Bismarck: A Life

by Jonathan Steinberg

  There is another thing that I would like to say to you. You stand entirely alone against the whole Ministry. That is an untenable position … Could you not rely on R von der Goltz? After the ‘New Era’ he spoke openly to me in a way that gained my confidence. Even Bernstorff might be useful.73

  Bismarck ignored that advice. The last thing he wanted was an alliance with moderate conservatives. He had another ally in mind which would have shocked Leopold von Gerlach. Bismarck proposed to play the Bonapartist game, as he said in the summer of 1859 to the nationalist liberal Victor Unruh:

  Prussia is completely isolated. There is but one ally for Prussia if she knows how to win and handle them … the German people! I am the same Junker of ten years ago … but I would have no perception and no understanding if I could not recognize clearly the reality of the situation.74

  Bismarck had seen that the ‘masses’ in France voted for order not radicalism and had given Louis Napoleon Bonaparte an overwhelming mandate. Would not the German people play the same role in Bismarck’s scheme to strength the position of Prussia? He intended to use nationalism as he had used the camarilla, to achieve his goals. He had come to understand that

  politics is less a science than an art. It is not a subject that can be taught. One must have the talent for it. Even the best advice is of no avail if improperly carried out.75

  Other changes took place against the background of the Crimean War which strengthened Prussia. The first half of the 1850s saw a very rapid expansion of railroad building which transformed the mobilization of the Prussian army. General Karl Friedrich Wilhelm von Reyher, chief of the General Staff in the 1850s, designated vital operational lines; worked out obligatory building codes for rail cars and railway stations to service cavalry and artillery; drew up a handbook of military regulations for all Prussian railroad companies; and coordinated timetables that acknowledged railroads as the principle mode of transport in wartime. Although Prussia never tested these plans in a full-scale mobilization in the 1850s, an operational timetable was in place by 1856.76

  In October 1857 the Chief of the Great General Staff Karl von Reyher died and Prince William, whom King Frederick William IV had appointed as Regent for three months on 23 October 1857, appointed Helmuth von Moltke to be his successor, one of the two most important appointments William ever made. The other, on 22 September 1862, was to appoint Bismarck. Moltke was as remarkable as Bismarck but temperamentally and socially his exact opposite. He was born on 26 October 1800 in Parchim in Mecklenburg, the son of an improvident father, who could not manage the family estates and had, as a result, to take a commission in the Royal Danish Army. Modest family circumstances ‘decided that Moltke together with his two brothers, Wilhelm and Fritz, without any concern for their own desires, had to become soldiers’.77 Lack of money led Moltke all his life to a certain obvious frugality. Even as a Field Marshall and the greatest general in Prussian history he travelled second class and usually took a sandwich in a paper bag. In 1822 he transferred from the Royal Danish to the Prussian army and from 1823 to 1826 he studied at the Kriegsakademie (War College). As Arden Bucholz describes it, the Kriegsakademie had developed a new way to train officers, the Kriegsspiel or war game:

  War games originated with two Prussian officers, the Reisswitzes between 1810 and 1824. Originally played with plaster terrain and porcelain models at a scale of 26 inches to the mile, it evolved into metal symbols—blue for Prussia and red for the enemy … A set of rules, an umpire—the conductor—who mediated between the opposing sides, and dice standing for the element of chance in war. War gaming was practised at three or four distinct levels. One was indoors around the map or sand table. The other three were all done outdoors.78

  Moltke graduated top in his class. He was always effortlessly the best at everything but was too poor to take the position he had earned in the Great General Staff because he lacked the private income needed to pay for his horses. As a result, like Albrecht von Roon, Moltke joined the topography section and became a ‘land artist’. Moltke took part in the great topographic project under Chief of the General Staff Karl Freiherr von Müffling and spent three years doing this work from 1826 to 1829.

  To do this he [Moltke] lived with local families … He became virtually a member of the family for the old Silesian nobility who took until noon for the grande toilette and did not always say what they thought. They lived in beautiful castles set in wonderful parks with French-style gardens and paintings by old masters on the walls. Moltke sketched the counts and countesses, wrote poetry and met all the neighbours …79

  Moltke painted and drew superbly, spoke six or seven languages (sources disagree on the number), and had immaculate manners. He had every grace and virtue (including discretion) to be the ideal courtier.

  In 1833 he finally had enough cash to join the General Staff but in 1835 asked for six months of travel on which he made his way through the Balkans to Constantinople. In 1836 the ambassador of the Sultan asked the Prussian government for a training officer and Moltke, who was already there, got the job. He served as military adviser to the Turkish army for three years, travelled all over the Balkans and middle East, wrote and published his memoirs in 1841, and became instantly famous.80 The book continues to be reprinted as Under the Half-Moon in our own times. In 1842 he married an English woman, Marie Burt, with whom he had no children.

  As Arden Bucholz observes,

  Within the age cohort which included hundreds of field grade officers, Molte had now achieved uniqueness. None of his colleagues had any practical military experience. None had served as responsible adviser to an army commander or been decorated with the order Star and Honour Sword by the Ottoman sultan and the Pour le mérite by the Prussian king. Such fame for an officer within the general literate public went back two generations—to the wars of liberation. But this was peace-time and more significant for now he had caught the attention of the royal family. And what they found surprised them: a very bright officer, graceful and adept at court, with the additional cachet as an artist. In a society of deference, rife with patron-client relationships, this was gold. His next three appointments put him into close, daily contact with three of them: the king’s nephew and most military relative, Prince Frederick Charles, the king’s younger brother Prince Henry and the king’s other nephew, Prince Frederick Wilhelm. Moltke got along well with the royals. This was certainly one key to his success. Elegantly turned out, perfectly tempered, he fitted in everywhere.81

  His assignment as adjutant to Prince Heinrich, who lived a solitary life as an art lover in Rome, gave him an opportunity to learn Italian and to draw the great architectural treasures of the Eternal City.82 Moltke was that rare human being, a universal man. There seemed to be nothing, especially in the arts, that he could not do. Of these appointments by far the most important was that of Adjutant to Prince Frederick William. There he got to know William Prince of Prussia. They had a lot in common. ‘Moltke and King Wilhelm were the same kind of people: economical and simplicity loving, moderate and unpretentious. Both used the unwritten parts of letters to make notes and disliked replacing old clothes with new.’83 Moltke had another qualification, indeed, was the first to have it: he himself had been a product of the General Staff as an educational institution. His predecessors: Grollman, Rühle von Lilienstern, Müffling, Krauseneck and Reyher, belonged to the Napoleonic generation and had had careers before the General Staff formally began to function in 1817. Moltke was an alumnus of the institution he now commanded.84

  Stories of Moltke’s calm detachment circulated throughout his career. In July 1870 Holstein reports that

  Colonel Stiehle [Gustav von Stiehe, chief of staff to Prince Friedrich Karl] also told me that he had found Moltke on the sofa with a novel of Sir Walter Scott in his hand. When the colonel passed some remark about such reading matter at such a moment, the General replied placidly: ‘Why not? Everything’s ready. We’ve only got to press the button.’85

  During the Franco-Prus
sian War, Lieutenant Colonel Julius Verdy du Vernois was one of the chief staff officers. On 9 January 1871 he wrote his assessment of Moltke as a boss in his private diary. It is remarkable testimony to the great general’s character:

  Moltke […] lives entirely with his staff, and is as kind as ever to everyone of us. No one has ever heard a single harsh word from him during the whole campaign. With us, he is even merry in his simple, cheerful and modest way. We all feel happy in his company, and absolutely love and worship him. But outside of our small circle, there is only one feeling and that is admiration towards him; everyone says he is a truly ideal character.86

  On the evening of the battle of Sedan, the greatest victory of Prussian arms in the nineteenth century, the King gave dinner for the top commanders. Alfred Count von Waldersee, then a young staff officer, recorded the following passage in his diary:

  At dinner were Roon, Moltke and Bismarck. The King raised his glass and drank to the health of ‘the man who sharpened the sword for me, the man who used it, and the man who successfully directed my policies.’ These words have been frequently quoted differently but I can guarantee that this is what he said.87

  On the 25 January 1858 the Crown Prince of Prussia Prince Frederick Wilhelm married the Princess Royal Victoria of Great Britain in the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace. Bismarck was not yet grand enough for Windsor but did get invited to the various dinners for the Royal Wedding in Berlin and noted in a letter to a friend that ‘in the evening there was a grand gala ball with supper, where the unpractical cut of the civil uniform and the cold corridors gave me a catarrh of the stomach’.88 As we shall see, Bismarck regarded the palaces as dangerous places, full of germs, draughts, and bossy women. The young Princess was a very young woman of 17 and looked even younger.

  As Walburga Countess von Hohenthal, commented in 1858:

  The princess appeared extraordinarily young. All the childish roundness still clung to her and made her look shorter than she really was. She was dressed in a fashion long disused on the continent, in a plum coloured silk dress fastened at the back. Her hair was drawn off her forehead. Her eyes were what struck me most; the iris was green like the sea on a sunny day and the white had a peculiar shimmer which gave them the fascination that, together with a smile that showed her beautiful white teeth, bewitched those who approached her.89

  During 1858 Frederick William IV had a series of strokes which damaged the speech centres of his brain and made it increasingly impossible for him to conduct the business of the monarchy. On 7 October 1858 he gave his royal powers to his younger brother, Prince William, who took on the role of Regent.90 The Crown Prince as Regent dismissed the conservative Manteuffel and appointed a new government composed of members of the Wochenblattpartei, many of whom Bismarck regarded as ‘enemies’. The so-called ‘New Era’ received the enthusiastic support of Prussian liberals but for Bismarck it spelled disaster. English influence and the so-called ‘New Era’ under the Regent were in Bismarck’s view equally dangerous. Pflanze sums up the change very neatly. ‘To shrewd observers, the change did not appear very drastic. Instead of feudal conservatives, aristocratic whigs were now in power.’91 This assessment is undoubtedly right but at the time Bethmann Hollweg, Rudolf von Auerswald, and the others in the group, including the Hohenzollern prince, Karl Anton of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, who became Minister-President, and those members of the new cabinet who had been Liberals in 1848, seemed to promise a new start. The Princess Regent Augusta, a princess of Saxe-Weimar and a hearty liberal, welcomed the ‘New Era’. The Prince Regent had doubts. ‘What have I done to merit praise from that crowd?’ he asked irritably.92

  The New Era ministry produced one change early in its tenure. On 2 February 1859 it allowed the Jewish owner of a knightly estate, a certain Herr Julius Silberstein of Breslau, the right to vote in the Breslau district diet, that is, to exercise precisely those ständische (traditional) rights which Bismarck had successfully helped to close to Jews in 1847. The leading noblemen in the diet protested and refused to accept the decision. A campaign to defend those rights against usurping Jews raged over the next two years.93 The dreadful prophesy of Burke had been fulfilled: the land had been turned into a commodity. A Jewish plutocracy would replace the true representatives of tradition and honour.

  The New Era also meant that Bismarck had lost his direct connection to power and it made him depressed and ill. On 20 February 1859 he wrote to Leopold von Gerlach,

  In foreign affairs I have nothing to write and feel depressed. When, as now in Berlin there are neither pre- nor post-considerations, neither plans nor signs of a stirring of the will, so the awareness of an entirely purposeless and planless employment lowers the spirits. I do nothing more than what I am directly ordered to do and let things simply slide …94

  To his brother, he complained about his health:

  In the meantime I have been so overworked and so ill that I was happy to find a few minutes for the necessary physical exercise. Because of the lack of that I suffer very much in the form of blood stoppage, congestion and susceptibility to colds.95

  Hypochondria, illnesses of all sorts, and depression regularly accompanied changes in Bismarck’s political situation. With age and—oddly—success they would get worse.

  While Bismarck fretted at the loss of influence, Albrecht von Roon had been invited to a ceremony to mark his admission to the Knightly Order of St John. As the Regent gave him the robe and insignia of his knighthood, he said to him, as Roon reported to his wife Anna,

  ‘These are the new robes (that is, the cloak) of the gentlemen who are Division Commanders and of those who will become Divisional Commanders. You (shaking my hand vigorously) are not yet one but will be in the near future.’ This ‘in the near future’, I interpret to mean at least within the year.96

  Roon came from a very modest background and probably from Dutch bourgeois stock. Certainly ‘de Ron’ had no claims to nobility, and his paternal grandfather had a wine business in Frankfurt. During the Nazi period, the existence of a significant number of ‘Noahs’ and ‘Isaacs’ in his Dutch ancestry gave cause for a certain amount of alarm and they touched up his geneaology.97 After Roon had served as tutor to the Prince’s nephew in 1846 and 1847, General von Unruh informed him on 1 November 1848 that Prince William and Princess Augusta wanted Major von Roon to be military governor of their son, the 17-year-old Frederick William, their eldest child and future Emperor Frederick III.98 We have seen how rapidly the career of Moltke had been transformed by such royal favour. The General handed the Major a letter from the Princess Augusta in which she explained that with respect to his purity of heart, truthfulness and piety, she could want nothing more of the young Prince. ‘Strength of character and intellectual ability, namely sharpness and logic, are not on the same level.’ She wanted her son to be brought up to date. ‘He belongs to the present and future. He must, as a result, absorb new ideas and learn to digest them, so that he develops a clear and lively awareness of his own time and lives not outside it but within and of it.’99

  Five days after receipt of this invitation, Roon replied to this remarkable letter with unusual frankness. He declared his

  inability to concede inner truth or outer justification to all the so-called, up-to-date views … I feel myself too old, too rusted into my prejudices, too lame. Will the touch of ‘reactionary essence’ which is inherent in me, not be harmful to the young gentleman?100

  Not only did a humble and not very well-heeled Major turn down a golden ladder to a brilliant career but he also had the nerve to suggest to the Princess that the young Prince ‘should be removed from Court and all its influences’.101 Roon had in a sense taken a huge risk with his career prospects by his frankness and he and Anna must have been relieved when a letter of 10 December arrived from the Princess in which she wrote that her choice of him as military governor had

  been perfectly confirmed by your open and honest answer … With respect to separating my son from Court and his par
ents, our views are far apart and for the moment and for the immediate future we shall not let him go away from us for that reason.102

  Early in January Prince William courteously informed Roon that Lieutenant Colonel Fischer from the Ministry of War had been appointed military governor to the Prince. The Prince added his own regrets:

  Today I can only say how much I regret that our first choice could not have been permitted to stand and to assure you that our respect for you has not changed in any way.103

  During 1849, when the Prussian Army suppressed the revolution in Baden, Major von Roon served as chief of staff to I Army Corps of the ‘Operation Army of the Rhine’, under Lieutenant General von Hirschfeld. The whole operation was under the command of Prince William of Prussia, which allowed Roon to solidify his position with the future King.104 He became part of the group around the Prince together with Adjutant-General von Kirchfeldt, Lieutenant Colonel Fischer, and one or two others. This group disliked the direction of Prussian politics. It met in the Prince’s temporary residence in Koblenz.105 In December 1850 von Roon was promoted to lieutenant colonel and made commanding officer of the 33rd Reserve Infantry in Thorn; as his wife put it on 31 December 1850, ‘this assignment [to command an unfashionable reserve regiment in a remote Polish town—JS] is an expression of the highest disfavour on the part of the Minister of War.’106 In the following December, he was in spite of the disfavour promoted colonel and the regiment happily transferred from remote Thorn to Cologne, near the royal couple in their residence in Koblenz, where the Prince of Prussia often inspected the 33rd Regiment and saw Roon regularly.107

  Koblenz was not far from Frankfurt but relations between Roon and Bismarck seem to have been still on a formal basis, as in the letter of 14 July 1852 in which Colonel Roon writes to his ‘honoured Friend’, as the heading has it, but within the text he addresses Bismarck as ‘honoured Excellency’, as part of a formal letter in which he asks Bismarck as ambassador to make arrangements for his general to visit the Fortress of Nancy and Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. He passes on greetings from their mutual friends, Kleist-Retzow and Moritz von Blanckenburg, and hopes that the gracious lady will, perhaps, remember him from 1847 and Venice.108 Roon must have felt his inferiority. After all, he was still a regimental commander of a not very fashionable regiment at nearly 50, while the young Bismarck, still under 40, had shot onto the political firmament with the brilliance of a comet. The Rooms still had to live off his modest salary. Five years later, his career had not advanced much as he wrote to his friend Clemens Theodor Perthes, the Bonn professor, on 9 November 1857: ‘I still cannot do more in fact than enlist recruits and send letters without content from above to below and from below to above.’ But he reports on a trip to Berlin and ‘plans for my future’. A note mentions an exchange of letters with Bismarck about his possible transfer to Frankfurt as Federal Military Plenipotentiary.109