The Kaiser

by Virginia Cowles

  The Queen was rather shocked by the hypocrisy of this letter and sent it on to Lord Salisbury with the comment that his excuses were “lame and illogical.” Salisbury agreed but felt it wise “fully to accept all his explanations without enquiring too narrowly into the truth of them.”

  There was no doubt that William regretted the rupture with England. At the moment that he was affixing his signature to the Kruger telegram he remarked to Baron von Marschall: “You have put an end to my visits to Cowes.” However, he had one satisfaction. Although he was not present at the 1896 Regatta, he trounced the Prince of Wales. The Meteor took the waters and won the Queen’s Cup. The Prince of Wales saw that the Britannia was hopelessly out built and the following year withdrew her from racing.

  Chapter 7. Real World Power

  “My dream is to marry Alix of Hesse,” wrote Nicholas, heir to the Russian throne in 1889. His parents were against the match and would not give their consent. Although Princess Alix was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and a first cousin of Kaiser William, the Czar thought his son should make a more brilliant alliance, while the Czarina, who shared the views of her sister, the Princess of Wales, disliked the idea of a German daughter-in-law. Nicholas, however, was steadfast. Five years later, when his father fell gravely ill and decided that it was urgent for the boy to marry, his heart was still fixed on the Hessian princess. He declared flatly that it would have to be Alix or no one, and finally his parents gave way. He was allowed to travel to Darmstadt to attend the marriage of Alix’s brother, the Grand Duke of Hesse, to Victoria, daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh, with the express purpose of asking the Princess’s hand in marriage.

  All the relations were gathered at Coburg for the occasion, including Queen Victoria and William II; and most of them felt sorry for Nicholas. They knew why he had come, but did not believe that Alix would accept him. She was deeply religious and had declared, time and again, that nothing would induce her to give up her Protestantism for the Greek Orthodox faith. The only person who regarded it as a simple matter of persuasion was the Kaiser. He immediately took Nicholas in hand. He found him tortured with shyness and afraid to propose lest Alix should prove so adamant that it would deprive him of all hope. William spent much time trying to raise his morale, and finally “in his cheery, impulsive way took Nicholas by the arm, led him to his room, made him buckle on his sword and carry his fur cap in his hand, stuck some roses in his hand and said to him: ‘ Now we will go and ask for Alix.’”[148]

  As everyone had prophesied, Nicholas was not successful. “I had a long and very difficult talk with Alix,” he wrote to his mother, “in which I tried to explain to her that there was no other way for her than to give her consent, and that she simply could not withhold it. She cried the whole time, and only whispered now and then ‘No, I cannot!’ Still I went on, repeating and insisting on what I had said before. And though this talk went on for two hours it came to nothing, because neither she nor I would give in.”[149]

  Everyone at Coburg was fascinated by the drama. The relations, wrote Nicky, “were very touching in their solicitude.” William, however, was determined to bring the matter to a triumphant conclusion, and plunged even further into the fray by himself having a talk with Alix. It was a curious situation, for here was he using all his powers of persuasion to induce Alix to embrace the Greek Orthodox faith, when only three years before he had threatened to ban his sister Sophie from Germany for doing the same thing. However, in this case William’s motives were not entirely unmixed for although he was eager to do a good turn for Nicholas, he also believed that it would be advantageous to the Fatherland to have a German princess on the Russian throne. His eloquence was successful, for on the 8th of April he drove Alix to the house where Nicholas was staying and pushed them into a room together. “We were left alone,” Nicholas wrote to his mother, “and with her very first words she consented! The Almighty only knows what happened to me then. I cried like a child and she did too; but her expression had changed; her face was lit by a quiet content… The whole world is changed for me; nature, mankind, everything; and all seemed to be good and lovable and happy. I couldn’t even write, my hand trembled so…”[150] The first thing the engaged couple did was to go to Queen Victoria’s room and tell her that they had reached an understanding. “I was quite thunderstruck,” she wrote in her Journal, “as, although I knew that Nicky much wished it, I thought Alix was not sure of her mind.” Although the wedding was some months off, the Queen invited them to visit her at Windsor in June. It was not a new experience for Alix, as her mother had died when she was a small child, and she had visited her grandmother nearly every summer; but for Nicholas it was an event. He was delighted with the invitation and, when he arrived, astonished by Queen Victoria’s lack of convention. “Granny has been very friendly,” he wrote his mother, “and even allowed us to go out for drives without a chaperone! I confess I didn’t expect that.” He was a little disappointed that he couldn’t dine with the Coldstream Guards but “I couldn’t give a definite answer because Granny loves me so and doesn’t like me missing dinner.”

  A few months later, in November 1894, the Czar died and Nicholas ascended the throne. Despite the deep mourning, his marriage to Princess Alix took place a few weeks later, and once again the couple travelled to England, this time for their honeymoon. “How impossible it seems that gentle little simple Alicky should be the great Empress of Russia,” wrote Victoria in her diary. The Queen was hopeful that “Nicky” would liberalise the tyrannical Russian regime, but soon after his accession she was disappointed to read that he had made a public speech castigating liberalism as a “senseless drama” and announcing his resolve “to maintain for the good of the whole nation the principle of absolute autocracy as firmly and strongly as did my lamented father.”

  William II was not bothered by Russia’s absolutism but by the Russo-Franco “Dual Alliance” which had been signed by Nicholas’s father eleven months earlier. However, he looked upon Nicky as an unusually pliable young man, and was confident that he could exert a strong influence upon him. The right policy, he decided, was to distract Russia’s attention. “We must try,” he told his Foreign Office in July 1895, “to nail Russia down in Asia, so that she may occupy herself less with Europe and the Near East.” This was not a hopeless aim, for Russia was greatly agitated by the ease with which Japan had invaded China twelve months earlier. The Czar declared loudly that his interests were menaced, and the Kaiser joined him in presenting Tokyo with a stiff ultimatum, secretly hoping that Nicky might involve himself in a Far Eastern war. But the Japanese prudently retreated, and William was obliged to think again. Perhaps he should inspire Nicholas with the idea of serving in the Pacific as the shield of civilization, or, better still, as the defender of the Cross.

  The Kaiser was not completely cynical in promoting this idea for he was deeply impressed by the efficiency of Japan’s army and navy; he talked excitedly about the Yellow Peril, and declared with genuine conviction that one day the heathen races would unite and threaten the whole of Christendom. To make his message clear to Nicholas he ordered his Court painter, Herr Knackfuss, to compose a picture showing bloody hordes, under the leadership of Buddha, being held at bay by the Christian powers; in the vanguard were Russia and Germany symbolised by two sentinels upholding the true Gospel. Underneath this artistic curiosity he inscribed: “Nations of Europe! Guard your most sacred possessions;” then he dispatched the painting to St. Petersburg. The Czar wrote a letter expressing his delight, and saying that he had given orders to have it “specially framed.” “So it worked all right,” commented William. “That is very satisfactory.”[151]

  But Germany was not the only country to worry about Russia. While the Kaiser kept an anxious eye on his eastern frontier, England watched her Far Eastern possessions with equal concern. In 1896 Nicholas toured Europe and once again visited England. Queen Victoria asked him bluntly whether the Franco-Russian alliance constituted a threat to British overseas t
erritories and he gave her an emphatic no; it was a protective agreement formed to counter the Triple Alliance, purely defensive and only operative on the European continent. The Queen recognised Nicholas for what he was: a charming, good-natured, weak-minded young man who was usually at the mercy of the last person with whom he talked. So a day after his departure she picked up her pen and tried to impress his words upon him. “Dearest Nicky, You will be surprised to get a letter from me already, but I could not manage to say something to you the day you left. It is, that I am sure you will kindly use your influence and let the French understand that you do not intend to support them in their constant inimicality towards England, which is a cause of much annoyance and difficulty to us, in Egypt amongst other subjects.

  “I would not have written this had you not told me that the agreement or alliance, or whatever it is called, was only of a military nature. I am (and Lord Salisbury the same) so anxious that we, Russia and England, should understand each other, and be on the most friendly terms, that I am sure you excuse my troubling you so soon… V.R.I.”[152]

  William II watched the comings and goings between the royal families of Russia and England with a jealous eye. The Prince and Princess of Wales made innumerable trips to Russia and met the Czar and his mother, the Dowager Empress, at family gatherings in Denmark. William hoped that his successful intervention in Nicholas’s courtship had given him an advantage, and in a letter written in the spring of 1896 reminded him “of two years ago when it was my good fortune to be able to help you secure that charming accomplished Angel who is your wife.”[153]

  William presumed rather heavily on the service he had done, assuming an intimacy which was not altogether appreciated. He wrote to Nicholas regularly and gave him a good deal of unsolicited advice. After one of the Czar’s visits to Paris in 1895 he warned him against making “republicanism” respectable. “The constant appearance of Princes, Grand-dukes, Statesmen, Generals in ‘full fig’ at reviews, burials, dinners, races, with the head of the Republic or in his entourage makes republicans — as such — believe that they are quite honest excellent people, with whom Princes can consort and feel at home! Now what is the consequence at home in our different countries? The republicans are revolutionists de nature and were treated — rightly too — as people who must be shot or hanged, and now they tell our other loyal subjects: ‘Oh, we are not dangerous bad men, look at France. There you see the royalties hobnobbing with the revolutionists! Why should it not be the same with us?’ We Christian Kings and Emperors have one holy duty imposed on us by Heaven, that is to uphold the Principle ‘by the Grace of God’…”

  Nicholas sometimes resented these lectures, yet when he was in William’s presence he invariably came under the spell of his strong personality. The two Emperors offered a striking contrast — the Kaiser spectacular, restless, boastful and the Czar shy, nervous, and unobtrusive. When Nicholas attended the Imperial German Manoeuvres in Breslau in 1896 the Princess of Pless thought he looked “very ill and weak, but the Czarina looks very healthy and has a most charming and clever face with deep blue eyes, and low straight eyebrows; her head is small and her hair brushed up from her forehead, only a few curls on the temples and just twisted up in the back; she had loads of lovely diamonds and great big sapphires.”[154]

  The Czarina’s appearance was misleading, for she was far from clever. She was making herself more disliked in Russia every day. She hated society and did her best to discourage Nicholas from taking part in any functions which could be avoided. She liked to spend her evenings sewing, while he read aloud to her. The Russian aristocracy complained to the English of her “German bourgeois mentality” and to the Germans of her “English stiffness.” She had no warmth for anyone who was not part of her family circle, and far from being grateful to the Kaiser for having influenced her matrimonial decision, resented the fact that he regarded her as beholden to him; she told Nicholas that she could not abide him.

  She was not alone in her dislike. The Dowager Empress had been so impressed by the stories her sister, the Princess of Wales, had told her that she could barely allude to William in a civil manner. Nicholas adored his mother but was a little frightened of her, and when William visited Russia in 1897 he scarcely knew how to break the news to her that it would be necessary to accord him a special honour. “Dear Mama,” he wrote, on July 23rd 1897, “I’m sorry to tell you we shall have to give William the rank of Admiral of our navy. Uncle Alexei reminded me of it; and I think, no matter how disagreeable it may be, we are obliged to let him wear our naval uniform; particularly since he made me last year a Captain in his own navy, and, what’s much worse, I’ll have to greet him as such at Kronstadt. It makes me sick to think of it!” (In the original, in French, “C’est a vomir!”)[155]

  Nevertheless the visit went off well. William was determined to charm his host and succeeded so well that Nicholas, for once, was grave enough to mention him favourably to his mother. On the other hand, he found the German Empress and her favourite lady-in-waiting, the Countess Brockdorff, a severe trial. “On the whole William was very cheerful, calm and courteous, while she tried to be charming and looked very ugly in rich clothes chosen without taste; the hats she wore in the evenings and at the performance at Olgano were particularly impossible. It was rumoured here that the Empress is very much under the influence of her ladies-inwaiting, especially Countess B., and that everything the latter disapproves of the Empress also dislikes.

  “At Krasnoe, on the day of the Tattoo, La Vie Parisienne was performed, because nothing else was found suitable. The third act had been chosen for the purpose and it was to be followed by a short ballet… The next day we learned that that idiot Countess B. had thoroughly disapproved of the play because she considered that it was a parody on the Germans. She thought that the Swiss admiral was an allusion to the Emperor, as he had been appointed Admiral of our fleet, and that le vieux diplomate was a caricature of Hohenlohe who has indeed deteriorated very much since last year. What do you think of that?”[156]

  Before closing his letter Nicholas added that William had been so impressed by the Standart “that he said he would have been happy to get it as a present and that after such a yacht he was ashamed to show the Hohenzollern. All that was very pleasant to us, as you will understand, dear Mama.” However the Dowager Empress made it plain that she did not understand. “I was sure the beautiful lines of the Standart would be an eyesore to William,” she replied. “Still, his joke about how happy he would be if the yacht were given to him was in doubtful taste. I hope he will not have the cheek to order himself a similar one here.[157] This would really be the limit, though just like him, with the tact that distinguishes him!”

  William was oblivious of these criticisms and returned to Germany flushed with success. He had not yet learned that Nicholas was always ready to bend to a strong personality, and continually changing his views. He wrote to Philip Eulenburg that the visit had turned out far better than he had expected, that he had reached “complete agreement” with Nicky on all important political questions, “so that together we have, so to say, disposed of all the world.” “A restoration of Alsace and Lorraine to France with Russian aid is an absolute and downright impossibility. Thus a war between Gaul and us, and Russia and us, is, God willing, no longer to be feared — Nicky and I again parted friends who are united by a sincere affection and absolute confidence in one another. Our relations are now as they never were under Bismarck, perhaps what they were at first under Nicholas I and Grandpapa”[158]

  The Kaiser had taken his new Secretary of State, the forty-eight-year-old Bernard von Bülow, former ambassador in Rome, to Russia with him. This appointment, made in June 1897, was due to Philip Eulenburg, who had met Bülow in 1881 when they both were attached to the German Embassy in Paris. They had much in common, for Bülow was an intellectual, witty, artistic, and worldly. Like Eulenburg he possessed charm and tact, but he had none of Philip’s kindness and loyalty. His feelings were carefully regulated
to serve an over-riding ambition. He made his way by simulating a warmth he did not possess, and by expressing sentiments he did not believe, for he had perceived that the most outrageous flatteries were credible to those on whom they were bestowed. As his career unfolded, his remarkable adroitness at slithering unharmed through awkward situations won him the nickname of “the eel.”

  Bülow and Eulenburg had only been in Paris together for a few months, and did not see each other for many years, but when Bülow learned, not long after Bismarck’s departure, of the important role that Eulenburg was playing, he picked up the old threads. “I have a great longing to see you again, dearest Philip,” he wrote in 1891. “A decade has been swallowed up since we were together in Paris.” Eulenburg replied warmly, and the two men embarked on a correspondence which became, on Bülow’s side, increasingly adulatory. In one letter he referred to Philip’s “infinite delicacy of feeling” and in another compared him to “a beautiful falcon in a forest filled with foxes, bristling swine and cackling geese!” “It seems so natural so say Du to each other,” he wrote in March 1893, “that I feel as if it could not be otherwise. Listen — outwardly unlike in so many ways, we are inwardly each other’s true affinity… Since the Heavenly Powers conferred on you the magic gift of bewildering and brilliant talents, I cannot compare with you productively; but I can receptively rejoice in you, drink in your flow of soul and admire you…”[159]