CHAPTER X.—THE FALL OF THE BISMARCKS
We have come now to a time when the effects of this reasserted English influence began to be apparent throughout Germany. Since his successful tour through the Westphalian strike district, Dr. Hinzpeter had been visibly growing in men’s eyes as the new power behind the throne. Another friend of William’s, Count William Douglas, began also to attract attention. This nobleman, ten years older than the Kaiser, and a capable writer and speaker as well as soldier is a descendant of one of the numerous Scotch cadets of aristocratic families who carried their swords into Continental service when the Stuarts were driven from the British throne. Both in appearance and temperament no one could be more wholly German than Count Douglas is, but his intimacy with William only became marked after the English visit.
Immediately upon his return from England, William delivered a speech at Münster in which he eulogized Hinzpeter as a representative Westphalian, whose splendid principles he had imbibed in his boyhood. During the ensuing autumn and winter the presence of Dr. Hinzpeter at the palace became so much a matter of comment that some of Bismarck’s “reptile” papers began to complain that if the Westphalian was to exert such power he ought to take office so that he could be openly discussed.
Similar attacks were made by the Chancellor’s organs upon Count Douglas, who had written a very complimentary pamphlet about the young Kaiser shortly after his accession, and who now, as an Independent Conservative, was thought to reflect the Kaiser’s own political preferences. Public opinion bracketed Hinzpeter and Douglas together as the active forces at the head of the Waldersee coalition, and we shall see that William himself treated them as such when the time for action came.
New men had gradually supplanted old ones in many important official posts. The gentlest of soft hints had long since (in August of 1888) been borne in by a little bird to the aged Count von Moltke, and he, on the instant, with the perfect dignity and pure gentility of his nature, had responded with a request to be permitted to retire from active labour. His letter, with its quaintly pathetic explanation that “I am no longer able to mount a horse.” was answered with effusion by William, who visited him personally at his residence, and made him President of the National Defence Commission, vice the Emperor Frederic, deceased. Later events rendered it natural to contrast the loyal behaviour of the great soldier with the mutinous and perverse conduct of the statesman whose name is popularly linked with his, and during the last year of his life Moltke existed in a veritable apotheosis of demonstrative imperial affection, which indeed followed his coffin to the grave with such symbols of royal favour as no commoner’s bier had ever before borne in Germany.
Somewhat later the Minister of Marine, General von Caprivi, received a delicate intimation that the Kaiser thought a soldier was out of place in charge of the navy, and he also promptly but gracefully resigned, and accepted the command of an army corps instead with cheerful obedience. It is a great gift to know when and how to get out, and Caprivi did it so amiably and intelligently that the Kaiser made a mental note of him as a good man to rely upon when the time should come.
General Bronsart von Schellendorf similarly resigned the War Ministry. He was a descendant of one of the large colony of Huguenot families which took refuge in Berlin after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes—and it was a strange freak of Fate’s irony which, in 1871, sent him as Colonel out from the German headquarters before Sedan to convey a demand for surrender to the French Emperor. Curiously enough he was succeeded now as Minister of War by another descendant of these exiled French Protestants, General von Verdy du Vernois, the ablest military writer of his generation, a notably clever organizer and a deservedly popular man.
Neither von Verdy nor Waldersee, who succeeded to Moltke’s proud position as Chief of the General Staff, remained long in their new posts. The world had nothing but vague surmises as to the causes of their retirement, and, noting that they still retain the friendly regard of their sovereign, did not dally long with these. Here again the contrast forces itself upon public attention, for these two good soldiers and able administrators neither sought interviews with travelling correspondents in which to vent their grievances, nor inspired spiteful attacks in provincial newspapers against their young chief. They went loyally out of office, as they had entered it, and kept their silence.
Thus throughout the public service, civil and military alike, these changes went forward—the greybeards who had helped to create the Empire on the field or in the council-room, one by one stepping down and out to make room for the new generation—but Bismarck, though becoming more and more isolated, clung resolutely to his place. It was no secret to him that the Kaiser’s principal advisers and friends were keen to throw him out of the Chancellorship; it must have long been apparent to him that the Kaiser was accustoming his mind to thoughts of a Berlin without Bismarck. But the Iron Chancellor had neither the simple dignity of Moltke nor the shrewd suavity of Caprivi. He would not leave until he had been violently thrust forth, and even then he would stand on the doorstep and shout.
The opponents of Bismarck had long been gathering their forces for a grand attack. Their difficulty had been the unwillingness of the Kaiser definitely to give his assent to the overthrow of the great man. Often, in moments of impatience at the autocratic airs assumed by Bismarck and his son, William had seemed on the point of turning down his thumb as a signal for slaughter. But there always would come a realization of how mighty a figure in German history Bismarck truly was—and perhaps, too, some modified reassertion of the tremendous personal influence with which for years the Chancellor had magnetized him. Almost to the end the young man had recurring spasms of subjection to this old ideal of his youth. Even while he was sporting his British ensign in Greek waters, and showing to the whole world how completely the breach between him and English royalty had been healed, he salved his conscience, as it were, by addressing enthusiastic and affectionate despatches to Bismarck from every new stopping-place on those classic shores.
But now, in January of 1890, the long-looked-for opportunity came. The natural term of the Reichstag elected in 1887—the last one chosen for only three years’ service—was on the point of expiration. The anti-Socialist penal laws would lapse in September of 1890 unless renewed either by this dying Reichstag or, without delay, by its successor. Prince Bismarck was, of course, committed to their prompt and emphatic renewal. His enemies—another term for William’s new friends—had secretly been preparing for the defeat of these laws in the Reichstag, and now, in the middle of the month, found that they had secured an absolute majority. They conveyed this fact to the Kaiser, with the obvious corollary that the time had arrived for him to take the popular lead in his Empire, and make an issue on this question with his Chancellor. William saw the point, and reluctantly took the decisive step.
Space permits only the most cursory glance at this parliamentary battlefield, whereon Bismarck had waged so many rough Berserker fights, and which now was to see his complete annihilation.
The Reichstag at Berlin is by no means powerful in the sense that Parliament is in London or Congress in Washington. It is a convention of spectacled professors, country nobles, and professional men desirous of advertisement or the pretence of employment, with a sprinkling of smart financiers and professional politicians who have personal ends to serve. They play at legislation—some seriously, others not—but as a rule what they do and say makes next to no difference whatever. They have not even the power of initiating legislation. That function belongs to the Bundes-rath or Federal Council, which means the Prussian Ministry, which in turn meant Bismarck. His historic conception of law-making was to combine by bribes and threats a sufficient number of the fragmentary parties to constitute a majority, and to use this to pass his measures as far as it would go. Then he would swing around, create a different majority out of other groups, and carry forward another line of legislation. In turn he had been at the head of every important political faction and the enemy of each, and if he was unable to get his way through one combination always managed sooner or later to obtain it by a new shaking-up of the dice.
Parliamentary institutions were not always at this low estate in Prussia. Three hundred years ago the Brandenburg Diet was a strong and influential body, which stoutly held the purse-strings and gave the law to sovereigns. The Hohenzollerns broke it down, first by establishing and fostering Stände, or small local diets, to dispute its power and jurisdiction, and then, in 1652, by the Great Elector boldly putting his mailed heel on it as a nuisance. It still lingered on in a formal, colourless, ineffective fashion until in the time of Frederic William I, when it was contemptuously kicked out of sight. That stalwart despot explained this parting kick by saying: “I am establishing the King’s sovereignty like a rock of bronze;” and, whatever its composition, there the rock stood indubitably in all men’s sight for much more than a century, with neither parliaments to shake its foundations nor powerful ministers to crumble away its sides.
Bismarck had made it a condition of his acceptance of office in 1862 that he would govern Prussia without a Parliament. When the fortune of war and the federation of the states enlarged the scope of his responsibilities to the limits of the new Empire, he proceeded upon the same autocratic lines. There was a greater necessity, it is true, of pretending to defer to the parliamentary idea, but he never dissembled his disgust at this necessity. He bullied the leaders of the opposition factions with such open coarseness, imputing evil and dishonest motives, introducing details of personal life which his spies had gathered, and using all the great powers at his command to insult and injure, that a large proportion of the educated and refined gentlemen of Germany, who should have been its natural political leaders, either declined to enter the Reichstag at all, or withdrew, disheartened and humiliated, after a brief term of service. All this reflected, and brought down in embodied form into our own times, the traditional attitude of the Hohenzollerns toward the poor thing called a Parliament.
It was therefore very much of an anachronism to find, in the year of grace 1890, a Prussian King invoking the aid of a Parliament to help him encompass the overthrow of his Prime Minister.
The situation on January 20th, briefly stated, was this: The Reichstag, consisting of 397 members, had been governed by Bismarck’s “Cartel” combination of 94 National Liberals, 78 Conservatives, and 37 Imperialists, a clear majority of 21. The efforts of the Waldersee party, however, had honeycombed this majority with disaffection, and the National Liberals had been induced to agree that they would not vote for a renewal of the clause giving the Government power to expel obnoxious citizens. On the other hand, the Conservatives promised not to vote for the renewal of the anti-Socialist law at all unless it contained the expulsion clause. Thus, of course, the measure was bound to fall between two stools. This apparent clashing of cross purposes might have been stopped in ten minutes if it had proceeded spontaneously from the two factions themselves. But everybody knew that it had been carefully arranged from above, and that the leader of each party had had an interview with the Kaiser. This affectation of irreconcilable views on the expulsion clause, therefore, deceived no one—least of all Prince Bismarck. He ostentatiously remained at Friedrichsruh until the very last day of the Reichstag; then, indeed, he arrived in Berlin, but did not deign to show himself at either the Chamber or the Schloss.
The National Liberals voted down the expulsion clause on January 23rd. Then the Conservatives, two days later, joined the Clerical, Freisinnige, and Socialist Parties in throwing out the whole measure. Thereupon the dissolution of the Reichstag was immediately announced, and the members proceeded to the Schloss to receive their formal dismissal from the Kaiser. William spoke somewhat more nervously than usual, but was extremely cordial in his manner. He praised the labours of the Reichstag, dwelt upon his desires to improve the condition of the working classes, and said never a word about the defeated Socialist laws. Everybody felt that the imperial reticence and the absence of Bismarck portended big events.
Next week came the first overt movement in the struggle which all Germany now realized that Bismarck was waging for political life itself. He resigned his minor post as Prussian Minister of Commerce, and the place was promptly filled by the appointment of Baron Berlepsch. This selection was felt to be symbolical—because Berlepsch had been Governor of the Rhineland during the strikes, and had managed to preserve order without recourse to violence, and to gain the liking of the working men. To make the meaning of this promotion more clear, the Governor of Westphalia, who had rushed to declare his province in a state of siege when the strike broke out, and had called in soldiers to overawe the miners, was now curtly dismissed from office.
All this signified that the Hinzpeter propaganda of Christian Socialism had at last definitely captured the young Kaiser. Once enlisted, he threw himself with characteristic vehemence of energy into the movement. Events now crowded on each other’s heels.
On February 4th William issued his famous brace of rescripts to Bismarck and to the Minister of Commerce, reciting the woes and perils of German industrial classes, and ordaining negotiations with certain European States for a Labour Conference, “with a view to coming to an understanding about the possibility of complying with the needs and desires of labourers, as manifested by them during the strikes of the last few years and otherwise.”
“I am resolved,” wrote the Emperor, “to lend my hand toward bettering the condition of German working men as far as my solicitude for their welfare is reconcilable with the necessity of enabling German industry to retain its power of competing in the world’s market, and thus securing its own existence and that of its labourers. The dwindling of our native industries through any such loss of their foreign-markets would deprive not only the masters, but the men, of their bread.... The difficulties in the way of improving our working men’s condition have their origin in the stress of international competition, and are only to be surmounted, or lessened, by international agreement between those countries which dominate the world’s market.” Hence, he had decided upon summoning an International Labour Conference.
On the evening of the day on which William thus astonished Germany and Europe, he was the principal guest at a dinner given by Bismarck in his palatial residence in the Wilhelmstrasse, and it was noted that he took special pleasure in talking with Dr. Miquel, Chief Burgomaster of Frankfort, to whom he spoke with zeal and at length upon his desire to promote the welfare and protect the natural rights of the labouring classes. Court gossip was swift to mark Miquel as a coming man, and to draw deductions of its own from the story that Bismarck had, even as the host of an emperor, seemed preoccupied and depressed.
A fortnight of unexampled uncertainty, of contradictory guesses and paradoxical rumours, now kept Berlin, and all Germany for that matter, in anxious suspense. That Bismarck had been confronted with a crisis was evident enough. Day after day he was seen to be holding prolonged conferences with the young Emperor, and the wildest surmises as to the character of these interviews obtained currency. There were stories of stormy scenes, of excited imperial dictation and angry ministerial resistance, which had no value whatever as contributions to the sum of popular information, but which were everywhere eagerly discussed. The weight of Berlin opinion inclined toward the theory that Bismarck would in the end submit. He had never in his life shown any disposition to make sacrifices for political consistency, and it was assumed that, once his personal objections were overcome, he would not at all mind adapting his political position to the new order of things. This view was, of course, based upon the idea that the Kaiser really desired to retain Bismarck in office; the loosest German imagination did not conceive the actual truth: to wit, that the Chancellor’s retirement had been decided upon, and was the one end at which all these mystifying moves and counter-moves aimed.
The preparations for the Conference went on, meanwhile. A new Council of State for Prussia was founded, to have charge of the general social and fiscal reforms contemplated. The public noted that chief among the names gazetted were those of Dr. Hinzpeter and Count Douglas, and these were given such associates as Herr Krupp, of Essen; Prince Pless, a great Silesian mine-owner; Baron von Stumm, another large employer; and Baron von Hune, a leading Catholic and important landed proprietor. These were new strong names, altogether out of the old Bismarckian official rut, and their significance was emphasized by the Emperor’s selection of Dr. Miquel as reporter of the Council. People recognized that events were being shaped at last from the royal palace instead of the Chancellery.
In the very middle of this period of political suspense came the elections for the new Reichstag. Never before had Germany seen such a lamb-like and sweet-tempered electoral campaign. Three years before Bismarck had literally moved heaven and earth to wrest a majority from the ballot-boxes, for he had induced the Vatican to formally recommend his nominees to Catholic voters, and had gone far beyond the bounds of diplomatic safety in his famous “sturm und drang” speech, threatening nothing less than war if a hostile Reichstag should be elected. But this time he preserved an obstinate and ominous silence. Nothing could tempt him to say a word in favour of any candidate.
Under the double influence of the Kaiser’s enthusiastic new Socialism and the Chancellor’s grim seclusion, the German electorate knocked the old “Cartel” parties into splinters. The polling results amazed everybody. Of the “Cartel” factions, the National Liberals fell from 94 to 39, the Conservatives from 78 to 66, and the Imperialists from 37 to 20. On the other hand, the Freisinnigen rose from 35 to 80, and the Socialists from 11 to 37. Equally interesting was the fact that for the first time the German imperial idea had made an impression on the Alsacian mind, and from sending a solid delegation of 15 dissentients, the two conquered provinces now elected 5 who accepted the situation.
Allusion has heretofore been made to Bismarck’s recent declaration that the Kaiser took up the whole Social-reform policy solely as a political dodge. If we could accept this theory, it would be of distinct interest to know what William thought of his bargain, after the returns were all in. The stupendous triumph of the dreaded Socialists and hated Freisinnigen must have indeed been a bitter mouthful to the proud young Hohenzollern. But he swallowed it manfully, and the results have been the reverse of harmful. No parliamentary session of the year, anywhere in the world, was more businesslike, dignified, and patriotic than that of the new Reichstag at Berlin.
But at the outset this political earthquake threw William into a great state of excitement. One might almost say that the electrical disturbances which ushered in the convulsion affected the young man’s mind, for he did perhaps his most eccentric action on election day. While the voters of Berlin were going to the polls at noon, on this 20th of February, the Kaiser suddenly “alarmed” the entire garrison of the capital, and sent the whole surprised force, cavalry, artillery, baggage trains and foot, rattling and scurrying through the streets of the capital at their utmost speed. It turned out to be nothing more serious than an abrupt freak of the Kaiser to utilize the fine weather for a drill on the Tempelhof. At least that was the explanation given: but the spectacle produced a sinister impression at the time, and there are still those who believe it to have been intended to influence and overawe the voters.
No doubt consciousness of the gravity of the quarrel with Bismarck, which the Kaiser and his new friends saw now must come swiftly to a point, contributed with the unexpected election results to temporarily unsettle William’s nerves. For a week or so, during this momentous period, there were actual fears lest his mental balance should break down under the strain. Fortunately the excited tension relaxed itself in good time, and there has since been no recurrence of the symptoms which then caused genuine alarm.
It was at the culmination of this unsettled period that William made his celebrated speech to the Brandenburg Diet. The occasion was the session dinner, March 5th, and those present noted that the Kaiser’s manner was unwontedly distrait and abstracted. His words curiously reflected his mood—half poetic, half pugilistic. He began by a tender reference to the way in which the Brandenburgers had through evil and joyous days alike stood at the back of the Hohenzollerns. With a gloomy sigh he added: “It is in the hour of need that one comes to know his true friends.” After an abrupt reference to a joke which had recently been made about him as the reisende, or Travelling, Kaiser, and a pedagogic injunction to his hearers to by all means travel as much in foreign lands as they could, he drifted into a lofty and beautiful description of the spiritualizing effects his recent sea voyages had had upon him. Standing alone on the great deck at night, he said, communing with the vast starry firmament, he had been able to look beyond politics and to realize the magnitude and tremendous responsibilities of the position he held. He had returned with a new and more exalted resolve to rule mercifully and well under God’s providence, and to benefit all his people. Then there came a sudden anti-climax to this graceful and captivating rhetoric. “All who will assist me in my great task,” he called out, throwing a lion’s glance over the tables, “I shall heartily welcome; but those who attempt to oppose me I will dash to pieces!”
The reporters were so frightened at these menacing words that they toned them down in their accounts of the speech; but the Kaiser with his own hand restored the original expression in the report of the official Reichsanzeiger. Naturally the phrase created a painful sensation throughout Germany. Everybody leaped to the conclusion that the threat was levelled at the Socialist and Radical leaders in particular, and the new Reichstag in general. But within a fortnight the astonished world learned that it was Bismarck who was to be dashed to pieces.
The time has not yet arrived for a detailed account of the circumstances surrounding Bismarck’s actual fall. We have been able to trace clearly enough the progression of causes and changes which led up to that fall. Of the event itself a great deal has been printed, but extremely little is known. The reason for this is simple. The Kaiser and his present friends are possessed with the rigid Prussian military sense of the duty of absolute silence about official secrets. Prince Bismarck has insisted vehemently upon the necessity of this quality in other people, yet has not always distinguished himself by respecting its demands. In his surprising latter-day garrulity, it is easy to believe that he would tell the story about which the others preserve so strict a reticence, if it were not that the story involves his own cruel personal humiliation.
Throughout the trying crisis William never lost sight of the proud and historic reputation of the man with whom he had to deal, or of the great personal reverence and affection which he, as a young King, owed to this giant among European statesmen, this most illustrious of the servants of his dynasty, this true creator of the new German Empire. Every step of the Emperor during the whole affair is marked with delicate courtesy and the most painstaking anxiety to avoid giving the doomed Chancellor unnecessary pain. Although it was entirely settled in the more intimate palace counsels at the end of 1889 that the Prince was to be retired from office, William sent him the following New Year’s greeting, than which nothing could be more cordial or kindly:
“In view of the impending change from one year to another, I send you, dear Prince, my heartiest and warmest congratulations. I look back on the expiring year, in which it was vouchsafed to us not only to preserve to our dear Fatherland external peace, but also to strengthen the pledges of its maintenance, with sincere gratitude to God. It is to me also a matter for deep satisfaction that, with the trusty aid of the Reichstag, we have secured the law establishing old age and indigence assurance, and thus taken a considerable forward step toward the realization of that solicitude for the welfare of the working classes which I have so wholly at heart. I know well how large a share of this success is due to your self-sacrificing and creative energy, and I pray God that He may for many more years grant me the benefit of your approved and trusted counsel in my difficult and responsible post as ruler.
“Wilhelm.
“Berlin, Dec. 31,1889.”
A few days later came the death of the venerable Empress Augusta, and William wrote again to Bismarck at Friedrichsruh, affectionately enjoining him not to endanger his health by trying to make the winter journey to Berlin for the funeral.
This friendly attitude was, to the Kaiser’s mind, entirely compatible with the decision that a new Chancellor was needed to carry on the enlightened programme of the new reign. But Bismarck stubbornly refused to recognize this. When his obstinacy made peremptory measures necessary, he had even the bad taste to instance these recent amiable messages as proofs of the duplicity with which he had been treated.
The best authenticated story in Berlin, of all the legion grown up about this historic episode, is to the effect that one afternoon, in the course of an interview between Kaiser and Chancellor on the approaching Labour Conference, Bismarck was incautious enough to use the old familiar threat of resignation with which he had been wont to terrify and subdue the first Kaiser. Young William said nothing, but two or three hours later an imperial aide-de-camp appeared at the Foreign Office in Wilhelmstrasse with the statement that he had come for that resignation. Bismarck, flushed and shaken, sent an evasive reply. The aide-de-camp came again, with a reiterated demand. Bismarck stammered out that he had not had the time to write it as yet, but that he would himself wait upon the Emperor with it the next day. He made this visit to the Schloss, prepared to urge with all the powers at his command, in the stress of a personal appeal, that the demand be reconsidered. But at the palace he was met with that equivalent for the housemaid’s transparent “Not at home” which is used in the halls of kings; and on his return to Wilhelmstrasse he found the inexorable aide-de-camp once more waiting for the resignation. Then only, in bitter mortification and wrath, did Bismarck write out his own official death-warrant, which a few days later was to be followed by his son Herbert’s resignation.
The widely circulated report that, in his extremity, the Chancellor appealed for aid to the Empress Frederic, seems to be apocryphal. It is certain, however, that he did, during the twenty-four hours in which that stolidly-waiting aide-de-camp darkened his life, make strenuous efforts in other almost equally unlikely and hostile quarters to save himself. They availed nothing save to reveal in some dim fashion to his racked and despairing mind how deeply and implacably he was hated by the officials and magnates all about him. But to the general public, astonished and bewildered at this sudden necessity to imagine a Germany without Bismarck, the glamour about his name was still dazzling. When it came their turn to act, they made the fallen Chancellor’s departure from Berlin a great popular demonstration. It is well that they did so. With all his faults, Bismarck was the chief German of his generation, and the spectacle of cold-blooded desertion which the official and journalistic classes of Berlin presented in their attitude toward him upon the instant of his tumble, offended human nature. Nothing could be more true than that he himself was responsible for this attitude. It was the only possible harvest to be expected from his sowing. He had done his best to make all preferment and power in Germany depend upon callous treachery and the calculation of self-interest. He had contemptuously thrust ideals and generous aspirations out of the domain of practical politics. He had systematically accustomed the German mind to the rule of force and cunning, to the savage crushing of political opponents, and the shameless use of slander and scandal as political weapons. That this official mind of his own moulding, inured to sacrificial horrors, familiar with the spectacle of statesmen destroyed and eminent politicians flung headlong from the “rock of bronze,” should have viewed his own prodigious downward crash without pity, was not at all unnatural. But for the credit of Germany with the outside world it is fortunate that the Berliners, as a whole, responded to the pathetic side of the episode.
William’s emotional nature was peculiarly stirred by the separation, when it finally came. The Reichsanzeiger of March 20th—two days after the final act in the comedy of the unresigned resignation—contained the imperial message granting Prince Bismarck permission to retire. The phraseology of the document was excessively eulogistic of the passing statesman, and no hint of differing opinions was allowed to appear. Bismarck was created Duke of Lauenburg, and given the rank of a Field Marshal.
More eloquent by far, however, than any rhetorical professions of grief in his public proclamations, were the Emperor’s statements to personal friends of the distress he suffered at seeing Bismarck depart. The ordeal was rendered none the less painful by the fact that it had been foreseen for months, or by the consideration that it was really unavoidable. On the 22nd William wrote to an intimate, in response to a message of sympathy:
“Many thanks for your kindly letter. I have, indeed, gone through bitter experiences, and have passed many painful hours. My heart is as sorrowful as if I had again lost my grandfather. But it is so ordered for me by God, and it must be borne, even if I should sink under the burden. The post of officer of the watch on the Ship of State has devolved upon me. Her course remains the same. So now full steam ahead!”