¶ Bismarck used the masses as the gardener uses manure. The blood of the peasantry manured the ground, out of which was to grow the harvest.
CHAPTER XV
The Great Year, 1870
56
Bismarck and Von Moltke, over a bowl of sherry punch, discuss “these poor times”—The Emperor-hunt begins.
¶ Volumes have been written to explain the origin of the Franco-Prussian war, and the intricate and inter-related facts are gone over again and again, now with emphasis here, again on the other side.
¶ It is trite to say that Bismarck foresaw that a war with France was inevitable. Behind this simple statement is a world of intrigue and ambition. The French still hold that the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine was the price not of war but of Bismarck’s brigandage. The French also believe that the candidacy of Prince Leopold Hohenzollern for the Spanish throne was a Prussian intrigue against France. The controversy on these points will never be settled, till the Doomsday Book is opened.
¶ When Bismarck sees that his work of unifying Germany cannot be completed without another war, the war comes!
His amazing insight into complex political, military and historical situations, in which with a few words he is able to divert public opinion to his own peculiar view, has been shown never with more diabolical cunning than at the time of the breaking out of the Franco-Prussian war. We refer here to the “Ems dispatch,” that played a startling part in bringing on the war; but the telegram, in itself, was really a simple thing.