Two Chancellors: Prince Gortchakof and Prince Bismarck

by Julian Klaczko

THE MISSIONS OF PRINCE GORTCHAKOF AND THE DÉBUTS OF M. DE BISMARCK.

The good old Plutarch, in commencing his long and charming series of Parallels with the account of the lives of Theseus and Romulus, experiences some difficulty in justifying such an association of the two heroes; he can find in them only very vague traits of resemblance, and these by no means striking. "To strength they both joined great powers of mind, both carried off women by violence, and the one as well as the other was not exempted from domestic miseries; indeed, toward the end of their lives they both aroused the hatred of their fellow-citizens."[1] Without doubt a writer of our day, wishing to give a comparative study of the two most prominent figures of contemporaneous politics, the chancellors of Russia and Germany, would only mislead in giving prominence to such points of resemblance. The association in this case is justifiable, for it suggests itself to every contemplative mind, to whoever has meditated on the events of the last fifteen or twenty years. The modern Plutarch who would undertake to write the lives of these two illustrious men, could, as it seems to us, easily resist the temptation of searching too deeply for, or forcing analogies in a subject where similarities abound and are so striking. Perhaps he would rather have to guard against necessary and tiresome repetitions in presence of a commonalty of ideas and of a harmony of action such as history has rarely known in two ministers guiding two different empires.

It is not, the reader may be well assured, a work of this sort which the author has undertaken in the following pages. We have only given the mere sketch of a picture which, to be even in a slight degree full and satisfactory, would have required much larger proportions, and above all a much more skillful hand. Without pretending to present here new and unpublished materials, or indeed to reunite all those which are already known, we have simply chosen a few, and tried to assort and arrange them so as to afford a better perspective. We have been obliged to renounce the wish to give to the different parts an equality of design and depth of coloring, and we have not even bound ourselves to follow a very regular and methodical course in this narration. Before a subject so vast and presenting so many shades and shadows, we have thought that it was permissible, that it was indeed occasionally useful, to vary the points of observation and to present it in different aspects.

I.

Like the Odoïefski, the Obolenski, the Dolgorouki, and many aristocratic families on the banks of the Moscova and the Neva, the Gortchakof also pride themselves on their descent from the Rourik; to speak more plainly, they claim to trace their origin from one of the sons of Michael, Grand Duke of Tchernigof, put to death towards the middle of the thirteenth century by the Mongolians of Batou Khan, since proclaimed martyr of the faith, exalted, indeed, among the saints of the Orthodox Church. One meets, nevertheless, with but few illustrious bearers of the name of Gortchakof in the gloomy and exciting annals of old Russia. In the epoch which preceded the accession of the Romanof, there lived a certain Peter Ivanovitch Gortchakof, the unfortunate commander of Smolenski, who surrendered this celebrated place to the Poles after two years of energetic and desperate resistance. He was taken to Warsaw, and there, in 1611, with the Czar Vassili, the two princes Schouyski, Sèhine, and a number of powerful boiars, he was forced to take part in the famous "cortége of captives" which the grand constable Zolkiweski presented one day—honorificentissime, says the chronicle of the times—to the king and the senate of the most serene republic. It was only in the second half of the last century, under the reign of Catherine II., that a Prince Ivan Gortchakof succeeded (thanks especially to his marriage with a sister of the opulent and courageous Souvorof) in again raising the glory of his old house, which has never since ceased to distinguish itself in the different branches of state service, principally in the career of arms. The France of to-day has preserved the memory of two Princes Gortchakof, two old soldiers of Borodino who distinguished themselves during the war of the Orient. The one commanded the left wing of the Russian troops at the battles of Alma and Inkermann; the other, Prince Michael, was the generalissimo of the armies of the czar in the Crimea, and rendered his name imperishable by the heroic defense of Sebastopol. Afterwards he governed the Kingdom of Poland as lieutenant of the emperor, and became therefore (strange example of the vicissitudes of history!) the supreme representative of a harsh, foreign government in this same city of Warsaw, where one of his ancestors had formerly figured in a memorable procession of the vanquished. However, if this circumstance ever occurred to Prince Michael, he drew therefrom none but suggestions worthy of his character; he governed the conquered country with moderation and benevolence, and left behind him the fame of a man as just in civil administration as he was intrepid in war.

The cousin of Prince Michael and present chancellor of the empire, Alexander Mikhaïlovitch Gortchakof, was born in 1798, and was educated in that lyceum of Zarkoe-Zeloe which has its distinct place in the pedagogic history of Russia. Founded by Catherine II. as a model educational establishment for the aristocratic youth of the empire, the lyceum shone with great éclat under the reign of Alexander I., although the Rollin and the Pestalozzi would certainly have had more than one reservation to make with respect to a college which only moulded its scholars for the world, and thought the vigorous classical studies a burden too heavy to carry into the ethereal spheres of pleasures and elegance. Almost all the professors of the establishment were foreigners, men marked with the stamp of the eighteenth century, acute minds, slightly frivolous, and above all disciples of Voltaire. The most eminent among them, the professor of French literature, he who initiated the future chancellor into the language of Voltaire, of which he so well knew the subtleties, was a Genevese, who, under the inoffensive name of M. de Boudry, concealed another of a terrible significance. M. de Boudry was the brother of Marat, that "sinistre conventionnel."[2] The Empress Catherine, in order "to end a scandal," had forced this patronymic change on M. Marat, without, however, succeeding in making him change his opinions, which always remained "Jacobin." He died in final impenitence, cherishing an openly avowed admiration for the friend of the people, unjustly calumniated. From this education of very doubtful value, the young Gortchakof succeeded in extracting a strong and useful substance. He left Zarkoe-Zeloe with various and solid acquirements; a surprising matter, he was even a good Latinist, and this last fact has remained a cause of amazement to his fellow-scholars as well as to the generations who followed. It is certain, however, that the chancellor could quote Horace with about the same appropriateness as Louis XVIII. of sainted memory. One of his best known dispatches ingeniously borrows from Suetonius an eloquent passage on the distinction to be established between liberty and anarchy.

Next to his classical attainments, that part of his youth which the chancellor loves especially to recall is that he was the fellow-scholar, and that he remained the friend, of the great national poet, Pouchkine, a fact more to his honor inasmuch as this friendship has brought with it embarrassments at certain times. When, by the order of the Emperor Alexander I., in consequence of an offensive ode, which one is not now known, the young singer of "Rouslan" and "Loudmila" was confined in an obscure village in the far interior of Russia, only two of his former comrades at the lyceum had the courage to go to see and offer him their condolence, and one of these intrepid youths was Prince Gortchakof. One finds in the work of Pouchkine some verses written in a lively and playful style, and which only derive their interest from the name of Alexander Mikhaïlovitch, to whom they are addressed. In one of these juvenile pieces, Pouchkine wishes his friend "to have Cupid as an inseparable companion as far as the banks of the Styx, and to go to sleep on the bosom of Helen in the very boat of Charon." Thoughtless wishes, which human malignity would surely not have failed to carry out in the end, if very fortunately the chancellor had not been able to preserve his old days from every deceitful seduction, and to avoid even the appearance of an arctic Ruy Gomez. The inspiration of the poet was happier another time, when, speaking of their different vocations, he predicts for Alexander Mikhaïlovitch a splendid destiny, and calls him "the beloved child of fortune."

Fortune was nevertheless slow to recognize its child, and to give him the lot which he merited. Having early entered the department of foreign affairs, being attached to the suite of M. de Nesselrode at the time of the Congresses of Laybach and Verona, Prince Gortchakof had already long passed that period which Dante calls the mezzo del cammin di vita; and even when very near his fiftieth year, was still only a minister plenipotentiary at a little court in Germany. A fortunate event at last came to commend him to the kindness of his master, and to render him distinguished in those diplomatic circles, in those regions "free from tears, but filled with sighs," which in the language of diplomacy are called the secondary posts.

In a moment of paternal weakness, the Emperor Nicholas had one day consented to the union of his daughter, the Grand Duchess Marie, with the Duke of Leuchtenberg, "the son of a Beauharnais, a Catholic officer in the service of the King of Bavaria," as was whispered with sadness in the intimate circles of the winter palace. Nicholas was not the man to retract his given word, but not the less did he feel the sting of what his surrounding court did not cease to call a mésalliance; and the bitterness increased when none of the foreign members of the imperial family came to take part in the brilliant festivities which preceded or followed the nuptial ceremony. Ill-luck would have it that soon afterwards a first cousin of the new imperial son-in-law and daughter of the ex-King Jerome married a Russian grown rich in trade, a prince in the valley of the Arno but scarcely a gentleman on the banks of the Neva,—a disagreeable accident, and which, according to the amazed courtiers, made the autocrat of all the Russias the relation of one of his subjects! It became necessary to efface all these unpleasant impressions, and to take, by a brilliant alliance, an incontestable revenge for so many vexations. It was hoped for a moment to be able to marry the Grand Duchess Alexandra to an arch-duke of Austria, but it was necessary to fall back on a prince of Darmstadt; for the Grand Duchess Olga, the most beautiful and the most beloved of the emperor's daughters, had been chosen by the only prince royal then unengaged, the presumptive heir to the throne of Würtemberg, of the old and illustrious house of Suabia.

The plan was not easily executed. The good Suabian people had little liking for it. A Russian marriage made it tremble for its constitutional liberties; and what was a graver matter, the old King William of Würtemberg, a good, liberal sovereign, but obstinate in all things, showed himself rather reluctant, and at his own pleasure retarded the negotiation. Other objections came from other sides still; but the Russian minister plenipotentiary at Stuttgart, the old fellow-scholar of Pouchkine, knew how to overcome them all with consummate skill. By aid of art and address, he was able to establish the Grand Duchess Olga in the royal family of Würtemberg. The joy of the Emperor Nicholas was great and unreserved, and the winter palace sang the panegyrics of the wonderful diplomat. After such a success, Prince Gortchakof could well demand to be promoted in his career, having approached nearer by several strides towards that embassy of Vienna which was considered as the supreme goal of ambition. He did nothing of this sort, however, and showed an admirable patience,—the patience of the patriarch Jacob with Laban, son of Nahor. To the four years which he had already passed at Stuttgart, Alexander Mikhaïlovitch declared himself ready to add another term more prolonged if it were necessary. He promised the empress-mother to remain indefinitely by the side of the Grand Duchess Olga, to aid her as a guide and counselor in a foreign country and in the midst of surroundings entirely new to her. Barren as the soil might be, he did not despair of growing there under this ray of beauty and of grace, which came directly from the great boreal sun; and in truth he kept this post at Stuttgart for eight more long years. Tenues grandia conamur!

However, any point of observation is good for one who understands how to adjust his glass and question the stars. The resident minister at Stuttgart had extensive information and found means of informing his government of many things quite outside the limits of the horizon of the little kingdom of Würtemberg. Soon the year 1848 came with its terrible catastrophes, with its great revolutionary earthquakes which added to the experience of the most experienced, which lightened with a sudden glimmer the ignorant depths of human nature, and, in the words of Milton, lightened the darkness. Such a lesson of history was not without profit, one can well believe, to the former scholar of Zarkoe-Zeloe. The salons and the cabinets for a long time had had no secrets from him; he now knew those of the forum and of the cross-roads. The vicinity of Frankfort, seat of the famous parliament, permitted him to study closely and fully the German agitation of this memorable epoch; he understood beforehand the phases, by turns naïve, burlesque, and odious, and was able to predict in good time the unfailing miscarriage of a revolution, the subdued billows of which foamed for a day even in the streets of Stuttgart, ordinarily so peaceful.

It was in the month of April, 1849. Preceding by twenty years the great work of 1870, the parliament of Frankfort had just formed a German Empire to the exclusion of Austria, and offered the crown to the King of Prussia, Frederick William IV. The King of Prussia hesitated, and ended by declining; the other German princes were still less willing to assent to a decree which implied their abdication; but this was by no means the plan of the German demagogy. It suddenly fell enthusiastically in love with this constitution, which on the very eve before it had denounced as reactionary, fatal to the liberties of the people, and designed to impose by force the Prussian vassalage decreed at Frankfort on different sovereigns of Germany. In Würtemberg, the chamber of deputies voted a pressing, imperious address in order to draw from the king the recognition of the Emperor Frederick William IV. The monarch replied by a refusal. The riot thundered on the public square, and the members of the court were forced to seek refuge at Ludwigsburg, fleeing from an enraged capital. "I will not submit to the House of Hohenzollern," the old King William of Würtemberg had said to the deputation of the chamber. "I owe it to my people and to myself. It is not for myself that I speak thus; I have but very few years to live. My duty to my country, my House, my family, forces this course of action on me." Alexander Mikhaïlovitch, touched by these agitating scenes, by this pathetic protestation of the father-in-law of Olga, "for the House, for the family of Würtemberg," assuredly had then but little expectation that one day, as Chancellor of the Russian Empire, he would become the most useful auxiliary, the firmest aid of an aggressive, audacious policy, destined to realize in every particular the plan of the rioters of Stuttgart, and to make Queen Olga the vassal of Hohenzollern.

This was, however, nothing but the noisy prologue of a drama yet far distant, and the year 1850 could indeed rejoice at seeing disappear in Germany the very last traces of an agitation which had done nothing but astonish Europe, instead of illuminating and warning it. Towards the end of this year, 1850, the German Confederacy was established anew under the terms of the ancient treaty of Vienna. The Bundestag again commenced its peaceable deliberations, and Prince Gortchakof was quite naturally appointed to represent the Russian Government at the Diet of Frankfort. Alexander Mikhaïlovitch henceforth had his marked place in a great centre of political affairs, where the personal merit of the minister borrowed a peculiar éclat from the extraordinary fortune which the latest events had created for his august master. Russian influence, at all times very considerable with the ruling houses of Germany, had grown prodigiously, having reached its zenith, one will remember, after the disorders of February. Alone remaining sheltered from the revolutionary tempest which had swept over almost all the States of the Continent, the empire of the czars appeared to be at that time the firmest stronghold of the principles of order and conservatism. "Humiliate yourselves, nations, God is with us!" said the Emperor Nicholas in a celebrated proclamation; and without being too much offended at language which made God in a manner the accessory to a great human boast, monarchical Europe had only acclamations for a prince who, after all, worked with a remarkable disinterestedness for the reëstablishment of the legitimate authorities, and for the maintenance of the equilibrium of the world.

In fact, it is just to acknowledge that in these troubled years of 1848-50, the autocrat of the North used his influence, as also his sword, only to strengthen the tottering thrones and to enforce respect for the treaties. He effectively protected Denmark, towards which from this epoch the rapacious hand of Germany was stretched, and he was the most ardent in calling a meeting of the Powers, which ended by snatching from the Germans the coveted prey. He interposed directly in Hungary, and with his military forces helped put down a formidable insurrection there, which had shaken to its foundations the ancient empire of Hapsburg, undermined at the same time by intestine troubles and an aggressive war which the kingdom of Piedmont had twice stirred up against it. Little favoring by his principles and interests this united Germany, "of which the first thought was a thought of unjust extension, the first cry a cry of war,"[3] he later used all his power in bringing about the reëstablishment pure and simple, of the German Confederation on the same basis as prior to 1848. The bonds of relationship and of friendship which united him to the court of Berlin were never strong enough to make him abandon for a single instant the cause of the sovereignty of princes, and of the independence of the States; and in spite of the sincere affection which he bore "his brother-in-law, the poet," he neither spared the King of Prussia, Frederick William IV., the evacuation of the Duchies, nor the hard conditions of Olmütz. Defender of European right on the Eider and the Main, of monarchical right on the Theiss and Danube, peacemaker for Germany, and, so to say, wholesale dealer in justice for Europe, Nicholas had at this moment a true greatness, an immense prestige, well merited on the whole, and which allowed no reflection on the agents charged with representing away from home a policy of which no one dared contest the immovable firmness and the perfect justice.

The Emperor Nicholas, in accrediting Prince Gortchakof to the German Confederation, in an autograph letter dated 11th November, 1850, recognized in the reunion of the Diet of Frankfort "a pledge for the maintenance of the general peace," and thus characterized by an able and judicious act, the honorable and salutary mission of this Diet in ordering matters created by the treaties of 1815. However legitimate the grievances of the liberal Germans were against the internal policy of the Bund[4] and its tendencies, little favorable to the development of the constitutional régime, yet one cannot deny that, according to the European point of view, and with regard to the equilibrium and the general peace of the world, this was a marvelous conception, well fitted to preserve the independence of the States and to hinder any deep perturbation in the bosom of the Christian family. The chimerical and mercantile minds of the times, the leading men of Manchester and the rich publicists, with at least "one idea a day," imagined that this was the moment to declare "war to war," to force a universal disarmament, to abolish military slavery; and to this effect they convoked noisy congresses of peace in different parts of the world. They had, indeed, in a day of naïveté, convoked one at Frankfort, without suspecting that by their side, and in this very Bundestag of such modest appearance, had sat for a long time a true and permanent congress of peace,—a congress which would do as much good as possible, and which, moreover, would have the advantage of not being ridiculous.

Placed in the very centre of Europe, separating by its large and immovable body the great military powers which form the border, so to speak, of our old continent,—a power neutral by necessity and almost by law over those great plains, where in former times the destinies of empires were decided,—the German Confederation formed an ensemble of States sufficiently coherent and compact to repulse any shock from abroad, yet not strong enough to become aggressive itself and to menace the security of its neighbors. Many years later, and when chancellor of the empire, Prince Gortchakof, in a celebrated circular, rendered homage to this beneficial combination of the Bund, "a combination purely and exclusively defensive," which permitted the localization of a war, become inevitable, "instead of generalizing it and of giving to the struggle a character and proportions beyond all human calculation, and which in any case would pile up ruins and cause torrents of blood to flow."[5]

In truth, if in this long half century which intervened between the Congress of Vienna and the ill-omened battle of Sadowa, the frontiers of the States have changed so little in spite of so many and so great changes in their political complexion; if the revolution of July, the campaign of Belgium, and even the wars of the Crimea and Italy have been carried on without noticeably disturbing the balance of the nations, or injuring them in their independence, we are specially indebted to this Bundestag so unappreciated, which by its very existence, by its position, and the wheelwork of its completed mechanism, prevented any conflict from becoming a general conflagration. It is doubtful whether the cause of humanity and civilization, or the very cause which the chancellor of Russia more specially represents with such facility and éclat, have gained in any considerable degree in seeing this old "combination" replaced in our time by another, more simple, it is true, but, perhaps, also much less calculated to restore confidence.

While acquitting himself zealously of the duties of his office in connection with the Germanic Confederation, Alexander Mikhaïlovitch continued to occupy the post of minister plenipotentiary at Stuttgart. He held it to be a matter of honor to fulfill to the end his confidential and intimate mission by the side of the Grand Duchess Olga. He divided his time between the free city on the Main, the seat of the Bund, and the little capital on the banks of the Neckar, where a warm and kind interest always greeted him. At Frankfort he took especial pleasure in the society of his Prussian colleague, a young lieutenant in the Landwehr,[6] an entire novice in the diplomatic career, although marked out for such a prodigious destiny. There had been settled here for many years a great Russian celebrity, a poet, who was at the same time an influential courtier, and who could not be overlooked by a diplomat with a love for intellectual enjoyments, and who had been a school-fellow of Pouchkine. The good and mild Vassili Joukofski had certainly none of the genius of Pouchkine, nor his independent and ardent character. More properly a facile versifier and an ingenious translator than a creative and original mind, with a nature rather effeminate and contemplative, the formerly renowned author of "Ondine" had early made his peace with the official society which the despotic will of Nicholas had created, and had always sunned himself in th e rays of imperial favor.

During his long and pleasant career as poet at the court, he had not been without dignities and honors. He, however, had a mission much more important and honorable; he was charged with directing the education of the heir-presumptive, Alexander, the present emperor, and of his brother the Grand Duke Constantine. Joukofski devoted himself to this task with intelligence and ardor, and retained the affection of his two august pupils to the end of his life. A proof of this fact is the correspondence which ensued and which he still maintained with them while at Frankfort. These letters were published quite recently. After having finished the education of the grand dukes, he made a voyage of pleasure in Germany. At Düsseldorf he found a companion for life, much younger than himself, but sharing all his tastes, even his charming weaknesses. He finally selected a home on the banks of the Main, at Frankfort.

Thus, as it happens to more than one of his compatriots, Joukofski, living entirely in a foreign country, and being indeed manifestly unwilling to return to his native land, considered the Occident miserably sunken and corrupted, and hoped only in "holy Russia" for the renovation and safety of a world overrun and possessed by the demon of revolution. The events of February only served to confirm him in these gloomy visions and to plunge him more and more into an uneasy mysticism, at times even irritating, but more often inoffensive and not devoid of a certain unhealthy charm. The campaign of Hungary caused a momentary diversion in his sad thoughts, and filled him with joy. It was not so much the glory with which the Russian army covered itself which pleased his mind; it was not even the triumph attained by the Russian sword, the sword of St. Michael, over "the impure beast:" his prayers, his hopes went far beyond. He hoped—thus he wrote to his imperial pupil that the great czar would profit by the power which God had given him and would "solve a problem on which the crusades had stranded;" that is to say, that he should drive the infidel from Byzantium, and liberate the holy land. Mme. Joukofski, although born a Protestant, felt in unison with her melancholy husband. Her soul had need of a "principle of authority," which failed her in the reformed confession, and which she sought one day in the Orthodox Church, to the great joy of the poet, without, however, being able to find there perfect rest.

Sometimes in the salon of the Joukofski the conversations were strangely varied and bizarre, on literature, politics, the glorious destinies of holy Russia, the inanity of modern civilization, the necessity of "a new eruption of Christianity," and on many matters invisible and "ineffable." Occasionally there fell into the midst of this salon, like a fantastic apparition, like a ghost from the world of spirits, a genius original and powerful in a very different way, but also tormented and troubled differently from the good court poet and former preceptor of the grand dukes. After having unveiled the hideous sores of Russian society with a vigorous, implacable hand, after having presented to his nation, in "Les Ames Mortes" and in "L'Inspecteur," a picture whose vices were appalling with truth and life, Nicholas Gogol suddenly gave up in despair civilization, progress, and liberty, and betaking himself to adore that which he had burned, valued nothing but barbarian Muscovy, saw no salvation but in despotism, thought himself in a state of "unpardonable" sin, and went in search of divine pity which always fled from him. Shortly afterwards he went from St. Petersburg to Rome, then to Jerusalem, then to Paris, everywhere seeking appeasement for his lacerated soul. Then he came from time to time to Joukofski, and passed whole weeks in his house, exhorting his friends to prayer, to repentance, and to contemplation of the divine mysteries. There were discussions without end, without a truce, on the "heathens of the Occident," on "a crusade," which was drawing near, on the redemption of sinful humanity by a race not yet defiled, and which had kept its faith. At several revivals the physicians were forced to interfere to put an end to a connection not without peril. One day Gogol was found, having died of inanition, prostrate before the holy images, in the adoration of which he had lost all thought of himself.... May we be pardoned for this short digression. It makes us acquainted with the state of the minds of a certain Russian society towards the end of the reign of Nicholas, and adds a curious stroke to the picture of the origins of the war in the Orient. One delights, however, to think of Alexander Mikhaïlovitch in this salon of the Joukofski, on an evening for instance, during such an intellectual conflict with the poor Gogol. The diplomat, equally cultivated and skeptical, was certainly made to recognize the bright and brilliant flashes which furrowed those driving clouds in a great, disordered mind; and he was made to unravel more than one strong and thrilling thought from the midst of those strange ramblings concerning an imminent crusade and the near deliverance of Zion.

Who would have thought it? It was these mystics, these men laboring under hallucinations, who had the true presentiment and saw the signs of the times! While Joukofski composed his "Commentary on Holy Russia," and Gogol mortified himself before the icônes, the Emperor Nicholas revolved in his mind the great thought of a crusade, and prepared in the most profound secrecy the mission of Prince Menchikof. The fact that the monarch who had done so much for preserving the peace and equilibrium of Europe had suddenly decided to throw such a fire-brand of war in the midst of the continent scarcely consolidated, while on the other hand the autocrat had awaited precisely this epoch of relative calm and of the reëstablishment of general order to announce his designs, in place of executing them boldly some years before during the revolutionary tempest which paralyzed almost all the Powers, his armies being already in the very heart of Hungary and commanding the banks of the Danube,—these facts will be for the impartial historian an evident proof of the good faith with which the czar undertook his fatal campaign, of the mystical blindness which guided his spirit at this time, and of the profound conviction which he had of the justice of his cause. Did Prince Gortchakof partake in the same measure of the illusions of his master? We doubt whether he did. We believe that, like the Kisselef, the Meyendorf, the Brunnow, and all the distinguished diplomats of Russia, without excepting the chancellor of the empire, the old Count Nesselrode, he was conscious of the great error toward which a proud prince, who allowed no objections and understood being "his own minister of foreign affairs," was tending. That naturally did not prevent the Russian representative to the German Confederation from fulfilling his duty with all the zeal which circumstances so critical made necessary, and from placing the various resources of his mind at the service of his country in the sphere of action which was reserved for him.

Events did not make it of much importance. In the Bundestag were concentrated not only all the efforts of the secondary States of the confederation, but there also were formed or conceived the projects, the preparations, and even the desires of the two principal German powers, the assistance of which Russia on the one side and France and England on the other, were equally concerned in obtaining. Prince Gortchakof could not complain of the turn affairs took in Germany. Frederick William IV. was faithful against every temptation. The czar could count in any case on "his brother-in-law, the poet;" and Alexander Mikhaïlovitch found an equally firm support in his colleague of Prussia, the young officer of the Landwehr. The cabinet of Berlin consented from time to time to join in the representations which the allies sent to St. Petersburg, to sign in concert with them the same note, or one analogous or concordant. But it did not take long to see that it only did this to retard their movements, and to deter them from any energetic resolution. At decisive moments it stopped short, hesitated, and pretended to preserve "la main libre" (free Hand). The other members of the Bund were much more sympathetic and more frankly won over to the Russian policy. They did not think the demands of the czar against Turkey at all exorbitant, and troubled themselves very little about the preservation of the "sick man." They likewise desired to preserve "la main libre," closed their ranks in the famous conferences of Bamberg, and were at times all ready to draw their swords. In truth, Alexander Mikhaïlovitch showed in the sequel, in the fatal year 1866, very little gratitude, very little distributive justice, for these poor secondary States, so devoted, so serviceable, so immovably attached at the time of the Oriental crisis.

While at London and at Paris vehement comments were made in the celebrated dispatches of Sir Hamilton Seymour, and the ambitious projects of Russia were denounced there, at Hanover, at Dresden, at Munich, at Stuttgart, at Cassel, nothing but censure was heard against the proceedings of the allies and their "usurpations." At Berlin they groaned all the more at seeing Christian monarchies undertake so ardently the defense of the Crescent. A single Germanic power, however, at that time the largest it is true, maintained a different attitude; a single one thought the cause of the allies just, seemed, indeed, at moments to be inclined to make common cause with them; and that power was Austria,—Austria, but lately succored by the Russian arms; saved by the strong and generous hand of the czar on the very brink of the abyss; "saved" by him from sudden dissolution. The astonishment, the stupefaction, the exasperation of the Emperor Nicholas knew no bounds. The entire Russian nation shared his sentiments,—Alexander Mikhaïlovitch like every patriotic Muscovite. "The immense ingratitude of Austria" became even then the unanimous cry,—the siboleth of every political faith in the vast empire of the North; and so it has remained even to our days.

It is necessary to lay stress upon this sentiment born in Russia in consequence of the Oriental conflict, and to discuss the real causes for it; for this sentiment has produced incalculable effects. It has contributed largely to the recent catastrophes; it has dictated more than one extreme resolution to the cabinet of St. Petersburg; it has made it abandon its venerable traditions,—its principles, consecrated by the experience of generations and seemingly immovable, having become, in a certain sense, the arcana imperii of the descendants of Peter the Great. To sum up, it has governed the general policy of the successor of Nesselrode during the last twenty years.

Assuredly Russia had the right to count on the recognition of Austria after the signal and incontestable service which it had rendered her in 1849. The armies which the czar then sent to the succor of the tottering empire of Hapsburg contributed powerfully to suppress a fatal, menacing insurrection there; and if it is true that in order to obtain this succor it was sufficient to recall to the Czar Nicholas a word given long before in a moment of confidential intimacy, the action does not become the less meritorious, and does so much the more honor to the heart of the autocrat.[7] It would be difficult to deny that this intervention in Hungary had not a generous and chivalric character which astonished the contemporaries and the clever. The clever ones, the statesmen, who, at this troubled epoch of Europe, had still preserved enough liberal spirit to cast their eyes toward the Danube,—Lord Palmerston among others,—remained for a long time incredulous, and endeavored to divine the reward paid for the aid that was lent. Should not the czar retain Galicia as a recompense for his assistance? Would he not procure some positive assurance from the side of the Principalities? was asked in the offices of Downing Street. Nothing of the sort happened, however. The Russians left Austria without a reward, as they had entered it without an arrière-pensée, and the troops of Paskévitch evacuated the country of the Carpathians unladen with booty. A young and ardent orator in the Prussian chambers, with the name (as yet but little known) de Bismarck,—the same who fifteen years later was to project striking a coup au cœur and arming the legions of Klapka,—admired at this moment the brilliant action of the czar, and only expressed the patriotic regret that this magnanimous rôle had not fallen to his own country, to Prussia. It was for Prussia to bring assistance to its elder brother in Germany, to "its former comrade in arms."[8] But it is allowable to suppose that, even with a king as loyal and poetic as Frederick William IV., affairs would have been conducted much less handsomely than with the barbarian of the North, and that similar aid from Prussia would have cost the empire of Hapsburg a part of Silesia or a part of its influence on the Main.

Shall we say, then, that in intervening in Hungary the Emperor of Russia acted from pure chivalry and platonic friendship, that he had no thought of personal interest and the good of his empire? Certainly not; and the czar had too much loyalty not to avow it frankly. He intervened in Hungary, not only as the friend of the Hapsburg, not only as the defender of the cause of order against cosmopolitan revolution; the most powerful motive in deciding him was the presence in the Hungarian army of Polish generals and officers, who intended to carry the war into the countries subjected to Russian rule. In his manifest of the 8th May, 1849, Nicholas expressed himself as follows: "The insurrection sustained by the influence of our traitors from Poland, of the year 1831, has given to the Hungarian revolt an extension more and more menacing.... His majesty, the Emperor of Austria, has invited us to assist against the common enemy.... We have ordered our army under way to quell the revolt, and to destroy the audacious anarchists, who equally menace the tranquillity of our provinces." The language was clear and frank, as was fitting for a sovereign preserving the consciousness of his dignity. This sovereign intended to render himself a service as well as his ally. He was going to stifle in his neighbors' territory an incendiary fire which threatened to harm his own domains; and in the act of intervening, let it be well understood, he at the same time acted in self-preservation.

Well! it seems according to all justice that the gratitude should correspond to the service rendered, and that the law of preservation, the supreme law of nature, should have equal force for the party under obligations as for the benefactor. There is no policy in the world, were it even taken from Holy Writ which could advise voluntary servitude; there is no doctrine, however sublime one wishes to imagine it, which, among the duties of the confession, recommends suicide. Now, it was nothing less than absolute subjection, the ruin of its personality as a great European State, which the Russians demanded of Austria in demanding its assent to their pretensions against the Orient. By geography, by the spirit of races, by religion, the Russian enterprises would strike a mortal blow at the empire of the Hapsburg, if this empire allowed them to triumph. A Danubian power, Austria should take care that the Lower Danube remained neutral, and that it should not fall into the hands of a powerful neighbor, who would then become master of this great river. A Sclavic power in its Oriental provinces, it ought to guard against being placed in immediate contact with an empire pan-Sclavic by tradition and by fatality, and it could not wish it to be planted in the Principalities, in Bosnia and Herzegovania. A Catholic power, it was forbidden to recognize the influence and the protectorate which the orthodox czar claimed over the Christians of the Grecian rite, of whom it counted several millions among its subjects. "My conduct in the question of the Orient! Why it is written on a map?" said Count Buol, to his brother-in-law, M. de Meyendorf, the Russian ambassador. He added that it was also written in history. "I have made no innovation. I have only inherited the political legacy of M. de Metternich."

In fact, in a previous crisis, at the time of the Hellenic insurrection and the war of 1828, the grand chancellor of the court and of the empire had defended this principle of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire with a firmness which nothing could disturb. During eight years he had defended it, braving the storm alone, not allowing himself to be discouraged either by the unpopularity then attaching to the Turkish cause or by the desertion of France. Why should the Russians hope that Austria would now desert this principle so vital for her, that she would desert it at the very moment when it commenced to triumph over the indifference of the Occident, and counted France and England among its most earnest champions?

Placed between a sentiment of gratitude very lively and real, as we have said, and a great political necessity, the government of Vienna has certainly done for gratitude all that it owed. It lavished warnings, prayers, good offices, offers of mediation on the Emperor Nicholas. Austria pardoned Russia more than one want of respect, more than one action of ill humor; it pardoned her the more than airy tone in which it had been disposed of in the effusions with Sir Hamilton Seymour,—the manner in which a certain autograph letter of the Emperor Francis Joseph had been received at St. Petersburg,—the haughty, almost insulting attitude of Count Orlof during his mission at Vienna. It did not cease till the end to calm the irritation of the allies, to modify and alter their programme, to assert the conciliating disposition of the czar, to hope against all hope. It pleaded only for the return in statu quo, repudiating any idea of humiliating or weakening Russia; it demanded nothing from her but the freedom of the Danube, the renunciation of the protectorate, and refused to follow the allies in their demands concerning the Black Sea. Unfortunately, as it happens too often to him who wishes to be equitable and just towards all parties, the Austrian government, by this conduct, ended by alienating France and England and exasperating the Russians. In the summer of 1854, at the very moment when Prince Gortchakof exchanged his post at Frankfort for that at Vienna, an eminent publicist, who was then, so to speak, the mouth-piece of the Occident, and of its generous spirits, almost despaired of Austria, and cried with bitterness that over there, in the Burg, "the Russian alliance was something as sacred as a religion, as fixed as propriety, and as popular as a fashion!" In the spring of the following year, the cabinets of Paris and of London resisted, as too favorable to Russia, a new plan of arrangement presented by Count Buol, and the French government on this occasion reproached Austria, in the "Moniteur Officiel," with offering an expedient rather than a solution.

The solution! The Emperor Francis Joseph certainly had it in his hands, and it perhaps depended only on him to render it as decisive and as radical as the most mortal enemies of Russia could wish. Why not confess it? To see the bitter fruit gathered by Austria in consequence of its honorable efforts during the Oriental crisis, and to see the implacable hatred and the cruel disasters which fell to its lot because of its attitude then, one surprises one's self sometimes in regretting that the cabinet of Vienna had so many scruples at this memorable epoch. One almost reproaches it for not having given proof of that independence of heart which seems, alas! the forced, indispensable condition for the independence of states. If Austria had wished to be a little less grateful and a little less politic during this war of the Orient, she would have resolutely joined herself to France and England, she would have taken part in the struggle, and instead of letting the allies rove for years around the borders of Russia, in the Black Sea and Baltic, she would have opened for them the fields of Poland, and have entered there with them. In place of "tickling the soul of the Colossus or of filing off a nail,"—as Russian publicists said later, and not without justice,—they should then have given him a coup au cœur,—one of those blows that the great recluse of Varzin knows how to plan and give. The cabinet of the Tuileries would not have refused to do this. In his dispatch of the 26th March, 1855, M. Drouyn de Lhuys laid down very skillfully the question of Poland; neither would the cabinet of St. James have raised serious objections. As to the probable success of such an enterprise, it suffices to remember that Russia was at the end of its resources, and that Prussia had not yet re-formed its military organization, was not yet in possession of its "instrument," and lastly that in place of William the Conqueror, Frederick the Romantic occupied the throne of the Hohenzollern. The mind is confounded before the contemplation of the consequences which such a decision on the part of the Emperor Francis Joseph might have caused. The face of the world would have been changed; Austria would certainly not have seen Sadowa[9] in 1866; Europe would not have seen the dismemberment of Denmark, nor the destruction of the Bund, nor the conquest of Alsace and Lorraine.

It was in the summer of 1854, as we have said above, that Prince Gortchakof was sent to Vienna. He replaced there, first provisionally, and in the following spring, definitely, Baron de Meyendorf, whose situation had become unpleasant in consequence of his ties of very near relationship with the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs. Alexander Mikhaïlovitch at last held that post at Vienna to which he had so long a time aspired, the post which, with that of London, was considered, under the reign of Nicholas, as the highest in Russian diplomacy, like the bâton of a marshal in his career. But now how full this honor was of bitterness, and what patriotic pangs accompanied a distinction formerly ardently wished for, to-day accepted through devotion to his sovereign and his country! On this ground, formerly so pleasant and smiling, the envoy of the czar could everywhere see nothing but briers and thorns. In this capital, renowned for its boisterous gayety and too frequent frivolity, he received nothing but disastrous and distracting news. And this "Austrian ingratitude," which he had only had glimpses of and combated from afar during his mission at Frankfort, he could now look in the face—and smile at it! There is a grief greater than the ricordare tempi felici nella miseria; it is to see a dream of happiness turn into a reality of misery, and one can easily understand what a treasure of gall this sojourn at Vienna must have heaped up in the wounded heart of the Russian patriot.[10]

It is superfluous to lay stress upon the activity which the new envoy of the czar displayed in this unhappy mission; to mention the infinite variety of means which he placed at the service of his cause, especially during the conferences of Vienna, which were opened after the death of Nicholas and the accession of the Emperor Alexander II. That was a moving sight and one which was truly not wanting in grandeur, that of the two Gortchakof, one behind the ramparts of Sebastopol, the other before the council board of Vienna, both defending their country with an equal tenacity, only yielding each inch of ground after a desperate combat, forced into their last intrenchments, but honored even to the end by loyal and chivalrous adversaries. To-day an epoch "of iron and of blood" has accustomed us to the summary proceedings—we had almost said executions—of Nikolsburg, of Ferrières, of Versailles, and of Frankfort, and a martial law used by the diplomats in helmets has replaced that which a former Europe, full of prejudices, loved to call the right of nations. To-day it is difficult to resist a sentiment of astonishment, almost of incredulity, in re-reading the protocols of these conferences of Vienna, where everything breathes decorum, politeness, urbanity, and mutual respect. One thinks himself carried back to an idyllic age, one far from us, to a world of ancient gentlemen. M. Drouyn de Lhuys, Minister of Foreign Affairs in France, Lord John Russell, until lately President of the Privy Council of England, did not think it beneath their dignity to go in person to Vienna to discuss there with Prince Gortchakof the possible conditions of a peace. Russia had lost several great battles, the allied fleets had blockaded all its seas and even menaced its capital. That did not prevent the French and English plenipotentiaries from treating it with all deference, with all the respect which the diplomacy of this good old time could employ. They displayed a veritable art in the invention of euphemisms; they gave themselves pains to find the mildest mediums, the most acceptable terms for the representative of a vanquished power. Indeed, that excellent Lord John Russell forced kindness so far as to recall, and that in the face of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, that England had made Louis XIV. submit to conditions much harder and more humiliating.[11] That was, perhaps, the only instance of want of tact which one can find in the conferences of Vienna, and yet what was it but a courteousness from an ally to an ally? As for Austria, it exhausted itself in finding means to spare the susceptibilities of Russia, and ended by presenting a plan of arrangement which was judged inacceptable by the cabinets of London and Paris, and drew on it the reproach of the "Moniteur Officiel," of which we have already spoken.

Negotiations were broken off, and nothing could be done but to await the issue of the supreme combat under the walls of Sebastopol. The Russian plenipotentiary awaited it at his post in Vienna in the twofold anguish of a patriot and a relation. The bulwark of the Crimea fell, and Russia found itself in the most critical situation. It was exhausted,—indeed much more exhausted than Europe then thought,—and the prolongation of the war would have infallibly transported the hostilities to the plains of Poland. At this moment Austria intervened anew. It agreed to the demands made by the allies at the conference of Vienna,—even that clause concerning the neutralization of the Black Sea, which it had hitherto resisted as too wounding to Russia. It was not possible to refuse this satisfaction to the allies after the capture of Sebastopol. In reality, these were the easiest conditions which have ever been imposed on a power at the close of a war so long, so bloody, and of such incontestable victories. Austria did more; it sent these conditions under form of an ultimatum, declaring that it would make common cause with the allies if they were not accepted; and Russia accepted them. To look at it plainly, this was a service rendered to a young sovereign, who, having inherited a disastrous war, thus found the means to spare at the same time the memory of his predecessor and the pride of his people. He could say now that he had only made peace because of a new adversary, who had arisen at the side of the old ones, and whom his father did not count on. In fact, it was said in Russia,—it was believed, indeed, so much was it in their interest to believe it. The Russian people were quickly reconciled with the conquerors of Alma and of Malakof. A single power remained in their eyes responsible for their disasters,—the power which during the whole war had rested on its arms. Even at this hour every Russian heart boils with indignation at the thought of Austria, of its immense ingratitude and its great treason.

Alexander Mikhaïlovitch shared these bitternesses, these popular rancors, and became the most energetic and openly avowed representative of them. In this respect he allowed his sentiments to burst forth with a frankness which approached very nearly to ostentation. A remark uttered by him during the session of the Congress at Paris, is still cited at Vienna: "Austria is not a state, it is only a government." These words preceded him to St. Petersburg and made his fortune there. The popular voice designated him as the future avenger, as the man destined to prepare for his nation a brilliant revenge; and the acute diplomat did not trouble himself to controvert such an opinion. Already, however, at this Congress of Paris certain tendencies, certain desires were revealed, which gave hope, which even opened horizons entirely new. The name of Italy was pronounced there. Roumania itself found there an unexpected support. At this strange Congress, which definitely regulated the conditions of a peace that France, England, and Austria had imposed on Russia, Austria appeared gloomy and morose, England irritated and nervous. France and Russia alone exchanged between one another the most exquisite politeness and surprising cordialities. The sword of Napoleon III. became the lance of Achilles, healing where it had just wounded, wounding where it had healed. "There was balm of Gilead in it," and support in the sovereign of the Tuileries. The day after the Congress, in the month of April, 1856, the old Count Nesselrode asked to be retired on account of his age, and Prince Alexander Gortchakof became Minister of Foreign Affairs.

II.

During the four years which he had passed at Frankfort as representative of his government to the German Confederation, Prince Gortchakof, as we have already seen, had made the acquaintance of, and maintained the most intimate relations with a colleague, whose rare qualities of mind, as probably also those of the heart, he appreciated as no one else did. The two friends were separated in the summer of 1854, when the Russian plenipotentiary went to fulfill his painful mission at Vienna. But they did not delay in meeting anew, and found as before that perfect congeniality of ideas and of sentiments, which, established since their first meeting in Frankfort, has never been interrupted, and has lasted for twenty-five years: grande mortalis ævi spatium. This friend of Prince Gortchakof on the smiling banks of the Main, was no other than M. de Bismarck, the future chancellor of Germany.

Otto-Edward-Leopold de Bismarck-Schoenhausen, born the 1st of April, 1815, at Schoenhausen, hereditary estate of his family in the old Mark of Brandenburg, could not flatter himself with having, like his friend Alexander Mikhaïlovitch, blood of the Saints in his veins. His biographers even observe with visible satisfaction, that at least two of his ancestors were excommunicated by the Church and died in final impenitence. What is more serious is that the most authorized historians of the Mark of Brandenburg, M. de Riedel among others, call into question the noble origin of the family. They show that the first of the line, of whom authentic documents of the fourteenth century speak, Rulo Bismarck, was a member and on several occasions even provost of "the guild of master tailors in cloth" at Stendal, a small market town of the old Mark. The fact does not seem doubtful. But could not the citizens of Stendal, just as well as those of certain cities in Tuscany, have forced every country noble, who wished to inhabit the city, to subscribe himself in one of those guilds? This is the opinion of the tories in this curious genealogical dispute. To hear them, the good citizens of Stendal must have been on a par, in the fourteenth century, with the great citizens of Florence and of Pisa, and Rulo Bismarck must have been master tailor in cloth about as much as Dante, his contemporary, was an apothecary. The whigs, on the contrary, the biographers in national-liberal colors, take their part gayly, and one of them ingeniously concludes, that in any case the ancestor Rulo ought "to contemplate with satisfaction and pride from the high heavens the splendid imperial mantle which his descendant has made for King William out of the cloth of Europe."

In times relatively more modern, the House of Bismarck presents, like many a noble country family of Brandenburg, an unbroken succession of modest and faithful servants of the state, some soldiers, some employed in civil duties. The eighteenth century offers us two rather more curious specimens, the grandfather and great uncle of the chancellor. One was surnamed the poet, the other the adventurer. The poet, this painful avowal must be made, composed his verses in the French language. We have notably by him an "Eloge ou Monument érigé à la Mémoire de Christine de Bismarck, née de Schoenfeld, par Charles-Alexandre de Bismarck," Berlin, 1774. It was to his dead wife that the retired captain of cavalry thought necessary to elevate this mausoleum of words and of Welche rhymes, full of the insipid sentimentality of the time. The adventurer (Ludolf-August) is more deserving of his name. He killed his servant in a fit of anger or drunkenness, was pardoned, took service in Russia, became involved in political intrigues in Courland, and was forced to go to Siberia in exile. Pardoned again, he entered into Russian diplomacy, filled several missions, and died commanding general at Poltava. Let us say in passing, that this Ludolf was not the only one of his family to serve under the Russian flag, and thus the name of Bismarck has long been well known at St. Petersburg.

The whig biographers lay much stress on the fact, that the mother of the young Otto, "an intelligent, ambitious, and rather cold woman," was a bourgeoise, a Miss Menken, of a family of savans well known at Leipsic. They love to prove in this manner that the restorer of the empire was connected by his mother with the bourgeoisie, that studious and cultivated bourgeoisie which is the great strength of Germany,—while claiming his right to the nobility and the army by his father, retired captain of cavalry, and by his grandfather the poet. Those profound Germans have a weakness, it is known, for all symbolism. They dignify very often with this name that which is nothing but a jeu d'esprit, in reality a play of words, and it is thus that they attach a certain signification to the futile circumstance that the young Otto was confirmed[12] at Berlin at the hands of Schleiermacher, the celebrated Doctor of Divinity, whose learning was much more respectable than his life; "in a manner and for a fleeting moment, it is true, but solemnly, the young man called to a life of action par excellence, was brought in contact with our learned theology and our romantic philosophy." Nor has it been forgotten to exalt the name of the "gray cloister" (Grauer Kloster), which the lyceum at Berlin bore, where the future destroyer of convents studied, or to note the French origin of one of his principal professors, Doctor Bonnet, descendant of a Huguenot family which sought refuge in Brandenburg in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

After having finished his studies at the lyceum of the gray cloister, Otto de Bismarck went to the University of Goettingen, to the celebrated Georgia Augusta, in order to study. In reality, he did nothing but lead the life of the sons of the muse, who have the good or bad fortune to be at the same time sons of family, cavalieri; he cultivated nothing but hunting, riding, swimming, gymnastic exercises, and fencing. He had more than twenty duels, and fully justified the glorious name of Bursche, which clung to him for a long time afterwards, even when he was ambassador and minister. One easily understands that the Institutes and Pandects cannot be very thoroughly studied in the midst of so many corporal exercises, and even the attempt to change the noisy Georgia Augusta for the most quiet and sedate University of Berlin, was a remedy heroic rather than efficacious. Has M. de Bismarck ever regularly passed this "state examination" (Staatsexamen) which in Prussia is the indispensable condition for an appointment to any public function? A grave question, which was discussed for a long time in Germany, and out of which a weapon has shaped itself for twenty years against the man, the deputy, the ambassador, the president of the council. A fact worthy of notice, and one which well characterizes the formal and regulative mind of the nation: M. de Bismarck had already defied all Europe, and dismembered the Danish monarchy, when in the opposition journals of Germany, there appeared from time to time, like belated rockets, malignant allusions to this problematical state examination! Since the epoch of Sadowa only have these malicious jibes entirely ceased: Sadowa caused many other irregularities to pass unnoticed, and assuredly much graver ones.

It is perhaps proper to inquire here what benefits M. de Bismarck reaped from his academic life, and to estimate, if but briefly, the cultivation and the peculiarities of his mind. It seems certain that M. de Bismarck is not a man of science and study, and that his liberal education shows more than one gap. A pleasing contrast, the two chancellors, Russian and German, of whom one knew but a single lyceum and that one of very doubtful merit, while the other attended the most renowned college (gymnasium) and alma mater of learned Germany. Certainly the pupil of Zarkoe-Zeloe, as regards classical knowledge and true humaniora, is far in advance of the lucky foster child of Georgia Augusta. Nevertheless it is well to observe that M. de Bismarck fills and more than fills a certain programme laid down one day by the spirituel and regretted Saint-Marc Giradin for the well educated men of the world. "I do not require, said he, that they know Latin; I only ask that they have forgotten it." From his academic youth, there has always remained to the chancellor of Germany a fund of culture of which he well knows the use on occasion, and he understands in a sufficient degree, his Bible, his Shakspere, his Goethe, and his Schiller, those four elements of all education, even the most common one, in German countries,—precious and enviable quadrivium of the children of Arminius! Prince Gortchakof has the refinements as well as the weaknesses of the man of letters; he takes care of his "mot," he corrects his phrase, he looks at and admires himself in his compositions; it is known that he was one day surnamed the Narcissus of the inkstand. By his tastes, by his exquisite sensibility, by his artistic instinct, he has a marked superiority over his former colleague of Frankfort. But the latter regains all this advantage as soon as one considers the original and personal stamp which he knows how to give to his thoughts and to his speech, as soon as one seeks the individuality, the breathing creator, the mens agitans molem, that something mysterious and powerful which antique sculpture rendered so ingeniously by placing a flame on the forehead of certain of its statues.

The chancellor of Germany is not a lettered man in the strict and somewhat vulgar acceptation of the world. He is, to speak correctly, neither an orator nor a writer. He does not understand developing a theme well, graduating its arguments, arranging its transitions. He does not construct his period and does not trouble himself about it. He has difficulty in expressing himself, both on the tribune and also with the pen. His style is harsh, occasionally very incorrect, as unacademical as possible. It is intricate, embarrassed, even trivial at moments. Every part guarded, and all reserve made, there is something of Cromwell in his manner of expressing himself. But in an entirely different manner than in Cromwell one is forced to admire in him those flashes of thought, those strong and unforeseen images, those penetrating words which strike, which impress themselves, and which are not forgotten. When quite lately in the midst of an argument, disconnected and embarrassed, concerning his conflict with Rome, he suddenly cried out: "Be sure of one thing, gentlemen, we will not go to Canossa!"[13] one should remember that he knew how to comprise there, in a sort of menacing cæterum censeo,[14] a whole world of memories and of passions. In a very different spirit, also in a time already far distant, it is true, speaking one day—about twenty years have since flown—of the principles of revolution and contra-revolution, he said that a parliamentary debate could never decide between these two principles: "The decision will only come from God, from the God of battles, when he lets fall from his hand the iron dice of destiny!" One thinks that he hears De Maistre in this last part of the phrase, and like M. de Maistre the chancellor of Germany has had his passage decried by the hangsman; we wish to speak of this invocation to iron and to blood, which must be replaced in its frame and put in its true light,—to settle its date,—to appreciate all the relief by the side of the incontestable brutality. The invocation was made when those national-liberals, to-day of such great servility towards him and with the obedience of a corpse, wished to prevent him from reforming the army, at the same time demanding him to complete the unity of Germany. The man who felt the distant thunder of Sadowa and Sedan rumble in his soul, launched at this moment to the orators the défi which he has only too well justified since, saying that it was not by speeches that Germany could be united: "to consummate this unity, iron and blood are necessary!" This orator does not breathe at ease in the uniform which never leaves him, and he advances only by fits and starts. He collects laboriously the clouds of his rhetoric, but the spark ends by flashing and by illuminating the whole situation. To make himself understood he employs the greatest or most familiar images, without choice, just as they come; he borrows a quotation from Shakspere and from Goethe just as well as from the Wasps of M. Alphonse Karr, or from a couplet of the vaudeville. One of his most happy, most memorable inspirations, he suddenly drew one day from the libretto of the "Freischütz."

The reader will kindly permit us to recall this last episode, even at the risk of delaying somewhat in some preliminary explanations of which a German auditory, full of souvenirs of its "Freischütz," would have no need. In this opera of Weber, Max, the good and unfortunate hunter, borrows a cartridge from Robin, the evil spirit, and immediately kills an eagle, one of whose feathers he proudly sticks in his cap. He then asks for some more cartridges, but Robin tells him that they are "enchanted balls," and that in order to obtain them he must surrender himself to the infernal spirits, and deliver his soul to them. Max draws back, and then Robin, sneering, tells him that he hesitates in vain, that the bargain is made, and that he has already committed himself by the ball he made use of: "Do you think, then, that this eagle was a free gift?" Well! when in 1849 the young orator of the Mark of Brandenburg had to implore the Prussian chamber not to accept for the King of Prussia the imperial crown which the parliament of Frankfort offered him, he ended by crying out: "It is radicalism which offers this gift to the king. Sooner or later this radicalism will stand upright before the king, will demand of him its recompense, and pointing to the emblem of the eagle on that new imperial flag, it will say: Did you think, then, that this eagle was a free gift?" A striking image and equally deep and ingenious! Yes, one cannot use with impunity the "enchanted balls" of revolution, and one does not make a bargain with the popular demon, without leaving it some of his soul. Sooner or later there will stand upright before you the bad genius whose aid you have accepted, Robin of the woods and the streets. He will come to receive your salute, and tell you that he did not intend to have worked for the King of Prussia. This magnificent oratorical burst of the young deputy of the Mark, the chancellor of Germany might have considered with benefit in more than one decisive circumstance, for instance on the day when he overthrew the secular throne, also the day when he gave the signal for the combat of civilization.

The writer does not differ much from the orator, and, in speaking of the writer, we think above all of those intimate and familiar letters which have been published in the well known book of George Hesekiel, and which have had a merited success in Germany. There is always the same obscurity, the same embarrassment of elocution, the same disorder, from time to time passages of lively and original expressions, of astonishing figures, of a bitter, harsh humor, which grinds and bites you with cruel pleasure. These letters are for the great part addressed to his sister, to "dear Malvina" (married to an Arnim), and we will borrow from them more than once during the course of this study. One notices in them certain descriptions of nature, of the brightness of the moon, of the North Sea, of the view of the Danube from the heights of Buda-Pesth, which are not wanting in coloring effect, and make up a picture. There is something of Heinrich Heine in these private Reisebilder, and it has been remarked of them, that there is perhaps something of Hamlet (and what a Hamlet!) in the following passage, the only melancholy one which we have met with in the midst of so many sanguine and robust sallies. "At the mercy of God! Everything is in reality but a question of time, peoples and individuals, wisdom and folly, peace and war. To the living, everything upon earth is but hypocrisy and jugglery, and this mask of flesh having once fallen off, the wise man and the fool resemble each other greatly, and it would be hard to distinguish between the Prussian and the Austrian, their skeletons being very carefully prepared." These lines fell from the same hand, however, which, since then, and assuredly by a very specific patriotism, has furnished so many thousand subjects to the preparers of skeletons!

One sees by these letters that M. de Bismarck handled at an early hour and with predilection this irony, in which he is without a master; a cold, crafty irony, and which too often approaches sneering. He used it later in his speeches, in his conversations with ministers and ambassadors, and even in diplomatic negotiations, in the most important, most decisive moments of history. At such moments this irony sometimes affects a great frankness, sometimes a great politeness, but a frankness to make you fall on your knees before the first lie, however brazen, a politeness to make you implore an incivility without forms as a veritable charity. One day, on the very eve of the war of 1866, Count Karolyi, ambassador of Austria, and acting in the name of his government, summoned M. de Bismarck to declare categorically if he expected to break the treaty of peace, the treaty of Gastein.[15] "No," was the reply, "I have not that expectation; but, if I had, would I answer you differently?" There is an example of that frankness which disconcerts, which confounds, and seems to cry in your ear with that devil from the "Inferno":

"Tu non pensavi ch'io loico fossi!"

As to the murderous politeness, which sometimes clothes the sarcasm of M. de Bismarck, let us recall here the mot which he launched later at the negotiators of Versailles, coming to treat with him concerning the surrender of famished Paris, and to offer him two hundred millions in contributions. "Oh," said he, "Paris is too great a personage that we should treat it in such a shabby manner; let us do it the honor of a milliard." That is truly an original turn which the rival of Heine thought to give to the maxima reverentia which one owes to misfortune! When one is destined in a ripe age to exercise his humor with such ease at the cost of princes and of peoples, how is it possible when young not to jest pleasantly about that poor fellow of a peasant in Pomerania who drank too much water? In one of his letters to his dear Malvina, the young country gentleman describes with a hilarious spirit an inundation which swept over his domain which is divided by a little branch of the narrow river Hampel. This inundation severed him from all his neighbors, carried off so and so many casks of eau-de-vie, "introduced an anarchical interregnum from Schievelbein to Damm," and he ends by this stroke: "I am proud to be able to say, that in my little branch of the Hampel a wagoner was drowned with his horse and his whole load of tar!" How proud in a different degree was this gentleman one day when, Europe having become his domain, he saw disappearing in the midst of the billows, billows of blood this time, a whole army and its chief, a whole empire and its emperor,—currus Galliæ et auriga ejus! That did not prevent, at another time, the young country gentleman from jumping bravely into the water to rescue his groom and gaining the medal for saving life. During many years this medal was the only one to decorate the broad chest of the Prussian minister at Frankfort. Asked one day by a colleague to the Bund about a decoration to which the diplomatic corps is but little accustomed, he replied in the tone which he alone possesses, that he sometimes happened to rescue a man,—in his leisure moments, be it understood. Probably, if he had been further pressed, he was capable of adding that he only did it for exercise.

Thus, to resume, from the epoch of his apprenticeship at the gray cloister and Georgia Augusta, Otto de Bismarck carried a literary burden, which, without being either too heavy or too full, has nevertheless enabled him to make his tour of the political world with ease and honor. And also since this epoch his mind disclosed the precious qualities which still distinguish it; a vivid and powerful imagination, a rare happiness in his choice of expressions occasionally grandiose, occasionally vulgar, but always striking; and lastly, a humor which has no equal, and which, to speak with Jean Paul, is a true sirocco to the soul. With all this no grace, no charm, no distinction or delicacy,—not a generous accent, no sweet and sympathetic cord, a complete absence of that milk of human kindness of which the poet speaks, an absolute want of that charity which, according to the great Christian moralist, is like the heavenly perfume of the soul. As to the art or rather handicraft, as to the work which consists in arranging his phrases, in connecting and disposing them so as to introduce harmony and clearness in the different parts of speech, in effacing its asperities and inequalities, in one word as to the style, M. de Bismarck never learned it or always disdained it. If we dared to apply to this style one of those trivial but expressive images of which he himself offers us more than one example, we would willingly compare it to a certain strange drink, hardly credible, and which, according to his biographers, the German chancellor has always liked: it consists of a mixture of champagne and porter! The language is in imitation of the drink: one finds in it the piquant, the sparkling, the exhilarating of the Aÿ together with the heaviness, the blackness, and above all the bitterness of the stout.

It is a curious fact, that the man who one day was to impose on all the States of Germany the severe bureaucratic and military laws of Prussia, "to place Germany in the saddle," to use one of his mots, to press it into the straight jacket of obligatory service,—even to indirectly train all Europe to new exercises, and to make it leave the plow for the sword, liberal occupations for the autumn and summer manœuvres,—this man, for his part, has never been able to bind himself down to academic duties, neither to the regular work of the bureau, nor to the severe discipline of the soldier. He himself has acknowledged having heard but two hours of lecture during his whole stay at Georgia Augusta. The university course being ended, he tried several times the administrative or judiciary career; he tried it at Aix-la-Chapelle, at Potsdam, at Greifswalde, then again at Potsdam, and had to give it up every time, disgusted by the monotonous labor of the bureau, or by quarrels with his superiors. On this subject is told the piquant reply of the young referendarius to a principal who had made him wait an hour in an antechamber: "I came to request a short leave of absence; but during this long hour I have had time to reflect, and I demand my dismission." Thrice he made a trial of the military service, without arriving at a higher grade than that of lieutenant in the Landwehr, a rank which he appreciated, however, and of which he loved to don the uniform on solemn occasions, even at the very time when he was already minister at Frankfort. The reader knows that the day of Sadowa brought him the insignia of a general. Those ten or twelve years which had passed for M. de Bismarck since his disputed state examination to his entrance into the Prussian chamber, the German biographers call by the fine name "years of storm and trouble," which recalls one of the most brilliant epochs of their literature.[16] In truth they were stormy, filled with miscarriages of more than one kind, with travels, financial embarrassments, perhaps also with an unrequited love. At least that is the meaning one is inclined to give to the following passage from a letter addressed to his sister Malvina: "I struggle in vain, I shall end by marrying ——; the world wishes it thus, and nothing seems more natural, and then we will both be killed on the spot. She left me coldly, it is true, but they all do that. It would not be so bad, however, if one could throw off his feelings with his shirts, no matter how rarely one changes the latter."

He seems to have had a very sincere affection for this sister; he overwhelms her with the most tender names. Thus he calls her his little dear, his Malvina, his Maldewinchen, his good little Arnim; he even calls her once (pardon him, O divinities of Walhalla) simply and in French, "ma sœur." In all the letters of this epoch, dated for the most part from the estates of Kniephof or Schoenhausen (it was not until later that M. de Bismarck acquired the famous Varzin[17]), by the side of an always biting and harsh humor, one can perceive a certain disenchantment; by the side of the cares of fortune appear from time to time projects for the future, very modest, truly, and which seldom aim at politics. In 1846 he attached a certain importance at being made surveyor of dikes in the district (Deichhauptmann). "The position is not remunerative, but it offers some interest in regard to Schoenhausen and other estates, for we would depend on it in a great measure if we were again without water as in the past year.... Bernard (a friend) insists on my going to Prussia (to Berlin). I would like to know what he expects there. He affirms that by my disposition and my inclinations, I am made for the service of the state, and that sooner or later I will end by entering it." Suddenly, and on the very eve of the reunion of the first Prussian parliament, one is surprised by the plan of a voyage to the Indias,—probably to make his fortune and establish himself there,—and one thinks involuntarily of Cromwell wishing to embark for America on the eve of the long parliament. Do not think, however, that the days passed sadly and morosely at Kniephof and at Schoenhausen: one lives there, one overlives the life of Juncker (country squire) and the officers of the neighboring garrison are good and stout fellows, in whose company one hunts and dances, "one empties great bowls half filled with champagne, half with porter;" the guests are awakened in the morning by pistols fired off close to their pillows; on entering the salon the female cousins are frightened with four foxes, and honor is paid to the name given by the whole country to the proprietor of the domain, the name of "mad Bismarck" (der tolle Bismarck). They are madcaps, and blusterers, prompt to draw their swords, to fight with pistol or steel, and they do not even avoid a pugilistic scene. One day in a smoking room at Berlin, the former pupil of Georgia Augusta broke his beer mug on the skull of a stranger disrespectful in his language towards a member of the royal family; not, however, without having first addressed a charitable warning to the insolent speaker, nor without having afterwards, very sedately, very politely, asked of the waiter the cost of the damage.[18] This happened in 1850; M. de Bismarck had already been deputy several years, and was on the point of becoming minister plenipotentiary to the Germanic Confederation.

Der tolle Bismarck; it was not only at Kniephof and at Schoenhausen that the future chancellor of Germany was thus called. The Berlinese themselves had no other name for him for a long time, during all the parliamentary period of the young deputy of the Mark, since his maiden speech and his first appearance on the tribune,—when having provoked an indescribable tumult by a violent attack against the liberals he drew from his pocket a newspaper, and quietly commenced reading, while waiting for the storm to calm,—up to his last speech on December 3, 1850, which completed the exasperation of the chamber, but was worth a diplomatic post to the orator. Success advances a little like the aristocratic law of the Chinese: it is necessary to supply glory from the rear and to throw lustre on the obscure antecedents of the favorite of fortune. This was, however, more to mistake the time and to misplace the historical perspective, than to wish to assign to M. de Bismarck in those years (1847-50) any important rôle which he did not fill until fifteen years later. The truth is that this rôle was not in this first period either of such eminence, or, above all, sufficiently respected to be tempted to arrange itself in an abstract, inductive method. An active and restless member of the group of Juncker in 1847, and of the great party of the cross which was formed after the revolution of February, the country gentleman of Schoenhausen was far from having in the bosom of this party the authority of a Gerlach and a Stahl, or the great position of a similar feudal lord of Silesia or Pomerania. In spite of his audacity, his impetuosity, and his sang-froid; in spite of his exceedingly happy sallies with an eloquence unequal and embarrassed in a very different manner from to-day, M. de Bismarck was at this epoch nothing but the Hotspur, and the enfant terrible of the sacred phalanx which defended the throne, the altar, and the conservative principles. He was in a measure the General Temple of the ill-tempered light-horsemen, a General Temple joined with the Marquis of Piré. At any rate he only passed for a successful Thadden-Triglaff, that brave M. Thadden-Triglaff who declared that he desired the liberty of the press, on condition, however, "that there was a power by the side of each journal to hang up the pamphleteers." The speeches of M. de Bismarck, friend and neighbor of this ingenious legislator of the press, were often not more reasonable. Did he not say one day, word for word, "that all the great cities ought to be destroyed and razed to the ground, as the eternal homes of revolution?"

The Athenians of the Spree[19] laughed at these jests, repeated those words full of humor, and above all admired a certain argument ad hominem by means of a mug of beer. Occasionally also they criticised with malice the advances made to the innocent, to the democrats, and diverted themselves especially over the famous little branch of olive which the country squire of Schoenhausen showed one day to his colleague of the chamber, the very radical Doctor d'Ester. This branch, he told him, he had cut in a recent excursion to Vaucluse, from the tomb of Laura and Petrarch. He put it carefully in his cigar case and thought of presenting it one day to the red gentlemen "as a sign of reconciliation." It was in the strange destiny of this extraordinary man not to be thought in earnest until the day when he became terrible. Der tolle Bismarck, the Germans said in 1850; at Frankfort the good Count Rechberg called him scoffingly a Bursche, and he was considered a personage worthy of laughter in the eyes of the French minister, a man of mind, however, even in 1864. The year after the legendary coast of Biarritz, he pursued with his projects the Emperor Napoleon III., who, resting on the arm of the author of "Colomba," whispered from time to time into the ear of the academician senator those words: "He is crazy!" Five years later the dreamer of Ham gave up his sword to the crazy man of the Mark.

"I belong,"—such was the defiant declaration of M. de Bismarck in one of his first speeches in the chamber,—"I belong to an opinion which glories in the reproaches of obscurantism, and of tendencies of the Middle Age; I belong to that great multitude which is compared with disdain to the most intelligent party of the nation." He wanted a Christian State. "Without a religious basis," said he, "a state is nothing but a fortuitous aggregation of interests, a sort of bastion in a war of all against all; without this religious basis, all legislation, instead of regenerating itself at the living sources of eternal truth, is only tossed about by human ideas as vague as changeable." It is for this reason that he pronounced against the emancipation of the Jews, and repulsed, above all, with horror the institution of civil marriage, a degrading institution, and one which "made the church the train-bearer (Schleppentraeger) of a subaltern bureaucracy."[20] He was as intransigeant for the throne as for the altar: he set at defiance the principle of the sovereignty of the people; universal suffrage (which he himself was to introduce one day into the whole German empire!) seemed to him a social danger and an outrage to good sense. He denied the rights of the nation; the crown alone had rights: the old Prussian spirit knew but that,—"and this old Prussian spirit is a Bucephalus who willingly allows his legitimate master to mount him, but who will throw to the ground every Sunday rider (Sonntagsreiter)!"

A resolute adversary of modern ideas, of constitutional theories, and of all that then formed the programme of the liberal party in Prussia, the deputy of the Mark combated with the same energy the two great national passions of this party: the "deliverance" of Schleswig-Holstein and the unity of Germany. He deplored that "the royal Prussian troops had gone to defend the revolution in Schleswig against the legitimate sovereign of that country, the King of Denmark;" he asserted that they were making a groundless quarrel with this king, that they sought a quarrel with him "for no cause" (um des Kaisers Bart), and he did not hesitate to declare before an angry chamber, that the war provoked in the Duchies of the Elbe was "an undertaking eminently iniquitous, frivolous, disastrous, and revolutionary."[21] As to the unity of Germany, the young orator of the ultras repulsed it in the name of Right, of the sovereignty and of the independence of princes, as well as in the name of patriotism, be it understood. He was Prussian, a specific Prussian, a hardened Prussian (stockpreusse), and cared very little to unite the good and firm substance "with the dissolved elements (das zerfahrene Wesen) of the South." He called on the army: Does this army wish to exchange the old national colors, black and white, for this German tricolor, which was only known to it as the emblem of revolution? Does it wish to exchange its old Dessauer march for the song of a Professor Arndt on the German fatherland?

We have already spoken of his speech against the imperial crown offered by the parliament of Frankfort, of the ingenious allusion borrowed from the libretto of the "Freischütz." While refusing the imperial crown, Frederick William IV. did not the less endeavor, during the years 1849 and 1850, to rescue some waifs from this wreck of unitarian ideas; he tried to group around himself, and with the aid of the liberals, a notable part of the Germanic body, to create a sort of northern confederation: "restricted union" became for a moment the mot d'ordre of a programme which General Radowitz was charged to place on the stage of the parliament of Erfurt. M. de Bismarck condemned without pity or weakness all these vain attempts; with the great theorician of his party, the celebrated Professor Stahl, he pleaded for the return to the statu quo prior to 1848. Like him he demanded "that the overturned column of right be replaced in Germany," that the Bund be restored on legal bases, according to the terms of the treaty of Vienna, and that no cessation should be made in placing Prussian politics on its guard against any "course of Phæton" in a region of clouds and thunder.

The thunderbolt did not in truth delay in striking, and the "course of Phæton" was brusquely arrested by the hand of that great Austrian minister, who himself only traversed, like a luminous meteor, the most elevated regions of power to disappear suddenly and to leave behind him eternal regrets. Prince Felix de Schwarzenberg recalls in some respects those statesmen of whom England lately offered the astounding example, those Peterboroughs, those Bentincks, and those like them, who knew how to interrupt, almost suddenly, a life given up to pleasures and to the frivolous follies of the world, to reveal themselves in a trice like veritable political geniuses, and to die before their time, after having exhausted the intoxication of easy good fortune and of glory, arduous in a very different degree. It is known with what a firm and steady hand the prince seized the helm of affairs in Austria, and in how short a time he succeeded in lifting up a monarchy placed on the brink of an abyss. Was his conduct in every particular irreproachable; was it even provident to the end? That is not the question for us. Let us limit ourselves in saying that rarely has a minister met with more good luck in his short career, found so much assurance in success, and spoken in a loftier or prouder tone in vexatious necessities. This time Prince Schwarzenberg spoke with all the authority which right gave him. Perhaps he spoke even too harshly, and Prussia seemed for a moment ready to pick up the glove. Frederick William IV. demanded of the chambers a credit of fourteen million thalers for the armament, and made a warlike speech. Europe became attentive, the national assembly of France was on the point of ordering a new levy of troops, and, fatidical prelude of a tragedy which was not to be played till fifteen years later, in 1850 as in 1866, Louis Napoleon thought that he ought to encourage the cabinet of Berlin, encourage it with aid, and in direct opposition to the general sentiment of the country! While the national assembly in France pronounced itself very plainly for neutrality and the minister of foreign affairs was even inclined in favor of Austria, the president of the republic sent an intimate friend to Berlin, M. de Persigny, with the mission to engage the King of Prussia as much as possible in the war. War appeared inevitable. The troops were already disposed in two parts; there had already been encounters between the advanced guards. All of a sudden, and before a menacing ultimatum from Vienna, strengthened by a friendly notice from St. Petersburg, M. de Manteuffel, president of the Prussian council, proposed to that of Austria to hold an interview at Oderberg, on the frontier of the two States. Some hours after having sent this proposition, he announced by telegraph (a proceeding then very rare), that, on positive orders from the king, he should go as far as Olmütz, without waiting for the reply. He went there, and signed (29 November, 1850) the preliminaries of peace, the famous "punctuations" by which Prussia yielded to the demands of Austria on every point.

It is not astonishing that such a profound humiliation,—preceded by a measure of distress up to that time unheard of in the annals of diplomacy, and immediately followed by an Austrian dispatch which very uselessly did nothing but irritate the wound,[22]—filled liberal Prussia with grief and indignation. It was in vain that M. de Manteuffel endeavored to justify his conduct before the national mind. He affirmed that he would rather be placed "in front of conical balls than pointed speeches" (lieber Spitzkugeln als spitze Reden); the chamber of Berlin expressed with passion the griefs of the country, and M. de Vincke closed one of the most vehement philippics with these words: "Down with the ministry!" A single orator dared to undertake the defense of the ministry, and to make in the same moment the apotheosis of Austria. Already in the preceding year M. de Bismarck had desired for his country the rôle of the Emperor Nicholas in Hungary. Since then he had never neglected an occasion to resent in behalf of the empire of the Hapsburg the insults which German liberalism had heaped on him, and he remained true to this policy even in the most extraordinary circumstances, and in the midst of the indescribable clamors of the assembly. He maintained that there could be no possible or legitimate federation in Germany without Austria. One of the greatest griefs of the Teutons against Austria has been in all times its not forming a state purely German, its containing in its bosom different populations and of an "inferior" race. This was the principal argument of the parliament of Frankfort in favor of the constitution of a Germany without the empire of the Hapsburg, and M. de Bismarck did not fail to reproduce it in 1866, in a memorable circular. In 1850 the deputy of the Mark did not share this opinion; he was convinced that "Austria was a German power in the full force of the term, although it also had the good fortune to exercise its dominion over foreign nationalities," and he boldly concluded that "Prussia should subordinate itself to Austria to the end that they might combat in concert the menacing democracy." Truly, in recalling that session of the Prussian chamber on the 3d December, 1850, one can, in the words of Montesquieu, observe the spectacle of the astounding vicissitudes of history; but the irony of fate commences to take its truly fantastic proportions, when one remembers that it was precisely this speech of the 3d December, 1850, which decided the vocation of M. de Bismarck and opened to him the career of foreign affairs. Forced to consent to the restoration of the Bund, and resigned to the preponderance of the empire of the Hapsburg, the Prussian government thought in truth that it could give no better pledges of its disposition than in choosing for its plenipotentiary to the Germanic Confederation the ardent orator whose devotion to the cause of the Hapsburg was even able to resist the proof of the humiliation of Olmütz. And it was as the most decided partisan of Austria that the future conqueror of Sadowa made his entrance into the arena of diplomacy!

The chamber was prorogued in consequence of this stormy discussion. The rupture with the national party was consummated, and M. de Manteuffel, whose cold and bureaucratic mind sympathized in reality but very slightly with the ultras, thought it nevertheless useful to strengthen the government by making them some advances. Several prominent posts in the civil service were conferred on members of the extreme right: M. de Kleist-Retzow, among others, held the presidency of the Rhenish provinces. One could hardly dream of utilizing in the same manner the talents of the former referendarius of Potsdam and Greifswalde, who had shown so little disposition and taste for the administrative career: on account of the considerations already mentioned, it was first thought of sending him to Frankfort as first secretary of the legation, but with the assurance of being made real representative at the end of some time. This choice produced some surprise. It was an entirely new proceeding (they have become accustomed to it there and in other places since) to reward a deputy with a diplomatic mission for his attitude or his vote in the chamber. It was asked if the eccentric and impetuous cavalier of the Mark would be the right man in the right place in the midst of such delicate circumstances. The timid and overscrupulous M. de Manteuffel was not without apprehension on this head, and the very ardor with which M. de Bismarck accepted the position only augmented the uneasiness of the president of the council. King Frederick William IV., who personally had a very high regard for the ardent "Percy" of the party of the cross, had nevertheless some doubts. "Your majesty can try me," said the aspirant for diplomacy; "if matters go wrong, your majesty will be at perfect liberty to recall me at the end of six months or even before."

It was only, however, at the end of eight years that he was recalled by the successor of Frederick William IV. And still, after the first days of his mission (June, 1851) he expressed himself thus in a confidential letter concerning the men and the affairs he was charged to deal with: "Our relations here consist in distrust and mutual espionage. If we only had something to spy out or to hide! But these are merely silly trifles, for which these people torment their minds. These diplomats who retail with an air of importance their bric-à-brac, seem to me much more ridiculous than a deputy of the second chamber draping himself in the feeling of his dignity. If exterior events do not unexpectedly arise, I know from to-day exactly what we shall have done in two, three, or five years, and what we can dispatch in twenty-four hours, if we wish to be sincere and reasonable for one day. I never doubted that all these gentlemen did their cooking in water; but a soup so watery and insipid that it is impossible to find in it a trace of fat does not cease to astonish me.... I have made very rapid progress in the art of saying nothing with many words; I write several sheets of reports, plain and round, like the leading articles, and if, after having read them, Manteuffel understands a jot, he is cleverer than I am. No one, not even the most malicious of democrats can have any idea what nonsense and charlatanisms diplomacy hides."

Some years later, during the complications of the Orient, he wrote to his sister Malvina: "I am at a session of the Bund; a very highly honored colleague is reading a very stupid speech on the anarchical situation in Upper Lippe, and I think that I cannot better improve this opportunity than in pouring out before you my fraternal sentiments. These knights of the round table who surround me in this ground floor of the Taxis palace are very honorable men, but not at all amusing. The table, twenty feet in diameter, is covered with a green cloth. Think of X—— and of Z—— in Berlin; they are entirely of the calibre of these gentlemen of the Bundestag. I have the habit of approaching all things with a feeling of innocence which gapes. My disposition of mind is that of a careless lassitude after I have succeeded in bringing little by little the Bund to the desolating consciousness of its profound nothingness. Do you remember the Lied of Heine: O Bund, o chien tu n'es pas sain, etc.? Well! that Lied will soon, and by a unanimous vote, be raised to the rank of national hymn of Germany."

The lassitude, the disgust as well as the contempt for the Bund increased from year to year. In 1858 he thought of leaving the career forever. He had enough of "this régime of truffles, of dispatches and of grand crosses." He spoke of withdrawing "under the guns of Schoenhausen," or still better of "growing young by ten years, and once more taking the offensive position of 1848 and 1849." He wished to fight, without being hindered by relations and official courtesies, to throw off the uniform, and to "go into politics in swimming drawers (in politischen Schwimmhosen)."

What is there astonishing in it? Of all imaginable political men, M. de Bismarck was certainly the least fitted to have a regard and liking for a deliberative body essentially moderated and moderating, where everything was discussed in private, in elaborated speeches, thought over at length and still more freely discussed, and where the gashes and thrusts actually amounted to nothing. A great congress of peace could scarcely have any attraction for the ardent Percys whom the smallest conference of Bangor[23] caused, enraged, to jump out of their skins; and the Bundestag, as we have said, was a permanent congress of peace called to maintain the statu quo and to remove every cause for conflict. The little incidents, the little manœuvres and the little struggles for influence were not wanting, it is true, in this company, more than in any other; they served to maintain the good humor of the ordinary diplomats, and were generally considered as useful stimulants for the good management of affairs and good digestion of dinners. But they must have seemed paltry in the eyes of a man of action and of combat; they must have irritated, at times even exasperated him! To observe the affairs of the world from this post on the Main, which allowed them to be grasped in their ensemble; to profit by abundant information, to compose therefrom brilliant dispatches, fit to instruct and above all to amuse an august master; to utter occasionally a very spirituel, very malicious mot, and to rejoice at it; to make others enjoy it, even to carry it perfectly warm to Stuttgart, and to confide its further expedition to a gracious Grand Duchess,—that was an occupation which might content Prince Gortchakof, even charm the leisure hours of a man educated in the school of Count Nesselrode and grown old in the career. But how was it possible to make such an existence agreeable to a cavalier of the Mark, improvised into a minister plenipotentiary, or to shut up in such a narrow circle, though a pleasant one, a "fiancé of Bellona," still foaming from battles delivered without cessation for four years on a resounding stage! In order to find a fitting compensation in the new circle in which he was placed, he needed at least some great European combination, some great negotiation capable of exercising his faculties, and of making them known,—and they talked to him of bric-à-brac, of Upper Lippe! A negotiation as insignificant as that with the poor Augustenburg, brought to a happy end in 1852, could certainly not be counted among the triumphs worthy of a Bismarck,[24] and this was nevertheless the single and pitiful "bubble of fat" which he was able to discover in the soup cooked during several years at Frankfort!

It is true that the question of the Orient did not delay in breaking out, and that at first it even seemed to open vast perspectives. Prussia was well disposed towards Russia. The secondary States of Germany showed themselves still more ardent, and sometimes even went so far as to have the appearance of being willing to draw their swords; so much the worse for Austria if she persisted in making common cause with the allies; that might bring about important territorial modifications, and all to the advantage of the House of Hohenzollern! And the representative of Prussia to the Germanic Confederation ("his excellency the lieutenant," as he was then called on account of the Landwehr uniform which he liked to wear) gave a warm and firm support in this crisis to his colleague of Russia, who had become his most intimate friend. He was not, however, long in seeing that the Germanic Confederation would not desert its neutrality; that the secondary States, in spite of all the agitations in the conferences of Bamberg, would not take an active part either in one sense or in the other, and that the war would be localized in the Black Sea and the Baltic. He conceived a profound disdain for the Bund, was "conscious of its unfathomable nothingness," and hummed over the green cloth of the Taxis palace the Lied of Heine on the Diet of Frankfort. In addition, he experienced on this occasion a grief, which he never forgot, which he recalled many years afterwards in a confidential dispatch which has become celebrated. During the Oriental complications, he wrote in 1859 to M. de Schleinitz, "Austria overcame us at Frankfort in spite of all the commonalty of ideas and desires which we then had with the secondary States. These States, after each oscillation, always indicate with the activity of the magnetized needle, the same point of attraction." Nothing more natural, however; it was not from the empire of the Hapsburg that Hanover and Saxony had to dread certain annexation, as events have since proved only too clearly. But the man who can one day desire the destruction of great cities, as the hot-beds of revolutionary spirit, did not hesitate to condemn in his soul and conscience the small States as the inextinguishable hearths of the "Austrian spirit."

Austria, in truth, was not slow in taking in the thoughts and the resentments of the cavalier of the Mark the place which the revolution had lately held there, and the ardent champion of Hapsburg in the chambers of Berlin became little by little their most bitter, most implacable enemy in the Bundestag. Moreover, all the great men of Prussia, commencing with the great elector and Frederick II., and without excepting William I., have always had, as regards Austria, "two souls in their breasts" like Faust, or, like Rebecca, "two children conflicting with one another in her bosom;" in a word, two principles, one of which imbued them with an almost religious respect for the antique and illustrious imperial house, while the other urged them to conquest and spoliation at the cost of this very house. In the month of May, 1849, the honest and poetical King Frederick William IV. declared to a deputation of ministers from the Germanic States,[25] "that he should consider that day as the most happy one of his life when he should hold the wash basin (Waschbecken) at the coronation of a Hapsburg as Emperor of Germany;" that did not prevent him later from smiling from time to time at the work of the parliament of Frankfort, and from working for the "restricted union" under the auspices of General de Radowitz. And even M. de Bismarck was certainly very sincere as deputy of the Prussian parliament in his "Austrian religion," when in the name of conservative principles he undertook the energetic defense of the Hapsburg against the attacks of German liberalism; but he was now the representative of his government in the Taxis palace, encountered Austria on its way to a struggle for influence with the secondary States, to a struggle of interests concerning the affairs of the Orient, and he began to engage in an order of ideas, at the end of which he was to take up the policy of "heart blow." It was thus that on the occasion of the war in the Orient and in the very city of Frankfort there arose in the hearts of the two future chancellors of Russia and of Germany that hatred of Austria which was to have such fatal consequences, for, that the reader may not be deceived, it was the connivance of these two political men,—the fatal ideology of the Emperor Napoleon III. aiding them largely, it is just to add,—which rendered possible the catastrophes of which our days have been the witnesses: the calamity of Sadowa, and the destruction of the Bund, and the dismemberment of Denmark as well as of France! With Prince Gortchakof, this sentiment of hostility burst forth suddenly in consequence of an erroneous appreciation of events, but which his whole nation shared with him. With M. de Bismarck, the hatred of Austria had not an origin so spontaneous; it had not, for instance, as an origin, the grievances of Olmütz, which the deputy of the Mark had on the contrary been able to easily overcome; it was slow in forming, it developed, consolidated itself in consequence of a long and daily struggle in the heart of the Bund, in consequence of an experience acquired at the end of several years of vain attempts, and from the definite conviction that Hapsburg would never of its free will, abandon the secondary States, and he defended them against every effort at absorption. Resuming the instruction which his sojourn of eight years at Frankfort had given him, the representative of Prussia to the Germanic Confederation wrote in 1859, in his often quoted dispatch to M. de Schleinitz, those remarkable words: "I see in our federal relations a fault which sooner or later we must cure ferro et igne." Ferro et igne! that is the first version of the received text "iron and blood," which one day the president of the council laid down in an official manner in a speech to the chamber.

At the same time that the ancient "Austrian religion" underwent with its former ardent confessor a transformation so radical, a no less curious change was wrought in his mind in regard to several other articles of the credo of his party. Removed from the mêlée and participating no longer in the parliamentary struggles, he began to observe more coldly certain questions important in those times, and to temper more than one antipathy of past days. Since 1852, on returning from a trip to Berlin, he writes: "There is something demoralizing in the air of the chamber; the best men of the world become vain there and cling to the Tribune as a woman to her toilet.... I find parliamentary intrigues hollow and unworthy of any notice. While one lives in their midst, one has illusions concerning them, and attaches to them I do not know how much importance.... Every time that I arrive there from Frankfort, I experience the feelings of a temperate man who falls among drunken people." Many things in old times disgraceful and abhorred, take now a less repulsive aspect to the eyes of the statesmen maturing great projects for the future. "The chamber and the press can become the most powerful instruments of our external policy," wrote in 1856 the former despiser of parliamentarism and friend of M. Thadden-Triglaff, and it is thus that one finds in the correspondence of these times the vague idea of a national representation of the Zollverein, even a pronounced desire for universal suffrage itself, provided that these means could become the instrumenta regni. The example of the second empire exercised then an influence which the historian should carefully bear in mind. This system of absolutism tinged with popular passions, "spotted with red," to employ a characteristic expression of M. de Bismarck, seduced the imagination of more than one aspirant for coups d'état and coups d'éclat, and the former colleague of the Doctor d'Ester must have opened his cigar case more than once and contemplated there the little sprig of olive plucked from the tomb of Petrarch and Laura.

Yet the goal seemed distant, and how veiled was the future, still indistinctly seen! It was not under King Frederick William IV., whose mind became more and more clouded, that he was permitted to think of action; even the accession of the regent, the present King William, seemed at first to make no change in the exterior situation. The new ministers of the regent, the ministers of the new era, as was said then, were honest doctrinarians who spoke of the development of conceded liberties and of the strengthening of the representative régime. The good and naïf, they even allowed William I. to proclaim solemnly one day that "Prussia need only make moral conquests in Germany!" Evidently the new era was not yet the era of M. de Bismarck. During the years which passed after the war of the Orient until his embassy in Russia, one sees the representative of Prussia to the Germanic Confederation in constant motion, on continual journeys across Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, Courland, and Upper Italy, seeking subjects for distraction, or perhaps also subjects for observation, and each time returning to Frankfort only to raise a difficulty, break some bric-à-brac, and to press to the utmost the nervous and bilious Count Rechberg, Austrian representative and president of the Bundestag. His frequent excursions to Paris caused him to have a presentiment of the events which were preparing in Italy; he only became more aggressive, and there was a time when his recall was considered at Frankfort as indispensable for the maintenance of peace. It was at this moment that he thought of definitely abandoning this career, of throwing off the uniform, and of going into politics in his "swimming drawers." He consented, however, to do it in "a bear-skin and with caviar," as he expressed himself in one of his letters; in other words called to exchange his post at Frankfort for that at St. Petersburg. One hoped thus to remove him from the burning ground, to "put him on ice" (another expression of M. de Bismarck); as for himself, he perhaps attached other hopes to this removal, and in any case found consolation in seeing his former colleague of Frankfort become principal minister of a great empire, and with whom he was always on such good terms. The 1st of April, 1859, "the anniversary of his birth," M. de Bismarck arrived in the capital of Russia.

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II.