assed since I called you to the head of my government,
russia has gained a position which is worthy of her
history and promises her further fortune and glory.
russia has gained a position which is worthy of her
history and promises her further fortune and glory.
Robertson - Bismarck
r82
BISMARCK
to have had a liking, dashed with pity and contempt. But
Napoleon was France, and there was a quintessence of
satisfaction now in the task of making France, whom he
hated, the dupe of his diplomacy, and the engineer against
her will of her own downfall.
While the legal points involved in the Duke of Augusten-
burg's claims were referred to the Prussian Crown lawyers
(who might safely be trusted to examine them with Prus-
sian impartiality) Roon was sent to France to attend the
French manoeuvres--a fairly clear hint to Austria that
Prussia had friends elsewhere than at Vienna; and in
October Bismarck's health required him to pay the second
of three momentous visits to Bordeaux and Biarritz, where
he met the Emperor, and on his way back discussed the
situation and the future with the French ministers at Paris.
The principles of his policy were subsequently explained
in an elaborate memorandum submitted to Napoleon
(August 18, 1865): 'Continental politics have for a long
time been based on the close union of the three Eastern
Powers, which, in the condition of things resulting from the
Holy Alliance, took the form of a coalition against France
. . . the policy of Prussia had for many years turned in
this direction . . . and has forced her to follow Austria's
South Germany and ' Entire Germany' policies. . . . Op-
posed to this traditional view there is another doctrine
which is founded upon Prussia's most vital needs. It is
the doctrine of the free and independent development of
Prussia and North German elements into an independent
great power, which may feel itself secure. . . . Can the
Emperor Napoleon consider it his duty to discourage
Prussia . . . and force her back into the old defensive
attitude of the Coalition. . . . This would be a certain
proof that the traditional policy, pursued for fifty years,
was correct, and that it must determine Prussia's conduct
in the future. '
Bismarck was now carefully preparing the way for Napo-
leon's acquiescence in the. annexation of the Duchies, the
consolidation of Prussia in the north of Germany as an
equipoise to Austria, and some unspecified compensation
to France. But neither Napoleon nor his ministers had
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 183
learned that Bismarck's unconventional frankness marked
a diplomatic reconnaissance. The easiest way to evade
committing yourself was, under the guise of friendship, to
incite the other side to damaging revelations of greed or
conquest. At present, until Austria had categorically
refused a settlement satisfactory to Prussia, any definite
engagement with France was dangerous. Neither the
Bang nor German public opinion would in 1864 have
tolerated a settlement of the Duchies by concert with
France to the detriment of Austria.
The first step was to clear the Federal forces out of Schles-
wig and Holstein. The Saxon and Hanoverian troops were,
therefore, peremptorily required to evacuate the Duchies,
on the ground that they now legally belonged to Prussia
and Austria. Moltke's correspondence proves that the
Prussian Staff was ready to turn the Saxons and Hano-
verians out by force, if needs be; but it was not necessary.
The Bund recognised its impotence, declared the Federal
execution at an end, and the Federal troops were with-
drawn (December 5). Two days later the triumphal
return of the victorious army of Prussia was celebrated
with much rejoicing in Berlin.
Public opinion both in the Duchies and without cease-
lessly clamoured for the installation of the Duke of Au-
gustenburg. At Vienna the blunder of concluding the
alliance of January 16 was now fully recognised, and Rech-
berg's dismissal from office (October, 1864) proclaimed
that the Ball-Platz was about to try a new line of policy.
Bismarck was determined first to hold Austria tightly to
the alliance, secondly, to make the administrative condo-
minium of the Duchies quite unworkable. 'We stand,'
he said,' before the question of the Duchies like two guests
before a delicious dish. One of them who has no appetite
and will not eat rigorously forbids the other whom the
delicacies tempt. '
The continuous drip of facts was eating away the hard
rock in his sovereign's conscience and Prussian public
opinion. William had begun to feel that Prussian honour
was involved in a satisfactory settlement, and that 'coer-
cion ' by Austria would land Prussia in a second Olmiitz.
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? 184
BISMARCK
A very significant memorial, signed by Radicals so pro-
nounced as Twesten, Jung, Mommsen, and others, em-
phasised the desirability of permanently securing the
Duchies for Germany by incorporation on reasonable terms
with Prussia. The report of the Prussian Crown lawyers
proved first, that the Duke of Augustenburg had no legal
claims; secondly, that the title to the Duchies had been
unquestionably vested in the King of Denmark; and
thirdly, that this title had been unquestionably transferred
by the Treaty of Vienna to Prussia and Austria, who were
now the de jure sovereigns of Schleswig and Holstein. If,
therefore, Prussia consented to install the Duke of Augus-
tenburg by agreement with Austria, the duke would be a
delegate ruling on such conditions as the de jure co-
sovereigns laid down. William's last scruples were thus
removed. The settlement was not a question of the
Augustenburger's 'rights' but of policy, and the dele-
gation of Prussia's rights affected the King's honour and
trusteeship of Prussian interests. How could expert
Prussian Crown lawyers possibly be wrong or biassed even
if they flatly contradicted expert Prussian professors and
historians?
On February 22, 1865, Bismarck formally stated to
Austria the conditions on which Prussia was prepared to
join with Austria in establishing the Duke of Augusten-
burg in the Duchies. They were practically the con-
ditions which the duke had rejected on June 1, 1864, and
would have made the Duchies to all intents and purposes
Prussian provinces, administered by the duke as a Prussian
state official. The Schleswig-Holstein troops were, for
example, to take the oath of allegiance to the King of
Prussia: while Prussian control of the harbour of Kiel was
guaranteed. The Austrian rejection of these terms was
a foregone conclusion, and (March 27) the request of the
Federal Diet, moved by Austria, for the unconditional
installation of the duke was rejected by Prussia, as a matter
beyond the competence of the Diet and also a breach of
treaty by Austria. Bismarck was now able to convince his
sovereign that it was not the Minister-President at Berlin
who stood in the way of an honourable settlement. The
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 185
suggestion of the pro-Austrians at Berlin that William
should purchase Austrian acquiescence in aPrussian annexa-
tion by the cession of Silesia was deftly calculated to stir
William's deepest resentment. The "surrender of Prussian
rights in the north, purchased by Prussian blood, was to
be sealed by the surrender of Prussian rights in the south,
purchased by the victories of Frederick the Great and the
immortal heroes of the heroic epoch. William, in short,
was finding, under guidance, his way to the conclusion
that Austria--with whom he had passionately desired
always to co-operate as a friend and ally--was utilising the
situation to inflict a humiliation on him or drive him into
a ' defensive' war.
The two secret Councils of State (March 9 and May 3),
at which the Crown Prince and all the high military and
civil authorities were present, revealed the gravity of the
situation. Such secret councils in the history of Prussia
are the invariable prelude to momentous decisions, and still
more momentous action. The whole situation was sur-
veyed, and the responsible opinion of the Prussian staff
was earnestly canvassed. The Chief of the Staff spoke to
men who knew what war, strategy and policy meant.
The upshot was that the King, satisfied that the soldiers
had correctly estimated the military position, decided that
if Austria threatened war, Prussia would fight and Prussia
would be right.
The tension in Prussia and Germany rapidly became
acute. A civil war (a Briiderkrieg) was in sight, and all
those influential sections of society to which war between
Prussia and Austria was a disaster, subversion of the
moral and political order, and the first step to ' the Revo-
lution' were aghast at the cynical wickedness of the
Minister-President, who betrayed the Conservative cause.
L. von Gerlach wrote bitterly to the Minister-President
at this cruel treachery to law and order. Bismarck's visit
to France, the trafficking with Napoleon--the Napoleon
of 1865 was generally held to be an arch-Machiavelli
of Jacobin statecraft--the Augustenburg agitation, and the
widening breach with Austria, inflamed and bewildered
public opinion. The caricature literature of these tense
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? BISMARCK
years reveals the fears and execrations of Conservatives,
Ultramontanes, Particularists of every shade, Nationalists,
Liberals, and Radicals. Bismarck's policy had evoked the
bitter denunciation of every party, and his unpopularity
reached its height in the period from the spring of 1865
to the climax of the final rupture in July 1866.
But unpopularity did not trouble Bismarck. The crisis
was of his own making. 'We have come,' he said to
Austria, ' to where the road divides . . . our tickets take
us upon diverging routes, nor can we in this trip enter
the carriage that you share with others. ' He anticipated
correctly that, if he could achieve his purpose by the
methods he judged suitable, reactionaries and progressives
alike who now were ready to stone him as a traitor, would
hail him as the saviour of Prussia and Germany, and his
methods as the finest expression of efficient German state-
craft. It is not surprising that his experience from 1849
to 1890 confirmed his contempt for public opinion,
whether of the upper or the lower classes, and his belief
that kings, princes, and nobles were even more ready than
professors or tinkers to worship success. It is essentially
characteristic of the man and his statesmanship that in the
heated atmosphere of June 1865 he calmly weighed the
forces in the situation, and decided to state, in the terms of
an ultimatum drawn up at a cabinet council at Regensburg,
the heads of a settlement. The Convention of Gastein
(August T4, 1865) was the diplomatic expression of those
terms. It was Austria, not Bismarck, who had given way.
The Convention provided for the transfer of the ad-
ministration of Holstein to Austria, and of Schleswig to
Prussia, with a joint share in the harbour of Kiel, the forti-
fication of which was to be entrusted to Prussia. Prussia
acquired Lauenburg by a money payment. The division
of the condominium was remarkable. Holstein was now
an Austrian enclave between Prussian Schleswig and the
Prussian kingdom. The Austrian land route to Holstein
was practically controlled by Prussia, and the Austrian fleet
could only reach Kiel by a journey from Trieste to the
North Sea, and before it ever got as far as Brest Bismarck
intended it should be stopped or sunk--by an ally of
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 187
Prussia. The Duke of Augustenburg's claims went into
the wastepaper basket, as also did the sacred and inviolable
principle, which all German historians, Conservatives and
Liberals, had regarded as a greater certainty than the law
of gravitation, that the Duchies since 1460 were 'one and
indivisible. '
The Convention was accepted by William 1. and the
Conservatives with profound relief as' a bloodless victory'
--peace with honour. The shame of a war with Austria
or of a second Olmutz had been triumphantly avoided.
But in the Duchies, in the middle and petty States, and
in the Nationalist, Liberal, and Ultramontane parties the
agreement of the two great German Powers roused deep
indignation. The cause of the duke, of Nationalism and
Liberalism were surrendered in a common betrayal.
Popular meetings at Frankfurt condemned the Convention
as a violation of public law and right which could not be
binding on the Duchies, whose autonomy was so cynically
overridden--and by Austria, the avowed representative
of moral order and legitimism.
Bismarck's view of the Convention is quite clear. The
Napoleonic military maxim ' Engage everywhere and then
see ' summed up his action. Bismarck had engaged ' the
enemy' along the whole line; the Convention enabled
him now ' to see. ' On July 13 he had written to M. von
Blankenburg that 'war with Austria is only a question
of time,' and after the Convention had been settled he
remarked: 'I could never have believed that I would find
an Austrian diplomatist who would have signed such a
document. ' He was quite willing to postpone the struggle
to a more favourable occasion. Neither the Prussian nor
the German nor the European situation was entirely
moulded to his liking. On July 21 he had telegraphed
both to Goltz at Paris to conclude a treaty of neutrality
with France, if the Austrians rejected the ultimatum, and
to Usedom at Florence to inquire officially what the atti-
tude of Italy would be in the case of war. France and
Italy--these were the two harassing uncertainties.
Nor was the German question, apart from the Duchie9,
adequately worked up. Bismarck had not yet been able
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? 188
BISMARCK
to link up a precise Prussian programme of Federal reform
with the issues raised in Schleswig-Holstein, and thereby
proclaim that Prussia was fighting for greater ends than
the mere acquisition of the Duchies wrested from Denmark.
A letter to his wife briefly alludes to the cruel and increas-
ing burden of work and responsibility that the preceding
twelve months had thrust upon him. Daily dispatches
from and to Rome, Florence, Vienna, Munich, Paris, the
direction of foreign policy aggravated by the internal diffi-
culties, the tangle in the Duchies, the military and financial
problems and the necessity of controlling and directing his
ministerial colleagues, and of keeping the King fully in-
formed and true to the straight course--such were some
of his chief cares, and the Minister-President found the
task almost beyond even his powers, while behind the un-
ending toil lay like lead the consciousness that a false step,
an error of judgment, a miscalculation would wreck both
Prussia and himself. His irritable and highly strung
nerves conspired with the white-hot passion within to rob
him of sleep, and to make him brusque, dictatorial, and
harsh. Yet he could always find the necessary half-hour,
when away from his home, to scribble a few lines to his
wife, and in these letters his truest thoughts and many
of his happiest descriptions and judgments are enshrined
with a vivid and unforgettable brevity. Bismarck had a
genuinely German contempt for women who meddled
with politics, and for men who allowed themselves to be
influenced in political affairs by women, whether wives
or mistresses. But to Frau von Bismarck he wrote
always as to one who had a right to know and on whose
judgment and sympathy he could implicitly rely.
Austria was certainly not ready for war. The Habsburg
primacy in Germany was at stake and could not be risked
simply on the Schleswig-Holstein question. Bismarck, in
the last resort, was determined to buy Napoleon or ally
with 'the Revolution'--to fling, if needs be, the whole
'system of 1815 '--treaties and principles, frontiers, and
balance of power--into the conflagration, conscious that
Prussia by her military strength and the exploitation of
National Liberalism, would emerge master probably of
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 189
Germany, as defined in 1849. But Austria, with a hostile
Russia to the north and a mutinous Hungary in the east,
could not buy Napoleon. Still less could she face 'the
Revolution. ' Austria's two deadliest foes, within and
without, were Nationalism and Liberalism, and the irony
of the situation in 1865 was summed up in the truth that
Austria's only genuine friend was Bismarck. Since 1849
Francis Joseph, a true Habsburg, blindly following the
star of the dynasty, and sacrificing all to the principle that
Austria was not a State but a family, had thrown away
opportunity after opportunity. As Richard m. was
haunted in the grey hours of the night before Bosworth
by the procession of the victims of his ambition, so now
Francis Joseph, on the eve of Koniggratz, could see the
procession of dismissed minister after minister sacrificed
to a dynastic obsession. The list was by no means com-
plete in August 1865; the finest opportunities and the
most loyal servants were still to be thrown away. But
had Francis Joseph been gifted with a spark of the imagina-
tion without which all statecraft shrivels at the touch of
reality into the tricks of the diplomatic card-sharper, he
would now have purchased from Bismarck a Prussian
defensive and offensive alliance against all and sundry.
Except as pieces in the mighty game of Prussian ideals,
Bismarck did not care a groschen for Napoleon, Victor
Emmanuel, and Italian Nationalism or for Deak and Magyar
autonomy. The withdrawal of Austria from the Duchies,
acquiescence in a Prussian hegemony north of the Main,
together with a real parity in a reconstructed Federal organi-
sation would have saved Venetia and much else besides for
the Habsburgs, and anticipated (under far more favourable
conditions for Austria) the system of 1879, perhaps even
have revived in a new form the Triple Alliance of 1819.
A big brain and a cool recognition of realities could have
made the Convention of Gastein a treaty that created a
system, not an armistice that simply called a halt, and
thus led up to the foundation of a Central Europe, more
justly poised between Berlin and Vienna than the system
of 1871. Whether such a treaty would have been better
for Europe as a whole it is idle to speculate. At least, it
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? IOO
BISMARCK
would have spared the Continent the triumphant vindica-
tion of force as the sovereign remedy for 'the great
questions of the age' that the war of 1866 provided; it
would have left Bismarck to face the difficulties of the
internal situation in Prussia without the conclusive argu-
ment that ended the constitutional struggle in Prussia,
and began the steady perversion of National Liberalism
from the gospel of Rights to the gospel of Power.
But Francis Joseph, in 1865, did not feel the need of
imagination. He only felt the need of time. Bismarck
needed time too, and he was confident he would make
a better use of the respite than the men who had tried
to bluff him and then shrank back at the counter-threat
of a Prussian mobilisation. Bismarck was neither the
Radowitz nor the Manteuffel of 1850, nor was William 1.
a Frederick William iv. Austria was no longer repre-
sented by a Schwarzenberg. 'The Convention,' Bismarck
pronounced in a memorable phrase, ' simply papered over
the cracks. '
William was grateful for being spared war--as he
thought--by the achievement of a resounding diplomatic
stroke. On September 15 the Minister-President and
his descendants were promoted to the rank of Counts
(Graf). 'In the four years,' wrote the King, ' that have
?
assed since I called you to the head of my government,
russia has gained a position which is worthy of her
history and promises her further fortune and glory. '
? 3. The rupture with Austria--The Treaty of Prague,
1865-1866
The ten months from the Convention of Gastein to
the final rupture on June 23, 1866, when the Prussian
troops entered Bohemia, make a very complicated chapter
in European history. Full justice to the diplomatic
moves and countermoves would require a large canvas
and elaborate detail. In France, Austria, Italy, and the
German States, the directors of policy continuously en-
visaged contradictory aims and alternative lines of action.
German public opinion was in greater bewilderment than
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
ever: fearing and detesting everything that Prussia did,
yet mastered by an intuition that in Prussian strength
and purposeful egoism alone lay all hopes of a permanent
decision. Germany had indeed dragged its anchors, and
was drifting into the storm.
The main lines of Bismarck's statecraft stand out in
the sharpest relief against the blurred and shifting kaleido-
scope. A letter from the devoted Roon, himself toiling
at full concert pitch, to have the Prussian army ready,
speaks of 'Otto's herculean industry day and night and
his reckless demands on his physical strength. . . . He
has now to reckon with the rebellion of his truest and
most submissive subject, his stomach, and is so irritable
and sensitive, particularly over petty matters, that I am
full of anxiety, for I know what is at stake. ' Roon adds
truly, 'complete freedom of mind, a deranged digestion,
and tortured nerves are hard to reconcile. ' But for all
his difficulties, political, mental, and physical, Bismarck
exhibited the one clear and resolute will, the one clear
and unshakable aim in the universal confusion. He was
determined to settle the fate of Prussia and Germany by
the appeal to the sword.
Roon, Moltke, and the Prussian Staff were of the same
determination. Men then and since have convinced
themselves that the war was inevitable, that it lay in the
alleged logic both of history and the situation, and that
after August 14, 1865, the two major States of Germany,
Prussia and Austria, simply slid slowly down inclined
planes to an unavoidable collision. A close study, how-
ever, of these ten months does not support the general
conclusion that wars are unavoidable, and that this
particular one exemplifies such a philosophy of history or
statesmanship.
It would be a complete misreading of Bismarck's policy,
principles, and methods to assert that either before or
after the Convention of Gastein he so completely lost his
grip on the Prussian rudder that he was forced into
fighting. Bismarck may not have believed in ' preventive
wars,' though the definition of a ' preventive war ' would
have to be very carefully drawn before either he or hii
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? BISMARCK
disciples could accept so complete a repudiation; _he
certainly did not believe in wars merely for conquest or
g'ory, and no statesman of the nineteenth. century had a
deeper sense of the responsibility that plunging a State
into war imposes on those who direct policy. _ But in
1865 and in 1866, as in 1870 or in 1864, he willed the
war and he deliberately worked for it.
The secrets of his statecraft will be completely missed
if we do not recognise two elemental postulates ^first,
that in 1865 he rejected every opportunity by which war
might be avoided; secondly, that he worked with stead-
fast patience to remove the obstacles to war, as the final
conclusion of the matter. He could, for example, have
taken up Napoleon's idea of a Congress, and with the
help of Russia (and certainly of Great Britain) have
opened all the festering abscesses in the operating theatre
of the European Concert. Such a course would ha^c
been welcomed by the best minds in Germany and outside
it. But a Congress would not have given him what he
held with passionate conviction was alone worth winning.
War alone, he concluded, would do his business, and
briefly for three reasons. JDeieaj^jjeremptory and con-
clusive, alone would drive Austria out of Germany and
extort the recognition not of Prussia's parity with herself
--the time for that had passed--but of Prussian supre-
macy; Prussian supremacy in Germany required terri-
torial additions to the Prussian State, (not merely Schleswig
and Holstein),, without which her mastery of the new
German organisation would be incomplete, _and such
annexations could only be secured from the defeated and
i'ustified by victory in war: the constitutional conflict in
'russia and the terms of the new organisation could only
be settled if the Prussian monarchy could dictate its will;
war alone, not diplomacy, would confer the dictatorship.
It was not in 1865 any more than "in 1864 or in 1870 the
-end--the unification of Germany on certain principles
and for certain ends--justifying the means. To Bismarck
the State, whose end is Power, does not justify the means,
that are Force. More correctly, the means are simply the
end in process of realisation. The stages through which
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
the purposive life of an organised community passes, he
would have argued, are not means to an end, they are the
successive manifestations of the purpose. Each successive
manifestation is linked with the preceding one, and the
sum of the manifestations is not separable from the end,
and does not require a justification different from that
for the totality of the result. What justifies life as a
whole justifies its successive manifestations or means of
realising itself, and no other justification is admissible or
necessary. Had Bismarck desired or conceived of a
unified Germany consummating the National State which
stands for Right, his methods would have been as different
as the result would have differed from the Prussia and
Germanv he created. But then he would not have been
the Bismarck of history, and his interpretation of life-
values would have been the opposite of what it was. The
impressive conclusions that his action has stamped ferro
et igni on the Germany and Europe of his generation are
two--first, that when a strong State is determined to
find in war a solution of political difficulties and will
accept no other solution, war will result, however un-
willing other States may be to go to war; and secondly,
that while the Germany of 1865 (and Bismarck knew it)
did not want the Bismarckian solution, the Germany of
1890 had been convinced by Bismarck that no other solution
in 1866 would have succeeded or satisfied what Germany
had been taught to recognise as her real ambitions and
needs. The one problem in statesmanship that Bismarck
did not solve for his or any other generation before or
since his time, and had no desire to solve, was how to
defeat the statecraft (that is force) of the State (that
stands for power) without recourse to force or without
repudiating the principle that the State stands for Right
not Might, or without accepting the poison distilled in
the doctrine that ends justify means.
As previously, his first and permanent difficulty lay
with his sovereign. William's education by his minister
in the gospel of Bismarckianism had to begin over again
after August 1865. Once his sovereign's 'conscience'
had been reilluminated, the King would readily misinter-
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? 194
BISMARCK
pret the appeal of military honour as the categorical
imperative of royal and civic duty.
The Liberal opposition in the Prussian Landtag must,
therefore, be provoked to continue its attacks on the
Crown and its advisers. Surrender, therefore, would be
surrender to 'rebels. ' As on June 13 (before Gastein),
so on February 3, 1866, when there were full-dress debates
on the foreign policy of the government, Bismarck
taunted the Progressive leaders with their political
futility, ineptitude, and parliamentary insolence. Their
criticisms on the conduct of affairs he dismissed as the
interference of ignorant trespassers on the prerogatives
of the Crown. This autocratic attitude in 'The House
of Phrases ' was largely tactical. Not there, but in France
and Italy, were the keys of the major political strategy.
Italy, in August 1865, had signified that jit was_ im-
possible for hex jri_a Jfra^
idle spectator. A Prussian alliance with Italy was danger-
ous; committal to the Italian programme opened serious
questionings; behind Florence lay Rome and the Papal
froblem. The year 1864 had seen the issue of the famous
yllabus which seriously perturbed the intellectuals of
German Liberalism and heated the Clericals in South
Germany and in France. The parties in Germany were,
in fact, marching to the Kulturkampf. Bismarck rightly
feared that Napoleon might, in has resentment_at" a
Prussian treaty with Italy behind his back, come to terms
with Austria, secure Venetia for Italy, in return for com-
pensation in Germany tQ Austria at Prussia's. expense,
and compensation to himself ux the Rhej^sh__pr^yinces.
The possibility of an anti-Prussian coalition was no idle
chimera of an overstrained mind in the Wilhelmstrasse.
Had there been a statesman of the first rank either at
Paris, Florence, or Vienna, a very ugly turn indeed could
have been given to the situation. As it was, Bismarck
had to deal with Napoleon, Drouyn de Lhuys, La
Marmora, and Mensdorff. The price that nations pay
when their destinies are in the hands of the intellectually
second-rate is set out with damning precision in the next
four year*.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
Napoleon had to be brought to a definite understanding.
On October I Bismarck was in Paris, and on October 3
at Biarritz--the third of three momentous visits. By <
November 7 he was back in Berlin. He had threshed out
the difficulties both in the Villa Eugenie at Biarritz, and
at St. Cloud with Napoleon and his ministers, and had
virtually accomplished the difficult task of securing
Napoleon's benevolent neutrality, without any awkward
promissory notes, which could be presented for payment
at sight at some future date. Prosper Merimee has put
on record his personal impression of the Minister-Presi-
dent--of his vigour and power and also of his irresistible
charm (a quality we are apt to forget Bismarck possessed
in a remarkable degree). But even in 1865 Merimee did
not take seriously the political ideas that Bismarck ex-
Sressed with such disarming and genial exuberance. Like
Fapoleon, Merimee thought the Minister-President was
sometimes really not quite sane, a Prussian Gascon whose
judgment was clouded by a misinterpretation of realities.
These momentous conferences at the Villa Eugenie provide
a dramatic contrast between the Prussian, in the zenith
of his physical and intellectual powers, alert, adamantine,
probing every weak point, and masking it all under an
amazing frankness--and, on the other side, the Emperor,
tired, puzzled, disillusioned, indecisive, yet clinging to his
dreams which he mistook for profound insight into the
Time-spirit. He was already suffering from the disease
that killed him; already conscious that the noonday of
the Empire had passed and that the shadows were falling,
the shadows that came from the coup tfttat.
Why Napoleon did not insist on a bargain in black and
white, and on pinning Bismarck down to a definite com-
pensation, is, indeed, a problem. Napoleon had a definite
article to sell, French neutrality, which the purchaser,
Bismarck, needed above all things. The experience of
1864 should have convinced the Emperor that he was
dealing with a man whose verbal promises were worthless,
and he should not have parted with French neutrality
except for a bond in writing. Even if, as is probable,
Bismarck had later repudiated the bond, Napoleon would
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? 196
BISMARCK
have had it to convince France and Europe. Napoleon,
it is true, was in a grave dilemma. He feared that
Bismarck, foiled at Paris, might settle with Austria and
re-establish the Triple Alliance of 1815 against France.
The obvious reply to such a menace was a threat to unite
with Austria and her South German Allies against Prussia.
But the real crux for Napoleon lay, as always, in Italy.
The Clericals would not let him evacuate Rome, and his
own 'nationalism' drove him to desire to complete the
work of 1859 by procuring Venetia for the kingdom of
Italy. It was not so much that Napoleon did not know
what compensation he really wanted as that he could not
openly ask for it--the left bank of the Rhine or Belgium.
The former brought him up against the dead wall of
Prussia--the latter against the dead wall of Great Britain
and the Treaty of 1839. Napoleon therefore postponed
the decision. His 'compensation' was to be defined
later. He jtrusted in his 'star' and on his calculation
that a Prusso-Austrian War would be a bloody and in-
decisive struggle, in which France could intervene . and
dictate her compensation either on both combatants
or on one by allying with the other. But the idea
rested on two fatal errors of judgment, which Napoleon
shared with most contemporary statesmen in Europe--an
exaggerated estimate of Austrian strength and jof_J^Ee
readiness of the French army--a complete ignorance of
the Prussian army as remoulded by the Prussian General
Staff. Bismarck and Moltke were in complete agreement
that if Prussia could not make war she had better go out
of business altogether.
Italy was now invited by Bismarck to conclude a com-
mercial alliance with the Zollverein. Such an economic
understanding, Bismarck told the Italian ambassador,
would have a high political significance for the future.
The negotiations were pressed, and by November 15 the
treaty was ready for the respective ratifications (March 3,
1866).
The next step was to put the screw on Austria.
Austria, of course, was ' behaving very badly ' in Holstein
--she was permitting the Augustenburg agitation to go
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 197
on with Kiel as its headquarters. This was a plain
violation of the Convention of Gastein, disturbing to
Prussia in her occupation of Schleswig, and keeping open
a sore that the Convention had healed. On January 26,
1866, Bismarck sent a rasping protest to Vienna. The
Austrian administration oJJHolstem^was intolerable; the
Augustenburg agitation must be promptly suppressed.
Austria was making herself ' the champion of the Revolu-
tion. ' The Austrian reply of February 9 informed the
Prussian government that the alliance of 1864 was at an
end. The position had reverted to the period before the
"Danish war, and Austrian relations with Prussia were
neither better nor worse than with any other European
Power. On February 28 a secret Council of State was
held in Berlin at which the Crown Prince, the military
chiefs, the Prussian ambassador at Paris, Goltz, specially
summoned, and, of course, Bismarck and the King, were
present. William decided that every diplomatic effort
compatible wrthTPrussian honour and safety must be made
to maintain peace. 'After having prayed to God,' the
King said, cto lead him in the right path, he should
consider the war, if it came, as a just one. '
On March 3 William wrote personally to Napoleon to
propose a definite understanding; next day the project
of an offensive and defensive alliance with Italy was taken
seriously in hand. At the Council of February 28,
Moltke had expressed his considered judgment that with
the neutrality of France, the military aid of Italy, and the
consequent division of the Austrian army by war on two
fronts, victory might be regarded as reasonably certain.
With General Govone, sent from Florence, Bismarck now
worked hard to conclude the Italian treaty. Not with-
out great difficulty. Both sides thoroughly distrusted
each other. The Italians, mindful of 1859, feared that
Prussia would embroil them with Austria, and then either
evade its share or settle the German quarrel at Italy's
expense. Nor had they any confidence in Bismarck's
honesty or honour. Bismarck, on his side, suspected that
Italy intended to utilise Prussia simply to obtain Venetia,
and was quite indifferent to the real issue--Prussian
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? 198
BISMARCK
supremacy in Germany: he desired to tie Italy down to
a specific engagement while leaving a free hand for him-
self. The project very nearly broke down on the crucial
point, which of the partners was to pick the quarrel and
open the fray. Each desired the other to make a war, in
which its ally would then promptly join. But the diffi-
culties were surmounted. Both Italy and Prussia needed
each other too much to allow the negotiations to end in
nothing. On April 8 the treaty was finished. It pro-
vided that, if a Prussian reform of the Germanic Con^
federation failed and Prussia was forced to take up arms,
Italy was to declare war; there was to be no peace pr_
armistice without the consent of both States, but consent
was not to be withheld if Venetia were ceded to Italy
and an equivalent in Austrian territory to Prussia ;^Jthk
Italian navy was to hinder the Austrian ships from reaching
the Baltic; and the treaty was to be valid only. fpr_three
months unless Prussia declared war.
'The treaty imposed on Italy obligations but no rights.
It did not specifically provide for Prussian help if Austria
declared war on Italy and kept the peace in Germany.
But it secured three vital guarantees for Prussia. It
made the casus foederis dependent on the German question
of Federal reform by Prussia (that was for William's
conscience); it blocked Napoleon as protector of Italy
from hostilities with Prussia (that was for the Tuileries);
it reserved to Prussia the right to make war, when and if
it chose (that was for Bismarck). Bismarck, in fact, was
in a similar position to Cavour after the compact of
Plombieres. He had to provoke war within a definite
period or lose the advantages of the treaty.
The international situation was thus cleared up, for
Napoleon had replied to William's letter with an assur-
ance of neutrality, the compensation for which was to
be defined later--always later. Bismarck might well
reflect on royal human nature, when he recalled that ten
years earlier his master at Coblenz had repudiated, as
a dishonourable temptation, the proposal that Prussia
should come to terms with Napoleon, and had pronounced
such an idea to be that of a schoolboy not a statesman.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 199
William's personal letter to the 'man of sin' recalls
Maria Theresa's letter to the ' woman of sin,' the Pompa-
dour, in each case to secure an alliance in order to annex.
To what concessions will not 'conscience' compel
honourable and royal men and women.
Austria had replied to the Council of February 28 at
Berlin by a week of State Councils at Vienna (March 7-13),
at which Benedek, who had prepared his army and cam-
paigns in Venetia, was present. Poor, gallant Benedek,
presently to be transferred from Venetia to Bohemia, in
order that an archduke might win in Italy, while the
general, assigned to command in a Bohemia that he did
not know an ill-organised army that did not know him,
was to be broken for his failure--the scapegoat's last
services to the incompetence of a selfish dynasty. Such
were the sacrifices that the Habsburgs expected and
obtained from their best servants.
The Italian negotiations justifiably alarmed Austria:
they caused consternation in the Conservative, fierce
indignation in the Ultramontane, camp in Germany.
BISMARCK
to have had a liking, dashed with pity and contempt. But
Napoleon was France, and there was a quintessence of
satisfaction now in the task of making France, whom he
hated, the dupe of his diplomacy, and the engineer against
her will of her own downfall.
While the legal points involved in the Duke of Augusten-
burg's claims were referred to the Prussian Crown lawyers
(who might safely be trusted to examine them with Prus-
sian impartiality) Roon was sent to France to attend the
French manoeuvres--a fairly clear hint to Austria that
Prussia had friends elsewhere than at Vienna; and in
October Bismarck's health required him to pay the second
of three momentous visits to Bordeaux and Biarritz, where
he met the Emperor, and on his way back discussed the
situation and the future with the French ministers at Paris.
The principles of his policy were subsequently explained
in an elaborate memorandum submitted to Napoleon
(August 18, 1865): 'Continental politics have for a long
time been based on the close union of the three Eastern
Powers, which, in the condition of things resulting from the
Holy Alliance, took the form of a coalition against France
. . . the policy of Prussia had for many years turned in
this direction . . . and has forced her to follow Austria's
South Germany and ' Entire Germany' policies. . . . Op-
posed to this traditional view there is another doctrine
which is founded upon Prussia's most vital needs. It is
the doctrine of the free and independent development of
Prussia and North German elements into an independent
great power, which may feel itself secure. . . . Can the
Emperor Napoleon consider it his duty to discourage
Prussia . . . and force her back into the old defensive
attitude of the Coalition. . . . This would be a certain
proof that the traditional policy, pursued for fifty years,
was correct, and that it must determine Prussia's conduct
in the future. '
Bismarck was now carefully preparing the way for Napo-
leon's acquiescence in the. annexation of the Duchies, the
consolidation of Prussia in the north of Germany as an
equipoise to Austria, and some unspecified compensation
to France. But neither Napoleon nor his ministers had
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 183
learned that Bismarck's unconventional frankness marked
a diplomatic reconnaissance. The easiest way to evade
committing yourself was, under the guise of friendship, to
incite the other side to damaging revelations of greed or
conquest. At present, until Austria had categorically
refused a settlement satisfactory to Prussia, any definite
engagement with France was dangerous. Neither the
Bang nor German public opinion would in 1864 have
tolerated a settlement of the Duchies by concert with
France to the detriment of Austria.
The first step was to clear the Federal forces out of Schles-
wig and Holstein. The Saxon and Hanoverian troops were,
therefore, peremptorily required to evacuate the Duchies,
on the ground that they now legally belonged to Prussia
and Austria. Moltke's correspondence proves that the
Prussian Staff was ready to turn the Saxons and Hano-
verians out by force, if needs be; but it was not necessary.
The Bund recognised its impotence, declared the Federal
execution at an end, and the Federal troops were with-
drawn (December 5). Two days later the triumphal
return of the victorious army of Prussia was celebrated
with much rejoicing in Berlin.
Public opinion both in the Duchies and without cease-
lessly clamoured for the installation of the Duke of Au-
gustenburg. At Vienna the blunder of concluding the
alliance of January 16 was now fully recognised, and Rech-
berg's dismissal from office (October, 1864) proclaimed
that the Ball-Platz was about to try a new line of policy.
Bismarck was determined first to hold Austria tightly to
the alliance, secondly, to make the administrative condo-
minium of the Duchies quite unworkable. 'We stand,'
he said,' before the question of the Duchies like two guests
before a delicious dish. One of them who has no appetite
and will not eat rigorously forbids the other whom the
delicacies tempt. '
The continuous drip of facts was eating away the hard
rock in his sovereign's conscience and Prussian public
opinion. William had begun to feel that Prussian honour
was involved in a satisfactory settlement, and that 'coer-
cion ' by Austria would land Prussia in a second Olmiitz.
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? 184
BISMARCK
A very significant memorial, signed by Radicals so pro-
nounced as Twesten, Jung, Mommsen, and others, em-
phasised the desirability of permanently securing the
Duchies for Germany by incorporation on reasonable terms
with Prussia. The report of the Prussian Crown lawyers
proved first, that the Duke of Augustenburg had no legal
claims; secondly, that the title to the Duchies had been
unquestionably vested in the King of Denmark; and
thirdly, that this title had been unquestionably transferred
by the Treaty of Vienna to Prussia and Austria, who were
now the de jure sovereigns of Schleswig and Holstein. If,
therefore, Prussia consented to install the Duke of Augus-
tenburg by agreement with Austria, the duke would be a
delegate ruling on such conditions as the de jure co-
sovereigns laid down. William's last scruples were thus
removed. The settlement was not a question of the
Augustenburger's 'rights' but of policy, and the dele-
gation of Prussia's rights affected the King's honour and
trusteeship of Prussian interests. How could expert
Prussian Crown lawyers possibly be wrong or biassed even
if they flatly contradicted expert Prussian professors and
historians?
On February 22, 1865, Bismarck formally stated to
Austria the conditions on which Prussia was prepared to
join with Austria in establishing the Duke of Augusten-
burg in the Duchies. They were practically the con-
ditions which the duke had rejected on June 1, 1864, and
would have made the Duchies to all intents and purposes
Prussian provinces, administered by the duke as a Prussian
state official. The Schleswig-Holstein troops were, for
example, to take the oath of allegiance to the King of
Prussia: while Prussian control of the harbour of Kiel was
guaranteed. The Austrian rejection of these terms was
a foregone conclusion, and (March 27) the request of the
Federal Diet, moved by Austria, for the unconditional
installation of the duke was rejected by Prussia, as a matter
beyond the competence of the Diet and also a breach of
treaty by Austria. Bismarck was now able to convince his
sovereign that it was not the Minister-President at Berlin
who stood in the way of an honourable settlement. The
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 185
suggestion of the pro-Austrians at Berlin that William
should purchase Austrian acquiescence in aPrussian annexa-
tion by the cession of Silesia was deftly calculated to stir
William's deepest resentment. The "surrender of Prussian
rights in the north, purchased by Prussian blood, was to
be sealed by the surrender of Prussian rights in the south,
purchased by the victories of Frederick the Great and the
immortal heroes of the heroic epoch. William, in short,
was finding, under guidance, his way to the conclusion
that Austria--with whom he had passionately desired
always to co-operate as a friend and ally--was utilising the
situation to inflict a humiliation on him or drive him into
a ' defensive' war.
The two secret Councils of State (March 9 and May 3),
at which the Crown Prince and all the high military and
civil authorities were present, revealed the gravity of the
situation. Such secret councils in the history of Prussia
are the invariable prelude to momentous decisions, and still
more momentous action. The whole situation was sur-
veyed, and the responsible opinion of the Prussian staff
was earnestly canvassed. The Chief of the Staff spoke to
men who knew what war, strategy and policy meant.
The upshot was that the King, satisfied that the soldiers
had correctly estimated the military position, decided that
if Austria threatened war, Prussia would fight and Prussia
would be right.
The tension in Prussia and Germany rapidly became
acute. A civil war (a Briiderkrieg) was in sight, and all
those influential sections of society to which war between
Prussia and Austria was a disaster, subversion of the
moral and political order, and the first step to ' the Revo-
lution' were aghast at the cynical wickedness of the
Minister-President, who betrayed the Conservative cause.
L. von Gerlach wrote bitterly to the Minister-President
at this cruel treachery to law and order. Bismarck's visit
to France, the trafficking with Napoleon--the Napoleon
of 1865 was generally held to be an arch-Machiavelli
of Jacobin statecraft--the Augustenburg agitation, and the
widening breach with Austria, inflamed and bewildered
public opinion. The caricature literature of these tense
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? BISMARCK
years reveals the fears and execrations of Conservatives,
Ultramontanes, Particularists of every shade, Nationalists,
Liberals, and Radicals. Bismarck's policy had evoked the
bitter denunciation of every party, and his unpopularity
reached its height in the period from the spring of 1865
to the climax of the final rupture in July 1866.
But unpopularity did not trouble Bismarck. The crisis
was of his own making. 'We have come,' he said to
Austria, ' to where the road divides . . . our tickets take
us upon diverging routes, nor can we in this trip enter
the carriage that you share with others. ' He anticipated
correctly that, if he could achieve his purpose by the
methods he judged suitable, reactionaries and progressives
alike who now were ready to stone him as a traitor, would
hail him as the saviour of Prussia and Germany, and his
methods as the finest expression of efficient German state-
craft. It is not surprising that his experience from 1849
to 1890 confirmed his contempt for public opinion,
whether of the upper or the lower classes, and his belief
that kings, princes, and nobles were even more ready than
professors or tinkers to worship success. It is essentially
characteristic of the man and his statesmanship that in the
heated atmosphere of June 1865 he calmly weighed the
forces in the situation, and decided to state, in the terms of
an ultimatum drawn up at a cabinet council at Regensburg,
the heads of a settlement. The Convention of Gastein
(August T4, 1865) was the diplomatic expression of those
terms. It was Austria, not Bismarck, who had given way.
The Convention provided for the transfer of the ad-
ministration of Holstein to Austria, and of Schleswig to
Prussia, with a joint share in the harbour of Kiel, the forti-
fication of which was to be entrusted to Prussia. Prussia
acquired Lauenburg by a money payment. The division
of the condominium was remarkable. Holstein was now
an Austrian enclave between Prussian Schleswig and the
Prussian kingdom. The Austrian land route to Holstein
was practically controlled by Prussia, and the Austrian fleet
could only reach Kiel by a journey from Trieste to the
North Sea, and before it ever got as far as Brest Bismarck
intended it should be stopped or sunk--by an ally of
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 187
Prussia. The Duke of Augustenburg's claims went into
the wastepaper basket, as also did the sacred and inviolable
principle, which all German historians, Conservatives and
Liberals, had regarded as a greater certainty than the law
of gravitation, that the Duchies since 1460 were 'one and
indivisible. '
The Convention was accepted by William 1. and the
Conservatives with profound relief as' a bloodless victory'
--peace with honour. The shame of a war with Austria
or of a second Olmutz had been triumphantly avoided.
But in the Duchies, in the middle and petty States, and
in the Nationalist, Liberal, and Ultramontane parties the
agreement of the two great German Powers roused deep
indignation. The cause of the duke, of Nationalism and
Liberalism were surrendered in a common betrayal.
Popular meetings at Frankfurt condemned the Convention
as a violation of public law and right which could not be
binding on the Duchies, whose autonomy was so cynically
overridden--and by Austria, the avowed representative
of moral order and legitimism.
Bismarck's view of the Convention is quite clear. The
Napoleonic military maxim ' Engage everywhere and then
see ' summed up his action. Bismarck had engaged ' the
enemy' along the whole line; the Convention enabled
him now ' to see. ' On July 13 he had written to M. von
Blankenburg that 'war with Austria is only a question
of time,' and after the Convention had been settled he
remarked: 'I could never have believed that I would find
an Austrian diplomatist who would have signed such a
document. ' He was quite willing to postpone the struggle
to a more favourable occasion. Neither the Prussian nor
the German nor the European situation was entirely
moulded to his liking. On July 21 he had telegraphed
both to Goltz at Paris to conclude a treaty of neutrality
with France, if the Austrians rejected the ultimatum, and
to Usedom at Florence to inquire officially what the atti-
tude of Italy would be in the case of war. France and
Italy--these were the two harassing uncertainties.
Nor was the German question, apart from the Duchie9,
adequately worked up. Bismarck had not yet been able
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? 188
BISMARCK
to link up a precise Prussian programme of Federal reform
with the issues raised in Schleswig-Holstein, and thereby
proclaim that Prussia was fighting for greater ends than
the mere acquisition of the Duchies wrested from Denmark.
A letter to his wife briefly alludes to the cruel and increas-
ing burden of work and responsibility that the preceding
twelve months had thrust upon him. Daily dispatches
from and to Rome, Florence, Vienna, Munich, Paris, the
direction of foreign policy aggravated by the internal diffi-
culties, the tangle in the Duchies, the military and financial
problems and the necessity of controlling and directing his
ministerial colleagues, and of keeping the King fully in-
formed and true to the straight course--such were some
of his chief cares, and the Minister-President found the
task almost beyond even his powers, while behind the un-
ending toil lay like lead the consciousness that a false step,
an error of judgment, a miscalculation would wreck both
Prussia and himself. His irritable and highly strung
nerves conspired with the white-hot passion within to rob
him of sleep, and to make him brusque, dictatorial, and
harsh. Yet he could always find the necessary half-hour,
when away from his home, to scribble a few lines to his
wife, and in these letters his truest thoughts and many
of his happiest descriptions and judgments are enshrined
with a vivid and unforgettable brevity. Bismarck had a
genuinely German contempt for women who meddled
with politics, and for men who allowed themselves to be
influenced in political affairs by women, whether wives
or mistresses. But to Frau von Bismarck he wrote
always as to one who had a right to know and on whose
judgment and sympathy he could implicitly rely.
Austria was certainly not ready for war. The Habsburg
primacy in Germany was at stake and could not be risked
simply on the Schleswig-Holstein question. Bismarck, in
the last resort, was determined to buy Napoleon or ally
with 'the Revolution'--to fling, if needs be, the whole
'system of 1815 '--treaties and principles, frontiers, and
balance of power--into the conflagration, conscious that
Prussia by her military strength and the exploitation of
National Liberalism, would emerge master probably of
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 189
Germany, as defined in 1849. But Austria, with a hostile
Russia to the north and a mutinous Hungary in the east,
could not buy Napoleon. Still less could she face 'the
Revolution. ' Austria's two deadliest foes, within and
without, were Nationalism and Liberalism, and the irony
of the situation in 1865 was summed up in the truth that
Austria's only genuine friend was Bismarck. Since 1849
Francis Joseph, a true Habsburg, blindly following the
star of the dynasty, and sacrificing all to the principle that
Austria was not a State but a family, had thrown away
opportunity after opportunity. As Richard m. was
haunted in the grey hours of the night before Bosworth
by the procession of the victims of his ambition, so now
Francis Joseph, on the eve of Koniggratz, could see the
procession of dismissed minister after minister sacrificed
to a dynastic obsession. The list was by no means com-
plete in August 1865; the finest opportunities and the
most loyal servants were still to be thrown away. But
had Francis Joseph been gifted with a spark of the imagina-
tion without which all statecraft shrivels at the touch of
reality into the tricks of the diplomatic card-sharper, he
would now have purchased from Bismarck a Prussian
defensive and offensive alliance against all and sundry.
Except as pieces in the mighty game of Prussian ideals,
Bismarck did not care a groschen for Napoleon, Victor
Emmanuel, and Italian Nationalism or for Deak and Magyar
autonomy. The withdrawal of Austria from the Duchies,
acquiescence in a Prussian hegemony north of the Main,
together with a real parity in a reconstructed Federal organi-
sation would have saved Venetia and much else besides for
the Habsburgs, and anticipated (under far more favourable
conditions for Austria) the system of 1879, perhaps even
have revived in a new form the Triple Alliance of 1819.
A big brain and a cool recognition of realities could have
made the Convention of Gastein a treaty that created a
system, not an armistice that simply called a halt, and
thus led up to the foundation of a Central Europe, more
justly poised between Berlin and Vienna than the system
of 1871. Whether such a treaty would have been better
for Europe as a whole it is idle to speculate. At least, it
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? IOO
BISMARCK
would have spared the Continent the triumphant vindica-
tion of force as the sovereign remedy for 'the great
questions of the age' that the war of 1866 provided; it
would have left Bismarck to face the difficulties of the
internal situation in Prussia without the conclusive argu-
ment that ended the constitutional struggle in Prussia,
and began the steady perversion of National Liberalism
from the gospel of Rights to the gospel of Power.
But Francis Joseph, in 1865, did not feel the need of
imagination. He only felt the need of time. Bismarck
needed time too, and he was confident he would make
a better use of the respite than the men who had tried
to bluff him and then shrank back at the counter-threat
of a Prussian mobilisation. Bismarck was neither the
Radowitz nor the Manteuffel of 1850, nor was William 1.
a Frederick William iv. Austria was no longer repre-
sented by a Schwarzenberg. 'The Convention,' Bismarck
pronounced in a memorable phrase, ' simply papered over
the cracks. '
William was grateful for being spared war--as he
thought--by the achievement of a resounding diplomatic
stroke. On September 15 the Minister-President and
his descendants were promoted to the rank of Counts
(Graf). 'In the four years,' wrote the King, ' that have
?
assed since I called you to the head of my government,
russia has gained a position which is worthy of her
history and promises her further fortune and glory. '
? 3. The rupture with Austria--The Treaty of Prague,
1865-1866
The ten months from the Convention of Gastein to
the final rupture on June 23, 1866, when the Prussian
troops entered Bohemia, make a very complicated chapter
in European history. Full justice to the diplomatic
moves and countermoves would require a large canvas
and elaborate detail. In France, Austria, Italy, and the
German States, the directors of policy continuously en-
visaged contradictory aims and alternative lines of action.
German public opinion was in greater bewilderment than
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
ever: fearing and detesting everything that Prussia did,
yet mastered by an intuition that in Prussian strength
and purposeful egoism alone lay all hopes of a permanent
decision. Germany had indeed dragged its anchors, and
was drifting into the storm.
The main lines of Bismarck's statecraft stand out in
the sharpest relief against the blurred and shifting kaleido-
scope. A letter from the devoted Roon, himself toiling
at full concert pitch, to have the Prussian army ready,
speaks of 'Otto's herculean industry day and night and
his reckless demands on his physical strength. . . . He
has now to reckon with the rebellion of his truest and
most submissive subject, his stomach, and is so irritable
and sensitive, particularly over petty matters, that I am
full of anxiety, for I know what is at stake. ' Roon adds
truly, 'complete freedom of mind, a deranged digestion,
and tortured nerves are hard to reconcile. ' But for all
his difficulties, political, mental, and physical, Bismarck
exhibited the one clear and resolute will, the one clear
and unshakable aim in the universal confusion. He was
determined to settle the fate of Prussia and Germany by
the appeal to the sword.
Roon, Moltke, and the Prussian Staff were of the same
determination. Men then and since have convinced
themselves that the war was inevitable, that it lay in the
alleged logic both of history and the situation, and that
after August 14, 1865, the two major States of Germany,
Prussia and Austria, simply slid slowly down inclined
planes to an unavoidable collision. A close study, how-
ever, of these ten months does not support the general
conclusion that wars are unavoidable, and that this
particular one exemplifies such a philosophy of history or
statesmanship.
It would be a complete misreading of Bismarck's policy,
principles, and methods to assert that either before or
after the Convention of Gastein he so completely lost his
grip on the Prussian rudder that he was forced into
fighting. Bismarck may not have believed in ' preventive
wars,' though the definition of a ' preventive war ' would
have to be very carefully drawn before either he or hii
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? BISMARCK
disciples could accept so complete a repudiation; _he
certainly did not believe in wars merely for conquest or
g'ory, and no statesman of the nineteenth. century had a
deeper sense of the responsibility that plunging a State
into war imposes on those who direct policy. _ But in
1865 and in 1866, as in 1870 or in 1864, he willed the
war and he deliberately worked for it.
The secrets of his statecraft will be completely missed
if we do not recognise two elemental postulates ^first,
that in 1865 he rejected every opportunity by which war
might be avoided; secondly, that he worked with stead-
fast patience to remove the obstacles to war, as the final
conclusion of the matter. He could, for example, have
taken up Napoleon's idea of a Congress, and with the
help of Russia (and certainly of Great Britain) have
opened all the festering abscesses in the operating theatre
of the European Concert. Such a course would ha^c
been welcomed by the best minds in Germany and outside
it. But a Congress would not have given him what he
held with passionate conviction was alone worth winning.
War alone, he concluded, would do his business, and
briefly for three reasons. JDeieaj^jjeremptory and con-
clusive, alone would drive Austria out of Germany and
extort the recognition not of Prussia's parity with herself
--the time for that had passed--but of Prussian supre-
macy; Prussian supremacy in Germany required terri-
torial additions to the Prussian State, (not merely Schleswig
and Holstein),, without which her mastery of the new
German organisation would be incomplete, _and such
annexations could only be secured from the defeated and
i'ustified by victory in war: the constitutional conflict in
'russia and the terms of the new organisation could only
be settled if the Prussian monarchy could dictate its will;
war alone, not diplomacy, would confer the dictatorship.
It was not in 1865 any more than "in 1864 or in 1870 the
-end--the unification of Germany on certain principles
and for certain ends--justifying the means. To Bismarck
the State, whose end is Power, does not justify the means,
that are Force. More correctly, the means are simply the
end in process of realisation. The stages through which
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
the purposive life of an organised community passes, he
would have argued, are not means to an end, they are the
successive manifestations of the purpose. Each successive
manifestation is linked with the preceding one, and the
sum of the manifestations is not separable from the end,
and does not require a justification different from that
for the totality of the result. What justifies life as a
whole justifies its successive manifestations or means of
realising itself, and no other justification is admissible or
necessary. Had Bismarck desired or conceived of a
unified Germany consummating the National State which
stands for Right, his methods would have been as different
as the result would have differed from the Prussia and
Germanv he created. But then he would not have been
the Bismarck of history, and his interpretation of life-
values would have been the opposite of what it was. The
impressive conclusions that his action has stamped ferro
et igni on the Germany and Europe of his generation are
two--first, that when a strong State is determined to
find in war a solution of political difficulties and will
accept no other solution, war will result, however un-
willing other States may be to go to war; and secondly,
that while the Germany of 1865 (and Bismarck knew it)
did not want the Bismarckian solution, the Germany of
1890 had been convinced by Bismarck that no other solution
in 1866 would have succeeded or satisfied what Germany
had been taught to recognise as her real ambitions and
needs. The one problem in statesmanship that Bismarck
did not solve for his or any other generation before or
since his time, and had no desire to solve, was how to
defeat the statecraft (that is force) of the State (that
stands for power) without recourse to force or without
repudiating the principle that the State stands for Right
not Might, or without accepting the poison distilled in
the doctrine that ends justify means.
As previously, his first and permanent difficulty lay
with his sovereign. William's education by his minister
in the gospel of Bismarckianism had to begin over again
after August 1865. Once his sovereign's 'conscience'
had been reilluminated, the King would readily misinter-
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? 194
BISMARCK
pret the appeal of military honour as the categorical
imperative of royal and civic duty.
The Liberal opposition in the Prussian Landtag must,
therefore, be provoked to continue its attacks on the
Crown and its advisers. Surrender, therefore, would be
surrender to 'rebels. ' As on June 13 (before Gastein),
so on February 3, 1866, when there were full-dress debates
on the foreign policy of the government, Bismarck
taunted the Progressive leaders with their political
futility, ineptitude, and parliamentary insolence. Their
criticisms on the conduct of affairs he dismissed as the
interference of ignorant trespassers on the prerogatives
of the Crown. This autocratic attitude in 'The House
of Phrases ' was largely tactical. Not there, but in France
and Italy, were the keys of the major political strategy.
Italy, in August 1865, had signified that jit was_ im-
possible for hex jri_a Jfra^
idle spectator. A Prussian alliance with Italy was danger-
ous; committal to the Italian programme opened serious
questionings; behind Florence lay Rome and the Papal
froblem. The year 1864 had seen the issue of the famous
yllabus which seriously perturbed the intellectuals of
German Liberalism and heated the Clericals in South
Germany and in France. The parties in Germany were,
in fact, marching to the Kulturkampf. Bismarck rightly
feared that Napoleon might, in has resentment_at" a
Prussian treaty with Italy behind his back, come to terms
with Austria, secure Venetia for Italy, in return for com-
pensation in Germany tQ Austria at Prussia's. expense,
and compensation to himself ux the Rhej^sh__pr^yinces.
The possibility of an anti-Prussian coalition was no idle
chimera of an overstrained mind in the Wilhelmstrasse.
Had there been a statesman of the first rank either at
Paris, Florence, or Vienna, a very ugly turn indeed could
have been given to the situation. As it was, Bismarck
had to deal with Napoleon, Drouyn de Lhuys, La
Marmora, and Mensdorff. The price that nations pay
when their destinies are in the hands of the intellectually
second-rate is set out with damning precision in the next
four year*.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
Napoleon had to be brought to a definite understanding.
On October I Bismarck was in Paris, and on October 3
at Biarritz--the third of three momentous visits. By <
November 7 he was back in Berlin. He had threshed out
the difficulties both in the Villa Eugenie at Biarritz, and
at St. Cloud with Napoleon and his ministers, and had
virtually accomplished the difficult task of securing
Napoleon's benevolent neutrality, without any awkward
promissory notes, which could be presented for payment
at sight at some future date. Prosper Merimee has put
on record his personal impression of the Minister-Presi-
dent--of his vigour and power and also of his irresistible
charm (a quality we are apt to forget Bismarck possessed
in a remarkable degree). But even in 1865 Merimee did
not take seriously the political ideas that Bismarck ex-
Sressed with such disarming and genial exuberance. Like
Fapoleon, Merimee thought the Minister-President was
sometimes really not quite sane, a Prussian Gascon whose
judgment was clouded by a misinterpretation of realities.
These momentous conferences at the Villa Eugenie provide
a dramatic contrast between the Prussian, in the zenith
of his physical and intellectual powers, alert, adamantine,
probing every weak point, and masking it all under an
amazing frankness--and, on the other side, the Emperor,
tired, puzzled, disillusioned, indecisive, yet clinging to his
dreams which he mistook for profound insight into the
Time-spirit. He was already suffering from the disease
that killed him; already conscious that the noonday of
the Empire had passed and that the shadows were falling,
the shadows that came from the coup tfttat.
Why Napoleon did not insist on a bargain in black and
white, and on pinning Bismarck down to a definite com-
pensation, is, indeed, a problem. Napoleon had a definite
article to sell, French neutrality, which the purchaser,
Bismarck, needed above all things. The experience of
1864 should have convinced the Emperor that he was
dealing with a man whose verbal promises were worthless,
and he should not have parted with French neutrality
except for a bond in writing. Even if, as is probable,
Bismarck had later repudiated the bond, Napoleon would
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? 196
BISMARCK
have had it to convince France and Europe. Napoleon,
it is true, was in a grave dilemma. He feared that
Bismarck, foiled at Paris, might settle with Austria and
re-establish the Triple Alliance of 1815 against France.
The obvious reply to such a menace was a threat to unite
with Austria and her South German Allies against Prussia.
But the real crux for Napoleon lay, as always, in Italy.
The Clericals would not let him evacuate Rome, and his
own 'nationalism' drove him to desire to complete the
work of 1859 by procuring Venetia for the kingdom of
Italy. It was not so much that Napoleon did not know
what compensation he really wanted as that he could not
openly ask for it--the left bank of the Rhine or Belgium.
The former brought him up against the dead wall of
Prussia--the latter against the dead wall of Great Britain
and the Treaty of 1839. Napoleon therefore postponed
the decision. His 'compensation' was to be defined
later. He jtrusted in his 'star' and on his calculation
that a Prusso-Austrian War would be a bloody and in-
decisive struggle, in which France could intervene . and
dictate her compensation either on both combatants
or on one by allying with the other. But the idea
rested on two fatal errors of judgment, which Napoleon
shared with most contemporary statesmen in Europe--an
exaggerated estimate of Austrian strength and jof_J^Ee
readiness of the French army--a complete ignorance of
the Prussian army as remoulded by the Prussian General
Staff. Bismarck and Moltke were in complete agreement
that if Prussia could not make war she had better go out
of business altogether.
Italy was now invited by Bismarck to conclude a com-
mercial alliance with the Zollverein. Such an economic
understanding, Bismarck told the Italian ambassador,
would have a high political significance for the future.
The negotiations were pressed, and by November 15 the
treaty was ready for the respective ratifications (March 3,
1866).
The next step was to put the screw on Austria.
Austria, of course, was ' behaving very badly ' in Holstein
--she was permitting the Augustenburg agitation to go
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 197
on with Kiel as its headquarters. This was a plain
violation of the Convention of Gastein, disturbing to
Prussia in her occupation of Schleswig, and keeping open
a sore that the Convention had healed. On January 26,
1866, Bismarck sent a rasping protest to Vienna. The
Austrian administration oJJHolstem^was intolerable; the
Augustenburg agitation must be promptly suppressed.
Austria was making herself ' the champion of the Revolu-
tion. ' The Austrian reply of February 9 informed the
Prussian government that the alliance of 1864 was at an
end. The position had reverted to the period before the
"Danish war, and Austrian relations with Prussia were
neither better nor worse than with any other European
Power. On February 28 a secret Council of State was
held in Berlin at which the Crown Prince, the military
chiefs, the Prussian ambassador at Paris, Goltz, specially
summoned, and, of course, Bismarck and the King, were
present. William decided that every diplomatic effort
compatible wrthTPrussian honour and safety must be made
to maintain peace. 'After having prayed to God,' the
King said, cto lead him in the right path, he should
consider the war, if it came, as a just one. '
On March 3 William wrote personally to Napoleon to
propose a definite understanding; next day the project
of an offensive and defensive alliance with Italy was taken
seriously in hand. At the Council of February 28,
Moltke had expressed his considered judgment that with
the neutrality of France, the military aid of Italy, and the
consequent division of the Austrian army by war on two
fronts, victory might be regarded as reasonably certain.
With General Govone, sent from Florence, Bismarck now
worked hard to conclude the Italian treaty. Not with-
out great difficulty. Both sides thoroughly distrusted
each other. The Italians, mindful of 1859, feared that
Prussia would embroil them with Austria, and then either
evade its share or settle the German quarrel at Italy's
expense. Nor had they any confidence in Bismarck's
honesty or honour. Bismarck, on his side, suspected that
Italy intended to utilise Prussia simply to obtain Venetia,
and was quite indifferent to the real issue--Prussian
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? 198
BISMARCK
supremacy in Germany: he desired to tie Italy down to
a specific engagement while leaving a free hand for him-
self. The project very nearly broke down on the crucial
point, which of the partners was to pick the quarrel and
open the fray. Each desired the other to make a war, in
which its ally would then promptly join. But the diffi-
culties were surmounted. Both Italy and Prussia needed
each other too much to allow the negotiations to end in
nothing. On April 8 the treaty was finished. It pro-
vided that, if a Prussian reform of the Germanic Con^
federation failed and Prussia was forced to take up arms,
Italy was to declare war; there was to be no peace pr_
armistice without the consent of both States, but consent
was not to be withheld if Venetia were ceded to Italy
and an equivalent in Austrian territory to Prussia ;^Jthk
Italian navy was to hinder the Austrian ships from reaching
the Baltic; and the treaty was to be valid only. fpr_three
months unless Prussia declared war.
'The treaty imposed on Italy obligations but no rights.
It did not specifically provide for Prussian help if Austria
declared war on Italy and kept the peace in Germany.
But it secured three vital guarantees for Prussia. It
made the casus foederis dependent on the German question
of Federal reform by Prussia (that was for William's
conscience); it blocked Napoleon as protector of Italy
from hostilities with Prussia (that was for the Tuileries);
it reserved to Prussia the right to make war, when and if
it chose (that was for Bismarck). Bismarck, in fact, was
in a similar position to Cavour after the compact of
Plombieres. He had to provoke war within a definite
period or lose the advantages of the treaty.
The international situation was thus cleared up, for
Napoleon had replied to William's letter with an assur-
ance of neutrality, the compensation for which was to
be defined later--always later. Bismarck might well
reflect on royal human nature, when he recalled that ten
years earlier his master at Coblenz had repudiated, as
a dishonourable temptation, the proposal that Prussia
should come to terms with Napoleon, and had pronounced
such an idea to be that of a schoolboy not a statesman.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 199
William's personal letter to the 'man of sin' recalls
Maria Theresa's letter to the ' woman of sin,' the Pompa-
dour, in each case to secure an alliance in order to annex.
To what concessions will not 'conscience' compel
honourable and royal men and women.
Austria had replied to the Council of February 28 at
Berlin by a week of State Councils at Vienna (March 7-13),
at which Benedek, who had prepared his army and cam-
paigns in Venetia, was present. Poor, gallant Benedek,
presently to be transferred from Venetia to Bohemia, in
order that an archduke might win in Italy, while the
general, assigned to command in a Bohemia that he did
not know an ill-organised army that did not know him,
was to be broken for his failure--the scapegoat's last
services to the incompetence of a selfish dynasty. Such
were the sacrifices that the Habsburgs expected and
obtained from their best servants.
The Italian negotiations justifiably alarmed Austria:
they caused consternation in the Conservative, fierce
indignation in the Ultramontane, camp in Germany.
