Now as in 1861 the King began to think about Bismarck and in April 1862 he was summoned from St Petersburg to Berlin for consultations. Bismarck wrote to tell Roon that he would soon be in Berlin to discuss a transfer either to Paris or London.92 A few days later he wrote to one of his former staff in Frankfurt that he was still not certain about his next post and must go to Berlin to find out. ‘So I travel without knowing where’, and must sell his Russian furniture and possessions at short notice quite unnecessarily, a certain way to lose a great deal of money.93 When he reached Berlin, he found a characteristic situation: the King could not make up his mind. As he wrote to Johanna on 17 May 1862, ‘our future is as uncertain as ever. Berlin has moved to centre stage [a ministerial post—JS]. I do nothing for and nothing against but will drink myself silly when I have my accreditation for Paris in my pocket.’94 We know by now that Bismarck always told Johanna that he had shunned the post he most wanted and it is clear from other sources that Bismarck had been hard at his palace intrigues to become Minister-President. In May 1862, Roon recorded in his notes that ‘Bismarck had been received several times in long audiences by the King. With several ministers he had long discussions and went every day to the Ministry of War. The initiated believed that his appointment to the Ministry must be expected directly.’95
In the midst of the ministerial crisis, on 21 May 1862, Roon’s friend Clement Theodor Perthes wrote a very significant assessment of Bismarck on the eve of his possible appointment to high or the highest office:
Bismarck-Schönhausen has great moral courage. A decisive spirit expresses itself in the energetic tone of his voice in all his speeches. He can sweep people along with him. He has no previous political training and lacks a thorough political education … He has a series of contradictions in his character. His wife, a Puttkamer by birth, is a strict Lutheran, related to Thadden-Trieglaff and very respectful of him. Bismarck inclines to a determined Lutheranism too but is irresponsible. There is an absent-mindedness in him and he can easily be stirred by sympathies and antipathies … He is thoroughly honest and straight but his policies can be immoral. By nature he has an unforgiving, vengeful tendency, which his religious sensibility and nobility of character keep under control.96
Perthes catches in this short sketch the deep dualism in Bismarck and the powerful contradictions in his nature. I would doubt that ‘thoroughly honest and straight’ ever applied to Bismarck. We know from his own accounts that he always lied to his parents and we have seen him lie regularly to Johanna, nor do I see any evidence that his Christianity had the slightest restraining effect on his vengefulness. Von Below showed us how little Christian love the heart of Bismarck contained. But Perthes foreshadowed the internal struggle that marked Bismarck’s years in power very accurately. Contemporaries intuit aspects of character which subsequent observers may well overlook.
By 23 May 1862, Bismarck could tell his wife that it would be Paris to which he would be sent,
but the shadow still remains in the background. I was almost caught by the cabinet so I will get away as quickly as I can … perhaps they will find another Minister-President as soon as I am out of sight.97
Two days later he wrote to his wife and brother that ‘everybody here is sworn to keep me here’ and that if he goes to Paris, it will be for a short time only.98 By 30 May he had arrived in Paris and wrote to Roon on 2 June 1862 to say that ‘I have arrived here safely and live like a rat in an empty barn.’ He hoped that the King would find another Minister-President and insisted that he would not accept a position of Minister without Portfolio because
the position is impractical: to have nothing to say and to have to bear everything, to stink about in everything without being asked and to be chewed up by everyone where one has something really to say.99
Roon replied two days later that ‘I took the occasion yesterday in influential quarters to raise the minister-president question and found the same leaning toward you and the same indecision. Who can help here? And how will this end?’100 Roon described in graphic detail the impossible situation in the new Landtag which had assembled for the first time on 19 May 1862. The only majority for a government would put the Democrats in control and that remained unthinkable. ‘Under these conditions, so says my logic, the present government might as well remain in office.’101 And Bismarck replied a few days later. ‘Rest assured that I undertake no counter-moves and manoeuvres … I am not lifting a finger.’102
By late June, Roon had become desperate. He expressed it in a passionate outburst to his friend:
More courage! More energetic activity abroad and at home! More action must be brought into this Ifflandish family drama. For that you are irreplaceable … how is it possible that Prussia will not go under?—And nonetheless, we must fight to the last drop of blood. Can that happen with a knife with a blade and which has no grip? Now you are off to London, Vichy, Trouville, I don’t know where and when you will get this letter …103
Indeed, as Roon wrote, Bismarck had arrived in London, where he remained until 4 July. It was during this visit that Bismarck met Benjamin Disraeli, at the home of the Russian Ambassador Brunnow. Disraeli, novelist, dandy, brilliant speaker, was the only contemporary of Bismarck’s who could match him in wit and political agility. This was the first occasion that these two remarkable men met. In those years, Disraeli, who had already served as leader of the House of Commons and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1852 government under Lord Derby, was now going through a long period in opposition. He had in the period out of office established his authority over the Conservative Party which would make him Prime Minister by 1868. Disraeli recorded Bismarck’s statement of his political intentions, which he declared in his astonishingly frank way:
I shall soon be compelled to undertake the conduct of the Prussian government. My first care will be to reorganize the army, with or without, the help of the Landtag … As soon as the army shall have been brought into such a condition as to inspire respect, I shall seize the first best pretext to declare war against Austria, dissolve the German Diet, subdue the minor states and give national unity to Germany under Prussian leadership. I have come here to say this to the Queen’s ministers.
On the way home, Disraeli accompanied Friedrich, Count Vitzthum von Eckstädt, the Austrian envoy to his residence. As they parted, Disraeli said to Vitzthum: ‘Take care of that man; he means what he says.’ And he did.104
On 5 July, Bismarck got back to Paris and found Roon’s various letters waiting. He reported briefly on his impressions of London. ‘Just back from London where they know more about China and Turkey than about Prussia … If I am going to live here longer, so I must definitely settle down with wife and horses and servants. I don’t know any longer what and where to have my lunch …’105 And to his wife he wrote that the ambassador’s house in Paris was ‘awful’ and made some suggestions on how to make it more habitable.106 His own plan for his future was typically Bismarckian, as he explained to Roon in a letter of 15 July: ‘I will not put pressure on the King by lying at anchor in Berlin and will not go home because I fear that on the journey through Berlin I shall be nailed to the guest house for an uncertain length of time …’
Roon too needed a holiday. Just before leaving Berlin, he wrote a long account of his present political position to his friend and confidante, Perthes:
I am getting determined and poisonous enemies who are a bit frightened of me and warm friends who like to honour my weakness a little. In certain high circles I am la bête and in others I am a pis-aller, the trusty last nail in the structure. In view of this importance of mine now grown beyond my capacities I feel the need in moments of quiet for my amusement to study the histories of Strafford and Latour, both noble counts, who like me had the passion to enlist themselves for the cause of their sovereigns, although one difference among others is that mine serves a better cause than theirs. As a result the prophecy, which I announced myself years ago ‘that I would die by the neck’ has acquired also anoth
er significance.107
In fact, Roon, as he got older, suffered increasingly from asthma and by the end he could have been said to have ‘died by the neck’.
Bismarck went off on holiday by himself to southern France. From 27 to 29 July 1862 he was in Bordeaux, then on to San Sebastian by 1 August. On 4 August he arrived at Biarritz where, as he wrote to Johanna, he could see from his hotel, ‘the charming view of the blue sea, which drives its white foam between wonderful cliffs towards the light house’.108 He joined the Prince and Princess Orloff for the next fortnight of sea, sun, and walks. The Orloffs were the grandest of Russian grand nobility. Prince Nikolaus, handsome and charming, had been crippled during the Crimean War, lost an eye, and had his arm shattered. His wife, a Princess Trubetskoy, came from an even grander and much richer family. She was 22 when she met Bismarck, about the age that Marie von Thadden had been when Bismarck first met her. There seems little doubt that Bismarck fell in love with the Princess and in the same way as he had with Marie, a forbidden love of a younger woman who was married to another man. They took walks together, bathed, lay in the sun, exchanged books, and Bismarck recovered his joy in life. As he wrote to Johanna,
next to me the most charming of all women, whom you would certainly love if you knew her better, a bit of Marie von Thadden, a bit of Nadi, but original for herself, funny, clever and charming … when you two come together, you will forgive me that I go into such raptures … I am ludicrously healthy and so happy, as I can be far from my loved ones.109
He wrote to his sister in the same tones and confessed ‘you know how these things occasionally hit me, without doing any harm to Johanna.’110 One wonders what Johanna must have felt when Bismarck compared Katharina to Marie.
What Katharina felt we do not know. Her grandson, who published a collection of letters between his grandmother and Bismarck in the midst of the Second World War, tried to maintain the proprieties and suggested that it was all quite harmless. Bismarck wrote to her as ‘Catty’ and she to him as ‘Uncle’, and he was, after all, twenty-five years older than she. My guess is that she was flattered, fascinated by the magnetism and brilliance of the man, but never remotely in love with him in return. Bismarck left the idyllic surroundings in Biarritz but the correspondence continued over the coming years, the most intense and stressful of Bismarck’s life. They came to an abrupt and—for Bismarck—painful end three years later, when Bismarck now Minister-President of Prussia, tried to recapture the rapture of 1862 by taking his family to the Hotel L’Europe in Biarritz in late September of 1865. He had written to his ‘Catty’ to tell her that he intended to be there. When they arrived, it rained the whole time. Catty never appeared and left no notice. She had forgotten her promise and she and her husband had decided to take a holiday in England. On 3 October 1865 she wrote to apologize. ‘Dear Uncle, What will you say to me now? I have been a bad niece, for I have broken my word to you. This time, alas, we must renounce our dear Biarritz …’111 It took Bismarck two weeks to answer and when he did, the bitterness could not be concealed. It begins formally
Dear Catharine,
It is true that you played me a trick which goes well beyond the privileges of a ‘méchante enfant’, since it was entirely adult and grown up bad manners … You would have done me a great service if you had informed me of the change in your plans … That is the reason I wanted to await the departure of an acquaintance to write to tell you freely the entire mischief [English in the original—JS] which you caused by your silence … Although it was very painful to me to see how quickly the poor uncle has been forgotten even in situations where a small sign of life would have meant a great deal, I have now gone too far along my road of life and have now too little chance …112
The letter breaks off at this point and is allegedly missing. My guess is that Prince Orloff censored the next few sentences because they were too revealing. There is more than enough in the text to show how deeply hurt Bismarck must have been. A man of 50 in love with a woman half his age may look ridiculous but the pain of rejection, if anything, can be more acute. This yearning for the love of a beautiful woman forms part of the portrait of the great Bismarck and not an insignificant one.
On the way back to Paris in September 1862, in Toulouse, Bismarck found a long letter from Roon dated 31 August, in which he set out the present situation and his hopes for an immediate Bismarck ministry.
My dear B! You will more or less be able to guess why I have not answered you before. I hoped and always hoped for a decision or even for a situation which must bring an acute solution … I shall assume your agreement and will counsel that you be named temporarily Minister-President without portfolio, something I have so far avoided. There is no other way! If you absolutely reject this, disavow me or order me to be silent. I have a private audience with the Gentleman on the 7th … You have time to object … The internal catastrophe will not happen now but in the Spring and by then you have to be there.113
On 12 September Bismarck replied from Toulouse that his present situation had become intolerable. His possessions were scattered all over Europe and much of them would freeze in St Petersburg if he still had no idea where to send them before winter set in. He had reached the point where he would accept anything if it put an end to the uncertainty. ‘If you secure me this certainty or any other certainty, I will paint angels’ wings on your picture.’114
On 17 September 1862 Roon made a conciliatory speech in the Landtag. The government had never in any way speculated on that which had come to be called a ‘conflict’ but on the contrary they really wanted to achieve an agreement over the outstanding questions.115 In his memoirs Bismarck wrote:
In Paris I received the following telegram, the signature of which had been agreed upon:
‘Berlin: le 18 Septembre.
Periculum in mora, Dépêchez-vous.
L’oncle de Maurice,
HENNING.’116
This formula, as we have seen, had been used in Roon’s previous attempt to hoist Bismarck into office and it produced its effect. On 22 September 1862 Roon went to Babelsberg to report that the Landtag by a vote of 308 to 11 had approved the amended budget for 1862 but had rejected by 273 to 68 the entire army reform as part of the budget. Resignation letters had already been submitted by Hohenlohe, Heydt, and Bernstorff. The King asked for Roon’s advice. Roon: ‘Your Majesty, summon Bismarck.’ King: ‘He will not want it and now he will not take it on. Besides he is not here and nothing can be discussed with him.’ Roon: ‘He is here. He will accept your Majesty’s command willingly.’117 Bismarck had arrived in Berlin on 20 September.118 This is his account of what happened next. He was
summoned to the Crown Prince. To his question as to my view of the situation, I could only give a very cautious answer, because I had read no German papers during the last few weeks … The impression which the fact of my audience had made was at once discernible from Roon’s statement that the King had said to him, referring to me: ‘He is no good either; you see he has already been to see my son.’ The bearing of this remark was not at once comprehensible to me, because I did not know that the King, having conceived the idea of abdication, assumed that I either knew or suspected it, and had therefore tried to place myself favourably with his successor.119
In spite of the King’s suspicions, he invited Bismarck to an audience. Here is Bismarck’s account of the occasion:
I was received at Babelsberg on September 22, and the situation only became clear to me when his Majesty defined it in some such words as these: ‘I will not reign if I cannot do it in such a fashion as I can be answerable to God, my conscience, and my subjects. But I cannot do that if I am to rule according to the will of the present majority in parliament, and I can no longer find any ministers prepared to conduct my government without subjecting themselves and me to the parliamentary majority. I have therefore resolved to lay down my crown, and have already sketched out the proclamation of my abdication, based on the motives to which I have referred.’
The King showed me the document in his own handwriting lying on the table, whether already signed or not I do not know. His Majesty concluded by repeating that he could not govern without suitable ministers.
I replied that his Majesty had been acquainted ever since May with my readiness to enter the ministry; I was certain that Roon would remain with me on his side, and I did not doubt that we should succeed in completing the cabinet, supposing other members should feel themselves compelled to resign on account of my admission. After a good deal of consideration and discussion, the King asked me whether I was prepared as minister to advocate the reorganization of the army, and when I assented he asked me further whether I would do so in opposition to the majority in parliament and its resolutions. When I asserted my willingness, he finally declared, ‘Then it is my duty, with your help, to attempt to continue the battle, and I shall not abdicate.’ I do not know whether he destroyed the document, which was lying on the table, or whether he preserved it in rei memoriam.120
The decision to appoint Bismarck ensured that King William would have trouble at home. The Crown Princess recorded that the Queen would be desperately unhappy. In a diary entry of 23 September 1862, she wrote,121 ‘Poor Mama! How the appointment of her arch-enemy will pain her.’ As early as July, Queen Augusta had made her position absolutely clear.
As the envoy to the Bundestag Herr v. B always filled those governments friendly to Prussia with mistrust and affected those houses hostile to Prussia with political views which did not correspond to the position of Prussia in Germany but to its status as a threatening great power.122
Bismarck: A Life Page 24