The nervous breakdown,
coupled with rheumatic fever and gastric disorders, seri-
ously affected a highly strung system.
coupled with rheumatic fever and gastric disorders, seri-
ously affected a highly strung system.
Robertson - Bismarck
96
BISMARCK
lenge and consider it no misfortune if we found in a
resolution of the majority at Frankfurt . . . a breach of
the Federal treaties. ' This is precisely what Bismarck did
in 1866. 'The word "German" for "Prussian" I would
gladly see inscribed on our banners, if we had first a closer
and practical unity with our other fellow-Germans than
hitherto; it loses all its charm if it is employed as now to
support the Federal bond. . . . I see in our Federal relations
a Prussian malady which sooner or later will have to be
healed by iron and fire, if we do not in good time find
another cure for it. '
In 1861 he wrote: 'The system of the solidarity of the
Conservative interests of all countries is a dangerous fiction,
so long as there is not the most complete and honourable
reciprocity. Pursued by Prussia alone, it is pure Don
Quixotism which weakens our King and his government in
the execution of its proper duty. It brings us to the abso-
lutely unhistorical, godless and lawless swindle of sove-
reignty in the German princes, which employs the Federal
system as its pedestal, and with which the European
Powers play to make it the darling of the Prussian Conser-
vative party . . . we protect foreign prerogatives with
more obstinacy than our own, and get enthusiastic for the
paltry sovereignties created by Napoleon and guaranteed
by Metternich. . . . So long as the folly of the present
Federal system lasts, which is simply a forcing-house of
dangerous and republican party struggles . . . we need a
stronger consolidation of German arms as much as our
daily bread; we need a new and plastic establishment in
the sphere of tariff policy to protect our material interests
against the disadvantages arising from the unnatural con-
figuration of our German frontiers . . . Moreover I
cannot see why we should so coyly shrink from the idea of
popular representation alike in the Federal League, the
Tariff, and the Union Parliament; an institution which
has a legitimate validity in every German State, which we
Conservatives in Prussia could not dispense with, cannot
be resisted as revolutionary. '1
1 The student who wishes to master Bismarck's views should study in Preusien in
Bundestag the dispatches of the following dates:--November 19, i8jt, April 23,
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN
The substance of Bismarck's thought and principles at
this stage can be summarised. Prussia must find her own
solution of the German problem; she must combine a
satisfaction of the claims of Germany with the satisfaction
of the claims of the historic and characteristic Prussian
State. A radical reform of the Diet brought about by
Prussian initiative must be such as to guarantee beyond
dispute the supremacy of Prussia in Germany and her
position as a great Power. There must be an end to the
system by which Austria could manipulate the middle and
petty States into a permanent and hostile majority in the
Federal Diet, and by which kingdoms or landgraviates, of
inferior extent, population, military and economic re-
sources, voted down Prussia, and ' mediatised'1 her. The
root of the mischief lay in the pretensions of dynastic
particularism to political equality with Prussia and Austria,
based on a 4 swindling ' and mushroom theory of legitimist
sovereignty. Co-operation with Austria, as Austria inter-
preted it, was impossible. In the interest of Germany
and of Prussia, Austria must be resisted. Prussian foreign
policy and the German problem were inseparable elements
1852, June 18, 1852, January 13, 1853, August 9, 1853, November 14, 1853,
February 15, 1854, February ", *%S5, April 26, 1856, May 12, 1857, June 2,
1857, March 14, 1858, April 10, 1858. They are all too long to be quoted
in txttnso, and they should be compared with the Baden Denkschrift, printed
in Bismarck Jahrbuch, iii. 193.
1 'Mediatised. '--This term so frequently occurs in Bismarck's writings and
German historians that, as there is no single English equivalent, it is desirable
to explain it for those not familiar with its technical and derivative meaning.
Technically, 'to mediatise' was a term derived from the old Holy Roman
Empire of the German nation which came to an end in 1806. The sovereign
princedoms of that Empire--whether ecclesiastical or secular--were held to be
immediate vassals of the Emperor. To 'mediatise' them meant, therefore, to
deprive them of the status of being immediate vassals, and to reduce them to the
position of being ' mediate," or secondary vassals, i. e. with one or more author-
ities between them and the supreme fount of imperial power--a process equiva-
lent to reduction from being a tenant-in-chiet to subordinate tenancy. By
degrees the term 'to mediatise' or 'mediatisation' derivatively came to imply
an act or a result by which a sovereign prince or state retained a titular inde-
pendence, but lost, or was deprived of, the rights and powers of sovereignty.
Hence, in Bismarck's time, the term was commonly used of a result by which
a state lost its true political independence and initiative and became dependent
on some power or powers, sovereign in theory and in fact. 'Mediatisation,'
therefore, broadly implied the retention of a titular sovereignty which conflicted
with the practical political dependence of the 'sovereign' on other sovereigns
or states.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 98
BISMARCK
of a single and larger unity. The benevolent neutrality
of France must be secured; with the friendship of Russia
and the goodwill of Napoleon, Prussia could throw her
individual strength into the decisive theatre--Germany
and Central Europe--concentrate, in short, on the over-
throwal of Austria in Germany.
These were conclusions calculated to dismay Conser-
vatives and Liberals alike, for they challenged the dearest
traditions of both parties. Bismarck did not either then
or subsequently speak out the whole of his mind. He did
not wish to alarm friends Or cause his opponents to blas-
pheme unnecessarily. Much was deliberately hidden in
his heart. But much also he could not have spoken out,
for he saw, and he recognised it, through a glass darkly.
'The longer I live,' he said later, ' the more incalculable
the future in politics proves to be. ' There are no indica-
tions of how or when or by whom precisely this programme
could be realised. Not a word of war or annexations. It
is the quintessence of his statecraft that the opportunity
would create the means; that in policy as in war a lucid
comprehension of ends was the one indispensable pre-
requisite, and that the major and minor tactics must be
settled by the situation of the moment and the character
and disposition of the enemy's forces. Success would come
to the side that made the fewest mistakes. Opportunity
was everything. The right stroke at the right moment
would give the decision. A lost opportunity was worse
than a defeat, for it implied a failure of judgment in the
commander. No tactical skill could compensate for in-
ferior intelligence in the supreme direction, and the
persistent will to persevere once the policy had been
made.
Bismarck's letters and memoranda are like Beethoven's
notebooks. In both we can trace a mind at work, the
patient elaboration of an idea, the jotting down of flashes
of insight which in due time may be developed into a com-
pleted composition. Some, however, are never worked
out; time and life failed, or the idea failed because the
mood that gave it birth never returned: others give us
the genesis of a perfected scheme: others merely indicate
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN
a thought, a premonition of what will come but in another
form. Genius is talking aloud to itself in the workshop of
the human spirit, and it is the prerogative of genius to be
fertile in contradictions and to nourish its strength on in-
consistencies: and the winged word and glory of emotion
may never soar beyond that free, inner mansion of person-
ality, never carry its message beyond the chambers of
feeling that divide, into the kingdom of action that unites,
all thought.
Bismarck had divined the real weakness of Austria--the
vulnerability of her European position, the competition in
her councils between the concentrated egoism of the
dynasty and the dissipated interests of the Empire, the
administrative dry rpt, the lack of vision and the absence
of moral imagination in her ministers, and the insoluble
antagonism between the ambition for supremacy in
Germany and her historic claims in Italy and Hungary.
No less had he divined the strength of Prussia, economic,
political, and military. Prussia so far had been handi-
capped by slavish adherence to a false tradition, by a sick
ancf irresolute sovereign, and by ministers whose wills and
courage were as weak as their intellectual powers. She
had neither developed her strength nor unified it under a
driving control. There already floated in Bismarck's mind
the conception of a reorganised Central Europe in which
Prussia should have superseded Austria in Germany, and
the Austrian Empire would reconsolidate itself as a
Danubian State between the twin capitals of Vienna and
Buda-Pesth. 'Un maitre des indiscretions savantes,' as
M. de la Gorce felicitously terms him, Bismarck was con-
tinually expressing ideas which ministers and diplomatists
regarded as a bad jest or the gaucherie of an incurable
amateur, but which were really sincere and intended to
probe a difficulty, or indicate an end. At Vienna he said
outright in 1864 that Austria should transfer its centre of
gravity to Buda-Pesth. 'At Berlin,' he told Rechberg,' we
Germans do not consider Vienna as a German city, and
what happens at Vienna as related to Germany. Of
course, I know that Vienna is a city on German soil, but it
is the capital of a non-German Empire . . . it is obvious
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? IOO
BISMARCK
that the Austrian monarchy is scarcely German . . . it
would do much better if it rested on its true strength, the
aggregate of the numerous races which compose its Empire,
rather than pursue the dream of a German supremacy
which we dispute, and to which it has no title. What is
German will revert to Germany sooner or later: it is inevit-
able. It is not more difficult to govern Vienna from Berlin
than to govern Pesth from Vienna--indeed, it would be
much easier. ' And he seriously meant it. There was not
room in Germany for Habsburg and Hohenzollern, and Bis-
marck had shed his Great Germany views of 1848-51. He
was now definitely on the side of the Small Germany party,
as the Frankfurt Liberal programme had defined it.
Prussia, in his eyes, needed diplomacy and an army--
precisely what the Liberals of 1848 had needed and failed
to secure. Questions of right (Rechtfragen) in the long run
became questions of might (Machtfragen). But an army
would be as useless without the right diplomacy as diplo-
macy without a strong army behind it. 'Diplomacy
without arms,' pronounced Frederick the Great,' is music
without instruments,' and Bismarck concurred without
reservation in the judgment. But neither in 1859 nor
later did he assert or believe that force alone, or force aided
by a skilful diplomacy, would suffice. The higher state-
craft required a subtler sympathy with the motives and
ideals of human beings, a tighter grip on realities, economic
as well as spiritual. The future Prussia and the future
Germany could not be brought into existence by force
alone, nor could they live and develop on force alone.
Intuitively and unconsciously, he was separating the
Nationalism with which he sympathised from the Liberalism
which he hated and feared.
The cry for strength--the will to power--based on the
ineradicable racial instinct of a Germany that was daily
bursting the bonds of the past and cleaving new paths
into intellectual and economic spheres of illimitable scope,
could and must be satisfied, and Bismarck was at one with
Prussian, Saxon, Bavarian, or Franconian in the fierce
thirst for power and domination. But the defeat of
Liberalism was the price that Nationalism must pay for its
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 101
satisfaction. Once the new Germany had come into,
existence, the German mind would adapt itself to new
categories of thought, and Liberalism, mutilated at the root,
would wither in the original stock, and the life and vigour
of the races would find their self-realisation in the new
National State and the new Nationalist ideals of German
power. For power, not self-government, supremacy not
parliamentary control, would satisfy a Nationalist and
unified Germany. How this again would happen Bismarck
neither knew nor attempted to reckon as yet. But the
certainty that it could and must be done inspired him with
fresh ambition and a perpetually renewed strength. When
Gerlach and the Kreuzzeitung mourned the lost leader
and the disciple's apostasy, they judged from the surface.
Bismarck had not ceased to be a Conservative because he
exposed the unsound foundations of their creed or chal-
lenged the erroneous conclusions drawn from vicious pre-
mises. Roon had a truer insight. Bismarck now and
subsequently puzzled and pained that unrepentant Junker
and unquenchably loyal friend. But Roon felt that
Bismarck remained in fibre and temper true to the faith
of Prussian Junkertum and his forefathers. The Liberals
and Radicals were no less right when they distrusted Bis-
marck at every step and saw in him the implacable oppon-
ent of all they held dear. The Germany that Bismarck
would make and the Germany they were v>> orking for were
in fundamental antithesis. They had their origins in an
antagonistic interpretation of life; they were rooted in
contradictory tables of value, standards of judgment, and
criteria of conduct; and they aimed at opposed ideals
of Statehood, and the place in, and the relation of, the
individual to the organisation of society.
Lastly, Bismarck's programme implied execution by a
Bismarck, and there was only one. The French ambassa-
dor said to him once: 'Your policy and ideas will bring
Prussia to another Jena. ' Bismarck replied: 'Perhaps,
but why not to Leipzig and Waterloo? ' 'I will make my
own music,' \s had said in 1849, ' or I will make none at
all. ' But in 1859 looked as if Fate was to deny him the
opportunity or drive him back to Schdnhausen.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 102
BISMARCK
? 2. Petersburg and Paris,' 1859-1862
On January 29, 1859, Bismarck was transferred from
Frankfurt to the embassy at Petersburg. On March 6 he
left Frankfurt, and on April 1, his forty-fourth birthday, he
was received in audience by Alexander n. and presented his
credentials. The new appointment had its personal and
political significance. Prince William had become Regent
on October 26, 1858. 'The new era ' began with his re-
gency. The ministry of moderate Liberals, under Prince
Anthony of HohenzoUern and their master the Regent, were
well aware of Bismarck's views, and it was not unnatural
that, having in contemplation a gradual change in a
Liberal direction both in foreign and home policy, they
should wish to be represented at Frankfurt by an agent
more in sympathy with the new attitude. Bismarck's pro-
Russian sympathies, evinced since 1854, would commend
him to the Russian Court; his impenitent Conservatism
was very unpopular with the Liberals; and his advocacy
of better relations with France was distasteful in the high-
est degree to the Prince Regent. At Petersburg, in short,
he would be honourably out of the way. The appoint-
ment was a mark of disapproval veiled in the customary
pretence of promotion. Bismarck had expected a change.
He wrote to his sister (November 12, 1858) that he was
ready 'to take refuge behind the guns of SchSnhausen,
and, as the government were now relying on the majority
hi the Left (Liberals), to consider how to do his duty in the
Upper House. Change is the soul of life, and I hope I shall
be ten years younger when I find myself again in the same
position to fight as '48-49. . . . It is all the same to me
whether I play the part of diplomatist or of a country
gentleman (Landjunker), and so far the prospect of a merry
and honourable fight without the clogs of office has as
much charm as the prospect of a continuous regime of
truffles, dispatches and Grand Crosses. ' But for all these
brave words Bismarck was chagrined. He was in the very
prime of his powers; he was ready for more responsible
work than the duty of executing a policy made by others;
he resented the veiled censure conveyed in his transfer, and
I
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 103
he suspected that--as happened--he was to be cut off fiom
confidence at headquarters. The chagrin was deepened
by the course of events.
The year 1859 was a depressing one for Bismarck. Since
January an old injury to his leg, incurred in shooting, was
aggravated by reckless exposure and a chill. His health
gave way, and in June he was seriously ill. His case was
mismanaged, and for some days he sat on Charon's pier,
wondering whether he would be called on to cross to the
other side. But his superb constitution came to his aid;
like the famous Duchess of Marlborough he refused
'either to be blistered or die'; he threw off both the
treatment and the malady, and took instead to punch in
(Bismarckianly) moderate quantities. Removed to Berlin
he fell suddenly ill again, and August had to be spent in
a wearisome convalescence at Wiesbaden and Nauheim.
Like most men who have enjoyed unbroken good health,
Bismarck was a bad patient; he had taxed strength and
nerves to their utmost, and he resented their refusal to
stand unlimited drafts on their powers. The illness made
a permanent mark in his life.
The nervous breakdown,
coupled with rheumatic fever and gastric disorders, seri-
ously affected a highly strung system. After 1859 he was
never the man he had been before. An increased irri-
tability and excitability, a morose and violent temper,
aggravated by sleeplessness, became increasingly apparent,
and constant returns of pain emphasised the unlovely
elements in his character. The old freshness and joy in
life evaporated; but he refused to alter his habits of life.
Roon in the campaign of 1866 notes how ' Otto ' persisted
in sitting up most of the night at his desk and lay in bed
till midday. Henceforward, particularly after 1862, he
was continually on the edge of a breakdown. With his
habits in eating and drinking, it is a proof of his marvellous
physical vitality that he did not collapse completely.
His recovery was not made easier by his political anxiety.
His revived interest in the domestic politics of Prussia
testifies to the fear that the renaissance of Liberalism, now
in full swing, would wreck his programme. Even more
disquieting was the outlook in foreign affairs. The
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 104
BISMARCK
Italian war of 1859, France openly in the field against
Austria, the French victories, the Austrian defeats, the
demand for a revision of the system of 1815, were blows at
the citadel of Conservatism; they stirred Nationalism
throughout Europe, and Cavour had pinned his flag to the
cause of constitutional and Liberal monarchism. Germany
was in an uproar. Conservatives, Nationalists, Liberals,
the dynasties from Berlin to Munich, felt that the national
enemy in the west was in arms, defeating a German State
in Austria, about to destroy legitimist and sovereign
princes in Italy, and to reopen the question of the Rhine.
'Austria in danger ' was a potent cry. Her sins were for-
gotten in the common peril to German supremacy and
legitimist monarchy in Central Europe. It was the crisis
of 1854 repeated in an acute form. For France--a Napo-
leonic France--was attacking Austria, and it would be
Prussia's turn next. And in 1859 it was not an affair of the
Danubian principalities, nor of Austrian neutrality. At
Berlin, as usual, government and nation faced at once
front to the Rhine. The Prince Regent mobilised four
corps; his strong sympathies as a ruler and as a German
with Austria, his desire to prove his German patriotism
and lead Germany in a national struggle, brought a great
European war into sight. Even so cold a head and so self-
controlled a Prussian patriot as Moltke decided on cool
reflection that the time had come for Prussia to intervene
and strike a blow for Austria and Germany.
Bismarck was literally in anguish, and he was helpless.
At Petersburg or Wiesbaden he was removed from the
direct contact with German affairs he had enjoyed at
Frankfurt; he was not consulted; and he had not the con-
fidence either of the Prince Regent or the ministers. The
winds of Liberalism were sweeping from the lemon groves
of Sicily across the Lombardy plains to the sands and
heath of Pomerania, the March of Brandenburg and
East Prussia. War with France would blow his policy to
the limbo of shattered ideals. Prussia would enter it as
the ally of Austria, -and with Prussia would march every
Nationalist and Liberal heart. The issue would, and must
be, the defeat of France. Austria would recover her grip
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 105
on Italy--for what could Piedmont do without the red
trousers ? --and either Austria would impose her will on
Germany, and re-rivet her supremacy, or under the stress
of the fray Prussia and Germany would be mastered by the
Liberals, in combination with the Nationalists, and unified
on the anvil of war by the master spirits of 1848. Which
would be worse--a Germany unified on a Liberal basis, or
an Austria triumphant on the Danube, the Po, and the
Rhine, reorganising the German Confederation beyond
Prussian control? Germany in the grip either of the
anti-Prussian * princelets grouped round Austria, or of
the National ,Union of the Liberals under Bennigsen,
Duncker, Gneist, and the Coburg pro-English group?
Everywhere Bismarck saw all the machinery at work
that he had tracked out at Frankfurt--the Austrian hand
manipulating the middle States, coercing the petty ones;
the illuminated princelets dabbling with Liberalism and
striving to combine Nationalism with Particularism;
Habsburg egoism appealing to Hohenzollern pride and
generosity, but determined that Prussia's army should
extricate Austria from her dilemma, sacrifice Prussian blood
to save Lombardy, Venetia, and Hungary, and receive
the reward of disinterestedness by riveting the Austrian
yoke on the Confederation; and all this was to be done in
the name of Conservatism, and the European solidarity of
legitimism against Jacobinism, Caesarism, and the Revolu-
tion. 'Our policy,' he wrote to his wife, 'daily glides
more and more in the wake of Austria; a shot on the
Rhine, and it is all over with the Austro-Italian war, and
in its place will come a Franco-Prussian war, in which
Austria, when we have lifted the burden off her shoulders,
will support or fail us as her interest dictates. . . . . As God
wills! It is only a question of time; nations and men,
folly and wisdom, war and peace, come and go like waves,
but the sea remains; there is nothing in this world but
It was idle to urge, as he did, that Napoleon could be
secured by tact, or, if need be, by paying blackmail; that
Austria's necessities afforded an unrivalled opportunity
for re-settling her relations with Prussia to Prussia's advan-
and the jugglers' tricks. '
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? xo6
BISMARCK
tage, and that if Prussian aid were required Austria must
pay in advance, and that a wedge could be driven in
between the middle and petty States and their Habsburg
ally; that Prussia could indicate she and not Austria would
reform the Confederation. Such advice only deepened the
distrust at the Berlin Court, angered the Gerlach Conser-
vatives, and stirred the scorn of the Liberals. It was mid-
summer Machiavellianism, destitute of all principle, and
Liberals and Conservatives alike stood for principles and
the solidarity of their cause with the cause outside Prussia
or Germany.
Bismarck was bitterly attacked from both camps. He
could tolerate Radical denunciations, but the reproaches
of the Kreuxzeitung cut into the quick. 'Write me down
a devil,' he wrote,' but I am a Teutonic devil, not a Gallic
one. ' His idea of securing Napoleon never involved the
surrender of essentials. He had taken Napoleon's measure
already. 'The itch with Napoleon,' he pronounced in
1855, 'to achieve the unexpected amounts to a disease,
and it is nourished by the Empress. ' 'He is no general
. . . he will only seek a war when internal necessities
drive him to it,' he wrote in 1857. 'His heart is much
stronger than his head,' he decided in 1861. He meant to
flatter his vanity, encourage him to wander on the misty
peaks of dreamland--les idees Napolioniennes--commit
nothing to paper; words could always be disavowed and
unverified verbal promises explained away. In Bismarck's
statecraft, as his advice about Austria revealed, the extor-
tion of services from an embarrassed friend only added
contempt for the deluded to dislike. His theory of inter-
national relations left no place for gratitude or generosity.
The successful deception of France would only increase
Prussian resentment at obligations incurred to an enemy,
stupid or weak enough to believe in gratitude. Statesmen
lent or borrowed the capital and currency of the political
life. The needy must pay, and the affluent had a right to
exact a high rate of interest because the needy were so
needy. In the remorseless world of inter-State com-
petition business was business. Ethical considerations
could not apply in the markets of diplomacy; for their
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 107
application ignored the real motives of State conduct.
Bismarck wrote to Roon that Prussia was committing the
folly of being Liberal at home and Conservative abroad.
Such a policy sapped the confidence of the sound elements
in Prussia and flouted the real forces at work in Germany.
Roon agreed in this diagnosis and the mischief of the ' new
era. ' But the recommendation of a Conservative policy
at home and a Liberal one abroad, left him wondering
whether illness had not shaken ' Otto's ' sanity.
Bismarck in the meanwhile could only growl and moan,
and do his best to strengthen the bonds between Prussia
and Russia. The gods decided for him. The crisis of
1859, like that of 1854, was tided over by the action of
France and Austria. Napoleon shrank from the conse-
quences of his own intervention in Italy. Magenta and
Solferino had not been victories in the manner of his uncle;
the idea of a war on the Rhine sent shivers through him;
Italy was breaking away into unforeseen revolutions; the
Ultramontanes were applying a pitiless pressure on the
Tuileries; and France was not prepared for a colossal
struggle. Francis Joseph, with Hungary simmering into
rebellion, Russia deaf and cold, and Great Britain swinging
over to Italy's side, was prepared to sacrifice Lombardy
rather than imperil Austrian supremacy in Germany. The
armistice of Villa Franca, which shattered the hopes of
Cavour, brought immediate relief to the tension in Ger-
many. The Prince Regent in Prussia could face the
German world. He had mobilised, he had not truckled
to France, he had satisfied German honour and his own
conscience.
The European crisis was over, and Prussia had made
neither mistakes nor concessions. William 1. had now to
face his Liberal subjects. The Liberals no longer hampered
by the cry of 'Austria in danger' and the 'Watch on the
Rhine,' took up the programme of constitutional reform
with renewed energy, and the war crisis indirectly brought
the domestic issues to a head.
The Prince Regent was a competent soldier, thoroughly
sound in professional technique, and intimately acquainted
with the administration of the Prussian army. As heir
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? io8
BISMARCK
to the throne, and now as virtually king and commander-
in-chief, he had studied military science, and he had at his
elbow first-rate military advisers on all army questions.
Prince William had the expert's knowledge and framed his
own judgment. The supreme command was his prero-
gative, and he was not prepared to surrender the control
it conferred to any one, least of all to politicians and
civilians who had neither his knowledge nor his militarist
principles. The rights of the Crown over the army in-
herited from his ancestors and expressly guaranteed in the
Constitution of 1851, were the rocher de bronze on which
the Prussian monarchy was impregnably based. The
crises of 1854 and 0f I%59 had revealed defects in the great
military machine, while the economic development of
Prussia had outstripped the system embodied in the law
of 1814.
Three points called for immediate attention. First
and least important, the technical and material equipment
required modernisation and extension. Secondly, the
twenty thousand men who annually escaped military ser-
vice, because the increase in the population furnished an
annual contingent larger than that originally prescribed,
must be brought into training; thirdly, the relations
between the active army, the reserve, and the Landwehr
--the constitutional militia--must be revised. The royal
and ministerial programme, finally adopted after earnest
consideration, aimed broadly at (1) increasing the numbers
of the active army by the creation of new regiments; (2)
remoulding the reserve and the Landwehr so as to give a
larger first reserve for bringing the peace establishment
up to war strength on mobilisation, and a second reserve
better trained and more closely incorporated with the
first line; (3) a supplemental annual charge in money of
nine million thalers. This programme required the assent
of the Landtag because the additional cost must be voted
in the budget, and because the abolition of the old, and
the reorganising of the new, Landwehr involved funda-
mental changes in the law of the land. In figures the
situation came to this: the old system approximately gave
Prussia a standing army of 150,000 with a war establish-
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 109
ment (without the Landwehr) of 230,000 men; and with
the old Landwehr, approximately, 480,000 men. The
new royal plan, with three years' service, would give a war
establishment of 450,000 men, and with the remodelled
Landwehr a total of 756,000. The plan of the opposition,
with two years' service, reduced the war establishment,
approximately, to 400,000, and the total, with the Land-
wehr, probably to some 600,000.
The Liberals, who were in a substantial majority in the
Lower House, had their chance. They recognised to the
full the desirability of increasing Prussia's military strength
--Prussia was to unify Germany--but they met the royal
programme by demanding (1) the reduction of compulsory
service from three years to two; (2) revision of the new
Landwehr scheme; (3) the annual voting of the Army
Budget. For our purpose here the details of a complicated
problem--military, financial, and constitutional--are not
of importance. But the principles in collision were vital,
and it must suffice briefly and clearly to disentangle them.
Prince William, as a professional soldier and as a ruler,
resented the criticism of a civilian opposition on the tech-
nical aspects of the scheme; his military advisers and he
himself were convinced that military efficiency could be
secured by the royal programme alone. But these tech-
nical questions were completely overshadowed by the
constitutional controversy. The opposition did not dis-
pute the prerogative of the sovereign, as commander-in-
chief, or the duty of every Prussian male to be trained in
the army; but they put forward three claims. First,
that as the obligation of military service affected every
man in Prussia, the nation had the legal and moral right
through its representatives to decide on what conditions
that service should be performed, and if Parliament chose
to reduce the period with the Colours from three years to
two, it had the right to do so; secondly, Parliament had
the legal right to vote or to refuse the taxes required for
maintaining the army; thirdly, the army estimates were
part of the annual budget, and the representatives of the
nation had the right annually to review this budget, since
without parliamentary sanction no taxes were legal for the
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? no
BISMARCK
army or any other institution of the State. In so far as
the army was dependent on statute law and taxation for
its existence, the concurrence of Parliament was essential.
The importance of these claims did not he in their legal
validity, which was undeniable, but in the principles and
consequences they involved. The Prince Regent and
Roon quite correctly grasped that the opposition was
determined to assert, through the annual revision of the
budget, the principle of ministerial responsibility to the
Lower House; and that through the power of the purse
the establishment of ministerial responsibility would lead
inevitably to a general and unlimited control of policy and
executive ministerial action. Prussia would cease to be a
State in which the King governed through the legislature;
it would become a State in which ministers, dependent on
the legislature, governed through the King. The army
would be turned into a creation of the Landtag, and the
prerogative of the sovereign would be legislated out of
existence. In a word, the old conception of the monarchy
was in irreconcilable collision with the new conception of
parliamentary Liberalism. For the Crown, the power and
character of the monarchy were at stake; for the Liberals,
the power and character of Parliament as a national insti-
tution of government. An issue had been raised on which
compromise was impossible. Was there, or was there not,
to be parliamentary and constitutional government in
Prussia? It was recognised that the decision would
affect not merely Prussia, but the whole of Germany.
At the outset the struggle was embittered by an act of
bad faith. The opposition temporarily voted the addi-
tional money required on the understanding that the
ministerial scheme should be withdrawn and the whole
question of reorganisation reserved for future consideration.
But the War Office promptly created the new regiments;
colours were solemnly given them by the Regent; and
the revised budget assumed that the scheme had been ap-
proved. William, who had become king in 1861, peremp-
torily refused to disavow the accomplished facts. His
acts as War-Lord (Kriegesherf) were not subject to parlia-
mentary revision; the money had been voted, and it was
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN in
within his prerogative to apply it. Rejection of the
budget and a dissolution of Parliament followed, with the
result that the Conservative minority was smitten hip and
thigh. The Conservative party numbered a tiny handful
in the new Landtag. The Crown was apparently con-
fronted with surrender to the opposition or resort to a
coup cPEtat.
Bismarck rejoiced in the quarrel. He had had nothing so
far to do either with framing the scheme or the crisis that
arose out of it. In his judgment-nothing could be better
than to strengthen the army, and it was for the soldiers to
decide how most effectively to do this. But even better was
the collision between the Crown and the Liberals. The
control of the army by an irresponsible Crown and ministers
responsible to the Crown alone, lay in the essence of his
everything that he hated and feared--parliamentary
government, the Landtag as a government-making, policy-
making organ, and ministers under the thumb of a majority
composed of professors, lawyers, journalists, and middle-class
amateurs. Even if the scheme were wrong, the Crown
must be supported and the opposition smashed into heel.
The King was desperately unhappy. His Liberal minis-
ters saw no solution but to yield. How could the
government continue without a budget? The country
at the general election had pronounced. The Crown
Prince had the gravest misgivings about a policy which
threatened to destroy national confidence in the sovereign,
perhaps even shatter the throne. Prussia was at this
moment insisting that the incurable autocrat of Hesse-
Cassel must obey his constitution and his legislature, yet
at home was defying the plain rights of the Landtag to vote
taxes and determine their application laid down in the
Prussian law of the land. Roon and the soldiers daily
reminded his Majesty that the army as a monarchical
institution was at stake, and a Hohenzollern who betrayed
the army betrayed himself. Surrender? Civil war? A
coup d fitat? Abdication? Which was King William to
choose? Roon also suggested that if his Majesty's
ministers refused to do their plain duty and defy Parlia-
programme.
BISMARCK
lenge and consider it no misfortune if we found in a
resolution of the majority at Frankfurt . . . a breach of
the Federal treaties. ' This is precisely what Bismarck did
in 1866. 'The word "German" for "Prussian" I would
gladly see inscribed on our banners, if we had first a closer
and practical unity with our other fellow-Germans than
hitherto; it loses all its charm if it is employed as now to
support the Federal bond. . . . I see in our Federal relations
a Prussian malady which sooner or later will have to be
healed by iron and fire, if we do not in good time find
another cure for it. '
In 1861 he wrote: 'The system of the solidarity of the
Conservative interests of all countries is a dangerous fiction,
so long as there is not the most complete and honourable
reciprocity. Pursued by Prussia alone, it is pure Don
Quixotism which weakens our King and his government in
the execution of its proper duty. It brings us to the abso-
lutely unhistorical, godless and lawless swindle of sove-
reignty in the German princes, which employs the Federal
system as its pedestal, and with which the European
Powers play to make it the darling of the Prussian Conser-
vative party . . . we protect foreign prerogatives with
more obstinacy than our own, and get enthusiastic for the
paltry sovereignties created by Napoleon and guaranteed
by Metternich. . . . So long as the folly of the present
Federal system lasts, which is simply a forcing-house of
dangerous and republican party struggles . . . we need a
stronger consolidation of German arms as much as our
daily bread; we need a new and plastic establishment in
the sphere of tariff policy to protect our material interests
against the disadvantages arising from the unnatural con-
figuration of our German frontiers . . . Moreover I
cannot see why we should so coyly shrink from the idea of
popular representation alike in the Federal League, the
Tariff, and the Union Parliament; an institution which
has a legitimate validity in every German State, which we
Conservatives in Prussia could not dispense with, cannot
be resisted as revolutionary. '1
1 The student who wishes to master Bismarck's views should study in Preusien in
Bundestag the dispatches of the following dates:--November 19, i8jt, April 23,
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN
The substance of Bismarck's thought and principles at
this stage can be summarised. Prussia must find her own
solution of the German problem; she must combine a
satisfaction of the claims of Germany with the satisfaction
of the claims of the historic and characteristic Prussian
State. A radical reform of the Diet brought about by
Prussian initiative must be such as to guarantee beyond
dispute the supremacy of Prussia in Germany and her
position as a great Power. There must be an end to the
system by which Austria could manipulate the middle and
petty States into a permanent and hostile majority in the
Federal Diet, and by which kingdoms or landgraviates, of
inferior extent, population, military and economic re-
sources, voted down Prussia, and ' mediatised'1 her. The
root of the mischief lay in the pretensions of dynastic
particularism to political equality with Prussia and Austria,
based on a 4 swindling ' and mushroom theory of legitimist
sovereignty. Co-operation with Austria, as Austria inter-
preted it, was impossible. In the interest of Germany
and of Prussia, Austria must be resisted. Prussian foreign
policy and the German problem were inseparable elements
1852, June 18, 1852, January 13, 1853, August 9, 1853, November 14, 1853,
February 15, 1854, February ", *%S5, April 26, 1856, May 12, 1857, June 2,
1857, March 14, 1858, April 10, 1858. They are all too long to be quoted
in txttnso, and they should be compared with the Baden Denkschrift, printed
in Bismarck Jahrbuch, iii. 193.
1 'Mediatised. '--This term so frequently occurs in Bismarck's writings and
German historians that, as there is no single English equivalent, it is desirable
to explain it for those not familiar with its technical and derivative meaning.
Technically, 'to mediatise' was a term derived from the old Holy Roman
Empire of the German nation which came to an end in 1806. The sovereign
princedoms of that Empire--whether ecclesiastical or secular--were held to be
immediate vassals of the Emperor. To 'mediatise' them meant, therefore, to
deprive them of the status of being immediate vassals, and to reduce them to the
position of being ' mediate," or secondary vassals, i. e. with one or more author-
ities between them and the supreme fount of imperial power--a process equiva-
lent to reduction from being a tenant-in-chiet to subordinate tenancy. By
degrees the term 'to mediatise' or 'mediatisation' derivatively came to imply
an act or a result by which a sovereign prince or state retained a titular inde-
pendence, but lost, or was deprived of, the rights and powers of sovereignty.
Hence, in Bismarck's time, the term was commonly used of a result by which
a state lost its true political independence and initiative and became dependent
on some power or powers, sovereign in theory and in fact. 'Mediatisation,'
therefore, broadly implied the retention of a titular sovereignty which conflicted
with the practical political dependence of the 'sovereign' on other sovereigns
or states.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 98
BISMARCK
of a single and larger unity. The benevolent neutrality
of France must be secured; with the friendship of Russia
and the goodwill of Napoleon, Prussia could throw her
individual strength into the decisive theatre--Germany
and Central Europe--concentrate, in short, on the over-
throwal of Austria in Germany.
These were conclusions calculated to dismay Conser-
vatives and Liberals alike, for they challenged the dearest
traditions of both parties. Bismarck did not either then
or subsequently speak out the whole of his mind. He did
not wish to alarm friends Or cause his opponents to blas-
pheme unnecessarily. Much was deliberately hidden in
his heart. But much also he could not have spoken out,
for he saw, and he recognised it, through a glass darkly.
'The longer I live,' he said later, ' the more incalculable
the future in politics proves to be. ' There are no indica-
tions of how or when or by whom precisely this programme
could be realised. Not a word of war or annexations. It
is the quintessence of his statecraft that the opportunity
would create the means; that in policy as in war a lucid
comprehension of ends was the one indispensable pre-
requisite, and that the major and minor tactics must be
settled by the situation of the moment and the character
and disposition of the enemy's forces. Success would come
to the side that made the fewest mistakes. Opportunity
was everything. The right stroke at the right moment
would give the decision. A lost opportunity was worse
than a defeat, for it implied a failure of judgment in the
commander. No tactical skill could compensate for in-
ferior intelligence in the supreme direction, and the
persistent will to persevere once the policy had been
made.
Bismarck's letters and memoranda are like Beethoven's
notebooks. In both we can trace a mind at work, the
patient elaboration of an idea, the jotting down of flashes
of insight which in due time may be developed into a com-
pleted composition. Some, however, are never worked
out; time and life failed, or the idea failed because the
mood that gave it birth never returned: others give us
the genesis of a perfected scheme: others merely indicate
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN
a thought, a premonition of what will come but in another
form. Genius is talking aloud to itself in the workshop of
the human spirit, and it is the prerogative of genius to be
fertile in contradictions and to nourish its strength on in-
consistencies: and the winged word and glory of emotion
may never soar beyond that free, inner mansion of person-
ality, never carry its message beyond the chambers of
feeling that divide, into the kingdom of action that unites,
all thought.
Bismarck had divined the real weakness of Austria--the
vulnerability of her European position, the competition in
her councils between the concentrated egoism of the
dynasty and the dissipated interests of the Empire, the
administrative dry rpt, the lack of vision and the absence
of moral imagination in her ministers, and the insoluble
antagonism between the ambition for supremacy in
Germany and her historic claims in Italy and Hungary.
No less had he divined the strength of Prussia, economic,
political, and military. Prussia so far had been handi-
capped by slavish adherence to a false tradition, by a sick
ancf irresolute sovereign, and by ministers whose wills and
courage were as weak as their intellectual powers. She
had neither developed her strength nor unified it under a
driving control. There already floated in Bismarck's mind
the conception of a reorganised Central Europe in which
Prussia should have superseded Austria in Germany, and
the Austrian Empire would reconsolidate itself as a
Danubian State between the twin capitals of Vienna and
Buda-Pesth. 'Un maitre des indiscretions savantes,' as
M. de la Gorce felicitously terms him, Bismarck was con-
tinually expressing ideas which ministers and diplomatists
regarded as a bad jest or the gaucherie of an incurable
amateur, but which were really sincere and intended to
probe a difficulty, or indicate an end. At Vienna he said
outright in 1864 that Austria should transfer its centre of
gravity to Buda-Pesth. 'At Berlin,' he told Rechberg,' we
Germans do not consider Vienna as a German city, and
what happens at Vienna as related to Germany. Of
course, I know that Vienna is a city on German soil, but it
is the capital of a non-German Empire . . . it is obvious
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? IOO
BISMARCK
that the Austrian monarchy is scarcely German . . . it
would do much better if it rested on its true strength, the
aggregate of the numerous races which compose its Empire,
rather than pursue the dream of a German supremacy
which we dispute, and to which it has no title. What is
German will revert to Germany sooner or later: it is inevit-
able. It is not more difficult to govern Vienna from Berlin
than to govern Pesth from Vienna--indeed, it would be
much easier. ' And he seriously meant it. There was not
room in Germany for Habsburg and Hohenzollern, and Bis-
marck had shed his Great Germany views of 1848-51. He
was now definitely on the side of the Small Germany party,
as the Frankfurt Liberal programme had defined it.
Prussia, in his eyes, needed diplomacy and an army--
precisely what the Liberals of 1848 had needed and failed
to secure. Questions of right (Rechtfragen) in the long run
became questions of might (Machtfragen). But an army
would be as useless without the right diplomacy as diplo-
macy without a strong army behind it. 'Diplomacy
without arms,' pronounced Frederick the Great,' is music
without instruments,' and Bismarck concurred without
reservation in the judgment. But neither in 1859 nor
later did he assert or believe that force alone, or force aided
by a skilful diplomacy, would suffice. The higher state-
craft required a subtler sympathy with the motives and
ideals of human beings, a tighter grip on realities, economic
as well as spiritual. The future Prussia and the future
Germany could not be brought into existence by force
alone, nor could they live and develop on force alone.
Intuitively and unconsciously, he was separating the
Nationalism with which he sympathised from the Liberalism
which he hated and feared.
The cry for strength--the will to power--based on the
ineradicable racial instinct of a Germany that was daily
bursting the bonds of the past and cleaving new paths
into intellectual and economic spheres of illimitable scope,
could and must be satisfied, and Bismarck was at one with
Prussian, Saxon, Bavarian, or Franconian in the fierce
thirst for power and domination. But the defeat of
Liberalism was the price that Nationalism must pay for its
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 101
satisfaction. Once the new Germany had come into,
existence, the German mind would adapt itself to new
categories of thought, and Liberalism, mutilated at the root,
would wither in the original stock, and the life and vigour
of the races would find their self-realisation in the new
National State and the new Nationalist ideals of German
power. For power, not self-government, supremacy not
parliamentary control, would satisfy a Nationalist and
unified Germany. How this again would happen Bismarck
neither knew nor attempted to reckon as yet. But the
certainty that it could and must be done inspired him with
fresh ambition and a perpetually renewed strength. When
Gerlach and the Kreuzzeitung mourned the lost leader
and the disciple's apostasy, they judged from the surface.
Bismarck had not ceased to be a Conservative because he
exposed the unsound foundations of their creed or chal-
lenged the erroneous conclusions drawn from vicious pre-
mises. Roon had a truer insight. Bismarck now and
subsequently puzzled and pained that unrepentant Junker
and unquenchably loyal friend. But Roon felt that
Bismarck remained in fibre and temper true to the faith
of Prussian Junkertum and his forefathers. The Liberals
and Radicals were no less right when they distrusted Bis-
marck at every step and saw in him the implacable oppon-
ent of all they held dear. The Germany that Bismarck
would make and the Germany they were v>> orking for were
in fundamental antithesis. They had their origins in an
antagonistic interpretation of life; they were rooted in
contradictory tables of value, standards of judgment, and
criteria of conduct; and they aimed at opposed ideals
of Statehood, and the place in, and the relation of, the
individual to the organisation of society.
Lastly, Bismarck's programme implied execution by a
Bismarck, and there was only one. The French ambassa-
dor said to him once: 'Your policy and ideas will bring
Prussia to another Jena. ' Bismarck replied: 'Perhaps,
but why not to Leipzig and Waterloo? ' 'I will make my
own music,' \s had said in 1849, ' or I will make none at
all. ' But in 1859 looked as if Fate was to deny him the
opportunity or drive him back to Schdnhausen.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 102
BISMARCK
? 2. Petersburg and Paris,' 1859-1862
On January 29, 1859, Bismarck was transferred from
Frankfurt to the embassy at Petersburg. On March 6 he
left Frankfurt, and on April 1, his forty-fourth birthday, he
was received in audience by Alexander n. and presented his
credentials. The new appointment had its personal and
political significance. Prince William had become Regent
on October 26, 1858. 'The new era ' began with his re-
gency. The ministry of moderate Liberals, under Prince
Anthony of HohenzoUern and their master the Regent, were
well aware of Bismarck's views, and it was not unnatural
that, having in contemplation a gradual change in a
Liberal direction both in foreign and home policy, they
should wish to be represented at Frankfurt by an agent
more in sympathy with the new attitude. Bismarck's pro-
Russian sympathies, evinced since 1854, would commend
him to the Russian Court; his impenitent Conservatism
was very unpopular with the Liberals; and his advocacy
of better relations with France was distasteful in the high-
est degree to the Prince Regent. At Petersburg, in short,
he would be honourably out of the way. The appoint-
ment was a mark of disapproval veiled in the customary
pretence of promotion. Bismarck had expected a change.
He wrote to his sister (November 12, 1858) that he was
ready 'to take refuge behind the guns of SchSnhausen,
and, as the government were now relying on the majority
hi the Left (Liberals), to consider how to do his duty in the
Upper House. Change is the soul of life, and I hope I shall
be ten years younger when I find myself again in the same
position to fight as '48-49. . . . It is all the same to me
whether I play the part of diplomatist or of a country
gentleman (Landjunker), and so far the prospect of a merry
and honourable fight without the clogs of office has as
much charm as the prospect of a continuous regime of
truffles, dispatches and Grand Crosses. ' But for all these
brave words Bismarck was chagrined. He was in the very
prime of his powers; he was ready for more responsible
work than the duty of executing a policy made by others;
he resented the veiled censure conveyed in his transfer, and
I
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 103
he suspected that--as happened--he was to be cut off fiom
confidence at headquarters. The chagrin was deepened
by the course of events.
The year 1859 was a depressing one for Bismarck. Since
January an old injury to his leg, incurred in shooting, was
aggravated by reckless exposure and a chill. His health
gave way, and in June he was seriously ill. His case was
mismanaged, and for some days he sat on Charon's pier,
wondering whether he would be called on to cross to the
other side. But his superb constitution came to his aid;
like the famous Duchess of Marlborough he refused
'either to be blistered or die'; he threw off both the
treatment and the malady, and took instead to punch in
(Bismarckianly) moderate quantities. Removed to Berlin
he fell suddenly ill again, and August had to be spent in
a wearisome convalescence at Wiesbaden and Nauheim.
Like most men who have enjoyed unbroken good health,
Bismarck was a bad patient; he had taxed strength and
nerves to their utmost, and he resented their refusal to
stand unlimited drafts on their powers. The illness made
a permanent mark in his life.
The nervous breakdown,
coupled with rheumatic fever and gastric disorders, seri-
ously affected a highly strung system. After 1859 he was
never the man he had been before. An increased irri-
tability and excitability, a morose and violent temper,
aggravated by sleeplessness, became increasingly apparent,
and constant returns of pain emphasised the unlovely
elements in his character. The old freshness and joy in
life evaporated; but he refused to alter his habits of life.
Roon in the campaign of 1866 notes how ' Otto ' persisted
in sitting up most of the night at his desk and lay in bed
till midday. Henceforward, particularly after 1862, he
was continually on the edge of a breakdown. With his
habits in eating and drinking, it is a proof of his marvellous
physical vitality that he did not collapse completely.
His recovery was not made easier by his political anxiety.
His revived interest in the domestic politics of Prussia
testifies to the fear that the renaissance of Liberalism, now
in full swing, would wreck his programme. Even more
disquieting was the outlook in foreign affairs. The
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 104
BISMARCK
Italian war of 1859, France openly in the field against
Austria, the French victories, the Austrian defeats, the
demand for a revision of the system of 1815, were blows at
the citadel of Conservatism; they stirred Nationalism
throughout Europe, and Cavour had pinned his flag to the
cause of constitutional and Liberal monarchism. Germany
was in an uproar. Conservatives, Nationalists, Liberals,
the dynasties from Berlin to Munich, felt that the national
enemy in the west was in arms, defeating a German State
in Austria, about to destroy legitimist and sovereign
princes in Italy, and to reopen the question of the Rhine.
'Austria in danger ' was a potent cry. Her sins were for-
gotten in the common peril to German supremacy and
legitimist monarchy in Central Europe. It was the crisis
of 1854 repeated in an acute form. For France--a Napo-
leonic France--was attacking Austria, and it would be
Prussia's turn next. And in 1859 it was not an affair of the
Danubian principalities, nor of Austrian neutrality. At
Berlin, as usual, government and nation faced at once
front to the Rhine. The Prince Regent mobilised four
corps; his strong sympathies as a ruler and as a German
with Austria, his desire to prove his German patriotism
and lead Germany in a national struggle, brought a great
European war into sight. Even so cold a head and so self-
controlled a Prussian patriot as Moltke decided on cool
reflection that the time had come for Prussia to intervene
and strike a blow for Austria and Germany.
Bismarck was literally in anguish, and he was helpless.
At Petersburg or Wiesbaden he was removed from the
direct contact with German affairs he had enjoyed at
Frankfurt; he was not consulted; and he had not the con-
fidence either of the Prince Regent or the ministers. The
winds of Liberalism were sweeping from the lemon groves
of Sicily across the Lombardy plains to the sands and
heath of Pomerania, the March of Brandenburg and
East Prussia. War with France would blow his policy to
the limbo of shattered ideals. Prussia would enter it as
the ally of Austria, -and with Prussia would march every
Nationalist and Liberal heart. The issue would, and must
be, the defeat of France. Austria would recover her grip
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 105
on Italy--for what could Piedmont do without the red
trousers ? --and either Austria would impose her will on
Germany, and re-rivet her supremacy, or under the stress
of the fray Prussia and Germany would be mastered by the
Liberals, in combination with the Nationalists, and unified
on the anvil of war by the master spirits of 1848. Which
would be worse--a Germany unified on a Liberal basis, or
an Austria triumphant on the Danube, the Po, and the
Rhine, reorganising the German Confederation beyond
Prussian control? Germany in the grip either of the
anti-Prussian * princelets grouped round Austria, or of
the National ,Union of the Liberals under Bennigsen,
Duncker, Gneist, and the Coburg pro-English group?
Everywhere Bismarck saw all the machinery at work
that he had tracked out at Frankfurt--the Austrian hand
manipulating the middle States, coercing the petty ones;
the illuminated princelets dabbling with Liberalism and
striving to combine Nationalism with Particularism;
Habsburg egoism appealing to Hohenzollern pride and
generosity, but determined that Prussia's army should
extricate Austria from her dilemma, sacrifice Prussian blood
to save Lombardy, Venetia, and Hungary, and receive
the reward of disinterestedness by riveting the Austrian
yoke on the Confederation; and all this was to be done in
the name of Conservatism, and the European solidarity of
legitimism against Jacobinism, Caesarism, and the Revolu-
tion. 'Our policy,' he wrote to his wife, 'daily glides
more and more in the wake of Austria; a shot on the
Rhine, and it is all over with the Austro-Italian war, and
in its place will come a Franco-Prussian war, in which
Austria, when we have lifted the burden off her shoulders,
will support or fail us as her interest dictates. . . . . As God
wills! It is only a question of time; nations and men,
folly and wisdom, war and peace, come and go like waves,
but the sea remains; there is nothing in this world but
It was idle to urge, as he did, that Napoleon could be
secured by tact, or, if need be, by paying blackmail; that
Austria's necessities afforded an unrivalled opportunity
for re-settling her relations with Prussia to Prussia's advan-
and the jugglers' tricks. '
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? xo6
BISMARCK
tage, and that if Prussian aid were required Austria must
pay in advance, and that a wedge could be driven in
between the middle and petty States and their Habsburg
ally; that Prussia could indicate she and not Austria would
reform the Confederation. Such advice only deepened the
distrust at the Berlin Court, angered the Gerlach Conser-
vatives, and stirred the scorn of the Liberals. It was mid-
summer Machiavellianism, destitute of all principle, and
Liberals and Conservatives alike stood for principles and
the solidarity of their cause with the cause outside Prussia
or Germany.
Bismarck was bitterly attacked from both camps. He
could tolerate Radical denunciations, but the reproaches
of the Kreuxzeitung cut into the quick. 'Write me down
a devil,' he wrote,' but I am a Teutonic devil, not a Gallic
one. ' His idea of securing Napoleon never involved the
surrender of essentials. He had taken Napoleon's measure
already. 'The itch with Napoleon,' he pronounced in
1855, 'to achieve the unexpected amounts to a disease,
and it is nourished by the Empress. ' 'He is no general
. . . he will only seek a war when internal necessities
drive him to it,' he wrote in 1857. 'His heart is much
stronger than his head,' he decided in 1861. He meant to
flatter his vanity, encourage him to wander on the misty
peaks of dreamland--les idees Napolioniennes--commit
nothing to paper; words could always be disavowed and
unverified verbal promises explained away. In Bismarck's
statecraft, as his advice about Austria revealed, the extor-
tion of services from an embarrassed friend only added
contempt for the deluded to dislike. His theory of inter-
national relations left no place for gratitude or generosity.
The successful deception of France would only increase
Prussian resentment at obligations incurred to an enemy,
stupid or weak enough to believe in gratitude. Statesmen
lent or borrowed the capital and currency of the political
life. The needy must pay, and the affluent had a right to
exact a high rate of interest because the needy were so
needy. In the remorseless world of inter-State com-
petition business was business. Ethical considerations
could not apply in the markets of diplomacy; for their
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 107
application ignored the real motives of State conduct.
Bismarck wrote to Roon that Prussia was committing the
folly of being Liberal at home and Conservative abroad.
Such a policy sapped the confidence of the sound elements
in Prussia and flouted the real forces at work in Germany.
Roon agreed in this diagnosis and the mischief of the ' new
era. ' But the recommendation of a Conservative policy
at home and a Liberal one abroad, left him wondering
whether illness had not shaken ' Otto's ' sanity.
Bismarck in the meanwhile could only growl and moan,
and do his best to strengthen the bonds between Prussia
and Russia. The gods decided for him. The crisis of
1859, like that of 1854, was tided over by the action of
France and Austria. Napoleon shrank from the conse-
quences of his own intervention in Italy. Magenta and
Solferino had not been victories in the manner of his uncle;
the idea of a war on the Rhine sent shivers through him;
Italy was breaking away into unforeseen revolutions; the
Ultramontanes were applying a pitiless pressure on the
Tuileries; and France was not prepared for a colossal
struggle. Francis Joseph, with Hungary simmering into
rebellion, Russia deaf and cold, and Great Britain swinging
over to Italy's side, was prepared to sacrifice Lombardy
rather than imperil Austrian supremacy in Germany. The
armistice of Villa Franca, which shattered the hopes of
Cavour, brought immediate relief to the tension in Ger-
many. The Prince Regent in Prussia could face the
German world. He had mobilised, he had not truckled
to France, he had satisfied German honour and his own
conscience.
The European crisis was over, and Prussia had made
neither mistakes nor concessions. William 1. had now to
face his Liberal subjects. The Liberals no longer hampered
by the cry of 'Austria in danger' and the 'Watch on the
Rhine,' took up the programme of constitutional reform
with renewed energy, and the war crisis indirectly brought
the domestic issues to a head.
The Prince Regent was a competent soldier, thoroughly
sound in professional technique, and intimately acquainted
with the administration of the Prussian army. As heir
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? io8
BISMARCK
to the throne, and now as virtually king and commander-
in-chief, he had studied military science, and he had at his
elbow first-rate military advisers on all army questions.
Prince William had the expert's knowledge and framed his
own judgment. The supreme command was his prero-
gative, and he was not prepared to surrender the control
it conferred to any one, least of all to politicians and
civilians who had neither his knowledge nor his militarist
principles. The rights of the Crown over the army in-
herited from his ancestors and expressly guaranteed in the
Constitution of 1851, were the rocher de bronze on which
the Prussian monarchy was impregnably based. The
crises of 1854 and 0f I%59 had revealed defects in the great
military machine, while the economic development of
Prussia had outstripped the system embodied in the law
of 1814.
Three points called for immediate attention. First
and least important, the technical and material equipment
required modernisation and extension. Secondly, the
twenty thousand men who annually escaped military ser-
vice, because the increase in the population furnished an
annual contingent larger than that originally prescribed,
must be brought into training; thirdly, the relations
between the active army, the reserve, and the Landwehr
--the constitutional militia--must be revised. The royal
and ministerial programme, finally adopted after earnest
consideration, aimed broadly at (1) increasing the numbers
of the active army by the creation of new regiments; (2)
remoulding the reserve and the Landwehr so as to give a
larger first reserve for bringing the peace establishment
up to war strength on mobilisation, and a second reserve
better trained and more closely incorporated with the
first line; (3) a supplemental annual charge in money of
nine million thalers. This programme required the assent
of the Landtag because the additional cost must be voted
in the budget, and because the abolition of the old, and
the reorganising of the new, Landwehr involved funda-
mental changes in the law of the land. In figures the
situation came to this: the old system approximately gave
Prussia a standing army of 150,000 with a war establish-
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN 109
ment (without the Landwehr) of 230,000 men; and with
the old Landwehr, approximately, 480,000 men. The
new royal plan, with three years' service, would give a war
establishment of 450,000 men, and with the remodelled
Landwehr a total of 756,000. The plan of the opposition,
with two years' service, reduced the war establishment,
approximately, to 400,000, and the total, with the Land-
wehr, probably to some 600,000.
The Liberals, who were in a substantial majority in the
Lower House, had their chance. They recognised to the
full the desirability of increasing Prussia's military strength
--Prussia was to unify Germany--but they met the royal
programme by demanding (1) the reduction of compulsory
service from three years to two; (2) revision of the new
Landwehr scheme; (3) the annual voting of the Army
Budget. For our purpose here the details of a complicated
problem--military, financial, and constitutional--are not
of importance. But the principles in collision were vital,
and it must suffice briefly and clearly to disentangle them.
Prince William, as a professional soldier and as a ruler,
resented the criticism of a civilian opposition on the tech-
nical aspects of the scheme; his military advisers and he
himself were convinced that military efficiency could be
secured by the royal programme alone. But these tech-
nical questions were completely overshadowed by the
constitutional controversy. The opposition did not dis-
pute the prerogative of the sovereign, as commander-in-
chief, or the duty of every Prussian male to be trained in
the army; but they put forward three claims. First,
that as the obligation of military service affected every
man in Prussia, the nation had the legal and moral right
through its representatives to decide on what conditions
that service should be performed, and if Parliament chose
to reduce the period with the Colours from three years to
two, it had the right to do so; secondly, Parliament had
the legal right to vote or to refuse the taxes required for
maintaining the army; thirdly, the army estimates were
part of the annual budget, and the representatives of the
nation had the right annually to review this budget, since
without parliamentary sanction no taxes were legal for the
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? no
BISMARCK
army or any other institution of the State. In so far as
the army was dependent on statute law and taxation for
its existence, the concurrence of Parliament was essential.
The importance of these claims did not he in their legal
validity, which was undeniable, but in the principles and
consequences they involved. The Prince Regent and
Roon quite correctly grasped that the opposition was
determined to assert, through the annual revision of the
budget, the principle of ministerial responsibility to the
Lower House; and that through the power of the purse
the establishment of ministerial responsibility would lead
inevitably to a general and unlimited control of policy and
executive ministerial action. Prussia would cease to be a
State in which the King governed through the legislature;
it would become a State in which ministers, dependent on
the legislature, governed through the King. The army
would be turned into a creation of the Landtag, and the
prerogative of the sovereign would be legislated out of
existence. In a word, the old conception of the monarchy
was in irreconcilable collision with the new conception of
parliamentary Liberalism. For the Crown, the power and
character of the monarchy were at stake; for the Liberals,
the power and character of Parliament as a national insti-
tution of government. An issue had been raised on which
compromise was impossible. Was there, or was there not,
to be parliamentary and constitutional government in
Prussia? It was recognised that the decision would
affect not merely Prussia, but the whole of Germany.
At the outset the struggle was embittered by an act of
bad faith. The opposition temporarily voted the addi-
tional money required on the understanding that the
ministerial scheme should be withdrawn and the whole
question of reorganisation reserved for future consideration.
But the War Office promptly created the new regiments;
colours were solemnly given them by the Regent; and
the revised budget assumed that the scheme had been ap-
proved. William, who had become king in 1861, peremp-
torily refused to disavow the accomplished facts. His
acts as War-Lord (Kriegesherf) were not subject to parlia-
mentary revision; the money had been voted, and it was
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN in
within his prerogative to apply it. Rejection of the
budget and a dissolution of Parliament followed, with the
result that the Conservative minority was smitten hip and
thigh. The Conservative party numbered a tiny handful
in the new Landtag. The Crown was apparently con-
fronted with surrender to the opposition or resort to a
coup cPEtat.
Bismarck rejoiced in the quarrel. He had had nothing so
far to do either with framing the scheme or the crisis that
arose out of it. In his judgment-nothing could be better
than to strengthen the army, and it was for the soldiers to
decide how most effectively to do this. But even better was
the collision between the Crown and the Liberals. The
control of the army by an irresponsible Crown and ministers
responsible to the Crown alone, lay in the essence of his
everything that he hated and feared--parliamentary
government, the Landtag as a government-making, policy-
making organ, and ministers under the thumb of a majority
composed of professors, lawyers, journalists, and middle-class
amateurs. Even if the scheme were wrong, the Crown
must be supported and the opposition smashed into heel.
The King was desperately unhappy. His Liberal minis-
ters saw no solution but to yield. How could the
government continue without a budget? The country
at the general election had pronounced. The Crown
Prince had the gravest misgivings about a policy which
threatened to destroy national confidence in the sovereign,
perhaps even shatter the throne. Prussia was at this
moment insisting that the incurable autocrat of Hesse-
Cassel must obey his constitution and his legislature, yet
at home was defying the plain rights of the Landtag to vote
taxes and determine their application laid down in the
Prussian law of the land. Roon and the soldiers daily
reminded his Majesty that the army as a monarchical
institution was at stake, and a Hohenzollern who betrayed
the army betrayed himself. Surrender? Civil war? A
coup d fitat? Abdication? Which was King William to
choose? Roon also suggested that if his Majesty's
ministers refused to do their plain duty and defy Parlia-
programme.
