This sentence reverberated through Europe and alarmed Prussia’s neighbours. The King was so annoyed at what he regarded as unnecessary provocation that he decided to dismiss Bismarck — but in the end the forty-seven-year-old statesman got round him. He announced that he had found a way out of the impasse with the assembly. His solution was simple enough — merely to rule without Parliament — yet it had a clever angle. The King must insist that his action was legal on the grounds that the constitution had a “hole” in it. Although money could only be spent with the assent of the two houses of Parliament, Prussia could not remain in a state of paralysis simply because the two houses refused to agree. Therefore the King must spend the money until they resolved their dispute. This was not all. In order to prevent trouble, Bismarck inveigled the King into muzzling the press. William I was dubious about these methods and although he agreed he remarked gloomily: “I see how it will end — on the gallows. You will suffer the fate of Strafford and I of Charles I.”
The Crown Princess was shocked and angry. She had never liked Bismarck — he was the antithesis of all she had been taught to admire — and here he was with one stroke abrogating the Constitution and destroying the liberal frame-work on which her beloved father had pinned his hopes. Furthermore, she was enraged that the assembly and the press should accept their defeat so tamely. “Thank God I was born in England,” she wrote heatedly to her mother, “where people are not slaves and too good to allow themselves to be treated as such.”[21]
At least she and her husband would not acquiesce in Bismarck’s unconstitutional acts. Prince Frederick would make his position clear. He was not in Berlin but the Princess followed him to Graudenz. She found him reluctant to comply. After all, his father, the King, stood behind Bismarck. “Think if it was your father,” he protested. “Would you like to disobey him and make him unhappy?” In the end she got round him and he promised to reveal his opposition in a speech at Danzig. His words sound mild enough but they nearly landed him in a fortress. “Of the proceedings which brought it [the constitutional change] about I know nothing,” he said, “I was absent. I have had no part in the deliberations which produced the result.”[22]
The fact that the Crown Prince dissociated himself from the King’s actions was enough to cause a sensation, not only in Prussia but throughout Europe. The Times newspaper made matters worse by congratulating the young couple on their courageous stand. Now it was the King’s turn to be furious. He wrote to the Prince demanding an apology; the Prince refused and offered to resign his office. The King considered all sorts of punishments — including the fortress — then finally decided to end the matter by forbidding the Crown Prince to make any further public utterances. The Princess was unrepentant. She wrote to her mother proudly that she had exercised a decisive influence on Fritz, “knowing how necessary it was that he should once express his sentiments openly and disclaim having any part in the last measures of the Government.” This was not all. She then encouraged Frederick to write to Bismarck (and to send a copy of the letter to the King), which was nothing less than a declaration of war. It ended with the words: “I will tell you what results I anticipate from your policy… whether you intend it or not, you will pass from one venturesome interpretation to another until you are finally driven into an open breach of the Constitution. I regard those who lead his Majesty the King, my most gracious father, into such courses as the most dangerous advisers for Crown and country.”[23] Bismarck spotted the hand of the Crown Princess. “She has decided upon a course of opposition to the present government,” he dictated in a memorandum, “… in order to bring her husband more and more into prominence…”
Meanwhile the Crown Princess had written to her mother gaily that both she and Fritz would do the same again “in the face of all the Kings and Emperors in the whole world.” “I enjoy a pitched battle when it comes to it exceedingly,” she commented happily. Yet the truth was that she had committed an irrevocable blunder. Not only had she caused a severe breach between father and son and made an enemy of Bismarck, but she had encouraged her husband to take a stand which, as a royal prince, he was not in a position to defend or exploit. Bismarck had won the battle for now he was the King’s sole adviser, while Frederick, by nailing his opposition colours to the mast, had destroyed the only weapon he possessed: indirect influence.
The Crown Princess seemed to have no idea of the impossible situation she had put herself in. She was only twenty-two and did not understand that in politics courage requires the companionship of sagacity. She was to learn by sad experience that the rift between King and Prince would never completely close; that she had made enemies with a man who would rule Germany for twenty-seven years; and that she had sown the seeds of discord which one day would separate her from her eldest son.
Chapter 2. His Youth
Prince William made his first visit to England when he was two and a half, just six months before the Prince Consort died. His mother took him to Osborne and in later life William claimed to have a vivid recollection of Grandpapa Albert, who, he said, swung him about in a huge white damask table-napkin. Not only did the boy hold a special position as the first grandchild, but Prince Albert had pronounced that he was “a pretty, clever child — a compound of both parents, just as it should be”; and this was enough for the Queen to stud her diary with praise. “The dear little boy is so intelligent and pretty, so good and affectionate.” “The darling little boy was with us for nearly an hour, running about so dearly and merrily.”
William’s second trip to England was eighteen months later, when he was just four. He was taken to Windsor for the marriage of his twenty-two-year-old Uncle “Bertie” to the Princess Alexandra of Denmark. For months beforehand a buzz of excitement had enlivened his mother’s house, for the Crown Princess considered herself personally responsible for the match. She had written her father glowing accounts of the Danish Princess, and Albert had told Victoria that he regarded the affair as good as settled. He had been struck down before any formal steps could be taken, but six months after his death the Queen wrote to Prince Christian, nephew and heir to the King of Denmark, formally requesting his daughter’s hand for the Prince of Wales.
Bertie had never seen Alexandra but he admired her picture; he was eager to marry in order to have his own establishment and escape from his mother’s surveillance. The Queen would not let him propose, however, until she had met the young lady, and a family gathering at Laecken was duly arranged by Uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians. Princess Alexandra was warned to dress simply and not to smile, for the Queen could not bear to see anyone looking happy. She made a good impression on Victoria, and, even more important, on Bertie, who was delighted by her charm and beauty. He was so attentive that a few weeks later Uncle Leopold wrote to Victoria: “The match is quite a love-match. Bertie is extremely happy and in admiration of his very lovely bride. All the arguments that one forced him to marry a young lady that he had never seen fall most completely to the ground. All this is important, particularly for England, where it will please people very much that the Prince of Wales, like his parents, should marry from affection.”[24]
The Queen would not allow her son to have a large wedding, saying that the ordeal would be too much for her. The ceremony took place at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and since space was limited, most of the guests were royal relations. Little Prince William attended his uncle’s wedding dressed in a Highland costume presented to him by his grandmother. He was immensely proud of his sporran and the tiny dirk in his stocking, but he found the ceremony interminably long. His eighteen-year-old Uncle Alfred — the Duke of Edinburgh — was put in charge of him. When he bade the small Prince be quiet William drew his dirk in a threatening manner; and when he remonstrated with him for throwing his sporran into the choir William bit him in the leg. Queen Victoria sat weeping in the gallery above the chancel, and remained ignorant of her grandson’s aggressive tendencies. She wrote to Uncle Leopold that he was “a clever, dear good litt
le child, the great favourite of my beloved Angel.”
The fact that William was the only grandchild who could recall Grandfather Albert gave him first place in Victoria’s heart. The boy — and his brothers and sisters — visited her regularly throughout their childhood years, and William was always touched by his grandmother’s indulgences. “The Queen,” he wrote, “was always particularly kind to me from the very first, she was a real grandmother, and our relations to one another were never changed or dimmed to the end of her life. I was allowed to play with the same toys and in the same places as did formerly my English uncles and aunts when they were my age. And by the same token we could go and drink tea and make butter and cream cheese in the little kitchen fitted out for them in the dairy at Frogmore, which was in Windsor Park.
At Osborne I could play with the same old iron cannon on a model redoubt where my uncles had played when they were boys. And I remember a lottery organised for us children at Windsor of which the winning prize was arranged by my grandmother to be a huge English cake… I was supposed to have been ‘very brave’ when having a tooth extracted by the celebrated Dr. Evans, so my grandmother gave me a brand-new gold pound that I kept for the whole of my life…” [25]
The Queen intimidated many people, including her own relations, but William was one of the few who was always at ease with her. He found her cosy and sympathetic and remembered how hard she had laughed at a gaffe made by Admiral Foley. The incident took place at a family lunch party at Osborne when William was twelve. The British sailing-frigate Eurydice had been sunk near Portsmouth, salvaged, and towed into harbour. “The Queen,” recounted William, “had commanded Admiral Foley to luncheon at Osborne to receive his report of it. After she had exhausted this melancholy subject, my grandmother, in order to give the conversation a more cheerful turn, inquired after his sister, whom she knew well, whereon the Admiral, who was hard of hearing and still pursuing his train of thought about the Eurydice, replied in his stentorian voice: ‘Well, Ma’am, I am going to have her turned over and take a good look at her bottom and have it well scraped.’ The effect of this answer was stupendous. My grandmother put down her knife and fork, hid her face in her handkerchief and shook and heaved with laughter until the tears rolled down her face.”[26]
No doubt Queen Victoria’s kindness to William assumed exaggerated proportions in contrast to the harsh life the Prince was obliged to live in Berlin. At four, he had two companions in the nursery, a three-year-old sister, Charlotte, and a one-year-old brother, Henry. They were happy with their jolly English nurse “Hobbsy” but when more babies continued to arrive Mrs. Hobbs was delegated to the younger ones, and the three eldest were put in charge of Fraulein von Dobeneck. Life became a torment of restrictions and punishments; but even more gruelling experiences were in store for them.
When William was seven his mother decided that the time had come to hand him over to a tutor. Although she described herself as a “free-thinker,” there was no trace of originality in the upbringing of her children. She faithfully copied the grim German regime that her father had laid down for her unfortunate brother Bertie, and, if anything, made it even more severe. As William’s tutor, she selected a stern unbending Calvinist school-master by the name of George Hintzpeter. This gaunt, joyless creature emphasized the Spartan ideas of duty and renunciation; anything in the name of pleasure was harmful to the character. William’s brother Henry was soon forced to share the routine and the two boys regarded themselves as little better than prisoners. Their existence became a nightmare of austerity, and, as far as William was concerned, even of fear and pain. Lessons began at six in the morning and continued all day — with only a few brief breaks for meals and physical exercise — until six or seven at night. The children were given dry rusks for breakfast to emphasise “renunciation;” and when their cousins came to visit them were made to offer them cakes, but to take none for themselves. All praise was rigidly excluded from their lives. The impossible was expected of them, Hintzpeter explained, in order to force them “to the nearest degree of perfection;” and since this could never be achieved there was no occasion for praise. Apart from the relentless scholastic regime, Prince William was made to undergo electric treatments on his powerless left arm. The experiments proved abortive and caused him excruciating pain.
He was also made to ride. Prussia was a military nation and a future king must be able to cut a fine ceremonial figure at the head of his cavalry. But how could he be taught? The child’s infirmity presented a serious problem. Hintzpeter finally found the answer. “Riding,” he wrote, “at first actually dangerous and forced upon him with stern discipline, despite his tearful resistance, was finally mastered with delight and skill… When the Prince was eight and a half years old a lackey still had to lead his pony by the rein, because his balance was so bad that his unsteadiness caused intolerable anxiety to himself and others. So long as this lasted he could not learn to ride: it had to be overcome no matter at what cost. Neither groom nor riding master could do it. Therefore the tutor [Hintzpeter], using a moral authority over his pupil that by now was absolute, set the weeping Prince on his horse without stirrups and compelled him to go through the various paces. He fell off continually: every time, despite his prayers and tears, he was lifted up and set upon its back again. After weeks of torture, the difficult task was accomplished: he had got his balance.”[27] William’s brother Henry howled with anguish when he was forced to witness these ordeals but the Crown Princess showed iron control, for she was convinced that Hintzpeter’s tactics were both right and necessary. On one occasion, when William came riding across the park at Potsdam his hat fell off, the pony reared, and he was thrown on his back. The Court Chamberlain, Herr Pulitz, could see the agitation in the Princess’s eyes but he wrote his wife admiringly that she did not allow a single exclamation to escape her lips.
To William his mother seemed a remote and even frightening figure. In later years he wrote that she did not show the same tenderness towards her three elder children as with her younger. Although she supervised her nurseries conscientiously she seldom laughed or played and only seemed to intervene to uphold the strictures of his tormentors, so that William always associated her with his misery. He could not know that during the years of his early boyhood — years that stretched from his mother’s twenty-fourth to thirtieth birthday — she was caught up in events that were changing the face of Europe, causing her an agonising inner conflict which led to many bitter tears.
Bismarck was at the root of all her trouble. He was a formidable enemy, for he was wily, ruthless, and cruelly vindictive. He believed that the end justified any means and did not hesitate to slander, distort, intimidate, or even blackmail, when it served his purpose. The Crown Princess was an easy target for she was English. He simply spread the story that she was an agent of Queen Victoria and a traitor to Prussia. Her advisers, Sir Robert Morier, the British diplomat, and Ernest Stockmar, her secretary, were also part of the “Anglo-Coburg” conspiracy to make Prussia a British satellite. Note how often the Princess journeyed to Windsor and Balmoral; note how persistently she referred to England as “home;” note how determinedly she employed English nurses for her children. She was always making disparaging remarks about Prussia; Bismarck himself had heard her say that there was more silver-plate in Liverpool than the whole of Prussia. Could anyone regard her as a Prussian patriot? Bismarck even convinced the King that she was not to be trusted; and since Frederick told his wife everything, persuaded the old man that it was not wise to allow the Crown Prince to see or hear any state secrets.
The Princess was sickened and outraged by these tales, but they did not produce the deep emotional stress that later darkened her existence. It was not until Bismarck launched out on his wars of aggression that her torment began. During the years between 1864 and 1871 he plunged the nation into three conflicts, first with Denmark, then Austria, then France; and Prussia emerged not only the victor but as the leader of a united Germany and the strongest p
ower on the continent. The Princess hated war, hated autocracy, and hated Bismarck. But how could she decry events that were transforming Fritz’s small country into a mighty empire which one day would be his heritage? Even worse, Fritz was a general in the Prussian Army and was obliged to take part in the campaigns. It was unbearable for her to feel that he was risking his life in an unjust war.
Prince Albert had boasted that his daughter had a “man’s mind,” but now the woman’s temperament took over. Torn between reason and impulse she moved first in one direction, then another, pouring out passionate and illogical sentiments to her mother. For instance, when Bismarck first challenged Denmark over the ownership of the Schleswig-Holstein Duchies, she scoffed at his claim, but as soon as war broke out she not only reversed her views but became incensed at England’s pro-Danish sympathies. Most countries in Europe deplored the attack on a small defenceless nation, and England was particularly concerned because the father of the Princess of Wales was King of Denmark. The beautiful Alexandra went about with tears in her eyes, saying, “The Duchies belong to Papa,” and feeling in Parliament rose to such a pitch it looked for a time as though England might intervene. Queen Victoria’s uncle, the King of the Belgians, could not refrain from writing mischievously: “Vicky little dreamt in selecting a charming princess [for her brother] that she would become a source of difficulties for England, and perhaps the cause of a popular war against Prussia.”
The Kaiser Page 3