Читать книгу Two Chancellors: Prince Gortchakof and Prince Bismarck - Julian Klaczko - Страница 6

II.

During the four years which he had passed at Frankfort as representative of his government to the German Confederation, Prince Gortchakof, as we have already seen, had made the acquaintance of, and maintained the most intimate relations with a colleague, whose rare qualities of mind, as probably also those of the heart, he appreciated as no one else did. The two friends were separated in the summer of 1854, when the Russian plenipotentiary went to fulfill his painful mission at Vienna. But they did not delay in meeting anew, and found as before that perfect congeniality of ideas and of sentiments, which, established since their first meeting in Frankfort, has never been interrupted, and has lasted for twenty-five years: grande mortalis ævi spatium. This friend of Prince Gortchakof on the smiling banks of the Main, was no other than M. de Bismarck, the future chancellor of Germany.

Otto-Edward-Leopold de Bismarck-Schoenhausen, born the 1st of April, 1815, at Schoenhausen, hereditary estate of his family in the old Mark of Brandenburg, could not flatter himself with having, like his friend Alexander Mikhaïlovitch, blood of the Saints in his veins. His biographers even observe with visible satisfaction, that at least two of his ancestors were excommunicated by the Church and died in final impenitence. What is more serious is that the most authorized historians of the Mark of Brandenburg, M. de Riedel among others, call into question the noble origin of the family. They show that the first of the line, of whom authentic documents of the fourteenth century speak, Rulo Bismarck, was a member and on several occasions even provost of "the guild of master tailors in cloth" at Stendal, a small market town of the old Mark. The fact does not seem doubtful. But could not the citizens of Stendal, just as well as those of certain cities in Tuscany, have forced every country noble, who wished to inhabit the city, to subscribe himself in one of those guilds? This is the opinion of the tories in this curious genealogical dispute. To hear them, the good citizens of Stendal must have been on a par, in the fourteenth century, with the great citizens of Florence and of Pisa, and Rulo Bismarck must have been master tailor in cloth about as much as Dante, his contemporary, was an apothecary. The whigs, on the contrary, the biographers in national-liberal colors, take their part gayly, and one of them ingeniously concludes, that in any case the ancestor Rulo ought "to contemplate with satisfaction and pride from the high heavens the splendid imperial mantle which his descendant has made for King William out of the cloth of Europe."

In times relatively more modern, the House of Bismarck presents, like many a noble country family of Brandenburg, an unbroken succession of modest and faithful servants of the state, some soldiers, some employed in civil duties. The eighteenth century offers us two rather more curious specimens, the grandfather and great uncle of the chancellor. One was surnamed the poet, the other the adventurer. The poet, this painful avowal must be made, composed his verses in the French language. We have notably by him an "Eloge ou Monument érigé à la Mémoire de Christine de Bismarck, née de Schoenfeld, par Charles-Alexandre de Bismarck," Berlin, 1774. It was to his dead wife that the retired captain of cavalry thought necessary to elevate this mausoleum of words and of Welche rhymes, full of the insipid sentimentality of the time. The adventurer (Ludolf-August) is more deserving of his name. He killed his servant in a fit of anger or drunkenness, was pardoned, took service in Russia, became involved in political intrigues in Courland, and was forced to go to Siberia in exile. Pardoned again, he entered into Russian diplomacy, filled several missions, and died commanding general at Poltava. Let us say in passing, that this Ludolf was not the only one of his family to serve under the Russian flag, and thus the name of Bismarck has long been well known at St. Petersburg.

The whig biographers lay much stress on the fact, that the mother of the young Otto, "an intelligent, ambitious, and rather cold woman," was a bourgeoise, a Miss Menken, of a family of savans well known at Leipsic. They love to prove in this manner that the restorer of the empire was connected by his mother with the bourgeoisie, that studious and cultivated bourgeoisie which is the great strength of Germany,—while claiming his right to the nobility and the army by his father, retired captain of cavalry, and by his grandfather the poet. Those profound Germans have a weakness, it is known, for all symbolism. They dignify very often with this name that which is nothing but a jeu d'esprit, in reality a play of words, and it is thus that they attach a certain signification to the futile circumstance that the young Otto was confirmed[12] at Berlin at the hands of Schleiermacher, the celebrated Doctor of Divinity, whose learning was much more respectable than his life; "in a manner and for a fleeting moment, it is true, but solemnly, the young man called to a life of action par excellence, was brought in contact with our learned theology and our romantic philosophy." Nor has it been forgotten to exalt the name of the "gray cloister" (Grauer Kloster), which the lyceum at Berlin bore, where the future destroyer of convents studied, or to note the French origin of one of his principal professors, Doctor Bonnet, descendant of a Huguenot family which sought refuge in Brandenburg in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

After having finished his studies at the lyceum of the gray cloister, Otto de Bismarck went to the University of Goettingen, to the celebrated Georgia Augusta, in order to study. In reality, he did nothing but lead the life of the sons of the muse, who have the good or bad fortune to be at the same time sons of family, cavalieri; he cultivated nothing but hunting, riding, swimming, gymnastic exercises, and fencing. He had more than twenty duels, and fully justified the glorious name of Bursche, which clung to him for a long time afterwards, even when he was ambassador and minister. One easily understands that the Institutes and Pandects cannot be very thoroughly studied in the midst of so many corporal exercises, and even the attempt to change the noisy Georgia Augusta for the most quiet and sedate University of Berlin, was a remedy heroic rather than efficacious. Has M. de Bismarck ever regularly passed this "state examination" (Staatsexamen) which in Prussia is the indispensable condition for an appointment to any public function? A grave question, which was discussed for a long time in Germany, and out of which a weapon has shaped itself for twenty years against the man, the deputy, the ambassador, the president of the council. A fact worthy of notice, and one which well characterizes the formal and regulative mind of the nation: M. de Bismarck had already defied all Europe, and dismembered the Danish monarchy, when in the opposition journals of Germany, there appeared from time to time, like belated rockets, malignant allusions to this problematical state examination! Since the epoch of Sadowa only have these malicious jibes entirely ceased: Sadowa caused many other irregularities to pass unnoticed, and assuredly much graver ones.

It is perhaps proper to inquire here what benefits M. de Bismarck reaped from his academic life, and to estimate, if but briefly, the cultivation and the peculiarities of his mind. It seems certain that M. de Bismarck is not a man of science and study, and that his liberal education shows more than one gap. A pleasing contrast, the two chancellors, Russian and German, of whom one knew but a single lyceum and that one of very doubtful merit, while the other attended the most renowned college (gymnasium) and alma mater of learned Germany. Certainly the pupil of Zarkoe-Zeloe, as regards classical knowledge and true humaniora, is far in advance of the lucky foster child of Georgia Augusta. Nevertheless it is well to observe that M. de Bismarck fills and more than fills a certain programme laid down one day by the spirituel and regretted Saint-Marc Giradin for the well educated men of the world. "I do not require, said he, that they know Latin; I only ask that they have forgotten it." From his academic youth, there has always remained to the chancellor of Germany a fund of culture of which he well knows the use on occasion, and he understands in a sufficient degree, his Bible, his Shakspere, his Goethe, and his Schiller, those four elements of all education, even the most common one, in German countries,—precious and enviable quadrivium of the children of Arminius! Prince Gortchakof has the refinements as well as the weaknesses of the man of letters; he takes care of his "mot," he corrects his phrase, he looks at and admires himself in his compositions; it is known that he was one day surnamed the Narcissus of the inkstand. By his tastes, by his exquisite sensibility, by his artistic instinct, he has a marked superiority over his former colleague of Frankfort. But the latter regains all this advantage as soon as one considers the original and personal stamp which he knows how to give to his thoughts and to his speech, as soon as one seeks the individuality, the breathing creator, the mens agitans molem, that something mysterious and powerful which antique sculpture rendered so ingeniously by placing a flame on the forehead of certain of its statues.

The chancellor of Germany is not a lettered man in the strict and somewhat vulgar acceptation of the world. He is, to speak correctly, neither an orator nor a writer. He does not understand developing a theme well, graduating its arguments, arranging its transitions. He does not construct his period and does not trouble himself about it. He has difficulty in expressing himself, both on the tribune and also with the pen. His style is harsh, occasionally very incorrect, as unacademical as possible. It is intricate, embarrassed, even trivial at moments. Every part guarded, and all reserve made, there is something of Cromwell in his manner of expressing himself. But in an entirely different manner than in Cromwell one is forced to admire in him those flashes of thought, those strong and unforeseen images, those penetrating words which strike, which impress themselves, and which are not forgotten. When quite lately in the midst of an argument, disconnected and embarrassed, concerning his conflict with Rome, he suddenly cried out: "Be sure of one thing, gentlemen, we will not go to Canossa!"[13] one should remember that he knew how to comprise there, in a sort of menacing cæterum censeo,[14] a whole world of memories and of passions. In a very different spirit, also in a time already far distant, it is true, speaking one day—about twenty years have since flown—of the principles of revolution and contra-revolution, he said that a parliamentary debate could never decide between these two principles: "The decision will only come from God, from the God of battles, when he lets fall from his hand the iron dice of destiny!" One thinks that he hears De Maistre in this last part of the phrase, and like M. de Maistre the chancellor of Germany has had his passage decried by the hangsman; we wish to speak of this invocation to iron and to blood, which must be replaced in its frame and put in its true light,—to settle its date,—to appreciate all the relief by the side of the incontestable brutality. The invocation was made when those national-liberals, to-day of such great servility towards him and with the obedience of a corpse, wished to prevent him from reforming the army, at the same time demanding him to complete the unity of Germany. The man who felt the distant thunder of Sadowa and Sedan rumble in his soul, launched at this moment to the orators the défi which he has only too well justified since, saying that it was not by speeches that Germany could be united: "to consummate this unity, iron and blood are necessary!" This orator does not breathe at ease in the uniform which never leaves him, and he advances only by fits and starts. He collects laboriously the clouds of his rhetoric, but the spark ends by flashing and by illuminating the whole situation. To make himself understood he employs the greatest or most familiar images, without choice, just as they come; he borrows a quotation from Shakspere and from Goethe just as well as from the Wasps of M. Alphonse Karr, or from a couplet of the vaudeville. One of his most happy, most memorable inspirations, he suddenly drew one day from the libretto of the "Freischütz."

The reader will kindly permit us to recall this last episode, even at the risk of delaying somewhat in some preliminary explanations of which a German auditory, full of souvenirs of its "Freischütz," would have no need. In this opera of Weber, Max, the good and unfortunate hunter, borrows a cartridge from Robin, the evil spirit, and immediately kills an eagle, one of whose feathers he proudly sticks in his cap. He then asks for some more cartridges, but Robin tells him that they are "enchanted balls," and that in order to obtain them he must surrender himself to the infernal spirits, and deliver his soul to them. Max draws back, and then Robin, sneering, tells him that he hesitates in vain, that the bargain is made, and that he has already committed himself by the ball he made use of: "Do you think, then, that this eagle was a free gift?" Well! when in 1849 the young orator of the Mark of Brandenburg had to implore the Prussian chamber not to accept for the King of Prussia the imperial crown which the parliament of Frankfort offered him, he ended by crying out: "It is radicalism which offers this gift to the king. Sooner or later this radicalism will stand upright before the king, will demand of him its recompense, and pointing to the emblem of the eagle on that new imperial flag, it will say: Did you think, then, that this eagle was a free gift?" A striking image and equally deep and ingenious! Yes, one cannot use with impunity the "enchanted balls" of revolution, and one does not make a bargain with the popular demon, without leaving it some of his soul. Sooner or later there will stand upright before you the bad genius whose aid you have accepted, Robin of the woods and the streets. He will come to receive your salute, and tell you that he did not intend to have worked for the King of Prussia. This magnificent oratorical burst of the young deputy of the Mark, the chancellor of Germany might have considered with benefit in more than one decisive circumstance, for instance on the day when he overthrew the secular throne, also the day when he gave the signal for the combat of civilization.

The writer does not differ much from the orator, and, in speaking of the writer, we think above all of those intimate and familiar letters which have been published in the well known book of George Hesekiel, and which have had a merited success in Germany. There is always the same obscurity, the same embarrassment of elocution, the same disorder, from time to time passages of lively and original expressions, of astonishing figures, of a bitter, harsh humor, which grinds and bites you with cruel pleasure. These letters are for the great part addressed to his sister, to "dear Malvina" (married to an Arnim), and we will borrow from them more than once during the course of this study. One notices in them certain descriptions of nature, of the brightness of the moon, of the North Sea, of the view of the Danube from the heights of Buda-Pesth, which are not wanting in coloring effect, and make up a picture. There is something of Heinrich Heine in these private Reisebilder, and it has been remarked of them, that there is perhaps something of Hamlet (and what a Hamlet!) in the following passage, the only melancholy one which we have met with in the midst of so many sanguine and robust sallies. "At the mercy of God! Everything is in reality but a question of time, peoples and individuals, wisdom and folly, peace and war. To the living, everything upon earth is but hypocrisy and jugglery, and this mask of flesh having once fallen off, the wise man and the fool resemble each other greatly, and it would be hard to distinguish between the Prussian and the Austrian, their skeletons being very carefully prepared." These lines fell from the same hand, however, which, since then, and assuredly by a very specific patriotism, has furnished so many thousand subjects to the preparers of skeletons!

One sees by these letters that M. de Bismarck handled at an early hour and with predilection this irony, in which he is without a master; a cold, crafty irony, and which too often approaches sneering. He used it later in his speeches, in his conversations with ministers and ambassadors, and even in diplomatic negotiations, in the most important, most decisive moments of history. At such moments this irony sometimes affects a great frankness, sometimes a great politeness, but a frankness to make you fall on your knees before the first lie, however brazen, a politeness to make you implore an incivility without forms as a veritable charity. One day, on the very eve of the war of 1866, Count Karolyi, ambassador of Austria, and acting in the name of his government, summoned M. de Bismarck to declare categorically if he expected to break the treaty of peace, the treaty of Gastein.[15] "No," was the reply, "I have not that expectation; but, if I had, would I answer you differently?" There is an example of that frankness which disconcerts, which confounds, and seems to cry in your ear with that devil from the "Inferno":

"Tu non pensavi ch'io loico fossi!"

As to the murderous politeness, which sometimes clothes the sarcasm of M. de Bismarck, let us recall here the mot which he launched later at the negotiators of Versailles, coming to treat with him concerning the surrender of famished Paris, and to offer him two hundred millions in contributions. "Oh," said he, "Paris is too great a personage that we should treat it in such a shabby manner; let us do it the honor of a milliard." That is truly an original turn which the rival of Heine thought to give to the maxima reverentia which one owes to misfortune! When one is destined in a ripe age to exercise his humor with such ease at the cost of princes and of peoples, how is it possible when young not to jest pleasantly about that poor fellow of a peasant in Pomerania who drank too much water? In one of his letters to his dear Malvina, the young country gentleman describes with a hilarious spirit an inundation which swept over his domain which is divided by a little branch of the narrow river Hampel. This inundation severed him from all his neighbors, carried off so and so many casks of eau-de-vie, "introduced an anarchical interregnum from Schievelbein to Damm," and he ends by this stroke: "I am proud to be able to say, that in my little branch of the Hampel a wagoner was drowned with his horse and his whole load of tar!" How proud in a different degree was this gentleman one day when, Europe having become his domain, he saw disappearing in the midst of the billows, billows of blood this time, a whole army and its chief, a whole empire and its emperor,—currus Galliæ et auriga ejus! That did not prevent, at another time, the young country gentleman from jumping bravely into the water to rescue his groom and gaining the medal for saving life. During many years this medal was the only one to decorate the broad chest of the Prussian minister at Frankfort. Asked one day by a colleague to the Bund about a decoration to which the diplomatic corps is but little accustomed, he replied in the tone which he alone possesses, that he sometimes happened to rescue a man,—in his leisure moments, be it understood. Probably, if he had been further pressed, he was capable of adding that he only did it for exercise.

Thus, to resume, from the epoch of his apprenticeship at the gray cloister and Georgia Augusta, Otto de Bismarck carried a literary burden, which, without being either too heavy or too full, has nevertheless enabled him to make his tour of the political world with ease and honor. And also since this epoch his mind disclosed the precious qualities which still distinguish it; a vivid and powerful imagination, a rare happiness in his choice of expressions occasionally grandiose, occasionally vulgar, but always striking; and lastly, a humor which has no equal, and which, to speak with Jean Paul, is a true sirocco to the soul. With all this no grace, no charm, no distinction or delicacy,—not a generous accent, no sweet and sympathetic cord, a complete absence of that milk of human kindness of which the poet speaks, an absolute want of that charity which, according to the great Christian moralist, is like the heavenly perfume of the soul. As to the art or rather handicraft, as to the work which consists in arranging his phrases, in connecting and disposing them so as to introduce harmony and clearness in the different parts of speech, in effacing its asperities and inequalities, in one word as to the style, M. de Bismarck never learned it or always disdained it. If we dared to apply to this style one of those trivial but expressive images of which he himself offers us more than one example, we would willingly compare it to a certain strange drink, hardly credible, and which, according to his biographers, the German chancellor has always liked: it consists of a mixture of champagne and porter! The language is in imitation of the drink: one finds in it the piquant, the sparkling, the exhilarating of the Aÿ together with the heaviness, the blackness, and above all the bitterness of the stout.

It is a curious fact, that the man who one day was to impose on all the States of Germany the severe bureaucratic and military laws of Prussia, "to place Germany in the saddle," to use one of his mots, to press it into the straight jacket of obligatory service,—even to indirectly train all Europe to new exercises, and to make it leave the plow for the sword, liberal occupations for the autumn and summer manœuvres,—this man, for his part, has never been able to bind himself down to academic duties, neither to the regular work of the bureau, nor to the severe discipline of the soldier. He himself has acknowledged having heard but two hours of lecture during his whole stay at Georgia Augusta. The university course being ended, he tried several times the administrative or judiciary career; he tried it at Aix-la-Chapelle, at Potsdam, at Greifswalde, then again at Potsdam, and had to give it up every time, disgusted by the monotonous labor of the bureau, or by quarrels with his superiors. On this subject is told the piquant reply of the young referendarius to a principal who had made him wait an hour in an antechamber: "I came to request a short leave of absence; but during this long hour I have had time to reflect, and I demand my dismission." Thrice he made a trial of the military service, without arriving at a higher grade than that of lieutenant in the Landwehr, a rank which he appreciated, however, and of which he loved to don the uniform on solemn occasions, even at the very time when he was already minister at Frankfort. The reader knows that the day of Sadowa brought him the insignia of a general. Those ten or twelve years which had passed for M. de Bismarck since his disputed state examination to his entrance into the Prussian chamber, the German biographers call by the fine name "years of storm and trouble," which recalls one of the most brilliant epochs of their literature.[16] In truth they were stormy, filled with miscarriages of more than one kind, with travels, financial embarrassments, perhaps also with an unrequited love. At least that is the meaning one is inclined to give to the following passage from a letter addressed to his sister Malvina: "I struggle in vain, I shall end by marrying ——; the world wishes it thus, and nothing seems more natural, and then we will both be killed on the spot. She left me coldly, it is true, but they all do that. It would not be so bad, however, if one could throw off his feelings with his shirts, no matter how rarely one changes the latter."

He seems to have had a very sincere affection for this sister; he overwhelms her with the most tender names. Thus he calls her his little dear, his Malvina, his Maldewinchen, his good little Arnim; he even calls her once (pardon him, O divinities of Walhalla) simply and in French, "ma sœur." In all the letters of this epoch, dated for the most part from the estates of Kniephof or Schoenhausen (it was not until later that M. de Bismarck acquired the famous Varzin[17]), by the side of an always biting and harsh humor, one can perceive a certain disenchantment; by the side of the cares of fortune appear from time to time projects for the future, very modest, truly, and which seldom aim at politics. In 1846 he attached a certain importance at being made surveyor of dikes in the district (Deichhauptmann). "The position is not remunerative, but it offers some interest in regard to Schoenhausen and other estates, for we would depend on it in a great measure if we were again without water as in the past year.... Bernard (a friend) insists on my going to Prussia (to Berlin). I would like to know what he expects there. He affirms that by my disposition and my inclinations, I am made for the service of the state, and that sooner or later I will end by entering it." Suddenly, and on the very eve of the reunion of the first Prussian parliament, one is surprised by the plan of a voyage to the Indias,—probably to make his fortune and establish himself there,—and one thinks involuntarily of Cromwell wishing to embark for America on the eve of the long parliament. Do not think, however, that the days passed sadly and morosely at Kniephof and at Schoenhausen: one lives there, one overlives the life of Juncker (country squire) and the officers of the neighboring garrison are good and stout fellows, in whose company one hunts and dances, "one empties great bowls half filled with champagne, half with porter;" the guests are awakened in the morning by pistols fired off close to their pillows; on entering the salon the female cousins are frightened with four foxes, and honor is paid to the name given by the whole country to the proprietor of the domain, the name of "mad Bismarck" (der tolle Bismarck). They are madcaps, and blusterers, prompt to draw their swords, to fight with pistol or steel, and they do not even avoid a pugilistic scene. One day in a smoking room at Berlin, the former pupil of Georgia Augusta broke his beer mug on the skull of a stranger disrespectful in his language towards a member of the royal family; not, however, without having first addressed a charitable warning to the insolent speaker, nor without having afterwards, very sedately, very politely, asked of the waiter the cost of the damage.[18] This happened in 1850; M. de Bismarck had already been deputy several years, and was on the point of becoming minister plenipotentiary to the Germanic Confederation.

Der tolle Bismarck; it was not only at Kniephof and at Schoenhausen that the future chancellor of Germany was thus called. The Berlinese themselves had no other name for him for a long time, during all the parliamentary period of the young deputy of the Mark, since his maiden speech and his first appearance on the tribune,—when having provoked an indescribable tumult by a violent attack against the liberals he drew from his pocket a newspaper, and quietly commenced reading, while waiting for the storm to calm,—up to his last speech on December 3, 1850, which completed the exasperation of the chamber, but was worth a diplomatic post to the orator. Success advances a little like the aristocratic law of the Chinese: it is necessary to supply glory from the rear and to throw lustre on the obscure antecedents of the favorite of fortune. This was, however, more to mistake the time and to misplace the historical perspective, than to wish to assign to M. de Bismarck in those years (1847-50) any important rôle which he did not fill until fifteen years later. The truth is that this rôle was not in this first period either of such eminence, or, above all, sufficiently respected to be tempted to arrange itself in an abstract, inductive method. An active and restless member of the group of Juncker in 1847, and of the great party of the cross which was formed after the revolution of February, the country gentleman of Schoenhausen was far from having in the bosom of this party the authority of a Gerlach and a Stahl, or the great position of a similar feudal lord of Silesia or Pomerania. In spite of his audacity, his impetuosity, and his sang-froid; in spite of his exceedingly happy sallies with an eloquence unequal and embarrassed in a very different manner from to-day, M. de Bismarck was at this epoch nothing but the Hotspur, and the enfant terrible of the sacred phalanx which defended the throne, the altar, and the conservative principles. He was in a measure the General Temple of the ill-tempered light-horsemen, a General Temple joined with the Marquis of Piré. At any rate he only passed for a successful Thadden-Triglaff, that brave M. Thadden-Triglaff who declared that he desired the liberty of the press, on condition, however, "that there was a power by the side of each journal to hang up the pamphleteers." The speeches of M. de Bismarck, friend and neighbor of this ingenious legislator of the press, were often not more reasonable. Did he not say one day, word for word, "that all the great cities ought to be destroyed and razed to the ground, as the eternal homes of revolution?"

The Athenians of the Spree[19] laughed at these jests, repeated those words full of humor, and above all admired a certain argument ad hominem by means of a mug of beer. Occasionally also they criticised with malice the advances made to the innocent, to the democrats, and diverted themselves especially over the famous little branch of olive which the country squire of Schoenhausen showed one day to his colleague of the chamber, the very radical Doctor d'Ester. This branch, he told him, he had cut in a recent excursion to Vaucluse, from the tomb of Laura and Petrarch. He put it carefully in his cigar case and thought of presenting it one day to the red gentlemen "as a sign of reconciliation." It was in the strange destiny of this extraordinary man not to be thought in earnest until the day when he became terrible. Der tolle Bismarck, the Germans said in 1850; at Frankfort the good Count Rechberg called him scoffingly a Bursche, and he was considered a personage worthy of laughter in the eyes of the French minister, a man of mind, however, even in 1864. The year after the legendary coast of Biarritz, he pursued with his projects the Emperor Napoleon III., who, resting on the arm of the author of "Colomba," whispered from time to time into the ear of the academician senator those words: "He is crazy!" Five years later the dreamer of Ham gave up his sword to the crazy man of the Mark.

"I belong,"—such was the defiant declaration of M. de Bismarck in one of his first speeches in the chamber,—"I belong to an opinion which glories in the reproaches of obscurantism, and of tendencies of the Middle Age; I belong to that great multitude which is compared with disdain to the most intelligent party of the nation." He wanted a Christian State. "Without a religious basis," said he, "a state is nothing but a fortuitous aggregation of interests, a sort of bastion in a war of all against all; without this religious basis, all legislation, instead of regenerating itself at the living sources of eternal truth, is only tossed about by human ideas as vague as changeable." It is for this reason that he pronounced against the emancipation of the Jews, and repulsed, above all, with horror the institution of civil marriage, a degrading institution, and one which "made the church the train-bearer (Schleppentraeger) of a subaltern bureaucracy."[20] He was as intransigeant for the throne as for the altar: he set at defiance the principle of the sovereignty of the people; universal suffrage (which he himself was to introduce one day into the whole German empire!) seemed to him a social danger and an outrage to good sense. He denied the rights of the nation; the crown alone had rights: the old Prussian spirit knew but that,—"and this old Prussian spirit is a Bucephalus who willingly allows his legitimate master to mount him, but who will throw to the ground every Sunday rider (Sonntagsreiter)!"

A resolute adversary of modern ideas, of constitutional theories, and of all that then formed the programme of the liberal party in Prussia, the deputy of the Mark combated with the same energy the two great national passions of this party: the "deliverance" of Schleswig-Holstein and the unity of Germany. He deplored that "the royal Prussian troops had gone to defend the revolution in Schleswig against the legitimate sovereign of that country, the King of Denmark;" he asserted that they were making a groundless quarrel with this king, that they sought a quarrel with him "for no cause" (um des Kaisers Bart), and he did not hesitate to declare before an angry chamber, that the war provoked in the Duchies of the Elbe was "an undertaking eminently iniquitous, frivolous, disastrous, and revolutionary."[21] As to the unity of Germany, the young orator of the ultras repulsed it in the name of Right, of the sovereignty and of the independence of princes, as well as in the name of patriotism, be it understood. He was Prussian, a specific Prussian, a hardened Prussian (stockpreusse), and cared very little to unite the good and firm substance "with the dissolved elements (das zerfahrene Wesen) of the South." He called on the army: Does this army wish to exchange the old national colors, black and white, for this German tricolor, which was only known to it as the emblem of revolution? Does it wish to exchange its old Dessauer march for the song of a Professor Arndt on the German fatherland?

We have already spoken of his speech against the imperial crown offered by the parliament of Frankfort, of the ingenious allusion borrowed from the libretto of the "Freischütz." While refusing the imperial crown, Frederick William IV. did not the less endeavor, during the years 1849 and 1850, to rescue some waifs from this wreck of unitarian ideas; he tried to group around himself, and with the aid of the liberals, a notable part of the Germanic body, to create a sort of northern confederation: "restricted union" became for a moment the mot d'ordre of a programme which General Radowitz was charged to place on the stage of the parliament of Erfurt. M. de Bismarck condemned without pity or weakness all these vain attempts; with the great theorician of his party, the celebrated Professor Stahl, he pleaded for the return to the statu quo prior to 1848. Like him he demanded "that the overturned column of right be replaced in Germany," that the Bund be restored on legal bases, according to the terms of the treaty of Vienna, and that no cessation should be made in placing Prussian politics on its guard against any "course of Phæton" in a region of clouds and thunder.

The thunderbolt did not in truth delay in striking, and the "course of Phæton" was brusquely arrested by the hand of that great Austrian minister, who himself only traversed, like a luminous meteor, the most elevated regions of power to disappear suddenly and to leave behind him eternal regrets. Prince Felix de Schwarzenberg recalls in some respects those statesmen of whom England lately offered the astounding example, those Peterboroughs, those Bentincks, and those like them, who knew how to interrupt, almost suddenly, a life given up to pleasures and to the frivolous follies of the world, to reveal themselves in a trice like veritable political geniuses, and to die before their time, after having exhausted the intoxication of easy good fortune and of glory, arduous in a very different degree. It is known with what a firm and steady hand the prince seized the helm of affairs in Austria, and in how short a time he succeeded in lifting up a monarchy placed on the brink of an abyss. Was his conduct in every particular irreproachable; was it even provident to the end? That is not the question for us. Let us limit ourselves in saying that rarely has a minister met with more good luck in his short career, found so much assurance in success, and spoken in a loftier or prouder tone in vexatious necessities. This time Prince Schwarzenberg spoke with all the authority which right gave him. Perhaps he spoke even too harshly, and Prussia seemed for a moment ready to pick up the glove. Frederick William IV. demanded of the chambers a credit of fourteen million thalers for the armament, and made a warlike speech. Europe became attentive, the national assembly of France was on the point of ordering a new levy of troops, and, fatidical prelude of a tragedy which was not to be played till fifteen years later, in 1850 as in 1866, Louis Napoleon thought that he ought to encourage the cabinet of Berlin, encourage it with aid, and in direct opposition to the general sentiment of the country! While the national assembly in France pronounced itself very plainly for neutrality and the minister of foreign affairs was even inclined in favor of Austria, the president of the republic sent an intimate friend to Berlin, M. de Persigny, with the mission to engage the King of Prussia as much as possible in the war. War appeared inevitable. The troops were already disposed in two parts; there had already been encounters between the advanced guards. All of a sudden, and before a menacing ultimatum from Vienna, strengthened by a friendly notice from St. Petersburg, M. de Manteuffel, president of the Prussian council, proposed to that of Austria to hold an interview at Oderberg, on the frontier of the two States. Some hours after having sent this proposition, he announced by telegraph (a proceeding then very rare), that, on positive orders from the king, he should go as far as Olmütz, without waiting for the reply. He went there, and signed (29 November, 1850) the preliminaries of peace, the famous "punctuations" by which Prussia yielded to the demands of Austria on every point.

It is not astonishing that such a profound humiliation,—preceded by a measure of distress up to that time unheard of in the annals of diplomacy, and immediately followed by an Austrian dispatch which very uselessly did nothing but irritate the wound,[22]—filled liberal Prussia with grief and indignation. It was in vain that M. de Manteuffel endeavored to justify his conduct before the national mind. He affirmed that he would rather be placed "in front of conical balls than pointed speeches" (lieber Spitzkugeln als spitze Reden); the chamber of Berlin expressed with passion the griefs of the country, and M. de Vincke closed one of the most vehement philippics with these words: "Down with the ministry!" A single orator dared to undertake the defense of the ministry, and to make in the same moment the apotheosis of Austria. Already in the preceding year M. de Bismarck had desired for his country the rôle of the Emperor Nicholas in Hungary. Since then he had never neglected an occasion to resent in behalf of the empire of the Hapsburg the insults which German liberalism had heaped on him, and he remained true to this policy even in the most extraordinary circumstances, and in the midst of the indescribable clamors of the assembly. He maintained that there could be no possible or legitimate federation in Germany without Austria. One of the greatest griefs of the Teutons against Austria has been in all times its not forming a state purely German, its containing in its bosom different populations and of an "inferior" race. This was the principal argument of the parliament of Frankfort in favor of the constitution of a Germany without the empire of the Hapsburg, and M. de Bismarck did not fail to reproduce it in 1866, in a memorable circular. In 1850 the deputy of the Mark did not share this opinion; he was convinced that "Austria was a German power in the full force of the term, although it also had the good fortune to exercise its dominion over foreign nationalities," and he boldly concluded that "Prussia should subordinate itself to Austria to the end that they might combat in concert the menacing democracy." Truly, in recalling that session of the Prussian chamber on the 3d December, 1850, one can, in the words of Montesquieu, observe the spectacle of the astounding vicissitudes of history; but the irony of fate commences to take its truly fantastic proportions, when one remembers that it was precisely this speech of the 3d December, 1850, which decided the vocation of M. de Bismarck and opened to him the career of foreign affairs. Forced to consent to the restoration of the Bund, and resigned to the preponderance of the empire of the Hapsburg, the Prussian government thought in truth that it could give no better pledges of its disposition than in choosing for its plenipotentiary to the Germanic Confederation the ardent orator whose devotion to the cause of the Hapsburg was even able to resist the proof of the humiliation of Olmütz. And it was as the most decided partisan of Austria that the future conqueror of Sadowa made his entrance into the arena of diplomacy!

The chamber was prorogued in consequence of this stormy discussion. The rupture with the national party was consummated, and M. de Manteuffel, whose cold and bureaucratic mind sympathized in reality but very slightly with the ultras, thought it nevertheless useful to strengthen the government by making them some advances. Several prominent posts in the civil service were conferred on members of the extreme right: M. de Kleist-Retzow, among others, held the presidency of the Rhenish provinces. One could hardly dream of utilizing in the same manner the talents of the former referendarius of Potsdam and Greifswalde, who had shown so little disposition and taste for the administrative career: on account of the considerations already mentioned, it was first thought of sending him to Frankfort as first secretary of the legation, but with the assurance of being made real representative at the end of some time. This choice produced some surprise. It was an entirely new proceeding (they have become accustomed to it there and in other places since) to reward a deputy with a diplomatic mission for his attitude or his vote in the chamber. It was asked if the eccentric and impetuous cavalier of the Mark would be the right man in the right place in the midst of such delicate circumstances. The timid and overscrupulous M. de Manteuffel was not without apprehension on this head, and the very ardor with which M. de Bismarck accepted the position only augmented the uneasiness of the president of the council. King Frederick William IV., who personally had a very high regard for the ardent "Percy" of the party of the cross, had nevertheless some doubts. "Your majesty can try me," said the aspirant for diplomacy; "if matters go wrong, your majesty will be at perfect liberty to recall me at the end of six months or even before."

It was only, however, at the end of eight years that he was recalled by the successor of Frederick William IV. And still, after the first days of his mission (June, 1851) he expressed himself thus in a confidential letter concerning the men and the affairs he was charged to deal with: "Our relations here consist in distrust and mutual espionage. If we only had something to spy out or to hide! But these are merely silly trifles, for which these people torment their minds. These diplomats who retail with an air of importance their bric-à-brac, seem to me much more ridiculous than a deputy of the second chamber draping himself in the feeling of his dignity. If exterior events do not unexpectedly arise, I know from to-day exactly what we shall have done in two, three, or five years, and what we can dispatch in twenty-four hours, if we wish to be sincere and reasonable for one day. I never doubted that all these gentlemen did their cooking in water; but a soup so watery and insipid that it is impossible to find in it a trace of fat does not cease to astonish me.... I have made very rapid progress in the art of saying nothing with many words; I write several sheets of reports, plain and round, like the leading articles, and if, after having read them, Manteuffel understands a jot, he is cleverer than I am. No one, not even the most malicious of democrats can have any idea what nonsense and charlatanisms diplomacy hides."

Some years later, during the complications of the Orient, he wrote to his sister Malvina: "I am at a session of the Bund; a very highly honored colleague is reading a very stupid speech on the anarchical situation in Upper Lippe, and I think that I cannot better improve this opportunity than in pouring out before you my fraternal sentiments. These knights of the round table who surround me in this ground floor of the Taxis palace are very honorable men, but not at all amusing. The table, twenty feet in diameter, is covered with a green cloth. Think of X—— and of Z—— in Berlin; they are entirely of the calibre of these gentlemen of the Bundestag. I have the habit of approaching all things with a feeling of innocence which gapes. My disposition of mind is that of a careless lassitude after I have succeeded in bringing little by little the Bund to the desolating consciousness of its profound nothingness. Do you remember the Lied of Heine: O Bund, o chien tu n'es pas sain, etc.? Well! that Lied will soon, and by a unanimous vote, be raised to the rank of national hymn of Germany."

The lassitude, the disgust as well as the contempt for the Bund increased from year to year. In 1858 he thought of leaving the career forever. He had enough of "this régime of truffles, of dispatches and of grand crosses." He spoke of withdrawing "under the guns of Schoenhausen," or still better of "growing young by ten years, and once more taking the offensive position of 1848 and 1849." He wished to fight, without being hindered by relations and official courtesies, to throw off the uniform, and to "go into politics in swimming drawers (in politischen Schwimmhosen)."

What is there astonishing in it? Of all imaginable political men, M. de Bismarck was certainly the least fitted to have a regard and liking for a deliberative body essentially moderated and moderating, where everything was discussed in private, in elaborated speeches, thought over at length and still more freely discussed, and where the gashes and thrusts actually amounted to nothing. A great congress of peace could scarcely have any attraction for the ardent Percys whom the smallest conference of Bangor[23] caused, enraged, to jump out of their skins; and the Bundestag, as we have said, was a permanent congress of peace called to maintain the statu quo and to remove every cause for conflict. The little incidents, the little manœuvres and the little struggles for influence were not wanting, it is true, in this company, more than in any other; they served to maintain the good humor of the ordinary diplomats, and were generally considered as useful stimulants for the good management of affairs and good digestion of dinners. But they must have seemed paltry in the eyes of a man of action and of combat; they must have irritated, at times even exasperated him! To observe the affairs of the world from this post on the Main, which allowed them to be grasped in their ensemble; to profit by abundant information, to compose therefrom brilliant dispatches, fit to instruct and above all to amuse an august master; to utter occasionally a very spirituel, very malicious mot, and to rejoice at it; to make others enjoy it, even to carry it perfectly warm to Stuttgart, and to confide its further expedition to a gracious Grand Duchess,—that was an occupation which might content Prince Gortchakof, even charm the leisure hours of a man educated in the school of Count Nesselrode and grown old in the career. But how was it possible to make such an existence agreeable to a cavalier of the Mark, improvised into a minister plenipotentiary, or to shut up in such a narrow circle, though a pleasant one, a "fiancé of Bellona," still foaming from battles delivered without cessation for four years on a resounding stage! In order to find a fitting compensation in the new circle in which he was placed, he needed at least some great European combination, some great negotiation capable of exercising his faculties, and of making them known,—and they talked to him of bric-à-brac, of Upper Lippe! A negotiation as insignificant as that with the poor Augustenburg, brought to a happy end in 1852, could certainly not be counted among the triumphs worthy of a Bismarck,[24] and this was nevertheless the single and pitiful "bubble of fat" which he was able to discover in the soup cooked during several years at Frankfort!

It is true that the question of the Orient did not delay in breaking out, and that at first it even seemed to open vast perspectives. Prussia was well disposed towards Russia. The secondary States of Germany showed themselves still more ardent, and sometimes even went so far as to have the appearance of being willing to draw their swords; so much the worse for Austria if she persisted in making common cause with the allies; that might bring about important territorial modifications, and all to the advantage of the House of Hohenzollern! And the representative of Prussia to the Germanic Confederation ("his excellency the lieutenant," as he was then called on account of the Landwehr uniform which he liked to wear) gave a warm and firm support in this crisis to his colleague of Russia, who had become his most intimate friend. He was not, however, long in seeing that the Germanic Confederation would not desert its neutrality; that the secondary States, in spite of all the agitations in the conferences of Bamberg, would not take an active part either in one sense or in the other, and that the war would be localized in the Black Sea and the Baltic. He conceived a profound disdain for the Bund, was "conscious of its unfathomable nothingness," and hummed over the green cloth of the Taxis palace the Lied of Heine on the Diet of Frankfort. In addition, he experienced on this occasion a grief, which he never forgot, which he recalled many years afterwards in a confidential dispatch which has become celebrated. During the Oriental complications, he wrote in 1859 to M. de Schleinitz, "Austria overcame us at Frankfort in spite of all the commonalty of ideas and desires which we then had with the secondary States. These States, after each oscillation, always indicate with the activity of the magnetized needle, the same point of attraction." Nothing more natural, however; it was not from the empire of the Hapsburg that Hanover and Saxony had to dread certain annexation, as events have since proved only too clearly. But the man who can one day desire the destruction of great cities, as the hot-beds of revolutionary spirit, did not hesitate to condemn in his soul and conscience the small States as the inextinguishable hearths of the "Austrian spirit."

Austria, in truth, was not slow in taking in the thoughts and the resentments of the cavalier of the Mark the place which the revolution had lately held there, and the ardent champion of Hapsburg in the chambers of Berlin became little by little their most bitter, most implacable enemy in the Bundestag. Moreover, all the great men of Prussia, commencing with the great elector and Frederick II., and without excepting William I., have always had, as regards Austria, "two souls in their breasts" like Faust, or, like Rebecca, "two children conflicting with one another in her bosom;" in a word, two principles, one of which imbued them with an almost religious respect for the antique and illustrious imperial house, while the other urged them to conquest and spoliation at the cost of this very house. In the month of May, 1849, the honest and poetical King Frederick William IV. declared to a deputation of ministers from the Germanic States,[25] "that he should consider that day as the most happy one of his life when he should hold the wash basin (Waschbecken) at the coronation of a Hapsburg as Emperor of Germany;" that did not prevent him later from smiling from time to time at the work of the parliament of Frankfort, and from working for the "restricted union" under the auspices of General de Radowitz. And even M. de Bismarck was certainly very sincere as deputy of the Prussian parliament in his "Austrian religion," when in the name of conservative principles he undertook the energetic defense of the Hapsburg against the attacks of German liberalism; but he was now the representative of his government in the Taxis palace, encountered Austria on its way to a struggle for influence with the secondary States, to a struggle of interests concerning the affairs of the Orient, and he began to engage in an order of ideas, at the end of which he was to take up the policy of "heart blow." It was thus that on the occasion of the war in the Orient and in the very city of Frankfort there arose in the hearts of the two future chancellors of Russia and of Germany that hatred of Austria which was to have such fatal consequences, for, that the reader may not be deceived, it was the connivance of these two political men,—the fatal ideology of the Emperor Napoleon III. aiding them largely, it is just to add,—which rendered possible the catastrophes of which our days have been the witnesses: the calamity of Sadowa, and the destruction of the Bund, and the dismemberment of Denmark as well as of France! With Prince Gortchakof, this sentiment of hostility burst forth suddenly in consequence of an erroneous appreciation of events, but which his whole nation shared with him. With M. de Bismarck, the hatred of Austria had not an origin so spontaneous; it had not, for instance, as an origin, the grievances of Olmütz, which the deputy of the Mark had on the contrary been able to easily overcome; it was slow in forming, it developed, consolidated itself in consequence of a long and daily struggle in the heart of the Bund, in consequence of an experience acquired at the end of several years of vain attempts, and from the definite conviction that Hapsburg would never of its free will, abandon the secondary States, and he defended them against every effort at absorption. Resuming the instruction which his sojourn of eight years at Frankfort had given him, the representative of Prussia to the Germanic Confederation wrote in 1859, in his often quoted dispatch to M. de Schleinitz, those remarkable words: "I see in our federal relations a fault which sooner or later we must cure ferro et igne." Ferro et igne! that is the first version of the received text "iron and blood," which one day the president of the council laid down in an official manner in a speech to the chamber.

At the same time that the ancient "Austrian religion" underwent with its former ardent confessor a transformation so radical, a no less curious change was wrought in his mind in regard to several other articles of the credo of his party. Removed from the mêlée and participating no longer in the parliamentary struggles, he began to observe more coldly certain questions important in those times, and to temper more than one antipathy of past days. Since 1852, on returning from a trip to Berlin, he writes: "There is something demoralizing in the air of the chamber; the best men of the world become vain there and cling to the Tribune as a woman to her toilet.... I find parliamentary intrigues hollow and unworthy of any notice. While one lives in their midst, one has illusions concerning them, and attaches to them I do not know how much importance.... Every time that I arrive there from Frankfort, I experience the feelings of a temperate man who falls among drunken people." Many things in old times disgraceful and abhorred, take now a less repulsive aspect to the eyes of the statesmen maturing great projects for the future. "The chamber and the press can become the most powerful instruments of our external policy," wrote in 1856 the former despiser of parliamentarism and friend of M. Thadden-Triglaff, and it is thus that one finds in the correspondence of these times the vague idea of a national representation of the Zollverein, even a pronounced desire for universal suffrage itself, provided that these means could become the instrumenta regni. The example of the second empire exercised then an influence which the historian should carefully bear in mind. This system of absolutism tinged with popular passions, "spotted with red," to employ a characteristic expression of M. de Bismarck, seduced the imagination of more than one aspirant for coups d'état and coups d'éclat, and the former colleague of the Doctor d'Ester must have opened his cigar case more than once and contemplated there the little sprig of olive plucked from the tomb of Petrarch and Laura.

Yet the goal seemed distant, and how veiled was the future, still indistinctly seen! It was not under King Frederick William IV., whose mind became more and more clouded, that he was permitted to think of action; even the accession of the regent, the present King William, seemed at first to make no change in the exterior situation. The new ministers of the regent, the ministers of the new era, as was said then, were honest doctrinarians who spoke of the development of conceded liberties and of the strengthening of the representative régime. The good and naïf, they even allowed William I. to proclaim solemnly one day that "Prussia need only make moral conquests in Germany!" Evidently the new era was not yet the era of M. de Bismarck. During the years which passed after the war of the Orient until his embassy in Russia, one sees the representative of Prussia to the Germanic Confederation in constant motion, on continual journeys across Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, Courland, and Upper Italy, seeking subjects for distraction, or perhaps also subjects for observation, and each time returning to Frankfort only to raise a difficulty, break some bric-à-brac, and to press to the utmost the nervous and bilious Count Rechberg, Austrian representative and president of the Bundestag. His frequent excursions to Paris caused him to have a presentiment of the events which were preparing in Italy; he only became more aggressive, and there was a time when his recall was considered at Frankfort as indispensable for the maintenance of peace. It was at this moment that he thought of definitely abandoning this career, of throwing off the uniform, and of going into politics in his "swimming drawers." He consented, however, to do it in "a bear-skin and with caviar," as he expressed himself in one of his letters; in other words called to exchange his post at Frankfort for that at St. Petersburg. One hoped thus to remove him from the burning ground, to "put him on ice" (another expression of M. de Bismarck); as for himself, he perhaps attached other hopes to this removal, and in any case found consolation in seeing his former colleague of Frankfort become principal minister of a great empire, and with whom he was always on such good terms. The 1st of April, 1859, "the anniversary of his birth," M. de Bismarck arrived in the capital of Russia.