CHAPTER XIX

HOW THE PRUSSIANS AFTER SADOWA CAME HOME TO BERLIN

There is much more to say on this subject of cabling which I touched on, perhaps prematurely, in the last chapter, but it can wait till certain incidents in Berlin have been described. Ever memorable to me was this visit to Berlin in 1866, and for two things. I saw something of the two greatest forces in Prussia, or two of the three greatest: the Prussian army and Count Bismarck. The third, whom I saw, but only saw, was the King; whom his grandson has since rechristened William the Great. The Seven Weeks' War was just over. There were Generals of the army who expected to enter Vienna in triumph, as, four and a half years later, the German armies were to enter Paris. But Count Bismarck had vetoed this project; by no means desiring to leave an indelible scar of defeat and humiliation on a kindred German capital. He wished, and the King wished, that in the future, and in the near future, Berlin and Vienna should be friends. In the interest of that wise policy the purely military ambitions of these Generals, the Red Prince perhaps among them, who were soldiers and nothing {171} else, were repressed. A consolation was allowed them in the shape of a triumphal re-entry into Berlin.

So on the 20th and 21st of September the garrison of Berlin and Potsdam, fifty thousand strong, but dividing their strength between the two days, marched through the Brandenburger Gate, and up the Unter den Linden to the Opera Platz. By good luck I had rooms in the Hotel du Nord, then the best hotel in Berlin, midway in the great avenue of Berlin; and being on the second floor I could look well over the trees and along almost the whole stretch of this fine street, a hundred yards wide.

It was such a spectacle as presents itself but seldom to the human eye, German or other. All things considered, it cannot often have been surpassed. The whole world was looking on. For here was Prussia, but three months ago a second-class European Power, which had suddenly stepped into the front rank. So dazzling was her rise that the Emperor Napoleon, looking out of the Tuileries windows upon a transformed Central Europe, was already demanding "compensation" for Sadowa, and demanding vainly. The leadership of Germany had passed in a night from Austria to Prussia. The Germanic Confederation had been dissolved and the North German Confederation, with Prussia the all-powerful head of it, had come into existence. With the refusal of Count Bismarck to listen to the demands of Napoleon, Prussia stood out in Central Europe as the German {172} State which at last was to resist all attempts from beyond the Rhine to impose the will of a French ruler upon the German people. It was a Declaration of Independence; and of something more than independence.

When the head of that great column of victorious troops emerged from the great Gate, what Berlin saw was the instrument by which these vast changes had been brought about. There were men of prophetic mind who saw in it the instrument of greater changes yet to be. But sufficient for the day was the glory thereof. All Berlin was in the streets; or in this one street; or in the windows and on the housetops of the Unter den Linden. As they cheered I did not think the volume of sound comparable to what one hears in London on great days of public rejoicing. There was rejoicing, of course, and there was enthusiasm, but it was of the grave German kind; none the less deep for being less resonant. I cannot remember being much impressed by these demonstrations, nor by the flags and other decorations. The Prussian flag, with its black and red, was a less cheerful piece of bunting than the Tricolour or the Union Jack. The Germans have, nevertheless, ideas of ornament and of art values; perhaps mid-way between the French, who are supreme in such matters, and the English, who have no ideas at all except to hang out all the flags they possess and trust to luck for harmony and effect. None the less was the Unter den Linden garlanded with banners, and the better houses or larger buildings {173} were glowing with colour and contrasts. But the military display was the important thing, and it was magnificent.

The King came first, riding a little in front of his headquarters staff and of the Generals who were in his suite. Whether he might be called William the Great or not, he was on that day a kingly figure. The officers with him numbered, I should think, perhaps a hundred and fifty, mostly well mounted, in uniforms which, whatever they might be singly, were splendid in the mass. They were perhaps too splendid. One would have liked to see these men in the clothes in which they had marched and fought; with the stains of war upon them. But that, I suppose, would have been abhorrent to the German mind, and especially to the German military mind, with its deep devotion to etiquette and its worship of routine and all forms of military technique. But the echoes of Austrian battlefields had not yet sunk into silence, and we knew well enough that these were no holiday warriors.

They rode slowly. When the King and his staff had passed there came a surprise. The procession seemed for one moment to have come to an end. There was an open space of perhaps fifty yards. In the centre of it rode three men The three were: Von Roon, Minister of War; Moltke; and between them Bismarck in a white uniform as Major of Cuirassiers. It was when they came into view that the cheering rose highest. The King was popular and the greeting of his {174} people had been cordial. But the three men behind him were the real heroes. Von Roon had organized the forces of Prussia; Moltke had guided them to victory; Bismarck had planned and brought on the war. The Carnot of Prussia; the soldier of all soldiers of Prussia next after the great Frederick; the brain and will and directing force of Prussia, these three; and in all Europe no other three comparable to them, singly or together.

So here they rode, these Three by themselves; apart, as if all that had gone before and all that was to come after were there in homage to them. The King and his headquarters staff were but the advance-guard to these Three. The five-and-twenty thousand troops who followed were but their rear-guard. These servants and priceless possessions of the State were encompassed about by all that was brilliant and all that was useful in the State themselves excepted. They bore themselves as befitted their services and their places, with a dignity, a serene disregard of everything but their duty, which belong to real greatness. Berlin hailed them with cheers of a kind which had been given to no other. I do not know that any of the three was precisely what might be called Popular. Popularity was not what Von Roon or Moltke or Bismarck had sought. But Berlin knew, and Prussia knew, that but for these three there would have been no day of victory for the Fatherland.

The troops came past in the formation known {175} as company front, and as the Prussian companies were a hundred strong or more, the effect was admirable. Berlin was thronged with soldiers for days after this, and the individual Prussian soldier was not then a very imposing object. He was well set up, but he and his uniform were not always on good terms; in short, he was too often slovenly or slouching. He had, moreover, a stiffness of bearing which reminded you of Heine's bitter account of him in earlier days; that "he looked as if he had swallowed the ramrod with which he had been thrashed." But in the mass you saw nothing slovenly, and the stiffness perhaps helped his officers to dress that company front in a straight line across the broad street. The front was, in fact, perfection, and so was the marching, and as these bodies of drilled men moved up the Linden they looked like what they had proved themselves, irresistible. They swept on with a movement as of some great natural force. Regiment after regiment swung past. There was never a break or halt. The machine was in its best working order. The men carried their heads high, crowned with victory. And so the tide of war poured through this peaceful street.

The Prussian uniform was not a brilliant one. In point of mere costume these troops were not comparable to many others. The Austrians were far more smartly dressed; and the English, and the French. But this blue and red looked workmanlike, while as for ornament--well, what ornament was needed beyond the word Sadowa, which {176} might have been, but was not, embroidered on the collars of their tunics? You saw also that this was a citizen army: the German people were in these ranks, as the Prussian people. The words have since become almost convertible, though there are millions of Germans who will not agree to that.

The regimental officers were well enough mounted and, so far as one could judge from a parade like this, were good horsemen. They sat well down in their saddles. A good seat and good hands go together, or ought to go together, but do not always, and the hands seemed heavy if a horse turned restive. But another thing became clear as you looked. The officers were of the elect. The Prussian aristocracy was in the saddle. There has never been a time since the Great Elector of Brandenburg when it was not in the saddle, actually and figuratively. To adopt Bismarck's phrase at a much later day, in a great speech at Jena, this country of Prussia has never been ruled from below. It was not in 1866. Nor have the Junkers and the nobility of Prussia ever failed to pay with their persons when the need arose. In that murderous cavalry charge at Mars-la-Tour, the ranks were crowded with the sons of Princes, and Dukes, and Counts, and all the rest; they rode, no small part of them, to death, and knew they were riding to death, but no thought of rank or riches stayed them, nor did any one falter.

It is impossible not to think of these later things as the memories of these September days in 1866 come back. I looked on then at the beginnings {177} of what was foreordained to happen. This was the army, these were the very men who were to close about Sedan in that other September of 1870. Long after that I was to see them again in the Opera Platz and Unter den Linden when the King who now rides with his grave gallantry of bearing at their head was to be buried, on one of the coldest and perhaps the blackest day Berlin ever saw. The splendour had departed. The triumph of 1866 had given way to mourning and gloom. And on the architrave of the Brandenburg Thor, draped and shrouded, like all Berlin, in black, stood out in white letters the last greeting of Berlin to its old-time King, "Vale, Senex Imperator."

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