"In the end Austria played my game for me. She demanded in April, 1866, the demobilization of the Prussian forces, which had begun to put themselves on a war footing in March. Then I knew the Lord had delivered her into our hands. I laid the demand before the King, saying: 'I do not know whether Your Majesty is prepared to surrender the command of your army to your brother of Austria.' He took fire at once. Then it was that he felt his honour as a soldier was attacked. From that moment the difficulty was to restrain him. We were not quite ready. It would have been dangerous to declare war at once. It was dangerous, perhaps, to let the moment of the King's anger pass, lest counsels of peace should again prevail. But one risk or the other had to be taken, and I chose the latter. Two months later, June 18th, war was declared, and the King issued a manifesto to his people which was everything that could be wished. All the rest was in the hands of the God of Battles."
Then a pause and a piercing glance, then on he went:
"After Königgrätz there were the same difficulties. The King could not at first understand why this career of victory was to be interrupted. He was King no longer. He was Field Marshal, commanding the forces of Prussia. He had won a great battle. The power of Austria was broken. Vienna lay at his mercy. Germany was waiting to know whether Austria or Prussia was to be her future master—well, no, not master, but which of the two was to be the chief State in Germany and the true leader of the German people. What other sign of supremacy could be so visible, so convincing, as the Prussian armies in Vienna, Prussian troops encamped in the Prater, the Danube bridled and bridged by us Prussians? When an enemy's capital lay at the victor's mercy, why should he not enter it? What great soldier ever refrained?
"Thus," said Bismarck, "spoke the King. I ventured to remind His Majesty of his reluctance to make war on the Emperor of Austria, and to ask whether, now that he was vanquished, he wished him to be humiliated also. That seemed to touch him. We talked long. He was surrounded by generals and princes who urged him on, but in the end he came round to my view which had been his own view before the war. So here we are in Berlin and not in Vienna, and please God we shall all be friends again, and some day there will be one Germany and not two, or twenty, or fifty, as in times past and to-day. The fruits of our triumph are yet to gather."
Twice during this discourse I had risen to go, but Bismarck said: "No, I have not finished." The third time, it was long past one o'clock, and I said: "If I don't go now Countess Bismarck will never let me see you again." This amused him, and he remarked: "I suppose you think I am getting sleepy!" But sleepy he was not. He had talked for near two hours with unquenchable energy and freshness, and with a force of speech in which no man was his rival.