FOOTNOTES
[1] Strictly speaking, almost complete, as some passages must still be omitted for the present.
[2] The despatch was understood to contain a sentence to the effect that Rome should take care not to challenge Europe, and that whatever the Church might say, the Austrian Courts of Justice would not allow themselves to be influenced into according any indulgence towards those who broke the laws or instigated others to do so.
[3] At that time it had only been accepted by the Committee of the House of Commons,—without any important amendments however, and its adoption on a third reading was assured. It is true, objections were raised. Gladstone very characteristically observed that the law now only empowered the Administration to proceed against incitements to treasonable action; it was, however, necessary to provide for the punishment of attempts by the press to create a “treasonable state of mind” amongst the people. The sole concession made by the Government was that the threatened measures should not be put into execution until warning (once only) had been given.
[4] The loyal Hanoverian circles did not tell the truth in this matter. Stoffel’s reports were, on the whole, good, and he himself was a man of respectable character.
[5] Not quite correct, according to a subsequent statement of the Minister’s and Count Bill’s own account.
[6] Louis de Condé was treacherously murdered on the 12th of March, 1569, after the engagement at Jarnac, just as he had delivered up his sword to an officer of the royal army, being shot by one Montesquieu, a captain of the Guards.
[7] These particulars are worked up into the [preceding chapter].
[8] In presence of later events he can hardly have expressed himself in this way.
[9] The Würtemberger was Von Reinhard, and the Darmstadter Von Munch-Bellinghausen, both determined opponents of Prussia.
[10] Compare this passage with the speech delivered by Bismarck in the United Diet on the 15th of June, 1847. On that occasion he said, “I am of opinion that the conception of the Christian state is as old as the so-called Holy Roman Empire, as old as all the European States, and that it is exactly the ground in which those States have struck deep roots; and further, that each State that wishes to secure its own permanence, or even if it merely desires to prove its right to existence, must act upon religious principles. The words ‘By the grace of God,’ which Christian rulers add to their names, are for me no mere empty sound. On the contrary, I recognise in them the confession that Princes desire to wield the sceptre with which God has invested them in accordance with His Will.” Certain remarks made by the Chancellor in his speech of the 9th of October, 1878, during the debate on the Anti-Socialist Bill, should also be remembered in this connection. He said, inter alia: “If I had come to believe as these men (the Social Democrats) do—yes, I live a full and busy life and am in opulent circumstances—but that would not be sufficient to make me wish to live another day if I had not, in the words of the poet, ‘an Gott und bessere Zukunft Glauben’ (faith in God and a better future).”
[11] It was a report from Mohl, originally intended, for his Government at Carlsruhe, which was communicated to the Chief, under whose instructions extracts therefrom were utilised in the press.
[12] At that time Secretary of State in the Foreign Office. He was not a Catholic.
[13] Bucher afterwards told me that the Chancellor was affected both by the superstition respecting the number thirteen and that relating to Friday. Other diplomats, as, for instance, the French, seem to entertain the same objection both to the number and the day. The following anecdote, which I was assured was perfectly genuine, may serve as an example. After the negotiations respecting the duty payable by ships passing through the Sound had been completed, it was arranged that the treaty containing the terms agreed upon should be signed at Copenhagen on the 13th of March, 1587. It turned out that the day thus chosen was not only the thirteenth of the month, but was also a Friday, and that there were thirteen Plenipotentiaries to sign the document. “A threefold misfortune!” exclaimed the French Ambassador Dotezac. To his delight, however, the addition of the signatures was postponed for some days owing to difficulties occasioned by the difference in the rate of exchange of Danish and Prussian thalers. The number of representatives still caused him so much anxiety, however, that it made him ill, and it was only on the decease of the Hanoverian Plenipotentiary a few weeks later that the French Ambassador and the other signatories of the treaty felt that they were no longer in danger of sudden death.
[14] Walker, the English Kutusow of Count Bismarck-Bohlen, H. B. M.’s Military Plenipotentiary at headquarters, was not held in much estimation by the Chancellor and his entourage.
[15] These suspicions, though fully justified by appearances, were subsequently shown to be for the greater part unfounded, except that there was inadequate provision for the requirements of the wounded. I reproduce the episode as evidence of the Minister’s usual humane feeling and love of justice.
[16] A reference to the popular Thuringian ballad of “The Landgrave and the Smith.”
[17] His greeting to those who brought him the news of his election as Emperor while he was netting birds in the forest.
[18] Thun, Rechberg and Prokesch held in succession the position of Austrian Minister to the Bundestag.
[19] The communication referred to is a letter by Thomas Carlyle published in The Times of November 18, in which it occupied two and a half columns. The passages quoted by Dr. Busch are here reproduced from the original:—
“The question for the Germans, in this crisis, is not one of ‘magnanimity,’ of ‘heroic pity and forgiveness to a fallen foe,’ but of solid prudence and practical consideration what the fallen foe will, in all likelihood, do when once on his feet again. Written on her memory, in a distinctly instructive manner, Germany has an experience of 400 years on this point; of which on the English memory, if it ever was recorded there, there is now little or no trace visible.... No nation ever had so bad a neighbour as Germany has had in France for the last 400 years; bad in all manner of ways; insolent, rapacious, insatiable, unappeasable, continually aggressive.... Germany, I do clearly believe, would be a foolish nation not to think of raising up some secure boundary fence between herself and such a neighbour now that she has the chance. There is no law of nature that I know of, no Heavens Act of Parliament whereby France, alone of terrestrial beings, shall not restore any portion of her plundered goods when the owners they were wrenched from have an opportunity upon them.... The French complain dreadfully of threatened ‘loss of honour’; and lamentable bystanders plead earnestly, ‘Don’t dishonour France; leave poor France’s honour bright.’ But will it save the honour of France to refuse paying for the glass she has voluntarily broken in her neighbour’s windows. The attack upon the windows was her dishonour. Signally disgraceful to any nation was her late assault on Germany; equally signal has been the ignominy of its execution on the part of France. The honour of France can be saved only by the deep repentance of France, and by the serious determination never to do so again—to do the reverse of so for ever henceforth.... For the present, I must say, France looks more and more delirious, miserable, blamable, pitiable and even contemptible. She refuses to see the facts that are lying palpably before her face, and the penalties she has brought upon herself. A France scattered into anarchic ruin, without recognisable head; head, or chief, indistinguishable from feet, or rabble; Ministers flying up in balloons ballasted with nothing else but outrageous public lies, proclamations of victories that were creatures of the fancy; a Government subsisting altogether on mendacity, willing that horrid bloodshed should continue and increase rather than that they, beautiful Republican creatures, should cease to have the guidance of it; I know not when and where there was seen a nation so covering itself with dishonour.... The quantity of conscious mendacity that France, official and other, has perpetrated latterly, especially since July last, is something wonderful and fearful. And, alas! perhaps even that is small compared to the self-delusion and unconscious mendacity long prevalent among the French.... To me at times the mournfullest symptom in France is the figure its ‘men of genius,’ its highest literary speakers, who should be prophets and seers to it, make at present, and, indeed, for a generation back have been making. It is evidently their belief that new celestial wisdom is radiating out of France upon all the other overshadowed nations; that France is the new Mount Zion of the universe; and that all this sad, sordid, semi-delirious, and, in good part, infernal stuff which French literature has been preaching to us for the last fifty years is a veritable new Gospel out of Heaven, pregnant with blessedness for all the sons of men.... I believe Bismarck (sic) will get his Alsace and what he wants of Lorraine, and likewise that it will do him, and us, and all the world, and even France itself by and by, a great deal of good.... (Bismarck) in fact seems to me to be striving with strong faculty, by patient, grand and successful steps, towards an object beneficial to Germans and to all other men. That noble, patient, deep, and solid Germany should be at length welded into a nation and become Queen of the Continent, instead of vapouring, vain-glorious, gesticulating, quarrelsome, restless and over-sensitive France, seems to me the hopefullest public fact that has occurred in my time.”—The Translator.
[20] The King.
[21] The Crown Prince.
END OF VOL. I.
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNGAY.