Fritz had played a major role on Prussia’s behalf in the first two wars, and was much loved and respected by the officers and men who had fought under him. His words of comfort to the wounded and thanks to his troops after each battle made his genuine interest in their well-being self-evident, and while his kindly, diffident manner may have been less assertive than that of his brusque, impatient cousin Friedrich Karl, it made him more popular. As a war hero who was first in line to the throne, it was only natural that he should be given some recognition at home during the years of peace as part of his preparation for kingship. However Bismarck had other ideas, preferring to send him abroad on various ceremonial duties, so he was rarely at home. At first Vicky and Fritz were pleased, as it widened the circles in which his value and talents would be appreciated. In due course it became apparent that this was an attempt to banish him from Prussia as his presence was a constant criticism of Bismarck’s reactionary policies, and it was also an officially-approved way of keeping husband and wife apart. It was clear that Fritz’s stand at Danzig was no mere passing phase, and after the war of 1866 it was noticeable that the Crown Prince of Prussia was conspicuous by his absence from the political limelight. Apart from his military duties and regular attendance at crown council meetings, his only official function was as his father’s representative on politically inconsequential missions abroad.
Bismarck knew it was mainly Vicky’s influence that prevented him from making a disciple of her husband, despite the fact that in some ways, particularly their respect for monarchical power, Fritz and Bismarck had more in common with each other than he did with Vicky. His subtle campaign of vilification against her was partly his means of revenge, partly his way of destroying what little respect her in-laws still had for her. She was well aware of this, complaining to Queen Victoria that their children were ‘universally pitied for having the great misfortune of having me for their Mama with my “unglücklichen englischen Ideen” [unfortunate English ideas] and “unpreussischen Gesinnugen” [un-Prussian views]’.16
By degrees they found themselves gradually isolated from their most trusted friends in Prussia, those whom next to her Bismarck most feared. These included Morier, Prince Hohenzollern (still wellrespected despite his resignation as Minister-President in 1862), and Baron Roggenbach, the Liberal Prussian representative at Frankfurt. Spies were planted in the Neue Palais; when a vacancy appeared in the household, Bismarck and his crony Moritz Busch filled the position with someone instructed to watch their employers carefully, and to report back on anything they saw or heard that might be of interest. By the time of the Paris exposition two such trained ‘servants’ were established in the accounts department, thus giving Bismarck the key to details of Fritz and Vicky’s domestic expenditure. The other staff reported obligingly on who visited the palace and Fritz had to stop inviting Morier, the only alternative being to risk his expulsion from Prussia on some trumped-up charge of interference. He was still welcome at Bornstädt, where he came regularly with discretion, warning Fritz and Vicky to take great care in all they did at the palace, in all they said to each other unless sure they were alone and nobody was listening at the door, and in not writing anything remotely inappropriate even in a ‘private’ diary except in cipher. Vicky had sometimes found her desk smelling of tobacco, or with the lock broken, and knew that dirty work was afoot.
Vicky gave birth to their youngest son on 10 February 1868, her mother’s wedding anniversary, and named him Waldemar. Overjoyed with this fourth son, she was soon longing to become pregnant again, writing to Fritz that ‘All the pain of labour is nothing compared to the happiness of having such a dear little creature to hold & to nurse oneself.’17
In April Fritz went to Rome for the wedding of Crown Prince Umberto of Italy to Princess Margharita of Naples. He was treated to an enthusiastic reception, and greeted everywhere with cries of ‘Evviva Prussia, l’angelo protettore d’Italia!’, while the press made much of his constant smile and martial bearing. After defeat in 1866 Austria had ceded Venetia to Italy, and a grateful King Victor Emmanuel conferred upon Fritz the Grand Cross of the Military Order of Merit of Savoy in recognition of his services to Italian unity. The wedding was followed by a court ball, where Princess Margharita was dancing with a banker’s son. When he accidentally stepped on her gown and tore the trimming, gasps of horror through the ballroom turned to astonishment as Fritz instantly produced a case from his coat pocket, took out a pair of scissors, knelt down and cut off the torn strip of lace. The Princess held out her hand to take it back, but instead he pressed it to his heart, folded it and replaced it in his pocket with the scissors. ‘He is a true knight,’ murmured the amazed onlookers, but a Stuttgart press reporter was less poetic: ‘These Prussians are sharp fellows, always armed, and ready for everything.’18
Meanwhile Vicky and her sister Alice were staying at the home of the Duke of Coburg in Gotha, an occasion marred by Vicky’s illhealth. Since her marriage she had suffered numerous minor upsets on a regular basis, but a severe bout of illness at this time left her with a lasting legacy. After an attack of ‘severe neuralgic headache’ and excruciating pain, especially in the nerve above her eye, she was advised to take quinine as a remedy, but this produced a severe rash which turned her face bright red. Her ears, eyelids and nose were so swollen that for a few days she went temporarily deaf, her eyes were almost completely shut, and she could only breathe with difficulty. Well aware of how unsightly her ‘fire-red shapeless mass’ of a face looked, she felt obliged to hide herself from view until the worst of the trouble had subsided.19
From this time onwards the neuralgia, violent headaches and recurrent pains in her back, side and limbs persisted regularly. Sometimes she needed morphine injections to deaden the pain, and her eyes were so inflamed that she had to wear blue-tinted glasses. Extremes of temperature, excessive standing or sitting in overheated ballrooms, exposure to gaslight in the theatre, and walking outside with a cold wind blowing in her face, were liable to bring on or exacerbate these symptoms which sometimes left her at her wits’ end. Only many years after her death did the possibility emerge that she had inherited the excruciatingly uncomfortable though not life-threatening condition of porphyria from which her greatgrandfather King George III had suffered so severely. In her case the complaint was perhaps likewise responsible for affecting her mental reason and impairing her judgement to some degree.
In January 1869 Willy celebrated his tenth birthday, was awarded the Order of the Black Eagle and appointed Lieutenant in the First Regiment of Guards. Photographs of him standing proudly in his uniform showed his left arm looking almost normal, a tribute to the work of the tailor who made the left sleeve slightly shorter than the right, and to the boy’s tenacity in trying his best to overcome the handicap. By this time it was clear that all the treatment to which he had been subjected as a small boy had been in vain. He could not run fast, climb trees, or cut his food with normal cutlery. Because of his distorted sense of balance, the arduous business of learning to ride, a necessity for a future King of Prussia, had initially terrified him as he struggled to stay in the saddle.
A disastrous choice of tutor for Willy and Henry, Georg Hinzpeter, appointed in 1866, exacerbated the problem. This stern, humourless disciplinarian had little understanding of children; his principles as a governor were based on what he termed Prussian simplicity, which Fritz and Vicky believed would stop ‘that terrible Prussian pride and ambition’. While he condemned personal pride, he constantly held up to his charges the example of their country and her superiority to all others, at a time when Bismarck was making a mockery of the principles of democratic government and advancing her prestige with the sword. The boys spent twelve hours a day at their lessons, with breaks only for meals and physical exercise. For breakfast they ate dry bread, and when entertaining visitors for tea they had to offer their guests cakes without taking any themselves. Henry apparently suffered no lasting ill-effects, but the spartan regime left its mark on Wil
ly.
Already Vicky knew she was having problems with her children. Like Queen Victoria she was candid to the point of bluntness about them, partly from a desire to encourage them to strive for greater things, partly to discourage vanity. Nevertheless she created a deeper bond with the five younger children, those whom she was allowed to nurse herself. Unhappily the three elder ones seemed to sense their mother’s disappointment, or her continual fault-finding where they were concerned, and grew up to resent her indulgent attitude towards their smaller siblings. As their father was often absent, she became the dominant influence in their formative years. In her letters to her mother Charlotte was criticized as ‘stupid and backward’, while Henry was ‘slow and plodding’. Though Queen Victoria was no stranger to the art of finding or magnifying faults in most of her own children, she counselled patience, assuring Vicky they would surely turn out far better than she feared.
Vicky always insisted on an active role in helping to prepare them for their future life and education. In 1866 she asked Queen Victoria for copies of memoranda written by her father and Baron Stockmar to use in setting up a similar educational guide to that used at Buckingham Palace. She felt that Charlotte’s French governess was exceeding her station; ‘I cannot and will not abandon all right of interfering with the children’s education and must reserve to myself to judge of what they are to learn & who is to teach them.’20
In September 1869 Fritz was chosen to represent Prussia at the opening of the Suez canal. Emperor Franz Josef, Emperor Napoleon and Empress Eugenie would be there as well, and for Bismarck it was a good way of disguising any future intentions he might have entertained with a view to threatening to declare war on France. Emperor Franz Josef, he knew, had been on Fritz’s conscience since the war of 1866, and in the event of a Franco-German conflict, it would suit his purposes for Habsburg and Hohenzollern to have an informal reconciliation. Both men got on very well together, and the Austrian Emperor knew better than to bear the Crown Prince any malice for merely discharging his duty. Another acquaintance of Fritz during his time in north Africa, according to rumour, was a Spanish courtesan, Dolores Cada. It was said that evidence of syphilitic infection soon appeared and was discreetly treated by the Khedive’s physician.21 Nevertheless this skeleton in the cupboard would return to haunt him some eighteen years later.*
Meanwhile Vicky took a holiday from Berlin and stayed in Cannes, taking Willy and Henry. They were joined by her sister Alice, at twenty-six already prone to chronic rheumatism and neuralgia, and they spent a pleasant few weeks in each others’ company. Always self-deprecating about her personal appearance, Vicky had convinced herself – or so her letters to Queen Victoria suggested – that she was the ugly one and her sad-faced, hollowcheeked sister was much the prettier. This may have been a way of trying to get Alice back into the Queen’s good books, for both sisters had incurred her wrath by their ‘awful and disgusting’ preference for nursing their babies themselves instead of handing them over to wet-nurses. Moreover Alice had been tactless or brave enough to speak out against Helena’s marriage to Christian, as she thought ‘Lenchen’ was being sacrificed to the selfish whims of their mother, adamant on keeping at least one married daughter nearby at her constant beck and call. Vicky was mildly jealous of King Wilhelm’s obvious preference for Alice, convinced her father-inlaw thought she was ugly and a bore in comparison. The King’s obvious preference may have been born from a desire to irritate Queen Augusta, who called Alice an atheist for daring to question the infallibility of the Bible and showing an interest in the teachings of free-thinkers who challenged the issue.
Ever since the treaty of Prague Vicky and Fritz had lived in continual dread of a third war; they suspected Bismarck was biding his time, allowing the North German Confederation and its mutual alliance to mature before drawing the sword against France. A pretext was not long in coming. In 1868 the childless Queen Isabella of Spain had abdicated, and the Prime Minister Marshal Prim recommended Leopold, a younger son of Prince Hohenzollern, as her successor. After the Prince discussed his son’s candidature with a few friends, including Fritz, he wanted nothing to do with such a potentially unstable throne in a country of which they knew nothing. Negotiations between the Spanish and Prussian governments had remained secret, and on Leopold’s refusal in April 1870 Fritz thought the affair was closed.
He reckoned without Bismarck, who saw how to pick a quarrel with France through skilful manipulation of the matter. To Napoleon and his advisers, the idea of a Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne would be blatant encirclement. Prussia had demonstrated her military prowess twice in the past six years, and Prince Leopold’s brother Karl had been elected Prince of Roumania in 1866. Like Fritz, King Wilhelm initially opposed the candidature for a similar reason; it did not suit the dignity of his family to accept a throne after the previous monarch had been deposed.
Fritz and Vicky were at Potsdam, where Vicky had given birth to a third daughter Sophie, on 14 June, when they heard that Leopold had accepted the throne after all. They were not surprised to hear that negotiations had been reopened several days previously; the King and his statesman had let the news become public knowledge without bothering to inform their Crown Prince. Their shock was nothing to that of the government in Paris, who demanded that Leopold must renounce the throne again. Wearily Fritz told Vicky that this could only end in mobilization; Vicky told him not to give up hope so easily; he should go and face the King, and demand to be kept informed. When he went to Berlin he found Bismarck, who pretended to take Fritz into his confidence, saying he hoped the business could be settled amicably. Fritz did not share Vicky’s acute perception; Bismarck was mild and ostensibly communicative when matters were playing into his hands and his schemes seemed to be working, hysterical if they were not. If Vicky had been present she would have known better than to take him at face value, but Fritz was deceived and returned happily to the Neue Palais. The next thing he heard was what he had hoped for; Leopold had withdrawn his acceptance again. Fritz was confident that this was the end of it but Vicky, suffering from post-natal depression and taught by bitter experience not to be too optimistic, thought otherwise. She dreaded the prospect of France, confident of military superiority, making capital from the issue by declaring war; like Fritz she thought Prussia was outnumbered in terms of troops and not ready to fight.
Not for some time did Fritz realize that he had been tricked into believing that Bismarck did not want war. His presence at Berlin would have been a sign that he was indulging in subterfuge to spark off the war for which he was waiting. That he was at Varzin, supervising the autumn harvest and entertaining guests, meant that either he had laid the snare and was waiting for France to walk into it, or the air was clear and everyone could look forward to peace after all. Fritz was one of the many who believed the latter.
Against his better judgment, Napoleon and his government sent the King a telegram demanding that Leopold’s candidature for the Spanish throne should not be renewed. From Ems Wilhelm dictated a politely-worded message that he could give no guarantee one way or the other. Bismarck received it for approval while dining with Roon and Moltke, and thought it too conciliatory. Setting to work with his pen he deleted about two-thirds of it; what was left read as an abrupt snub. On receiving this, the famous ‘Ems telegram’, the French government felt grossly insulted; and on 15 July France declared war. So well had Bismarck played his role that Fritz and Vicky were not alone in believing Napoleon to be the aggressor.
When Fritz called on Bismarck a couple of days later, the latter told him that there was no way of avoiding war; Prussian honour was at stake. When the King, reluctant for a full-scale campaign against France, talked at the war council of partial mobilization, he persuaded his father that this would not be enough. After the meeting he walked out gravely to the crowds assembled around the station at Wildpark, and publicly announced the result to an enthusiastic reception. Three days later, he noted in his diary: ‘General enthusiasm: Germany ri
ses like one man, and will restore its unity.’22
Fritz had faith in Prussia’s ability to organize her soldiers to advantage in battle, but Vicky believed the odds were fearfully against them, and wondered how many of the women would be mourning the loss of a husband or son by Christmas. Maybe England would come to the rescue, but much as Queen Victoria appreciated her German family connections, she still had a corner in her heart for Napoleon and Eugenie. Moreover, the Prussia of the 1850s that Prince Albert had seen as the way towards an united liberal Germany had been replaced by a sabre-rattling kingdom in which liberalism was no longer the dominant force. While France was the apparent aggressor, Lord Loftus and Lord Bloomfield, present and former British ministers in Berlin, had warned Lord Clarendon at the Foreign Office of Bismarck’s lack of scruples in his pursuit of German unity, and that it would be all too tempting to lay blame on the French.
Fritz and Vicky hoped that Britain might send troops to fight alongside Germany against France. The rest of the family, wrote Vicky, felt that England ‘would have had it in her power to prevent this awful war, had she in concert with Russia, Austria and Italy, declared she would take arms against the aggressor’.23 She was concerned lest public opinion in Germany would criticize her as England, it was said, had sided with the French against them and had ‘interpreted her neutrality to the exclusive benefit of France’. It would be glorious, she wrote to Queen Victoria, if England helped them to victory ‘and if our nations stood once more as in the greatest days of old, side by side in the field of honour.’ While she admitted that Emperor Napoleon was ‘not the scourge of Europe his uncle was’, that she knew he would rather be at peace, and that she had strong personal regard for him and Eugenie, who had always shown them kindness, ‘one must really admit that they have behaved ill in every way’.24
Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz Page 14
