Lay Down Your Arms: The Autobiography of Martha von Tilling

by Bertha von Suttner

Events now began to tread on each other’s heels. Austria declared for the Augustenburg so decisively that Prussia characterised it as a breach of the Gastein treaty, and discovered in that a plainly hostile intention; the consequence of which was that the preparations on both sides were carried to their highest point. And now Saxony also began to do the same. The excitement was universal, and became more violent every day. “War in sight, war in sight,” was the announcement of every newspaper and every speech. I felt as if I were at sea and a storm approaching.

The most hated and most reviled man in Europe then was called Bismarck. On May 7 an attempt was made to assassinate him. Did Blind, the perpetrator of the deed, wish to avert this storm? And would he have averted it?

I received letters from Prussia from Aunt Cornelia, from which it seemed that in that country the war was anything but desired. While with us there prevailed universal enthusiasm for the idea of a war with Prussia, and we looked with pride on our “million of picked soldiers,” inward contention reigned there. Bismarck was no less reviled and slandered in his own country than in ours; the report went that the Landwehr would refuse to go out to the “fraternal war,” and it was said that Queen Augusta threw herself at her husband’s feet to pray for peace. Oh! how glad should I have been to kneel at her side, and how gladly would I have hurried off all my sister-women—yes, all—to do the same. It is this, and this alone, that should be the effort of all women: “Peace, peace. Lay down your arms.”

If our beautiful empress had also thrown herself at her husband’s feet, and with tears and lifted hands had begged for disarmament—who knows? Perhaps she did—perhaps the emperor himself also wished to preserve peace, but the pressure proceeding from the councils, and the speakers, and the shouting and the writing was such as no one man—even on the throne—could stand against.

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On June 1 Prussia declared to the assembly of the Bund that she would at once disarm if Austria and Saxony set the example. Against that came a direct accusation from Vienna that Prussia had for a long time been planning, in concert with Italy, an attack on Austria, and on that account the latter now desired to call the whole Bund to arms, in order to request it to undertake the decision of the case of the duchies. She desired at the same time to call the Estates of Holstein to co-operate.

Against this declaration Prussia lodged a protest—inasmuch as it overturned the Gastein treaty. That being so the position reverted to the Vienna treaty, i.e., to the common condominium. The consequence was that Prussia had also the right to occupy Holstein—as on her side Austria was permitted to occupy Schleswig. And the Prussians at once moved into Holstein. Gablenz withdrew without sword drawn, but under protest.

Bismarck had previously said in a circular letter: “We have found no disposition at all to meet us at Vienna. On the contrary, expressions have fallen from Austrian statesmen and councillors of the emperor which have reached the ear of the king from authentic sources (tritsch tratsch), and which prove that the ministers wish for war at any price (to wish for public slaughter, what a fearful accusation!), partly because they hope for success in the field, partly to get free of internal difficulties, and to eke out their own shattered finances by contributions from Prussia (statecraft).”

The Press was now completely warlike, and of course (as the patriotic custom is) sure of victory. The possibility of defeat must be entirely left out of view by every loyal subject whom his prince summons to the battle. Numerous leading articles pictured Benedek’s entry into Berlin, and also the sack of that city by the Croats. Some even recommended to raze the capital of Prussia to the ground. “Sack,” “raze to the ground,” “ride over spurs in blood”—these are expressions which do not indeed any longer express the popular conception in modern times of what is right; but they have, since the days of our school-studies of the ancient histories of war, been always clinging to people; and they have been so often recited in the histories of battles learned by heart, so often written down in our essays in German, that if a man has to write an article on the subject of war in a newspaper, such expressions drop from his pen spontaneously. Contempt for the enemy cannot be too strongly expressed—for the Prussian troops the Vienna newspapers had no other term than “the tailors”. Adjutant-General Count Grünne expressed himself thus: “We shall chase off these Prussians with a flea in their ear”. That is the kind of way to make a war quite “popular”. That sort of thing strengthens the national confidence.