The King’s brother Karl suggested that he should be confined in a fortress, but Bismarck knew that to make a martyr of the Crown Prince would do much for liberal opinion in Prussia. He cautioned the King that imprisonment or any kind of persecution would make the Crown Prince a martyr to the liberals and strengthen their resistance against the government; ‘deal gently with the young man Absalom’ was his view. It would be more prudent to issue a sharp warning that any repetition of the Danzig speech would not be tolerated. He also persuaded the King to let Fritz continue the military inspection tour, since any deviation from his schedule could give the impression that he was planning further acts of insubordination. Finally he recommended that in future the Crown Prince should be kept busy with ministry meetings and affairs of state so there would be less chance for him to have any contact with his liberal advisers.
The King accepted this and wrote to Fritz, informing him that he was free to share the opinions of the opposition, but not to make them public. He was prepared to forgive the Danzig episode as long as his son promised not to broadcast anti-government views again. Fritz was prepared to accept his father’s terms for reconciliation as he had no intention of criticizing the government again, much to Vicky’s disappointment. ‘A year of silence and self-denial has brought Fritz no other fruits than that of being considered weak and helpless,’ she wrote to Queen Victoria. ‘The Liberals think that he is not sincerely one of them, and those few who think it, fancy he has not the courage to avow it. He has now given them an opportunity of judging his way of thinking and consequently will now again be passive and silent until better days come.’9
In London The Times claimed that the Crown Prince had ‘cleared away the mist of doubt which hung around him and dimmed his popularity, that he greatly improved his position before the country, and gave, for the future, an implied pledge precious to the people and most important to his dynasty’.10 This was an exaggeration, as the German liberals criticized him for his remark that he knew nothing about the discussions that brought the press decree about. They knew he attended crown council meetings and that he must have known the edict was under consideration, so in their view his comments cast some doubt on his sincerity. Queen Victoria unequivocally endorsed their action, telling her daughter that she was ‘the best and wisest adviser he could have, and the worthy child of your beloved father who will look down approvingly on you.’11 Such encouragement was not best calculated to make Vicky act with caution in the future, but she was right to explain that the intention of the Danzig speech was ‘to convey in a clear and unzweideutig (unambiguous) way to his hearers, that he had nothing to do with the unconstitutional acts of the Government – that he was not even aware of their being in contemplation!’12 Liberals also criticized his endorsement of his father in the speech, which to them seemed uncalled for as the King endorsed Bismarck’s decree.
Despite their reservations, some prominent liberals tried to persuade Fritz to deliver a more unequivocal statement of opposition to Bismarck’s government. The Grand Duke of Baden and his foreign minister, Hans von Roggenbach, advised him to resign his military posts or refuse to perform any more official functions till the ministry ceased its unconstitutional business, and one liberal deputy, Karl Mathy, said he hoped the Danzig speech would be but the first in a series of statements against the Minister-President’s policies. Queen Victoria also encouraged her son-in-law to show his disapproval by breaking off his military inspection tour forthwith, absenting himself from Prussia and coming to England. ‘He cannot satisfy his father by half measures,’ she wrote to Vicky, ‘and he may compromise his and his children’s position if he does not clearly show to the country that he not only does not belong to that party, but highly disapproves what has been done!’13
Knowing that any sudden end to his tour would constitute another act of insubordination, Fritz prudently declined the invitation. Any further anti-government statements, he realized, would push him into the arms of the progressive party. If the progressives wished to claim him as one of their own, he believed, he would not be able to restrain them any more than he could prevent Bismarck’s efforts to bring him over to his point of view. Having made his views plain at Danzig, he refused to say or do any more as he did not want to set himself up as a leader of the opposition. Before the speech, he had foreseen that any protest on his part would be bound to create confusion. His much-criticized homage to his father was meant to convince everyone that the King had not turned against them, and to hold out hope that in time he would reverse his support for Bismarck’s damaging unconstitutional methods. It was intended as a gesture of faith in the King, and he had no intention of giving any support to a radical Liberal majority, whose aims he opposed.
Sensing that his reluctance to adopt a more self-assertive position could discredit his image as a liberal, Vicky arranged for the publication of her husband’s letters in the foreign press which would place his opposition on record. On 11 June she asked Queen Victoria to publicize the Danzig speech in England, and sent her extracts from his correspondence, adding that other letters had been entrusted to Stockmar and the Grand Duke of Baden. Her campaign had no effect in Prussia, where the press edict forbade any publication of the letters; the circulation of rumours made Prussian liberals doubt the validity of the correspondence, and the furore soon died down.
In the long run, the Danzig incident did little to reassure liberals of Fritz’s devotion to their cause. Bismarck was sure the Crown Princess had masterminded the entire episode to obtain publicity for her husband’s actions and to acquaint public opinion with their philosophy. Embarrassed by the affair, Fritz begged the recipients of his letters not to show them to anyone. ‘I will tell you what results I anticipate from your policy,’ he wrote to Bismarck. ‘You will go on quibbling with the Constitution until it loses all value in the eyes of the people. In that way you will on the one hand arouse anarchical movements that go beyond the bounds of the Constitution; while on the other hand, whether you intend it or not, you will pass from one venturesome interpretation to another until you are finally driven into an open breach of the Constitution. I regard those who lead his Majesty the King, my most gracious father, into such courses as the most dangerous advisers for Crown and Country.’ ‘Youth is hasty with words,’ Bismarck scrawled in the margin.14
Yet he continued to try and convince his father that Bismarck and his unconstitutional policies were a liability to the monarchy, insisting that all constitutional conflict could be ended if Bismarck resigned and the King accepted the two-year service term. Angered at his son’s persistence, the King told him he would obtain his military reforms through regular dissolutions of parliament if necessary until he had secured ‘obedience’. Fritz also spoke to Bismarck, who shocked him by saying that a constitutional regime was ‘untenable’ in Prussia. Asked why he still bothered with the constitution at all, Bismarck said he would observe existing laws as long as he reasonably could.
The dilemma involved Vicky in much soul-searching with regard to her status in Prussia. She found it ‘very disagreeable’ to be seen by others as meddling and intriguing in politics, which she knew was not ‘a ladies’ profession’ in Germany any more than it was in England. How easy it would be, she knew, to choose a quiet life and live in peace with everybody, whose affection she would gain ‘if I sought it by having no opinion of my own’; but she would not be ‘a free-born Englishwoman’ and her mother’s child if she took the simpler option. It was still impossible for her to break free of her inheritance and the conviction that she had been sent to Prussia with a mission. She took heart from the fact that the aristocracy, who so disliked Queen Augusta, were at least still civil to her, ‘though they looked upon me with jealousy as a stranger and as an Englishwoman,’ and with her youthful optimism acknowledged that they saw that she was full of goodwill and wanted nothing more than to be friends with them.15 Her optimism and good faith were to be sorely tested in the years ahead.
Fritz had been ordere
d to join his father at Gastein, where discussions were taking place with Emperor Franz Josef about the latter’s suggestion of calling a conference of reigning German princes for the settlement of German affairs at Frankfurt. Efforts were being made to reach a compromise between Austria and Prussia, both struggling for supreme power in the future of the German Confederation. The King considered it his duty but his Minister wanted to prevent him, asking him bluntly if Austria was going to dictate to Prussia. Bismarck pleaded, cajoled, raged at his master, and eventually got his way with the excuse that Prussia’s invitation had arrived so late that it was an insult. Fritz would also have welcomed Prussian participation at Frankfurt, knowing that the question of rivalry in the Confederation between his country and Austria could only be solved by either such a meeting, or armed conflict.
Despite King Wilhelm’s absence the conference opened on 17 August, and Fritz felt that the honour of his family and state had been insulted; the proceedings had no right to open without Prussian participation. To Vicky such matters of personal pride were less important than the question of peaceful German co-existence, and she saw a chance of salvaging the situation in Queen Victoria’s visit to Coburg to see the widow of Baron Stockmar. Though Fritz was at one with Bismarck in believing that Prussia ought to wrest the leadership of the German Confederation from Austria, and that unification should precede liberalization (unlike Vicky and the Prince Consort), he thought it was only right that his father should make every effort to co-operate with Austria. He and Vicky accepted the Queen’s offer to try and persuade the King to go to Frankfurt. When Wilhelm paid her a courtesy call at the end of August, after Fritz and Vicky had returned home, she told him she favoured a rapprochement between Prussia and Austria. Primed carefully by Bismarck, the King told her that the Viennese ministry was out to ruin Prussia, and that Emperor Franz Josef was bent on increasing the influence of the Catholic church; as the two leading Protestant countries of Europe, Britain and Prussia should combine to restrain Austria. Realizing that his new Minister-President’s influence made further argument useless, the Queen broke off the discussion. Without Wilhelm the Frankfurt conference achieved nothing.
After the cabinet voted to dissolve parliament on 2 September, Fritz asked his father whether he supported Bismarck’s views on the future of government in Prussia, and reported to Vicky that the King believed there would be no more constitutions in twenty years’ time. On asking him what would replace constitutions, the King said he did not know as he would probably not live long enough to find out, adding that the King of Prussia was never intended to be a weak figurehead in the face of a more powerful parliament. ‘When I asked him how often he intended to dissolve parliament, he replied that dissolutions would continue until it became obedient, or until barricades were raised in the streets, or until he ascended the scaffold.’16 It confirmed his son’s worst fears; he was now positive his father’s direction would lead to revolution, civil war, and the downfall of the monarchy.
The King’s threat to suspend the constitution was forcing Fritz into a hostile stance towards the government and ministry. When he asked for permission to abstain from crown council meetings, indicating his intent to embark on a policy of passive resistance to the administration, the King refused, declaring he needed his son’s support more than ever, and that refusal to attend crown council meetings indicated that he was under the influence of the King’s enemies. The conversation ended with King William making a hollow threat to abdicate ‘and you can see what you will do to Prussia with your ideas.’17
Fritz had more to say on the subject. Encouraged by Vicky, the British diplomat Robert Morier, and the privy counsellor in the ministry of justice, Heinrich von Friedberg, he wrote to the King that he would create difficulties in crown council meetings if forced to attend. The King passed his son’s letter to Bismarck, who agreed that the Crown Prince’s behaviour was the result of the influence of his liberal associates. Fritz had written that he could no longer consider himself a part of the ministry or an adviser to the king, in view of the government’s unconstitutional actions.
Fritz wrote that same day to Bismarck telling him that he had given expression to his ‘serious misgivings for the future’, and that His Majesty knew he was ‘a decided opponent of the Ministry’. Bismarck replied that he could ‘only hope that your Royal Highness will one day find servants as faithful as I am to your father. I do not intend to be of the number.’18 A few days later Fritz agreed to continue attending council sessions, on condition that he could express his opinions in writing to his father. Such a strategy was not without risk. Vicky learned that the King believed Fritz was expressing opinions inculcated in him by others, from whose adverse influences he should be extricated by any means possible. Meanwhile Baron Stockmar was warning Fritz that high-ranking members of the military élite still harboured the possibility of having him declared officially unfit to rule, and hoped to remove him and his line from the succession in favour of the more ideologically sound Prince Friedrich Karl and family.
This continual unpleasantness with his father made Fritz thankful for his happy home life, and he was never happier than when with Vicky and the children. Yet the continual treatment for Willy’s left arm was a sore trial for the family. They agreed to electrical stimulus to try and shock the deformed muscles into movement, and to strapping his neck and shoulders into a cage-like contraption for an hour a day to correct the sideways tilt of the head, but the results were negligible. As one of the most maternal of women, Vicky was always distressed to see her eldest child being treated thus, and it was hard for her not to feel some sense of revulsion or even guilt at his deformity, especially when she looked at other children the same age with perfectly formed limbs. Despite his tantrums she and Fritz found him a lovable child, while Ditta and Henry were very quiet and shy with strangers, but in the security of their domestic circle they were cheerful and affectionate.
Vicky was equally happy in this domestic circle, especially as she never felt confident in the company of most of her in-laws, aware that they regarded her as a creature from another species. By the summer of 1863 she knew that the ladies of the Berlin court thought it ‘a pity their future King had married one so plain and so unornamental for society.’19 Her skin flushed red in the intense heat of the Berlin ballrooms, and she felt ill at ease at balls and social functions, where it was an effort to keep her eyes open through fatigue. Like her father she had always loved getting up early and going to bed at a sensible hour, and she found it difficult to stay awake until the small hours.
After autumn manoeuvres, the family left Potsdam at the end of September for a few weeks at Balmoral. Vicky was much amused at the sight of Fritz wearing the kilt, or a ‘little skirt’.20 Bertie invited them to Sandringham for his birthday celebrations on 9 November, and they arrived in Norfolk a few days in advance, having lingered on the journey south in order to compare the provincial art galleries with those in Germany. But on 6 November Fritz was summoned home for the opening of Parliament, due to take place three days later. He returned for the ceremony, and the King gave him permission not to continue attending council meetings on condition that he avoided any more opposition. Afterwards he travelled back to England, and on the journey he was told that King Frederik VII of Denmark had just died.
The problem of Schleswig-Holstein, both duchies of the German Confederation, had given rise to Palmerston’s immortal quip that only three people had ever understood all the issues: the Prince Consort, now dead, a German professor, who had since gone mad, and he himself, who had regrettably forgotten all about it. On the accession of Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg to the Danish throne as King Christian IX, both duchies demanded their own government. Fritz, Augusta, and Queen Victoria all supported the claims of Duke Friedrich of Schleswig-Holstein (‘Fritz Holstein’), married to the Queen’s niece Adelaide of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. With the support of several other German states he issued a proclamation announcing that he
had assumed government of both on the death of King Frederik. Denmark, on the other hand, intended to continue governing them itself.
Everyone was greatly preoccupied with the problem when Fritz rejoined Vicky and the children at Windsor. By the time Bertie and Alix arrived a few days later the family had foreseen trouble, for, as King Christian’s eldest daughter Alix defiantly declared, ‘the duchies belong to Papa’. They came into collision with Vicky and Fritz, and also with Fritz Holstein’s mother-in-law Feodora, who was also staying at Windsor. On 18 November at breakfast there was a sharp difference of opinion between Fritz and the Queen. He argued that Britain had done Prussia a disservice by agreeing to the terms of the London Protocol of 1852, and that despite her German sympathies the Queen was too dependent on the will of her ministers.21
In her distress she poured out her heart to King Leopold, complaining that Fritz was ‘very violent’, that no respect was paid to her opinions now, and that it ‘makes visits like Fritz and Vicky’s very painful and trying.’22 The King advised her that she should forbid any further mention of the matter in her presence. It was the most unpleasant visit Fritz and Vicky had yet paid to Britain, not just because of the family atmosphere but also as they feared war on a scale considerably beyond the family rows at Windsor and Sandringham. They knew Bismarck had no sympathy with the liberal Fritz Holstein, and characteristically the Minister-President kept silent to all but a few close associates. He intended to take the duchies for Prussia, which he admitted had no claim, but their amalgamation would give Prussia added prestige.
Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz Page 11
