No reference to the Battenbergs is to be found in the published extracts from her journal.* Apart from a brief discussion of international affairs and the possibility of war with a Franco-Russian alliance if Austria should be attacked with Germany being bound by treaty to defend her, the time they spent in conversation, a little over half an hour, was kept to relatively uncontroversial matters. Bismarck alluded to their only other meeting, at Versailles in 1855. Queen Victoria mentioned her grandson Wilhelm’s inexperience, to which he replied that the Crown Prince knew nothing about civil affairs, but ‘should he be thrown into the water, he would be able to swim’. She asked him to stand by her daughter and he promised he would, agreeing that ‘hers was a hard fate.’ Most important of all he assured her that he was not contemplating any form of Regency, as he knew it would upset the Emperor.28 At the end the ‘Iron Chancellor’ walked out of the room, smiling with admiration and mopping his brow: ‘What a woman! One could do business with her!’29
On the last day of her visit the Queen saw Fritz again as she told him that he must repay the visit as soon as he felt better. With a ready smile and a wave of her hand, she took her leave for the last time of the son-in-law on whom such a bright future had depended. She also warned her daughter that she had to reconcile herself to the fact that ‘this unfortunate project’, the Moretta-Sandro marriage, would never come to pass. That the Queen returned to England unsure of whether her warning had been taken to heart was evident from one of her letters four weeks later. ‘I only hope you will see your way to put an end to a state of things which is quite ruinous’, she advised Vicky, adding that the betrothal scheme had ‘been the indirect cause of all his misfortunes’, and that if Vicky and Moretta really loved him, ‘you ought to set him free and spare his honourable name being assailed as it is now being’.30
A few days after the Queen’s departure from Berlin, Bismarck publicly denounced the ‘notorious’ article which had attacked Queen Victoria’s ‘interference’ vis-à-vis her support of the Battenberg marriage. It had been written by Moritz von Busch on Bismarck’s orders, and when both men discussed this denunciation, the Chancellor smiled cynically. The article, he said, ‘was really quite first rate.’31
During her husband’s reign Vicky’s own health was far from good. Under constant stress, rheumatism and headaches gave her constant trouble, and while friends were sympathetic, her enemies thought or professed to think that she was on the edge of hysteria if not madness. By April she could only sleep fitfully when exhaustion overtook her, and every morning at 6.30 she was by Fritz’s side before he awoke. On stirring he mouthed the words ‘tell me’, and she told him ‘every tiny little thing I had done, seen and heard the day before, what I had thought, hoped and imagined’.32 At times he would feel slightly better and his temperature would subside; if the weather was warm enough, they would have a tent erected in the garden and a seat on the lawn screened by shrubs and trees, so he could lie outside and enjoy the fresh air.
Occasionally the Dowager Empress would be brought along in her wheelchair to sit by her son and talk to him in her shaking voice. Neither of them now had much in common, Augusta’s interests extending little beyond court functions and the gossip which she had always loved, but Fritz was grateful for her company.
When he felt strong enough to drive into Berlin with Vicky and the girls, he had only to show himself at the railings of the palace for the crowds, anxiously awaiting each bulletin on his health, to cheer; when he ventured through the streets, his subjects would wave their handkerchiefs and raise their hats in the air in their enthusiasm for the Emperor whose life was hanging by a thread. Women threw flowers into the carriage, and mothers lifted babies or small children to catch a glimpse of his face. In recognition he raised his cap as often as his energy would permit, until a sudden coughing fit necessitated them turning off briefly into one of the city palaces for the bandage to be renewed. The widespread sympathy and admiration were testified to by the bouquets delivered daily to Charlottenburg, from expensive blooms from Berlin’s most exclusive florists, to humble bunches of primroses and violets from less wealthy but equally devoted well-wishers. One morning a lady bought up the entire contents of a basket of fresh violets from a street vendor and sent them to her sovereign, and a footman came out to give her his thanks.
His mind remained clear, and he always studied the newspapers and state documents passed to him with the keen interest of a ruler determined to do his duty. He was distressed by the news of floods in East Prussia after a period of torrential rain, and though he had to send Vicky to represent him on a visit to the affected areas – the only occasion during his reign on which she left him for any length of time – he made a personal gift of 50,000 marks to help the victims. One of his plans was to alleviate slum areas in the cities by more state expenditure on housing for the poor; ‘in this way part of the so-called social question would be solved’.33 Bismarck had not neglected the lower classes either, but his own tentative steps towards socialism were motivated by absolutist principles; he rejected the idea of factory inspection and statutory limitation of working hours, preferring to establish employee insurance against accidents, sickness, redundancy and old age. This philosophy was too revolutionary for some of his contemporaries, though some of it anticipated the twentieth century welfare state, yet it was too transparent for the more discerning liberals. They saw that the Chancellor’s real aim was to make workers feel more dependent on the state, and therefore on him. Fritz’s honest intentions of improving social conditions had no such motives. Since his first years as Crown Prince he had discussed the socialist movement with his mother and wife, and they agreed that self-help was the best means of combating distress; one would have less to fear from the fanaticism of early socialists if one made good some of the grievances of these would-be revolutionaries. With a more liberal ministry such ideas would have been put into practice.
It grieved him to think that so much would be left undone at his death. When asked about rebuilding the Berlin cathedral, a scheme with which he and Vicky had been concerned during a previous visit to Italy, he wrote sadly on his pad that it was ‘all over and done with’. At a ministerial meeting he asked the Finance Minister Adolf Scholz how long it would take the mint to produce new coins bearing his likeness. When told that they would not be ready for two or three months, he raised his hands and the look of despair on his face revealed that he knew he would not live to see them.34 Nevertheless a few of his ideas still bore fruit. He appointed an army commission to devise new rules for drill and training regulations, part of the military reforms he had planned, in time for him to give his assent, and he entrusted Henry with responsibility for choosing designs submitted for a new uniform for the imperial navy.
Bismarck’s own description of his dealings with his new sovereign and consort was a masterpiece of courtliness. To Fritz’s biographer Margaretha von Poschinger, he recalled in his last years that they were ‘always on the best of terms’, and that ‘any differences of opinion between us were discussed with Their Majesties in the most friendly way.’ The Empress was ‘very clever and decided’, while the Emperor was ‘a very remarkable and estimable man, extremely amiable and friendly, yet none the less far-sighted, intelligent and decided.’ The Chancellor was impressed with his monarch’s kindly bearing and courage under such difficult circumstances, especially with the way Fritz always accompanied him to the door of the room after their audiences and opened it himself to let him out on taking his departure. ‘One day, as he was walking with me through the room, I noticed that he was shaking with pain and weakness, and had already stretched out my arm, as I thought he was about to fall, when he managed to seize the door-knob and steadied himself. Yet he uttered no complaint and bore his pains in manly silence.’35 He gave the impression of a man who would do what his sovereign wanted if only the ministers would let him, and though Fritz was not deceived he was too weak to argue.
In matters of foreign policy, Bismarck and Crown
Prince Wilhelm were poles apart. The former was in despair over the heir’s ‘lust for war’ and evident obsession with declaring or participating in war against Russia, convinced that he would draw his sword at once if he could.36 Like the Emperor and Empress he was exasperated by the hawkish Waldersee and his influence on Crown Prince Wilhelm, and tried to separate the two men by finding the General a command in Hanover where he could do less mischief, but he had too many powerful allies. Vicky complained to Bismarck that nobody could approach Waldersee, as he, Moltke and Albedyll were ‘sticking together like a nest of rats.’37
While hardly the devoted son he made himself out to be in later years, Willy had some sympathy for his parents, and one incident during his father’s reign does him credit. Waldersee scoffed at the ‘petticoat rule which is being exercised indirectly through the sick Emperor’, and told him that it was unnecessary ‘to carry out the commands sent from Charlottenburg on the part of His Majesty the Emperor . . . considering that it is well known what is the true source which inspires them’. The Crown Prince reminded him that, like all other German officers, he had sworn the military oath of loyalty to the Kaiser, which implied ‘strict execution of every command’ from the sovereign. If one of them was to charge Count Waldersee with attempting to seduce the brigade commander of the 2nd Infantry Brigade of Guards (the Crown Prince) into disobedience and breach of his military oath, and sentencing him to be placed in front of a sandheap and shot, he would ‘execute the command to the letter – with pleasure.’38 At last Waldersee saw he had overstepped the bounds of propriety.
However if Kaiser Friedrich was generally an object of compassion, there was little for the Empress. As Colonel Swaine, the British military attaché in Berlin, observed with sadness, it was ‘as if a curse had come over this country, leaving but one bright spot and that is where stands a solitary woman doing her duty faithfully and tenderly by her sick husband against all odds.’39 Fortunately political allies were aware of her plight, and the Freisinnige party member Eugen Richter gallantly came to her defence whenever the Reichstag was in session. On 26 May he accused the government and nationalist parties of offending the Empress in every way possible, in speech and in print. They shouted him down and tried to stop him from speaking, but he would not be deterred, and he concluded by asking Bismarck what he would do if taunted with just one-hundredth part of the calumnies she had to bear.40 After he sat down, several of them mounted the rostrum in turn to declare that they never had the slightest desire to offend Her Majesty. When she read an account in the papers the next day, Vicky was alarmed that it might galvanize her political enemies into a new campaign of persecution against her.
She was distressed that Willy seemed to be doing everything he could to irritate them. After Bergmann stormed out of the case, the Crown Prince asked him to dinner ‘as demonstratively as possible, which considering his strange behaviour, is, to say the least, not very good taste.’ Their eldest son was ‘in a “ring”, a côterie, whose main endeavour is as it were to paralyse Fritz in every way.’41
On 24 May, Queen Victoria’s birthday, Henry and Irene were married at Charlottenburg chapel. Among the guests were the Prince of Wales in his Prussian regimental uniform, the Grand Duke and Duchess Serge of Russia, and Prince and Princess Louis of Battenberg. Fritz had enjoyed helping to make arrangements and seeing to the invitations as far as his ebbing strength allowed, and welcoming the bride with her father and family the morning before, but on the day itself he was not so strong. While he waited for a signal that the family had assembled and were ready for him, the officiating clergy thought he was staying away in order to avoid overtiring himself. The court chaplain Dr Kogel was about to begin his address when the door opened and Fritz entered, wearing his general’s uniform with the Hessian Order and the Star of the Garter, his collar open to facilitate breathing through the canula, and a stick in his hand for support. He took his seat quietly on the right of the altar, between his mother and Vicky. When the bridal couple exchanged rings he stood up, and as the organist played the closing voluntary he walked out unaided.
While Field-Marshal von Moltke, now a sprightly eightyseven, paid tribute to his bravery, Herbert Bismarck told the Prince of Wales afterwards that a sovereign who could not take part in debates should not be allowed to reign. When he returned to England Bertie told the Queen angrily that he had felt like throwing the insolent young man out of the room. Official reports in government-controlled newspapers mentioned eagerly how the Empress had forced her husband to attend the ceremony, having built up his strength with wine and stimulants, and that those sitting near him in the chapel could hear his piteous gasps for breath; a quarter of an hour later they saw him in his invalid chair in plain dress, utterly exhausted.42 Such accounts were grossly exaggerated, but the day had obviously taken its toll of his remaining strength. He had stood the occasion without so much as coughing, and afterwards he drove around the park in his pony carriage for an hour and a half, but that evening his temperature rose and he spent the following day in bed.
On 29 May Willy led his Guards Infantry Brigade in a march past his father in the Charlottenburg Palace grounds. Fritz sat watching from his open carriage in full uniform, but huddled up in his overcoat. This may have been a gesture by Willy to atone for his previous misdemeanours, but his father found it a trial to be seen in such a pitiful state by his troops, as well as a brutal reminder that he was unable to take part in this or any similar functions as a reigning Emperor. Willy later maintained that his father had requested it, while according to Vicky it was their son’s idea and he ‘meant well, but it was most unfortunate, for Fritz only agreed with the utmost reluctance’.43
On 1 June the court moved from Charlottenburg to the Neue Palais, Potsdam. Here Fritz had been born, and here he had spent nearly every summer of his married life. More than anywhere else in Germany, except perhaps for the little cottage and farm at Bornstädt, this was his home. As they travelled there on the royal steamer Alexandria, he lying on a couch on deck with Vicky sitting beside him, the sun shone brightly and the banks were lined by cheering crowds. It was as if the well-wishers, waving and throwing flowers, had a premonition that this would be their last sight of him. As Moretta, Sophie and Mossy welcomed them on landing and helped their father into the carriage which was to drive them to the palace, he was evidently very happy to be home at last. Just before he and Vicky walked inside, he wrote on his pad that he wanted it to be known as Friedrichskron.
Their old home had never looked more lovely to them than it did in the days following, all the more so as they knew that they had so little time left together on earth; ‘the sun is always said to shine more beautifully just before setting.’44 Fritz’s sleep and appetite were poor, and meals were ‘a torment’. It had been arranged that they would go to Homburg in July, but with each passing day it was increasingly evident that he would not last that long.
Yet this slow death did not put an immediate end to everything Fritz enjoyed. On warmer days he would sit or lie on the balcony and admire the view, and sometimes they would go driving around the estate to see once again the trees and flowers which they had carefully tended for nearly thirty precious years during which only their love and devotion to each other had remained the same. Indoors he continued with his work of signing documents, writing letters, and reading the papers from beginning to end, showing Vicky with his finger or pencil anything that particularly impressed him. ‘What will become of me?’ he asked her on 11 June, four days before the end. ‘Do I seem to improve? When shall I be well again? What do you think? Shall I be ill long? I must get well, I have so much to do.’45
A week after their arrival at Friedrichskron he carried out the only important political act of his reign. The Minister of the Interior, the anti-Semite Robert von Puttkamer, one of the most reactionary members of the government, had been responsible for the official proclamation of Kaiser Wilhelm’s death in March without any allusion to his successor, and had been implicated in a c
ase of corruption, namely thwarting electoral reform in order to save his brother’s seat in the Reichstag. To dismiss a colleague of Bismarck’s, and a closely related one at that – Puttkamer was a cousin of Princess Bismarck – was easier said than done, but when the Chancellor asked the Emperor to sign a bill prolonging the life of the Reichstag from three to five years in order to maintain a recentlygained conservative majority, the latter made assent conditional on Puttkamer’s departure. Fritz had won, but Bismarck held an ostentatious banquet two days later at which the ex-Minister was guest of honour. Privately the two men were too alike to be really friendly, and Puttkamer was an uncomfortable colleague whom the Chancellor suspected was waiting to step into his place, but the dinner party was little more than a deliberate act of defiance to get even with his dying master.
On the following Sunday, the choir of the Twelve Apostles Church in Berlin asked if they could sing their Emperor some choral music. It was arranged that they would stand outside his sitting-room, where he could sit and listen. When they began their performance Vicky was standing with them, but as they began an anthem Mackenzie beckoned her back, as Fritz was in tears; hearing it for the first time as Emperor had affected him deeply. When the choir had finished he wiped his eyes and, unaided except for his stick, got up and walked towards them to offer his thanks.
Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz Page 27