The chancellor of Germany is not a lettered man in the strict and somewhat vulgar acceptation of the world. He is, to speak correctly, neither an orator nor a writer. He does not understand developing a theme well, graduating its arguments, arranging its transitions. He does not construct his period and does not trouble himself about it. He has difficulty in expressing himself, both on the tribune and also with the pen. His style is harsh, occasionally very incorrect, as unacademical as possible. It is intricate, embarrassed, even trivial at moments. Every part guarded, and all reserve made, there is something of Cromwell in his manner of expressing himself. But in an entirely different manner than in Cromwell one is forced to admire in him those flashes of thought, those strong and unforeseen images, those penetrating words which strike, which impress themselves, and which are not forgotten. When quite lately in the midst of an argument, disconnected and embarrassed, concerning his conflict with Rome, he suddenly cried out: "Be sure of one thing, gentlemen, we will not go to Canossa!"[13] one should remember that he knew how to comprise there, in a sort of menacing cæterum censeo,[14] a whole world of memories and of passions. In a very different spirit, also in a time already far distant, it is true, speaking one day—about twenty years have since flown—of the principles of revolution and contra-revolution, he said that a parliamentary debate could never decide between these two principles: "The decision will only come from God, from the God of battles, when he lets fall from his hand the iron dice of destiny!" One thinks that he hears De Maistre in this last part of the phrase, and like M. de Maistre the chancellor of Germany has had his passage decried by the hangsman; we wish to speak of this invocation to iron and to blood, which must be replaced in its frame and put in its true light,—to settle its date,—to appreciate all the relief by the side of the incontestable brutality. The invocation was made when those national-liberals, to-day of such great servility towards him and with the obedience of a corpse, wished to prevent him from reforming the army, at the same time demanding him to complete the unity of Germany. The man who felt the distant thunder of Sadowa and Sedan rumble in his soul, launched at this moment to the orators the défi which he has only too well justified since, saying that it was not by speeches that Germany could be united: "to consummate this unity, iron and blood are necessary!" This orator does not breathe at ease in the uniform which never leaves him, and he advances only by fits and starts. He collects laboriously the clouds of his rhetoric, but the spark ends by flashing and by illuminating the whole situation. To make himself understood he employs the greatest or most familiar images, without choice, just as they come; he borrows a quotation from Shakspere and from Goethe just as well as from the Wasps of M. Alphonse Karr, or from a couplet of the vaudeville. One of his most happy, most memorable inspirations, he suddenly drew one day from the libretto of the "Freischütz."
The reader will kindly permit us to recall this last episode, even at the risk of delaying somewhat in some preliminary explanations of which a German auditory, full of souvenirs of its "Freischütz," would have no need. In this opera of Weber, Max, the good and unfortunate hunter, borrows a cartridge from Robin, the evil spirit, and immediately kills an eagle, one of whose feathers he proudly sticks in his cap. He then asks for some more cartridges, but Robin tells him that they are "enchanted balls," and that in order to obtain them he must surrender himself to the infernal spirits, and deliver his soul to them. Max draws back, and then Robin, sneering, tells him that he hesitates in vain, that the bargain is made, and that he has already committed himself by the ball he made use of: "Do you think, then, that this eagle was a free gift?" Well! when in 1849 the young orator of the Mark of Brandenburg had to implore the Prussian chamber not to accept for the King of Prussia the imperial crown which the parliament of Frankfort offered him, he ended by crying out: "It is radicalism which offers this gift to the king. Sooner or later this radicalism will stand upright before the king, will demand of him its recompense, and pointing to the emblem of the eagle on that new imperial flag, it will say: Did you think, then, that this eagle was a free gift?" A striking image and equally deep and ingenious! Yes, one cannot use with impunity the "enchanted balls" of revolution, and one does not make a bargain with the popular demon, without leaving it some of his soul. Sooner or later there will stand upright before you the bad genius whose aid you have accepted, Robin of the woods and the streets. He will come to receive your salute, and tell you that he did not intend to have worked for the King of Prussia. This magnificent oratorical burst of the young deputy of the Mark, the chancellor of Germany might have considered with benefit in more than one decisive circumstance, for instance on the day when he overthrew the secular throne, also the day when he gave the signal for the combat of civilization.
The writer does not differ much from the orator, and, in speaking of the writer, we think above all of those intimate and familiar letters which have been published in the well known book of George Hesekiel, and which have had a merited success in Germany. There is always the same obscurity, the same embarrassment of elocution, the same disorder, from time to time passages of lively and original expressions, of astonishing figures, of a bitter, harsh humor, which grinds and bites you with cruel pleasure. These letters are for the great part addressed to his sister, to "dear Malvina" (married to an Arnim), and we will borrow from them more than once during the course of this study. One notices in them certain descriptions of nature, of the brightness of the moon, of the North Sea, of the view of the Danube from the heights of Buda-Pesth, which are not wanting in coloring effect, and make up a picture. There is something of Heinrich Heine in these private Reisebilder, and it has been remarked of them, that there is perhaps something of Hamlet (and what a Hamlet!) in the following passage, the only melancholy one which we have met with in the midst of so many sanguine and robust sallies. "At the mercy of God! Everything is in reality but a question of time, peoples and individuals, wisdom and folly, peace and war. To the living, everything upon earth is but hypocrisy and jugglery, and this mask of flesh having once fallen off, the wise man and the fool resemble each other greatly, and it would be hard to distinguish between the Prussian and the Austrian, their skeletons being very carefully prepared." These lines fell from the same hand, however, which, since then, and assuredly by a very specific patriotism, has furnished so many thousand subjects to the preparers of skeletons!
One sees by these letters that M. de Bismarck handled at an early hour and with predilection this irony, in which he is without a master; a cold, crafty irony, and which too often approaches sneering. He used it later in his speeches, in his conversations with ministers and ambassadors, and even in diplomatic negotiations, in the most important, most decisive moments of history. At such moments this irony sometimes affects a great frankness, sometimes a great politeness, but a frankness to make you fall on your knees before the first lie, however brazen, a politeness to make you implore an incivility without forms as a veritable charity. One day, on the very eve of the war of 1866, Count Karolyi, ambassador of Austria, and acting in the name of his government, summoned M. de Bismarck to declare categorically if he expected to break the treaty of peace, the treaty of Gastein.[15] "No," was the reply, "I have not that expectation; but, if I had, would I answer you differently?" There is an example of that frankness which disconcerts, which confounds, and seems to cry in your ear with that devil from the "Inferno":
"Tu non pensavi ch'io loico fossi!"
As to the murderous politeness, which sometimes clothes the sarcasm of M. de Bismarck, let us recall here the mot which he launched later at the negotiators of Versailles, coming to treat with him concerning the surrender of famished Paris, and to offer him two hundred millions in contributions. "Oh," said he, "Paris is too great a personage that we should treat it in such a shabby manner; let us do it the honor of a milliard." That is truly an original turn which the rival of Heine thought to give to the maxima reverentia which one owes to misfortune! When one is destined in a ripe age to exercise his humor with such ease at the cost of princes and of peoples, how is it possible when young not to jest pleasantly about that poor fellow of a peasant in Pomerania who drank too much water? In one of his letters to his dear Malvina, the young country gentleman describes with a hilarious spirit an inundation which swept over his domain which is divided by a little branch of the narrow river Hampel. This inundation severed him from all his neighbors, carried off so and so many casks of eau-de-vie, "introduced an anarchical interregnum from Schievelbein to Damm," and he ends by this stroke: "I am proud to be able to say, that in my little branch of the Hampel a wagoner was drowned with his horse and his whole load of tar!" How proud in a different degree was this gentleman one day when, Europe having become his domain, he saw disappearing in the midst of the billows, billows of blood this time, a whole army and its chief, a whole empire and its emperor,—currus Galliæ et auriga ejus! That did not prevent, at another time, the young country gentleman from jumping bravely into the water to rescue his groom and gaining the medal for saving life. During many years this medal was the only one to decorate the broad chest of the Prussian minister at Frankfort. Asked one day by a colleague to the Bund about a decoration to which the diplomatic corps is but little accustomed, he replied in the tone which he alone possesses, that he sometimes happened to rescue a man,—in his leisure moments, be it understood. Probably, if he had been further pressed, he was capable of adding that he only did it for exercise.
Thus, to resume, from the epoch of his apprenticeship at the gray cloister and Georgia Augusta, Otto de Bismarck carried a literary burden, which, without being either too heavy or too full, has nevertheless enabled him to make his tour of the political world with ease and honor. And also since this epoch his mind disclosed the precious qualities which still distinguish it; a vivid and powerful imagination, a rare happiness in his choice of expressions occasionally grandiose, occasionally vulgar, but always striking; and lastly, a humor which has no equal, and which, to speak with Jean Paul, is a true sirocco to the soul. With all this no grace, no charm, no distinction or delicacy,—not a generous accent, no sweet and sympathetic cord, a complete absence of that milk of human kindness of which the poet speaks, an absolute want of that charity which, according to the great Christian moralist, is like the heavenly perfume of the soul. As to the art or rather handicraft, as to the work which consists in arranging his phrases, in connecting and disposing them so as to introduce harmony and clearness in the different parts of speech, in effacing its asperities and inequalities, in one word as to the style, M. de Bismarck never learned it or always disdained it. If we dared to apply to this style one of those trivial but expressive images of which he himself offers us more than one example, we would willingly compare it to a certain strange drink, hardly credible, and which, according to his biographers, the German chancellor has always liked: it consists of a mixture of champagne and porter! The language is in imitation of the drink: one finds in it the piquant, the sparkling, the exhilarating of the Aÿ together with the heaviness, the blackness, and above all the bitterness of the stout.
It is a curious fact, that the man who one day was to impose on all the States of Germany the severe bureaucratic and military laws of Prussia, "to place Germany in the saddle," to use one of his mots, to press it into the straight jacket of obligatory service,—even to indirectly train all Europe to new exercises, and to make it leave the plow for the sword, liberal occupations for the autumn and summer manœuvres,—this man, for his part, has never been able to bind himself down to academic duties, neither to the regular work of the bureau, nor to the severe discipline of the soldier. He himself has acknowledged having heard but two hours of lecture during his whole stay at Georgia Augusta. The university course being ended, he tried several times the administrative or judiciary career; he tried it at Aix-la-Chapelle, at Potsdam, at Greifswalde, then again at Potsdam, and had to give it up every time, disgusted by the monotonous labor of the bureau, or by quarrels with his superiors. On this subject is told the piquant reply of the young referendarius to a principal who had made him wait an hour in an antechamber: "I came to request a short leave of absence; but during this long hour I have had time to reflect, and I demand my dismission." Thrice he made a trial of the military service, without arriving at a higher grade than that of lieutenant in the Landwehr, a rank which he appreciated, however, and of which he loved to don the uniform on solemn occasions, even at the very time when he was already minister at Frankfort. The reader knows that the day of Sadowa brought him the insignia of a general. Those ten or twelve years which had passed for M. de Bismarck since his disputed state examination to his entrance into the Prussian chamber, the German biographers call by the fine name "years of storm and trouble," which recalls one of the most brilliant epochs of their literature.[16] In truth they were stormy, filled with miscarriages of more than one kind, with travels, financial embarrassments, perhaps also with an unrequited love. At least that is the meaning one is inclined to give to the following passage from a letter addressed to his sister Malvina: "I struggle in vain, I shall end by marrying ——; the world wishes it thus, and nothing seems more natural, and then we will both be killed on the spot. She left me coldly, it is true, but they all do that. It would not be so bad, however, if one could throw off his feelings with his shirts, no matter how rarely one changes the latter."
He seems to have had a very sincere affection for this sister; he overwhelms her with the most tender names. Thus he calls her his little dear, his Malvina, his Maldewinchen, his good little Arnim; he even calls her once (pardon him, O divinities of Walhalla) simply and in French, "ma sœur." In all the letters of this epoch, dated for the most part from the estates of Kniephof or Schoenhausen (it was not until later that M. de Bismarck acquired the famous Varzin[17]), by the side of an always biting and harsh humor, one can perceive a certain disenchantment; by the side of the cares of fortune appear from time to time projects for the future, very modest, truly, and which seldom aim at politics. In 1846 he attached a certain importance at being made surveyor of dikes in the district (Deichhauptmann). "The position is not remunerative, but it offers some interest in regard to Schoenhausen and other estates, for we would depend on it in a great measure if we were again without water as in the past year.... Bernard (a friend) insists on my going to Prussia (to Berlin). I would like to know what he expects there. He affirms that by my disposition and my inclinations, I am made for the service of the state, and that sooner or later I will end by entering it." Suddenly, and on the very eve of the reunion of the first Prussian parliament, one is surprised by the plan of a voyage to the Indias,—probably to make his fortune and establish himself there,—and one thinks involuntarily of Cromwell wishing to embark for America on the eve of the long parliament. Do not think, however, that the days passed sadly and morosely at Kniephof and at Schoenhausen: one lives there, one overlives the life of Juncker (country squire) and the officers of the neighboring garrison are good and stout fellows, in whose company one hunts and dances, "one empties great bowls half filled with champagne, half with porter;" the guests are awakened in the morning by pistols fired off close to their pillows; on entering the salon the female cousins are frightened with four foxes, and honor is paid to the name given by the whole country to the proprietor of the domain, the name of "mad Bismarck" (der tolle Bismarck). They are madcaps, and blusterers, prompt to draw their swords, to fight with pistol or steel, and they do not even avoid a pugilistic scene. One day in a smoking room at Berlin, the former pupil of Georgia Augusta broke his beer mug on the skull of a stranger disrespectful in his language towards a member of the royal family; not, however, without having first addressed a charitable warning to the insolent speaker, nor without having afterwards, very sedately, very politely, asked of the waiter the cost of the damage.[18] This happened in 1850; M. de Bismarck had already been deputy several years, and was on the point of becoming minister plenipotentiary to the Germanic Confederation.
Der tolle Bismarck; it was not only at Kniephof and at Schoenhausen that the future chancellor of Germany was thus called. The Berlinese themselves had no other name for him for a long time, during all the parliamentary period of the young deputy of the Mark, since his maiden speech and his first appearance on the tribune,—when having provoked an indescribable tumult by a violent attack against the liberals he drew from his pocket a newspaper, and quietly commenced reading, while waiting for the storm to calm,—up to his last speech on December 3, 1850, which completed the exasperation of the chamber, but was worth a diplomatic post to the orator. Success advances a little like the aristocratic law of the Chinese: it is necessary to supply glory from the rear and to throw lustre on the obscure antecedents of the favorite of fortune. This was, however, more to mistake the time and to misplace the historical perspective, than to wish to assign to M. de Bismarck in those years (1847-50) any important rôle which he did not fill until fifteen years later. The truth is that this rôle was not in this first period either of such eminence, or, above all, sufficiently respected to be tempted to arrange itself in an abstract, inductive method. An active and restless member of the group of Juncker in 1847, and of the great party of the cross which was formed after the revolution of February, the country gentleman of Schoenhausen was far from having in the bosom of this party the authority of a Gerlach and a Stahl, or the great position of a similar feudal lord of Silesia or Pomerania. In spite of his audacity, his impetuosity, and his sang-froid; in spite of his exceedingly happy sallies with an eloquence unequal and embarrassed in a very different manner from to-day, M. de Bismarck was at this epoch nothing but the Hotspur, and the enfant terrible of the sacred phalanx which defended the throne, the altar, and the conservative principles. He was in a measure the General Temple of the ill-tempered light-horsemen, a General Temple joined with the Marquis of Piré. At any rate he only passed for a successful Thadden-Triglaff, that brave M. Thadden-Triglaff who declared that he desired the liberty of the press, on condition, however, "that there was a power by the side of each journal to hang up the pamphleteers." The speeches of M. de Bismarck, friend and neighbor of this ingenious legislator of the press, were often not more reasonable. Did he not say one day, word for word, "that all the great cities ought to be destroyed and razed to the ground, as the eternal homes of revolution?"