True, the
web of diplomacy was broken by the King of Wurttem-
berg's brusque reversal of a provisional agreement.
web of diplomacy was broken by the King of Wurttem-
berg's brusque reversal of a provisional agreement.
Robertson - Bismarck
No other result
would justify the war in Bismarck's judgment. What kind
of France, therefore, did German unification require?
Everything turned on the answer to that question.
The collapse of the Second Empire, and the establish-
ment on September 4, after Sedan, of a provisional
government of National Defence, reduced the political
and military situation to a bewildering flux. Where was
France--at Paris, Metz, or Bordeaux? It was as difficult
to find as'the Europe' which Thiers sought. What was the
government of National Defence? With whom was peace to
be made? Where in France could be found the guarantees,
who could give them, and what were they worth when
given? The complications grew worse with every month,
until they culminated in the struggle between the National
government and the Commune. The tortuous dealings
with Bazaine, the sinister episode of Regnier, the negotia-
tions with Chislehurst, with Jules Favre at Ferrieres, with
Boyer, with the Comte de Chambord, with Thiers, the inter-
position of Gambetta, and the establishment of the National
Assembly at Bordeaux, make a parallel column on the page,
side by side with which the military events make another
column, and the European situation a third. The three
columns had to be daily written up, weighed and harmon-
ised at General Headquarters--and all the time Germany,
pressed by Bismarck, was writing a fourth column of greater
importance than the other three in its decisive influence
on the future. It is not surprising that in the Rue de
Provence and in the H6tel des Reservoirs at Versailles
a tense irritability prevailed, and that these Prussians
quarrelled with each other almost as fiercely as with the
French. But Bismarck's luck was extraordinary. Had
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? BISMARCK
Bazaine with 170,00x3 of France's finest troops at Metz
fought like Colonel Denfort and the handful of heroes at
Belfort to the last cartridge, man, and horse, France cer-
tainly would have obtained a reasonable peace. The
Place Belfort at Paris with its unconquered Lion facing to
the east and the simplicity of the inscription,' A la defense
nationale! ' is illuminated to all time by the Duc d'Aumale's
cry at Bazaine's trial--' Mais il y avait la France! '
Bazaine betrayed France. He deserved a monument in
the Sieges Allee at Berlin.
Metz surrendered on October 27. The surrender
settled the fate of the armies of the . Loire and of Paris.
On October 31 Gortschakov issued the note in which
Russia formally declared that the neutrality of the Black
Sea, defined in the Treaty of 1856, no longer existed.
'Idiots! ' Bismarck exclaimed, 'they have begun four
weeks too soon. ' But Gortschakov was neither so foolish
nor so vain as Bismarck would have us believe, either in
that or any other transaction. He knew his Bismarck.
He was not going to wait until the war was over, and his
former pupil, with a treaty of peace in his pocket, could
take an unembarrassed part in the Near Eastern question,
and consider whether British and Austrian amity were not
worth more than a pledge to Russia. We may be quite
sure that Bismarck on July 12 had given no undertaking
in writing. The understanding was purely verbal, and
verbal pledges from Bismarck without corroboration were
as difficult to prove as verbal offers of marriage without an
engagement ring. The King of Prussia, the Reichstag, and
German historians could always be trusted to accept, in a
conflict of personal evidence, the word of a German Chan-
cellor against all the words of all the statesmen in the
world. When Bismarck lied, he lied as advised by one of
the greatest of his countrymen--Luther. He lied fortiter,
like a hero.
In reality Gortschakov's bomb burst at the happiest
moment for Bismarck. Austria and Great Britain, con-
sidering with their hearts in their boots whether they could
intervene in the west without being publicly insulted or
of being drawn into a war, which they were determined
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 277
to avoid at all costs, were now flung into a whirlpool of
their own, from which it took them three months to ex-
tricate themselves with such bedraggled dignity as accept-
ance of the Russian ultimatum permitted. The Congress
of London accomplished the reconciliation of two contra-
dictory propositions (March 13, 1871). It declared that
a solemn treaty, to which the European Powers were
signatories, could only be altered by and with the consent
of the signatories, and it registered in the Protocol the
successful violation of that principle by Russia. By the
time the Congress met (January 17) to insert the diplo-
matic and juristic patch in the document, torn up by
Russia, the German Empire was made and the preliminaries
of peace were practically settled. King William spoke the
truth in his letter to the Tsar, when he emphasised his
own and Germany's gratitude for Russia's invaluable ser-
vices. Public opinion in England was hopelessly divided
between admiration for Germany, pity for France, con-
tempt for the fallen Second Empire and determination to
remain neutral, i. e. the right to condemn both parties
without reserve, and the love of peace that is based on
military impotence. Carlyle's notable letter to The Times
did great service to the German cause. It is not sur-
prising that Bismarck was not afraid of serious interven-
tion from Great Britain and Austria. He could reply as
the friend of William the Silent replied, when he tested
his dagger on a protocol: 'I wish to see what steel can
do against parchment. '
To the making of peace Bismarck brought four fixed
principles: serious negotiations with any authority in
France that would grant his terms; no submission of the
terms to a European Congress; the impotence of France
for a generation to undo the settlement; the foundation
of German unification on the impotence of France. A
France so bled and mutilated as to be an irreconcilable
enemy, and condemned to stare 'hypnotised at the gap in
the Vosges,' would be an incontrovertible argument for the
continuance of the Empire in arms. What Germany had
taken by force, she could only keep henceforth by force.
National sentiment and pride, and the perpetual danger
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BISMARCK
would prevent Prussia from 'falling asleep' as she did
after 1786 ' on the laurels ' of victory.
The evidence is sound that the first victories decided
Bismarck's intentions to annex Alsace and Lorraine, gilt-
edged by a swinging indemnity. Where exactly the
frontier line would be drawn would be determined by the
extent of the victories and the advice of the military
experts. Throughout the prolonged negotiations he
never wavered from these two conditions--the indemnity
and the annexations. After 1871 Bismarck 'confessed'
more than once that the soldiers were responsible for the
retention of Metz, and that he himself would have been
content with Alsace and a strip of 'German' Lorraine.
The sincerity of such obiter dicta is more than questionable.
The contemporary evidence of 1870-1 points to a wholly
different conclusion. Bismarck was just as remorseless
as the most truculent militarist at Headquarters. His
insistence on the bombardment of Paris, his scorn at 'the
English catchwords of humanity and civilisation,' his
jeers at the sufferings of the civil population and the
children in Paris, the dinner-table ridicule of the appeals
and tears of Favre and Thiers--by these and fifty other
similar self-revealing acts recorded and gloated over by
Busch and the jackals of the back-stairs, he proved that he
neither wished nor intended to be generous. Generosity
would have been an unpardonable weakness. Behind the
impressive record of achievement lies an unforgettable
chronicle of envenomed pettiness and coarse brutality, and
the pitiable part of it is that Bismarck was unaware of the
depths to which he could sink; and that the Germany of
Bismarck's Chancellorship could read and approve--even
praise--the qualities and traits revealed in these intimate
and degrading chronicles.
It is more probable that he agreed with the criticism
of the Junkers on his folly in not insisting on taking
Belfort as well as Metz and Strasburg. His remark that
had Thiers been the minister of an historic monarchy
France would have obtained easier terms, is illuminating,
but not convincing. In any case, he utilised to the full
the terrible dislocation which the demoralised and demo-
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 279
ralising Second Empire had inflicted on France. Every
twist that the screw could drive home was utilised to the
full. Napoleon, Bourbonism, Orleanism, republicanism,
anarchy, the inexorability of Moltke and his sovereign, the
national demand in Germany, the impotence of Great
Britain and Austria, the connivance of Russia, were all in
turn or together pressed on the unhappy French nego-
tiators. Thiers and Favre had also frequently to suffer
for the slights and jealousies of ' the demi-gods'; because
Bismarck had lost his temper with the Crown Prince, or
was exasperated at the obstinacy of Wiirttemberg, or the
insolence of Bavaria in the concurrent negotiations for the
unification of Germany. In his hatred and contempt of
France Bismarck was . the incarnation of Prussia's stored-
up passion. The preliminaries of Versailles and the Peace
of Frankfurt--the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, with
Strasburg and Metz, worth in Moltke's judgment two
army corps and an unrivalled place cL'armes as a pivot for a
future offensive, the indemnity of . ? 200,000,000 and the
occupation of French territory at French cost till the last
franc had been paid, together with the guarantee that
France would always accord to Germany 'the most
favoured nation ' privilege in her tariffs--were the begin-
ning of a new Europe.
It is idle to argue the thesis that Bismarck by another
kind of peace could have reconciled France in a few years
no less effectively than he reconciled Austria, and that
such a reconciliation in the twenty years that followed
1871 would have enabled him to isolate Great Britain as
completely as the most ardent champion of German Welt-
macht could have desired. The 'might have beens' of
history are only valuable as a help to an interpretation of
the actual. The thesis presupposes a wholly different
Bismarck, and a wholly different evolution of Germany
since 1815. Ranke's verdict that the war of 1870 was not
a war with Napoleon in. but with Louis xiv. was the
verdict of every German. There is every reason to
conclude that if the National Liberals had established
a constitutional monarchy and responsible parliamentary
government in 1866 they would have exacted from France
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? 28o
BISMARCK
in 1871 terms as severe as those imposed by the prelimi-
naries of Versailles. Bismarck correctly maintained that
for the German armies or himself to return to an Imperial
Reichstag without Alsace and Lorraine was impossible.
The annexations were the 'liberation' of German terri-
tories wrested from a divided Empire in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, and without them the new Empire
could not be made. It was not the terms, but the use
made of them, which differentiated Bismarck from the
National Liberals. With the exception of the tiny hand-
ful of Socialist Democrats, represented by the two votes
of Bebel and Liebknecht in the Reichstag, every German
man and woman believed that Sedan was the judgment
of God (Gottesgericht), and that but for God and the
German armies Napoleon would have come to Berlin,
annexed the left bank of the Rhine, broken up the North
German Confederation, reversed the verdict of 1866, and
thrown back German unification for a century, perhaps
for ever. Moreover, every German man and woman was
convinced in 1870 that to Teutonic civilisation, and not to
the decadent Latin races, belonged the future and the
trusteeship of the higher humanism. Renan's La R6-
forme intellectuelle et morale de la France and the two letters
to Strauss with their dignified exposition of the qualities
of the French mind and their subtle indictment of the
Teutonic Gospel of Nationalism were as unintelligible to
the German mind, as was their style unapproachable by
any German pen. 'Ce qui nous a manque, ce n'est pas
le cceur,' Renan summed up,' c'est la t? te. ' In the differ-
ence between Renan's Letters and Treitschke's pamphlet
What we require from France was concentrated the whole
bitter controversy.
It was easier to make peace than to make the Empire.
The Unitarians had to decide what was to be the form of
the new imperial organisation; how and by what procedure
it was to be brought about, and by whom? Was there to
be an Emperor (Kaiser), and if so of what? What was to
be the Empire (Reich)? Were the Southern States to be
invited to enter the North German Confederation, and on
what terms? or was the Northern Confederation to wait for
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 281
the request from the south? From whom was the initial
request to come, and to whom? How could Bavarian and
Wiirttemberg 'independence' be reconciled with the
Praesidium of Prussia and the unity of control in policy and
executive administration? Or was it desirable to scrap
the Constitution of 1867 and make a wholly new one,
federal or unitary? By whom was unification to be
made? By the King of Prussia direct on his own initiative,
or by the German princes in solemn congress, or by the
German peoples in a second constituent Parliament at
Frankfurt, Berlin, or even Versailles? Hard questions,
indeed. So contradictory were the various views of war-
ring parties in Germany, so sharp the clash of conflicting
ambitions at military headquarters, so inextricably inter-
twined were political principles with personal feeling and
petty intrigues, so entangled was the German problem
with the question of peace with France, that Roon in the
retirement where he mourned the death of his soldier
son felt that not even Bismarck would be able to thread
the labyrinth and reach daylight.
The south had swung into line on July 19 with im-
pressive unanimity. Bavarians, Wurttembergers, Hessians
and Badeners had fought as fiercely as Prussian, Saxon, or
Hanoverian. Bismarck at Headquarters, watching with
anxiety the effect of the victories on the opinion of the
south, was rapidly convinced that the mould of unification
could be filled at once from the molten national passion
and the pride of victory. Postponement until after the
war would bring the inevitable reaction, stiffen the stiff
neck of Particularism, give Liberalism time to organise its
forces, and confront the empire-builder with the justice
of satisfying the national demand for a real unity and
responsible parliamentary institutions.
Behind the military front and in Germany every one was
thinking and talking about unification. The National
Liberals in the Reichstag discussed the idea of an address
requesting the King of Prussia to proclaim the Empire, in
the reconstitution of which a constituent Parliament
would subsequently play the decisive part. Two con-
versations in September with the Crown Prince revealed
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BISMARCK
that the heir to the throne was working for the resur-
rection of the Imperial Crown and an Empire with an
Upper House of Princes, and a Lower representative
chamber with an imperial ministry and executive respon-
sible to the Reichstag. The North German confederation
was strong enough, the Crown Prince held, to ' constrain'
the south, if it proved reluctant. The Crown Prince
voiced the ideals of moderate National Liberalism. On
the other hand, the King saw no need of any constitution-
making. The Prussian Crown was more glorious than
any imperial one. All that was necessary was to tighten
up the military alliances with the south, and secure beyond
all question the prerogative of the Prussian Crown in
policy and the army. An extension of parliamentarism,
or the interference of the German peoples in imperial
politics, was a return to the deplorable precedent of '48.
William had drunk of the chalice of victory as well as. of the
chalice of popularity since 1862, and the military ' demi-
gods ' daily reminded him that but for the King's prescient
statesmanship in the constitutional conflict he and his
loyal Prussian army would not be at the gates of Paris.
The King, not Bismarck, the army, not the politicians,
were the authors of the unprecedented triumphs. If
there was to be a revision, it must be in favour of Prussia,
not in favour of parliamentary parties who would have
destroyed the Prussian army in 1862, and would destroy it
again, if given the power to do so. Bismarck rejected all
these ideas and methods. He was as firmly determined
not to have the Crown Prince's or the Liberals' solution,
as he was to take the settlement out of the hands of the
soldiers and to compel the King to accept the Empire and
the Imperial Crown. The national passion and demands
of Germany were a reality. They could be exploited to
drive through a Bismarckian solution. 'We must have a
contented Bavaria,' he asserted. But how to content
Bavaria, the king of which was more interested in Wagner
and the Decree of Papal Infallibility than in German uni-
fication, and who fled from politics to the enchantment of
his castles?
But if the establishment of a unified and Imperial
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 283
Germany was not to be taken out of Bismarck's hands
either by the military chiefs, the princes, or the popular
forces in Germany, and a direction given which would
Sermanently affect the final result, it was essential that
ismarck should get hold of the controlling levers at once.
Bismarck, absent in France, desired first to master the
facts and probe the situation, before committing himself.
He promptly dispatched the ablest of his lieutenants,
Delbruck, on a mission to the south. Delbriick justified
the Chancellor's confidence in his diplomatic ability and
firmness. In Berlin he first captured Bennigsen and the
National Liberals for unity through the existing Con-
federation, and in the south he persuaded Bray, Varnbuler,
and Dalwigk that modifications in that Confederation were
the best way of combining unity with concessions to
Munich and Stuttgart. Action on that line, satisfied
Bismarck. Concessions to Bavaria and Wurttemberg
could be combined with the Praesidium of Prussia, the
continuance of the Bundesrat, and an Empire controlled,
as the North German Confederation had been, by an un-
reformed Prussia. By accepting the basis of the existing
Confederation National Liberalism had in fact cut its
throat. In its eagerness' to promote unity, it was building
a tomb for itself in the constitution of the new Empire.
The next step was to persuade the south to follow the
Liberals and cut its throat also on the altar of patriotism.
The idea of a Congress of Princes broke down on the im-
possibility of securing the attendance of the King of
Bavaria. Instead of the princes, however, came their
governments, and by October 26 Bismarck was negotiating
with groups of ministers headed by Bray (Bavaria), Mitt-
nacht and Suckow (Wurttemberg), Jolly (Baden), and
Dalwigk (Hesse). Once the governments consented to
negotiate at Versailles it was not difficult to deal with them
separately, and play one off against the other. The strong
unitarianism of Baden was a useful argument.
True, the
web of diplomacy was broken by the King of Wurttem-
berg's brusque reversal of a provisional agreement. Bis-
marck replied by concluding terms separately with Baden
and Hesse (November 15); he isolated Wurttemberg by
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BISMARCK
a special convention (November 23) with Bavaria embody-
ing definite concessions to Bavarian particularism--' the
free and independent administration ' of the kingdom, the
retention of a separate postal service, the exclusion of the
Bavarian army, in time of peace, from Federal control, and
the presidency of a new Foreign Affairs Committee of the
Bundesrat in which Prussia was not represented. Bavaria
thus mollified with this tribute, illusory in fact, but im-
pressive on paper, to its pride and importance, agreed to
enter a Confederation, rebuilt on the Constitution of 1867.
Bismarck was triumphant. 'Unity is made,' he exclaimed,
'and the Emperor also. ' Wiirttemberg could now only
hasten to adhere (November 25), but without obtaining
the special privileges of Bavaria. King Charles's vacil-
lating obstinacy had simply prevented his ministers from
exacting the price for agreement that could have been
gained a month earlier. 1
The several conventions were submitted to the respec-
tive legislatures for ratification. Both in the Reichstag of
the north and the Parliaments at Stuttgart and Munich
opposition to the terms was certain: in the Reichstag
because they diminished the unity demanded by the
National Liberals; in the south because they conceded too
much to Prussian supremacy. But Bismarck held the
critics of both camps in an insoluble dilemma. Amend-
ment or rejection would imperil the diplomatic contracts
and postpone indefinitely a true unification. The con-
ventions concluded at Versailles were not ideal, but they
were the best obtainable. The Reichstag was accordingly
menaced with larger concessions to southern particularism;
the south was warned that in a fresh negotiation the north
would insist on far more stringent conditions. A delay
of six months would imperil unification and perhaps ruin
1 The evidence that Bismarck used the secret papers from Cerc. ay--captured
by the Germans--to compel the Southern States to accept the Prussian terms, as
alleged by Ruville and others, is not convincing. Such a method of political
blackmail was quite in accordance with Bismarckian methods ; but we do not
know the full contents of the papers, nor how far they were genuine. In the
absence of more proof than has been so far vouchsafed, it is improbable that
the Southern States had seriously negotiated with France in 1867-1870, or that
the Cercay papers contained matter which Bray and others were afraid to see
published.
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 285
the treaty of peace with France. Delbriick's ability in
securing from the National Liberals and the south the
Constitution of 1867 as the basis of the new organisation
had disarmed National Liberalism completely. It could
now achieve its programme only by ruining an immediate
unification. The National Liberal leaders consoled them-
selves with the argument that unification would prove its
own reward. 'The lady,' Lasker said, 'is very ugly, but
we shall marry her for all that. ' The-future was to show
whether National Liberalism was justified in the Empire
it had accepted but not made.
Bismarck had still two sovereigns to convince--the King
of Bavaria and the King of Prussia. The latter he left to
the last. William was to enjoy the fate of Ulysses in the
cave of Polyphemus. But, acting on a happy suggestion,
Bismarck persuaded the King of Bavaria to write to the
King of Prussia, inviting him in the name of the German
Princes to take the Imperial Crown and exercise as
Emperor his Praesidial rights in the Confederation. On
December 1, at Schloss Hohenschwangau, King Louis in
bed and suffering from toothache, copied from Bismarck's
draft the formal request; and to prevent any slips the
letter was dispatched hot-haste by special messenger to
Versailles, and read to the King of Prussia on December 2.
William proclaimed it to be ' as inopportune as possible,'
and was very ' morose,' as was noted by the Crown Prince
in his Diary: 'As we left the room Bismarck and I shook
hands,' added the diarist; 'with to-day Kaiser and Reich
are irrevocably restored; the interregnum of sixty-five
years (i. e. since 1804), the Kaiserless, terrible time is past;
this glorious title is a guarantee. ' Bismarck could cordially
shake hands. If the door had shut on a King of Prussia,
indignant at being invited to convert himself into a
German Emperor, it had shut even more decisively on the
Liberal Empire of which the Crown Prince, the illuminated
princelets of the Coburg group, and the intellectuals of
Gotha had dreamed so ineffectually. William's fears
were unfounded. Prussia was not about to be dissolved
in Germany. Nor was the Prussian King to cease to be
War-Lord of the German nation in arms. It was a Prussia,
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BISMARCK
more Prussian than William himself, that was about to
absorb Germany.
King Louis' letter drove home the argument for rati-
fying the conventions. The Reichstag accepted (Decem-
ber 9), and the other legislatures followed suit; Bavaria,
true to its independence, deferring the decision beyond the
day fixed in the Convention (January 1). The finishing
touch was a visit to Versailles by a delegation from the
Reichstag (December 16) to expound the popular demand
for an Imperial Crown. Simson, the President, twenty-
one years before, in 1849, had headed a similar deputation
from the National Parliament at Frankfurt to Frederick
William iv. ; but, as M. Matter neatly puts it, 'Entre
1849 et 1870, Bismarck, Roon et Moltke avaient passe. '
William boldly told the parliamentarians that the valid
authority for conferring an Imperial Crown was not the
Reichstag, ' but the German Princes and the Free Cities. '
The implication that the Reichstag's function was simply
to confirm decisions, made elsewhere, was true in fact. It
was indeed the basis of the Empire which the Reichstag had
agreed to accept. To the King, to the military chiefs, to
'the unemployed princes who made " the second step " at
the H6tel des Reservoirs,' and to Bismarck himself, the
Thirty Delegates were either interlopers or superfluous.
They could ratify, but they could not originate; they
could praise famous men but they could not bestow Im-
perial Crowns. The dispensations of Providence stopped
at the threshold of the Throne. They did not extend to
the representatives of the nation. The deputies made
known their wishes, and were treated very frigidly by the
King, more warmly by the Crown Prince, and with cavalier
militarism by the soldier-chiefs. Bismarck was as' morose'
as his sovereign, and ' The Thirty' returned to Germany
effusive in their admiration for the King of Prussia!
For three weeks Bismarck wrestled with his obstinate
sovereign. 'What have I to do with this honorary
title ? (Character-major /),' William demanded sulkily. On
January 17, when the final details of the coming ceremony
were settled, he was so angry that he turned his back on
those present and, like a spoiled child, stared out of the
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 287
window until the business was settled. 'His reluctance,'
Bismarck wrote later,' was not unconnected with the desire
to obtain an acknowledgment rather of the superior re-
spectability of the hereditary Prussian Crown than of the
Imperial Title. ' William indeed was so ' morose ' that he
wrote to the Queen, saying that' he very nearly abdicated
and handed over everything to Fritz! ' An Empire and
an Emperor required an Imperial Chancellor. Bismarck
consented to accept the title and the office. 'They will
put me in very bad company,' he said,' for they will turn
me into a Beust! '
The final ceremony of January 18, 1871, in the Hall of
Mirrors at Versailles--the anniversary of the assumption
of the royal crown by the Electors of Brandenburg at
Konigsberg in 1701--proclaimed to the world the birth
of a new State. The guns that salute the births of heirs
to royal thrones added their welcome--they were the guns
forcing capitulation on the beleaguered and starving Paris.
The German Empire and German unity had their foun-
dations laid in the defeat, dismemberment, and impotence
of France.
It is commonly said that the Empire was not the creation
of the German people, but of the German princes. For-
mally this is true: but the amended and expanded consti-
tution of the North German Confederation was not the
work of the princes. It was not the Empire desired, either
by the King of Prussia, or the soldier-chiefs, or the dynasties.
The compelling force to unity came from the heart and
labours of the German people, and the princes who crowded
the dais on January 18 were the last to be converted--a
Mahometan conversion in truth by the sword of the King
of Prussia and his prophet, Bismarck. The structure,
character, principles, and purpose of the new imperial
polity and the new Federal Imperial State were the work of
one man--Bismarck. Delbriick's services cannot be exag-
gerated, but he was a superb instrument, not a creator.
The statesman who had defeated alike the dynasties and
the Liberals, the Unitarians and the Particularists, the
soldiers and the professors, was the new Imperial Chan-
cellor. 'His Majesty,' Bismarck wrote in his Memoirs,
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'was so offended at the course I had adopted that, on de-
scending from the raised dais of the princes, he ignored me
as I stood alone upon the free space before it, and passed
me by in order to shake hands with the generals standing
behind me. ' 'Standing alone '--Bismarck since 1852 had
so often stood alone--in the presence of his sovereign and
Germany, but he had always ended by bending men and
affairs to his relentless will. And never so completely as
on January 18, 1871.
On March 21 the Emperor William expressed the
verdict of Germany and Europe when he raised Count
Bismarck to the title and status of a Prince in the Empire
that he had made.
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? CHAPTER VI
THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR, 1871-1890
? I. The Empire, the System, and the Chancellor, 1871-1878
The seven months from July 1870 to January 1871 regis-
tered five events of capital importance: the Declaration of
Papal Infallibility (July 18), the virtual establishment of the
Third Republic in France (September 4), the unification
of Italy by the entry of the Italian troops into Rome
(September 20), the fall of the Temporal Power of the
Papacy, and the establishment of the unified German
Empire (January 18, 1871). Of these five the two most
momentous in their wide-world significance were the
Declaration of Papal Infallibility and the abolition of the
Temporal Power of the Papacy.
With January 18, 1871, secular Europe entered on the
age of Bismarck. 'Germany in the Age of Bismarck ' was
transformed into 'Europe in the Age of Bismarck,' the
Imperial Chancellor of the new German Empire. From
1871 to 1890 Bismarck was the transcendent figure in Euro-
pean politics, with an influence akin to, but far surpassing,
the ascendency of Metternich from 1815 to 1848. Metter-
nich had equals and rivals who contested his supremacy
and defeated his policy--Castlereagh, Canning, Palmerston,
Nicholas 1. Bismarck did not meet a British Canning nor
a Russian Nicholas. Lord Odo Russell (Lord Ampthill),
who weighed his words, wrote from Berlin in 1880: 'At
St. Petersburg Bismarck's word is gospel, as well as at Paris
and Rome, where his sayings inspire respect, and his silences
apprehension. ' And Lord Odo might have said the same
with equal truth of Vienna, Madrid, and Constantinople.
In 1872 Lord Odo had informed our Foreign Office that
Bismarck's policy was 'the supremacy of Germany in
B. T
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BISMARCK
Europe and of the German race in the world. ' When
Bismarck fell in 1890 the author and upholder of a definite
political system ended his career. Every one asked the
question: Could the system continue without a Bismarck?
Was a new system about to take its place, and, if so, what?
Two broad conditions after 1871 materially assisted
Bismarck's policy and German supremacy--the weakness
and disorganisation of most of the European States, and
the character of the Germany of which he was the Chan-
cellor. Although her recovery from the collapse of 1870
was astonishingly rapid, France had not securely found her-
self when Bismarck fell; and her internal history during
his chancellorship is a chronicle of crises, from the struggle
with the Commune to the suicide of Boulanger on the
grave of his mistress at Brussels (1891). These were sur-
mounted, it is true, but with great difficulty. The Dual
Empire of Austria-Hungary was a continuous prey to the
complications that had produced the Compromise of 1867,
and the consequences of that very provisional settlement.
Russia was swayed successively by the ideas underlying the
reform policy of Alexander n. , a reversion to the absolutism
of Nicholas 1. , Pan-Slavism, the rise of Nihilism, and the
conflicting claims of the Near and the Far East. The
closer that Russian policy, within or without the Empire,
in this epoch is studied, the stronger stands out the lack
of continuity and of insight, due to undeveloped resources,
administrative disorganisation, internal and immature fer-
mentation, and contradictory conceptions and indecision in
the successive directors of the autocracy. Italy, ambitious
to be a Great Power at a stroke, but forgetting that though
salvation could not come without unification, it would not
come by unification alone, wrestled ceaselessly with
poverty, and the terrible consequences, moral, political,
and intellectual, of three centuries of denationalisation and
misgovernment. And Italy suffered more than any other
European State from the inevitable opposition that the
Quirinal found in the Vatican.
Yet Italy, like France, was slowly finding herself, as she
groped her way through the valleys of disillusionment and
indecision. Spain was in no position to mark out an
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
independent orbit of policy, and the gravitation of Madrid
to the German system, which would have been accelerated
had Leopold of Hohenzollern crossed the Pyrenees in 1870,
was steadily accentuated between 1870 and 1890. The
Ottoman Empire and the Balkans were the Ottoman
Empire and the Balkans, and they provided in the evolution
of things many opportunities that Bismarck seized with a
cautious but relentless grip.
The one exception to the continental States was Great
Britain. Men of British speech analysing their politics
with a microscope, and forgetting the telescope and per-
spective so essential to sane and long views, are prone to
discover in these twenty years of British development
from 1870 to 1890 either nothing but the repellent scuffle
of parochial parties or an expansion of imperialism in
which the insular record is an irritating blot. The critical
function of history, however, like the critical function of
literature, is not summed up in the scheduling and auditing
of mistakes. Mistakes there were in plenty, but the connec-
tion between the external' expansion of England ' and the
internal development was intimate, vital, and decisive.
The Empire that was being expanded and consolidated
after 1870 rested securely, but not without many violent
controversies, within and without the island, on responsible
representative self-government for the heart of the system:
and from that heart it could radiate in time slowly and
surely to every part. It might well have been otherwise.
There were not lacking influential voices within, respond-
ing to the powerful influences without, that demanded a
different course leading to a very different result. Great
Britain did not altogether escape the hypnotism of Bis-
marckian Europe. But the broad fact remains that she
deliberately continued to toil up the steep and stony stairs
of representative self-government. Though she did not
recognise the full significance at the time, Great Britain
preserved and strengthened a polity, an ideal, and an
Imperial State that were the antithesis in every respect
of the German Empire. They were also the negation of
the ultimate efficacy and value of German principles.
Great Britain in the nineteenth, thus accomplished a
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BISMARCK
work no less momentous than her achievement in the
seventeenth, century. From 1603 to 1688 she cut herself
adrift from the tremendous swing of tendencies on the
Continent. From 1870 onwards she refused to surrender
or betray the principles which had given her a unique
position. The implicit antagonism of the "British State
to the monarchies of the Continent runs like a red thread
through the diplomacy of Bismarck. Bismarck recognised
the danger, but failed to exorcise or destroy it.
In comparison with Russia, France, Italy, Austria-
Hungary, and Spain, and despite the severity of her in-
ternal struggles, Germany revealed a continuity of foreign
policy clean-cut and self-conscious alike in principles and
methods, together with an executive and an administrative
stability, which contributed enormously to the riveting
of a German supremacy on the Continent. The con-
tinuity and stability were not wholly due to Bismarck.
The military, which preceded the political, ascendency of
Prussia was laid on the granite, hewn and dressed by the
German mind and German science. Bismarck had for
his instrument in completing the political supremacy,
which came last, a nation convinced that national like
individual success must be won by sacrifice and self-
discipline. We may both detest and admire the achieve-
ment of Germany, but it is only ignorance that fails to
recognise the solidity of work on which German ascend-
ency was based, and the futility of impeaching it except
by a superiority in toil, concentrated purpose, and sacrifice.
In 1871 the grand lines of German unification and a new
State-system, adjusted to the supremacy of a German
Central Europe, were roughly made, but the mould required
to be filled and adapted to use. Time and peace were the
two essential requirements, which the Chancellor must
provide. Foreign policy could provide peace--home
policy must see that the time was fully employed.
would justify the war in Bismarck's judgment. What kind
of France, therefore, did German unification require?
Everything turned on the answer to that question.
The collapse of the Second Empire, and the establish-
ment on September 4, after Sedan, of a provisional
government of National Defence, reduced the political
and military situation to a bewildering flux. Where was
France--at Paris, Metz, or Bordeaux? It was as difficult
to find as'the Europe' which Thiers sought. What was the
government of National Defence? With whom was peace to
be made? Where in France could be found the guarantees,
who could give them, and what were they worth when
given? The complications grew worse with every month,
until they culminated in the struggle between the National
government and the Commune. The tortuous dealings
with Bazaine, the sinister episode of Regnier, the negotia-
tions with Chislehurst, with Jules Favre at Ferrieres, with
Boyer, with the Comte de Chambord, with Thiers, the inter-
position of Gambetta, and the establishment of the National
Assembly at Bordeaux, make a parallel column on the page,
side by side with which the military events make another
column, and the European situation a third. The three
columns had to be daily written up, weighed and harmon-
ised at General Headquarters--and all the time Germany,
pressed by Bismarck, was writing a fourth column of greater
importance than the other three in its decisive influence
on the future. It is not surprising that in the Rue de
Provence and in the H6tel des Reservoirs at Versailles
a tense irritability prevailed, and that these Prussians
quarrelled with each other almost as fiercely as with the
French. But Bismarck's luck was extraordinary. Had
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? BISMARCK
Bazaine with 170,00x3 of France's finest troops at Metz
fought like Colonel Denfort and the handful of heroes at
Belfort to the last cartridge, man, and horse, France cer-
tainly would have obtained a reasonable peace. The
Place Belfort at Paris with its unconquered Lion facing to
the east and the simplicity of the inscription,' A la defense
nationale! ' is illuminated to all time by the Duc d'Aumale's
cry at Bazaine's trial--' Mais il y avait la France! '
Bazaine betrayed France. He deserved a monument in
the Sieges Allee at Berlin.
Metz surrendered on October 27. The surrender
settled the fate of the armies of the . Loire and of Paris.
On October 31 Gortschakov issued the note in which
Russia formally declared that the neutrality of the Black
Sea, defined in the Treaty of 1856, no longer existed.
'Idiots! ' Bismarck exclaimed, 'they have begun four
weeks too soon. ' But Gortschakov was neither so foolish
nor so vain as Bismarck would have us believe, either in
that or any other transaction. He knew his Bismarck.
He was not going to wait until the war was over, and his
former pupil, with a treaty of peace in his pocket, could
take an unembarrassed part in the Near Eastern question,
and consider whether British and Austrian amity were not
worth more than a pledge to Russia. We may be quite
sure that Bismarck on July 12 had given no undertaking
in writing. The understanding was purely verbal, and
verbal pledges from Bismarck without corroboration were
as difficult to prove as verbal offers of marriage without an
engagement ring. The King of Prussia, the Reichstag, and
German historians could always be trusted to accept, in a
conflict of personal evidence, the word of a German Chan-
cellor against all the words of all the statesmen in the
world. When Bismarck lied, he lied as advised by one of
the greatest of his countrymen--Luther. He lied fortiter,
like a hero.
In reality Gortschakov's bomb burst at the happiest
moment for Bismarck. Austria and Great Britain, con-
sidering with their hearts in their boots whether they could
intervene in the west without being publicly insulted or
of being drawn into a war, which they were determined
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 277
to avoid at all costs, were now flung into a whirlpool of
their own, from which it took them three months to ex-
tricate themselves with such bedraggled dignity as accept-
ance of the Russian ultimatum permitted. The Congress
of London accomplished the reconciliation of two contra-
dictory propositions (March 13, 1871). It declared that
a solemn treaty, to which the European Powers were
signatories, could only be altered by and with the consent
of the signatories, and it registered in the Protocol the
successful violation of that principle by Russia. By the
time the Congress met (January 17) to insert the diplo-
matic and juristic patch in the document, torn up by
Russia, the German Empire was made and the preliminaries
of peace were practically settled. King William spoke the
truth in his letter to the Tsar, when he emphasised his
own and Germany's gratitude for Russia's invaluable ser-
vices. Public opinion in England was hopelessly divided
between admiration for Germany, pity for France, con-
tempt for the fallen Second Empire and determination to
remain neutral, i. e. the right to condemn both parties
without reserve, and the love of peace that is based on
military impotence. Carlyle's notable letter to The Times
did great service to the German cause. It is not sur-
prising that Bismarck was not afraid of serious interven-
tion from Great Britain and Austria. He could reply as
the friend of William the Silent replied, when he tested
his dagger on a protocol: 'I wish to see what steel can
do against parchment. '
To the making of peace Bismarck brought four fixed
principles: serious negotiations with any authority in
France that would grant his terms; no submission of the
terms to a European Congress; the impotence of France
for a generation to undo the settlement; the foundation
of German unification on the impotence of France. A
France so bled and mutilated as to be an irreconcilable
enemy, and condemned to stare 'hypnotised at the gap in
the Vosges,' would be an incontrovertible argument for the
continuance of the Empire in arms. What Germany had
taken by force, she could only keep henceforth by force.
National sentiment and pride, and the perpetual danger
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BISMARCK
would prevent Prussia from 'falling asleep' as she did
after 1786 ' on the laurels ' of victory.
The evidence is sound that the first victories decided
Bismarck's intentions to annex Alsace and Lorraine, gilt-
edged by a swinging indemnity. Where exactly the
frontier line would be drawn would be determined by the
extent of the victories and the advice of the military
experts. Throughout the prolonged negotiations he
never wavered from these two conditions--the indemnity
and the annexations. After 1871 Bismarck 'confessed'
more than once that the soldiers were responsible for the
retention of Metz, and that he himself would have been
content with Alsace and a strip of 'German' Lorraine.
The sincerity of such obiter dicta is more than questionable.
The contemporary evidence of 1870-1 points to a wholly
different conclusion. Bismarck was just as remorseless
as the most truculent militarist at Headquarters. His
insistence on the bombardment of Paris, his scorn at 'the
English catchwords of humanity and civilisation,' his
jeers at the sufferings of the civil population and the
children in Paris, the dinner-table ridicule of the appeals
and tears of Favre and Thiers--by these and fifty other
similar self-revealing acts recorded and gloated over by
Busch and the jackals of the back-stairs, he proved that he
neither wished nor intended to be generous. Generosity
would have been an unpardonable weakness. Behind the
impressive record of achievement lies an unforgettable
chronicle of envenomed pettiness and coarse brutality, and
the pitiable part of it is that Bismarck was unaware of the
depths to which he could sink; and that the Germany of
Bismarck's Chancellorship could read and approve--even
praise--the qualities and traits revealed in these intimate
and degrading chronicles.
It is more probable that he agreed with the criticism
of the Junkers on his folly in not insisting on taking
Belfort as well as Metz and Strasburg. His remark that
had Thiers been the minister of an historic monarchy
France would have obtained easier terms, is illuminating,
but not convincing. In any case, he utilised to the full
the terrible dislocation which the demoralised and demo-
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 279
ralising Second Empire had inflicted on France. Every
twist that the screw could drive home was utilised to the
full. Napoleon, Bourbonism, Orleanism, republicanism,
anarchy, the inexorability of Moltke and his sovereign, the
national demand in Germany, the impotence of Great
Britain and Austria, the connivance of Russia, were all in
turn or together pressed on the unhappy French nego-
tiators. Thiers and Favre had also frequently to suffer
for the slights and jealousies of ' the demi-gods'; because
Bismarck had lost his temper with the Crown Prince, or
was exasperated at the obstinacy of Wiirttemberg, or the
insolence of Bavaria in the concurrent negotiations for the
unification of Germany. In his hatred and contempt of
France Bismarck was . the incarnation of Prussia's stored-
up passion. The preliminaries of Versailles and the Peace
of Frankfurt--the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, with
Strasburg and Metz, worth in Moltke's judgment two
army corps and an unrivalled place cL'armes as a pivot for a
future offensive, the indemnity of . ? 200,000,000 and the
occupation of French territory at French cost till the last
franc had been paid, together with the guarantee that
France would always accord to Germany 'the most
favoured nation ' privilege in her tariffs--were the begin-
ning of a new Europe.
It is idle to argue the thesis that Bismarck by another
kind of peace could have reconciled France in a few years
no less effectively than he reconciled Austria, and that
such a reconciliation in the twenty years that followed
1871 would have enabled him to isolate Great Britain as
completely as the most ardent champion of German Welt-
macht could have desired. The 'might have beens' of
history are only valuable as a help to an interpretation of
the actual. The thesis presupposes a wholly different
Bismarck, and a wholly different evolution of Germany
since 1815. Ranke's verdict that the war of 1870 was not
a war with Napoleon in. but with Louis xiv. was the
verdict of every German. There is every reason to
conclude that if the National Liberals had established
a constitutional monarchy and responsible parliamentary
government in 1866 they would have exacted from France
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? 28o
BISMARCK
in 1871 terms as severe as those imposed by the prelimi-
naries of Versailles. Bismarck correctly maintained that
for the German armies or himself to return to an Imperial
Reichstag without Alsace and Lorraine was impossible.
The annexations were the 'liberation' of German terri-
tories wrested from a divided Empire in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, and without them the new Empire
could not be made. It was not the terms, but the use
made of them, which differentiated Bismarck from the
National Liberals. With the exception of the tiny hand-
ful of Socialist Democrats, represented by the two votes
of Bebel and Liebknecht in the Reichstag, every German
man and woman believed that Sedan was the judgment
of God (Gottesgericht), and that but for God and the
German armies Napoleon would have come to Berlin,
annexed the left bank of the Rhine, broken up the North
German Confederation, reversed the verdict of 1866, and
thrown back German unification for a century, perhaps
for ever. Moreover, every German man and woman was
convinced in 1870 that to Teutonic civilisation, and not to
the decadent Latin races, belonged the future and the
trusteeship of the higher humanism. Renan's La R6-
forme intellectuelle et morale de la France and the two letters
to Strauss with their dignified exposition of the qualities
of the French mind and their subtle indictment of the
Teutonic Gospel of Nationalism were as unintelligible to
the German mind, as was their style unapproachable by
any German pen. 'Ce qui nous a manque, ce n'est pas
le cceur,' Renan summed up,' c'est la t? te. ' In the differ-
ence between Renan's Letters and Treitschke's pamphlet
What we require from France was concentrated the whole
bitter controversy.
It was easier to make peace than to make the Empire.
The Unitarians had to decide what was to be the form of
the new imperial organisation; how and by what procedure
it was to be brought about, and by whom? Was there to
be an Emperor (Kaiser), and if so of what? What was to
be the Empire (Reich)? Were the Southern States to be
invited to enter the North German Confederation, and on
what terms? or was the Northern Confederation to wait for
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 281
the request from the south? From whom was the initial
request to come, and to whom? How could Bavarian and
Wiirttemberg 'independence' be reconciled with the
Praesidium of Prussia and the unity of control in policy and
executive administration? Or was it desirable to scrap
the Constitution of 1867 and make a wholly new one,
federal or unitary? By whom was unification to be
made? By the King of Prussia direct on his own initiative,
or by the German princes in solemn congress, or by the
German peoples in a second constituent Parliament at
Frankfurt, Berlin, or even Versailles? Hard questions,
indeed. So contradictory were the various views of war-
ring parties in Germany, so sharp the clash of conflicting
ambitions at military headquarters, so inextricably inter-
twined were political principles with personal feeling and
petty intrigues, so entangled was the German problem
with the question of peace with France, that Roon in the
retirement where he mourned the death of his soldier
son felt that not even Bismarck would be able to thread
the labyrinth and reach daylight.
The south had swung into line on July 19 with im-
pressive unanimity. Bavarians, Wurttembergers, Hessians
and Badeners had fought as fiercely as Prussian, Saxon, or
Hanoverian. Bismarck at Headquarters, watching with
anxiety the effect of the victories on the opinion of the
south, was rapidly convinced that the mould of unification
could be filled at once from the molten national passion
and the pride of victory. Postponement until after the
war would bring the inevitable reaction, stiffen the stiff
neck of Particularism, give Liberalism time to organise its
forces, and confront the empire-builder with the justice
of satisfying the national demand for a real unity and
responsible parliamentary institutions.
Behind the military front and in Germany every one was
thinking and talking about unification. The National
Liberals in the Reichstag discussed the idea of an address
requesting the King of Prussia to proclaim the Empire, in
the reconstitution of which a constituent Parliament
would subsequently play the decisive part. Two con-
versations in September with the Crown Prince revealed
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BISMARCK
that the heir to the throne was working for the resur-
rection of the Imperial Crown and an Empire with an
Upper House of Princes, and a Lower representative
chamber with an imperial ministry and executive respon-
sible to the Reichstag. The North German confederation
was strong enough, the Crown Prince held, to ' constrain'
the south, if it proved reluctant. The Crown Prince
voiced the ideals of moderate National Liberalism. On
the other hand, the King saw no need of any constitution-
making. The Prussian Crown was more glorious than
any imperial one. All that was necessary was to tighten
up the military alliances with the south, and secure beyond
all question the prerogative of the Prussian Crown in
policy and the army. An extension of parliamentarism,
or the interference of the German peoples in imperial
politics, was a return to the deplorable precedent of '48.
William had drunk of the chalice of victory as well as. of the
chalice of popularity since 1862, and the military ' demi-
gods ' daily reminded him that but for the King's prescient
statesmanship in the constitutional conflict he and his
loyal Prussian army would not be at the gates of Paris.
The King, not Bismarck, the army, not the politicians,
were the authors of the unprecedented triumphs. If
there was to be a revision, it must be in favour of Prussia,
not in favour of parliamentary parties who would have
destroyed the Prussian army in 1862, and would destroy it
again, if given the power to do so. Bismarck rejected all
these ideas and methods. He was as firmly determined
not to have the Crown Prince's or the Liberals' solution,
as he was to take the settlement out of the hands of the
soldiers and to compel the King to accept the Empire and
the Imperial Crown. The national passion and demands
of Germany were a reality. They could be exploited to
drive through a Bismarckian solution. 'We must have a
contented Bavaria,' he asserted. But how to content
Bavaria, the king of which was more interested in Wagner
and the Decree of Papal Infallibility than in German uni-
fication, and who fled from politics to the enchantment of
his castles?
But if the establishment of a unified and Imperial
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 283
Germany was not to be taken out of Bismarck's hands
either by the military chiefs, the princes, or the popular
forces in Germany, and a direction given which would
Sermanently affect the final result, it was essential that
ismarck should get hold of the controlling levers at once.
Bismarck, absent in France, desired first to master the
facts and probe the situation, before committing himself.
He promptly dispatched the ablest of his lieutenants,
Delbruck, on a mission to the south. Delbriick justified
the Chancellor's confidence in his diplomatic ability and
firmness. In Berlin he first captured Bennigsen and the
National Liberals for unity through the existing Con-
federation, and in the south he persuaded Bray, Varnbuler,
and Dalwigk that modifications in that Confederation were
the best way of combining unity with concessions to
Munich and Stuttgart. Action on that line, satisfied
Bismarck. Concessions to Bavaria and Wurttemberg
could be combined with the Praesidium of Prussia, the
continuance of the Bundesrat, and an Empire controlled,
as the North German Confederation had been, by an un-
reformed Prussia. By accepting the basis of the existing
Confederation National Liberalism had in fact cut its
throat. In its eagerness' to promote unity, it was building
a tomb for itself in the constitution of the new Empire.
The next step was to persuade the south to follow the
Liberals and cut its throat also on the altar of patriotism.
The idea of a Congress of Princes broke down on the im-
possibility of securing the attendance of the King of
Bavaria. Instead of the princes, however, came their
governments, and by October 26 Bismarck was negotiating
with groups of ministers headed by Bray (Bavaria), Mitt-
nacht and Suckow (Wurttemberg), Jolly (Baden), and
Dalwigk (Hesse). Once the governments consented to
negotiate at Versailles it was not difficult to deal with them
separately, and play one off against the other. The strong
unitarianism of Baden was a useful argument.
True, the
web of diplomacy was broken by the King of Wurttem-
berg's brusque reversal of a provisional agreement. Bis-
marck replied by concluding terms separately with Baden
and Hesse (November 15); he isolated Wurttemberg by
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BISMARCK
a special convention (November 23) with Bavaria embody-
ing definite concessions to Bavarian particularism--' the
free and independent administration ' of the kingdom, the
retention of a separate postal service, the exclusion of the
Bavarian army, in time of peace, from Federal control, and
the presidency of a new Foreign Affairs Committee of the
Bundesrat in which Prussia was not represented. Bavaria
thus mollified with this tribute, illusory in fact, but im-
pressive on paper, to its pride and importance, agreed to
enter a Confederation, rebuilt on the Constitution of 1867.
Bismarck was triumphant. 'Unity is made,' he exclaimed,
'and the Emperor also. ' Wiirttemberg could now only
hasten to adhere (November 25), but without obtaining
the special privileges of Bavaria. King Charles's vacil-
lating obstinacy had simply prevented his ministers from
exacting the price for agreement that could have been
gained a month earlier. 1
The several conventions were submitted to the respec-
tive legislatures for ratification. Both in the Reichstag of
the north and the Parliaments at Stuttgart and Munich
opposition to the terms was certain: in the Reichstag
because they diminished the unity demanded by the
National Liberals; in the south because they conceded too
much to Prussian supremacy. But Bismarck held the
critics of both camps in an insoluble dilemma. Amend-
ment or rejection would imperil the diplomatic contracts
and postpone indefinitely a true unification. The con-
ventions concluded at Versailles were not ideal, but they
were the best obtainable. The Reichstag was accordingly
menaced with larger concessions to southern particularism;
the south was warned that in a fresh negotiation the north
would insist on far more stringent conditions. A delay
of six months would imperil unification and perhaps ruin
1 The evidence that Bismarck used the secret papers from Cerc. ay--captured
by the Germans--to compel the Southern States to accept the Prussian terms, as
alleged by Ruville and others, is not convincing. Such a method of political
blackmail was quite in accordance with Bismarckian methods ; but we do not
know the full contents of the papers, nor how far they were genuine. In the
absence of more proof than has been so far vouchsafed, it is improbable that
the Southern States had seriously negotiated with France in 1867-1870, or that
the Cercay papers contained matter which Bray and others were afraid to see
published.
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 285
the treaty of peace with France. Delbriick's ability in
securing from the National Liberals and the south the
Constitution of 1867 as the basis of the new organisation
had disarmed National Liberalism completely. It could
now achieve its programme only by ruining an immediate
unification. The National Liberal leaders consoled them-
selves with the argument that unification would prove its
own reward. 'The lady,' Lasker said, 'is very ugly, but
we shall marry her for all that. ' The-future was to show
whether National Liberalism was justified in the Empire
it had accepted but not made.
Bismarck had still two sovereigns to convince--the King
of Bavaria and the King of Prussia. The latter he left to
the last. William was to enjoy the fate of Ulysses in the
cave of Polyphemus. But, acting on a happy suggestion,
Bismarck persuaded the King of Bavaria to write to the
King of Prussia, inviting him in the name of the German
Princes to take the Imperial Crown and exercise as
Emperor his Praesidial rights in the Confederation. On
December 1, at Schloss Hohenschwangau, King Louis in
bed and suffering from toothache, copied from Bismarck's
draft the formal request; and to prevent any slips the
letter was dispatched hot-haste by special messenger to
Versailles, and read to the King of Prussia on December 2.
William proclaimed it to be ' as inopportune as possible,'
and was very ' morose,' as was noted by the Crown Prince
in his Diary: 'As we left the room Bismarck and I shook
hands,' added the diarist; 'with to-day Kaiser and Reich
are irrevocably restored; the interregnum of sixty-five
years (i. e. since 1804), the Kaiserless, terrible time is past;
this glorious title is a guarantee. ' Bismarck could cordially
shake hands. If the door had shut on a King of Prussia,
indignant at being invited to convert himself into a
German Emperor, it had shut even more decisively on the
Liberal Empire of which the Crown Prince, the illuminated
princelets of the Coburg group, and the intellectuals of
Gotha had dreamed so ineffectually. William's fears
were unfounded. Prussia was not about to be dissolved
in Germany. Nor was the Prussian King to cease to be
War-Lord of the German nation in arms. It was a Prussia,
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BISMARCK
more Prussian than William himself, that was about to
absorb Germany.
King Louis' letter drove home the argument for rati-
fying the conventions. The Reichstag accepted (Decem-
ber 9), and the other legislatures followed suit; Bavaria,
true to its independence, deferring the decision beyond the
day fixed in the Convention (January 1). The finishing
touch was a visit to Versailles by a delegation from the
Reichstag (December 16) to expound the popular demand
for an Imperial Crown. Simson, the President, twenty-
one years before, in 1849, had headed a similar deputation
from the National Parliament at Frankfurt to Frederick
William iv. ; but, as M. Matter neatly puts it, 'Entre
1849 et 1870, Bismarck, Roon et Moltke avaient passe. '
William boldly told the parliamentarians that the valid
authority for conferring an Imperial Crown was not the
Reichstag, ' but the German Princes and the Free Cities. '
The implication that the Reichstag's function was simply
to confirm decisions, made elsewhere, was true in fact. It
was indeed the basis of the Empire which the Reichstag had
agreed to accept. To the King, to the military chiefs, to
'the unemployed princes who made " the second step " at
the H6tel des Reservoirs,' and to Bismarck himself, the
Thirty Delegates were either interlopers or superfluous.
They could ratify, but they could not originate; they
could praise famous men but they could not bestow Im-
perial Crowns. The dispensations of Providence stopped
at the threshold of the Throne. They did not extend to
the representatives of the nation. The deputies made
known their wishes, and were treated very frigidly by the
King, more warmly by the Crown Prince, and with cavalier
militarism by the soldier-chiefs. Bismarck was as' morose'
as his sovereign, and ' The Thirty' returned to Germany
effusive in their admiration for the King of Prussia!
For three weeks Bismarck wrestled with his obstinate
sovereign. 'What have I to do with this honorary
title ? (Character-major /),' William demanded sulkily. On
January 17, when the final details of the coming ceremony
were settled, he was so angry that he turned his back on
those present and, like a spoiled child, stared out of the
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 287
window until the business was settled. 'His reluctance,'
Bismarck wrote later,' was not unconnected with the desire
to obtain an acknowledgment rather of the superior re-
spectability of the hereditary Prussian Crown than of the
Imperial Title. ' William indeed was so ' morose ' that he
wrote to the Queen, saying that' he very nearly abdicated
and handed over everything to Fritz! ' An Empire and
an Emperor required an Imperial Chancellor. Bismarck
consented to accept the title and the office. 'They will
put me in very bad company,' he said,' for they will turn
me into a Beust! '
The final ceremony of January 18, 1871, in the Hall of
Mirrors at Versailles--the anniversary of the assumption
of the royal crown by the Electors of Brandenburg at
Konigsberg in 1701--proclaimed to the world the birth
of a new State. The guns that salute the births of heirs
to royal thrones added their welcome--they were the guns
forcing capitulation on the beleaguered and starving Paris.
The German Empire and German unity had their foun-
dations laid in the defeat, dismemberment, and impotence
of France.
It is commonly said that the Empire was not the creation
of the German people, but of the German princes. For-
mally this is true: but the amended and expanded consti-
tution of the North German Confederation was not the
work of the princes. It was not the Empire desired, either
by the King of Prussia, or the soldier-chiefs, or the dynasties.
The compelling force to unity came from the heart and
labours of the German people, and the princes who crowded
the dais on January 18 were the last to be converted--a
Mahometan conversion in truth by the sword of the King
of Prussia and his prophet, Bismarck. The structure,
character, principles, and purpose of the new imperial
polity and the new Federal Imperial State were the work of
one man--Bismarck. Delbriick's services cannot be exag-
gerated, but he was a superb instrument, not a creator.
The statesman who had defeated alike the dynasties and
the Liberals, the Unitarians and the Particularists, the
soldiers and the professors, was the new Imperial Chan-
cellor. 'His Majesty,' Bismarck wrote in his Memoirs,
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'was so offended at the course I had adopted that, on de-
scending from the raised dais of the princes, he ignored me
as I stood alone upon the free space before it, and passed
me by in order to shake hands with the generals standing
behind me. ' 'Standing alone '--Bismarck since 1852 had
so often stood alone--in the presence of his sovereign and
Germany, but he had always ended by bending men and
affairs to his relentless will. And never so completely as
on January 18, 1871.
On March 21 the Emperor William expressed the
verdict of Germany and Europe when he raised Count
Bismarck to the title and status of a Prince in the Empire
that he had made.
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? CHAPTER VI
THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR, 1871-1890
? I. The Empire, the System, and the Chancellor, 1871-1878
The seven months from July 1870 to January 1871 regis-
tered five events of capital importance: the Declaration of
Papal Infallibility (July 18), the virtual establishment of the
Third Republic in France (September 4), the unification
of Italy by the entry of the Italian troops into Rome
(September 20), the fall of the Temporal Power of the
Papacy, and the establishment of the unified German
Empire (January 18, 1871). Of these five the two most
momentous in their wide-world significance were the
Declaration of Papal Infallibility and the abolition of the
Temporal Power of the Papacy.
With January 18, 1871, secular Europe entered on the
age of Bismarck. 'Germany in the Age of Bismarck ' was
transformed into 'Europe in the Age of Bismarck,' the
Imperial Chancellor of the new German Empire. From
1871 to 1890 Bismarck was the transcendent figure in Euro-
pean politics, with an influence akin to, but far surpassing,
the ascendency of Metternich from 1815 to 1848. Metter-
nich had equals and rivals who contested his supremacy
and defeated his policy--Castlereagh, Canning, Palmerston,
Nicholas 1. Bismarck did not meet a British Canning nor
a Russian Nicholas. Lord Odo Russell (Lord Ampthill),
who weighed his words, wrote from Berlin in 1880: 'At
St. Petersburg Bismarck's word is gospel, as well as at Paris
and Rome, where his sayings inspire respect, and his silences
apprehension. ' And Lord Odo might have said the same
with equal truth of Vienna, Madrid, and Constantinople.
In 1872 Lord Odo had informed our Foreign Office that
Bismarck's policy was 'the supremacy of Germany in
B. T
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Europe and of the German race in the world. ' When
Bismarck fell in 1890 the author and upholder of a definite
political system ended his career. Every one asked the
question: Could the system continue without a Bismarck?
Was a new system about to take its place, and, if so, what?
Two broad conditions after 1871 materially assisted
Bismarck's policy and German supremacy--the weakness
and disorganisation of most of the European States, and
the character of the Germany of which he was the Chan-
cellor. Although her recovery from the collapse of 1870
was astonishingly rapid, France had not securely found her-
self when Bismarck fell; and her internal history during
his chancellorship is a chronicle of crises, from the struggle
with the Commune to the suicide of Boulanger on the
grave of his mistress at Brussels (1891). These were sur-
mounted, it is true, but with great difficulty. The Dual
Empire of Austria-Hungary was a continuous prey to the
complications that had produced the Compromise of 1867,
and the consequences of that very provisional settlement.
Russia was swayed successively by the ideas underlying the
reform policy of Alexander n. , a reversion to the absolutism
of Nicholas 1. , Pan-Slavism, the rise of Nihilism, and the
conflicting claims of the Near and the Far East. The
closer that Russian policy, within or without the Empire,
in this epoch is studied, the stronger stands out the lack
of continuity and of insight, due to undeveloped resources,
administrative disorganisation, internal and immature fer-
mentation, and contradictory conceptions and indecision in
the successive directors of the autocracy. Italy, ambitious
to be a Great Power at a stroke, but forgetting that though
salvation could not come without unification, it would not
come by unification alone, wrestled ceaselessly with
poverty, and the terrible consequences, moral, political,
and intellectual, of three centuries of denationalisation and
misgovernment. And Italy suffered more than any other
European State from the inevitable opposition that the
Quirinal found in the Vatican.
Yet Italy, like France, was slowly finding herself, as she
groped her way through the valleys of disillusionment and
indecision. Spain was in no position to mark out an
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
independent orbit of policy, and the gravitation of Madrid
to the German system, which would have been accelerated
had Leopold of Hohenzollern crossed the Pyrenees in 1870,
was steadily accentuated between 1870 and 1890. The
Ottoman Empire and the Balkans were the Ottoman
Empire and the Balkans, and they provided in the evolution
of things many opportunities that Bismarck seized with a
cautious but relentless grip.
The one exception to the continental States was Great
Britain. Men of British speech analysing their politics
with a microscope, and forgetting the telescope and per-
spective so essential to sane and long views, are prone to
discover in these twenty years of British development
from 1870 to 1890 either nothing but the repellent scuffle
of parochial parties or an expansion of imperialism in
which the insular record is an irritating blot. The critical
function of history, however, like the critical function of
literature, is not summed up in the scheduling and auditing
of mistakes. Mistakes there were in plenty, but the connec-
tion between the external' expansion of England ' and the
internal development was intimate, vital, and decisive.
The Empire that was being expanded and consolidated
after 1870 rested securely, but not without many violent
controversies, within and without the island, on responsible
representative self-government for the heart of the system:
and from that heart it could radiate in time slowly and
surely to every part. It might well have been otherwise.
There were not lacking influential voices within, respond-
ing to the powerful influences without, that demanded a
different course leading to a very different result. Great
Britain did not altogether escape the hypnotism of Bis-
marckian Europe. But the broad fact remains that she
deliberately continued to toil up the steep and stony stairs
of representative self-government. Though she did not
recognise the full significance at the time, Great Britain
preserved and strengthened a polity, an ideal, and an
Imperial State that were the antithesis in every respect
of the German Empire. They were also the negation of
the ultimate efficacy and value of German principles.
Great Britain in the nineteenth, thus accomplished a
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BISMARCK
work no less momentous than her achievement in the
seventeenth, century. From 1603 to 1688 she cut herself
adrift from the tremendous swing of tendencies on the
Continent. From 1870 onwards she refused to surrender
or betray the principles which had given her a unique
position. The implicit antagonism of the "British State
to the monarchies of the Continent runs like a red thread
through the diplomacy of Bismarck. Bismarck recognised
the danger, but failed to exorcise or destroy it.
In comparison with Russia, France, Italy, Austria-
Hungary, and Spain, and despite the severity of her in-
ternal struggles, Germany revealed a continuity of foreign
policy clean-cut and self-conscious alike in principles and
methods, together with an executive and an administrative
stability, which contributed enormously to the riveting
of a German supremacy on the Continent. The con-
tinuity and stability were not wholly due to Bismarck.
The military, which preceded the political, ascendency of
Prussia was laid on the granite, hewn and dressed by the
German mind and German science. Bismarck had for
his instrument in completing the political supremacy,
which came last, a nation convinced that national like
individual success must be won by sacrifice and self-
discipline. We may both detest and admire the achieve-
ment of Germany, but it is only ignorance that fails to
recognise the solidity of work on which German ascend-
ency was based, and the futility of impeaching it except
by a superiority in toil, concentrated purpose, and sacrifice.
In 1871 the grand lines of German unification and a new
State-system, adjusted to the supremacy of a German
Central Europe, were roughly made, but the mould required
to be filled and adapted to use. Time and peace were the
two essential requirements, which the Chancellor must
provide. Foreign policy could provide peace--home
policy must see that the time was fully employed.
