Bismarck: A Life

by Jonathan Steinberg

  The actual results could hardly be called a triumph for the Bismarck Ministry. The shift to the left continued as in the election of 1862. The Progressives won 141 seats as opposed to 135 in the previous legislature. The other liberals went up from 96 to 106 and the ‘Constitutionals’, the largest fraction in 1858, the New Era liberals, disappeared completely. There were now 35 conservatives instead of 11.84

  On 6 November Hans von Kleist-Retzow sent his friend an encouraging passage from the Bible. As he wrote:

  I read yesterday in Revelations, Ch 2, Verse 27 ‘And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.’

  Bismarck wrote on the margin, ‘O Hans, always wrathful with God’s thunderbolt’.85

  On 9 November 1863 William I opened the Landtag with an intransigent Speech from the Throne. The King made clear that he would only give ‘My agreement to the necessary household bill which will guarantee and secure the maintenance of the existing structure of the army.’86 The First Chamber, the House of Lords, welcomed the King’s speech. By a vote of 72 to 8 the Lords approved an Address to the King, drafted by Hans von Kleist, which stated explicitly:

  Your Majesty’s Government has met those undoubted obligations imparted to it and through maintenance of Royal Power as the foundation stone of our Constitution and without any kind of violation of the Constitution or the existing legal system, even without the state budget, it has happily dispelled the danger namely by holding firm to the army reorganization which without committing treason cannot be reversed.87

  As a sign of the readiness to concede something to the liberals, the government lifted the press edict which both houses welcomed but in lifting the edict the government repeated its ‘unaltered conviction that the edict of 1 June to maintain public security and to master an unusual emergency situation was urgently necessary and at the same time absolutely constitutional.’88 The deadlock continued.

  It was to be broken ultimately by events outside Prussia. On 15 November 1863 Frederick VII, King of Denmark, died without an heir, and the crisis of the Danish succession gave Bismarck the chance he needed to outflank domestic opposition by success abroad. On 18 November the new Danish King, King Christian IX, signed the text of a constitution which incorporated Schleswig into the Kingdom of Denmark. Here at last was the foreign crisis that Bismarck wanted. At the end of 1862 he wrote a lengthy letter about the Danish question to an unnamed correspondent:

  It is certain that the Danish business can only be solved in a way which we would wish by a war. One can find a pretext for such a war any time … We cannot get out of the disadvantage of having signed the London Protocol with Austria unless we repudiate it as a result of a break caused by war … [Prussia has] no interest in fighting a war … in Schleswig-Holstein to install a new Grand Duke, who will vote against us at the Bund because he fears our lust for annexation and whose government will become a willing object of Austrian intrigues, forgetful of any gratitude which he owes Prussia for his elevation.89

  His first move involved securing an agreement with the Austrians to defend the previous agreements about the succession and the status of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. On 28 November 1863 Prussia and Austria sent a joint note to the Danish government which rejected the Danish moves and cited the treaties of 1851 and 1852 as the legal basis for their intervention.90

  The Schleswig-Holstein question has the reputation of being incomprehensible. Lord Palmerston is supposed to have remarked that ‘only three people have ever understood the Schleswig-Holstein question. One is dead, one has gone mad and I have forgotten.’ That is a typically Palmerstonian exaggeration. The positions are really quite clear. Denmark had a monarchy which rested on a tradition of royal absolutism and the line of inheritance in that monarchy could pass down the female line. The two historic duchies of Schlweswig and Holstein observed the Salic Law under which only a male heir could inherit. In addition the duchies had historically been joined at the hip in the phrase ‘Up ewig ungedeelt’ (forever undivided), though in practice Holstein had been part of the Germanic Confederation, whereas Schleswig had not and hence the King of Denmark in his capacity as Duke of Holstein was a member of the German Bund. When the revolution of 1848 introduced constitutionalism to Denmark, King Frederick VII announced that the duchies would be incorporated into the new kingdom. The revolutionary German parliament in Frankfurt rushed to defend the German national territory and a war, largely fought by Prussian troops, broke out which Prussia, once it recovered its nerve, unilaterally abandoned. The reappearance of the Danish question suited Bismarck perfectly, because, as Christopher Clark writes,

  modern and pre-modern themes were interwoven. On the one hand, it was an old-fashioned dynastic crisis, triggered, like so many seventeenth and eighteenth-century crises, by the death of a king without male issue. In this sense, we might call the conflict of 1864 ‘the War of the Danish Succession’. On the other hand, Schleswig-Holstein became the flash-point of a major war only because of the role played by nationalism as a mass movement.91

  The Schleswig-Holstein crisis had just that combination of complex elements that gave Bismarck room to play with a large number of sets of alternatives: Danish versus German nationalism, dynastic versus popular politics, Prussia versus Austria, Prussia versus the German Bund, royal government versus parliament, and, finally, an international dimension because of the role of the great powers. In 1852 an international congress in London had established that both Austria and Prussia would recognize the ‘integrity’ of the Danish kingdom and Denmark in turn agreed never to incorporate the duchies or take any steps toward that end.92 The great powers recognized that, if Frederick VII of Denmark died without issue, the succession to the Kingdom of Denmark and to the Duchies would pass to the heir, Christian of Glücksberg, who would thus inherit both Schleswig and Holstein. The Duke of Augustenburg, the heir to the Duchies by Salic Law, signed the agreements but never renounced his rights in perpetuity.93 Hence when Frederick VII in March of 1863 announced a new constitutional arrangement, the crisis threatened to erupt anew but this time the Danes hoped for a better outcome. European diplomats had their attention directed to the Polish Crisis and the Danish cabinet thought it could get enough support to revoke the London Treaties. Frederick’s sudden death made the issue acute.

  In early December 1863, the King of Prussia called a Crown Council, that is, a cabinet meeting presided over by the King and attended by the Crown Prince. According to his memoirs, Bismarck made clear that the aim of Prussian policy ought to be the acquisition of the Duchies by Prussia. ‘While I was speaking, the Crown Prince raised his hands to heaven as if he doubted my sanity. My colleagues remained silent.’94 The King struggled with the concept, and repeated, ‘I have no right to Holstein’. Bismarck observed bitterly that ‘the King’s way of looking at things was impregnated by a vagabond liberalism through the influence of his consort and the pushing of the Bethmann Hollweg clique.’95 This was a very wayward description of the King’s entirely conservative and legitimist position. He had correctly stated the position. He had no dynastic right nor claim to the Duchies and hence no legitimate way to annex them to his kingdom. Bismarck ran into the King’s opposition and immediately blamed the woman who embodied all the malign forces in the royal household, Queen Augusta.

  Bismarck, as always, had a second strategy in mind. After the failure of the Frankfurt Congress of the Princes, Baron Rechberg, who had become Austrian Foreign Minister on 17 May 1859, decided in exasperation to work with, not against, Prussia, ‘with the remark that an understanding with Prussia was easier for Austria than for the middle states’.96 Bismarck had clashed bitterly with Rechberg in Frankfurt and the two had been about to go to the woods for a duel at one point. Rechberg had a reputation for temper and was widely known as a Kratzbürste (scratch brush), that is, snappish and
quick-tempered, but Bismarck got used to him. ‘On the whole Rechberg was not bad, at least personally honest, if too violent and quick to explode, one of those overheated red blondes.’97 Rechberg had a low opinion of his opponent. When it looked like the New Era cabinet would fall, Rechberg said, ‘if there is a change of ministry, the horrible Bismarck will be next in line, a man who is capable of taking off his jacket and climbing on the barricades.’98 Whatever their relationship, Rechberg served Bismarck’s purposes perfectly because he had been schooled under Metternich and that meant conventional, conservative diplomacy. Since Rechberg now favoured a dual Austro-Prussian directory for Germany, he naturally agreed to Bismarck’s suggestion that the two powers as signatories of the London Treaties must insist that Denmark be held strictly to the letter of the treaties. If King William would not now countenance a policy of naked aggression followed by annexation, Bismarck needed to make sure that no German solution took place by which the small states would ride a wave of national enthusiasm for the young Augustenburg duke. When on 7 December the Bundestag by a one-vote majority voted for the federal ‘execution’ to force Denmark to abide by the London Treaties of 1852, that suited Bismarck admirably. There were three options in principle: best—annexation of both Duchies by Prussia; tolerable—the status quo with the Duchies in personal union with Denmark because he knew he could always stir up trouble in that situation; worst—a victory for the Bund and the small states in favour of the Duke of Augustenburg which would add another impossible middlesized state always ready to vote against Prussia. That by the autumn of 1866 Bismarck had achieved the first and much more than that, he called his ‘proudest achievement’. At the close of the war in 1864, he reflected ‘this trade teaches that one can be as shrewd as the shrewdest in this world and still at any moment go like a child into the dark.’99

  Bismarck’s tactics in this, his greatest achievement, resemble those we have seen before, constantly shuffling sets of alternatives and playing off one against the other. Rechberg and Karolyi needed a firm guarantee that Bismarck would stay loyally by the London Treaties but Bismarck could genuinely explain that his King under the evil influence of the Queen and the liberals of the court entourage had thrown his emotional support to the young Augustenburg pretender. What could a poor foreign minister do?

  The Bund had ordered Saxon and Hanoverian troops to enter Holstein and as a consequence Prussian and Austria troops also crossed the frontier. This period placed a great strain on Bismarck’s nerves. He could not control the army nor the vagaries of its commanders. On 12 January Bismarck wrote to Roon to ask about certain military movements, very nervously. He was worried that the Austrians might reach the Eider before the Prussians. ‘That would be disagreeable to his Majesty. Or have the orders already been issued? If so, then I have said nothing to you and I can recall the ink already used.’100

  Bismarck found himself in a double bind. He had a domestic crisis to overcome before he could carry out his Danish policy and he had an international crisis in which he had to prevent British, French, and Russian intervention in his little war, an intervention to which, as signatories of the Treaties of London, they had a perfect right. That Bismarck saw this period as his masterpiece arises from the sheer complexity of the challenges facing him. Let us see if we can sort them by category. In domestic affairs, he had a deadlock with parliament which made it unlikely, if not impossible, that money for the war would be allocated in a legal way. On 15 January Bismarck told the Landtag that he wanted to use legally appropriated funds for the Danish venture, ‘but if these were refused, then he would take them wherever he could find them.’101 In foreign affairs he had to keep Austria under control. On the next day, 16 January 1864, Bismarck and Graf Karolyi signed a protocol that extended the joint military operation of the Austro-Prussian force into Schleswig. Bismarck clearly intended to get involved in a shooting war, if possible, as Roon explained to Perthes on 17 January 1864: ‘The first shot from a canon tears up all treaties without our having to break them explicitly. The peace arrangement after a victorious war brings new relationships.’102

  The King, the court, the royal family and its many relations, and the appeal of the young Duke of Augustenburg, a handsome 34-year-old prince, generated an almost insuperable obstacle to Bismarck’s schemes. On 19 November 1863, in response to Christian IX’s proclamation about Schleswig, the young Augustenburg proclaimed himself Frederick VIII of Schleswig-Holstein and was widely supported in German public opinion. To make things worse, his wife, Princess Adelheid zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg (1835–1900) was a niece of Queen Victoria and thus a cousin of Crown Princess Victoria. Bismarck had also to cope with generals whom he could not control and who treated him as the civilian interloper he undoubtedly was.

  Abroad, Bismarck had to make sure that the Great Powers let him carry out his plan. Napoleon III tried to extort a concession for his support, such as the Prussian territories on the Left Bank of the Rhine, which he had to reject without pushing the Emperor into alliance with Britain. A Liberal government in London, of course, sympathized with little Denmark and deeply distrusted the Prussian reactionary, author of the press edict. The British Foreign Secretary was the grandest of grand Whigs, Lord John Russell, as John Prest describes him in the New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as ‘the thinking person’s politician’.103 Lord John served under a very different Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, a strong and noisy activist. When the Danish crisis blew up, the British cabinet could not agree on a policy. ‘Palmerston had encouraged the Danes to believe that they would not stand alone, but the cabinet refused to sanction military intervention.’104 The French Foreign Secretary would not have been surprised. He told the British ambassador in late 1863 that ‘the question of Poland had shown that Great Britain could not be relied upon when war was in the distance.’105

  On 16 January 1864 the governments of Austria and Prussia presented a joint note to the Danish Foreign Minister, von Quaade, which made clear their determination not to accept the constitution of 18 November 1863. By promulgating the constitution,

  the Danish government has unequivocally broken the obligations which it undertook in 1852 … The above named two Powers owe it to themselves and to the Federal Diet, in consequence of the part they played in those proceedings … not to allow this situation to continue … Should the Danish government not comply with this summons, the two above named Powers will find themselves compelled to make use of the means at their disposal for the restoration of the status quo.106

  As Michael Embree writes, ‘the Danes had thus precipitated a crisis, for which they were unprepared and the consequences of which they completely misjudged.’ On 20 January Field Marshall Wrangel assumed command of the Allied Army and entered Holstein on a march to the river Eider. The Danes had played into Bismarck’s hands ‘blinded by pure nationalism’.107

  Bismarck still could not be certain that his policy had worked and on 21 January 1864 he wrote to Roon just before a Crown Council to express his anxiety that the King would give in to family pressure and back the young Augustenburg:

  The King has ordered me to come to him before the meeting to consider what is to be said. I will not have much to say. In the first place I hardly slept at all last night and feel wretched and then really do not know what one should say … after it has become more or less clear that His Majesty at the risk of breaking with Europe and experiencing a more terrible Olmütz, wants to yield to democracy and the Würzburger in order to establish Augustenburg and create yet another middle state.108

  On 25 January the King dissolved the Landtag when it refused to pass the 1864 Budget and also rejected a 12 million thaler loan to finance a Schleswig-Holstein action. At least that much Bismarck had achieved.

  The next difficulty Bismarck faced involved the generals. Bismarck rested his case against the Western powers on strict adherence to the Treaties of London and a commitment to advance in lockstep with the Austrians. That in turn meant that Prussian generals had to
move more slowly than they might have wished. The most intransigent of these was General Field Marshall Count von Wrangel, the Berliner’s ‘Papa Wrangel’. In January 1864, Wrangel was three months short of his 80th birthday but had command of the Prussian forces in Schleswig. Age had not mellowed the old hothead. Bismarck’s needs for restraint passed on through the King’s orders infuriated Wrangel and he let loose on Bismarck, as Bismarck describes it in his memoirs:

  My old friend Field-Marshal Wrangel sent the King telegrams, not in cipher, containing the coarsest insults against me, in which remarks were made, referring to me, [and] about diplomatists fit for the gallows. I succeeded, however, at that time in inducing the King not to move a hair’s breath in advance of Austria, especially not to give the impression that Austria was being dragged along by us against her will.109

  One tiny incident shows how weak Bismarck’s actual position was on the eve of his first triumph. Bismarck needed, quite rightly, a diplomat to represent him at the HQ of Field Marshall Wrangel and had appointed Ambassador Emil von Wagner. Holstein, whom Bismarck sent to serve as secretary to Wagner, recalls in his memoirs that

  when he went to report to the Field Marshall, he came back in very low spirits. This is how he described the scene: the Field Marshall had received him surrounded by royal princes and the whole of his vast military staff. When Wagner presented himself the Field Marshall replied: ‘Tomorrow we transfer our headquarters to Hadersleben but you are to stay here—you diplomats are out of place in military headquarters. But you can write to me, my boy.’ With that Wagner was dismissed.

  Bismarck persuaded the King to overrule Wrangel, who then ordered Wagner to HQ. ‘He came back radiant. ‘The Field Marshall is a charming man. I didn’t see this side of him the first time. He came straight up to me and said, “Well, my boy, and where have you been all this time? I shan’t let you run away again!” The royal reproof had worked.’110 It worked but it cost Bismarck extra strain and nervous tension. Here again we can grasp the remarkable way Bismarck succeeded in imposing his will on Prussian conduct without being able to issue an order to the people who had to fight the war.