Forge of Empires

Home > Other > Forge of Empires > Page 64
Forge of Empires Page 64

by Michael Knox Beran


  329 Dumas: Bismarck developed “a consuming passion for the novels of Dumas”—BMS, 135-36.

  329 Eugène Sue: The philosophy of Michael Bakunin’s Catechism of a Revolutionist, Edmund Wilson observed, drew on the inspiration of the virtuous avengers of the oppressed portrayed by Dumas père, Schiller, and Eugène Sue. Bakunin managed, Wilson wrote, “to fuse into a single ideal the romantic attitudes of [Sue’s] Rodolphe, [Schiller’s] Karl Moor, [Dumas’s] Monte Cristo and Macaire”—Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1940), 276.

  329 Nicholas Chernysheusky: MR 301.

  329 They read the Gospels: MR, 322.

  329 Marx and Lasalle: MR, 305.

  329 In a little room: MR, 274-75.

  329 willing to suffer: MR, 275, 278, 283-85.

  330 sour: MR, 276.

  330 undress uniform: Busch, Bismarck: Some Secret Pages from His History, i, 53, 78.

  330 cup of tea: Except where otherwise noted, the account in this section of Bismarck’s experiences while traveling with the army is drawn from Moritz Busch, Bismarck: Some Secret Pages from His History, i, 53-78.

  331 “Let me play”: Whitman, Personal Reminiscences of Prince Bismarck, 93.

  331 “My temperament”: BMS, 178.

  331 The French weapon: Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War, 52.

  331 “squandering”: Otto Friedrich, Blood and Iron: From Bismarck to Hitler, the von Moltke Family’s Impact on German History (New York: HarperPerennial, 1996), 169.

  331 new steel guns: Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War, 57-58.

  331 imperturbably calm: George Bancroft to Hamilton Fish, August 2, 1870, SD NARA M44/ROLL 16.

  331 had not such iron nerves: Abeken, Bismarck’s Pen, 349.

  332 “quickens his clearness”: George Bancroft to Hamilton Fish, August 2, 1870, SD NARA M44/ROLL 16.

  332 “love of fighting”: Gedanken, ii, 92.

  332 “dry”: Gedanken, ii, 92.

  332 “Negative Capability”: Keats to George and Thomas Keats, December 21, 1817, in The Letters of John Keats, ed. Maurice Buxton Forman (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), p. 71. Fritz Stern drew attention to the applicability of Keats’s dictum to Bismarck’s character in Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire, 49.

  332 “a very moderate”: Sidney Whitman, Personal Reminiscences of Prince Bismarck (New York: D. Appleton, 1903), 85.

  332 deny himself even doubt: Bismarck would perhaps have liked to have been able to deny himself doubt. “If I had to choose the form in which I would prefer to live again,” he once said, “I am not so sure that I should not like to be ant.” The ant, he observed, knew only “perfect subordination, discipline, and order”; it did not know doubt—Sidney Whitman, Personal Reminiscences of Prince Bismarck (New York: D. Appleton, 1903), 334-35.

  332 the state of feeling: E. B. Washburne to Hamilton Fish, August 8, 1870, SD NARA M34/ROLL T-70.

  332 had not known such a day: Ibid.

  332 rain was falling: Ibid.; “The War,” The Times, Tuesday, August 9, 1870, 7.

  332 Parisians stood about: E. B. Washburne to Hamilton Fish, August 8, 1870, SD NARA M34/ROLL T-70.

  332 unfortunate Ollivier: E. B. Washburne to Hamilton Fish, August 12, 1870, SD NARA M34/ROLL T-70.

  332 read his words: Ibid.

  332 “The country has been”: Ibid.

  332 fierce gesticulations: The Times, Tuesday, July 5, 1870, 5.

  332 temper: “The Spanish Difficulty,” The Times, Saturday, July 9, 1870, 12; E. B. Washburne to Hamilton Fish, August 12, 1870, SD NARA M34/ROLL T-70.

  333 “Come down”: E. B. Washburne to Hamilton Fish, August 12, 1870, SD NARA M34/ROLL T-70.

  333 The old man pursued: In this account of Lee’s journey to Lexington I adopt the conjectures of Freeman, who having sifted the evidence thought it likely that Lee wore his gray uniform, and that he was refused hospitality on the day he reached the crest of the Blue Ridge—REL, iv, 226-27.

  333 “I consider”: REL, iv, 258.

  334 “We have no”: REL, iv, 278.

  334 “I have”: REL, iv, 296.

  334 “I find it so hard”: REL, iv, 297.

  334 prejudices of his age: It is no less painful to find Walt Whitman speaking in a similar vein. See David S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography (New York: Vintage, 1996), 469-74.

  335 “Teach him”: REL, iv, 505.

  335 “Doctor”: REL, iv, 206.

  335 “We failed”: REL, iv, 402.

  335 “Misfortune”: REL, iv, 464.

  335 “to visualize”: REL, iv, 170-71.

  335 “My interest”: REL, iv, 345.

  335 The heavy cavalry: Guedalla, The Second Empire, 420.

  336 the Sun King: Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England, WLM, iii, 572-73.

  336 Marshal Bazaine: Ordre Général, Armée du Rhin, August 12, 1870, Bazaine Dossier, AA, 6yd 62; Décret Impériale, August 12, 1870, Bazaine Dossier, AA, 6yd 62.

  337 “absolutely stupefying”: The Times, Friday, August 26, 1870, 7.

  337 Châlons: “Emperor at Châlons,” The Times, Thursday, August 18, 1870, 7.

  337 insulted his name: Alistair Home, The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-1871 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1966), 47.

  337 “I seem to have abdicated”: Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870-1871 (London: Routledge, 2001), 185; McMillan, Napoleon III, 163.

  338 “never reach”: Emile Zola, The Downfall, trans. W. M. Sloane (New York: P. F. Collier, 1902), 54; see also TE, 190.

  338 Makeup had been: McMillan, Napoleon III, 163.

  338 Once: TE, 200.

  339 at Metz: Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, 270.

  339 “seemed as if it”: Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 26.

  339 “earth trembled”: Rüdiger Safranski, Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography, trans. Shelley Frisch (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 68.

  339 “sees everywhere”: “Here,” Nietzsche said, “when the danger to [the Greek’s] will is greatest, art approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing”—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1967), 59-60 (emphasis in original); compare Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, 270.

  339 “would never dream”: Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, 270.

  339 nervous breakdown: Ibid., 222.

  339 He traveled: The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1983), 104.

  340 “godlike selfhood”: He “that is richest in the fullness of life,” Nietzsche said, is the Dionysian man; he that is weakest is the romantic man—Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 328.

  340 “cadaverous perfume”: Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, 270.

  340 did not say yes: Ibid., 271-73.

  340 dancing naked: So his peeping landlady in Turin averred. See Lesley Chamberlain, Nietzsche in Turin (New York: Picador, 1998), 216; Safranski, Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography, 370.

  340 a new mode of myth: Compare Nietzsche’s assessment of the art of Hugo and Wagner—Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 436.

  340 “Zarathustra”: Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, 306.

  340 threw himself: Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 67; Safranski, Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography, 316; Chamberlain, Nietzsche in Turin, 208.

  340 “Hit her in the face”: CP, 53.

  340 “made his way screaming”: CP, 54.

  340 “He was coming from the pub”: Maude, The Life of Tolstoy: The First Fifty years, 258-59.

  341 “relentless”: Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, 274-75.

  341 annihilation: Ibid., 261.r />
  341 segregation of the sick: Ibid., 124.

  341 Dionysian dowry: Ibid., 266.

  341 fraternity boy: Karl Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought, trans. David E. Green (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 303.

  341 “repels and disgusts”: Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 161-62.

  341 “horned-beast”: LRW, iv, 597.

  341 “To think German”: Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, 263.

  341 “I know my fate”: Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, 326.

  341 “The Empress!”: Vizetelly, The Court of the Tuileries, 1852-1870, 44.

  341 her diadem: Ibid., 398.

  341 and she inquired: E. B. Washburne to Hamilton Fish, August 11, 1870, SD NARA M34/ROLL T-70.

  341 “Unfortunately”: Ibid.

  341 Washburne: PMUSG, 117-21; W. E. Woodward, Meet General Grant (New York: Horace Liveright, 1928), 189.

  342 “Yes”: E. B. Washburne to Hamilton Fish, August 11, 1870, SD NARA M34/ROLL T-70.

  342 Cabinet Noir: Vizetelly, The Court of the Tuileries, 1852-1870, 147.

  342 took chloral: Guedalla, The Second Empire, 418.

  342 “kept me”: TE, 193; see also Horne, The Fall of Paris, 49.

  342 Chevreau: TE, 192, 194.

  342 There she learned: Guedalla, The Second Empire, 428.

  342 “No”: TE, 194-95.

  342 “Why didn’t”: TE, 195.

  343 fell upon her knees: Ibid.

  343 “Déchéance! Déchéance!”: Guedalla, The Second Empire, 428.

  343 “Vive la République!”: Vizetelly, The Court of the Tuileries, 1852-1870, 406.

  343 “Anything rather”: Ibid., 405.

  343 extinct: E. B. Washburne to Hamilton Fish, September 5, 1870, SD NARA M34/ROLL T-70.

  343 proclaimed a Republic: Ibid.

  343 “Go, go”: Vizetelly, The Court of the Tuileries, 1852-1870, 407.

  343 “Her Majesty”: Ibid.

  344 A few faithful: TE, 197.

  344 Salon Bleu: Vizetelly, The Court of the Tuileries, 1852-1870, 160.

  344 Ominous sounds: Horne, The Fall of Paris, 57.

  344 the Louvre: Ibid., 58.

  344 hackney cab: TE, 208.

  31. Vinum Daemonum

  345 But he could not rid himself: Unless otherwise indicated, the quotations in this section are taken from Tolstoy’s book, A Confession, which has been reprinted many times.

  346 “I was literally”: Aylmer Maude, The Life of Tolstoy: Later Years (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1910), 5.

  346 “a kind man”: Ibid., 66-67.

  346 “steppes of Kansas”: Maude, The Life of Tolstoy: First Fifty Years, 397.

  346 “made me believe”: Maude, The Life of Tolstoy: Later years, 94.

  346 “The priests”: Maude, The Life of Tolstoy: First Fifty years, 343.

  347 a heavy burden of debt: Zakharova, “Autocracy and the Reforms of 1861-1871 in Russia: Choosing Paths of Development,” RGR, 31; Boris Mironov, “The Russian Peasant Commune After the Reforms of the 1860s,” SR, vol. 44, no. 3 (Autumn 1985), 466.

  347 “more liberal”: Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime, 167; see also Daniel Field, “The Year of Jubilee,” RGR, 52-53.

  347 repressive atmosphere: MR, 311.

  348 “What then”: Maude, The Life of Tolstoy: Later Years, 238-83.

  348 348 But Tolstoy rejected: Ibid., 9, 70.

  348 “was a Christ”: Albert A. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians (Cleveland: Collier, 1961), 251.

  348 “It is absurd”: Maude, The Life of Tolstoy: First Fifty years, 346.

  348 The sun was setting: Abeken, Bismarck’s Pen, 290.

  348 “I am God’s”: Wetzel, A Duel of Giants, 15.

  349 not “a clod”: Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War, 253.

  349 “exclusive right”: SS, 194 (emphasis added).

  349 Moltke maintained: SS, 223.

  350 “cap the volcano”: SS, 227.

  350 “draw the fangs”: SS, 199.

  350 “gets more buzzardlike”: SS, 194.

  350 Confronted with: B, 274.

  350 “What some day”: SS, 190.

  351 on short rations: The Times, Monday, August 22, 1870, 6.

  351 no salt: Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War, 241.

  351 Bazaine retired: Guedalla, The Two Marshals, 180. The story of Bazaine’s games of billiards is perhaps apocryphal—Ibid., 189-90.

  351 so precarious: Busch, Bismarck: Some Secret Pages from His History, i, 132.

  351 The Chancellor conceived: TE, 236-39.

  352 “Let us all”: Winston Spencer Churchill, The Second World War, 6 vols. (Boston: Houghton Miffllin, 1948-53), iv, 647. Churchill there describes the fall of Admiral Darlan.

  352 At the end of October: État des Services, May 11, 1872, Bazaine Dossier, AA, 6yd 62; “The Fall of Metz,” The Times, Saturday, October 29, 1870, 5.

  352 pacing the garden: Busch, Bismarck: Some Secret Pages from His History, i, 172.

  352 “almost certainly”: Stern, Gold and Iron, 146.

  352 fall and sensual: Vizetelly, My Days of Adventure, available on the Internet; “The New French Government, “The Times, Tuesday, September 6, 1870, 8.

  353 “Mademoiselle, voulez-vous”: Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War, 286.

  353 “at a draught”: Busch, Bismarck: Some Secret Pages from His History, i, 227.

  353 “And their treacherous”: Ibid., i, 167. Otto Friedrich supposes that the words were stimulated “by too much Burgundy”; and Gerhard Ritter notes that Bismarck’s most Draconian utterances were often made “over a glass of wine”—Friedrich, Blood and Iron, 190; SS, 222. Busch states that the remark in question was made at teatime, but this scarcely proves the sobriety of the speaker. Not wine but brandy—which Bismarck carried with him in a flask—was the most likely culprit, if alcohol was indeed the inspiration of his words.

  353 “Count Bismarck”: Lord Fitzmaurice, The Life of Granville George Leveson Gower, Second Earl Granville, K. G., ii, 41 (emphasis added).

  353 a deep impression: Busch, Bismarck: Some Secret Pages from His History, i, 167; see also SS, 222.

  353 total war: Some historians argue that the term “total war” does not apply to the American Civil War. See Mark E. Neely, Jr., “Was the Civil War a Total War?” ORTW, 50-51.

  353 “The proper strategy”: Busch, Bismarck: Some Secret Pages from His History, i, 128.

  353 “You know how”: Carl N. Degler, “The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification: The Problem of Comparison,” ORTW, 68-69.

  353 Bismarck had at first: Busch, Bismarck: Some Secret Pages from His History, i, 80.

  353 “The more Frenchmen”: Ibid., i, 167.

  354 prepare public opinion: Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870-1871 (London: Routledge, 2001), 353.

  354 “shot and stabbed”: Friedrich, Blood and Iron, 190.

  354 “femme entretenue”: LRW, iv, 272.

  354 “to write to Bismarck”: Ibid.

  354 Richard Hornig: Desmond Chapman-Huston, Ludwig II: The Mad King of Bavaria (New York: Dorset, 1990), 138.

  354 “Sophie got rid of”: Ibid., 137.

  355 “Heaven”: Ferdinand Mayr-Ofen [pseudonym of Otto Zarek], Ludwig II of Bavaria: The Tragedy of an Idealist, trans. Ella Goodman and Paul Sudley (London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1937), 172.

  355 “Only spiritual love”: LRW, iii, 244.

  355 “of all mire”: Chapman-Huston, Ludwig II, 174.

  355 “by the pure and holy”: Ibid., 179.

  355 “holy and pure”: Ibid., 174.

  355 “Accursed”: LRW, iii, 244.

  355 “On the mountains”: Chapman-Huston, Ludwig II, 163.

  355 “Romanticism is disease”: Johann Peter Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe (Leipzig, 1837), Thursday, April 2, 1829.

  355 He would escape: LRW, iv, 290.

  355 He would leave:
LRW, iv, 306; Mayr-Ofen, Ludwig II of Bavaria, 222.

  355 He once confided: Ibid.

  32. “You Have a New World”

  357 The fifth anniversary: For the items of news which absorbed the country on the fifth anniversary of Lincoln’s death, see The New-York Times, Wednesday, April 13, 1870, through Sunday, April 17, 1870.

  357 “notable bad men”: “The Erie Scandal,” The New-York Times, Saturday, April 16, 1870, 4.

  358 “Whig interpretation”: Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (London: G. Bell, 1959).

  358 morally complicated: Crankshaw, Bismarck, 413-14.

  358 proclamation: Proclamation des nuen deutschen kaiserreiches, 18 January 1871.

  358 A tremendous “Hoch”: Abeken, Bismarck’s Pen, 333.

  359 “so cold”: Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War, 282.

  359 the most unhappy: BGE, 182.

  359 territorial title: Foot, “The Origins of the Franco-Prussian War and the Remaking of Germany,” NCMH, x, 601.

  359 refused to shake: B, 288.

  359 Half a million: George Bancroft to Hamilton Fish, September 24, 1870, SD NARA M44/ROLL 16.

  359 Favre: Horne, The Fall of Paris, 241.

  359 Bismarck prevailed: Stig Förster, “The Prussian Triangle of Leadership in the Face of a People’s War: A Reassessment of the Conflict Between Bismarck and Moltke, 1870-71,” ORTW, 139.

  359 At the behest: SS, 224.

  360 “I don’t like”: Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War, 304.

  360 a concession to Moltke: Förster, “The Prussian Triangle of Leadership in the Face of a People’s War,” 134.

  360 Shortly after: E. B. Washburne to Hamilton Fish, March 1, 1871, in Washburne, Franco-German War and Insurrection of the Commune (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1878), 148-49.

  360 asked for a light: Friedrich, Blood and Iron, 206.

  360 “the old and cruel”: BGE, 185.

  360 “Professor Gladstone”: G. P. Gooch, “Bismarck’s Legacy,” Foreign Affairs, XXX (1952), reprinted in Otto von Bismarck: A Historical Assessment, ed. Theodore S. Hamerow (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1966), 99.

  360 “I have”: Gladstone to Lord Granville, December 10, 1870, in Lord Fitzmaurice, The Life of Granville George Leveson Gower, ii, 71.

  361 “represents”: Crankshaw, Bismarck, 304.

 

‹ Prev