The name of Napoleon III. then came up. The Chief regarded him as a man of limited intelligence. “He is much more good-natured and much less acute than is usually believed.” “Why,” interrupted Lehndorff, “that is just what some one said of Napoleon I.: ‘a good honest fellow, but a fool.’” “But seriously,” continued the Chief, “whatever one may think of the coup d’état he is really good-natured, sensitive, even sentimental, while his intellect is not brilliant and his knowledge limited. He is a specially poor hand at geography, although he was educated in Germany, even going to school there,—and he entertains all sorts of visionary ideas. In July last he spent three days shilly-shallying without being able to come to a decision, and even now he does not know what he wants. People would not believe me when I told them so a long time ago. Already in 1854–55 I told the King, Napoleon has no notion of what we are. When I became Minister I had a conversation with him in Paris. He believed there would certainly be a rising in Berlin before long and a revolution all over the country, and in a plebiscite the King would have the whole people against him. I told him then that our people do not throw up barricades, and that revolutions in Prussia are only made by the Kings. If the King could only bear the strain for three or four years he would carry his point. Of course the alienation of public sympathy was unpleasant and inconvenient. But if the King did not grow tired and leave me in the lurch I should not fail. If an appeal were made to the population, and a plebiscite were taken, nine-tenths of them would vote for the King. At that time the Emperor said of me: ‘Ce n’est pas un homme sérieux.’ Of course I did not remind him of that in the weaver’s house at Donchery.”
Somebody then mentioned that letters to Favre began “Monsieur le Ministre,” whereupon the Chief said: “The next time I write to him I shall begin Hochwohlgeborner Herr!” This led to a Byzantine discussion of titles and forms of address, Excellenz, Hochwohlgeboren, and Wohlgeboren. The Chancellor entertained decidedly anti-Byzantine views. “All that should be dropped,” he said. “I do not use those expressions any longer in private letters, and officially I address councillors down to the third class as Hochwohlgeboren.”
Abeken, a Byzantine of the purest water, declared that diplomats had already resented the occasional omission of portions of their titles, and that only councillors of the second class were entitled to Hochwohlgeboren. “Well,” said the Chief, “I want to see all that kind of thing done away with as far as we are concerned. In that way we waste an ocean of ink in the course of the year, and the taxpayer has good reason to complain of extravagance. I am quite satisfied to be addressed simply as ‘Minister President Count von Bismarck.’”
Saturday, December 24.—Bucher told us at lunch he had heard from Berlin that the Queen and the Crown Princess had become very unpopular, owing to their intervention on behalf of Paris; and that the Princess, in the course of a conversation with Putbus, struck the table and exclaimed: “For all that, Paris shall not be bombarded!”
We are joined at dinner by Lieutenant-Colonel von Beckedorff, an old and intimate friend of the Chief, who said to him: “If I had been an officer—I wish I were—I should now have an army and we should not be here outside Paris.” He proceeded to give reasons for believing that it was a mistake to have waited and invested Paris. With regard to the operations of the last few weeks, he criticised the advance of the army so far to the north and south-west and the intention of advancing still further. “If it should become necessary to retire from Rouen and Tours, the French will think they have beaten us. It is an unpractical course to march on every place where a mob has been collected. We ought to remain within a certain line. It may be urged that in that case the French would be able to carry on their organisation beyond that line. But they will always be able to do that even if we advance, and we may be obliged ultimately to follow them to the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean.” “When we were still at Mainz, I thought that the best plan would be for us to take what we wanted to keep and occupy some five other departments as a pledge for the payment of the cost of the war, and then let the French try to drive us out of our positions.”
A further discussion of the conduct of the war followed, in the course of which the Chief remarked: “With us it occasionally happens that it is not so much the generals who begin and direct the course of battles as the troops themselves. Just as it was with the Greeks and Trojans. A couple of men jeer at each other and come to blows, lances are flourished, others rush in with their spears, and so it finally comes to a pitched battle. First the outposts fire without any necessity, then if all goes well others press forward after them; at the start a non-commissioned officer commands a batch of men, then a lieutenant advances with more men, after him comes the regiment, and finally the general must follow with all the troops that are left. It was in that way that the battle of Spicheren began, and also that of Gravelotte, which properly speaking should not have taken place until the 19th. It was different at Vionville. There our people had to spring at the French like bulldogs and hold them fast. At St. Privat the Guards made a foolish attack merely out of professional jealousy of the Saxons, and then when it failed threw the blame on the Saxon troops, who could not have come a minute sooner with the long march they had had to make, and who afterwards rescued them with wonderful gallantry.”
Later on I was summoned to see the Chief. Various articles are to be written on the barbarous manner in which the French are conducting the war—and not merely the franctireurs, but also the regulars, who are almost daily guilty of breaches of the Geneva Convention. The French appear only to know, and appeal to, those clauses that are advantageous to themselves. In this connection should be mentioned the firing at flags of truce, the ill-treatment and plundering of doctors and hospital bearers and attendants, the murder of wounded soldiers, the misuse of the Geneva Cross by franctireurs, the employment of explosive bullets, and the treatment of German ships and crews by French cruisers in breach of the law of nations. The conclusion to be as follows:—The present French Government is greatly to blame for all this. It has instigated a popular war and can no longer check the passions it has let loose, which disregard international law and the rules of war. They are responsible for all the severity which we are obliged to employ against our own inclinations and contrary to our nature and habits, as shown in the conduct of the Schleswig and Austrian campaigns.
At 10 P.M. the Chief received the first class of the Iron Cross.
At tea Hatzfeldt informs me that he is instructed to collect all the particulars published by the newspapers respecting the cruelties of the French, and asks whether I would not prefer to undertake that task. After I promised to do so, he continued: “Moreover, I believe the Chief only sent for me in order to tell me his opinion of the new decoration.” He said to Hatzfeldt: “I have already enough of these gewgaws, and here is the good King sending me the first class of the Iron Cross. I shall be thoroughly ridiculous with it, and look as if I had won a great battle. If I could at least send my son the second class which I no longer want!”
Sunday, December 25th.—Cardinal Bonnechose of Rouen is said to be coming here. He and Persigny want to convoke the old Legislative Assembly, and still more the Senate, which is composed of calmer and riper elements, in order to discuss the question of peace. The Chief is believed to have made representations to the King respecting the expediency, on political grounds, of greater concentration in the military operations.