There can be no doubt that the accession of the Emperor Frederick was expected in not a few quarters to mean the almost immediate fall of Bismarck, but this expectation left out of account various important factors of the situation. Both the new Emperor and his Empress, though, as we have seen, they profoundly disapproved of Bismarck’s policy as a whole, nevertheless fully realised the Chancellor’s patriotism and the unparalleled services which he had been able to render to the German people. Bismarck, in his own account of his relations with the Emperor, recalls that they began as far back as 1848, when Prince Frederick William was only seventeen, and he had since received from him various proofs of personal confidence, notably on the occasion of the Dantzig episode in 1863. This confidence was, Bismarck declares, quite independent of political principles and differences of opinion, and though many attempts to shake it were made from interested quarters, they had no permanent success.
Later Bismarck also asserted roundly that the Emperor Frederick made it easy for him, by his amiability and confidence, to transfer to him the affection he had cherished for his father. He was both more open than his father had been to the constitutional idea of Ministerial responsibility, and also less hampered by family traditions in adjusting himself to political necessities. And Bismarck goes on to state that “all assertions of lasting discord in our relations are unfounded.”
On the subject of the Crown Princess’s influence Bismarck said:
“I could not assume that his wife had the same kindly feeling for me; her natural innate sympathy for her home had, from the beginning, shown itself in the attempt to turn the weight of Prusso-German influence in the groupings of European power into the scale of her native land; and she never ceased to regard England as her country. In the differences of interest between the two Asiatic Powers, England and Russia, she wished to see the German power applied in the interests of England if it came to a breach. This difference of opinion, which rested on the difference of nationality, caused many a discussion between her Royal Highness and me on the Eastern question, including the Battenberg question. Her influence on her husband was at all times great, and it increased with years, to culminate at the time when he was Emperor. She also, however, shared with him the conviction that in the interests of the dynasty it was necessary that I should be maintained in office at the change of reign.”
It is interesting here to recall that on August 31, 1870, after the battle of Beaumont, Busch obtained from Bismarck the following opinion of the then Crown Prince:
“He will be reasonable later on, and allow his Ministers to govern more, and not put himself too much forward, and in general he will get rid of many bad habits that render old gentlemen of his trade sometimes rather troublesome. [It is to be feared that this uncomplimentary allusion is to the old Emperor.] For the rest, he is unaffected and straightforward; but he does not care to work much, and is quite happy if he has plenty of money and amusements, and if the newspapers praise him.”
A very superficial judgment of the Emperor Frederick, and the suggestion that he was too fond of money is particularly gratuitous. As a matter of fact, only the year before his accession, in 1887, a certain Frenchman, Ballardin by name, died, leaving the whole of his fortune, valued at several million francs, to the then Crown Prince. M. Ballardin appeared to have been so embittered by disputes with the French authorities that he determined to show his hatred and contempt for his native country by the novel method of bequeathing his property to the German Crown Prince, who, however, absolutely refused to accept even the smallest portion of the legacy. That is certainly not the action of a man who could be accused of a love of money.
It may here be stated, on this subject of money, that when the Emperor Frederick succeeded to the throne, there was in the hands of Baron Kohn, the private banker of the old Emperor William, a sum of fifty-four million marks (£2,700,000), which was bequeathed to the Emperor Frederick as a kind of family treasure, to be controlled by the head of the House of Hohenzollern for the time being. When the Emperor Frederick died, however, it was found that the great bulk of this money had been invested abroad by his orders in the name of his widow; her uncle, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and her cousin, King Leopold of Belgium, being the trustees. It is even asserted that the late Prince Stolberg resigned at the time his office of Minister of the Imperial Household in consequence of what he considered the diversion of this sum of money from the Hohenzollern family. According to another version, however, only a portion of this money became the absolute property of the Empress, the remainder being hers for life, with power of appointment among her younger children.
To return to Busch; he also obtained from Bismarck a curious anecdote of the Empress:
“I took the liberty to ask further what sort of woman the Crown Princess was, and whether she had much influence over her husband. ‘I think not,’ the Count said; ‘and as to her intelligence, she is a clever woman; clever in a womanly way. She is not able to disguise her feelings, or at least not always. I have cost her many tears, and she could not conceal how angry she was with me after the annexations (that is to say of Schleswig and Hanover). She could hardly bear the sight of me, but that feeling has now somewhat subsided. She once asked me to bring her a glass of water, and as I handed it to her she said to a lady-in-waiting who sat near and whose name I forget, ‘He has cost me as many tears as there is water in this glass.’ But that is all over now.”