Holstein had an unhappy knack of reaching the wrong conclusion. It was not a question of tactics. It was a fierce battle for power. Bismarck recognised this at once; if he altered his tone and became more suppliant the sceptre would fall from his hands. He had always treated the Emperor harshly, and until now had been successful. When, for instance, the Emperor Frederick lay dying and William had sent the Chancellor a draft of the speech he intended to deliver to the Federal Princes upon ascending the throne, Bismarck had rebuked him for his indecent haste and advised him to burn it. Later, when William began writing comments in the margins of state papers, Bismarck asked him to refrain because of the confusion it caused. The Kaiser had taken these rebuffs meekly, and Bismarck believed that it was the right way to handle him.
But this time he had gone too far. “I have no ministers,” stormed the Kaiser. “They are all Prince Bismarck’s ministers!” On March 15th he decided to visit the Chancellery and have things out with the old man. Although he still had a rankling fear of Bismarck, he knew that if he did not take action he would become a laughing stock. The scene was as stormy as he envisaged. He criticised Bismarck for trying to whip up support in the Reichstag by consorting with a certain party leader whom the Chancellor knew the Kaiser particularly disliked. “Abandoning all manners and all reserve,” wrote William in a letter to the Emperor of Austria, “he told me he was not going to be led by me in leading-strings, once for all he would have nothing of that sort from me, I had no notion of Parliamentary life, it was not my place to order him about in such matters…”[99] Bismarck threw his dispatch case on the floor and said that if William wanted his resignation he could have it; he could not do his duty unless he saw whom he liked. “Even if your Sovereign forbids it?” asked the Kaiser. “The power of my Sovereign ceases at my wife’s drawing-room,” snapped the Chancellor.
Then William raised the subject of the 1852 Order, and told Bismarck he would have to withdraw it. The Chancellor shook his head. “No Premier can remain responsible if the monarch makes decisions on the advice of all and sundry.” According to William, Bismarck added “that he had no trust in ‘his’ ministers, they had brought things to me behind his back, things with which he disagreed, and he had given them a lesson in consequence. I pointed out to him that it amounted to a deep affront to me, who had co-operated loyally with him as his sovereign, to accuse me of secretly intriguing against him behind his back; this he would not admit… I asked him to let me take a greater share in business and to initiate and include me in important decisions, but he refused with decision, saying that he must have made up his mind beforehand as to his decisions before he came to me…”
By this time Bismarck could scarcely control himself. But he had one last trick up his sleeve — not a particularly relevant one, but none the less satisfying. He picked up his case and pulled out a paper. The Kaiser asked him what he was looking at and he pretended to draw away in embarrassment. It was a report from London on the Czar’s visit, he said, but he preferred his sovereign not to see it. William snatched it from his hand and read Alexander ÜI’s comment on himself. “C'est un garson mol eleve et de mauvaise foi.” William flung down the paper and stalked out of the room.
The Kaiser was anxious for Bismarck to resign of his own accord and not to be put in the position of dismissing him. He was worried about public opinion, particularly European opinion, and did not want to arouse taunts of ingratitude — or perhaps even look ridiculous — by quarrelling openly with the famous old man. Furthermore, he was still a little frightened of Bismarck and awed by the momentous step he was taking; so he criticised the Chancellor ceaselessly to give himself confidence: “Things are at quite a bad pass with Russia at present,” he told von Waldersee. “There is a strong feeling there against me, and Czar Alexander is talking against me offensively — he says among other things that I am mad. The feeling against us is increasing, and under no circumstances now shall I pay my visit to Krasnoe. Everyone recognises that at home things are in a bad way — what is the great Chancellor doing then? Where are his services?”
Waldersee did all he could to stiffen the Kaiser’s resolve for he still had hopes of the Chancellorship and was afraid that Bismarck might find a way to wriggle off the hook. He declares in his diary that he was responsible for goading the Kaiser into the final, decisive action: that of sending General von Hahnke, head of the Military Cabinet, to the Chancellor and demanding either the withdrawal of the Order of 1852 or his resignation. “That is impossible,” Bismarck replied. “If the Emperor wishes to quash the Order, he will have also to terminate the existing Presidency of the State Ministry. I have no objection to that.”
Hahnke reported Bismarck’s reply and the Emperor sent him back again, this time repeating his command in even stronger language. “His Majesty,” said General von Hahnke, “insists on the withdrawal of the Order in question. After yesterday’s interview, His Majesty can only await Your Serene Highness’s immediate resignation. Your Serene Highness will be good enough to be at the Palace at two o’clock, to hand over your office.” “I am not well enough to go to the Palace,” retorted Bismarck. “I will write.”
The Chancellor took several days to comply with the monarch’s command, partly because he knew how irritating the suspense would be, and partly because he wished to find the words that would do William most damage. He fastened the blame for his departure on the Order of 1852 and the Emperor’s high-handedness in going over his Chancellor’s head. However, his carefully chosen phrases presenting himself as the defender of constitutional rule against the Sovereign’s arbitrary whims were not known until after his death in 1898, as the Kaiser suppressed its publication.
As far as William was concerned the next few days were filled with acute anxiety. What if the old man changed his mind? What if he had a trump card that would make them look ridiculous? While Bismarck was working on his statement the Emperor dined in company with Count Eulenburg. He was asked to calm the Sovereign’s nerves with music. Obediently he played and sang while William sat next to him, turning the pages and joining in the choruses. “He was wholly absorbed,” wrote Eulenburg, “thoroughly enjoying himself. His remarkably adaptable temperament did not desert him in these anxious hours. Only for a few minutes was the music interrupted by the burning political question — the Emperor, called out to hear Hahnke’s answer, sat down again at once by the piano, and said softly: ‘The resignation is all right.’ Upon this he went on singing.”[100]
Everyone behaved badly. Waldersee crowed, Holstein pretended that he had taken no part in the affair, Eulenburg tried to keep in with both sides. The Chancellor and Emperor behaved worst of all. Bismarck wept and thundered and criticised the Sovereign to anyone who would listen. He even called on the Empress Frederick, forgetful of his brutal behaviour to her, and with tears in his eyes said: “All I want is a little sympathy.” When William awarded him a grant of money and the title “Duke of Lauenberg” he refused the money and announced caustically that he would use the title when he wished to travel incognito. When he left for his country estate several thousand people and many dignitaries gathered at the station to bid him goodbye; there was even a band which played a slow march. “A state funeral,” observed Bismarck caustically, “with full honours.” After that, whenever he took coins out of his pocket he made a point of turning the Imperial Eagle upwards so he would not have to see “that false face.”
William used different tactics. He simply lied. He could not make up his mind what pose to adopt for the sake of public opinion, so he tried several attitudes. He informed Queen Victoria that he had dismissed Bismarck in order to force the old man to conserve his health and that they had parted with tears and embraces; he told the British Ambassador in Berlin that Bismarck had made such a violent scene that he expected an ink-pot to come hurtling at his head, and dignity had compelled him to ask for his resignation; he told the Czar’s brother that Bismarck’s departure had caused him almost as much sadness as his grandfather’s dea
th; and he told the Emperor of Austria that he had dismissed the Chancellor because he refused to co-operate.
He sent along a letter to Franz Joseph full of sentiment and falsehoods. “The man whom all my life I have looked upon as a demigod,” he wrote to the Emperor Franz Joseph, “for whom I had endured in my parents’ home a moral persecution like the pains of hell, the man for whom, after the death of the Emperor William, I had thrown myself alone into the breach in order to retain him,[101] bringing upon myself the anger of my dying father and the inextinguishable hatred of my mother, was looking on all this as nothing, striding past and ignoring me, because I was not ready to bow to his will. His boundless contempt of humanity, which he had for all, even those who were working themselves to death for him, did him a bad turn here, when he took his master for a nobody and tried to degrade him to a retainer. When he took his leave he charged me with having chased him away with insults; to this I naturally made no reply.”[102]
William presented much the same version to the Czar of Russia, and was delighted by the reply. “Thou wast entirely right,” said the Czar. “The Prince, though a prince, was after all only thy minister, thy servant. As such, his first duty was to obey thee. His disobedience to his Emperor brought his fall. In thy place I should have done just the same…”
Count von Waldersee, despite all his machinations, did not become Chancellor. Instead, the Kaiser appointed an honest, bullet-headed soldier, General Caprivi. This poor man was not equipped for his position. Sometimes he sat with his head in his hands, and once he said: “I feel as though I were groping in a dark room… The great man overshadows me completely.” When he expressed his misgivings to the Kaiser, William remarked briskly: “There’s no need for you to be anxious; one man’s much like another, and I’ll accept the responsibility for all transactions.”
Bismarck could not take his successor seriously and barely alluded to him. However, when the harassed Caprivi cut down the trees in the Chancellery garden to make the rooms lighter, the old man expostulated that his confidence in the character of the general had undergone a shock. “I would pardon Herr von Caprivi many differences of political opinion rather than the ruthless destruction of trees.”
The trees, however, were not the only things to go. Within ten days of the old Chancellor’s departure the Kaiser and Caprivi managed, almost by whim, to kick Bismarck’s main prop out from under the German Empire. The Russian Ambassador, Count Shuvalov, had called at the Chancellery on March 17th to discuss the Reinsurance Treaty, which had been signed in 1887 for three years, and which Bismarck had informed him he would Eke to renew. When he was told that the Chancellor was busy composing his letter of resignation he was so astonished that he wired to St. Petersburg that an explosion was taking place so strange that it made him wonder whether the young Emperor was “in a normal state.” A few days later he told Count Herbert Bismarck — who had also handed in his resignation — that in the light of the new developments he would have to reconsider his offer. This message reached the Kaiser late at night on the 21st. He was so excited that he sent a messenger to wake up the Ambassador and ask him to come to the palace at eight the next morning. Shuvalov did as he was bid, and the Emperor received him instantly. “Sit down and listen to me,” said William II. “You know how much I love and respect your Sovereign. Your Emperor has been too good to me for me to do otherwise than to inform him personally of the situation created by the events which have just taken place… I beg you to tell His Majesty that on my part I am entirely disposed to renew our agreement, that my foreign policy remains and will remain the same as it was in the time of my grandfather.” When the Czar read this wire he wrote on it: “Nothing more satisfactory could be looked for. We shall see by the sequel whether deeds correspond to words.”[103]
At this point Baron Holstein stepped in. He was determined to establish himself as the master of the Wilhelmstrasse from the outset. Furthermore, he had been bitterly critical of Bismarck’s policy in recent years, and it would scarcely stamp him as a man of independence if he tamely accepted the old man’s treaty as his first act. So he began to raise objections which were echoed by other members of the Foreign Office. The treaty, he said, was not compatible with the terms of the Triple Alliance, and if it became known would damage Germany’s relations with Austria. And with Bismarck in a rage, could anyone guarantee that it would not become known?
This squalid argument proved decisive with the Kaiser, and the treaty was turned down. A few weeks later the German Ambassador in St. Petersburg warned Berlin that Russia “might seek elsewhere the support she has failed to find with us and three months later, in June 1890, the Czar took the first step towards closer relations with France. “I could not but regard this,” wrote Bismarck in 1896, “as a caprice of destiny, and history may have to call it a fatality.”[104]
Meanwhile, in March 1890, the world was speculating on the departure of the most famous statesman in Europe. Bismarck had been far from popular in England and France, but now people began to wonder if his successor would prove more troublesome. Sir William Harcourt wrote to Mr. John Morley: “What do you say to the removal of the great German panjandrum himself? It is not a pleasant prospect to have Europe left to the mercy of a hothead who seems also to be a fool.”[105] The French were more analytical. The de Goncourt brothers noted in their journal: “This young German Emperor, this neurotic mystic, this enthusiast for the religious and warlike operas of Wagner, this man who, in his dreams, wears the white armour of Parsifal, with his sleepless nights, his sickly activity, his feverish brain, seems to be a monarch who will be very troublesome in the future.”
Chapter 5: Count Eulenberg
“Pray do not believe that my son does anything for any other reason than vanity,” the Empress Frederick remarked wearily. One of the vanities she most disliked was William’s attitude as “head of the House of Hohenzollern.” He declared that all members of the family, no matter how remotely connected, reflected the Imperial glory; therefore they must give him absolute obedience. He exercised tyrannical control, not only as custodian of their morals and religious beliefs, but in the running of their day-to-day lives. He felt free to criticise their clothes, manners, friends, and recreations. They could not engage courtiers without his approval or even travel from one city to another without his permission. The ladies and gentlemen of their households were informed that their duty lay, not with their immediate masters, but with the Emperor; consequently they must report any irregularities to The All Highest himself.
The Empress Frederick refused to heed her son’s dicta. Once she sent him a message that she was leaving on a visit to England in the morning, and not to come to the station. William complained to Field Marshal von Waldersee that he could not understand his mother’s ingratitude; had he not provided her with houses and money? “Of course it would be far better for me to go away from Berlin and not return,” the Empress wrote to her daughter Sophie, eighteen months after her husband’s death, “but I cannot be banished from the spot where my darling husband and two sweet children lie buried, nor leave the house for good and all where we spent so many years together, and where now recollections haunt every nook and corner, nor can I abandon the many institutions and works of charity of which I am the patroness and who constantly want me, so all these considerations make it impossible for me to leave Berlin altogether. Besides it would look as if I were afraid of them — William and Dona — if I gave up my rights, and as if they had succeeded in frightening or driving me away…”[106]
So the Empress remained in Germany, sad and embittered, complaining to Queen Victoria of her son’s slights. “When I was in Berlin I saw William three times… The whole time he was gay and merry, but quite indifferent, never asking me one question about myself, and not one sympathising or kind word was uttered!” William probably would have been surprised if he had seen these pathetic outpourings, for he did not regard his mother as a pathetic person. He saw her as a clever, iron-willed woman with an “unden
iable love of power.” Indeed, he astonished the British Ambassador, Sir Edward Malet, at a dinner party by referring proudly to their likenesses. “My mother and I have the same characters. I have inherited hers. That good stubborn English blood which will not give way is in both our veins. The consequence is that, if we do not happen to agree, the situation becomes difficult.”[107]
William made life difficult for his sisters as well. Princess Victoria still pined for her lover, Prince Alexander of Battenberg, and lived in the forlorn hope that her brother one day would withdraw his refusal. However, Alexander grew tired of waiting and finally married a Viennese opera singer. Victoria’s sister, Sophie, was more fortunate. In 1889 she married the Duke of Sparta, Crown Prince of Greece. But even Sophie, in far-away Athens, could not escape William’s interference. In 1891 she wrote her mother that she had decided to adopt the Greek Orthodox religion. When William heard of it he declared that it was a slight to German Protestantism and warned her that if she took such a step he would not allow her to set foot in Germany again. She argued that she was not changing her religion for worldly considerations but conviction. She sent the correspondence to her mother but the Empress was sceptical. “I am afraid your kind and nice words will be lost on him, as he has absolutely no heart… He is, besides, not learned enough to understand that our Christian Religion has centuries ago divided itself into branches, of which each one naturally considers itself the true one, the purest and the best… With William it is not religion that vexes him, it is his silly vanity and pride of being ‘head of the family,’ and their being obliged to bend to his will…”[108] As the Empress predicted, William was not touched by Sophie’s appeal and notified her that she was “banished” from Germany. She telegraphed the news to her mother, sending the message en clair so that all the officials could read it. “Received answer. Keeps to what he said at Berlin. Fixes it to three years. Mad. Never mind. Sophie.”
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