The accession of the young Emperor William was followed by an astounding outburst of violence against the Empress Frederick on the part of Bismarck’s tools, his agents in the Press and elsewhere—indeed, the Empress once told an intimate friend that no humiliation and pain which could be inflicted on her had been spared her.
The first humiliation took a strange and terrible form; a cordon of soldiers was drawn round the New Palace, when the Emperor Frederick was known to be dying, in order that no secret documents might be removed without the knowledge of the new Emperor.
The Empress, aware that this was the work of Bismarck, requested an interview with him, but Bismarck replied that he had no time, as he was so fully occupied with his master, the new Emperor. As a matter of fact, everything at the New Palace which the late Emperor or the Empress Frederick considered to be important had been placed out of Bismarck’s reach. For a considerable time these private papers were entrusted to the care of a person in the Empress’s confidence, who resided outside the country, ultimately they were sent back to Germany.
Unfortunately not all the late Emperor’s papers had been so carefully guarded, and, to the anguish of his widow, his memory became involved in acute, and it may even be said degrading, controversy.
In the well-known review, the Deutsche Rundschau, Dr. Geffcken, a Liberal publicist who had been honoured by the Emperor Frederick’s friendship, published extracts from the diary of the late Sovereign. They were designed to defend his memory against his traducers, and in particular to prove that it was he who suggested the united German Empire. It seems that the diaries were found locked up at the Villa Zirio, and it was stated that they were given, or at least shown, by the Emperor Frederick to Baron von Roggenbach, the Baden statesman.
Bismarck at first affected to believe, and apparently he succeeded in persuading the Emperor William, that the published extracts were forgeries. The offending number of the review was accordingly suppressed, and Geffcken was arrested on September 29 on a charge of high treason. He was acquitted of criminal intention in the following January, and in the interval the Cologne Gazette charged Sir Robert Morier, then British Ambassador in St. Petersburg, with having given information to Marshal Bazaine of the movements of the Prussian forces in 1870. Fortunately Morier was able to produce convincing documentary evidence of his innocence, but it was generally felt that this monstrous attack on the Empress Frederick’s old friend was really directed against the Empress herself.
The Empress behaved with the greatest dignity and self-restraint during this time of bitter persecution, and in the many diaries and memoirs of the period we can find but one reference which reveals how she really felt. This reference is in Sir Horace Rumbold’s Recollections. He tells of the deep feeling with which the Empress spoke of the suffering she had passed through and the wrongs she had endured. “She spoke of them with an exceeding bitterness, emphasising what she said with clenched hands and betraying an emotion which suddenly gained me, and more than explained the Queen’s well-known reference to her as her ‘dear persecuted daughter.’”
It may be asked why the young Emperor William did not intervene to protect his mother from the hostility of his Chancellor. Unfortunately there is no doubt that at this time there was an estrangement between mother and son. Years before, Bismarck had taken precautions to prevent the heir presumptive to the throne from imbibing the liberal principles of both his parents, and had caused him to spend the impressionable years of early manhood entirely under the influence of his grandfather, the old Emperor, and the military glories of the new Empire. Bismarck no doubt thought that he had obtained a complete ascendancy over his new master. It was significant that whereas on his accession the Emperor Frederick had addressed his first message to the nation at large through the Chancellor, the Emperor William addressed his first messages to the Army and Navy, the civilians having to wait a day or two for their recognition. Another indication of the character of the new régime was afforded by the Emperor William’s reversal of his father’s decision to name the New Palace, Friedrichskron.
These and other incidents show how the Emperor began his reign under the domination of Bismarck, but it is pleasant to record that the estrangement from his mother, which the old Chancellor undoubtedly fostered, was not of long duration.
It is curious how seldom, among the many studies, criticisms, and estimates of the Emperor William II, we find his extraordinary versatility attributed to the influence of heredity; and yet it is easy to see now that the Empress Frederick ought to have enjoyed much greater popularity in Germany than she did as a matter of fact enjoy at any time, if only because she was the mother of such a son.