Forge of Empires

by Michael Knox Beran

  257 the watchword: Moritz Busch, Bismarck: Some Secret Pages from His History, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1898), i, 446.

  257 Lord Loftus: Loftus, The Diplomatic Reminiscences of Lord Augustus Loftus, P. C., G. C. B., i, 60.

  257 “The war”: Wilhelm J. C. E. Stieber, The Chancellor’s Spy: The Revelations of the Chief of Bismarck’s Secret Service, trans. Jan van Heurck (New York: Grove Press, 1980), 108.

  257 “Who is Europe?”: Ibid.

  257 “When you start”: Margutti, The Emperor Francis Joseph and His Times, 324.

  258 “The struggle”: Loftus, The Diplomatic Reminiscences of Lord Augustus Loftus, P. C., G. C. B., i, 60; BGE, 128; Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, 305.

  258 Army of the Elbe: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, June 19, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7.

  258 The Elector himself: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, July 11, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7.

  258 George V: Joseph A. Wright to Seward, June 8, 1866, SD NARA M44/ROLL 13; John Lothrop Motley to Seward, June 19, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7.

  258 Heros von Borcke: Hume, “Colonel Heros von Borcke: A Famous Prussian Volunteer in the Confederate States Army,” in Southern Sketches, First Series, no. 2, 15; Heros von Borcke, Colonel Heros von Borcke’s Journal, 26 April-8 October 1862, 1-2.

  258 “You must change”: Hume, “Colonel Heros von Borcke: A Famous Prussian Volunteer in the Confederate States Army,” in Southern Sketches, First Series, no. 2, 21.

  258 The third element: Moltke to the Commanders of the First and Second Armies, June 22, 1866, in Moltke’s Correspondence During the Campaign of 1866 Against Austria (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1915), 47.

  258 Fürstenstein: Loftus, The Diplomatic Reminiscences of Lord Augustus Loftus, P. C., G. C. B., i, 70.

  259 New Palace: Lord Ronald Charles Sutherland Leveson Gower, My Reminiscences, 2 vols. (London: Kegan Paul, 1883), i, 183-85.

  259 “old hag”: Tyler Whittle, The Last Kaiser: A Biography of Wilhelm II (New York: Times Books, 1977), 13, 21.

  259 opposed his war: Gedanken, ii, 47.

  25. The Bloodletting

  260 onlookers groaned: Moss, Russia in the Age of Alexander II, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, 90.

  260 “Lord, forgive”: Venturi, Roots of Revolution, 349.

  260 “bringing out”: MR, 255.

  260 “It was a terrible”: Ibid.

  260 now insane: Venturi, Roots of Revolution, 349.

  260 “on his knees”: Ibid.

  261 a French ideal: James H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (New York: Vintage, 1970), 234.

  261 Reformers were ousted: Mosse, Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia, 72.

  261 arbitrary arrest: MR, 252.

  261 counter-surveillance: Stephen Graham, Tsar of Freedom: The Life and Reign of Alexander II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935), 207; Edward Crankshaw, The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia’s Drift to Revolution, 1825-1917 (New York: Da Capo, 2000), 200.

  261 dancing girls: MR, 243.

  261 French performers: LGT, 172.

  261 state budget: Mosse, Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia, 88.

  261 tax farming: David Christian, “A Neglected Great Reform: The Abolition of Tax Farming in Russia,” RGR, 102-14.

  262 closed the Sunday Schools: Mosse, Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia, 110-12.

  262 the nobility of Moscow: Crankshaw, The Shadow of the Winter Palace, 181.

  262 “he had already done”: Venturi, Roots of Revolution, 317.

  262 “The right of initiative”: Moss, Russia in the Age of Alexander II, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, 89.

  262 “all-powerful lord”: Larissa Zakharova, “Autocracy and the Reforms of 1861-1871 in Russia: Choosing Paths of Development,” trans. Daniel Field, RGR, 35.

  262 fall to pieces: “And now I suppose you consider that I refuse to give up any of my powers from motives of petty ambition,” Alexander told one of those who implored him to grant a constitution. “I give you my imperial word that, this very minute, at this very table, I would sign any constitution you like, if I felt that it would be for the good of Russia. But I know that, were I to do so today, tomorrow Russia would fall to pieces”—Mosse, Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia, 112-13; see also Alfred J. Rieber, “Alexander II: A Revisionist View,” JMH, vol. 43, no. 1 (March 1971), 43.

  262 He “would fall”: MR, 243.

  263 “Is everything quiet”: Ibid.

  263 crony capitalism: See Minxin Pei, “The Dark Side of China’s Rise,” FP (March-April 2006).

  263 “his protectors”: MR, 246.

  263 to enlarge the Empire: Mosse, Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia, 119-33.

  263 of Central Asia: England watched Alexander’s Asiatic policy with unease; the Tsar was coming ever closer to India. The British would soon proclaim Victoria Empress of the subcontinent, in order to show the Tsar that they were quite as serious about their Empire as he was about his.

  263 Legal Tender Act: McPherson, Battle Cry of freedom, 447.

  264 “skin of ivory”: Maurice Paléologue, The Tragic Romance of Alexander II of Russia, trans. Arthur Chambers (London: Hutchinson, 1927), 37.

  264 gazelle: Ibid., 36.

  264 invited her: Moss, Russia in the Age of Alexander II, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, 90.

  264 The year before: Ilsa Barea, Vienna (New York: Knopf, 1966), 239.

  264 “Prussia”: Franz Josef, “An Meine Völker,” Wiener Zeitung, June 17, 1866, 1.

  264 brave corps commander: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, July 11, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7.

  264 “I am too little”: Craig, The Battle of Könnigrätz, 14.

  264 “every tree”: Joseph Redlich, Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1965), 323.

  264 “So now”: Craig, The Battle of Könnigrätz, 14.

  265 “It would”: Ibid., 79.

  265 “I beg”: Heinrich Freidjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany 1859-1866, trans. A. J. P. Taylor and W. L. McElwee (London: Macmillan, 1935), 228.

  265 Reichenberg (Liberec): Joseph A. Wright to Seward, July 2, 1866, SD NARA M44/ROLL 13.

  265 was astonished to find: Gedanken, ii, 32; Craig, The Battle of Könnigrätz, 82.

  265 “Ja”: Craig, The Battle of Könnigrätz, 82.

  265 “I feel pain”: Otto Friedrich, Blood and Iron: From Bismarck to Hitler, the von Moltke Family’s Impact on German History (New York: HarperPerennial, 1996), 102.

  265 He quitted the castle: Gedanken, ii, 32.

  266 cigars, a French novel: Bismarck to Countess von Bismarck, July 2, 1866, Gesammelten Werke, xiv (2), 716-17.

  266 On the evening of July 2: Moltke to the Second Army, July 2, 1866, in Moltke’s Correspondence During the Campaign of 1866 Against Austria, 55.

  266 Moltke … was roused: Loftus, The Diplomatic Reminiscences of Lord Augustus Loftus, P. C., G. C. B., i, 82.

  266 “Gott sei:” Craig, The Battle of Könnigrätz, 85.

  266 when the cannon began: Horace Rumbold, Francis Joseph and His Times (New York: Appleton, 1909), 281.

  266 At noon: Moltke to von Wolff, July 4, 1866, in Moltke’s Correspondence During the Campaign of 1866 Against Austria, 56; John Lothrop Motley to Seward, July 3, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7.

  266 “Your Majesty”: Craig, The Battle of Könnigrätz, 111.

  266 “Those are not”: John George Louis Hesekiel, The Life of Bismarck, Private and Political, trans. Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie (London: James Hogg, 1870), 402.

  266 “The campaign”: Craig, The Battle of Könnigrätz, 122.

  267 Nearly half a million: Ibid., x-xl.

  267 by storm: Moltke to von Wolff, July 4, 1866, in Moltke’s Correspondence During the Campaign of 1866 Against Austria, 56.

  267 Were driven: Moltke to von Wolff, July 4, 1866, in Ibid.

  267 “Oh, you cowards!”: Craig, The Battle of Könnigrät
z, 133.

  267 in full retreat: Moltke to von Wolff, July 4, 1866, in Moltke’s Correspondence During the Campaign of 1866 Against Austria, 56.

  267 “Don’t be silly”: Ward, Germany 1815-1890, ii, 287.

  267 A number of his officers: Ibid.

  267 His troops: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, July 11, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7.

  267 “A defeated”: Craig, The Battle of Könnigrätz, 164.

  267 feverish: Ward, Germany 1815-1890, ii, 288.

  268 “still quivers”: TE, 101-02.

  268 “the date of doom”: Ibid.

  268 “It is France”: B, 206.

  268 peremptory telegram: Napoleon III to Wilhelm I, July 4, 1866, Rheinpolitik, i, 302; Gedanken, ii, 33.

  268 council of state: TE, 104.

  268 Drouyn again: Ibid.

  268 in French tinged: Bicknell, Life in the Tuileries Under the Second Empire, 25.

  268 Marshal Randon: TE, 104-05.

  268 The Marquis de La Valette: TE, 105; Ward, Germany 1815-1890, ii, 301.

  268 or so the Empress thought: TE, 105.

  269 “When the Prussian armies”: Ibid.

  269 tentatively inclined: Ward, Germany 1815-1890, ii, 300-01.

  269 He ordered a French force: TE, 106.

  269 reversed his decision: TE, 107; Ward, Germany 1815-1890, ii, 301; Freidjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany 1859-1866, 248.

  269 “I am not ready”: BGE, 129; Guedalla. The Second Empire, 358.

  269 Footmen: Margutti, The Emperor Francis Joseph and His Times, 173.

  269 halberds: Ibid., 28.

  269 “No breach”: Ibid., 168; Eugen Ketterl, The Emperor Francis Joseph I: An Intimate Study, trans. M. Ostheide (Boston: Stratford, 1930), 47.

  269 “What do you mean”: Margutti, The Emperor Francis Joseph and His Times, 38.

  269 “You can take it”: Ibid., 34.

  269 every military review: Ibid., 41.

  269 “Wekerele”: Ibid., 42.

  270 the neat hand: Ibid., 49.

  270 regulated: Ibid., 33.

  270 to inspect the table: Ketterl, The Emperor Francis Joseph I, 45.

  270 looked for his reflection: Ibid.

  270 disturbing: Freidjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany 1859-1866, 237; compare Rumbold, Francis Joseph and His Times, 290.

  270 a telegram from Feldherr: Freidjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany 1859-1866, 237.

  270 dining gardens of the Prater: Ibid., 252.

  270 The music of Strauss: Ibid.

  270 “Does not such scum”: Ibid.

  270 terror: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, July 17, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7.

  270 “gloom”: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, July 11, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7; John Lothrop Motley to Seward, July 17, 1866, SD NARA

  270 When the Kaiser drove: Freidjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany 1859-1866, 252.

  270 “Long live”: Ibid.

  270 Wiener Abendpost: Ibid., 251.

  270 Zelinka: Ibid., 258.

  271 “trenches were”: Ibid., 258.

  271 The Prussian Second Army: Joseph A. Wright to Seward, June 12, 1866, SD NARA M44/ROLL 13.

  271 The railway: Joseph A. Wright to Seward, June 8, 1866, SD NARA M44/ROLL 13.

  271 First Army: Joseph A. Wright to Seward, June 12, 1866, SD NARA M44/ROLL 13.

  271 The population: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, July 24, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7.

  271 Foreign nationals: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, July 18, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7.

  271 Steamships in the Danube: Freidjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany 1859-1866, 258.

  271 gates of the city: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, July 17, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7.

  271 the Marchfeld: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, July 24, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7.

  271 Pressburg: Ibid.

  271 “sickening expectation”: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, July 11, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7.

  271 “It makes me sick”: Bismarck, “Gespräche während der Schlacht von Königgrätz,” July 3, 1866, Gesammelten Werke, vii, 136.

  271 the telegram: Ward, Germany 1815-1890, ii, 302.

  271 “I will be revenged”: BMS, 85.

  272 The longer the war continued: Freidjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany 1859-1866, 270.

  272 He accepted: Ward, Germany 1815-1890, ii, 305.

  272 “go on to”: Craig, The Battle of Könnigrätz, 169.

  272 “carried away”: Crankshaw, Bismarck, 217

  272 The other powers: Gedanken, ii, 51; Ward, Germany 1815-1890, ii, 312-13.

  272 obstinate: Gedanken, ii, 45-46.

  272 Bismarck replied: Gedanken, ii, 46.

  272 The wounding of Austria: Gedanken, ii, 37, 44.

  272 His nerves: Gedanken, ii, 43.

  272 relieved of his duties: Gedanken, ii, 43-44.

  272 join his regiment: Gedanken, ii, 47.

  273 weeping: Gedanken, ii, 43.

  273 fall out the window: Gedanken, ii, 47.

  273 Crown Prince Friedrich: Ibid. Bismarck’s account of his conflict with the King and the generals has been criticized by scholars; but there is reason to believe that, if it is in places open to question, it is in its broad outlines true—See B, 211.

  273 The terms: john Lothrop Motley to Seward, August 1, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7.

  273 the greatest part of Schleswig: (1) A small portion; of northern Schleswig was retained by Denmark pursuant to the 1864 Treaty of Vienna. (2) Pursuant to the terms of the 1866 settlement, the inhabitants of upper Schleswig were to vote on the question of union with Prussia or with Denmark. The plebiscite did not take place until 1920—NCMH, xiv, Atlas, ed. H. C. Darby and Harold Fullard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 143.

  273 four million Germans: Loftus, The Diplomatic Reminiscences of Lord Augustus Loftus, P. C., G. C. B., i, 94.

  273 Frankfurt: BGE, 134-35.

  273 thirty million florins: On the amount actually extracted from Frankfurt, see Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: The World’s Banker, 1849-1999, 152, and Fritz Stern, Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire, 90-91.

  273 “Surely”: Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, The Court of the Tuileries 1852-1870 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1912), 299.

  273 Prussian superstate: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, July 17, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7; John Lothrop Motley to Seward, July 24, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7; Joseph A. Wright to Seward, July 26, 1866, SD NARA M44/ROLL 13.

  273 salvation of Europe: Metternich made the prediction to Lord Loftus—Loftus, The Diplomatic Reminiscences of Lord Augustus Loftus, P. C., G. C. B., i, 69.

  273 “Each weakening”: Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Race 1812-1822, 59.

  273 “In 1866”: William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960), 95.

  273 Prussian Germany: Joseph Roth, “Clemenceau,” in Roth, Report from a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France, 1925-1939, trans. Michael Hoffmann (New York: W W. Norton, 2004), 261.

  274 “a matter of detail”: Fletcher, The Mission of Vincent Benedetti to Berlin 1864-1870, 99.

  274 But he agreed to ask: Freidjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany 1859-1866, 281.

  274 Count Benedetti: Fletcher, The Mission of Vincent Benedetti to Berlin 1864-1870, 109; Ward, Germany 1815-1890, ii, 314; Busch, Bismarck: Some Secret Pages from His History, i, 448.

  274 “Louis shall”: B, 208.

  274 But the crafty Junker: Freidjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany 1859-1866, 281-82.

  274 German civil war: Bismarck was at once the Abraham Lincoln and the Jefferson Davis of the German civil war. Like Lincoln, he sought to unify a nation; like Davis, he sought to withdraw his own region from one federal system (the Austrian-dominated German Confederation)and bring it within the fold of a new one (the North
German Confederation, afterwards the German Reich)—Carl N. Degler, “The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification: The Problem of Comparison,” ORTW, 55.

  274 refused to push it: Bismarck in 1866 attained to Clausewitz’s strategic ideal: “A prince or general who knows exactly how to organize his War according to his object and means, who does neither too little nor too much, gives by that the greatest proof of his genius…. It is the exact fulfillment of silent suppositions, it is the noiseless harmony of the whole action which we should admire, and which only makes itself known in the total result”—Clausewitz, On War, 242.

  274 The purest type: On the contrast between Bismarck’s “practicable aims” and Caesarenwahnsin, see G. P. Gooch, “Bismarck’s Legacy,” FA, XXX (1952), reprinted in Otto von Bismarck: A Historical Assessment, ed. Theodore S. Hamerow (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1966), 97.

  274 “hour of fate”: TE, 110.

  274 “seemed so utterly”: TE, 110-11.

  275 “My soul”: TE, 111-12.

  275 Public opinion: TE, 111; Ward, Germany 1815-1890, ii, 315.

  275 “painted force”: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, July 17, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7. Motley’s allusion is to Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis.

  275 “hatched from a cannon ball”: Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York: Bonanza, 1982), 7.

  275 national industry: Mirabeau said: “La guerre est l’industrie nationale de la Prusse.”

  275 Richelieu: Kissinger, Diplomacy, 112, 116-17.

  275 “ces maudits”: Treitschke, The Fire-Test of the North German Confederation, 21.

  275 “moral shock”: TE, 111.

  275 He could neither walk: BGE, 129.

  275 At Vichy, he and Drouyn: Freidjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany 1859-1866, 297

  275 Mainz: Loftus, The Diplomatic Reminiscences of Lord Augustus Loftus, RC., G. C. B., i, 96; Ward, Germany 1815-1890, ii, 315-16; Freidjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany 1859-1866, 295.

  275 Archduchess Charlotte: Cunningham, Mexico and the Foreign Policy of Napoleon III, 189.

  275 Cuirassiers: Vizetelly, The Court of the Tuileries 1852-1870, 332.

  275 belonged to Marie-Antoinette: Ibid., 330.

  275 withdraw the French expeditionary force: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, May 15, 1866, SD NARA T157/ROLL 7.

  276 He published: Headlam, Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire, 279; Freidjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany 1859-1866, 296-97.