CHAPTER XX

A TALK WITH COUNT BISMARCK IN 1866

I

By one of those pieces of good fortune which descend only upon the undeserving, I came to know Count Bismarck before I left Berlin. I was advised to present my letter at the Landtag, and as the Count was said to be in the House, I sent it in. He came out to the ante-chamber where I was waiting, and there for the first time I looked into the pale blue eyes whence had flashed the lightnings that had riven the power of Austria on the field of Sadowa. Now they had a kindly and welcoming look in them. But, said Count Bismarck:

"I have not a moment. A debate is on, and I am to speak at once. Come to my house in the Wilhelmstrasse at half-past ten to-night, and we can have a talk. Meantime you might like to hear the debate."

And he called to an official to take me into the Chamber, shook hands again, and away he went. I heard his speech, marvelled at the sight of a Parliamentary chief in full military uniform; marvelled at the tone of authority, which also was {179} military; marvelled again at the brevity and directness of the orator who took no thought of rhetoric and hardly cared to convince, but rather to command. It was the oratory of the master of many legends. True, the four years' conflict between him and the Prussian Parliament was over, but true also that on both Parliament and Minister that conflict had left a mark. In his voice there was still a challenge, and in the silence of the Chamber still something sullen. He had won. They had lost in a struggle upon which, as Herr Loewe told me, they ought never to have entered; would never have entered had they known. Loewe and his party of so-called Liberals confessed themselves not only beaten but wholly in the wrong.

At half-past ten I rang at the outer door--which was more like a gate--of the palace in the Wilhelmstrasse. It was opened by a soldier who asked my name, and when he heard it told me I was expected and asked me to follow him. I was taken upstairs to a large empty room on the first floor. In a moment out came Count Bismarck's famous _adlatus_, Herr Lothar Bücher. The Count was engaged with the Minister of War but if I could wait would see me presently. I waited ten minutes. Again the door to the left opened, and forth came Von Roon, the mighty organizer of war, himself of course a soldier since in Prussia everybody who counted in affairs of State was a soldier, and still is. You had need to visit Berlin in those warlike days to understand {180} what was meant by the phrase that Prussia was a camp. Then you had need to visit it again in time of peace to understand that whether in peace or war Prussia was still a camp, and as much in peace as in war. What it is now I cannot say. I have not been in Berlin these last fifteen years, but between 1866 and 1893 I was there many times, and every time it was a camp. The garrison of Berlin and Potsdam was never, I think, less than 40,000 men. The streets of Berlin were always thronged with officers, and on the broad sidewalks of the Unter den Linden or the Friedrichstrasse there was scarce room for anybody else. The youngest lieutenant wanted all of it to himself. To each other these officers were civility itself but the civilian had no rights they were bound to respect.

I had already seen something of this all-pervading military spirit and military supremacy, and sat reflecting on it in this great _salon_ where I waited for Count Bismarck to be at leisure. When Herr von Roon came out he recognized me, I suppose, as a stranger, and, civilian though I was, gave me the greeting he thought due to Count Bismarck's guest, which I returned. There was almost a halt as he strode past; his face was turned to me, and I could read in it the stern record of a long conflict; of vast responsibilities and years of unceasing toil; a rugged face enough but the light of victory in his eye. He, too, had fought and won. Curiously enough, among the men I met at that time in Berlin, the man who, {181} Bismarck excepted, seemed to have most of the statesman in him, with the statesman's civic virtues and traits, was this Minister of War. Not because he was Minister in the sense in which an English Secretary of State for War is Minister. The English War Minister is never a soldier; he is a Parliamentary chief, and his authority over the army denotes the supremacy of Parliament over the whole military hierarchy from commander-in-chief down to the drummer boy.

But of Parliamentary supremacy there had been for these last four years in Prussia none whatever. The Minister of War was not responsible to Parliament; he never has been; he is not now. He was then responsible to the King of Prussia, as he is now to the German Emperor. When, in May, 1863, the Chamber protested to the King that the attitude of the Ministry to Parliament was arbitrary and unconstitutional (as it was), the King made answer that the Ministry possessed his confidence, and sent the Parliament about its business. That is, he prorogued Parliament, announced that he would govern for the present without a Parliament; and as matters did not mend and the Chamber again in December refused to vote a war budget, the King dissolved it. Parliamentary government existed at that time in Prussia under the constitution, but in name only.

These reflections were cut short by the reopening of the door, and Count Bismarck entered. {182} Still in uniform, nor did I ever see him except in uniform, whether in public or private, till I visited him in his home at Friedrichsruh in 1893, where he wore a black frock-coat and black trousers, crowned, when he went out, by a soft, broad-brimmed grey felt hat, quite shapeless. He had, more than any man I ever met, the manner of the _grand seigneur_, in which distinction of bearing and a grave, even gentle, courtesy went together. He was sorry, he said, to have kept me waiting, "but the business of the State, you know, comes first, and though one crisis is over another succeeds, and we know not yet what the end is to be." This I understood to refer not to Austria, for the Treaty of Prague had been signed in August, but to France, where the Emperor was brooding over his lost prestige and lost hold on Southern Germany, and was meditating demands which might compensate him for the loss of the power of meddling with matters which were none of his business.

As he said this we walked into his private room, or cabinet, the very centre of the spider's web; a comfortable, plain, workmanlike little room; a writing-desk the chief piece of furniture, large enough to fill the whole of the further corner; a sideboard opposite, a small table with ash trays, a few chairs, and that was all. The curtains were drawn; the room, German fashion, seemed a trifle close, and as if old Frederick William's Tobacco Parliament had been held here all these last hundred and fifty years or more. There was a rug in the centre which had to do duty for {183} the carpet which in Germany, as elsewhere on the Continent, never covers the whole floor.

As we were sitting down, the Count behind his desk, a door opened, opposite to the one by which we had entered, and there appeared a lady whom I had never seen; the Countess Bismarck. When she saw me she said to her husband:

"You have not been in bed for three nights. I hope you don't mean to sit up again."

Of course I rose, saying, "At any rate, he shall not sit up for me." But the Count laughed, came out from behind his desk, took me by the shoulders, thrust me down into the chair again, all with an air of kindly authority not easy to describe, and said:

"Sit where you are. I want to talk to you."

As I thought it over afterward I supposed Count Bismarck had some object in mind other than the pleasure of my conversation. He knew that I was the representative of _The Tribune_; my letter to him had stated that. He knew what the position and power of _The Tribune_ were, and especially of its influence with the Germans in America. And it seemed to me that, in view of the relations between the Germans at home and the Germans beyond the seas, he thought it might be worth while that his view of the situation should be put before the Germans in America, and before the Americans also, in an authentic though not an authoritative way. Count Bismarck did not say that. It was my conjecture, {184} upon which I acted to a certain extent as I will explain more fully by and by.

Countess Bismarck looked on at this performance which she plainly did not like, but presently smiled and said to her husband: "Well, if you will sit up you must have something to drink," went to the sideboard, mixed a brandy and soda, took it to him, put the glass to his lips, and stood by him to see that he drank the whole, which he did with no visible reluctance. He handed the empty tumbler to his wife and thanked her. She put her arm about him, kissed him, looked at me reproachfully but amiably, and vanished. A truly domestic, truly German, altogether charming little scene.

Many years later, after Count Bismarck had become Prince Bismarck and a greater figure in Germany than the world had seen, I met Princess Bismarck again at a dinner in Homburg given by Mr. William Walter Phelps, American Minister at Berlin. Mr. Phelps had long been a friend of the Bismarck family and on easy terms with the head of that family, who liked and respected him. It was a case of sympathy between opposites. No contrast could be more complete than the contrast between Prince Bismarck and Mr. Phelps; but their relations were, as so often happens, all the more friendly for that reason. I was presented to the Princess, and after dinner inquired whether she remembered this midnight incident in the Wilhelmstrasse. She asked me to describe it, and I told her what had happened. She had wholly {185} forgotten it. I asked her if I might some day narrate the story. "I don't see why you shouldn't," she answered. Years after that I again saw the Princess at Friedrichsruh, and she asked whether I had ever repeated my tale. I said no, but that I still meant to avail myself of her permission, as I now do.

The Princess thought, I imagine, she would like to see the Prince portrayed in this intimate way and in this relation to his wife. Her life had always been lived in and for his. She knew well what the world thought; to the world he was always the Iron Chancellor. But in private life he was the affectionate loyal husband to whom one woman had devoted all she had--all her love, truth, worship--an adoration which perhaps not many men have deserved or received from any woman.

There is much in Bismarck's _Love Letters_--which are hardly love letters--about his wife and much in other Bismarck books, notably in Sidney Whitman's _Personal Reminiscences_, the best of them all. The Princess will ever live as an amiable figure, and if she had not been that would still live as the wife of the one great German of his time; as the woman who had known how to captivate a fancy once supposed to be wayward, and to make it and him her own. The quality which distinguished her was sweetness or nature, which she never lost during a life harassed by many solicitudes and vexed by illness.

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II

The Countess von Bismarck having departed out of the little room, the King's Minister plunged at once into his subject, which was nothing less than the history of the last four years during which he had ruled over Prussia. Much of what he said I repeated in _The Tribune_ no very long time after. All that he said, or all that I could remember, I put down in writing that night before I slept. It contained, however, so much that obviously was not meant for print and could never be printed that, after using as much as I thought could properly be published, I destroyed my manuscript. I had said to Count Bismarck as I left that he knew he had been talking to a journalist and yet had said many things he could not wish made known to the public. He laughed and answered: "Well, it is your business to distinguish."

It is, therefore, still my business to distinguish. I may perhaps say a little more than I could while both the Emperor and the Prince were alive, but not much. For, in truth, I have never quite understood why confidences cease to be confidences because those who imparted them or those whom they concern are dead. A man who quits this world leaves his reputation, if he has any, behind him. Indiscretions may affect his memory as they might have affected his living fame. In this case they would exalt Count Bismarck's fame; but it might be at the expense of others whom he had {187} no desire to belittle. So I keep for the most part to generalities.

Of the King he spoke with astonishing freedom, yet never a word to injure the sovereign whom he served. I will quote once more a sentence I have repeated before now:

"You are a Republican, and you cannot fully understand the loyalty I cherish to a King to whose ancestors my ancestors have been loyal for hundreds of years."

Yet it comes to this--and of this truth History has long since taken account--that between Count Bismarck and his august master there was a long-continuing conflict. If the King had won there would have been no Austro-Prussian War, nor any Franco-German War, nor any German Confederation, nor any Germany as we know Germany to-day. When, therefore, the present German Emperor puts forward his grandfather as the author of these changes, he is making for his grandfather a false claim. While he was still Prince William of Prussia he said:

"Whenever I hear a great event in my grandfather's reign discussed I never hear his name mentioned, but always Bismarck's. When I come to the throne it is my name you will hear as the author of the policies and deeds of my reign."

William the Second has kept that pledge, but that is no reason why he should try to rewrite the history of his grandfather's time or to rob Prince Bismarck of the renown which belongs to him and {188} which the world awards him. Powerful as he is, he is not powerful enough for that.

This is a digression, but it will serve to bring out the main fact that there was a contest between the King and Bismarck in 1866, and that not the King but Bismarck came out triumphant. In the long war with Parliament the King and his Minister were together, and the King was as loyal to his Minister as the Minister was to the King. But when the critical moment came it still has to be said that Bismarck's was the seeing eye and the deciding voice, and his, not the King's, was the directing mind.

Over the heads of the Parliament and people of Prussia, and against the wish of the King, who only at the last moment and by one last argument had been persuaded to consent, did Bismarck pursue his way.

"It was not," said Bismarck, "till I had convinced the King that his honour as a soldier was involved that he would agree to the war with Austria. No political argument moved him. The vision of a united Germany with himself at the head of a German Confederation did not dazzle him.

"'Austria is my brother,' he said; 'the war would be fratricidal. The Emperor and I are bound together by many ties, by many interests; above all by affection and by loyalty. I should think it treacherous to attack a sovereign who has given me many proofs of good-will and to I have given pledges. Nothing will induce to do it.'"

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"Yet," continued Bismarck, "he had allowed me to take step after step, each one of which led inevitably to war. In the long conflict with the Parliament he was with me. Only by his support was that conflict maintained or victory possible. No money was voted for four years. We laid hands on the public revenues, but the Government had to be carried on in part by money supplied out of that Royal Treasure Fund which for generations the Kings of Prussia have hoarded for kingly purposes. The preparations for war were nourished from the same source. The war with Denmark was paid for to a certain extent out of the same royal purse. The Landtag never assented to the Schleswig-Holstein enterprise nor would vote a solitary thaler to carry it on. Before that, when I became Minister, in September, 1862, my first act was to announce to the Chamber that I proposed to govern without a budget. The Chamber protested against that as unconstitutional, which of course it was. Six months later the Chamber invited the King to dismiss his Ministers. He replied that his Ministers had his confidence, and a week later instead of dismissing us announced that he proposed to govern without a Parliament.

"All this time I was preparing for war with Austria after Denmark. The King must have known what it all meant, but he did not stay his hand nor withdraw his confidence from us. After the peace with Denmark there was no longer any reason for military preparations except Austria. {190} But the King still allowed me to go on. In January, 1865, the Parliament again rejected the public budget. The King rejoined by seizing on the public revenues in the name of the State. The public knew nothing of what I had in mind. The Parliament knew nothing. If it had been possible to take Parliament into my confidence the budget would have been voted. The Liberals have admitted that. But to take Parliament into my confidence would have been to take Austria into my confidence. It could not be. It was necessary to strike suddenly; to strike before Austria could assemble her reserves, or take advantage of her immense resources, or bring into line all the discordant races of that great Empire.

"How much did I tell the King? Well, as much as was necessary for the time being. The great struggle with His Majesty was put off till the moment of conflict was near; till it was necessary to throw off the mask. Besides, you must consider that I had to deal not only with the King but with the various Court influences which surrounded him. They were almost all hostile to me. Many of them were very powerful with the King. I might spend six weeks in coaxing him to assent to a particular measure. When he had promised, in would come some Grand Duchess and in half an hour undo my six weeks' work."

I interrupt the flow of this speech to remark that, long after this, Prince Bismarck repeated to the same complaint about grand ducal interventions. They never ceased. They were never {191} relaxed. There was no conciliating these great personages. They had policies and purposes of their own, which were never those of Germany but always of some German principality with which their personal interests were bound up. There is nothing so selfish as a second-class Royalty; a Serenity with a dukedom which a pocket-handkerchief would cover.

Bismarck continued:

"In the end Austria played my game for me. She demanded in April, 1866, the demobilization of the Prussian forces, which had begun to put themselves on a war footing in March. Then I knew the Lord had delivered her into our hands. I laid the demand before the King, saying: 'I do not know whether Your Majesty is prepared to surrender the command of your army to your brother of Austria.' He took fire at once. Then it was that he felt his honour as a soldier was attacked. From that moment the difficulty was to restrain him. We were not quite ready. It would have been dangerous to declare war at once. It was dangerous, perhaps, to let the moment of the King's anger pass, lest counsels of peace should again prevail. But one risk or the other had to be taken, and I chose the latter. Two months later, June 18th, war was declared, and the King issued a manifesto to his people which was everything that could be wished. All the rest was in the hands of the God of Battles."

Then a pause and a piercing glance, then on he went:

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"After Königgrätz there were the same difficulties. The King could not at first understand why this career of victory was to be interrupted. He was King no longer. He was Field Marshal, commanding the forces of Prussia. He had won a great battle. The power of Austria was broken. Vienna lay at his mercy. Germany was waiting to know whether Austria or Prussia was to be her future master--well, no, not master, but which of the two was to be the chief State in Germany and the true leader of the German people. What other sign of supremacy could be so visible, so convincing, as the Prussian armies in Vienna, Prussian troops encamped in the Prater, the Danube bridled and bridged by us Prussians? When an enemy's capital lay at the victor's mercy, why should he not enter it? What great soldier ever refrained?

"Thus," said Bismarck, "spoke the King. I ventured to remind His Majesty of his reluctance to make war on the Emperor of Austria, and to ask whether, now that he was vanquished, he wished him to be humiliated also. That seemed to touch him. We talked long. He was surrounded by generals and princes who urged him on, but in the end he came round to my view which had been his own view before the war. So here we are in Berlin and not in Vienna, and please God we shall all be friends again, and some day there will be one Germany and not two, or twenty, or fifty, as in times past and to-day. The fruits of our triumph are yet to gather."

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Twice during this discourse I had risen to go, but Bismarck said: "No, I have not finished." The third time, it was long past one o'clock, and I said: "If I don't go now Countess Bismarck will never let me see you again." This amused him, and he remarked: "I suppose you think I am getting sleepy!" But sleepy he was not. He had talked for near two hours with unquenchable energy and freshness, and with a force of speech in which no man was his rival.

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