The Kaiser

by Virginia Cowles

  THE KAISER

  Virginia Cowles

  © Crawley Features 1963

  Virginia Cowles has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  This edition published in 2018 by Sharpe Books.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter I. His Mother

  Chapter 2. His Youth

  Chapter 3. The Ninety-nine Days

  Chapter 4: Dropping the Pilot

  Chapter 5: Count Eulenberg

  Chapter 6. The Kaiser, the Prince and England

  Chapter 7. Real World Power

  Chapter 8. Britain’s Last Offer

  Chapter 9. The Kaiser and the Czar

  Chapter 10: Vendetta

  Chapter 11. The German Fleet

  Chapter 12. The Interview

  Chapter 13. Repeat Performance

  Chapter 14. Sarajevo

  Chapter 15. Armageddon

  Chapter 16. Supreme War Lord

  Chapter 17. King of Prussia

  Chapter 18. Epilogue at Doom

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter I. His Mother

  A salute of IOI guns told the people of Berlin, on the winter afternoon of January 27th, 1859, that a future king of Prussia had been born. The eighteen-year-old mother, the English-born Princess Frederick, lay dangerously ill. The labour had been long and difficult, no anaesthetics had been given, and in the end forceps had been used. Only German doctors were in attendance, for the messenger sent to summon the Princess’s English doctor had misunderstood his instructions and posted the letter instead of delivering it. During the hours of agony the Prince had sat by his wife’s bed, sometimes holding her in his arms. At one point the German doctors said aloud that they did not think either mother or child would survive; the newspapers were informed and set up obituary notices. When, at last, the delivery was accomplished, the relief and confusion were so great, no one noticed that the baby’s left arm had been wrenched from the shoulder socket. A day later the nurse reported that it was hanging in a peculiarly limp way. The doctors were confounded; after long consultation they announced that nothing could be done.

  The Princess was not allowed to sit up for nearly a month. At the end of February she wrote to her mother, Queen Victoria: “Your grandson is exceedingly lively and when awake will not be satisfied unless kept dancing about continually. He scratches his face and tears his caps and makes every sort of extraordinary little noise. I am so thankful, so happy, he is a boy. I longed for one more than I can describe, my whole heart was set upon a boy, therefore I did not expect one… I feel very proud of him and very proud of being a Mama…”[1] It was a brave letter for she did not mention her distress over her child’s arm. During the next few years she consulted many doctors, but they always gave her the same negative answer.

  The Princess’s letters were read by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with avid interest. “Vicky” — as she was called in the family circle — was the Queen’s eldest child and Princess Royal of England; she also was the favourite of both parents. She not only was attractive but brilliantly clever. Her precociousness had become apparent at the age of three when she began to produce a remarkable vocabulary in three languages. When she was eight, her governess, Lady Lyttelton, was writing: “The Princess Royal might pass, if not seen, but only overheard, for a young lady of seventeen in whichever of her three languages she chose to entertain the company.” Even the crabbed German pedant, the Baron Stockmar, who was Prince Albert’s closest adviser, wrote: “I think her to be exceptionally gifted in some things, even to the point of genius.”

  The Princess’s talents threw an unkind light on her brother and sister, “Bertie” and Alice. By comparison Alice, who was two years younger, seemed dull, while Bertie, one year younger, appeared positively backward. However, they were good-tempered, jolly children and the praise showered on Vicky did not create a breach of any kind. Indeed, all three remained devoted to one another for the rest of their lives — even though these lives were fated to cross each other in a tragic pattern. Vicky was destined to become the mother of Kaiser William II and Alice the mother of the last Czarina of Russia; while Bertie would ascend the throne as Edward VII and play no small part in the events leading to the First World War.

  Vicky’s childhood did not last long. At the age of fourteen she became engaged to Prince Frederick William of Prussia. This tall, good-looking, twenty-four-year-old prince, who one day would become King of Prussia, arrived at Balmoral for a visit in the summer of 1855 and informed the Queen and Prince Albert that he had fallen in love with the ten-year-old Vicky when he had met her at the Great Exhibition in Paris four years earlier. The royal parents welcomed the match, but hesitated before allowing “Fritz” to propose. “… we were uncertain on account of her extreme youth,” the Queen noted in her diary, “whether he should speak to her himself, or wait until he came back again. However, we felt it was better he should do so, and during our ride up Craig-na-Bain this afternoon, he picked a piece of white heather (the emblem of ‘ good luck,’) which he gave to her; and this enabled him to make an allusion to his hopes and wishes as they rode down Glen Gir-noch…,”[2] The Princess was not in the least disconcerted by the Prince’s declaration, and accepted him with enthusiasm. “She manifested toward Fritz and ourselves the most childlike simplicity and candour,” wrote her father. “The young people are ardently in love with one another…”

  Prince Albert adored his daughter. His love was almost Narcissus-like, for she seemed to be a reflection of himself — a twin soul who mirrored his innermost thoughts. He had played an active part in her education, and nothing delighted him more than to plant ideas in her fertile brain and watch them flower into his own beliefs. He felt that her marriage with Prince Frederick would result not only in happiness, but give her the opportunity to play an historic role upon the world stage. Prince Albert and Baron Stockmar came from the small principality of Saxe-Coburg which in recent years had become a centre of progressive thought. They dreamed of the day when Prussia would model itself upon the English constitutional monarchy — that miracle of the nineteenth century — and under the banner of liberalism would unite the independent German states and kingdoms into one powerful nation; and with Vicky on the throne the new Germany would ally itself with Great Britain to preserve peace and order throughout the world.

  Albert’s dreams were not altogether fanciful, for ever since the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, the German states had been linked together in a loose confederation. They each sent delegates to a Diet at Frankfurt, which, although it had no specific powers, was a sounding board for opinion and promoted a spirit of cohesion. Then came the great liberal wave of 1848, inspired by the ideals of the French revolution and the practical example of the English parliamentary system, which rolled across Europe inciting “revolutionary mobs” to clamour for the vote. In Berlin the crowds clashed with the army, and the King, fearful of civil war, gave way. For the first time in history Prussia was permitted a parliament based on popular representation; and at Frankfurt a German national Assembly sprang into being elected by universal suffrage.

  Unfortunately the period of freedom was short-lived. A year later the national assembly invited the King of Prussia, Frederick William IV, to accept the crown of a united Germany under a liberal constitution. But the King was a hide-bound reactionary, and was more impressed (and a little frightened) by the fiery speeches of a political new-comer, Otto von Bismarck, who declared that Frankfurt’s “middle-class” liberalism would destroy the supremacy of Prussia and the glories of Junker rule. So Frederick William plucked up his courage and declined the throne of Germany on the grounds that it had not been offered to him by the German princes, adding petulantly
that he did not wish to pick up a crown “from the gutter.” Then, with the backing of Russia and Austria, he reorganised his army and refused to recognise the national assembly as an over-riding authority. As this body lacked both financial and military support the Prussian king’s defiance finally brought about its collapse; and all that was left in the ruin was the old impotent Frankfurt Diet.

  Although Albert was bitterly disappointed by the climax of these stirring events, he remained optimistic. After all, Prussia had benefited from the upheaval, for the King would scarcely dare to withdraw the constitution he had been forced to bestow upon his country, and the people now had an assembly, no matter how feeble its authority, based on a limited franchise. Albert regarded the new chamber as “a framework” for democracy. With a progressive monarch on the Prussian throne the constitution could be developed and expanded; and his future son-in-law, Prince Frederick, was the right man for the task. The Prince was not clever, but he was high-minded and brave and a firm adherent of parliamentary government. Furthermore, he was almost as impressed by the Princess Royal as her parents were. Vicky would supply the intellect and together they would move forward on the path that the Prince Consort had chosen for them.

  So Albert flung himself eagerly into the task of preparing his daughter for the work that lay before her. If he adored Vicky she, in turn, idolised her father. No one, not even her husband, ever acquired the same influence over her. He grounded her thoroughly in politics and was the final arbiter of her opinions. She was a natural blue-stocking and delighted in producing learned papers for his perusal, ranging from historical precis to treatises on British cabinet responsibility and parliamentary procedure. “She comes to me every evening from six to seven,” Prince Albert wrote to his future son-in-law, when I put her through a kind of general catechising. In order to make her idea clear, I let her work out subjects for herself, which she brings to me for correction. She is at present writing a short compendium of Roman history.”[3] So that he could implant his vision of how German political institutions might develop, he instructed her to translate an almost unreadable thesis by a German scholar entitled Karl August und die Deutsche Politik. He was so proud of her work that he sent a copy to Lord Clarendon, the Foreign Secretary. The latter congratulated the translator, saying: “The Princess’s manner is… the reflection of a highly cultivated intellect.”

  The Princess’s engagement was kept secret until she was sixteen, when it was announced that the wedding would take place in nine months’ time on January 25th, 1858. From this moment on Queen Victoria’s sentimentality threatened to engulf all those around her. Everything took on the tragedy of “a last time”. The Princess was forever saying farewell to places, things, and people. The wedding ceremony was scheduled to take place at St. James’s Chapel in London, after which Vicky would return to Windsor for her honeymoon. Just before the royal family left Windsor for Buckingham Palace, the Queen wrote in her diary: “Went to look at the rooms prepared for Vicky’s ‘Honeymoon.’ It quite agitated me to look at them. Poor, poor child! We took a short walk with Vicky who was dreadfully upset with this real break in her life; the real separation from her childhood! She slept for the last time in the same room with Alice. Now all this is cut off.”[4]

  However, the Queen managed to check her emotions when British prestige required it. When, for instance, there were murmurs from German quarters that, since Prince Frederick one day would become King of Prussia, the wedding ought to take place in Berlin, she reacted strongly. Prussia might be destined for great things, but as yet she was a second-class power, and ought not to forget it. “The Queen never could consent to it,” she wrote indignantly to her Foreign Secretary, “and the assumption of its being too much for a Prince Royal of Prussia to come over to marry the Princess Royal of Great Britain IN England is too absurd, to say the least… Whatever may be the usual practice of Prussian Princes, it is not every day that one marries the eldest daughter of the Queen of England. The question therefore must be considered as settled and closed.”[5]

  Closed it was, and the Queen promptly returned to her tearful sentiments. She described the wedding in her diary as “the second most eventful day in my life as regards feelings.” The ceremony itself went off without a hitch. Royalties from all over Europe were present and the bride looked enchanting. “She is not at all short,” wrote one of the Maids of Honour, “and has a beautiful countenance, so gentle and childlike, and has quite a nice figure, fine hair and beautiful eyes.”[6] Although the Princess was very much in love with her husband she was deeply affected by her mother’s emotions. She gave the Queen lockets filled with her hair and clung to her, sobbing: “I think it will kill me to take leave of dear Papa.”

  At last the day of departure came. The couple had returned from their Windsor honeymoon and Princess Mary of Cambridge wrote in her diary that she drove to Buckingham Palace to see “poor, dear Vicky off” and found the Queen in her closet “surrounded by a number of crying relations.” The Queen herself wrote: “A dreadful moment and a dreadful day. Such sickness came over me, real heartache, when I thought of our dearest child being gone, and for so long — all, all being over! It began to snow before Vicky went, and continued to do so without intermission all day. At times I could be quite cheerful, but my tears began to flow afresh frequently, and I could not go near Vicky’s corridor.”[7]

  Despite the snow the newly-weds rode to the station in an open carriage to wave to the populace. The Prince Consort and the bride’s sixteen-year-old brother Bertie accompanied them to Gravesend where the royal yacht, the Victoria and Albert, was waiting to take them across the Channel. The Prince Consort managed to keep back the tears, but Bertie wept unashamedly. The Times added the final touch of gloom by writing prophetically: “We only trust and pray that the policy of England and Prussia may never present any painful alternatives to the Princess now about to leave our shores…”

  With such a leave-taking it is not surprising that the long trip to Berlin did not begin with much gaiety. However, the Princess was fortunate in one of her German ladies-in-waiting — the beautiful, high-spirited Countess Walpurga von Hohenthal. When this charming young lady was introduced to Queen Victoria, the latter remarked laughingly: “The Princess is seventeen, the Maid of Honour eighteen. What a respectable court that will make!” The Countess’s sparkle and gaiety, and her love of all things English, quickly won the bride’s heart and before the journey was over “Walpurga” had become “Wally” and the two young ladies were finding much to amuse them. The train made many stops before Berlin. At Wittenberg, a town noted for its pastry, the Princess was presented by the Mayor with a huge apple tart. Shortly afterwards, Field Marshal von Wrangel boarded the train, complimented the Princess, and sat down on the tart. The bride and her lady-in-waiting went into peals of laughter, and the Field Marshal asserted gallantly that he was delighted to have provoked so much merriment.

  The state entry into Berlin, however, offered no such lighter moments. The weather was icy, yet the Princess and her ladies-in-waiting were obliged to change into evening dress at Potsdam, and ride through the streets of Berlin in open carriages, with no wraps, and windows down. When they arrived at the Old Schloss, which was to be the couple’s Berlin residence, the King and Queen of Prussia were waiting to greet them. The Queen, who hated England, asked haughtily: “Are you not frozen?” “All except my heart, which is warm,” replied the Princess with perfect control.

  The Queen of Prussia, Prince Frederick’s aunt, was by no means the only person in Berlin who was anti-English. The hostility sprang mainly from the fact that Prussia had sympathised strongly with Russia against England in the Crimean War which had ended barely two years earlier. It also came from a dislike of English “liberalism,” which, it was feared, might infect the rigid Prussian system and prove the undoing of the ruling class. The antagonism was fanned constantly by The Times newspaper which, under the editorship of the passionately liberal Mr. Delane, delighted in jibing at Prussia
n autocracy. When the Princess Royal’s engagement was announced, he referred to the Hohenzollerns as a “paltry German dynasty.” This was needlessly insulting and caused a storm of anger in Berlin. But it was the Junkers — and not the royal family — who found the smug superiority of The Times most unbearable. Compared to the great British land-owning aristocracy the Junkers were dowdy and provincial and, like poor relations, immensely touchy. Furthermore they resented the fact that English noblemen could preach democracy and still retain their vast properties, whereas in semi-feudal Prussia democracy would spell the end of Junkerdom. The fact that the English seemed to have devised a magic formula which gave them the best of all worlds only served to increase the resentment.

  Vicky could not fail to sense the atmosphere and picked her way warily. Although many Berliners secretly were proud of the fact that their Prince had married Queen Victoria’s daughter, they watched her critically, ready to take offence at any slight. But she was clever enough to emphasise repeatedly how proud she was to be “a Prussian” and soon old Field Marshal von Wrangel, who had sat on the apple tart, was calling her an angel, and the German-born Duchess of Manchester was writing to Queen Victoria that “the English could not help feeling proud of the way the Princess Royal is spoken of, and the high esteem she is held in.”[8]

  Life was not easy for the Princess. In the first place the old King — the same gentleman who had refused the Frankfurt crown — was senile; yet his permission was necessary before the smallest alteration could be made in any of the royal palaces. Her Berlin home, the Old Schloss, offered a bleak contrast to English royal houses with their carpets and books and blazing fires. It was cold, dark, and filled with black antique furniture. Indeed, it was mediaeval in everything including the plumbing, and even worse, it was said to be haunted. “I do not believe that anyone washed in former days,” wrote the Countess von Hohenthal, “for if you were lucky you found a basin, the size of an entree dish of some precious porcelain, Dresden or Carl Theodore, and a bottle of water of priceless ruby glass… The rooms were immense, the walls covered with full-length pictures, the great furniture creaked and the wind, on a winter’s night, shrilled through the ill-fitting doors and windows. I lived in constant dread of meeting the White Lady, especially as there was a report that a sentry had seen her not so very far from the part occupied by us, outside her usual ‘beat.’”[9]