Lastly, though few statesmen of the day had a more astute grasp of constitutional politics than Prince Albert did, his textbook knowledge of Prussian court life was based on hearsay and not experience. Not having lived in Berlin, he was incapable of understanding the conditions Vicky found at court after her marriage, from the stiff etiquette and narrow-minded elderly princes, to the deep-rooted distrust of any connection with parliamentary government. That she had inherited much of his analytical mind and way of thinking was her great misfortune, according to Mary Bulteel, she ‘divided everything into three heads, turning them about so much that she often came to a wrong conclusion.’24 Men like the liberal-minded Max Duncker, appointed political adviser to Fritz earlier in 1861, lacked Albert’s intellectual foresight but were better placed to advise, as they knew Prussia from first-hand experience.
Vicky still had much to learn about dealing with people. Wally Hohenthal was dismayed at her readiness to take ‘violent fancies’ to others. ‘She used at first to think them quite perfect and then came the bitter disillusion. She also took first-sight dislikes to persons, based often only on a trick of manner, or an idle word dropped about them in her presence, and thus she often lost useful friends and supporters. She was no judge of character, and never became one, because her own point of view was the only one she could see.’ Her husband, Wally noted, was ‘undeveloped for his age’, and it was evident whose was the stronger character.25 Fritz’s adjutant, General Lothar von Schweinitz, who had accompanied him to England in 1858 and attended the wedding, recalled that after the bride said goodbye to her English family, she took her husband energetically by the arm and led him to the railway carriage, adding that she ‘led him all through life in the same way’.26
Dr Wegner forbade Vicky to visit England at once and comfort her mother, as she was in the early stages of her third pregnancy, and still convalescent at the time of her father’s death. Fritz went instead, and the Queen unburdened her grief to him as she described her husband’s last hours in detail. Brokenly she told how his illness had started and progressed; how he had been reconciled with the wayward Bertie after his liaison with a young woman while at Curragh earlier in the year; how she had held his hand to the end, only realising that he had passed away by the spiritual look on his face. Then, taking his hand and leading him into the bedroom she showed him the corpse dressed in a blue overcoat, his hands holding a photograph of the Queen. He stayed for the funeral at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, on 23 December, at which he and the Prince of Wales were chief mourners.
Vicky felt particularly isolated while he was away, but in February 1862 she was given her chance to go to Windsor. If she found it an impossible task trying to comfort the inconsolable Queen, both women benefited from the emotional reunion. As a young wife who remained as passionately in love with her husband as she was the day they were married, she understood her widowed mother’s plight better than anyone else as she described the sense of loss to Fritz; Papa’s empty room, empty bed, how she slept with Papa’s coat over her, the red dressing gown beside her and some of his clothes in the bed. She herself desperately missed her father’s ready good morning and good night, and it almost seemed to her ‘as if the sun had stopped shining’.27
Others in Prussia thought the sun had stopped shining on their Crown Prince and Princess as well. Shortly after Christmas rumours began to circulate that he had fallen for the attentions of an attractive lady at court, and that his jealous wife was leaving for England where she would begin divorce proceedings against him. To their fury Baron Stockmar and other members of their household received letters asking if there was any truth in these stories, which Fritz blamed on the machinations of the arch-conservative Kreuzzeitung party. Such slanders were without foundation, nonetheless credible as nobody had any illusions about the unhappy marriage of the King and Queen, or of his brother Friedrich Karl and his much-bullied wife Marianne. Nevertheless these malicious whispers marked the beginning of a persistent campaign against the ‘non-Prussian’ Crown Princess, accused of being an agent of another power, dominating a mild-mannered weak husband. It was something they had to learn to accept, or live with at any rate.
Prussian elections in December 1861 had produced a greatly increased liberal majority, hostile to military reforms. After discovering that extra funds had been fraudulently diverted towards the army, the ministry insisted that all such expenditure should be strictly accounted for in future. Despite Fritz’s warning that to dismiss the ministry would exacerbate any conflict between crown and parliament, and that its presence was vital for the maintenance of the fragile balance between the most reactionary conservatives and radical liberals, the King dissolved the Landtag in March, replacing the liberal ministers with conservatives, led by Prince Adolf von Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen. Though the new Minister-President was a moderate by conservative standards, his appointment was still welcomed by the Kreuzzeitung.
Vicky warned Fritz in a letter that if the King looked to the conservatives to solve the crisis, ‘then all bright hopes are finished during his reign, for if he once gets into the hands of those people, he will never get away while he is alive.’ The best he could do, she recommended, was for him to keep away from parliamentary sittings in the event of an anti-liberal government. ‘You owe it to your future, to the country and to your children to keep aloof from everything which might lead the people to have an erroneous idea of your political convictions, or that might shake the confidence which you have won by your liberal attitude and your collaboration with Ministers holding those opinions.’28
In a meeting with the King that same month Fritz made clear his complete agreement with ‘essential liberal policy for internal and foreign affairs’ – basically, no ill-considered reform of the army and taxation at home, and closer links with the rest of Europe. The King reproached him for being hand-in-glove with the Liberals, warning him that as Crown Prince he was placing himself in jeopardy with his liberal views, especially as the press was rather tactlessly describing his attitude as being in opposition to his father. Fritz was angry and bewildered; surely there was a wide difference, he wrote to Vicky, between the freely-expressed opinions of an unbiased person, such as himself, and an opponent deliberately setting himself up against the King.29 The liberals wanted him to break with the King, while the military establishment were rumoured to be planning a coup in favour of the King’s brother Prince Friedrich Karl.
It was in these months that Vicky’s influence on him began to make an impact. Mild, good-natured but indecisive, Fritz was upset by family quarrels and often caught between both sides of an argument, and Vicky reinforced his belief in his own opinions, giving him a measure of badly-needed self-confidence. With a bullying father and an indifferent mother, neither of whom had cared about him nearly as much as Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had about each of their brood of nine, he badly needed somebody in the family to give him support, encouragement and faith in the future. The Prince Consort had done so to the best of his ability, and Vicky vowed to do likewise. A Crown Princess of Prussia carrying out such a sacred trust from her late father, her Hohenzollern in-laws feared, would be a formidable character. Some of them saw it would be in their best interests to try and minimize her influence on their Crown Prince, or failing that, use attack – in other words, attacking her reputation – as the best form of defence.
Husband and wife had always differed in their outlook to a degree, and always would. Vicky had inherited her father’s conviction that Prussia needed to adopt a more liberal constitution before aspiring to German leadership, and shared the policy of more left-wing members of the Landtag who wanted Prussia to adopt parliamentary democracy along British lines. This was too radical for Fritz, a supporter of German unification first and liberalization second. For Prussia to emerge as leader of the German states, it needed to subjugate the opposition of other German rulers to unification under it, if necessary by force. Moreover he took issue with the liberals who aimed to increase parliament
ary power at the crown’s expense. As far as he was concerned free expression, free trade and popular education could be attained without altering the constitution or subordinating the monarchy’s powers to parliament. The assembly’s role was to defend existing laws and institute progressive reforms as long as they could be achieved through mutual cooperation between crown and parliament.
Fritz was more cautious than his wife, more introspective, reluctant to embrace conflict and controversy; she was impulsive, impatient, and as she readily admitted, loved a good fight. A few more years of guidance and restraint from her father might have taught her the wisdom of proceeding more slowly and surely, of seeing situations with a more elastic judgment. She was irritated by her husband’s apparent unwillingness to use his position to initiate or promote liberal changes in Prussian policy, not fully appreciating that his position as heir to the throne prevented him from doing so. All he could do was attend meetings of the crown council and council of ministers as an observer, and act as his father’s representative abroad. Such minimal power and influence as he thus had were also exaggerated by his liberal supporters, who like Vicky often expected him to be able to provide more than he could deliver. Years of experience eventually persuaded her to see matters more his way, and she revised her outlook as inspired by her father, who had gone to his grave insistent that Prussia should be the self-appointed champion of morality and legality, peacefully attracting other German states to the concept of unification under Prussian leader-ship. In due course she accepted the policy of other German liberals who advocated decisive action on behalf of the nationalist cause whenever Prussia faced a foreign policy crisis, thus revising their ideas on moral conquests to suit the situation. Force was only permissible if used to advance the liberal-national goals of unification, self-determination of the German people under foreign rule, and the preservation of constitutionalism.
It was unfortunate that she had been temporarily thrown off balance by her father’s premature death. In the months immediately afterwards, she clung so tenaciously to his example that for a time it was impossible for her to see that Prussia’s future developments would have eventually resulted in him revising his opinions.
With so much unpleasantness at home, Fritz was glad to go regularly to England, although he doubted the wisdom of Queen Victoria in allowing a foreign prince to deputise for her so frequently, and he regretted having to leave Vicky behind. He opened the second international exhibition in May, in his capacity as President of the Exhibition Commission appointed to prepare Prussia’s role in the display, and a few days later he was a special guest of the Royal Academy of Arts at their annual dinner. The other guests were impressed by his speech with his clear grasp of the English language, in which he dwelt on his genuine love of his wife’s country. Queen Victoria claimed that her grief made it impossible for her or her children to participate in such festivities, but as Fritz had feared, the English public was not over-impressed with the spectacle of a German prince performing such public functions in England.
Meanwhile there were growing rumours that Bismarck might be appointed as the ‘strong man’ to come and solve the crisis his own way. As federal representative at Frankfurt and Prussian representative at St Petersburg, his name was already a byword for abhorrence of Britain and liberal government, and the Prince Consort had vetoed his nomination for Prussian ambassador in London the previous year, on the grounds that a man who had taken such a pro-Russian stance during the Crimean war was no friend of England. Vicky was aware of his reputation as an unprincipled character and dreaded the consequences if he was appointed, while Fritz knew him to be his mother’s ‘deadly enemy’, and hoped at least for her sake that he would not be summoned. Bismarck had written and circulated a report of his meeting in London with Lord Palmerston and the Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell, in his capacity as Foreign Minister, calling the English constitution contrary to his principles, as it stipulated that the crown’s advisers should come from the parliamentary majority’s ranks, thus allowing for ‘great and permanent encroachments’ on the royal prerogative. This despatch, Fritz wrote, was a grim foretaste of what might be in store for them ‘if that man were sooner or later to control the destinies of Prussia!’30
As she was in the eighth month of her third pregnancy Vicky was unable to attend Alice’s wedding, held privately in the dining room at Osborne on 1 July with Fritz as best man. On 14 August her third child, Henry Wilhelm Albert, was born. Queen Augusta thought that he would be known as Albert, as a name which ‘really ought to be handed down as a legacy from the never-to-be-forgotten grandfather – and I believe that Queen Victoria expected it too.’31 However he was called Henry in the family.
By this time the political crisis was reaching deadlock. Further elections in May had resulted in a heavy defeat for the conservatives, with corresponding gains for the liberals and progressives. Any compromise between the King’s ministers who defended his prerogative and his reform programme, and the elected parliament, 85 per cent of which were members of the opposition, appeared out of the question. The King vowed to prevent any parliamentary attempt to undermine his prerogative, while the Landtag was determined to reject the military budget and impose parliamentary government on the crown. Some liberals, prepared to hold out an olive branch, offered to abandon their opposition if the government agreed to accept their demand to reduce the term of military service from three to two years. The King would not yield, telling them he would rule without a military budget, but his ministers rejected this on the grounds that he would be placing the crown in violation of the constitution. Roon advised him to summon Bismarck and give him a cabinet post, or entrust him with the reins of government in order to strengthen the case of the crown, but he declared that he would rather abdicate.
On 17 September the Landtag was called upon to vote the measures en bloc, and defeated them by 308 votes to 11. Anarchy was everywhere, the King raged, and he would sooner abdicate than yield. General Roon, Minister for War, advised that either they could stage a coup d’état, and authorise illegal collection of taxes in defiance of the constitution, or else he would call Bismarck to take over the government. Next day he sent the latter a telegram urging him to return at once.
Fritz and Vicky had gone to see Queen Victoria at Gotha, but the King recalled Fritz to Berlin because of the impending crisis. On 18 September, with tears in his eyes, he showed his son the deed of abdication and the draft of the speech in which he would announce that he was relinquishing the throne. It was a carefullyconsidered decision; God and his conscience, he said sadly, would not allow him to do anything else. If the ministry refused to accept his reforms, he would make way for his son.
Fritz, astonished, was overcome with sympathy for the ‘poor broken old man’. This was no threat to abdicate in the heat of the moment, and he did not appreciate that his father was only doing so because he knew that Fritz himself would spare no effort to implore him from taking such a drastic step. Moreover he was worried about the precedent that would be set if a Prussian sovereign could be forced or cajoled into abdication like this as a result of parliamentary decisions, and the threat it would pose to dynasty, crown and country. Much as he respected the institution of parliamentary government and the constitution, he revered the crown still more.
Though he was nominally opposed to the two-year term of military service, he tried to impress on his father that conceding on the two-year term would not be comparable with the consequences of relinquishing the throne. He tried to convince the cabinet to support the King so that abdication could be avoided, but the ministers remained resolutely divided on the two-year service term. He spent the next forty-eight hours trying to mediate between the King and his ministers, brokering a compromise; conceding part of the way on military training would be far preferable to abdication.
That evening he wrote to Vicky, who had remained in Gotha with Queen Victoria and Lord Clarendon, and explained everything; she was equally taken aback, but she gue
ssed that the King was playing for high stakes and understood his son only too well to know what Fritz’s answer would be. Why, she suggested, should they not take the chance? They must not think of themselves, but of the fatherland and of their children who would otherwise one day have to make good where they had failed. If the King felt he could not take the necessary steps to restore order and confidence in Prussia without going against his conscience, she said, it would be only ‘wise and honest’ to leave it to others who could take over such duties without burdening their conscience. She could see no way out, and considered he should make the sacrifice for the sake of their country; if he did not accept his father’s decision, she believed that he would come to regret it one day.32
Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz Page 9
