XI
GERMAN SECRET SERVICE—continued
That Stieber was admitted to the more intimate confidences of Bismarck would seem indicated by the fact that in the year after Sadowa, the chief of police suggested, he tells in his Memoirs, that he should be entrusted with the task of doing in France what he had done in Bohemia. This was in June 1867, when he asked Bismarck for eighteen months' time in which to supply the Chancellor with all the military and regional intelligence of the French frontiers and invasion zones, which it was necessary to possess for a successful campaign. Prussia was then paying some £52,000 a year for the secret-intelligence service, and Bismarck was not slow to perceive that Stieber in his own way was making the path of victory more smooth for von Moltke's commanders. In the month of June the Chancellor had induced King William to confer on his police-minister the order of the Red Eagle, and in the course of the evening which followed the conferring of that decoration Bismarck and Stieber were for long engaged in conversation, the momentous nature of which was soon shown by the departure of Stieber, accompanied by his aides, Zernicki and Kaltenbach, into France with the object of laying down base-lines, as the surveyors put it. Among the various results of that journey was the appointment of over 1000 spies within the invasion zones with "head-centres" at Brussels, Lausanne and Geneva. Another result of this journey, he himself tells, was his handing over to Bismarck some 1650 reports of fixed local spies, in the pay of Prussia, 90 per cent. of them Prussians, which called for (a) the drafting of large bodies of German agriculturists into districts which lay along the possible routes of advancing German armies, and (b) the sending of several thousands of female employees for service in public places as barmaids or cashiers. It was emphasised that these women should be "as pretty as possible." Several hundred retired non-commissioned officers were to be sent to France, where local "fixed spies" guaranteed them employment of a commercial kind. Furthermore in the garrison towns in the eastern departments some fifty young and pretty girls to act as servants in canteens were requisitioned by Stieber, who laid stress on the fact that women of a "high type of morality" would hardly serve his purpose, which was to extract information from drinking soldiers. Several hundred more domestic servants were to be placed among the homes of middle-class people such as doctors, lawyers, merchants. From the year 1867, and in pursuance of Stieber's plans, some 13,000 German spies of the minor order were asked for, itself a sufficiently large body of immigrants, one would imagine, to awaken the suspicions of alert French people. Between that year and 1870, Stieber had added at least 20,000 more, all of them scattered in various kinds of capacities along the routes of intended invasion from Berlin and Belgium to Paris. There was one important interlude, however.
In 1867 an attempt was made on the life of Alexander II. of Russia by a Pole, when that Emperor was paying an important political visit to Napoleon III. Stieber was then in Paris with Bismarck, also attached to the staff of the King of Prussia, who was a participator in this meeting of sovereigns. Information had come to the Prussian minister of police that an attempt was to be made on the life of Alexander. Accordingly Stieber called on Bismarck, imparting to him this important information. Bismarck assured his police-minister that he was already acquainted with the plot to assassinate the Tsar.
"But," added the Chancellor, "we must allow this act to be attempted and for political reasons. Nevertheless, we can assure the safety of the Emperor by having the conspirators shadowed and arrested once they have fired their revolvers. You, Stieber, must have your men on the spot, and when the attempt is made, the assailant's aim must be deflected. The very fact that an attack is made upon the Tsar while in Paris will prevent the arranging of a Franco-Russian alliance which is not just now to the interests of Prussia, and if the would-be assassin is not condemned to death, a period of estrangement must follow between France and Russia and this is just as I would have things to be."
As it fell out, a young Pole actually made the attempt on the next day. Stieber's men had shadowed him all through the night, till the very moment in which he fired at the Tsar, the outrage taking place, but without harmful results to the object of the attack. All had fallen out as Bismarck had foretold, and with the subsequent failure of a Paris jury to convict the youthful Pole, France was prevented, by the estrangement which succeeded, from assuring herself the friendship of an ally whose support might have changed the history of the Franco-German War of 1870. The story is told in detail in Stieber's own Memoirs, and we confess that, having read it several times with care, we are ourselves forced to the conclusion that Bismarck's supposition that a French jury would fail to convict the Pole was based upon something much more tangible than the arts and processes of divination. In other words, the impression left upon the mind is that Bismarck's gold had subsidised the conspirators in the plot as well as the Paris jurymen, in order to bring about a political situation which should not interfere with his plans. Bismarck had already more than once proved himself an expert in preparing his schemes far in advance, as the Danish and Austrian wars had already proved, and as the Franco-German War was even more fully to demonstrate.
When, in due course, and as a result of Bismarck's plan of forcing a fight on the French at the psychological moment, war was declared against France in July 1870, Stieber and his two lieutenants, Zernicki and Kaltenbach, left for the Front with the headquarters staff. His title was Chief of the Active-Service Police and his duties, drawn up by himself, were as follows:—
1. To provide information to the Staff regarding the situation, strength and movements of each of the French armies in the field.