Bismarck
under-
stood as well as Lord Lyons that the Napoleonic Empire
could not stand another rebuff.
stood as well as Lord Lyons that the Napoleonic Empire
could not stand another rebuff.
Robertson - Bismarck
Morier in 1868 drew up
for Lord Stanley a memorandum on the German situation,
in which the truth is told with remarkable accuracy. A
few sentences may be quoted here :--
'The motive power we seek resides, of course, in the Chancellor;
not however in the office, but in the individual Bismarck who at
present fills the office. . . . The Federal Council, after the fashion
of diplomatic congresses, works underground and away from the
light of day . . . hence the work is bona fide got through at the
B. R
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BISMARCK
green table. Under these circumstances, to those acquainted with
the personal prestige of Bismarck, his complete mastery of the
situation in the Federal Council is no matter of surprise. . . . He
is among his Federal compeers facile prineefs, not merely in the
higher branches of statesmanship, but as a skilful workman in the
details of administration. . . . Certain it is that no law and no
measure comes out of the Federal Council in any other shape than
that the Federal Chancellor desires . . . The intrinsic vitality of
the national forces as compared with those opposed to them, the
recognition by Bismarck of this fact, and lastly, the accident of the
hitter's Wolseyan lust for power; for the more we penetrate into
the intricacies of the North German Constitution, the more we
become convinced that its whole framework is built up with refer-
ence to the exceptional and extraordinary position of the Chan-
cellor . . . and to the concentration into his own hands of the vast
administrative power vested in the Federal Chancellor's depart-
ment. . . . The government of North Germany is tending daily
to become as much a personal government as that of France. . . .
No man can be a bona fide leader of a great Liberal party without
faith in Liberal principles, and not one mustard seed of such faith
exists in Count Bismarck's nature. '--{Life of Morier, ii. pp. 103-23. )
Throughout Morier emphasised the secrets of Bismarck's
power--Prussia and Prussianism, and, secondly, National
Liberalism bent on unification. Morier had. been for
fifteen years a voice crying in the wilderness. He was
hated and feared by Bismarck because he knew and told
the truth about Prussianism. He was distrusted in
England at the Foreign Office because he told his chiefs
what they did not wish to hear, and had the embarrassing
gift of predicting failures and the reasons for them.
The real problem for the Europe of 1867-70 lay in the
undeniable antithesis between the State as Power, based
on the nation in arms, carrying out a policy in which might
made right, and the State as Right, striving to base inter-
national relations on law, morality, and the conscience of
self-governing democracies. But the problem was neither
solved nor even simplified by a grotesque and unpardonable
ignorance of Germany's avowed ambitions and the sources
from which it drew its strength, or by the supposition that
Germany standing on the threshold of achievement would
listen for one moment to a suggestion of throwing down
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 259
the one weapon by which achievement could be made
good.
Bismarck intended to unify Germany and alter not
merely the Balance of Power but rearrange the Continent
on a different system, the capital feature of which would
be a German hegemony controlled by Prussia. In 1868,
when Morier wrote, Moltke on foot had examined the
Franco-German frontier from end to end. By 1870 the
reorganisation of the Federal forces was practically com-
plete; the strategic railways carried out; the military
material collected, and mobilisation could be effected
within three weeks or less. France swarmed with German
spies. At Berlin every move in France was watched with
the eyes of the hunter on his prey. The war with France
was being as remorselessly prepared as the war of 1866
with Austria, and with all the benefit of the experience of
'64 and '66. The Chief of the Staff knew that it would
probably come on Prussia like a thief in the night. Char-
acter, personality, and power of work--these two men,
Bismarck and Moltke, were the quintessence of Prussianism
in the combination of these qualities. And they had at
their disposal a nation brimming with capacity, fired with
the faith that can move mountains, and ready to work
itself to the bone in disciplined toil.
Two other quotations are relevant to the general situa-
tion. Lord Lyons wrote to Lord Clarendon on January
30, 1870 :--
'M. Ollivier was particularly alive to the importance
of not exposing France to the appearance of being slighted;
in fact, he would not conceal from me that under present
circumstances a public rebuff from Prussia would be fatal.
"Un echec," he said, " c'est la guerre! "' 'I could see,'
wrote Lord A. Loftus on March 12, 1870, 'that Count
Bismarck has no fear of the Russian policy towards Prussia,
so long as the Emperor lives and Prince Gortchakov re-
mains minister. '
After 1867 the external and internal situation was dis-
quieting and depressing. In Bavaria Prince Hohenlohe,
manfully striving against the Ultramontanes and the
Particularists to find a form of union which would
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BISMARCK
preserve the autonomy of Bavaria, was obliged to resign
(March 7, 1870), and a clerical administration under Bray
took his place. In Wurttemberg, a stronghold of Radical-
ism and the Deutsche Volkspartei, the anti-union oppo-
sition was so democratic that the Tsar Alexander n. was
seriously concerned for the throne of his kinsmen at
Stuttgart. In the Reichstag there was much bitter
criticism. Bismarck was so exasperated that he had re-
course to his familiar device of tendering his resignation
on the ground that one man could not reconcile the King,
eight ministers, and three Parliaments. But his chief
difficulties were not with the Reichstag but with the irre-
concilable dynasticism of the deposed rulers--the Hano-
verian in particular. The famous' Reptile Fund' derived
its name from the sequestration of a part of the royal pro-
perty of Hanover to a fund for counteracting Hanoverian-
ism. 'The reptiles must be pursued into their lairs. '
Junkertum was a continuous stumbling-block. Edwin
von Manteuffel, the chief of the military cabinet, was sup-
ported by a powerful party as likely to be a much better
Chancellor. The Memoirs of Stosch and Bernhardi reveal
the under-currents swirling round the monarchy. Bis-
marck retorted by attacks on feminine and English in-
fluence. The jackals round the lion yapped, with the
lion's encouragement, in the press controlled by the
Press Bureau and the Reptile Fund.
Foreign policy and the international situation kept
Bismarck very anxious. The irrepressible Beust had trans-
ferred his services from Dresden to Vienna. Beust meant
more mischief than Austria was capable of carrying out.
German historians have sedulously built up the theory
that between 1868 and 1870 Prussia was being steadily
encircled by three hostile states. Hence the comfortable
conclusion that the war with France was a defensive effort
against an offensive assault, anticipated by Prussia and
thrust upon her against her will.
In support of this view there are certain undeniable
facts. In the autumn of 1867 Napoleon met the King of
Wurttemberg at Ulm, the King of Bavaria at Augsburg,
and the Emperor of Austria at Salzburg. Francis Joseph
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 261
returned the visit at Paris. The entente between Austria
and France was, however, confined to after-dinner toasts.
Menabrea in Italy drew up the project of a triple alliance,
and in 1868 and 1869 there was much discussion between
Vienna, Florence, and Paris. The general belief at Berlin
that an alliance between France and Italy had been con-
cluded was erroneous. All that Napoleon had on paper
was (September 1869) a letter from Victor Emmanuel and
another from Francis Joseph approving of the idea of com-
mon action at some future date. He showed these letters
in July 1870 to the Council at Paris that had war and peace
in its hands, and they profoundly influenced the decision.
The Council afterwards accepted Napoleon's interpretation
--wholly unjustified, as the events proved--that they were
equivalent to a solemn pledge. The visit of General
Le Flo to Petersburg in 1869 caused much perturbation,
but Le F16 discovered that Russia was only interested in the
question of ' revising' the clauses in the Treaty of 1856
which closed the Black Sea to Russia. Bismarck truly
told Lord A. Loftus that 'he attributed no importance
to the reports of a Franco-Russian entente. ' The per-
manent difficulty was Rome. Napoleon declined to give
the one guarantee that would secure Italy's enthusiastic
aid--the withdrawal of the French troops from Rome.
The Archduke Albert, the victor of Custozza, visited Paris
in the spring of 1870, and General Lebrun was sent to
Vienna. Schemes of military co-operation were discussed,
but when (June 15) Lebrun left Vienna no formal alliance
had been drawn up, nor was there a military convention in
existence pledging either France or Austria to combined
action. No military convention with Italy was in exist-
ence nor had a formal political alliance been made. The
danger of the situation lay in the critical position of the
Napoleonic Empire, summed up in Lord Lyons' letter of
May 6, 1870 :--
'It would be quite a mistake to suppose that this is a
moment at which it would be safe to defy France. On
the contrary, a war unmistakably provoked by Prussia
would be hailed by many as a welcome diversion from
internal difficulties. So far as I can judge, Ollivier
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BISMARCK
is not the man to shrink from one? (The italics are Lord
Lyons'. )
So far, no evidence has been forthcoming to prove that
Italy, Austria, and France had agreed to unite in an attack
on Prussia or the North German Confederation. The
'conspiracy' to force an offensive war on an unwilling
Germany had in fact not been made. The justification of
Bismarck's action, wherever it may be placed, cannot rest
on the defined menace of a Triple Alliance, ready to strike
at an agreed hour for agreed objects by agreed and con-
certed action.
Bismarck was perfectly well informed of these facts.
The intelligence departments of the Foreign Office and
the General Staff did not accept the gossip of diplomatists
and journalists as the basis of their policy and strategy,
though they utilised it, with much embroidery, in the
newspapers controlled from the Chancery to organise
German public opinion. On the other hand, the evidence
that Bismarck after 1866 regarded a war with France as
inevitable and desirable is overwhelming, and he has com-
pleted it in his own Memoirs. After 1866 the political task
was to isolate France, for the General Staff demanded the
isolation of the foe as the condition of a crushing military
decision. Bismarck started by giving Moltke the neces-
sary time. For three years he sedulously damped down
the Chauvinists in the Reichstag. For three years the
Chancellor breathed peace and goodwill. The argument
for unification through war was clinched by the course
of events in Germany since 1866. Without war uni-
fication was either impossible or only attainable by pulling
the North German Confederation to pieces and recon-
structing it to suit the anti-Prussian feeling of the south.
In the Reichstag the National Liberals, toiling at unifying
legislation, had not abandoned the principle of achieving
ministerial responsibility and responsible parliamentary
government in a Federal and united Germany. In March
1869 Twesten and the Radical Left demanded the estab-
lishment of four responsible Federal ministers--finance,
war, the navy, and commerce--to sit beside the Federal
Chancellor as colleagues, not as the subordinate executive
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 263
heads of Chancery departments. The proposal, which
meant a re-writing of the Federal Constitution, was only
defeated with the help of the Conservatives by seventeen
votes. For three years Bismarck at Berlin and in the soli-
tude of Varzin studied Germany and the problem. War
alone would smash down, he concluded and rightly, the
obstinate obstacles to the Prussian solution. So long as
France was there, the south would be reinforced in its
stubborn reluctance to enter the Confederation except on
its own terms. War was necessary also as much to complete
the defeat of Liberalism as to defeat France. In May 1870
Bismarck spoke in the Reichstag of the embogging of the
work of unification in the sand of Particularism, of the
States, and of parties, and of the German right to crush
under a foot of iron every obstacle to the establishment of
the German nation in all its splendour and power. The
war of 1870 foretold the nadir of Liberalism in Europe.
Russia was in Bismarck's pocket. After 1867 Bismarck's
system of foreign policy pivoted more surely than before
on a close understanding with Petersburg. It is probable
that in 1866 Russia's acquiescence in the Treaty of Prague
had been secured by an undertaking to permit the revision
of the Treaty of 1856 at a favourable opportunity. It is
certain that Bismarck secured Russia's benevolent neu-
trality in 1870 by inviting Russia to denounce the pro-
hibitive clauses: and the undertaking had probably been
given in the spring of 1870, if not earlier. Such a denun-
ciation would at once put Great Britain out of action; it
meant that "Austria, a signatory to the Treaty of 1856,
and bound by a secret alliance with England and France,
dating from 1856, to resist the revision of the Black Sea
articles by force, would have Russia on her back if she took
action either against Russia or Prussia. Bismarck's refusal
to intervene in the Italian problem was not due to in-
difference but to calculation. So long as France kept her
troops in Rome a Franco-Italian alliance was out of the
question. If circumstances required, Prussia could, as in
1866, buy Italy for a price; on the other hand, the
increasing volume of opposition to the Vatican Council
in Germany offered the opportunity to gratify German
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BISMARCK
Protestants and Catholics by breaking with the Papacy.
Bismarck therefore held his hand.
The neutrality of Belgium created a powerful lever on
Great Britain. The General Staff at Berlin preferred for
military reasons that Belgium should remain neutral.
When Bismarck published in The limes on July 25, 1870,
Benedetti's damning letter with its crude revelation of
Napoleon's ambitions and proposals, and followed it up
by a Prussian guarantee of Belgium's security, he practically
obtained British neutrality. 'Louis' was certainly going
to pay dearly for his intervention in 1866.
So far then from Prussia by the spring of 1870 being
hemmed in and isolated, it was France that was hemmed
in. The only alliances Bismarck required were the military
conventions with the south, and these had been secured
in 1866. Moltke assured him that, humanly speaking, if
a united Germany fought France in a ring fence victory
was certain. The ring fence was practically complete.
It was not enough, however, to hem France in. She
must be either coerced or lured into declaring war. The
war could then be proclaimed a defensive one, on behalf of
German honour, security, and independence. France the
aggressor, pacific Prussia the victim of her vanity and
ambition.
This attitude was essential. King William still had a
conscience, even if, as Bismarck said in 1869, ' our master
to-day has changed his tune from that in 1862; he has
drunk from the chalice of popularity and refuses to break
it. ' But the south must be brought in, fired with the
enthusiasm for 'Germany in danger. ' Neutral public
opinion must be influenced from the start to tolerate, per-
haps demand, the chastisement of France.
Bismarck under-
stood as well as Lord Lyons that the Napoleonic Empire
could not stand another rebuff. He knew the men with
whom he had to deal: Napoleon, ill, vacillating, swayed
by every group in turn; Ollivier, high-minded, weak, and
not master of his cabinet; the reckless Duc de Gramont,
ultramontane to his finger-tips, who replaced the cool-
headed Daru in May; behind them the Empress and the
clerical camarilla, and in Paris the boulevard patriotism
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 265
de cafe-concert, vain, ignorant, the dupe of its government
and itself.
Spain could complete the isolation of France. Cer-
tainly Bismarck's luck was extraordinary, for just when
Prussia needed a revolution the Spaniards obligingly pro-
vided one. In 1868 Queen Isabella abdicated. The
Spanish throne was vacant. Who was to fill it?
The complete story of the Hohenzollern candidature
has never been told. It probably never will, for the secret
may be concealed in the archives of Friedrichsruhe, but
more probably was buried with Bismarck. But the main
points are clear, and they conclusively contradict the Prus-
sian version accepted for a decade because the refutation was
not available. Whether Prim and Salazar started the idea
of placing Leopold or Frederick of Hohenzollern-Sigmar-
ingen, the elder or the third son of Anthony of Hohen-
zollern, and the brothers of Charles, ruler in Roumania,
or whether the idea was inspired by Bismarck, is of historical
interest but not of political importance. We know now
that in February 1869 Villanueva came from Spain to
Berlin and had a long interview with the Chancellor; in
March Th. von Bernhardi left for a special mission to
Spain; in September 1869 Salazar was introduced by
Werthern, the Prussian minister at Munich, to Prince
Anthony, and suggested the throne for Prince Leopold; in
February 1870 Salazar returned and pressed the candidature
on King William and Prince Anthony, who were not favour-
able to the idea; Bismarck on February 27 drew up a
confidential report in which he strongly supported the
proposal; on March 15 a Council was held at which Moltke,
Roon, Schleinitz, Thile, Delbriick, Bismarck, the King,
and Prince Anthony and Leopold were present; at this
Council Delbriick asked Moltke ' Are we ready if Napoleon
takes it ill? ' and Moltke simply nodded; the Hohen-
zollerns hesitated, attracted by the prospects, repelled by
the dangers of so ambitious a stroke; Bismarck sent Lothar
Bucher and Major Versen on a secret mission to Spain in
April; to Prince Anthony's deep regret, neither of his avail-
able sons would accept; the affair which seemed to be closed
was renewed in May as the result of Bucher and Versen's
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BISMARCK
mission, and thanks to a second mission of Bucher's, and
Salazar's importunity, supported by Bismarck's persistent
pressure, Prince Leopold finally consented probably by the
end of May, definitely on June 19; and, lastly, on June 21,
'after a hard struggle,' King William also consented. So
far the matter had been kept a profound secret. Olozaga,
the Spanish minister at Paris, was quite in the dark; Prim,
however, instead of carrying the business through and
presenting Europe with a fait accompli, as Bismarck pro-
bably intended and Salazar expected, prorogued the
Cortes till October 31. He seems to have lost his nerve at
this point, and to have hoped to talk Napoleon over during
the summer at Vichy. But the secret was either betrayed
or deliberately let out, and on July 3 was definitively
known at Paris. .
Bismarck was perfectly well aware that France would
not accept the Hohenzollern candidature. The King of
Roumania duly noted in his diary the certainty of French
opposition, as far back as December 9, 1868, and on the
mere rumour of such a candidature in 1869 Napoleon
(May n) had sent Benedetti to Bismarck to indicate the
attitude of the French government. It is certain that
Bismarck intended to fling down a challenge to France,
and that in procuring the acceptance of the candidature by
his sovereign he was deliberately provoking a European war.
The argument that a Hohenzollern prince at Madrid would
drop hk Germanism and become a Spaniard when he
crossed the Pyrenees is worthless, and recent events in the
Near East confirm its worthlessness. Bismarck himself can
be put in the witness-box. In his report of February 27
he argued that among many advantages that acceptance
of the Spanish throne would bring--the prestige of the
Hohenzollerns elevated like the Habsburgs to a European
position, the strengthening of the monarchical principle,
the commercial concessions for German trade (as in Rou-
mania)--the military aspect was of great importance:--
'If Germany and France were at war,' he wrote, ' and
the position was that under Isabella, and if on the other
hand a government in sympathy with Germany existed,
the difference for us between these two situations may be
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 267
calculated at one to two army corps. In the former,
French troops would be released by Spain and be available
against Germany; in the latter, France would have to
detach an army corps to the (Spanish) frontier. '
In a word, Spain would complete the isolation of France
and open the Mediterranean to Germany. It was a case
of double or quits. If France acquiesced, Spain became
a Hohenzollern satrapy, possibly an ally in a future war; if
she refused, she must make the candidature a casus belli,
and force war on Prussia.
Bismarck's contention that the whole matter was a pure
family and dynastic matter is belied by his conduct and
arguments. If so, why all the secrecy? Why was it
necessary to discuss a pure family affair of a cadet branch
of the Hohenzollerns at a Prussian Council, at which it was
requisite to include the Federal Chancellor, the Chief of
the General Staff, the Minister of War, the Director of the
Federal Chancery, and the Under-Secretary of the Foreign
Department? In Bismarck's confidential report the
candidature was argued on grounds of high policy in which
the interests of Germany and Prussia were deeply con-
cerned, and refusal of the offer was represented to be
politically detrimental to Germany. Bismarck repeatedly
asserted that he had no locus standi officially to advise the
King in a dynastic concern. Yet for twelve months he
had used all his authority and power as Chancellor and
Minister-President to press Prince Anthony and his sove-
reign to accept. Bismarck's denial of knowledge of the
affair was a he. . In what capacity did he receive Villanueva,
send Bernhardi, Bucher, and Versen to Spain, and corre-
spond with the Crown Prince on the subject? The
original introduction of Salazar to Prince Anthony was
made by Werthern, certainly with Bismarck's consent and
probably at his instigation. Men in the diplomatic ser-
vice were broken by Bismarck for implicating the govern-
ment, without the Chancellor's authority, in a policy
that committed Prussia. Werthern would not have dared
to do what he did, unless he desired to be treated as
Arnim was later.
Bismarck's conduct throughout the affair was com-
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BISMARCK
petent, dictatorial, and absolutely unscrupulous, and his
behaviour was indicated in the letter, taken by Bucher to
Spain on June 11, the authenticity of which can be
accepted. He would maintain that officially he was not
concerned. Why should the Spaniards not offer the crown
to any one they pleased? Accordingly, he retired to
Varzin on April 14, and stayed there till May 21. Until
June 8 he was in Berlin and then retired to Varzin to be
out of the way, when 'the Spanish bomb' burst, and
stayed there till July 12. King William went for a cure
to Ems, and the Hohenzollerns of Sigmaringen were
at their country-house. Thile as under-secretary could
therefore reply to French questions that 'the Prussian
government was absolutely ignorant of this affair, which
did not exist for it. ' Thile who had been present at the
Council of March 15!
It is unnecessary to relate in detail the oft-told dramatic
story of the French government's action when the news
of the candidature became known. From July 3 onwards
French public opinion was in a fever of excitement and
indignation. The government recognised the challenge.
By sending Benedetti direct to King William at Ems they
succeeded in stripping the candidature of its family char-
acter. They deliberately fixed the responsibility on
Prussia, and on July 12, when Prince Anthony renounced
the candidature, with King William's acquiescence,
France had won a striking diplomatic success. King
William, indeed, confessed that the renunciation removed
a load of stone from his heart. The French government
feared, however, that Prince Leopold might imitate his
brother Prince Charles in 1866 in the Roumanian affair, re^
pudiate his father, and go to Spain. The Duc de Gramont
and Ollivier knew the character of the Prussian government
and of Bismarck, and were determined to stroke the t's and
dot the i's of the renunciation; they aimed at inflicting a
personal as well as a political humiliation on the Hohen-
zollern sovereign and his minister. Like a weak man
Gramont did not know where to stop. His insistence
that King William must give a guarantee that the candi-
dature would not be renewed, was made on his own re-
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 269
sponsibility without communication to the Prime Minister,
or the Council of State, or, apparently, Napoleon himself.
King William, who had behaved correctly so far, and was
convinced that his acquiescence in the renunciation closed
the whole episode, naturally resented the French demand
as an insinuation against his royal good faith and as a deli-
berate attempt to pick a quarrel with Prussia. The
message through an aide-de-camp that the incident was
closed, and that he had nothing further to say, was some-
what curt but unobjectionable. It was not insulting nor
intended to be an insult. Gramont had by his folly
pledged France; much worse, he had given Bismarck his
chance.
By July 12 Bismarck was very depressed. For the first
time he had been worsted before Europe in a grave affair
of diplomacy; and it is clear that he had not anticipated
the French success in terrifying Prince Anthony into a re-
nunciation. The game as he had intended to play it had
broken down completely. He now had neither a defen-
sive war nor the candidature. Public opinion both in
Paris and Germany was very excited, but had the French
government taken a strong and cool line on the 12th of
July, informed France that as the result of French action
the candidature was at an end, that the King of Prussia
acquiesced in the renunciation, and that his royal words
and pacific disposition could be trusted, it is difficult to see
what Bismarck could have done. The Duc de Gramont's
irresponsible and criminal levity ruined a great success.
But it is impossible to acquit Ollivier, the Prime Minister,
of culpable negligence, indecision, and weakness. A close
examination of the evidence leaves an indelible impression
that Ollivier wavered between several and contradictory
lines of action, and did not supervise the action of the
Foreign Office as he should have done. Gramont and
Ollivier enabled Bismarck to represent France as insulted.
The French government had now either to sit down under
the insult or force a war in vindication of French honour.
The famous 'dispatch from Ems'1 which brought
1 Late in life Bismarck remarked to Harden, the editor of Die Zukunfi, who
printed it in his paper: 'It is very easy, without falsification, but simply by
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about the final rupture was neither a falsification nor a
forgery. The King left to Bismarck's discretion the re-
sponsibility of publishing his intimation to Benedetti that
he had nothing further to communicate. Bismarck saw
Gortschakov on July 12 at Berlin, and probably then and
there ratified Russia's benevolent neutrality in the case of
war by agreeing to the denunciation of the prohibitive
clauses in the Treaty of 1856 at a favourable opportunity;
he was searching with ferocious earnestness for the oppor-
tunity to reopen the issues between France and Prussia
and drive France into war. The edited version of the
King's narrative which he authorised for publication was
a brutaUsed and provocative message, true in the bare
facts, but so worded as to convey a wholly different con-
struction; it was deliberately intended to be 'a red flag
for the Gallic Bull. ' The Bismarckian version gladdened
the gloomy hearts of Roon and Moltke at that memorable
meal on the night of July 13. This meant the war for
which they had prayed and worked. Roon said: 'Our
God of old lives still and will not let us perish in disgrace. '
Moltke smote his hand upon his breast and said: * If I
may not live to lead our armies in such a war, then the devil
may come directly afterwards and fetch away the old car-
case. ' That night Bismarck said his prayers with Unusual
fervency. On July 14 Germany was singing ' Die Wacht
am Rhein! ' At Paris delirious crowds on the boulevards
were crying ' A Berlin! ' On July 15 King William issued
the order for general mobilisation. On July 19 France
declared war. 1
Bismarck had won. The British offer of mediation
(July 17) was politely but firmly rejected. France was
isolated. Beust and Victor Emmanuel's efforts to settle
omissions and corrections, completely to alter the tone of a communication. I
have myself once had experience of the task, as editor of the Ems dispatch . . .
when by omissions and compressions I had edited it, Moltke exclaimed: "The
original was an order to retreat (chamade), now it is a summons to charge
(fanfare). "' The text of the King's message and the version, as edited by
Bismarck and sent officially for publication and to all the Prussian diplomatic
representatives, is printed in an Appendix (p. 496), where the exact character
of the ' editing1 can be textually established by every reader for himself.
1 The famous cartoon in Punch (July 30), one of Tenniel's best, in which
the great Napoleon warned Napoleon III. to halt--' Beware ! '--published before
the German victories bore the warning out, was a prophecy tragically true.
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 271
the Italian problem, with a view to armed mediation and
subsequent active intervention on the side of France, broke
down between July 19 and August 2. Even at the eleventh
hour and in the extreme peril of the situation Napoleon
could not, or more probably was not allowed to, bring him-
self to renounce Rome. He wavered, consented, and then
withdrew his consent. By August 6 the German victories
made the intervention of Austria and Italy or a Triple
Alliance too dangerous to be seriously entertained further.
Bismarck's political strategy, as in 1866, had given the
German army its chance; and the soldiers justified his
confidence. Roon told King William on July 15 that
mobilisation was easy, for everything was ready. Marshal
Leboeuf had said the same at St. Cloud. Leboeuf s assertion
was an ignorant boast, Roon's a summary of three years'
relentless preparation. The German military machine
worked with marvellous precision. After July 15 Moltke
could find time to read French novels, until the troops
had reached their appointed stations, when he left Berlin
with his sovereign for Worth, Spicheren, Mars-la-Tour,
St. Privat, Sedan, and Paris.
Bismarck travelled with General Headquarters through-
out the campaign; his sons were serving in the army and
took part in the desperate battles round Metz; he himself
was present at Sedan, and there at the weaver's cottage on
the Donchery road, on the morning of September 2, he
met Napoleon. 'An emphatic contrast,' he wrote to his
wife on September 3, ' with our last meeting in '67 at the
Tuileries. Our conversation was difficult, although I did
not wish to recall things which would painfully affect the
man struck down by God's mighty hand . . . yesterday
and the day before lost France 100,000 men and an
Emperor. ' By October 5 Headquarters reached Versailles,
and Bismarck resided in the Rue de Provence till March 6,
1871--Versailles he had last visited with General Leboeuf.
From the declaration of war to the ratification of the
Peace of Frankfurt, May 10, 1871, he was overwhelmed
with work; and, as in 1866, the strain imposed on his health
and nerves by the continuous negotiations, the relations
with the European neutrals, the necessity of keeping in close
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touch with developments and public opinion in Germany,
and the perpetual crisis created by the war and the military
operations, caused an excessive irritability, aggravated by
frequent bursts of violent anger. 'The official files,' he
wrote to his wife, 'make a pile higher than my head. '
'Dead tired as he is,' noted Abeken, 'he cannot sleep. '
Every one from the King downwards had to endure his
dictatorial temper, his explosions of wrath, and his rasping
tongue, with its vivid, direct, unsparing, and bitter
phrases. He was endured, because he was indispensable.
His experience, prestige, inexhaustible resources, and
amazing powers of work, the lucid grip on general prin-
ciples and the mastery of detail, the personality and the
temperament of genius, made him unique. There was
only one Bismarck, and there were no three men at Head-
quarters or elsewhere in Germany who could combine his
gifts . and his qualities. 'The Bismarck touch' was re-
vealed in the ten months that followed July 19, 1870, not
once but fifty times. In truth, these Prussians, leaders
and subordinates alike, were an iron race, tough of skin,
lavish in all the relations of life of a stern brutality, and a
full-blooded and unrestrained force, and meting out to each
other no little of the militarist and graceless arrogance that
defeated France had to endure. They were the victors,
and they took care to let Europe as well as France feel it.
Through all the events that make the history of these
months so tragic for France, so intoxicating for Ger-
many, so humiliating for Europe, there rings the gospel of
the conqueror's sword. For pity, generosity, sympathy
you will look in vain. The appeal is always to force.
German power had brought the German armies to Paris
--to Babylon--and Babylon was about to fall. Power was
the one and only convincing argument, and Germany had
it. No one else had.
From the commencement to the end of the war Bis-
marck's relations with the soldier-chiefs were more sharply
strained than they had been in 1866. The soldiers--' the
demi-gods,' as Bismarck called them--would gladly have
left him behind at Berlin; his continuous presence at Head-
quarters, his ' interference' with the military direction and
?
for Lord Stanley a memorandum on the German situation,
in which the truth is told with remarkable accuracy. A
few sentences may be quoted here :--
'The motive power we seek resides, of course, in the Chancellor;
not however in the office, but in the individual Bismarck who at
present fills the office. . . . The Federal Council, after the fashion
of diplomatic congresses, works underground and away from the
light of day . . . hence the work is bona fide got through at the
B. R
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BISMARCK
green table. Under these circumstances, to those acquainted with
the personal prestige of Bismarck, his complete mastery of the
situation in the Federal Council is no matter of surprise. . . . He
is among his Federal compeers facile prineefs, not merely in the
higher branches of statesmanship, but as a skilful workman in the
details of administration. . . . Certain it is that no law and no
measure comes out of the Federal Council in any other shape than
that the Federal Chancellor desires . . . The intrinsic vitality of
the national forces as compared with those opposed to them, the
recognition by Bismarck of this fact, and lastly, the accident of the
hitter's Wolseyan lust for power; for the more we penetrate into
the intricacies of the North German Constitution, the more we
become convinced that its whole framework is built up with refer-
ence to the exceptional and extraordinary position of the Chan-
cellor . . . and to the concentration into his own hands of the vast
administrative power vested in the Federal Chancellor's depart-
ment. . . . The government of North Germany is tending daily
to become as much a personal government as that of France. . . .
No man can be a bona fide leader of a great Liberal party without
faith in Liberal principles, and not one mustard seed of such faith
exists in Count Bismarck's nature. '--{Life of Morier, ii. pp. 103-23. )
Throughout Morier emphasised the secrets of Bismarck's
power--Prussia and Prussianism, and, secondly, National
Liberalism bent on unification. Morier had. been for
fifteen years a voice crying in the wilderness. He was
hated and feared by Bismarck because he knew and told
the truth about Prussianism. He was distrusted in
England at the Foreign Office because he told his chiefs
what they did not wish to hear, and had the embarrassing
gift of predicting failures and the reasons for them.
The real problem for the Europe of 1867-70 lay in the
undeniable antithesis between the State as Power, based
on the nation in arms, carrying out a policy in which might
made right, and the State as Right, striving to base inter-
national relations on law, morality, and the conscience of
self-governing democracies. But the problem was neither
solved nor even simplified by a grotesque and unpardonable
ignorance of Germany's avowed ambitions and the sources
from which it drew its strength, or by the supposition that
Germany standing on the threshold of achievement would
listen for one moment to a suggestion of throwing down
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 259
the one weapon by which achievement could be made
good.
Bismarck intended to unify Germany and alter not
merely the Balance of Power but rearrange the Continent
on a different system, the capital feature of which would
be a German hegemony controlled by Prussia. In 1868,
when Morier wrote, Moltke on foot had examined the
Franco-German frontier from end to end. By 1870 the
reorganisation of the Federal forces was practically com-
plete; the strategic railways carried out; the military
material collected, and mobilisation could be effected
within three weeks or less. France swarmed with German
spies. At Berlin every move in France was watched with
the eyes of the hunter on his prey. The war with France
was being as remorselessly prepared as the war of 1866
with Austria, and with all the benefit of the experience of
'64 and '66. The Chief of the Staff knew that it would
probably come on Prussia like a thief in the night. Char-
acter, personality, and power of work--these two men,
Bismarck and Moltke, were the quintessence of Prussianism
in the combination of these qualities. And they had at
their disposal a nation brimming with capacity, fired with
the faith that can move mountains, and ready to work
itself to the bone in disciplined toil.
Two other quotations are relevant to the general situa-
tion. Lord Lyons wrote to Lord Clarendon on January
30, 1870 :--
'M. Ollivier was particularly alive to the importance
of not exposing France to the appearance of being slighted;
in fact, he would not conceal from me that under present
circumstances a public rebuff from Prussia would be fatal.
"Un echec," he said, " c'est la guerre! "' 'I could see,'
wrote Lord A. Loftus on March 12, 1870, 'that Count
Bismarck has no fear of the Russian policy towards Prussia,
so long as the Emperor lives and Prince Gortchakov re-
mains minister. '
After 1867 the external and internal situation was dis-
quieting and depressing. In Bavaria Prince Hohenlohe,
manfully striving against the Ultramontanes and the
Particularists to find a form of union which would
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BISMARCK
preserve the autonomy of Bavaria, was obliged to resign
(March 7, 1870), and a clerical administration under Bray
took his place. In Wurttemberg, a stronghold of Radical-
ism and the Deutsche Volkspartei, the anti-union oppo-
sition was so democratic that the Tsar Alexander n. was
seriously concerned for the throne of his kinsmen at
Stuttgart. In the Reichstag there was much bitter
criticism. Bismarck was so exasperated that he had re-
course to his familiar device of tendering his resignation
on the ground that one man could not reconcile the King,
eight ministers, and three Parliaments. But his chief
difficulties were not with the Reichstag but with the irre-
concilable dynasticism of the deposed rulers--the Hano-
verian in particular. The famous' Reptile Fund' derived
its name from the sequestration of a part of the royal pro-
perty of Hanover to a fund for counteracting Hanoverian-
ism. 'The reptiles must be pursued into their lairs. '
Junkertum was a continuous stumbling-block. Edwin
von Manteuffel, the chief of the military cabinet, was sup-
ported by a powerful party as likely to be a much better
Chancellor. The Memoirs of Stosch and Bernhardi reveal
the under-currents swirling round the monarchy. Bis-
marck retorted by attacks on feminine and English in-
fluence. The jackals round the lion yapped, with the
lion's encouragement, in the press controlled by the
Press Bureau and the Reptile Fund.
Foreign policy and the international situation kept
Bismarck very anxious. The irrepressible Beust had trans-
ferred his services from Dresden to Vienna. Beust meant
more mischief than Austria was capable of carrying out.
German historians have sedulously built up the theory
that between 1868 and 1870 Prussia was being steadily
encircled by three hostile states. Hence the comfortable
conclusion that the war with France was a defensive effort
against an offensive assault, anticipated by Prussia and
thrust upon her against her will.
In support of this view there are certain undeniable
facts. In the autumn of 1867 Napoleon met the King of
Wurttemberg at Ulm, the King of Bavaria at Augsburg,
and the Emperor of Austria at Salzburg. Francis Joseph
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 261
returned the visit at Paris. The entente between Austria
and France was, however, confined to after-dinner toasts.
Menabrea in Italy drew up the project of a triple alliance,
and in 1868 and 1869 there was much discussion between
Vienna, Florence, and Paris. The general belief at Berlin
that an alliance between France and Italy had been con-
cluded was erroneous. All that Napoleon had on paper
was (September 1869) a letter from Victor Emmanuel and
another from Francis Joseph approving of the idea of com-
mon action at some future date. He showed these letters
in July 1870 to the Council at Paris that had war and peace
in its hands, and they profoundly influenced the decision.
The Council afterwards accepted Napoleon's interpretation
--wholly unjustified, as the events proved--that they were
equivalent to a solemn pledge. The visit of General
Le Flo to Petersburg in 1869 caused much perturbation,
but Le F16 discovered that Russia was only interested in the
question of ' revising' the clauses in the Treaty of 1856
which closed the Black Sea to Russia. Bismarck truly
told Lord A. Loftus that 'he attributed no importance
to the reports of a Franco-Russian entente. ' The per-
manent difficulty was Rome. Napoleon declined to give
the one guarantee that would secure Italy's enthusiastic
aid--the withdrawal of the French troops from Rome.
The Archduke Albert, the victor of Custozza, visited Paris
in the spring of 1870, and General Lebrun was sent to
Vienna. Schemes of military co-operation were discussed,
but when (June 15) Lebrun left Vienna no formal alliance
had been drawn up, nor was there a military convention in
existence pledging either France or Austria to combined
action. No military convention with Italy was in exist-
ence nor had a formal political alliance been made. The
danger of the situation lay in the critical position of the
Napoleonic Empire, summed up in Lord Lyons' letter of
May 6, 1870 :--
'It would be quite a mistake to suppose that this is a
moment at which it would be safe to defy France. On
the contrary, a war unmistakably provoked by Prussia
would be hailed by many as a welcome diversion from
internal difficulties. So far as I can judge, Ollivier
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BISMARCK
is not the man to shrink from one? (The italics are Lord
Lyons'. )
So far, no evidence has been forthcoming to prove that
Italy, Austria, and France had agreed to unite in an attack
on Prussia or the North German Confederation. The
'conspiracy' to force an offensive war on an unwilling
Germany had in fact not been made. The justification of
Bismarck's action, wherever it may be placed, cannot rest
on the defined menace of a Triple Alliance, ready to strike
at an agreed hour for agreed objects by agreed and con-
certed action.
Bismarck was perfectly well informed of these facts.
The intelligence departments of the Foreign Office and
the General Staff did not accept the gossip of diplomatists
and journalists as the basis of their policy and strategy,
though they utilised it, with much embroidery, in the
newspapers controlled from the Chancery to organise
German public opinion. On the other hand, the evidence
that Bismarck after 1866 regarded a war with France as
inevitable and desirable is overwhelming, and he has com-
pleted it in his own Memoirs. After 1866 the political task
was to isolate France, for the General Staff demanded the
isolation of the foe as the condition of a crushing military
decision. Bismarck started by giving Moltke the neces-
sary time. For three years he sedulously damped down
the Chauvinists in the Reichstag. For three years the
Chancellor breathed peace and goodwill. The argument
for unification through war was clinched by the course
of events in Germany since 1866. Without war uni-
fication was either impossible or only attainable by pulling
the North German Confederation to pieces and recon-
structing it to suit the anti-Prussian feeling of the south.
In the Reichstag the National Liberals, toiling at unifying
legislation, had not abandoned the principle of achieving
ministerial responsibility and responsible parliamentary
government in a Federal and united Germany. In March
1869 Twesten and the Radical Left demanded the estab-
lishment of four responsible Federal ministers--finance,
war, the navy, and commerce--to sit beside the Federal
Chancellor as colleagues, not as the subordinate executive
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 263
heads of Chancery departments. The proposal, which
meant a re-writing of the Federal Constitution, was only
defeated with the help of the Conservatives by seventeen
votes. For three years Bismarck at Berlin and in the soli-
tude of Varzin studied Germany and the problem. War
alone would smash down, he concluded and rightly, the
obstinate obstacles to the Prussian solution. So long as
France was there, the south would be reinforced in its
stubborn reluctance to enter the Confederation except on
its own terms. War was necessary also as much to complete
the defeat of Liberalism as to defeat France. In May 1870
Bismarck spoke in the Reichstag of the embogging of the
work of unification in the sand of Particularism, of the
States, and of parties, and of the German right to crush
under a foot of iron every obstacle to the establishment of
the German nation in all its splendour and power. The
war of 1870 foretold the nadir of Liberalism in Europe.
Russia was in Bismarck's pocket. After 1867 Bismarck's
system of foreign policy pivoted more surely than before
on a close understanding with Petersburg. It is probable
that in 1866 Russia's acquiescence in the Treaty of Prague
had been secured by an undertaking to permit the revision
of the Treaty of 1856 at a favourable opportunity. It is
certain that Bismarck secured Russia's benevolent neu-
trality in 1870 by inviting Russia to denounce the pro-
hibitive clauses: and the undertaking had probably been
given in the spring of 1870, if not earlier. Such a denun-
ciation would at once put Great Britain out of action; it
meant that "Austria, a signatory to the Treaty of 1856,
and bound by a secret alliance with England and France,
dating from 1856, to resist the revision of the Black Sea
articles by force, would have Russia on her back if she took
action either against Russia or Prussia. Bismarck's refusal
to intervene in the Italian problem was not due to in-
difference but to calculation. So long as France kept her
troops in Rome a Franco-Italian alliance was out of the
question. If circumstances required, Prussia could, as in
1866, buy Italy for a price; on the other hand, the
increasing volume of opposition to the Vatican Council
in Germany offered the opportunity to gratify German
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BISMARCK
Protestants and Catholics by breaking with the Papacy.
Bismarck therefore held his hand.
The neutrality of Belgium created a powerful lever on
Great Britain. The General Staff at Berlin preferred for
military reasons that Belgium should remain neutral.
When Bismarck published in The limes on July 25, 1870,
Benedetti's damning letter with its crude revelation of
Napoleon's ambitions and proposals, and followed it up
by a Prussian guarantee of Belgium's security, he practically
obtained British neutrality. 'Louis' was certainly going
to pay dearly for his intervention in 1866.
So far then from Prussia by the spring of 1870 being
hemmed in and isolated, it was France that was hemmed
in. The only alliances Bismarck required were the military
conventions with the south, and these had been secured
in 1866. Moltke assured him that, humanly speaking, if
a united Germany fought France in a ring fence victory
was certain. The ring fence was practically complete.
It was not enough, however, to hem France in. She
must be either coerced or lured into declaring war. The
war could then be proclaimed a defensive one, on behalf of
German honour, security, and independence. France the
aggressor, pacific Prussia the victim of her vanity and
ambition.
This attitude was essential. King William still had a
conscience, even if, as Bismarck said in 1869, ' our master
to-day has changed his tune from that in 1862; he has
drunk from the chalice of popularity and refuses to break
it. ' But the south must be brought in, fired with the
enthusiasm for 'Germany in danger. ' Neutral public
opinion must be influenced from the start to tolerate, per-
haps demand, the chastisement of France.
Bismarck under-
stood as well as Lord Lyons that the Napoleonic Empire
could not stand another rebuff. He knew the men with
whom he had to deal: Napoleon, ill, vacillating, swayed
by every group in turn; Ollivier, high-minded, weak, and
not master of his cabinet; the reckless Duc de Gramont,
ultramontane to his finger-tips, who replaced the cool-
headed Daru in May; behind them the Empress and the
clerical camarilla, and in Paris the boulevard patriotism
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 265
de cafe-concert, vain, ignorant, the dupe of its government
and itself.
Spain could complete the isolation of France. Cer-
tainly Bismarck's luck was extraordinary, for just when
Prussia needed a revolution the Spaniards obligingly pro-
vided one. In 1868 Queen Isabella abdicated. The
Spanish throne was vacant. Who was to fill it?
The complete story of the Hohenzollern candidature
has never been told. It probably never will, for the secret
may be concealed in the archives of Friedrichsruhe, but
more probably was buried with Bismarck. But the main
points are clear, and they conclusively contradict the Prus-
sian version accepted for a decade because the refutation was
not available. Whether Prim and Salazar started the idea
of placing Leopold or Frederick of Hohenzollern-Sigmar-
ingen, the elder or the third son of Anthony of Hohen-
zollern, and the brothers of Charles, ruler in Roumania,
or whether the idea was inspired by Bismarck, is of historical
interest but not of political importance. We know now
that in February 1869 Villanueva came from Spain to
Berlin and had a long interview with the Chancellor; in
March Th. von Bernhardi left for a special mission to
Spain; in September 1869 Salazar was introduced by
Werthern, the Prussian minister at Munich, to Prince
Anthony, and suggested the throne for Prince Leopold; in
February 1870 Salazar returned and pressed the candidature
on King William and Prince Anthony, who were not favour-
able to the idea; Bismarck on February 27 drew up a
confidential report in which he strongly supported the
proposal; on March 15 a Council was held at which Moltke,
Roon, Schleinitz, Thile, Delbriick, Bismarck, the King,
and Prince Anthony and Leopold were present; at this
Council Delbriick asked Moltke ' Are we ready if Napoleon
takes it ill? ' and Moltke simply nodded; the Hohen-
zollerns hesitated, attracted by the prospects, repelled by
the dangers of so ambitious a stroke; Bismarck sent Lothar
Bucher and Major Versen on a secret mission to Spain in
April; to Prince Anthony's deep regret, neither of his avail-
able sons would accept; the affair which seemed to be closed
was renewed in May as the result of Bucher and Versen's
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mission, and thanks to a second mission of Bucher's, and
Salazar's importunity, supported by Bismarck's persistent
pressure, Prince Leopold finally consented probably by the
end of May, definitely on June 19; and, lastly, on June 21,
'after a hard struggle,' King William also consented. So
far the matter had been kept a profound secret. Olozaga,
the Spanish minister at Paris, was quite in the dark; Prim,
however, instead of carrying the business through and
presenting Europe with a fait accompli, as Bismarck pro-
bably intended and Salazar expected, prorogued the
Cortes till October 31. He seems to have lost his nerve at
this point, and to have hoped to talk Napoleon over during
the summer at Vichy. But the secret was either betrayed
or deliberately let out, and on July 3 was definitively
known at Paris. .
Bismarck was perfectly well aware that France would
not accept the Hohenzollern candidature. The King of
Roumania duly noted in his diary the certainty of French
opposition, as far back as December 9, 1868, and on the
mere rumour of such a candidature in 1869 Napoleon
(May n) had sent Benedetti to Bismarck to indicate the
attitude of the French government. It is certain that
Bismarck intended to fling down a challenge to France,
and that in procuring the acceptance of the candidature by
his sovereign he was deliberately provoking a European war.
The argument that a Hohenzollern prince at Madrid would
drop hk Germanism and become a Spaniard when he
crossed the Pyrenees is worthless, and recent events in the
Near East confirm its worthlessness. Bismarck himself can
be put in the witness-box. In his report of February 27
he argued that among many advantages that acceptance
of the Spanish throne would bring--the prestige of the
Hohenzollerns elevated like the Habsburgs to a European
position, the strengthening of the monarchical principle,
the commercial concessions for German trade (as in Rou-
mania)--the military aspect was of great importance:--
'If Germany and France were at war,' he wrote, ' and
the position was that under Isabella, and if on the other
hand a government in sympathy with Germany existed,
the difference for us between these two situations may be
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 267
calculated at one to two army corps. In the former,
French troops would be released by Spain and be available
against Germany; in the latter, France would have to
detach an army corps to the (Spanish) frontier. '
In a word, Spain would complete the isolation of France
and open the Mediterranean to Germany. It was a case
of double or quits. If France acquiesced, Spain became
a Hohenzollern satrapy, possibly an ally in a future war; if
she refused, she must make the candidature a casus belli,
and force war on Prussia.
Bismarck's contention that the whole matter was a pure
family and dynastic matter is belied by his conduct and
arguments. If so, why all the secrecy? Why was it
necessary to discuss a pure family affair of a cadet branch
of the Hohenzollerns at a Prussian Council, at which it was
requisite to include the Federal Chancellor, the Chief of
the General Staff, the Minister of War, the Director of the
Federal Chancery, and the Under-Secretary of the Foreign
Department? In Bismarck's confidential report the
candidature was argued on grounds of high policy in which
the interests of Germany and Prussia were deeply con-
cerned, and refusal of the offer was represented to be
politically detrimental to Germany. Bismarck repeatedly
asserted that he had no locus standi officially to advise the
King in a dynastic concern. Yet for twelve months he
had used all his authority and power as Chancellor and
Minister-President to press Prince Anthony and his sove-
reign to accept. Bismarck's denial of knowledge of the
affair was a he. . In what capacity did he receive Villanueva,
send Bernhardi, Bucher, and Versen to Spain, and corre-
spond with the Crown Prince on the subject? The
original introduction of Salazar to Prince Anthony was
made by Werthern, certainly with Bismarck's consent and
probably at his instigation. Men in the diplomatic ser-
vice were broken by Bismarck for implicating the govern-
ment, without the Chancellor's authority, in a policy
that committed Prussia. Werthern would not have dared
to do what he did, unless he desired to be treated as
Arnim was later.
Bismarck's conduct throughout the affair was com-
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BISMARCK
petent, dictatorial, and absolutely unscrupulous, and his
behaviour was indicated in the letter, taken by Bucher to
Spain on June 11, the authenticity of which can be
accepted. He would maintain that officially he was not
concerned. Why should the Spaniards not offer the crown
to any one they pleased? Accordingly, he retired to
Varzin on April 14, and stayed there till May 21. Until
June 8 he was in Berlin and then retired to Varzin to be
out of the way, when 'the Spanish bomb' burst, and
stayed there till July 12. King William went for a cure
to Ems, and the Hohenzollerns of Sigmaringen were
at their country-house. Thile as under-secretary could
therefore reply to French questions that 'the Prussian
government was absolutely ignorant of this affair, which
did not exist for it. ' Thile who had been present at the
Council of March 15!
It is unnecessary to relate in detail the oft-told dramatic
story of the French government's action when the news
of the candidature became known. From July 3 onwards
French public opinion was in a fever of excitement and
indignation. The government recognised the challenge.
By sending Benedetti direct to King William at Ems they
succeeded in stripping the candidature of its family char-
acter. They deliberately fixed the responsibility on
Prussia, and on July 12, when Prince Anthony renounced
the candidature, with King William's acquiescence,
France had won a striking diplomatic success. King
William, indeed, confessed that the renunciation removed
a load of stone from his heart. The French government
feared, however, that Prince Leopold might imitate his
brother Prince Charles in 1866 in the Roumanian affair, re^
pudiate his father, and go to Spain. The Duc de Gramont
and Ollivier knew the character of the Prussian government
and of Bismarck, and were determined to stroke the t's and
dot the i's of the renunciation; they aimed at inflicting a
personal as well as a political humiliation on the Hohen-
zollern sovereign and his minister. Like a weak man
Gramont did not know where to stop. His insistence
that King William must give a guarantee that the candi-
dature would not be renewed, was made on his own re-
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 269
sponsibility without communication to the Prime Minister,
or the Council of State, or, apparently, Napoleon himself.
King William, who had behaved correctly so far, and was
convinced that his acquiescence in the renunciation closed
the whole episode, naturally resented the French demand
as an insinuation against his royal good faith and as a deli-
berate attempt to pick a quarrel with Prussia. The
message through an aide-de-camp that the incident was
closed, and that he had nothing further to say, was some-
what curt but unobjectionable. It was not insulting nor
intended to be an insult. Gramont had by his folly
pledged France; much worse, he had given Bismarck his
chance.
By July 12 Bismarck was very depressed. For the first
time he had been worsted before Europe in a grave affair
of diplomacy; and it is clear that he had not anticipated
the French success in terrifying Prince Anthony into a re-
nunciation. The game as he had intended to play it had
broken down completely. He now had neither a defen-
sive war nor the candidature. Public opinion both in
Paris and Germany was very excited, but had the French
government taken a strong and cool line on the 12th of
July, informed France that as the result of French action
the candidature was at an end, that the King of Prussia
acquiesced in the renunciation, and that his royal words
and pacific disposition could be trusted, it is difficult to see
what Bismarck could have done. The Duc de Gramont's
irresponsible and criminal levity ruined a great success.
But it is impossible to acquit Ollivier, the Prime Minister,
of culpable negligence, indecision, and weakness. A close
examination of the evidence leaves an indelible impression
that Ollivier wavered between several and contradictory
lines of action, and did not supervise the action of the
Foreign Office as he should have done. Gramont and
Ollivier enabled Bismarck to represent France as insulted.
The French government had now either to sit down under
the insult or force a war in vindication of French honour.
The famous 'dispatch from Ems'1 which brought
1 Late in life Bismarck remarked to Harden, the editor of Die Zukunfi, who
printed it in his paper: 'It is very easy, without falsification, but simply by
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BISMARCK
about the final rupture was neither a falsification nor a
forgery. The King left to Bismarck's discretion the re-
sponsibility of publishing his intimation to Benedetti that
he had nothing further to communicate. Bismarck saw
Gortschakov on July 12 at Berlin, and probably then and
there ratified Russia's benevolent neutrality in the case of
war by agreeing to the denunciation of the prohibitive
clauses in the Treaty of 1856 at a favourable opportunity;
he was searching with ferocious earnestness for the oppor-
tunity to reopen the issues between France and Prussia
and drive France into war. The edited version of the
King's narrative which he authorised for publication was
a brutaUsed and provocative message, true in the bare
facts, but so worded as to convey a wholly different con-
struction; it was deliberately intended to be 'a red flag
for the Gallic Bull. ' The Bismarckian version gladdened
the gloomy hearts of Roon and Moltke at that memorable
meal on the night of July 13. This meant the war for
which they had prayed and worked. Roon said: 'Our
God of old lives still and will not let us perish in disgrace. '
Moltke smote his hand upon his breast and said: * If I
may not live to lead our armies in such a war, then the devil
may come directly afterwards and fetch away the old car-
case. ' That night Bismarck said his prayers with Unusual
fervency. On July 14 Germany was singing ' Die Wacht
am Rhein! ' At Paris delirious crowds on the boulevards
were crying ' A Berlin! ' On July 15 King William issued
the order for general mobilisation. On July 19 France
declared war. 1
Bismarck had won. The British offer of mediation
(July 17) was politely but firmly rejected. France was
isolated. Beust and Victor Emmanuel's efforts to settle
omissions and corrections, completely to alter the tone of a communication. I
have myself once had experience of the task, as editor of the Ems dispatch . . .
when by omissions and compressions I had edited it, Moltke exclaimed: "The
original was an order to retreat (chamade), now it is a summons to charge
(fanfare). "' The text of the King's message and the version, as edited by
Bismarck and sent officially for publication and to all the Prussian diplomatic
representatives, is printed in an Appendix (p. 496), where the exact character
of the ' editing1 can be textually established by every reader for himself.
1 The famous cartoon in Punch (July 30), one of Tenniel's best, in which
the great Napoleon warned Napoleon III. to halt--' Beware ! '--published before
the German victories bore the warning out, was a prophecy tragically true.
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 271
the Italian problem, with a view to armed mediation and
subsequent active intervention on the side of France, broke
down between July 19 and August 2. Even at the eleventh
hour and in the extreme peril of the situation Napoleon
could not, or more probably was not allowed to, bring him-
self to renounce Rome. He wavered, consented, and then
withdrew his consent. By August 6 the German victories
made the intervention of Austria and Italy or a Triple
Alliance too dangerous to be seriously entertained further.
Bismarck's political strategy, as in 1866, had given the
German army its chance; and the soldiers justified his
confidence. Roon told King William on July 15 that
mobilisation was easy, for everything was ready. Marshal
Leboeuf had said the same at St. Cloud. Leboeuf s assertion
was an ignorant boast, Roon's a summary of three years'
relentless preparation. The German military machine
worked with marvellous precision. After July 15 Moltke
could find time to read French novels, until the troops
had reached their appointed stations, when he left Berlin
with his sovereign for Worth, Spicheren, Mars-la-Tour,
St. Privat, Sedan, and Paris.
Bismarck travelled with General Headquarters through-
out the campaign; his sons were serving in the army and
took part in the desperate battles round Metz; he himself
was present at Sedan, and there at the weaver's cottage on
the Donchery road, on the morning of September 2, he
met Napoleon. 'An emphatic contrast,' he wrote to his
wife on September 3, ' with our last meeting in '67 at the
Tuileries. Our conversation was difficult, although I did
not wish to recall things which would painfully affect the
man struck down by God's mighty hand . . . yesterday
and the day before lost France 100,000 men and an
Emperor. ' By October 5 Headquarters reached Versailles,
and Bismarck resided in the Rue de Provence till March 6,
1871--Versailles he had last visited with General Leboeuf.
From the declaration of war to the ratification of the
Peace of Frankfurt, May 10, 1871, he was overwhelmed
with work; and, as in 1866, the strain imposed on his health
and nerves by the continuous negotiations, the relations
with the European neutrals, the necessity of keeping in close
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touch with developments and public opinion in Germany,
and the perpetual crisis created by the war and the military
operations, caused an excessive irritability, aggravated by
frequent bursts of violent anger. 'The official files,' he
wrote to his wife, 'make a pile higher than my head. '
'Dead tired as he is,' noted Abeken, 'he cannot sleep. '
Every one from the King downwards had to endure his
dictatorial temper, his explosions of wrath, and his rasping
tongue, with its vivid, direct, unsparing, and bitter
phrases. He was endured, because he was indispensable.
His experience, prestige, inexhaustible resources, and
amazing powers of work, the lucid grip on general prin-
ciples and the mastery of detail, the personality and the
temperament of genius, made him unique. There was
only one Bismarck, and there were no three men at Head-
quarters or elsewhere in Germany who could combine his
gifts . and his qualities. 'The Bismarck touch' was re-
vealed in the ten months that followed July 19, 1870, not
once but fifty times. In truth, these Prussians, leaders
and subordinates alike, were an iron race, tough of skin,
lavish in all the relations of life of a stern brutality, and a
full-blooded and unrestrained force, and meting out to each
other no little of the militarist and graceless arrogance that
defeated France had to endure. They were the victors,
and they took care to let Europe as well as France feel it.
Through all the events that make the history of these
months so tragic for France, so intoxicating for Ger-
many, so humiliating for Europe, there rings the gospel of
the conqueror's sword. For pity, generosity, sympathy
you will look in vain. The appeal is always to force.
German power had brought the German armies to Paris
--to Babylon--and Babylon was about to fall. Power was
the one and only convincing argument, and Germany had
it. No one else had.
From the commencement to the end of the war Bis-
marck's relations with the soldier-chiefs were more sharply
strained than they had been in 1866. The soldiers--' the
demi-gods,' as Bismarck called them--would gladly have
left him behind at Berlin; his continuous presence at Head-
quarters, his ' interference' with the military direction and
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