Though Fritz shared Bismarck’s goal of a united Germany, with Prussia as leader, as a friend of Fritz Holstein from university days he would have been glad to see him assume undisputed rule of the territories. At the same time he had every understanding of Denmark’s plight. As he had expected, Bismarck gave him no prior warning of events until the last minute; on 16 January 1864, with Austria’s approval, he sent King Christian an ultimatum to evacuate and renounce all claim to the duchies within twenty-four hours. Opinion in the Diet of the German Confederation was almost as hostile to Prussia as it was in England, for Bismarck had acted without consulting the other states apart from Austria. He did not trust Fritz as he believed that, if the latter was told in advance, the news would be betrayed to Queen Victoria. ‘It is hard that a frontier line should also be the line of demarcation between the interests of mother and daughter,’ he had written to the King, ‘but to forget the fact is always perilous to the state.’23 Prussia’s future position as leader of the German states depended on subduing Austria, a policy which required Russian support, and Bismarck was eager to weaken links between Prussia and Britain’s rival, Russia. One way to achieve this was to persist in his insinuations to the King of filial disloyalty on the part of the Crown Prince, the result being that from this time onwards there was an irrevocable decline in relations between the King on one hand and his son and daughter-in-law on the other. Henceforth, the King told Fritz, he would no longer be permitted to see government dispatches.
The King and Bismarck were still suspicious of Fritz after his contrary attitude regarding the Danzig affair, but he could hardly be kept at home while Prussia was at war, so he was sent to report to headquarters. Field-Marshal Wrangel had been appointed supreme commander of the allied armies of Prussia and Austria; though now eighty years of age and no longer capable of running a war, he was the only German officer who held a rank higher than the commander of the Austrian troops. Prince Friedrich Karl was commander of the Prussian forces.
The Danish forces were heavily outnumbered, and King Christian and his ministers hoped that England would come to their rescue in the event of war; Palmerston and Russell wished to do so, but Queen Victoria was as pro-German as ever, and Britain remained neutral. On 1 February Prussia and allied forces marched into Schleswig, and within a few days Fritz was promoted to joint command with Wrangel, whose evident senility he charitably excused on the grounds that the veteran officer was ‘half crazy’, his former energy having ‘turned to obstinacy and stubbornness’. Depressed at Bismarck’s hold on his father, Fritz prayed that God would give him enlightenment to see through the man ‘who has proved to be Prussia’s undoing.’24 When the King bestowed on him the Order of the Red Eagle with Swords he was deeply touched by this paternal mark of favour, while writing to Duncker of his shame at being ‘decorated after so little experience and active service, while as yet no officer has received any mark of distinction, although deserved by many.’25 The men serving under him, he felt, would ask what honours were still left for really brave deeds on the field of battle.
Within a few days the Danish army abandoned its defences in Schleswig, allowing the Prussian army to advance and Fritz, bored with doing nothing, was granted permission to join the troops. While still a reluctant enemy of Denmark who never ceased to feel sympathy for King Christian and his family, he also resented being kept at headquarters for most of the time and felt his rightful place was at the battlefield. By April it was clear the Danes would soon be ready for peace, and an armistice was declared.
Vicky’s division of loyalties between England and Prussia made her position increasingly painful. She had had a spate of angry letters from England; Queen Victoria admonished her with her hope that ‘this dreadful war might have been prevented but you all (God forgive you for it) would have it.’26 Bertie had condemned Prussia, saying that the war would ‘be a stain for ever on Prussian history’,27 and in her anxiety Alix had given birth prematurely in January to a son, named Albert Victor. A visit to Vicky from her brother Affie had been spoilt by sarcastic comments from The Times, which reported the King’s award of the Order of the Black Eagle to Queen Victoria’s second son under the heading ‘A very questionable honour’.28 The Queen and her eldest daughter were equally incensed.
While she, like her husband, had never wanted war, Vicky was proud of her husband’s role in the conflict and of Germany’s victory, and angry at the ‘continual meddling and interfering of England in other people’s affairs’ and unjust attacks on Prussia in the English press and parliament. As she wrote to Queen Victoria, the English would resent it ‘if they were engaged in a war, to be dictated to in a pompous style, how they were to conduct it, indeed I am sure they would not stand such interference.’29
On 25 April a conference opened in London to discuss the war, with representation from all neutral and belligerent powers. An armistice was proposed, to last for six weeks from 11 May, and later that week Fritz returned home. Vicky was overjoyed to see him again, after the longest separation – over three months – they had yet known. During the war she had had to contend with her first taste of real unpopularity, especially when The Times chose to take King Wilhelm and his ‘mischievous cabinet’ to task, congratulating Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm on his principled stand on behalf of the Augustenburg claim, and on having a consort who shared his liberal views. Such articles were music to the ears of Bismarck and the military clique, who eagerly seized on her divided loyalties by spreading rumours that she was unhappy at the success of the allied troops; everything she said and did was at once criticized as being in imitation of England, therefore anti-Prussian. ‘I feel as if I could smash the idiots; it is so spiteful and untrue’, she wrote. ‘I never was popular here, but since the war you can well imagine that my position has not improved owing to the English press.’30
On his return Fritz was appointed to the command of the Second Army Corps by the King, who received him with some indifference. He would have been proud of his son, had Bismarck not continually commented to him about the possible betrayal of state secrets his son could pass on to England. A few days’ rest with Vicky elapsed before he began a tour of inspection, so he did not return to the front when the armistice expired in June, Prussian troops captured the island of Alsen, and the Danish cabinet sued for peace; negotiations opened at Vienna in July, and three months later a treaty was concluded. Denmark renounced her claims to Schleswig and Holstein, in favour of Prussia and Austria, a temporary measure which did not augur well for the future.
What Fritz and Vicky had dreaded from the beginning, and what Queen Augusta and the angry English press had foreseen, was true. Bismarck ignored Fritz Holstein in the peace negotiations; he had sent his country to war in order to seize the duchies for Prussia, and was already boasting to his confidantes that war against Austria was now only a question of time. Fritz felt no little revulsion at the part he had been forced to take in the campaign, fearing that apart from his wife, mother and mother-in-law, nobody would believe that he had not wantonly taken advantage of Denmark’s military isolation, subsequent British neutrality, and Duke Friedrich’s lack of influence at Berlin, in order to further his own country’s territorial aims.
Vicky was pregnant again, but felt stronger than she had on the three previous occasions. For King Wilhelm’s birthday in March she and Fritz had presented him with a sum of money to inaugurate a fund that would assist the families of dead or disabled soldiers. Her memories of meeting Florence Nightingale in England during the Crimean war, and her husband’s experience on the front lines which made him well aware of the lack of proper medical attention for men on active service, made them both aware of how much work needed to be done. She undertook the task of helping to organize an army nursing corps, the kind of work she relished as it gave her a chance to be of use to her country.
There would be other calls on her time that summer, she assured Fritz while he was still at the front; they had ‘many important books’ to study. ‘If y
ou are pressed for time, I will summarize any books you won’t have time to read. I’m ashamed to think how much I have yet to learn!’31 The Prince Consort would indeed have been proud of his eldest daughter, never one to let slip any opportunity for self-improvement or to better her husband as well.
On 15 September 1864 Vicky gave birth to a third son, whom they named Sigismund at King Wilhelm’s request. This was the first baby she was allowed to nurse herself, despite the disgust of Queen Victoria and Queen Augusta; to this could be attributed the intimacy with her five younger children throughout their lives that she never enjoyed with the three elder, who had been entrusted to wet nurses on Queen Augusta’s orders. Before the birth she had wanted to ask Bertie and Alix to be godparents, but Queen Victoria advised that the time was not ripe for a reconciliation with the ‘conquered party’, so Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Elizabeth of Austria were asked instead.
After Sigi was christened, Fritz took Vicky for six weeks’ holiday in Switzerland. On their way back they met the Waleses in Cologne, but Fritz had overlooked the fact that his uniform – which he wore as it never occurred to him to wear civilian clothes when meeting a fellow prince – was sporting the war decorations he had accepted with such reluctance. The Prince of Wales wrote afterwards, ‘it was not pleasant to see him and his ADC always in Prussian uniform flaunting before our eyes a most objectionable ribbon which he received for his deeds of valour??? against the unhappy Danes.’32
It was all the more painful for Fritz and Vicky as they privately agreed with Bertie’s remark. On the King’s orders, 18 December was declared a day of national thanksgiving for victory throughout Prussia; church bells pealed at regular intervals, special celebratory church services and military parades were held, decorations were awarded, and a dinner was given in the evening for all princes who had fought in the war, and members of the war cabinet. Fritz considered this show of triumphalism excessive, and he asked his father for permission not to attend. The angry King would not listen to him, but he made his protest all the same. He cut Bismarck dead at the dinner, and sat still when the other guests raised their glasses to toast the minister’s health. The self-congratulatory atmosphere in Berlin, where the people basked in the reflected glory of their defeat of Denmark, irritated Vicky and Fritz. Victory over a smaller, considerably outnumbered foe was nothing to be proud of. Even more disturbingly, it showed that Bismarck’s plan for a nation unified through war had a more direct if chauvinistic appeal for Prussia than the goal of a united Germany and constitutional monarchy which they forecast.
Fritz and Vicky wanted a place to live more informally, away from the trappings of state and prying servants, many of whom were chosen for the very purpose by Queen Augusta and Bismarck. Vicky found the village of Bornstädt by accident when she was out driving one day and her coachman took the wrong road from Berlin. The difference between the Prussian countryside and the tense atmosphere of the city impressed her with the same contrast between London and the Scottish Highlands which had struck her parents before buying their estate at Balmoral. Exploring the tangled wilderness, rough track sheltered by woodland, untrimmed grass and hedges, and dilapidated but strangely inviting humble cottages, she found a house for sale partly hidden by an avenue of poplars, with broken windows, flaking paint, and an untended garden. By Christmas 1863 she and Fritz had bought it, and in the following spring they had it converted into a farmhouse. He supervised the management of the land and the labour required to get it into shape, while she attended to the dairy, poultry-yard and garden. Fritz and Vicky bought the farm when they had only three children; by the time it was suitable for them as a residence, their family numbered five. Meanwhile Vicky had purchased two cows, a dairy had been installed, and the garden had been transformed into a playground with swings, seesaw, and a cricket field. Later they added chickens and ducks, and had a stable for the children’s ponies built.
It did not take long for them to become thoroughly at home in the village. Time had stood still for the people who never undressed, tore food apart with their hands, and wrapped their babies in newspaper or rags before placing them on insect-ridden beds of damp straw. It was the kind of challenge Vicky relished, and she set about helping to show the villagers benefits of modern sanitation and hygiene. Soon she and Fritz knew nearly everyone, and it was not unusual to see them dressed as an English country squire and his wife, strolling along the roads or riding on horseback, always ready to stop and say good morning, or to enquire after the health of the sick.
Stories of the royal schoolmaster quickly passed into the realms of Prussian folklore. Fritz often visited the village school to listen to the children’s lessons, sometimes taking the teacher’s place. On one occasion, touching a medal, he asked a little girl to which kingdom it belonged. ‘To the mineral kingdom,’ she replied. ‘And this?’ he asked, pointing to a flower. ‘To the vegetable kingdom.’ ‘And I myself: to what kingdom do I belong?’ Back came the answer: ‘to the kingdom of Heaven.’33 Another morning, as he was talking to the youngsters and looking at their work, the master was handed a telegram telling him that his mother was seriously ill. ‘Go at once, leave the school to me’, Fritz told him, and carried on teaching his charges until a clergyman arrived to relieve him.34
The writer Gustav zu Putlitz and his wife Elizabeth befriended Vicky and Fritz at this time, and were appointed Chamberlain and Grande Maitresse of the household. The former had first met Vicky when he was writing a history of the Neue Palais, and he was greatly impressed with her for being ‘marvellously well read’, admiring a drawing she had just done for one of her husband’s military charities as ‘conceived with real genius and most artistically executed. This young Princess has more than average gifts, and, besides, is more cultured than any woman I know of her age’. The next day he was writing with equal admiration of the way that ‘It is astonishing that she not only reads, but commits everything to memory, and she discusses history like a historian, with excellent judgement and decision.’ There could be no doubt of their happy marriage, he noted a few days later, of ‘the perfect harmony of this union, in which the Crown Prince, notwithstanding the more brilliant qualities of the Princess, still preserves his simple and natural attitude and undeniable influence.’35
Such glimpses of the couple at home showed that their marriage had remained the idyll that it was on the day of their wedding. ‘The older I grow, the more I come to know of human beings, the more I thank God for having given me a wife like mine,’ Fritz wrote at around this time. ‘I trust that God will preserve our peace and domestic happiness. I ask for nothing else.’36
Among others who enjoyed their hospitality at this time were Fritz Holstein and his brother Christian, both of whom had been deprived of their property and army commissions by Bismarck. Fritz had championed their cause as long as he could, arguing with his former friend Duncker who had not the courage to stand up to the Minister’s wrath, believing that the creation of a new state of Schleswig-Holstein under the Hereditary Prince’s rule was the most satisfactory way of maintaining harmony between Prussia and Austria. Bismarck dismissed the Augustenburg claim by saying that the army had fought for Prussia, not for Duke Friedrich, and that to settle the duchies in his favour would encourage other pretenders. The convention of Gastein, signed in August 1865, agreed to the administration of Schleswig by Prussia, and that of Holstein by Austria – a temporary measure which augured badly for the future. Vicky was bitter at the way the Elbe Duchies and Fritz Holstein had been treated, writing to Queen Victoria how she wished that they and Prussia were rid of Bismarck. If her letter was opened by the post officials she would be accused of high treason – ‘but I am as loyal as anyone as I love the King and would do anything to serve him.’37
Fritz and Vicky wanted to do something for this ill-treated family. Unlike his brother, Prince Christian was a bachelor and spent much of his time at Bornstädt playing with the children like an uncle or elder brother and sharing Fritz’s cigars; their closene
ss in age (Christian was the elder by nine months) and his ability to speak fluent English endeared him to them. Although a good-natured soul, this bald, rather ugly and penniless Prince was hardly eligible by royal standards. Queen Victoria was anxious to find a husband for her third daughter Helena, an intelligent girl but plain and ‘wanting in charm’.38 Such meagre qualifications and her mother’s insistence on keeping a married daughter in England limited her prospects, until Vicky suggested Christian. If the two liked each other, then he would presumably not object to living under the eye of a mother-inlaw.
It was arranged that they should meet at Coburg in August. The anniversary of the Prince Consort’s birth date had been chosen for the unveiling of a statue there to his memory. Though it was the first time that all nine brothers and sisters had been together since the wedding of the eldest in 1858, it was a joyless occasion. Fritz and Vicky felt uncomfortable as the terms of Gastein – signed a fortnight earlier – amounted to ill-disguised Prussian plunder, made all the worse as they were helpless to do anything about it. Bertie and Alix were still angry over the Danish defeat, and when introduced to Prince Karl Bertie was outwardly civil but Alix defiantly tossed her head, refusing to speak to him. Fritz could not blame her, but such incidents did not endear him to his uncles, who constantly reminded him of his part in introducing a Danish princess into his wife’s family. Then Queen Victoria was so incensed at the King’s ignoring her letters that she would not call on him, or even visit Queen Augusta at Koblenz, let alone invite her to the unveiling. The latter was deeply offended at what she took to be a personal insult.
Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz Page 12