In February, 1864, Prussia and Austria together declare war upon Denmark over the Schleswig-Holstein succession. They agree to govern the spoils between them, but fall out over the question of their respective jurisdiction, and the Prussian army being ready, and the Moltke plan of campaign worked out, war is declared, and in seven weeks the Treaty of Prague is signed, in 1866, by which Austria gives up all her rights in Schleswig-Holstein, and abandons her claim to take part in the reorganization of Germany. The North German Confederation is formed to include all lands north of the Main; Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, the Hesse states, Nassau, and Frankfurt-am-Main become part of Prussia; and the south German states agree to remain neutral, but allies of Prussia in war.
On the 11th of March, 1867, a month after the formation of the Confederation of the North German States, Bismarck proclaims with pride in the new Reichstag: “Setzen win Deutschland, so zu sagen, in den Sattel! Reiten wird es schon können!”
October 13th, 1868, Leopold von Sigmaringen, a German prince of the House of Hohenzollern, is named for the first time as a candidate for the Spanish throne. Nobody in Germany, or anywhere else, was much more interested in this candidature, than we are now interested in the woman’s suffrage or the prohibition candidate at home. But France had looked on with jealous eyes at the vigorous growth and martial successes of Prussia. It was thought well to attack her and humiliate her before she became stronger. All France was convinced, too, that the southern German states would revert to their old love in case of actual war, and side with the nephew of their former friend, the great Napoleon. The French ambassador is instructed to force the pace. Not only must the Prussian King disavow all intention to support the candidacy of the German prince, but he must be asked to humiliate himself by binding himself never in the future to push such claims.
William I is at Ems, and Benedetti, the French ambassador, reluctantly presses the insulting demand of his country upon the royal gentleman as he is walking. The King declines to see Benedetti again, and telegraphs to Bismarck the gist of the interview. Lord Acton writes: “He [Bismarck] drew his long pencil and altered the text, showing only that Benedetti had presented an offensive demand, and that the King had refused to see him. That there might be no mistake he made this official by sending it to all the embassies and legations. Moltke exclaimed, ‘You have converted surrender into defiance.’ ” The altered telegram was also sent to the Norddeutscher Allgemeine Zeitung and to officials. It is not perhaps generally known that General Lebrun went to Vienna in June, 1870, to discuss an alliance with Austria for an attack on the North German Confederation in the following spring. Bismarck knew this. This was on the 13th of July, 1870; on the 16th the order was given to mobilize the army, on the 31st followed the proclamation of the King to his people: “Zur Errettung des Vaterlandes.” On August the 2d, King William took command of the German armies, and on September 1st, Napoleon handed over his sword, and on January the 18th, 1871, King William of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of the Mirrors in the Palace at Versailles.
“It sounds so lovely what our fathers did,
And what we do is, as it was to them,
Toilsome and incomplete.”
It is easy to forget in such a rapid survey of events that Bismarck could have had any serious opposition to face as he tramped through those eight years, from 1862 to 1870, with a kingdom on his back. It is easy to forget that King William himself wished to abdicate in those dark hours, when his people refused him their confidence, and called a halt upon his endeavors to strengthen the absolutely essential instrument for Prussia’s development, the army; it is easy to forget that even the silent and seemingly imperturbable Moltke hesitated and wavered a little at the audacity of his comrade; it is easy to forget the conspiracy of opposition of the three women of the court, the Crown Princess, Frau von Blumenthal, and Frau von Gottberg, all of English birth, and all using needles against this man accustomed to the Schläger and the sword; it is easy to forget that even Queen Victoria’s influence was used against him to prevent the reaping of the justifiable fruits of victory in 1871; it is easy to forget what a bold throw it was to go to war with Austria, and to array Prussia against the very German states she must later bind to herself; it is easy to forget the dour patience of this irascible giant with the petulant and often petty legislature with which he had to deal.
I cannot understand how any German can criticise Bismarck, but there are official prigs who do; little decorated bureaucrats who live their lives out poring over papers, with an eye out for a “von” before their bourgeois names, and as void of audacity as a sheep; men who creep up the stairway to promotion and recognition, clinging with cautious grip to the banisters. One sees them, their coats covered with the ceramic insignia of their placid servitude, decorations tossed to them by the careless hand of a master who is satisfied if they but sign his decrees, with the i’s properly dotted, and the t’s unexceptionably crossed. They are the crumply officials who melted into defencelessness and moral decrepitude after Frederick the Great, and again at the glance of Napoleon, and who owe the little stiffness they have to the fact that Bismarck lived. It is one of the things a full-blooded man is least able to bear in Germany, to hear the querulous questioning of the great deeds of this man, whose boot-legs were stiffer than the backbones of those who decry him.
What a splendid fellow he was!
“Give me the spirit that, on this life’s rough sea,
Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind,
Even till his sail-yards tremble and his masts do crack,
And his rapt ship run on her side so low
That she drinks water and her keel ploughs air.
There is no danger to a man that knows
What life and death is - there’s not any law
Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law.”
He was no worshipper of that flimsy culture which is, and has been for a hundred years, an obsession of the German. He knew, none knew better indeed, that the choicest knowledge is only mitigated ignorance. He surprised Disraeli with his mastery of English, and Napoleon with his fluency in French, both of which he had learned from his Huguenot professors. The popular man, the popular book, the popular music, picture, or play, were none of them a golden calf to him. He mastered what he needed for his work, and pretended to no enthusiasm for intellectualism as such. He knew that there is no real culture without character, and that the mere aptitude for knowing and doing without character is merely the simian cleverness that often dazzles but never does anything of importance. “Culture!” writes Henry Morley, “the aim of culture is to bring forth in their due season the fruits of the earth.” Any learning, any accomplishments, that do not serve a man to bring forth the fruits of the earth in their due season are merely mental gimcracks, flimsy toys, to admire perhaps, to play with, and to be thrown aside as useless when duty makes its sovereign demands.