Statesmen
who spend half their lives preparing to force war on their
unprepared neighbours invariably spend the other half
in meeting the wars they are convinced their neighbours
intend to force upon them.
who spend half their lives preparing to force war on their
unprepared neighbours invariably spend the other half
in meeting the wars they are convinced their neighbours
intend to force upon them.
Robertson - Bismarck
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
173
scarcely knew where Schleswig-Holstein could be found
on the map, but we were ready to threaten what we had
no intention of performing, and we hectored every one
with the complacent superiority that deserves the title of
insular. The gravity of the German and European situa-
tion was quite unappreciated, because there are none so
blind as those who do not wish to see. The language of
responsible public men, and not merely of Palmerston, of
politicians, and of ' Society,' naturally misled the Danes,
who made the pardonable mistake of supposing that
England meant what she said, and of interpreting ignorant
bluster as moral conviction. 'I wasted several years of
my life,' Bismarck remarked, 'by the supposition that
England was a great nation. ' The price that we paid then
and subsequently was the price that we deserved to pay.
A nation with responsible parliamentary government is
not the victim but the author of its government's blunders;
and if it seeks to transfer the responsibility to politicians
and a party system, or some other scapegoat, it is guilty
of the lie in the soul.
Bismarck's first step was to secure Austria. It did not
escape his attention that Austria, compared with Prussia,
was in a very unfavourable position for effective military
and political action in the Duchies. Austria, humiliated
by the Polish fiasco and the failure of the Congress of
Princes, was only too ready to listen to the Prussian over-
tures. The rejection by the Federal Diet (January 14)
of the Prussian proposal, that Austria and Prussia, in virtue
of their international position, should occupy Schleswig
in order to secure the observance of the Convention, was
tantamount to a declaration that the Diet repudiated the
his policy and aims. The effect of these utterances on public opinion
at Copenhagen, throughout Germany, and at Berlin and Vienna, is not a
question of speculation. Morier and others saw with pain how our newspapers
encouraged the Danes, angered while patronising the German Liberals, inflamed
the tension, and were carefully studied by Bismarck, who was accurately in-
formed of the ignorance and bluster in London. 'England,' said a Prussian
deputy, 'is always full of consideration for those who can defend themselves. '
And the England of 1863-64 aUo seems to have been convinced that (a) the
British fleet had only to appear and Prussia would retire in humble fear;
and (A) still more characteristic, that military states would conduct their
military operations as our Government and War Office had conducted the
Crimean War.
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? 174
BISMARCK
Convention; it compelled Austria to accept the Prussian
alliance. 'We recognise,' said Bismarck, ' in King Chris-
tian the heir both of the rights and the wrongs of his
predecessor; our fidelity to treaties must be open to no
impeachment. ' The Treaty of January 16, 1864, bound
Austria and Prussia to determine the future of the Duchies
by joint agreement and to decide the succession question
only by common consent. It ruled out agreements with
a third party, and it made the two States, as guarantors
of the Convention and Protocol of 1852, a single State to
all intents and purposes. Austria could henceforward
only oppose Prussia or act with the Federal Diet, or another
European Power, by tearing up the treaty, which proved,
as Bismarck intended it to be, a millstone round Austria's
neck. It was to be the connecting link between the
German question and the question of the Duchies. Had
the Danes now accepted the Austro-Prussian ultimatum
of January 16, to withdraw the new constitution and place
the situation in the hands of the Powers, there must have
been at least delay, and time would have been brought on
to the Danish side. The Danish government knew, as
every one did, that Great Britain had previously rejected
the reference to a Congress. The British government was
of opinion that King Christian's claims to the Duchies
could not be questioned. The ultimatum was accordingly
rejected.
Bismarck afterwards smilingly admitted that a Danish
acceptance would have been a serious upset to his plans;
but he added, probably with truth, '1 had ascertained
that the Danes would certainly refuse, otherwise I should
not have taken the risk. ' The Danes, moreover, were only
given forty-eight hours to decide, and the Austro-Prussian
army crossed the frontier at once. The Prussian note of
January 31 virtually proclaimed that Danish resistance
ad torn the Convention of London to shreds and tatters.
And Danish resistance was openly applauded in England
--which expected to see 1849 repeated in 1864. So much
did England know of Prussia and of Denmark.
The situation was certainly peculiar. Saxon and Hano-
verian troops were acting for the Federal Diet, whose
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 175
jurisdiction was limited to Holstein. The Austrian and
Prussian troops, representing two signatories to the
Convention of 1852, could coerce Denmark, for the Con-
vention applied to the whole kingdom and not merely to
the Duchies. France, Great Britain, and Russia had an
equal right with Austria and Prussia to intervene; and
Austria and Prussia by themselves could not draw up a
new, or restore the old, Convention. A Congress was
inevitable. The Prussian General Staff, on its mettle,
recognised that the pace must be forced. The storm of
the Diippel lines (April 18) drove the Danes to accept
reference to a Congress at London, and the armistice of
April 18 left Austria and Prussia in practical possession of
the Duchies. Germany was jubilant: 1848 was avenged.
It only remained now for Europe to sever the Duchies
from Denmark, install the Duke of Augustenburg, and the
business was over.
'The business,' Bismarck had decided, was only begin-
ning. The Prussian Staff would not be whistled off its
prey by journalists in Printing House Square or Fleet
Street; the King, who flattered himself that he had faced a
scaffold in Unter Den Linden for the army, felt it was good
to be a Hohenzollern; and even the most rebellious
Prussian Radical had pride in the soldiers of Prussia. 'It
will not be amiss,' Bismarck concluded, 'if we enter the
Congress in possession of the object in dispute. ' But the
floors of European Congresses are notoriously slippery.
Bismarck, represented by Bernstorff in London, was deter-
mined to make the Congress end in a stalemate. He
could always block what he did not want, and then propose
what he felt sure would be rejected by others. The blood
and iron of the Prussian sword could then bring the curtain
down on the first act.
War was only a continuation of policy, a means to give yon
the terms on which you wish to live with your neighbours;
and Bismarck had three fine cards to play. A settlement
against the will of the Duchies was no settlement (that
appealed to Napoleon with his itch for plebiscites); the
restoration of the Duchies to Denmark would be violently
opposed by Germany, and every Augustenburger in Europe
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? 176
BISMARCK
(that was for the Queen of Great Britain, the widow of a
Coburg prince); a partition could probably be wrecked on
its details (that was for himself). Where in the Duchies did
the Danish fringe end and the German begin? Bismarck
had a crushing answer to the proposals of his opponents in
London. If he was thwarted he would resign, with the
result that Prussia, in the hands of the overwhelming oppo-
sition in the Landtag, would join the Diet and the princes
in supporting the Duke of Augustenburg, and Europe
would be confronted with a united Germany, holding the
Duchies in its possession and determined to fight for their
retention. He kept his hand on German nationalism,
and now opened the throttle to let the superheated steam
out. From the Wilhelmstrasse he invited the journalists
and the professors to lash public opinion into a frenzy.
'Let the whole pack go,' he commanded; and 'the whole
pack' let themselves go with German thoroughness and
rhetoric. As a corrective he encouraged Russia to revive
the claims of the house of Oldenburg, passed over in 1852.
Nor--he quietly insinuated--were the dynastic claims of
a Prussian claimant to be wholly overlooked.
The interest of the Congress does not lie in its tedious
details of proposals1 rejected by one or other of the parties,
but in the steady sapping and countermining by Prussia, so
as to bring about a deadlock. Clarendon penetrated the
blocking tactics. It was then too late. British public
opinion, confronted with a disinterested war by Great
Britain alone for two wretched Duchies on behalf of an un-
reasonable Denmark, which rejected every compromise, had
not the vision or the knowledge to graspthe significance for
Europe of Schleswig-Holstein, and the situation had been
so bungled by the British government and so skilfully en-
gineered by Bismarck that war on behalf of Denmark was
war with Liberal Germany. Our Court was determined to
1 The proposal to return to the position defined in the Convention of 1852
was rejected by Germany, Austria, and Prussia; the proposal to install the
Duke of Augustenburg in the Duchies, separated from Denmark, made by
Austria and Prussia, was rejected by Denmark and Great Britain; the British
proposal to divide Schleswig at the line of the river Schlei was rejected by
Germany; the Danish proposal to make the river Eider the frontier was
rejected by Prussia.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 177
keep England out of war, and the ministers,- divided
amongst themselves, shrank from involving the Crown in
a ministerial crisis, in which it was very uncertain that
public opinion would support them. The government
had not decided in advance whether it was a British interest
to fight, and, if it was not, what line of action would
spare Great Britain from a humiliating rebuff and
treachery to friends it had deceived. Napoleon, 'the
Man of Sin,' was playing with the idea (suggested by
the Arch-Tempter) that the most reasonable solution
was to recognise the Nationalist principle and assign
the Duchies to Prussia as the representative of that
principle--of course for a compensation to be denned
later. The policy of disinterested idealism and the
policy of pourboir'es--the policy of the benevolent
heart and the policy of the calculating brain--are hard
to harmonise at any time, but the harmony is im-
possible for a muddled head and a heart suffering from
valvular disease.
While the Congress wrangled Bismarck was clearing a
difficulty of his own out of the way. Through the Crown
Prince and M. Duncker he gave the Duke of Augustenburg
an interview at Berlin (June 1). The King and the Crown
Prince were apparently confident that it would result in
the adoption by Bismarck of Augustenburg as the candi-
date of Prussia. It is impossible to reconcile the narratives
of that memorable scene, which come first hand from
Bismarck and the duke. Recent German critical scholar-
ship has held that the duke's story is the more trustworthy,
which is quite probable, but the controversy, though a
fascinating study in evidential sources, does not affect the
result. When the two men parted at midnight of June 1
Bismarck had decided that he had finished with the duke,
and the duke recognised that he would be installed in
the Duchies only by Bismarck's expulsion from office.
Bismarck expounded the difficulties, legal and political, of
enforcing the duke's claims; but if the duke were prepared
to agree to certain conditions, which would place the
Duchies in the military and administrative control of
Prussia, he would work on his behalf. The conditions
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? i78
BISMARCK
were such as to establish a virtual Prussian protectorate,
under which the duke would be nominally sovereign, but
in all essentials he would simply be the President (Regie-
rungs Oberprasident) of a Prussian province. The Duchies
were, in short, to be the ducal scabbard of the Prussian
sword. The duke rejected the conditions, as incom-
patible with his independence as a sovereign prince and his
desire to be an autonomous and Liberal ruler. When he
walked out into the summer night, he was walking out of
history. Upstairs the Minister-President was shrugging
his shoulders. Liberals never would see that half a loaf was
better than no bread. It was now quite clear that annexa-
tion-to Prussia was the only tolerable solution. Annexa-
tion? How? Would Austria consent to a Prussian
annexation?
The Congress broke up on June 25 on the deadlock that
Bismarck desired. Its debates registered three results:
first, that the Convention of 1852 had gone into the waste-
paper basket; secondly, that no alternative settlement had
been arrived at; and thirdly,--the really momentous
result--that Bismarck had smashed the Concert of Europe
into fragments. Henceforward one of the main prin-
ciples of his policy, not merely in the Schleswig-Holstein
affair, was to prevent the fragments from re-uniting.
German sentiment supported this policy. As long as the
European Powers fell out, Prussia and Germany would
come by their own. The next six years provided the
proof. Beust--the representative of the Federal Diet at
London--whom defeat always prompted to epigrams, said
happily enough: 'The conference closed after some very
animated debates, as a Black Forest clock sometimes stops
after ticking more loudly than usual. ' 'You came,' said
Clarendon to Bernstorff, 'into the conference as masters
of the situation, and as masters of the situation you now
leave it. Have a care how long that will last. ' Bismarck
appreciated the compliment from an experienced states-
man. As for the threat, he had the care to see that ' that *
lasted from 1864 to 1890. The disappointment at Wind-
sor Castle was even more bitter than Clarendon's disgust.
The failure of the Congress was a grievous blow to dynastic
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 179
Liberalism in Germany. 1 Our Court agreed with another
remark of Clarendon's: 'Je ne veux plus jamais rien avoir
a faire avec cet homme sans foi ni loi qui s'appelle M. de
Bismarck, ni celui qui est son negre M. de Rechberg
(the Austrian Prime Minister). ' Clarendon was to have
another bout later on with the man without faith or law,
and to fare no better.
Hostilities were resumed. The Danes saw the security
of their islands smashed in when Alsen was captured
(June 29) by the skill of the Prussian Chief of the Staff.
The miracle of British help, for which to the last they had
hoped against hope, was not vouchsafed. On August 1,
to avoid the fall of Copenhagen, preliminaries of peace
were signed. The Duchies were handed over in full sove-
reignty to Austria and Prussia conjointly, who in accord-
ance with the treaty of January 16, would now conjointly
determine their ultimate fate. The major military opera-
tions were over; but the major strategy of diplomacy had
simply closed the first phase of the campaign. 'We were
liberated Schleswig and Holstein to leave poor King
Christian in peace. ' For Bismarck the annexation of the
conquered Duchies was only a part, and not the most im-
portant part, of the great problem--the solution of the
German question in accordance with Prussian principles
and interests. The enemy in that vast field was Prussia's
ally Austria. And until Austria was as decisively defeated
as Denmark Prussia could not impose her terms.
The Prussian army had had a dress rehearsal in the
Danish campaign. It had justified itself. Let the
soldiers now see to it that the experience was used to pre-
pare the army for the much more serious trial that lay
ahead. 'The occasion for such a war,' Bismarck wrote in
December 1862, ' can be found at any moment, when our
position with regard to the great Powers is favourable for
carrying it on. ' But the tremendous task imposed on the
director of Prussian policy was how to force a war upon
1 'The Queen cannot but think that this country . . . has no other course
but to withdraw, and to refuse to take any further part in this lamentable
contest/ (Mem. to Lord Granville, June 27,1S64. Lift, i. p. 475. )
remarked later, 'once we had
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? i8o
BISMARCK
Austria, and at the same time convince King William,
Prussia, Germany if possible, and Europe, that it was
Austria forcing the war on Prussia; how also to link the
interests of Germany with the essential interests of Prussia,
and how to secure the European situation that would
leave Prussia to fight in a closed ring fence with Austria,
and garner undisturbed the fruits of victory. A Congress
of Paris, London, or Vienna to rearrange the map of
Europe and the organisation of Germany would be fatal
to a Prussian settlement. Bismarck's diplomacy in the
next eighteen months reveals his interpretation of the
situation: first, the settlement of the Duchies must be
kept open; secondly, the key of the international situation
lay at Paris; thirdly, that so far from quarrelling with
Austria in 1864 the benefits of the alliance were by no
means exhausted and must be exploited a great deal
further. 'So long,' he said, 'as we--Austria and Prussia
--remain united no one of the great Powers will move a
finger to disturb the status quo. ' What Bismarck really
intended was that they should not move a finger if Austria
and Prussia fell out--as they were bound to do.
From September 1862 (and earlier) until September
1870 at least, a repetition by Francis Joseph of
the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 was perpetually in
his thoughts. France and Austria had then laid aside
their historic antagonism to unite against the troubler of
the peace--Frederick the Great. Bismarck realised that
in autocracies, such as Austria, Russia, or the Second
Empire (as in the Europe of the ancien rigime) policy
could be shaped by the sovereign entirely against the
popular wish or sentiment, and Bismarck's handling of
Russia both before and after 1870 explicitly rested on his
hold not on Russian sentiment--as he told the Reichstag
in 1888--but on the Tsar. Great Britain was quite
different; for there you had to deal with a nation that
could coerce, and could not be coerced by, its government.
In diplomacy the power of the autocracies had great ad-
vantages, but also one great disadvantage. The auto-
cratic State might be quickly switched off into a new orbit,
to suit the policy of its governor. The psychology of the
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 181
statecraft of power reveals one simple categorical impera-
tive of state-reason: never let others do to you what you
would do to them, and it is one of the supreme penalties
of that statecraft, imposed on its disciples, invariably to
expect foul play as the riposte to foul play.
Statesmen
who spend half their lives preparing to force war on their
unprepared neighbours invariably spend the other half
in meeting the wars they are convinced their neighbours
intend to force upon them. The incapacity of a de-
bauchee autocrat is, therefore, a better security of the
peace of Europe than the ambitions of genius. The sove-
reign who covets his neighbour's wife is less harmful in
the long run than the Minister-President of an autocracy
who covets his neighbour's lands.
For Bismarck it was not necessary to secure France as
an accomplice--and he could not have secured France--
but it was essential to secure Napoleon. That the policy
of which Napoleon was to be the accomplice was wholly
opposed to the interests of France, indeed was to be the
basis of France's ultimate ruin, was obvious to Bismarck;
and, in his mind, ought to have been obvious to Napoleon.
Yet, if the interest of Prussia could only be gained by the
ruin of France, it was the duty of a Prussian statesman to
ruin France. For Bismarck the ethics were irrelevant:
the real problem was of a wholly different kind--how to
secure the essential neutrality of Napoleon without paying
for it except in vague promises that could always be
repudiated, or in a good will which he did not feel. The
compact of Plombieres could now or at any time be re-
peated by the compact of Biarritz. But pride and national
sentiment were far too strong for so simple a solution. He
was not Cavour, nor was Prussia the kingdom of Sardinia.
He said, truly enough, that in listening to Napoleon's over-
tures he felt like Joseph tempted by Potiphar's wife; and
the cession of German territory, even if it did not belong
to Prussia, as the price of French support stirred genuine
and fierce resentment within him. For to Bismarck, as to
all the Germans of his day, France was the one irreconcil-
able foe with whom Prussia and Germany had a long ac-
count to settle. For Napoleon himself Bismarck seems
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? 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.
? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
173
scarcely knew where Schleswig-Holstein could be found
on the map, but we were ready to threaten what we had
no intention of performing, and we hectored every one
with the complacent superiority that deserves the title of
insular. The gravity of the German and European situa-
tion was quite unappreciated, because there are none so
blind as those who do not wish to see. The language of
responsible public men, and not merely of Palmerston, of
politicians, and of ' Society,' naturally misled the Danes,
who made the pardonable mistake of supposing that
England meant what she said, and of interpreting ignorant
bluster as moral conviction. 'I wasted several years of
my life,' Bismarck remarked, 'by the supposition that
England was a great nation. ' The price that we paid then
and subsequently was the price that we deserved to pay.
A nation with responsible parliamentary government is
not the victim but the author of its government's blunders;
and if it seeks to transfer the responsibility to politicians
and a party system, or some other scapegoat, it is guilty
of the lie in the soul.
Bismarck's first step was to secure Austria. It did not
escape his attention that Austria, compared with Prussia,
was in a very unfavourable position for effective military
and political action in the Duchies. Austria, humiliated
by the Polish fiasco and the failure of the Congress of
Princes, was only too ready to listen to the Prussian over-
tures. The rejection by the Federal Diet (January 14)
of the Prussian proposal, that Austria and Prussia, in virtue
of their international position, should occupy Schleswig
in order to secure the observance of the Convention, was
tantamount to a declaration that the Diet repudiated the
his policy and aims. The effect of these utterances on public opinion
at Copenhagen, throughout Germany, and at Berlin and Vienna, is not a
question of speculation. Morier and others saw with pain how our newspapers
encouraged the Danes, angered while patronising the German Liberals, inflamed
the tension, and were carefully studied by Bismarck, who was accurately in-
formed of the ignorance and bluster in London. 'England,' said a Prussian
deputy, 'is always full of consideration for those who can defend themselves. '
And the England of 1863-64 aUo seems to have been convinced that (a) the
British fleet had only to appear and Prussia would retire in humble fear;
and (A) still more characteristic, that military states would conduct their
military operations as our Government and War Office had conducted the
Crimean War.
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? 174
BISMARCK
Convention; it compelled Austria to accept the Prussian
alliance. 'We recognise,' said Bismarck, ' in King Chris-
tian the heir both of the rights and the wrongs of his
predecessor; our fidelity to treaties must be open to no
impeachment. ' The Treaty of January 16, 1864, bound
Austria and Prussia to determine the future of the Duchies
by joint agreement and to decide the succession question
only by common consent. It ruled out agreements with
a third party, and it made the two States, as guarantors
of the Convention and Protocol of 1852, a single State to
all intents and purposes. Austria could henceforward
only oppose Prussia or act with the Federal Diet, or another
European Power, by tearing up the treaty, which proved,
as Bismarck intended it to be, a millstone round Austria's
neck. It was to be the connecting link between the
German question and the question of the Duchies. Had
the Danes now accepted the Austro-Prussian ultimatum
of January 16, to withdraw the new constitution and place
the situation in the hands of the Powers, there must have
been at least delay, and time would have been brought on
to the Danish side. The Danish government knew, as
every one did, that Great Britain had previously rejected
the reference to a Congress. The British government was
of opinion that King Christian's claims to the Duchies
could not be questioned. The ultimatum was accordingly
rejected.
Bismarck afterwards smilingly admitted that a Danish
acceptance would have been a serious upset to his plans;
but he added, probably with truth, '1 had ascertained
that the Danes would certainly refuse, otherwise I should
not have taken the risk. ' The Danes, moreover, were only
given forty-eight hours to decide, and the Austro-Prussian
army crossed the frontier at once. The Prussian note of
January 31 virtually proclaimed that Danish resistance
ad torn the Convention of London to shreds and tatters.
And Danish resistance was openly applauded in England
--which expected to see 1849 repeated in 1864. So much
did England know of Prussia and of Denmark.
The situation was certainly peculiar. Saxon and Hano-
verian troops were acting for the Federal Diet, whose
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 175
jurisdiction was limited to Holstein. The Austrian and
Prussian troops, representing two signatories to the
Convention of 1852, could coerce Denmark, for the Con-
vention applied to the whole kingdom and not merely to
the Duchies. France, Great Britain, and Russia had an
equal right with Austria and Prussia to intervene; and
Austria and Prussia by themselves could not draw up a
new, or restore the old, Convention. A Congress was
inevitable. The Prussian General Staff, on its mettle,
recognised that the pace must be forced. The storm of
the Diippel lines (April 18) drove the Danes to accept
reference to a Congress at London, and the armistice of
April 18 left Austria and Prussia in practical possession of
the Duchies. Germany was jubilant: 1848 was avenged.
It only remained now for Europe to sever the Duchies
from Denmark, install the Duke of Augustenburg, and the
business was over.
'The business,' Bismarck had decided, was only begin-
ning. The Prussian Staff would not be whistled off its
prey by journalists in Printing House Square or Fleet
Street; the King, who flattered himself that he had faced a
scaffold in Unter Den Linden for the army, felt it was good
to be a Hohenzollern; and even the most rebellious
Prussian Radical had pride in the soldiers of Prussia. 'It
will not be amiss,' Bismarck concluded, 'if we enter the
Congress in possession of the object in dispute. ' But the
floors of European Congresses are notoriously slippery.
Bismarck, represented by Bernstorff in London, was deter-
mined to make the Congress end in a stalemate. He
could always block what he did not want, and then propose
what he felt sure would be rejected by others. The blood
and iron of the Prussian sword could then bring the curtain
down on the first act.
War was only a continuation of policy, a means to give yon
the terms on which you wish to live with your neighbours;
and Bismarck had three fine cards to play. A settlement
against the will of the Duchies was no settlement (that
appealed to Napoleon with his itch for plebiscites); the
restoration of the Duchies to Denmark would be violently
opposed by Germany, and every Augustenburger in Europe
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? 176
BISMARCK
(that was for the Queen of Great Britain, the widow of a
Coburg prince); a partition could probably be wrecked on
its details (that was for himself). Where in the Duchies did
the Danish fringe end and the German begin? Bismarck
had a crushing answer to the proposals of his opponents in
London. If he was thwarted he would resign, with the
result that Prussia, in the hands of the overwhelming oppo-
sition in the Landtag, would join the Diet and the princes
in supporting the Duke of Augustenburg, and Europe
would be confronted with a united Germany, holding the
Duchies in its possession and determined to fight for their
retention. He kept his hand on German nationalism,
and now opened the throttle to let the superheated steam
out. From the Wilhelmstrasse he invited the journalists
and the professors to lash public opinion into a frenzy.
'Let the whole pack go,' he commanded; and 'the whole
pack' let themselves go with German thoroughness and
rhetoric. As a corrective he encouraged Russia to revive
the claims of the house of Oldenburg, passed over in 1852.
Nor--he quietly insinuated--were the dynastic claims of
a Prussian claimant to be wholly overlooked.
The interest of the Congress does not lie in its tedious
details of proposals1 rejected by one or other of the parties,
but in the steady sapping and countermining by Prussia, so
as to bring about a deadlock. Clarendon penetrated the
blocking tactics. It was then too late. British public
opinion, confronted with a disinterested war by Great
Britain alone for two wretched Duchies on behalf of an un-
reasonable Denmark, which rejected every compromise, had
not the vision or the knowledge to graspthe significance for
Europe of Schleswig-Holstein, and the situation had been
so bungled by the British government and so skilfully en-
gineered by Bismarck that war on behalf of Denmark was
war with Liberal Germany. Our Court was determined to
1 The proposal to return to the position defined in the Convention of 1852
was rejected by Germany, Austria, and Prussia; the proposal to install the
Duke of Augustenburg in the Duchies, separated from Denmark, made by
Austria and Prussia, was rejected by Denmark and Great Britain; the British
proposal to divide Schleswig at the line of the river Schlei was rejected by
Germany; the Danish proposal to make the river Eider the frontier was
rejected by Prussia.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 177
keep England out of war, and the ministers,- divided
amongst themselves, shrank from involving the Crown in
a ministerial crisis, in which it was very uncertain that
public opinion would support them. The government
had not decided in advance whether it was a British interest
to fight, and, if it was not, what line of action would
spare Great Britain from a humiliating rebuff and
treachery to friends it had deceived. Napoleon, 'the
Man of Sin,' was playing with the idea (suggested by
the Arch-Tempter) that the most reasonable solution
was to recognise the Nationalist principle and assign
the Duchies to Prussia as the representative of that
principle--of course for a compensation to be denned
later. The policy of disinterested idealism and the
policy of pourboir'es--the policy of the benevolent
heart and the policy of the calculating brain--are hard
to harmonise at any time, but the harmony is im-
possible for a muddled head and a heart suffering from
valvular disease.
While the Congress wrangled Bismarck was clearing a
difficulty of his own out of the way. Through the Crown
Prince and M. Duncker he gave the Duke of Augustenburg
an interview at Berlin (June 1). The King and the Crown
Prince were apparently confident that it would result in
the adoption by Bismarck of Augustenburg as the candi-
date of Prussia. It is impossible to reconcile the narratives
of that memorable scene, which come first hand from
Bismarck and the duke. Recent German critical scholar-
ship has held that the duke's story is the more trustworthy,
which is quite probable, but the controversy, though a
fascinating study in evidential sources, does not affect the
result. When the two men parted at midnight of June 1
Bismarck had decided that he had finished with the duke,
and the duke recognised that he would be installed in
the Duchies only by Bismarck's expulsion from office.
Bismarck expounded the difficulties, legal and political, of
enforcing the duke's claims; but if the duke were prepared
to agree to certain conditions, which would place the
Duchies in the military and administrative control of
Prussia, he would work on his behalf. The conditions
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? i78
BISMARCK
were such as to establish a virtual Prussian protectorate,
under which the duke would be nominally sovereign, but
in all essentials he would simply be the President (Regie-
rungs Oberprasident) of a Prussian province. The Duchies
were, in short, to be the ducal scabbard of the Prussian
sword. The duke rejected the conditions, as incom-
patible with his independence as a sovereign prince and his
desire to be an autonomous and Liberal ruler. When he
walked out into the summer night, he was walking out of
history. Upstairs the Minister-President was shrugging
his shoulders. Liberals never would see that half a loaf was
better than no bread. It was now quite clear that annexa-
tion-to Prussia was the only tolerable solution. Annexa-
tion? How? Would Austria consent to a Prussian
annexation?
The Congress broke up on June 25 on the deadlock that
Bismarck desired. Its debates registered three results:
first, that the Convention of 1852 had gone into the waste-
paper basket; secondly, that no alternative settlement had
been arrived at; and thirdly,--the really momentous
result--that Bismarck had smashed the Concert of Europe
into fragments. Henceforward one of the main prin-
ciples of his policy, not merely in the Schleswig-Holstein
affair, was to prevent the fragments from re-uniting.
German sentiment supported this policy. As long as the
European Powers fell out, Prussia and Germany would
come by their own. The next six years provided the
proof. Beust--the representative of the Federal Diet at
London--whom defeat always prompted to epigrams, said
happily enough: 'The conference closed after some very
animated debates, as a Black Forest clock sometimes stops
after ticking more loudly than usual. ' 'You came,' said
Clarendon to Bernstorff, 'into the conference as masters
of the situation, and as masters of the situation you now
leave it. Have a care how long that will last. ' Bismarck
appreciated the compliment from an experienced states-
man. As for the threat, he had the care to see that ' that *
lasted from 1864 to 1890. The disappointment at Wind-
sor Castle was even more bitter than Clarendon's disgust.
The failure of the Congress was a grievous blow to dynastic
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 179
Liberalism in Germany. 1 Our Court agreed with another
remark of Clarendon's: 'Je ne veux plus jamais rien avoir
a faire avec cet homme sans foi ni loi qui s'appelle M. de
Bismarck, ni celui qui est son negre M. de Rechberg
(the Austrian Prime Minister). ' Clarendon was to have
another bout later on with the man without faith or law,
and to fare no better.
Hostilities were resumed. The Danes saw the security
of their islands smashed in when Alsen was captured
(June 29) by the skill of the Prussian Chief of the Staff.
The miracle of British help, for which to the last they had
hoped against hope, was not vouchsafed. On August 1,
to avoid the fall of Copenhagen, preliminaries of peace
were signed. The Duchies were handed over in full sove-
reignty to Austria and Prussia conjointly, who in accord-
ance with the treaty of January 16, would now conjointly
determine their ultimate fate. The major military opera-
tions were over; but the major strategy of diplomacy had
simply closed the first phase of the campaign. 'We were
liberated Schleswig and Holstein to leave poor King
Christian in peace. ' For Bismarck the annexation of the
conquered Duchies was only a part, and not the most im-
portant part, of the great problem--the solution of the
German question in accordance with Prussian principles
and interests. The enemy in that vast field was Prussia's
ally Austria. And until Austria was as decisively defeated
as Denmark Prussia could not impose her terms.
The Prussian army had had a dress rehearsal in the
Danish campaign. It had justified itself. Let the
soldiers now see to it that the experience was used to pre-
pare the army for the much more serious trial that lay
ahead. 'The occasion for such a war,' Bismarck wrote in
December 1862, ' can be found at any moment, when our
position with regard to the great Powers is favourable for
carrying it on. ' But the tremendous task imposed on the
director of Prussian policy was how to force a war upon
1 'The Queen cannot but think that this country . . . has no other course
but to withdraw, and to refuse to take any further part in this lamentable
contest/ (Mem. to Lord Granville, June 27,1S64. Lift, i. p. 475. )
remarked later, 'once we had
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? i8o
BISMARCK
Austria, and at the same time convince King William,
Prussia, Germany if possible, and Europe, that it was
Austria forcing the war on Prussia; how also to link the
interests of Germany with the essential interests of Prussia,
and how to secure the European situation that would
leave Prussia to fight in a closed ring fence with Austria,
and garner undisturbed the fruits of victory. A Congress
of Paris, London, or Vienna to rearrange the map of
Europe and the organisation of Germany would be fatal
to a Prussian settlement. Bismarck's diplomacy in the
next eighteen months reveals his interpretation of the
situation: first, the settlement of the Duchies must be
kept open; secondly, the key of the international situation
lay at Paris; thirdly, that so far from quarrelling with
Austria in 1864 the benefits of the alliance were by no
means exhausted and must be exploited a great deal
further. 'So long,' he said, 'as we--Austria and Prussia
--remain united no one of the great Powers will move a
finger to disturb the status quo. ' What Bismarck really
intended was that they should not move a finger if Austria
and Prussia fell out--as they were bound to do.
From September 1862 (and earlier) until September
1870 at least, a repetition by Francis Joseph of
the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 was perpetually in
his thoughts. France and Austria had then laid aside
their historic antagonism to unite against the troubler of
the peace--Frederick the Great. Bismarck realised that
in autocracies, such as Austria, Russia, or the Second
Empire (as in the Europe of the ancien rigime) policy
could be shaped by the sovereign entirely against the
popular wish or sentiment, and Bismarck's handling of
Russia both before and after 1870 explicitly rested on his
hold not on Russian sentiment--as he told the Reichstag
in 1888--but on the Tsar. Great Britain was quite
different; for there you had to deal with a nation that
could coerce, and could not be coerced by, its government.
In diplomacy the power of the autocracies had great ad-
vantages, but also one great disadvantage. The auto-
cratic State might be quickly switched off into a new orbit,
to suit the policy of its governor. The psychology of the
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 181
statecraft of power reveals one simple categorical impera-
tive of state-reason: never let others do to you what you
would do to them, and it is one of the supreme penalties
of that statecraft, imposed on its disciples, invariably to
expect foul play as the riposte to foul play.
Statesmen
who spend half their lives preparing to force war on their
unprepared neighbours invariably spend the other half
in meeting the wars they are convinced their neighbours
intend to force upon them. The incapacity of a de-
bauchee autocrat is, therefore, a better security of the
peace of Europe than the ambitions of genius. The sove-
reign who covets his neighbour's wife is less harmful in
the long run than the Minister-President of an autocracy
who covets his neighbour's lands.
For Bismarck it was not necessary to secure France as
an accomplice--and he could not have secured France--
but it was essential to secure Napoleon. That the policy
of which Napoleon was to be the accomplice was wholly
opposed to the interests of France, indeed was to be the
basis of France's ultimate ruin, was obvious to Bismarck;
and, in his mind, ought to have been obvious to Napoleon.
Yet, if the interest of Prussia could only be gained by the
ruin of France, it was the duty of a Prussian statesman to
ruin France. For Bismarck the ethics were irrelevant:
the real problem was of a wholly different kind--how to
secure the essential neutrality of Napoleon without paying
for it except in vague promises that could always be
repudiated, or in a good will which he did not feel. The
compact of Plombieres could now or at any time be re-
peated by the compact of Biarritz. But pride and national
sentiment were far too strong for so simple a solution. He
was not Cavour, nor was Prussia the kingdom of Sardinia.
He said, truly enough, that in listening to Napoleon's over-
tures he felt like Joseph tempted by Potiphar's wife; and
the cession of German territory, even if it did not belong
to Prussia, as the price of French support stirred genuine
and fierce resentment within him. For to Bismarck, as to
all the Germans of his day, France was the one irreconcil-
able foe with whom Prussia and Germany had a long ac-
count to settle. For Napoleon himself Bismarck seems
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? 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.
