¶ There is a story of a garrison brawl in which a Bismarck slew his companion in drink, then fled to Russia, then on to Siberia; soldier of fortune, he fights under any flag that promises a gay life and plenty of loot. Three hundred years later—how the wheel turns round!—Otto von Bismarck, as Russian Ambassador to the King of Prussia, engaged in intrigues for the same old lust of land, the same old nefarious business, but this time sprayed over by the high-sounding name, diplomacy.
¶ Dr. Busch, the Saxon press-agent for Prince Bismarck, repeats the old tale of the winning of Alsace by the French king, through the aid of Otto von Bismarck’s great-great-grandfather, a mercenary soldier; adding that while one Bismarck helped take Alsace away, another of that redoubtable family brought it back many years later, with the added joy of the prodigious money-fine of five billions of francs!
7
Boisterous Col. Bismarck, of the Dragoons; “The Wooden Donkey dies today!” French Cavalier Bismarck and his mushy prose-poems.
¶ Burly strength and horse-play, rather than diplomacy, were always distinctive traits of that part of the Bismarck family immediately surrounding Otto von Bismarck; and in Otto’s case, although the years gradually taught him that there are more ways of stopping a man’s mouth than by cutting off his head, on the whole we seek in vain, among ancestral Bismarcks, for any striking characteristics in which the point does not turn either on gluttony or on deep-drinking.
¶ They were enormous eaters. Bread and meat were not enough. They must have game, fish, cake, wines, and plenty of each. Hunger put them in a rage. They were iron men, with stomachs of pigs.
¶ They were unbrooked master spirits, followed the hounds, fought duels, had noisy tongues, and gloried in personal independence.
When they loved they loved madly; when they hated it was the same. They drank all night and were out again at dawn.
¶ Yet in their way, they were high-minded gentlemen, devoted themselves industriously to their duties; and it may be that the turbulence of their lives borrowed something from the rude clash of opinion that often divided the best friends, during the stormy periods of history in which they fought as soldiers of fortune.
¶ Otto von Bismarck’s great-grandfather, Augustus, calling his cronies of the barracks around him, was wont to add zest to the carousal by introducing the trumpet call after each toast; to heighten the infernal racket, the boisterous colonel of dragoons ordered a volley fired in the drink-hall.