276 Belgium?: Freidjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany 1859-1866, 299-300; Headlam, Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire, 281-83.
276 “Bismarck thinks”: Tolstoy to Y. S. Samarin, January 10, 1867, TL, 211.
276 “the blood-letting” … “old jades”: Tolstoy to Y. S. Samarin, January 10, 1867, TL, 211.
277 2nd Panzer Regiment: Anthony Beevor, Stalingrad (London: Penguin, 1999), 17.
277 Riding with them: Hume, “Colonel Heros von Borcke: A Famous Prussian Volunteer in the Confederate States Army,” in Southern Sketches, First Series, no. 2, 16.
277 Order of the Red Eagle: Ibid.
277 (largely ineffective): Geoffrey Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870-1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 61.
277 The crowd hailed: B, 222.
277 captured guns: Loftus, The Diplomatic Reminiscences of Lord Augustus Loftus, P.C., G.C.B., i, 109.
277 “But I have beaten.”: Stern, Gold and Iron, 94.
277 indemnify or pardon: Gedanken, ii, 44, 69-70.
277 ministerial responsibility: Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640-1945, xiv; Michael Foot, “The Origins of the Franco-Prussian War and the Remaking of Germany,” NCMH, x, 579; Stern, Gold and Iron, 93-94.
277 A relic: Gedanken, ii, 67-69; Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640-1945, 174-79. Niall Ferguson rightly observes that Bismarck “abandoned his original commitment to William I that he would assert the monarch’s unqualified control over the military budget; for, although the military budget of the North German Confederation and later the Reich was never voted on annually, it was still voted on periodically”—Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, 150-51. But this was a hollow victory for the free-state liberals, for under the new régime there was neither genuine ministerial responsibility nor effective legislative supervision of the army, which continued to be controlled almost exclusively by the old Prussian military caste. Under the constitution of the Reich, ministers could be dismissed only by the Kaiser, not the legislature; and the lawmakers had no power to initiate legislation. Under Wilhelm II, even the Minister of War was largely a cipher; the army was controlled almost entirely by the sovereign’s military cabinet and the General Staff. In the last phases of World War One, the Reich was virtually a military dictatorship under General Ludendorff—Hans Speier, “Ludendorff: The German Concept of Total War,” in Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, ed. Earle, 308-15.
278 “sacred right”: Joseph A. Wright to Seward, September 3, 1866, SD NARA M44/ROLL 13.
278 “right of the German”: Bismarck, “Sitzung der Kommission des Abgeordnetenhauses,” August 25, 1866, in Die gesammelten Werke, x, 276-77.
278 zu leben: Gedanken, ii, 71.
278 militant: Bismarck’s philosophy of “blood and iron” was influenced by the the romantic theories of Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Justus Möser. It was at the same time an early version of the idea of Lebensraum—living space—which Friedrich Ratzel, Karl Haufshofer, and Adolf Hitler subsequently propounded. In the romantic theory, a nation was not an agglomeration of individuals, of private souls: it was a living organism, an “unanalysable organic whole,” one which, if it were to survive, must feed at times upon the flesh of other nations—See Isaiah Berlin, Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, 10-13, 342-46; Abram L. Harris, “Sombart and German (National) Socialism,” JPE, vol. 50, no. 6 (December 1942), 818-19; Otto Pflanze, “Bismarck and German Nationalism,” AHR, vol. 60, no. 3 (April 1955), 560; George Santayana, Egotism in German Philosophy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916), 68-69.
278 “a national force”: Jacob Burckhardt, History of Greek Culture, trans. Palmer Hilty (New York: Dover, 2002), 161.
278 restrain the military chiefs: “It was the fatal weakness of the German Empire,” Winston Churchill wrote, “that its military leaders, who knew every detail of their profession and nothing outside it, considered themselves, and became, arbiters of the whole policy of the State…. Everything in Germany had been sacrificed to the military view. On every occasion [after the fall of Bismarck] the General Staff had had their way.” This “intense and mighty organism” was “at once the strength and ruin of the German Empire,” for in Germany “there was no one to stand against the General Staff and to bring their will-power and special point of view into harmony with the general salvation of the State”—Winston S. Churchill, Thoughts and Adventures (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 104, 108-09. Bismarck failed to create a system which nurtured future leaders, ones capable of carrying on his policy. “It was the great flaw in Bismarck that he did not parallel Moltke’s officer-corps by a corresponding race of politicians who would identify themselves in feeling with his State and its new tasks, would constantly take up good men from below, and so provide for the continuance of the Bismarck action-pulse forever”—Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West: An Abridged Edition, ed. Helmut Werner and Arthur Helps, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 386. Henry Kissinger points out that Bismarck’s “very success committed Germany to a permanent tour de force. It created conditions that could be dealt with only by extraordinary leaders. Their emergence in turn was thwarted by the colossus who dominated his country for nearly a generation. Bismarck’s tragedy was that he left a heritage of unassimilated greatness…. a great man tends to stunt the emeregence of strong personalities”—Kissinger, “The White Revolutionary: Reflections on Bismarck,” D, vol. 97, no. 3 (Summer 1968), 890, 921.
278 278 “Future years”: SDC, 80-81.
278 “a few stray”: SDC, 81.
278 “the leading actor”: SDC, 310.
278 “a Nationality”: SDC, 314
278 “the peculiar color”: SDC, 69.
279 “The current portraits”: Ibid.
279 “Today, alas”: Paléologue, Roman tragique de l’Empereur Alexandre II, 30-31.
279 He went to Putbus: Gedanken, ii, 76.
279 “When he sits still”: BGE, 142.
Part Three: FREEDOM AND TERROR
26. Towards the Abyss
283 burned towns: MCCW, 796, 800.
283 “This is Sherman’s”: MCCW, 800.
283 “Nature”: MCCW, 800.
283 “There was poverty”: MCCW, 805.
283 in ruins: MCCW, 802-03.
283 the old Colonel: MCCW, 814-15.
283 They had enough: MCCW, 805.
283 Scipio: MCCW, 815.
284 “the habit of all”: MCCW, 809.
284 “There remains”: William Faulkner, Light in August, in Faulkner, Novels, 1930-1935, ed. Joseph Blotner and Noel Polk (New York: Library of America, 1985), 442.
284 “a hundred”: MCCW, 774.
284 Rawlins Lowndes: MCCW, 807.
284 “perfect wreck”: MCCW, 818.
284 “A feeling”: MCCW, 814.
284 “are nights”: MCCW, xli.
284 to go for a walk: LGT, 191-92.
285 “But I don’t need”: LGT, 191.
285 “dear Angel”: S. Konovalov, “The Emperor Alexander II and Princess Ekaterina Dolgorukaya (Yurievskaya): Nine Letters,” Oxford Slavonic Papers (1964), vol. 11, 94ff.
286 curious faraway look: Maurice Paléologue, The Tragic Romance of Alexander II of Russia, trans. Arthur Chambers (London: Hutchinson, 1927), 62.
286 “looks into another”: Robert Blake, Disraeli (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967), 522.
286 “Why”: Paléologue, The Tragic Romance of Alexander II of Russia, 141.
286 the Pan-Slavs: George F. Kennan, The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order: Franco-Russian Relations, 1875-1890 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 32-33.
286 There was a low door: Paléologue, The Tragic Romance of Alexander II of Russia, 41.
286 In Nicholas’s study: Nicholas I had two studies in Winter Palace, one on the ground floor and one on the third floor. Some
scholars believe that the assignations took place in the study on the ground floor—Paléologue, The Tragic Romance of Alexander II of Russia, 41; Walter G. Moss, Russia in the Age of Alexander II, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (London: Anthem Press, 2002), 116.
287 Tsarskoe Selo: Paléologue, The Tragic Romance of Alexander II of Russia, 63.
287 his alternative world: Prince Kroptkin spoke of the Tsar’s “double life”—MR, 244. The pattern is familiar enough. The tsars were constantly falling into the habit of a double life. Ivan the Terrible, for a time, withdrew from Moscow altogether. He later divided his principality into two parts; in the one, the traditional customs and institutions of Muscovy were preserved, while in the other the Tsar created a private fantasy world. In this secondary domain, Ivan acted upon the “hellish inspiration” that seized him in middle life, and was free to delight in blood and in other forms of perversity. The dreamworld of Catherine the Great, though it was milder in nature, was scarcely less fantastic. The story of the horse was a crude simulacrum of a more complicated drama of escape. The Empress feared to undertake a thorough reformation of her Empire; she relaxed the more odious feature of the patrimonial state without, however, doing away with it altogether, and like other tremulous despots she bought off potential enemies with public treasure, lavishing on the more dangerous grandees large grants of land. These corrupt expedients did not satisfy Catherine’s lofty ideals of reason and order, and in an elaborate charade she played the part of Empress-philosophe, drafting make-believe laws for a make-believe Russia. The last of the omnipotent tsars, Josef Stalin, retired for long intervals to his roses and mimosas, as well as to his books, as though he were a private scholar who aspired only to cultivate his mind and his gardens in tranquility, and not a cruel tyrant who sent millions to their deaths—See N. M. Karamzin, Karamzin’s Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia, trans. Richard Pipes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), 112; Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1979), 119, 174; and Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (New York: Knopf, 2004), 65, 74, 93-99, 121, 133-35, 522-23, 542-43, 567-568, 580, 623-24.
287 “Count Shuvalov is out driving”: Blake, Disraeli, 624.
287 “Schu”: Ibid., 647.
287 “prepared one reactionary”: MR, 242.
288 “A couple of bears”: MR, 243-44.
288 Verwundet: LRW, iv, 190. It is not certain whether Nietzsche heard the musical phrase only, or whether he heard the accompanying words also. The music forms part of the third act of Siegfried.
288 Friedrich Nietzsche: Nietzsche had met Wagner once before, in Leipzig; it was on that occasion that the composer extended to him an invitation to visit him at Triebschen.
288 “One thing”: LRW, iii, 510.
288 “the other peoples”: LRW, iv, 39-40.
289 Bayreuth: LRW, iv, 262-63.
289 “Dionysian power”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974), 327-28.
289 “Pater Seraphicus”: LRW, iv, 259.
289 “At that time”: LRW, iv, 356.
289 “contest”: LRW, iv, 192.
289 “made the Meister”: Ibid.
289 “I’d let go”: Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1989), 247 (emphasis in original).
289 “secret work”: Ibid., 254.
289 “heights”: Ibid., 263.
289 reflexive asceticism: Nietzsche described the asceticism of the philosopher as a form of protective coloration: “for the longest time philosophy would not have been possible at all on earth without ascetic wraps and cloaks, without an ascetic self-misunderstanding.” The philosopher was forced to disguise himself as an ascetic priest—a type for which Nietzsche had no sympathy. He expressed the hope that the winged creature would eventually escape from its gloomy caterpillar of asceticism, but outwardly at least was true to the ascetic type—Ibid., 115-16(emphasis in original).
290 “a philosopher and solitary”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1968), 3.
290 the artist knows not: “This seems to me to be almost the norm among fertile artists—nobody knows a child less well than its parents do—and it is true even in the case, to take a tremendous example, of the whole world of Greek art and poetry: it never ‘knew’ what it did”—Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 327. Nietzsche refined the philosophy of Pindar, who said, “Become what you are.” “To become what one is,” Nietzsche said, “one must not have the faintest notion what one is.” Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, 254.
27. Unripe Fruit
291 Count Benedetti: Count Benedetti, Ma Mission en Prusse (Paris: Henri Plon, 1871), 315.
291 still talked: “France and Spain,” The Times, July 8, 1870, 5.
291 Rarely had the peace of Europe: E. B. Washburne to Hamilton Fish, July 19, 1870, SD NARA M34/ROLL T-70; Lord Newton, Lord Lyons: A Record of British Diplomacy, 2 vols. (London: Edward Arnold, 1913), i, 294.
292 La Granja: “News in Brief,” The Times, Tuesday, July 5, 1870, 12.
292 Prince Leopold: “Prince Leopold,” The Times, Monday, July 11, 1870, 10.
292 by a remote affinity: George Bancroft to Hamilton Fish, July 23, 1870, SD NARA M44/ROLL 16.
292 stout and easygoing: George Santayana, Persons and Places: The Background of My Life (New York: Scribner’s, 1944), 77.
292 Don Juan Prim: George Bancroft to Hamilton Fish, July 12, 1870, SD NARA M44/ROLL 16.
292 Portuguese Princess: “Prince Leopold,” The Times, Monday, July 11, 1870, 10.
292 was reluctant: Leopold initially declined the offer of the Crown—Edward Crankshaw, Bismarck (London: Penguin, 1990), 260; see also Bismarck and the Hohenzollern Candidature for the Spanish Throne, ed. Georges Bonnin, trans. Isabella A. Massey (London: Chatto & Windus, 1957), 9, and Robert Howard Lord, The Origins of the War of 1870: New Documents from the German Archives (New York: Russell & Russell, 1966), 18-19. Prince Leopold’s younger brother, Frederick, was also considered for the Spanish throne; but he was averse to the idea.
292 Bernhardi: B, 265; Bismarck and the Hohenzollern Candidature for the Spanish Throne, 19; Lord, The Origins of the War of 1870: New Documents from the German Archives, 17.
292 “reptile funds”: B, 260; BGE, 166.
292 In the last days of June: BGE, 168.
292 tepid approval: Bismarck and the Hohenzollern Candidature for the Spanish Throne, 10.
293 “Had they”: EHA, 937.
293 poison: Office, Adams said, “was more poisonous than priestcraft or pedgagogy in proportion as it held more power … [the] poison was that of the will,—the distortion of sight,—the warping of mind,—the degradation of tissue,—the coarsening of taste,—the narrowing of sympathy to the emotions of a caged rat”—EHA, 1054.
293 “I suppose”: Henry Adams to Henry Cabot Lodge, Nov 15, 1881, in Henry Adams: Selected Letters, ed. Ernest Samuels (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1992), 164-65.
294 expiatory pilgrimage: EHA, 740.
294 “denser, richer”: Henry James, Hawthorne, in James, Literary Criticism: Essays on Literature, American Writers, English Writers, ed. Leon Edel and Mark Wilson (New York: Library of America, 1984), 351.
294 “less a sufferer”: Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1942), 49.
294 “speak out plainly”: Ibid., ix.
294 “exile”: Ibid., 5.
295 “May God”: Stanford Family Collection, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University.
295 “there cannot be”: SDC, 132.
295 “mechanical consolidation”: EHA, 1035.
295 The French Emperor: Thomas W. Evans, The Second French Empire, ed. Edward A. Crane (New York: D. Appleton, 1903), 160.
295 Three days before: Baron Mercier de
Lostende to Gramont, July 3, 1870, Origines Diplomatiques, xxviii, 19; B, 266; Lord, The Origins of the War of 1870, 25-26; BMS, 118.
295 “Le vin”: Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, The Court of the Tuileries, 1852-1870 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1922), 394.
296 Can-Can: Geoffrey Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870-1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)., 26.
296 “constitutional minister”: “France,” The Times, Tuesday, July 5, 1870, 9; Theodore Zeldin, Emile Ollivier and the Liberal Empire of Napoleon III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 1.
296 the state of France: George Bancroft to Hamilton Fish, July 14, 1870, SD NARA M44/ROLL 16.
296 look to America: George Bancroft to Hamilton Fish, July 16, 1870, SD NARA M44/ROLL 16; “The Crops in France,” The Times, Wednesday, July 6, 1870, 10.
296 Bazaine had returned: Etat des Services, May 11, 1872, Bazaine Dossier, AA, 6yd 62.
296 Ollivier arrived: Napoleon III to Ollivier, July 5, 1870, Origines Diplomatiques, xxviii, 36; “France and Spain,” The Times, Friday, July 8, 1870, 5.
296 Ollivier might seem: The Times, Saturday, July 16, 1870, 8; B, 264.
296 The pre-eminent figure: The Times, Saturday, July 16, 1870, 8.
297 the proposed entente: James Wycliffe Headlam, Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899), 319. Napoleon III contemplated also an alliance with Italy; but negotiations with the Cabinet of Florence reached an impasse when questions concerning the temporal powers of the Pope and the status of Rome as a fief of the Church were raised. The Italians wished to see Rome the capital of a united Italy; Louis-Napoleon, whose troops upheld the papal jurisdiction with bayonets, was reluctant to take a step which might cost him the support of his Ultramontane subjects—Michael Foot, “The Origins of the Franco-Prussian War and the Remaking of Germany,” NCMH, x, 600; Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital (New York: Vintage, 1996), 103-04.
297 “imperil the interests”: The Times, Thursday, July 7, 1870, 9, 12.
297 “with your support”: Ibid.; Lord, The Origins of the War of 1870, 42.
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