia, and thirdly,
leave Prussia with undiminished resources to settle her
relations with Austria. Bismarck did not as yet contem-
plate an open rupture, still less war with Austria. He was
perfectly ready to support Austria, provided that she would
give guarantees, and treat Prussia as an equal and not as a
rather larger Bavaria. He was no less clear that the tradi-
tional system continued by Manteuffel involved a humili-
ating and crippling subordination of Prussia to Austria's
needs and supremacy.
These ideas of policy necessitated a revision of principles
of political action, very clearly revealed in his remarkable
correspondence with Gerlach. The trite image of the
hen in consternation at the chicken fledged beneath her
protecting wings now taking to the water because it was
a duckling, is a faint picture of the pain and indignation
with which Gerlach discovered the apostasy of his disciple.
It was easy for Gerlach to concur in the necessity of an
entente with Russia; but when it was plain that the result
of the alliance was to be an entente with France and anta-
gonism to Austria, he recoiled with horror. 'Cynical'
and 'unprincipled' were colourless adjectives for such a
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? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 93
policy. The stability of European society, and of Prussia
in particular, depended, in Gerlach's view, on legitimate
monarchical rule, and on the maintenance throughout
Europe of Conservative principles which were of universal
validity; the moral duty of combating ' the Revolution'
was a necessity of existence, no less than an obedience to
divine law and authority. Austria represented every
sound principle as clearly as Russia: France was the
negation of everything sacred and solid--she was 'the
Revolution,' with Napoleon crowned on a throne picked
from the Jacobin gutters and placed on his head by per-
jury and bloodshed. How could it be statesmanship and
right--for a Prussian above all, loyal to his sovereign by
the grace of God and freed from the superstitions of
Liberalism--to desert and impugn Austria and to seek for
an unholy partnership at Paris?
Bismarck took up the challenge. In the tactics of
statesmanship, interests, he maintained, were more im-
portant than principles: policy demanded flexibility and
not rigidity of principles. Understandings were simply
temporary bargains. Napoleon was not so bad as he was
painted. Austria was a great deal worse than she pro-
fessed to be. A bargain with Napoleon was not a surrender
to the Revolution, but an exploitation of it for Prussia's
interest. And, to secure Prussia's interest, if an alliance
with the Devil were desirable, it should be made with a
light conscience. All this high-faluting talk about Conser-
vative principles of universal validity was irrelevant and
unreal. There were no such principles, Conservative,
Liberal or Revolutionary. Reason of state--for Bismarck
the reason of the Prussian State--was the one abiding
reality in a world of uncontrollable facts and fluctuating
situations. The true statesman must be prepared to be
Conservative at home and Liberal abroad, or vice versa;
to be a Jacobin in Paris and an Absolutist at Petersburg, if
necessary, and must seek to wring out of every opportunity
the maximum of advantage for his country, otherwise he
was a doctrinaire or a bungler, a professor or a bureau-
cratic automaton.
He invited Gerlach to study history impartially. The
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BISMARCK
Conservative interpretation of the origin and evolution
of legitimism and revolution would not stand the test of
facts. All thrones and forms of government were in origin
revolutionary or founded on usurpation. Even the Prus-
sian monarchy had usurped the rights of those it had
dispossessed. Legitimism was a new-fangled doctrine,
created as a result of the Revolution of 1789, to meet the
conditions of a once existent but now vanished situation.
It was this obstinate obsession of unverifiable assumptions
and this irrational refusal to recognise realities which had
ruined Conservatism in the past, and would ruin it in the
future. It was time for Prussia to free herself from the
fetters of a system which clogged her independence and
to return to the sounder system of Frederick who had made
himself and his State great. If it was right for Frederick
to ally with France and withstand Austria in season and
out of season, because Prussia's interest required it, the
same reason of State and imperishable interest no less
required it to-day.
The correspondence, in short, widened, while it demon-
strated, the gulf between the old Conservatism and the
new. Bismarck had indeed travelled far from the stand-
point of his youth: Gerlach had remained unchanged.
And Gerlach was correct in his assertion, that master and
disciple no longer spoke the same language. Bismarck
was content to leave it at that.
The German problem slowly intertwined itself into the
problem of Prussia's true foreign policy. Bismarck's
maturing thought, continually reinforced by freshets of
experience, groped its way through the thickets of youthful
prejudice. The process can be traced in the State papers
(confirmed by his letters) which pressed upon his govern-
ment Bismarck's weighed and tested conclusions.
In 1851 he wrote: 'I do not believe that the Federal
Diet in its present form can be the last word in our politics;
rather I see in it only a shell within which can develop all
the sound and practical elements of the union (Erfurt)
policy, a shell that will drop off when the kernel is ripe. '
In 1853, he pointed out that 'unless Austria renounced
the policy of Schwarzenberg . . . sooner or later the
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? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN
federal wagon, pulled by the Prussian horse forwards and
by the Austrian horse backwards, would go to pieces. '
From 1853 onwards dispatch after dispatch emphasised
'the restless effort of Austria to compel Prussia by the
organisation of a majority of votes in the Diet' to accept
the will of Vienna. Prussia was driven to a defensive
attitude. In the notable 'splendid report,''Prachtbericht,'
of 1856 he wrote: 'The Emperor Francis Joseph is not
master of his lands and subjects in the same measure as our
all gracious Lord. . . . Austria on the defensive I consider
weak, and at the first successful stroke of a rival the whole
of the internal artificial fabric of the centralised scribbling
bureaucracy of Bach and Buol would tumble in like a pack
of cards . . . the traditional policy of Austria and its
jealousy of us cannot be removed, and I would trust the
old fox in his new coat as little as in his summer bristles.
. . . I will express my conviction that in no long time we
shall have to fight for our existence against Austria, and
that it is not in our power to avoid the fight, because the
course of events in Germany admits of no other develop-
ment. '
'Austria,' he wrote in 1857, 'does not wish us to in-
crease our importance in Germany, and England cannot
favour our development either on the sea or in trade. In
politics no one acts unselfishly, unless it is his interest to
do so. ' 'Your Excellency is aware,' he wrote in 1858,
'that the Federal Diet and our disadvantageous position
in it is Austria's best weapon . . . the whole of my seven
years' service at Frankfurt has been an unbroken struggle
with efforts of every kind and the relentless attempts to
exploit the Federal Diet as an instrument to aggrandise
Austria and humiliate Prussia. ' 'We must,' he urged,
'establish a Customs Parliament . . . our Parliament and
press must discuss tariff policy without reserve from the
Prussian point of view; it will thus divert the exhausted
attention of Germany to itself, and our Prussian Parliament
will become a power in Germany. ' From Petersburg in
1859 he wrote to Schleinitz: 'The federal machinery in
normal times is an oppressive, in crises a dangerous, hand-
cuff for Prussia. . . . I believe we should take up the chal-
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BISMARCK
lenge and consider it no misfortune if we found in a
resolution of the majority at Frankfurt . . . a breach of
the Federal treaties. ' This is precisely what Bismarck did
in 1866. 'The word "German" for "Prussian" I would
gladly see inscribed on our banners, if we had first a closer
and practical unity with our other fellow-Germans than
hitherto; it loses all its charm if it is employed as now to
support the Federal bond. . . . I see in our Federal relations
a Prussian malady which sooner or later will have to be
healed by iron and fire, if we do not in good time find
another cure for it. '
In 1861 he wrote: 'The system of the solidarity of the
Conservative interests of all countries is a dangerous fiction,
so long as there is not the most complete and honourable
reciprocity. Pursued by Prussia alone, it is pure Don
Quixotism which weakens our King and his government in
the execution of its proper duty. It brings us to the abso-
lutely unhistorical, godless and lawless swindle of sove-
reignty in the German princes, which employs the Federal
system as its pedestal, and with which the European
Powers play to make it the darling of the Prussian Conser-
vative party . . . we protect foreign prerogatives with
more obstinacy than our own, and get enthusiastic for the
paltry sovereignties created by Napoleon and guaranteed
by Metternich. . . . So long as the folly of the present
Federal system lasts, which is simply a forcing-house of
dangerous and republican party struggles . . . we need a
stronger consolidation of German arms as much as our
daily bread; we need a new and plastic establishment in
the sphere of tariff policy to protect our material interests
against the disadvantages arising from the unnatural con-
figuration of our German frontiers . . . Moreover I
cannot see why we should so coyly shrink from the idea of
popular representation alike in the Federal League, the
Tariff, and the Union Parliament; an institution which
has a legitimate validity in every German State, which we
Conservatives in Prussia could not dispense with, cannot
be resisted as revolutionary. '1
1 The student who wishes to master Bismarck's views should study in Preusien in
Bundestag the dispatches of the following dates:--November 19, i8jt, April 23,
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? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN
The substance of Bismarck's thought and principles at
this stage can be summarised. Prussia must find her own
solution of the German problem; she must combine a
satisfaction of the claims of Germany with the satisfaction
of the claims of the historic and characteristic Prussian
State. A radical reform of the Diet brought about by
Prussian initiative must be such as to guarantee beyond
dispute the supremacy of Prussia in Germany and her
position as a great Power. There must be an end to the
system by which Austria could manipulate the middle and
petty States into a permanent and hostile majority in the
Federal Diet, and by which kingdoms or landgraviates, of
inferior extent, population, military and economic re-
sources, voted down Prussia, and ' mediatised'1 her. The
root of the mischief lay in the pretensions of dynastic
particularism to political equality with Prussia and Austria,
based on a 4 swindling ' and mushroom theory of legitimist
sovereignty. Co-operation with Austria, as Austria inter-
preted it, was impossible. In the interest of Germany
and of Prussia, Austria must be resisted. Prussian foreign
policy and the German problem were inseparable elements
1852, June 18, 1852, January 13, 1853, August 9, 1853, November 14, 1853,
February 15, 1854, February ", *%S5, April 26, 1856, May 12, 1857, June 2,
1857, March 14, 1858, April 10, 1858. They are all too long to be quoted
in txttnso, and they should be compared with the Baden Denkschrift, printed
in Bismarck Jahrbuch, iii. 193.
1 'Mediatised. '--This term so frequently occurs in Bismarck's writings and
German historians that, as there is no single English equivalent, it is desirable
to explain it for those not familiar with its technical and derivative meaning.
Technically, 'to mediatise' was a term derived from the old Holy Roman
Empire of the German nation which came to an end in 1806. The sovereign
princedoms of that Empire--whether ecclesiastical or secular--were held to be
immediate vassals of the Emperor. To 'mediatise' them meant, therefore, to
deprive them of the status of being immediate vassals, and to reduce them to the
position of being ' mediate," or secondary vassals, i. e. with one or more author-
ities between them and the supreme fount of imperial power--a process equiva-
lent to reduction from being a tenant-in-chiet to subordinate tenancy. By
degrees the term 'to mediatise' or 'mediatisation' derivatively came to imply
an act or a result by which a sovereign prince or state retained a titular inde-
pendence, but lost, or was deprived of, the rights and powers of sovereignty.
Hence, in Bismarck's time, the term was commonly used of a result by which
a state lost its true political independence and initiative and became dependent
on some power or powers, sovereign in theory and in fact. 'Mediatisation,'
therefore, broadly implied the retention of a titular sovereignty which conflicted
with the practical political dependence of the 'sovereign' on other sovereigns
or states.
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BISMARCK
of a single and larger unity. The benevolent neutrality
of France must be secured; with the friendship of Russia
and the goodwill of Napoleon, Prussia could throw her
individual strength into the decisive theatre--Germany
and Central Europe--concentrate, in short, on the over-
throwal of Austria in Germany.
These were conclusions calculated to dismay Conser-
vatives and Liberals alike, for they challenged the dearest
traditions of both parties. Bismarck did not either then
or subsequently speak out the whole of his mind. He did
not wish to alarm friends Or cause his opponents to blas-
pheme unnecessarily. Much was deliberately hidden in
his heart. But much also he could not have spoken out,
for he saw, and he recognised it, through a glass darkly.
'The longer I live,' he said later, ' the more incalculable
the future in politics proves to be. ' There are no indica-
tions of how or when or by whom precisely this programme
could be realised. Not a word of war or annexations. It
is the quintessence of his statecraft that the opportunity
would create the means; that in policy as in war a lucid
comprehension of ends was the one indispensable pre-
requisite, and that the major and minor tactics must be
settled by the situation of the moment and the character
and disposition of the enemy's forces. Success would come
to the side that made the fewest mistakes. Opportunity
was everything. The right stroke at the right moment
would give the decision. A lost opportunity was worse
than a defeat, for it implied a failure of judgment in the
commander. No tactical skill could compensate for in-
ferior intelligence in the supreme direction, and the
persistent will to persevere once the policy had been
made.
Bismarck's letters and memoranda are like Beethoven's
notebooks. In both we can trace a mind at work, the
patient elaboration of an idea, the jotting down of flashes
of insight which in due time may be developed into a com-
pleted composition. Some, however, are never worked
out; time and life failed, or the idea failed because the
mood that gave it birth never returned: others give us
the genesis of a perfected scheme: others merely indicate
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? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN
a thought, a premonition of what will come but in another
form. Genius is talking aloud to itself in the workshop of
the human spirit, and it is the prerogative of genius to be
fertile in contradictions and to nourish its strength on in-
consistencies: and the winged word and glory of emotion
may never soar beyond that free, inner mansion of person-
ality, never carry its message beyond the chambers of
feeling that divide, into the kingdom of action that unites,
all thought.
Bismarck had divined the real weakness of Austria--the
vulnerability of her European position, the competition in
her councils between the concentrated egoism of the
dynasty and the dissipated interests of the Empire, the
administrative dry rpt, the lack of vision and the absence
of moral imagination in her ministers, and the insoluble
antagonism between the ambition for supremacy in
Germany and her historic claims in Italy and Hungary.
No less had he divined the strength of Prussia, economic,
political, and military. Prussia so far had been handi-
capped by slavish adherence to a false tradition, by a sick
ancf irresolute sovereign, and by ministers whose wills and
courage were as weak as their intellectual powers. She
had neither developed her strength nor unified it under a
driving control. There already floated in Bismarck's mind
the conception of a reorganised Central Europe in which
Prussia should have superseded Austria in Germany, and
the Austrian Empire would reconsolidate itself as a
Danubian State between the twin capitals of Vienna and
Buda-Pesth. 'Un maitre des indiscretions savantes,' as
M.
de la Gorce felicitously terms him, Bismarck was con-
tinually expressing ideas which ministers and diplomatists
regarded as a bad jest or the gaucherie of an incurable
amateur, but which were really sincere and intended to
probe a difficulty, or indicate an end. At Vienna he said
outright in 1864 that Austria should transfer its centre of
gravity to Buda-Pesth. 'At Berlin,' he told Rechberg,' we
Germans do not consider Vienna as a German city, and
what happens at Vienna as related to Germany. Of
course, I know that Vienna is a city on German soil, but it
is the capital of a non-German Empire . . . it is obvious
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? IOO
BISMARCK
that the Austrian monarchy is scarcely German . . . it
would do much better if it rested on its true strength, the
aggregate of the numerous races which compose its Empire,
rather than pursue the dream of a German supremacy
which we dispute, and to which it has no title. What is
German will revert to Germany sooner or later: it is inevit-
able. It is not more difficult to govern Vienna from Berlin
than to govern Pesth from Vienna--indeed, it would be
much easier. ' And he seriously meant it. There was not
room in Germany for Habsburg and Hohenzollern, and Bis-
marck had shed his Great Germany views of 1848-51. He
was now definitely on the side of the Small Germany party,
as the Frankfurt Liberal programme had defined it.
Prussia, in his eyes, needed diplomacy and an army--
precisely what the Liberals of 1848 had needed and failed
to secure. Questions of right (Rechtfragen) in the long run
became questions of might (Machtfragen). But an army
would be as useless without the right diplomacy as diplo-
macy without a strong army behind it. 'Diplomacy
without arms,' pronounced Frederick the Great,' is music
without instruments,' and Bismarck concurred without
reservation in the judgment. But neither in 1859 nor
later did he assert or believe that force alone, or force aided
by a skilful diplomacy, would suffice. The higher state-
craft required a subtler sympathy with the motives and
ideals of human beings, a tighter grip on realities, economic
as well as spiritual. The future Prussia and the future
Germany could not be brought into existence by force
alone, nor could they live and develop on force alone.
Intuitively and unconsciously, he was separating the
Nationalism with which he sympathised from the Liberalism
which he hated and feared.
The cry for strength--the will to power--based on the
ineradicable racial instinct of a Germany that was daily
bursting the bonds of the past and cleaving new paths
into intellectual and economic spheres of illimitable scope,
could and must be satisfied, and Bismarck was at one with
Prussian, Saxon, Bavarian, or Franconian in the fierce
thirst for power and domination. But the defeat of
Liberalism was the price that Nationalism must pay for its
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? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 101
satisfaction. Once the new Germany had come into,
existence, the German mind would adapt itself to new
categories of thought, and Liberalism, mutilated at the root,
would wither in the original stock, and the life and vigour
of the races would find their self-realisation in the new
National State and the new Nationalist ideals of German
power. For power, not self-government, supremacy not
parliamentary control, would satisfy a Nationalist and
unified Germany. How this again would happen Bismarck
neither knew nor attempted to reckon as yet. But the
certainty that it could and must be done inspired him with
fresh ambition and a perpetually renewed strength. When
Gerlach and the Kreuzzeitung mourned the lost leader
and the disciple's apostasy, they judged from the surface.
Bismarck had not ceased to be a Conservative because he
exposed the unsound foundations of their creed or chal-
lenged the erroneous conclusions drawn from vicious pre-
mises. Roon had a truer insight. Bismarck now and
subsequently puzzled and pained that unrepentant Junker
and unquenchably loyal friend. But Roon felt that
Bismarck remained in fibre and temper true to the faith
of Prussian Junkertum and his forefathers. The Liberals
and Radicals were no less right when they distrusted Bis-
marck at every step and saw in him the implacable oppon-
ent of all they held dear. The Germany that Bismarck
would make and the Germany they were v>> orking for were
in fundamental antithesis. They had their origins in an
antagonistic interpretation of life; they were rooted in
contradictory tables of value, standards of judgment, and
criteria of conduct; and they aimed at opposed ideals
of Statehood, and the place in, and the relation of, the
individual to the organisation of society.
Lastly, Bismarck's programme implied execution by a
Bismarck, and there was only one. The French ambassa-
dor said to him once: 'Your policy and ideas will bring
Prussia to another Jena. ' Bismarck replied: 'Perhaps,
but why not to Leipzig and Waterloo? ' 'I will make my
own music,' \s had said in 1849, ' or I will make none at
all. ' But in 1859 looked as if Fate was to deny him the
opportunity or drive him back to Schdnhausen.
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? 102
BISMARCK
? 2. Petersburg and Paris,' 1859-1862
On January 29, 1859, Bismarck was transferred from
Frankfurt to the embassy at Petersburg. On March 6 he
left Frankfurt, and on April 1, his forty-fourth birthday, he
was received in audience by Alexander n. and presented his
credentials. The new appointment had its personal and
political significance. Prince William had become Regent
on October 26, 1858. 'The new era ' began with his re-
gency. The ministry of moderate Liberals, under Prince
Anthony of HohenzoUern and their master the Regent, were
well aware of Bismarck's views, and it was not unnatural
that, having in contemplation a gradual change in a
Liberal direction both in foreign and home policy, they
should wish to be represented at Frankfurt by an agent
more in sympathy with the new attitude. Bismarck's pro-
Russian sympathies, evinced since 1854, would commend
him to the Russian Court; his impenitent Conservatism
was very unpopular with the Liberals; and his advocacy
of better relations with France was distasteful in the high-
est degree to the Prince Regent. At Petersburg, in short,
he would be honourably out of the way. The appoint-
ment was a mark of disapproval veiled in the customary
pretence of promotion. Bismarck had expected a change.
He wrote to his sister (November 12, 1858) that he was
ready 'to take refuge behind the guns of SchSnhausen,
and, as the government were now relying on the majority
hi the Left (Liberals), to consider how to do his duty in the
Upper House. Change is the soul of life, and I hope I shall
be ten years younger when I find myself again in the same
position to fight as '48-49. . . . It is all the same to me
whether I play the part of diplomatist or of a country
gentleman (Landjunker), and so far the prospect of a merry
and honourable fight without the clogs of office has as
much charm as the prospect of a continuous regime of
truffles, dispatches and Grand Crosses. ' But for all these
brave words Bismarck was chagrined. He was in the very
prime of his powers; he was ready for more responsible
work than the duty of executing a policy made by others;
he resented the veiled censure conveyed in his transfer, and
I
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? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 103
he suspected that--as happened--he was to be cut off fiom
confidence at headquarters. The chagrin was deepened
by the course of events.
The year 1859 was a depressing one for Bismarck. Since
January an old injury to his leg, incurred in shooting, was
aggravated by reckless exposure and a chill. His health
gave way, and in June he was seriously ill. His case was
mismanaged, and for some days he sat on Charon's pier,
wondering whether he would be called on to cross to the
other side. But his superb constitution came to his aid;
like the famous Duchess of Marlborough he refused
'either to be blistered or die'; he threw off both the
treatment and the malady, and took instead to punch in
(Bismarckianly) moderate quantities. Removed to Berlin
he fell suddenly ill again, and August had to be spent in
a wearisome convalescence at Wiesbaden and Nauheim.
Like most men who have enjoyed unbroken good health,
Bismarck was a bad patient; he had taxed strength and
nerves to their utmost, and he resented their refusal to
stand unlimited drafts on their powers. The illness made
a permanent mark in his life. The nervous breakdown,
coupled with rheumatic fever and gastric disorders, seri-
ously affected a highly strung system. After 1859 he was
never the man he had been before. An increased irri-
tability and excitability, a morose and violent temper,
aggravated by sleeplessness, became increasingly apparent,
and constant returns of pain emphasised the unlovely
elements in his character. The old freshness and joy in
life evaporated; but he refused to alter his habits of life.
Roon in the campaign of 1866 notes how ' Otto ' persisted
in sitting up most of the night at his desk and lay in bed
till midday. Henceforward, particularly after 1862, he
was continually on the edge of a breakdown. With his
habits in eating and drinking, it is a proof of his marvellous
physical vitality that he did not collapse completely.
His recovery was not made easier by his political anxiety.
His revived interest in the domestic politics of Prussia
testifies to the fear that the renaissance of Liberalism, now
in full swing, would wreck his programme. Even more
disquieting was the outlook in foreign affairs. The
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BISMARCK
Italian war of 1859, France openly in the field against
Austria, the French victories, the Austrian defeats, the
demand for a revision of the system of 1815, were blows at
the citadel of Conservatism; they stirred Nationalism
throughout Europe, and Cavour had pinned his flag to the
cause of constitutional and Liberal monarchism. Germany
was in an uproar. Conservatives, Nationalists, Liberals,
the dynasties from Berlin to Munich, felt that the national
enemy in the west was in arms, defeating a German State
in Austria, about to destroy legitimist and sovereign
princes in Italy, and to reopen the question of the Rhine.
'Austria in danger ' was a potent cry. Her sins were for-
gotten in the common peril to German supremacy and
legitimist monarchy in Central Europe. It was the crisis
of 1854 repeated in an acute form. For France--a Napo-
leonic France--was attacking Austria, and it would be
Prussia's turn next. And in 1859 it was not an affair of the
Danubian principalities, nor of Austrian neutrality. At
Berlin, as usual, government and nation faced at once
front to the Rhine. The Prince Regent mobilised four
corps; his strong sympathies as a ruler and as a German
with Austria, his desire to prove his German patriotism
and lead Germany in a national struggle, brought a great
European war into sight. Even so cold a head and so self-
controlled a Prussian patriot as Moltke decided on cool
reflection that the time had come for Prussia to intervene
and strike a blow for Austria and Germany.
Bismarck was literally in anguish, and he was helpless.
At Petersburg or Wiesbaden he was removed from the
direct contact with German affairs he had enjoyed at
Frankfurt; he was not consulted; and he had not the con-
fidence either of the Prince Regent or the ministers. The
winds of Liberalism were sweeping from the lemon groves
of Sicily across the Lombardy plains to the sands and
heath of Pomerania, the March of Brandenburg and
East Prussia. War with France would blow his policy to
the limbo of shattered ideals. Prussia would enter it as
the ally of Austria, -and with Prussia would march every
Nationalist and Liberal heart. The issue would, and must
be, the defeat of France. Austria would recover her grip
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? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 105
on Italy--for what could Piedmont do without the red
trousers ? --and either Austria would impose her will on
Germany, and re-rivet her supremacy, or under the stress
of the fray Prussia and Germany would be mastered by the
Liberals, in combination with the Nationalists, and unified
on the anvil of war by the master spirits of 1848. Which
would be worse--a Germany unified on a Liberal basis, or
an Austria triumphant on the Danube, the Po, and the
Rhine, reorganising the German Confederation beyond
Prussian control? Germany in the grip either of the
anti-Prussian * princelets grouped round Austria, or of
the National ,Union of the Liberals under Bennigsen,
Duncker, Gneist, and the Coburg pro-English group?
Everywhere Bismarck saw all the machinery at work
that he had tracked out at Frankfurt--the Austrian hand
manipulating the middle States, coercing the petty ones;
the illuminated princelets dabbling with Liberalism and
striving to combine Nationalism with Particularism;
Habsburg egoism appealing to Hohenzollern pride and
generosity, but determined that Prussia's army should
extricate Austria from her dilemma, sacrifice Prussian blood
to save Lombardy, Venetia, and Hungary, and receive
the reward of disinterestedness by riveting the Austrian
yoke on the Confederation; and all this was to be done in
the name of Conservatism, and the European solidarity of
legitimism against Jacobinism, Caesarism, and the Revolu-
tion. 'Our policy,' he wrote to his wife, 'daily glides
more and more in the wake of Austria; a shot on the
Rhine, and it is all over with the Austro-Italian war, and
in its place will come a Franco-Prussian war, in which
Austria, when we have lifted the burden off her shoulders,
will support or fail us as her interest dictates. . . . . As God
wills! It is only a question of time; nations and men,
folly and wisdom, war and peace, come and go like waves,
but the sea remains; there is nothing in this world but
It was idle to urge, as he did, that Napoleon could be
secured by tact, or, if need be, by paying blackmail; that
Austria's necessities afforded an unrivalled opportunity
for re-settling her relations with Prussia to Prussia's advan-
and the jugglers' tricks. '
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? xo6
BISMARCK
tage, and that if Prussian aid were required Austria must
pay in advance, and that a wedge could be driven in
between the middle and petty States and their Habsburg
ally; that Prussia could indicate she and not Austria would
reform the Confederation. Such advice only deepened the
distrust at the Berlin Court, angered the Gerlach Conser-
vatives, and stirred the scorn of the Liberals. It was mid-
summer Machiavellianism, destitute of all principle, and
Liberals and Conservatives alike stood for principles and
the solidarity of their cause with the cause outside Prussia
or Germany.
Bismarck was bitterly attacked from both camps. He
could tolerate Radical denunciations, but the reproaches
of the Kreuxzeitung cut into the quick. 'Write me down
a devil,' he wrote,' but I am a Teutonic devil, not a Gallic
one. ' His idea of securing Napoleon never involved the
surrender of essentials. He had taken Napoleon's measure
already. 'The itch with Napoleon,' he pronounced in
1855, 'to achieve the unexpected amounts to a disease,
and it is nourished by the Empress. ' 'He is no general
. . . he will only seek a war when internal necessities
drive him to it,' he wrote in 1857. 'His heart is much
stronger than his head,' he decided in 1861. He meant to
flatter his vanity, encourage him to wander on the misty
peaks of dreamland--les idees Napolioniennes--commit
nothing to paper; words could always be disavowed and
unverified verbal promises explained away. In Bismarck's
statecraft, as his advice about Austria revealed, the extor-
tion of services from an embarrassed friend only added
contempt for the deluded to dislike. His theory of inter-
national relations left no place for gratitude or generosity.
The successful deception of France would only increase
Prussian resentment at obligations incurred to an enemy,
stupid or weak enough to believe in gratitude. Statesmen
lent or borrowed the capital and currency of the political
life. The needy must pay, and the affluent had a right to
exact a high rate of interest because the needy were so
needy. In the remorseless world of inter-State com-
petition business was business. Ethical considerations
could not apply in the markets of diplomacy; for their
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? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 107
application ignored the real motives of State conduct.
Bismarck wrote to Roon that Prussia was committing the
folly of being Liberal at home and Conservative abroad.
Such a policy sapped the confidence of the sound elements
in Prussia and flouted the real forces at work in Germany.
Roon agreed in this diagnosis and the mischief of the ' new
era. ' But the recommendation of a Conservative policy
at home and a Liberal one abroad, left him wondering
whether illness had not shaken ' Otto's ' sanity.
could safely pivot on that. Central Europe was her
theatre of operations, and movements outside that decisive
theatre were eccentric or quixotic. An understanding
with France would first secure the benevolent neutrality
of the most important Continental Power, secondly, pre-
vent a coalition between France and Russia, and thirdly,
leave Prussia with undiminished resources to settle her
relations with Austria. Bismarck did not as yet contem-
plate an open rupture, still less war with Austria. He was
perfectly ready to support Austria, provided that she would
give guarantees, and treat Prussia as an equal and not as a
rather larger Bavaria. He was no less clear that the tradi-
tional system continued by Manteuffel involved a humili-
ating and crippling subordination of Prussia to Austria's
needs and supremacy.
These ideas of policy necessitated a revision of principles
of political action, very clearly revealed in his remarkable
correspondence with Gerlach. The trite image of the
hen in consternation at the chicken fledged beneath her
protecting wings now taking to the water because it was
a duckling, is a faint picture of the pain and indignation
with which Gerlach discovered the apostasy of his disciple.
It was easy for Gerlach to concur in the necessity of an
entente with Russia; but when it was plain that the result
of the alliance was to be an entente with France and anta-
gonism to Austria, he recoiled with horror. 'Cynical'
and 'unprincipled' were colourless adjectives for such a
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? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 93
policy. The stability of European society, and of Prussia
in particular, depended, in Gerlach's view, on legitimate
monarchical rule, and on the maintenance throughout
Europe of Conservative principles which were of universal
validity; the moral duty of combating ' the Revolution'
was a necessity of existence, no less than an obedience to
divine law and authority. Austria represented every
sound principle as clearly as Russia: France was the
negation of everything sacred and solid--she was 'the
Revolution,' with Napoleon crowned on a throne picked
from the Jacobin gutters and placed on his head by per-
jury and bloodshed. How could it be statesmanship and
right--for a Prussian above all, loyal to his sovereign by
the grace of God and freed from the superstitions of
Liberalism--to desert and impugn Austria and to seek for
an unholy partnership at Paris?
Bismarck took up the challenge. In the tactics of
statesmanship, interests, he maintained, were more im-
portant than principles: policy demanded flexibility and
not rigidity of principles. Understandings were simply
temporary bargains. Napoleon was not so bad as he was
painted. Austria was a great deal worse than she pro-
fessed to be. A bargain with Napoleon was not a surrender
to the Revolution, but an exploitation of it for Prussia's
interest. And, to secure Prussia's interest, if an alliance
with the Devil were desirable, it should be made with a
light conscience. All this high-faluting talk about Conser-
vative principles of universal validity was irrelevant and
unreal. There were no such principles, Conservative,
Liberal or Revolutionary. Reason of state--for Bismarck
the reason of the Prussian State--was the one abiding
reality in a world of uncontrollable facts and fluctuating
situations. The true statesman must be prepared to be
Conservative at home and Liberal abroad, or vice versa;
to be a Jacobin in Paris and an Absolutist at Petersburg, if
necessary, and must seek to wring out of every opportunity
the maximum of advantage for his country, otherwise he
was a doctrinaire or a bungler, a professor or a bureau-
cratic automaton.
He invited Gerlach to study history impartially. The
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BISMARCK
Conservative interpretation of the origin and evolution
of legitimism and revolution would not stand the test of
facts. All thrones and forms of government were in origin
revolutionary or founded on usurpation. Even the Prus-
sian monarchy had usurped the rights of those it had
dispossessed. Legitimism was a new-fangled doctrine,
created as a result of the Revolution of 1789, to meet the
conditions of a once existent but now vanished situation.
It was this obstinate obsession of unverifiable assumptions
and this irrational refusal to recognise realities which had
ruined Conservatism in the past, and would ruin it in the
future. It was time for Prussia to free herself from the
fetters of a system which clogged her independence and
to return to the sounder system of Frederick who had made
himself and his State great. If it was right for Frederick
to ally with France and withstand Austria in season and
out of season, because Prussia's interest required it, the
same reason of State and imperishable interest no less
required it to-day.
The correspondence, in short, widened, while it demon-
strated, the gulf between the old Conservatism and the
new. Bismarck had indeed travelled far from the stand-
point of his youth: Gerlach had remained unchanged.
And Gerlach was correct in his assertion, that master and
disciple no longer spoke the same language. Bismarck
was content to leave it at that.
The German problem slowly intertwined itself into the
problem of Prussia's true foreign policy. Bismarck's
maturing thought, continually reinforced by freshets of
experience, groped its way through the thickets of youthful
prejudice. The process can be traced in the State papers
(confirmed by his letters) which pressed upon his govern-
ment Bismarck's weighed and tested conclusions.
In 1851 he wrote: 'I do not believe that the Federal
Diet in its present form can be the last word in our politics;
rather I see in it only a shell within which can develop all
the sound and practical elements of the union (Erfurt)
policy, a shell that will drop off when the kernel is ripe. '
In 1853, he pointed out that 'unless Austria renounced
the policy of Schwarzenberg . . . sooner or later the
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? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN
federal wagon, pulled by the Prussian horse forwards and
by the Austrian horse backwards, would go to pieces. '
From 1853 onwards dispatch after dispatch emphasised
'the restless effort of Austria to compel Prussia by the
organisation of a majority of votes in the Diet' to accept
the will of Vienna. Prussia was driven to a defensive
attitude. In the notable 'splendid report,''Prachtbericht,'
of 1856 he wrote: 'The Emperor Francis Joseph is not
master of his lands and subjects in the same measure as our
all gracious Lord. . . . Austria on the defensive I consider
weak, and at the first successful stroke of a rival the whole
of the internal artificial fabric of the centralised scribbling
bureaucracy of Bach and Buol would tumble in like a pack
of cards . . . the traditional policy of Austria and its
jealousy of us cannot be removed, and I would trust the
old fox in his new coat as little as in his summer bristles.
. . . I will express my conviction that in no long time we
shall have to fight for our existence against Austria, and
that it is not in our power to avoid the fight, because the
course of events in Germany admits of no other develop-
ment. '
'Austria,' he wrote in 1857, 'does not wish us to in-
crease our importance in Germany, and England cannot
favour our development either on the sea or in trade. In
politics no one acts unselfishly, unless it is his interest to
do so. ' 'Your Excellency is aware,' he wrote in 1858,
'that the Federal Diet and our disadvantageous position
in it is Austria's best weapon . . . the whole of my seven
years' service at Frankfurt has been an unbroken struggle
with efforts of every kind and the relentless attempts to
exploit the Federal Diet as an instrument to aggrandise
Austria and humiliate Prussia. ' 'We must,' he urged,
'establish a Customs Parliament . . . our Parliament and
press must discuss tariff policy without reserve from the
Prussian point of view; it will thus divert the exhausted
attention of Germany to itself, and our Prussian Parliament
will become a power in Germany. ' From Petersburg in
1859 he wrote to Schleinitz: 'The federal machinery in
normal times is an oppressive, in crises a dangerous, hand-
cuff for Prussia. . . . I believe we should take up the chal-
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BISMARCK
lenge and consider it no misfortune if we found in a
resolution of the majority at Frankfurt . . . a breach of
the Federal treaties. ' This is precisely what Bismarck did
in 1866. 'The word "German" for "Prussian" I would
gladly see inscribed on our banners, if we had first a closer
and practical unity with our other fellow-Germans than
hitherto; it loses all its charm if it is employed as now to
support the Federal bond. . . . I see in our Federal relations
a Prussian malady which sooner or later will have to be
healed by iron and fire, if we do not in good time find
another cure for it. '
In 1861 he wrote: 'The system of the solidarity of the
Conservative interests of all countries is a dangerous fiction,
so long as there is not the most complete and honourable
reciprocity. Pursued by Prussia alone, it is pure Don
Quixotism which weakens our King and his government in
the execution of its proper duty. It brings us to the abso-
lutely unhistorical, godless and lawless swindle of sove-
reignty in the German princes, which employs the Federal
system as its pedestal, and with which the European
Powers play to make it the darling of the Prussian Conser-
vative party . . . we protect foreign prerogatives with
more obstinacy than our own, and get enthusiastic for the
paltry sovereignties created by Napoleon and guaranteed
by Metternich. . . . So long as the folly of the present
Federal system lasts, which is simply a forcing-house of
dangerous and republican party struggles . . . we need a
stronger consolidation of German arms as much as our
daily bread; we need a new and plastic establishment in
the sphere of tariff policy to protect our material interests
against the disadvantages arising from the unnatural con-
figuration of our German frontiers . . . Moreover I
cannot see why we should so coyly shrink from the idea of
popular representation alike in the Federal League, the
Tariff, and the Union Parliament; an institution which
has a legitimate validity in every German State, which we
Conservatives in Prussia could not dispense with, cannot
be resisted as revolutionary. '1
1 The student who wishes to master Bismarck's views should study in Preusien in
Bundestag the dispatches of the following dates:--November 19, i8jt, April 23,
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? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN
The substance of Bismarck's thought and principles at
this stage can be summarised. Prussia must find her own
solution of the German problem; she must combine a
satisfaction of the claims of Germany with the satisfaction
of the claims of the historic and characteristic Prussian
State. A radical reform of the Diet brought about by
Prussian initiative must be such as to guarantee beyond
dispute the supremacy of Prussia in Germany and her
position as a great Power. There must be an end to the
system by which Austria could manipulate the middle and
petty States into a permanent and hostile majority in the
Federal Diet, and by which kingdoms or landgraviates, of
inferior extent, population, military and economic re-
sources, voted down Prussia, and ' mediatised'1 her. The
root of the mischief lay in the pretensions of dynastic
particularism to political equality with Prussia and Austria,
based on a 4 swindling ' and mushroom theory of legitimist
sovereignty. Co-operation with Austria, as Austria inter-
preted it, was impossible. In the interest of Germany
and of Prussia, Austria must be resisted. Prussian foreign
policy and the German problem were inseparable elements
1852, June 18, 1852, January 13, 1853, August 9, 1853, November 14, 1853,
February 15, 1854, February ", *%S5, April 26, 1856, May 12, 1857, June 2,
1857, March 14, 1858, April 10, 1858. They are all too long to be quoted
in txttnso, and they should be compared with the Baden Denkschrift, printed
in Bismarck Jahrbuch, iii. 193.
1 'Mediatised. '--This term so frequently occurs in Bismarck's writings and
German historians that, as there is no single English equivalent, it is desirable
to explain it for those not familiar with its technical and derivative meaning.
Technically, 'to mediatise' was a term derived from the old Holy Roman
Empire of the German nation which came to an end in 1806. The sovereign
princedoms of that Empire--whether ecclesiastical or secular--were held to be
immediate vassals of the Emperor. To 'mediatise' them meant, therefore, to
deprive them of the status of being immediate vassals, and to reduce them to the
position of being ' mediate," or secondary vassals, i. e. with one or more author-
ities between them and the supreme fount of imperial power--a process equiva-
lent to reduction from being a tenant-in-chiet to subordinate tenancy. By
degrees the term 'to mediatise' or 'mediatisation' derivatively came to imply
an act or a result by which a sovereign prince or state retained a titular inde-
pendence, but lost, or was deprived of, the rights and powers of sovereignty.
Hence, in Bismarck's time, the term was commonly used of a result by which
a state lost its true political independence and initiative and became dependent
on some power or powers, sovereign in theory and in fact. 'Mediatisation,'
therefore, broadly implied the retention of a titular sovereignty which conflicted
with the practical political dependence of the 'sovereign' on other sovereigns
or states.
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BISMARCK
of a single and larger unity. The benevolent neutrality
of France must be secured; with the friendship of Russia
and the goodwill of Napoleon, Prussia could throw her
individual strength into the decisive theatre--Germany
and Central Europe--concentrate, in short, on the over-
throwal of Austria in Germany.
These were conclusions calculated to dismay Conser-
vatives and Liberals alike, for they challenged the dearest
traditions of both parties. Bismarck did not either then
or subsequently speak out the whole of his mind. He did
not wish to alarm friends Or cause his opponents to blas-
pheme unnecessarily. Much was deliberately hidden in
his heart. But much also he could not have spoken out,
for he saw, and he recognised it, through a glass darkly.
'The longer I live,' he said later, ' the more incalculable
the future in politics proves to be. ' There are no indica-
tions of how or when or by whom precisely this programme
could be realised. Not a word of war or annexations. It
is the quintessence of his statecraft that the opportunity
would create the means; that in policy as in war a lucid
comprehension of ends was the one indispensable pre-
requisite, and that the major and minor tactics must be
settled by the situation of the moment and the character
and disposition of the enemy's forces. Success would come
to the side that made the fewest mistakes. Opportunity
was everything. The right stroke at the right moment
would give the decision. A lost opportunity was worse
than a defeat, for it implied a failure of judgment in the
commander. No tactical skill could compensate for in-
ferior intelligence in the supreme direction, and the
persistent will to persevere once the policy had been
made.
Bismarck's letters and memoranda are like Beethoven's
notebooks. In both we can trace a mind at work, the
patient elaboration of an idea, the jotting down of flashes
of insight which in due time may be developed into a com-
pleted composition. Some, however, are never worked
out; time and life failed, or the idea failed because the
mood that gave it birth never returned: others give us
the genesis of a perfected scheme: others merely indicate
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? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN
a thought, a premonition of what will come but in another
form. Genius is talking aloud to itself in the workshop of
the human spirit, and it is the prerogative of genius to be
fertile in contradictions and to nourish its strength on in-
consistencies: and the winged word and glory of emotion
may never soar beyond that free, inner mansion of person-
ality, never carry its message beyond the chambers of
feeling that divide, into the kingdom of action that unites,
all thought.
Bismarck had divined the real weakness of Austria--the
vulnerability of her European position, the competition in
her councils between the concentrated egoism of the
dynasty and the dissipated interests of the Empire, the
administrative dry rpt, the lack of vision and the absence
of moral imagination in her ministers, and the insoluble
antagonism between the ambition for supremacy in
Germany and her historic claims in Italy and Hungary.
No less had he divined the strength of Prussia, economic,
political, and military. Prussia so far had been handi-
capped by slavish adherence to a false tradition, by a sick
ancf irresolute sovereign, and by ministers whose wills and
courage were as weak as their intellectual powers. She
had neither developed her strength nor unified it under a
driving control. There already floated in Bismarck's mind
the conception of a reorganised Central Europe in which
Prussia should have superseded Austria in Germany, and
the Austrian Empire would reconsolidate itself as a
Danubian State between the twin capitals of Vienna and
Buda-Pesth. 'Un maitre des indiscretions savantes,' as
M.
de la Gorce felicitously terms him, Bismarck was con-
tinually expressing ideas which ministers and diplomatists
regarded as a bad jest or the gaucherie of an incurable
amateur, but which were really sincere and intended to
probe a difficulty, or indicate an end. At Vienna he said
outright in 1864 that Austria should transfer its centre of
gravity to Buda-Pesth. 'At Berlin,' he told Rechberg,' we
Germans do not consider Vienna as a German city, and
what happens at Vienna as related to Germany. Of
course, I know that Vienna is a city on German soil, but it
is the capital of a non-German Empire . . . it is obvious
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? IOO
BISMARCK
that the Austrian monarchy is scarcely German . . . it
would do much better if it rested on its true strength, the
aggregate of the numerous races which compose its Empire,
rather than pursue the dream of a German supremacy
which we dispute, and to which it has no title. What is
German will revert to Germany sooner or later: it is inevit-
able. It is not more difficult to govern Vienna from Berlin
than to govern Pesth from Vienna--indeed, it would be
much easier. ' And he seriously meant it. There was not
room in Germany for Habsburg and Hohenzollern, and Bis-
marck had shed his Great Germany views of 1848-51. He
was now definitely on the side of the Small Germany party,
as the Frankfurt Liberal programme had defined it.
Prussia, in his eyes, needed diplomacy and an army--
precisely what the Liberals of 1848 had needed and failed
to secure. Questions of right (Rechtfragen) in the long run
became questions of might (Machtfragen). But an army
would be as useless without the right diplomacy as diplo-
macy without a strong army behind it. 'Diplomacy
without arms,' pronounced Frederick the Great,' is music
without instruments,' and Bismarck concurred without
reservation in the judgment. But neither in 1859 nor
later did he assert or believe that force alone, or force aided
by a skilful diplomacy, would suffice. The higher state-
craft required a subtler sympathy with the motives and
ideals of human beings, a tighter grip on realities, economic
as well as spiritual. The future Prussia and the future
Germany could not be brought into existence by force
alone, nor could they live and develop on force alone.
Intuitively and unconsciously, he was separating the
Nationalism with which he sympathised from the Liberalism
which he hated and feared.
The cry for strength--the will to power--based on the
ineradicable racial instinct of a Germany that was daily
bursting the bonds of the past and cleaving new paths
into intellectual and economic spheres of illimitable scope,
could and must be satisfied, and Bismarck was at one with
Prussian, Saxon, Bavarian, or Franconian in the fierce
thirst for power and domination. But the defeat of
Liberalism was the price that Nationalism must pay for its
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? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 101
satisfaction. Once the new Germany had come into,
existence, the German mind would adapt itself to new
categories of thought, and Liberalism, mutilated at the root,
would wither in the original stock, and the life and vigour
of the races would find their self-realisation in the new
National State and the new Nationalist ideals of German
power. For power, not self-government, supremacy not
parliamentary control, would satisfy a Nationalist and
unified Germany. How this again would happen Bismarck
neither knew nor attempted to reckon as yet. But the
certainty that it could and must be done inspired him with
fresh ambition and a perpetually renewed strength. When
Gerlach and the Kreuzzeitung mourned the lost leader
and the disciple's apostasy, they judged from the surface.
Bismarck had not ceased to be a Conservative because he
exposed the unsound foundations of their creed or chal-
lenged the erroneous conclusions drawn from vicious pre-
mises. Roon had a truer insight. Bismarck now and
subsequently puzzled and pained that unrepentant Junker
and unquenchably loyal friend. But Roon felt that
Bismarck remained in fibre and temper true to the faith
of Prussian Junkertum and his forefathers. The Liberals
and Radicals were no less right when they distrusted Bis-
marck at every step and saw in him the implacable oppon-
ent of all they held dear. The Germany that Bismarck
would make and the Germany they were v>> orking for were
in fundamental antithesis. They had their origins in an
antagonistic interpretation of life; they were rooted in
contradictory tables of value, standards of judgment, and
criteria of conduct; and they aimed at opposed ideals
of Statehood, and the place in, and the relation of, the
individual to the organisation of society.
Lastly, Bismarck's programme implied execution by a
Bismarck, and there was only one. The French ambassa-
dor said to him once: 'Your policy and ideas will bring
Prussia to another Jena. ' Bismarck replied: 'Perhaps,
but why not to Leipzig and Waterloo? ' 'I will make my
own music,' \s had said in 1849, ' or I will make none at
all. ' But in 1859 looked as if Fate was to deny him the
opportunity or drive him back to Schdnhausen.
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BISMARCK
? 2. Petersburg and Paris,' 1859-1862
On January 29, 1859, Bismarck was transferred from
Frankfurt to the embassy at Petersburg. On March 6 he
left Frankfurt, and on April 1, his forty-fourth birthday, he
was received in audience by Alexander n. and presented his
credentials. The new appointment had its personal and
political significance. Prince William had become Regent
on October 26, 1858. 'The new era ' began with his re-
gency. The ministry of moderate Liberals, under Prince
Anthony of HohenzoUern and their master the Regent, were
well aware of Bismarck's views, and it was not unnatural
that, having in contemplation a gradual change in a
Liberal direction both in foreign and home policy, they
should wish to be represented at Frankfurt by an agent
more in sympathy with the new attitude. Bismarck's pro-
Russian sympathies, evinced since 1854, would commend
him to the Russian Court; his impenitent Conservatism
was very unpopular with the Liberals; and his advocacy
of better relations with France was distasteful in the high-
est degree to the Prince Regent. At Petersburg, in short,
he would be honourably out of the way. The appoint-
ment was a mark of disapproval veiled in the customary
pretence of promotion. Bismarck had expected a change.
He wrote to his sister (November 12, 1858) that he was
ready 'to take refuge behind the guns of SchSnhausen,
and, as the government were now relying on the majority
hi the Left (Liberals), to consider how to do his duty in the
Upper House. Change is the soul of life, and I hope I shall
be ten years younger when I find myself again in the same
position to fight as '48-49. . . . It is all the same to me
whether I play the part of diplomatist or of a country
gentleman (Landjunker), and so far the prospect of a merry
and honourable fight without the clogs of office has as
much charm as the prospect of a continuous regime of
truffles, dispatches and Grand Crosses. ' But for all these
brave words Bismarck was chagrined. He was in the very
prime of his powers; he was ready for more responsible
work than the duty of executing a policy made by others;
he resented the veiled censure conveyed in his transfer, and
I
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? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 103
he suspected that--as happened--he was to be cut off fiom
confidence at headquarters. The chagrin was deepened
by the course of events.
The year 1859 was a depressing one for Bismarck. Since
January an old injury to his leg, incurred in shooting, was
aggravated by reckless exposure and a chill. His health
gave way, and in June he was seriously ill. His case was
mismanaged, and for some days he sat on Charon's pier,
wondering whether he would be called on to cross to the
other side. But his superb constitution came to his aid;
like the famous Duchess of Marlborough he refused
'either to be blistered or die'; he threw off both the
treatment and the malady, and took instead to punch in
(Bismarckianly) moderate quantities. Removed to Berlin
he fell suddenly ill again, and August had to be spent in
a wearisome convalescence at Wiesbaden and Nauheim.
Like most men who have enjoyed unbroken good health,
Bismarck was a bad patient; he had taxed strength and
nerves to their utmost, and he resented their refusal to
stand unlimited drafts on their powers. The illness made
a permanent mark in his life. The nervous breakdown,
coupled with rheumatic fever and gastric disorders, seri-
ously affected a highly strung system. After 1859 he was
never the man he had been before. An increased irri-
tability and excitability, a morose and violent temper,
aggravated by sleeplessness, became increasingly apparent,
and constant returns of pain emphasised the unlovely
elements in his character. The old freshness and joy in
life evaporated; but he refused to alter his habits of life.
Roon in the campaign of 1866 notes how ' Otto ' persisted
in sitting up most of the night at his desk and lay in bed
till midday. Henceforward, particularly after 1862, he
was continually on the edge of a breakdown. With his
habits in eating and drinking, it is a proof of his marvellous
physical vitality that he did not collapse completely.
His recovery was not made easier by his political anxiety.
His revived interest in the domestic politics of Prussia
testifies to the fear that the renaissance of Liberalism, now
in full swing, would wreck his programme. Even more
disquieting was the outlook in foreign affairs. The
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BISMARCK
Italian war of 1859, France openly in the field against
Austria, the French victories, the Austrian defeats, the
demand for a revision of the system of 1815, were blows at
the citadel of Conservatism; they stirred Nationalism
throughout Europe, and Cavour had pinned his flag to the
cause of constitutional and Liberal monarchism. Germany
was in an uproar. Conservatives, Nationalists, Liberals,
the dynasties from Berlin to Munich, felt that the national
enemy in the west was in arms, defeating a German State
in Austria, about to destroy legitimist and sovereign
princes in Italy, and to reopen the question of the Rhine.
'Austria in danger ' was a potent cry. Her sins were for-
gotten in the common peril to German supremacy and
legitimist monarchy in Central Europe. It was the crisis
of 1854 repeated in an acute form. For France--a Napo-
leonic France--was attacking Austria, and it would be
Prussia's turn next. And in 1859 it was not an affair of the
Danubian principalities, nor of Austrian neutrality. At
Berlin, as usual, government and nation faced at once
front to the Rhine. The Prince Regent mobilised four
corps; his strong sympathies as a ruler and as a German
with Austria, his desire to prove his German patriotism
and lead Germany in a national struggle, brought a great
European war into sight. Even so cold a head and so self-
controlled a Prussian patriot as Moltke decided on cool
reflection that the time had come for Prussia to intervene
and strike a blow for Austria and Germany.
Bismarck was literally in anguish, and he was helpless.
At Petersburg or Wiesbaden he was removed from the
direct contact with German affairs he had enjoyed at
Frankfurt; he was not consulted; and he had not the con-
fidence either of the Prince Regent or the ministers. The
winds of Liberalism were sweeping from the lemon groves
of Sicily across the Lombardy plains to the sands and
heath of Pomerania, the March of Brandenburg and
East Prussia. War with France would blow his policy to
the limbo of shattered ideals. Prussia would enter it as
the ally of Austria, -and with Prussia would march every
Nationalist and Liberal heart. The issue would, and must
be, the defeat of France. Austria would recover her grip
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? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 105
on Italy--for what could Piedmont do without the red
trousers ? --and either Austria would impose her will on
Germany, and re-rivet her supremacy, or under the stress
of the fray Prussia and Germany would be mastered by the
Liberals, in combination with the Nationalists, and unified
on the anvil of war by the master spirits of 1848. Which
would be worse--a Germany unified on a Liberal basis, or
an Austria triumphant on the Danube, the Po, and the
Rhine, reorganising the German Confederation beyond
Prussian control? Germany in the grip either of the
anti-Prussian * princelets grouped round Austria, or of
the National ,Union of the Liberals under Bennigsen,
Duncker, Gneist, and the Coburg pro-English group?
Everywhere Bismarck saw all the machinery at work
that he had tracked out at Frankfurt--the Austrian hand
manipulating the middle States, coercing the petty ones;
the illuminated princelets dabbling with Liberalism and
striving to combine Nationalism with Particularism;
Habsburg egoism appealing to Hohenzollern pride and
generosity, but determined that Prussia's army should
extricate Austria from her dilemma, sacrifice Prussian blood
to save Lombardy, Venetia, and Hungary, and receive
the reward of disinterestedness by riveting the Austrian
yoke on the Confederation; and all this was to be done in
the name of Conservatism, and the European solidarity of
legitimism against Jacobinism, Caesarism, and the Revolu-
tion. 'Our policy,' he wrote to his wife, 'daily glides
more and more in the wake of Austria; a shot on the
Rhine, and it is all over with the Austro-Italian war, and
in its place will come a Franco-Prussian war, in which
Austria, when we have lifted the burden off her shoulders,
will support or fail us as her interest dictates. . . . . As God
wills! It is only a question of time; nations and men,
folly and wisdom, war and peace, come and go like waves,
but the sea remains; there is nothing in this world but
It was idle to urge, as he did, that Napoleon could be
secured by tact, or, if need be, by paying blackmail; that
Austria's necessities afforded an unrivalled opportunity
for re-settling her relations with Prussia to Prussia's advan-
and the jugglers' tricks. '
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? xo6
BISMARCK
tage, and that if Prussian aid were required Austria must
pay in advance, and that a wedge could be driven in
between the middle and petty States and their Habsburg
ally; that Prussia could indicate she and not Austria would
reform the Confederation. Such advice only deepened the
distrust at the Berlin Court, angered the Gerlach Conser-
vatives, and stirred the scorn of the Liberals. It was mid-
summer Machiavellianism, destitute of all principle, and
Liberals and Conservatives alike stood for principles and
the solidarity of their cause with the cause outside Prussia
or Germany.
Bismarck was bitterly attacked from both camps. He
could tolerate Radical denunciations, but the reproaches
of the Kreuxzeitung cut into the quick. 'Write me down
a devil,' he wrote,' but I am a Teutonic devil, not a Gallic
one. ' His idea of securing Napoleon never involved the
surrender of essentials. He had taken Napoleon's measure
already. 'The itch with Napoleon,' he pronounced in
1855, 'to achieve the unexpected amounts to a disease,
and it is nourished by the Empress. ' 'He is no general
. . . he will only seek a war when internal necessities
drive him to it,' he wrote in 1857. 'His heart is much
stronger than his head,' he decided in 1861. He meant to
flatter his vanity, encourage him to wander on the misty
peaks of dreamland--les idees Napolioniennes--commit
nothing to paper; words could always be disavowed and
unverified verbal promises explained away. In Bismarck's
statecraft, as his advice about Austria revealed, the extor-
tion of services from an embarrassed friend only added
contempt for the deluded to dislike. His theory of inter-
national relations left no place for gratitude or generosity.
The successful deception of France would only increase
Prussian resentment at obligations incurred to an enemy,
stupid or weak enough to believe in gratitude. Statesmen
lent or borrowed the capital and currency of the political
life. The needy must pay, and the affluent had a right to
exact a high rate of interest because the needy were so
needy. In the remorseless world of inter-State com-
petition business was business. Ethical considerations
could not apply in the markets of diplomacy; for their
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? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 107
application ignored the real motives of State conduct.
Bismarck wrote to Roon that Prussia was committing the
folly of being Liberal at home and Conservative abroad.
Such a policy sapped the confidence of the sound elements
in Prussia and flouted the real forces at work in Germany.
Roon agreed in this diagnosis and the mischief of the ' new
era. ' But the recommendation of a Conservative policy
at home and a Liberal one abroad, left him wondering
whether illness had not shaken ' Otto's ' sanity.
