Blood and Iron Part 13

Strauss calls William "A romanticist on the throne of the Caesars!"

This Fr: William IV wished to be an absolute monarch, after the traditional Hohenzollern style, yet he had so few soldierly instincts that the army hated him.

-- This political att.i.tude with William was not a form of romantic idealism bordering on lunacy; it was instead a token of his blundering stupidity; also in a sense his four-square frankness in owning that Prussia was playing second fiddle to Austria, at this interesting moment. And, in truth, all that William thought was logical; the stream was tending that way; few denied it, except politicians interested in advancing their own fortunes by setting Austria back in the great game of grab. However, William, instead of loading cannon and turning them on the Radicals, now swarming around his palace, was much pleased to send a bishop to Jerusalem.

-- Nicholas of Russia warned William to beware of democrats, and to stand up for Divine-right of kings, but what is the use of advising a coward to be a hero, a fool to be a wise man? In the end, a man must go through life with the sort of head he has--round, square, flat, or mushy--is it not true? You are no exception, yourself; and our church-building William, in turn, was true to his own aesthetic nature, regardless of bayonets poked under his nose.

-- Bad business this promising the people a written Const.i.tution; ominous for the breed of kings; a situation, in short, not unlike that forced on the Grand Monarch at an earlier day, that is to say, no money without the States' General.

-- After 1840, Liberal opinions were directed against the King, personally, charging him with political reactionary tendencies. The course of popular liberty was taken by noted men, among them Arnold Ruge, Karl Marx, Feuerbach, Strauss, Bauer, Fallersleben, Dingelstedt, Meissner, Beck, Kinkel, and others. Also, when Ischech attempted to a.s.sa.s.sinate William IV, the dastardly act found supporters who gloried in the "patriot's" effort to rid the country of a "tyrant," even through cold-blooded murder.

-- Also, the very memory of the frightful excesses of the French Revolution still shocked the conservative political element of Europe.

The land-owning cla.s.ses of Prussia, backed by the Prussian army, stood shoulder to shoulder for their old t.i.tles. The new call of political liberalism was, therefore, in the view of Prussian conservatives, to be put down at all hazards. The position was, of course, largely selfish, but it was very human.

-- Matters came to a crisis in '47; King William IV needed money for a little railroad project in East Prussia. In his dilemma, he called his Baby Parliament, or Diet, April 11, 1847, and "deigned" to permit therein the right of pet.i.tion; there were in truth no privileges of political significance, no real powers; it was a side-show, so far as the "people" were concerned--and for eleven weeks volleys of oratory crackled and thundered.

-- Here, we meet Bismarck face to face; and you should now be prepared, from what you have read, to understand the gigantic problem Bismarck was called upon to face--single-handed!

-- Furthermore, Bismarck's att.i.tude was not, as has often been recorded, a case of "might is right." The French Revolution had proven conclusively that there can be no political "right" without a political "might." We should not forget this fact throughout the Bismarck story of Prussia's rise to power.

BOOK THE THIRD

Bismarck Supports His King

CHAPTER VII

Fighting Fire With Fire

23

The voice in the Wilderness proclaims the G.o.d-given glory of Kings, vicegerents of Christ on this earth.

-- The French Revolution brought to Paris adventurers and patriots from every part of Europe. Among these was a young Corsican who, with his mother and sisters, had been driven out of his native island. This man, Napoleon Bonaparte, was in the course of a few years to become Emperor of France and Master of Europe.

-- There is a cla.s.sical picture of young Napoleon, at the time of the early riots in Paris.

Standing on a curbstone, to one side, he watches the pa.s.sing of liberty-crazed mobs, armed with pikes--the self-same common people on whose shoulders Napoleon himself was later to ride into amazing power.

-- Thus, likewise, in another time of political crisis, (1847-48) men were flocking to Berlin to debate anew the well-worn theme, "The Rights of Man."

Quietly looking on was another man of destiny, Otto von Bismarck, burly d.y.k.e-captain of the Elbe, up to that time a farmer on his ancestral estates in Pomerania. What this young blond giant saw before him was somewhat of this extraordinary order:

-- The universal theme was once more "Liberty," and the din not only in Berlin but throughout German states, was ear-splitting. Of course, there were patriots who stood on broad National grounds, but the purely personal point of view was still very much in evidence.

Every man had his say, often accompanied by brandis.h.i.+ng of fists or the laying on of canes; all dignified by the name "patriotism," but in truth it exhibited the old struggle of human nature for supremacy.

The ma.s.ses were fighting to unseat kings, whose dogma of "Divine-right" had by the French Revolution been shown to be only insidious political quackery, in the past sustained largely by the sword. The common people were wrestling to grasp this monarchic sword away, and here and there had already seized the hilt or the blade--it mattered not which!--and the dynasties of Hohenzollern, Hapsburg, Wittelsbach, and all the lesser swarm, were suddenly put on the defensive. Hotly pursued sovereigns kept their heads only by some concession to popular fury; again, by flight. The people were intoxicated with the wine of their newly found power!

-- And what would they do with their new bauble, liberty, fraternity and equality? The centre of the stage was occupied by a struggling ma.s.s of kings, fighting not only for their crowns but for the very clothes on their backs! There were poets in fine frenzy declaiming; grenadiers firing muzzle-loaders; priests invoking the wrath of G.o.d; kings shouting out that they were the only accredited earthly representatives of Heaven; historians hotly insisting that all were in error, and that the scroll showed this or that; law-givers pleading for the old forms; lunatics laughing in demoniacal glee; peasants armed with pitchforks jabbing right and left; demagogues calling on Heaven to witness their lofty and disinterested leaders.h.i.+p; while around the edges of the scene mountebanks, camp-followers, renegades, wh.o.r.es and political blacklegs, were waiting for their share of the plunder, let victory fall where it may.

-- What a magnificent scramble for place, pelf and power! It were blasphemy to call this riot the desire for progress for the ma.s.ses. It were equal blasphemy to call it stupidity and reaction, on the part of the contending monarchs, as against crus.h.i.+ng with iron heel the hopes of the people for political and intellectual life. Either one of these diagonally opposed interpretations of the time is too extreme. The truth is in neither view. As a matter of fact, behind the seething ma.s.s of human forms was the age-old motive of human selfishness; and while here and there some lofty soul may have glimpsed in his fervid imagination a United Germany, based on a "German national faith," in which the rights of each citizen should be no more or no less than the rights of all others, with each man working for all men and all men for each man, this poetical idea was only another evidence of how the n.o.blest minds place the illusion and the dream before the appalling fact of human selfishness in the universal struggle for personal aggrandizement.

-- The merging of the various German states, or the transference of land from one German monarch to another, in the ensuing political struggle for power, is, after all, as nothing compared with the change in ideas, now close at hand; what may be called the "mind" of Germany was about to undergo a veritable French Revolution! However, it was not to be a French Revolution in the sense of mob-rule. We shall make this clear as we come more especially to tell you, in details, of a certain political millennium which Bismarck scorned, although courageously pressed upon him by leaders of the party of the people.

-- On the whole, however, the drift of events was toward "German national faith," bringing in turn some form of representative government, as against the doctrine of Divine-right of kings. The monarchs were placed more and more on the defensive; it was to be their last stand, not only for their crowns but for their very lives!

-- And now face to face with the gigantic problem of a United Germany, again we study our last hope of kings--our Prussian Strafford von Bismarck. In some respects he is the historical foil of Strafford of Charles I, whose money-needs compelled the calling of the Long Parliament; and the help Strafford had given to the king in ruling without a parliament had mortally offended the Commons; Strafford was declared guilty of high treason--and despite Charles' efforts, Strafford went to the block!

-- Will Bismarck come to a similar end on the scaffold of the Prussian liberals?

-- We see before us a giant in form and in mental strength; a monster of will-power, with the iron ambition to compel men to do his individual bidding; a political superman.

-- He had spent his time more with cattle, horses and dogs than he had with men.

-- His spirit was high, untrammelled, rebellious. He ironically despised the common people; the burden-bearers in all forms of government were in this giant's opinion not good enough to sit beside kings.

-- Morose, obstinate, self-opinionated, with an enormous capacity for liquor, Bismarck was an intellectual as well as physical glutton.

-- Most of all, this strange man, half-beast, half-seer, was to turn out to be the very voice of the old decaying kingcraft. He had an immovable belief in the Feudal right of royalty to rule over its subjects as it pleased; and by his amazing power of intrigue supported by supreme abilities exercised during the ensuing thirty years, Bismarck at last rose to a height that overshadowed the monarchs whom he served--and ruled!

We wish to emphasize, again, that Bismarck's conception of kingcraft was no mere despotic thing. To him, a king was truly a man of great practical as well as moral responsibilities, akin to father, hence should be obeyed.

24

Our young blond giant appears at Third Estates' a.s.sembly--The King's predicament--Bismarck's opportunity.

-- Behold Otto Edward Leopold von Bismarck, the country squire, straight from his cow-sheds and his hunting dogs; a young blond German giant, 32 years old, in the very prime of his ma.s.sive strength and endurance; plentiful hair cropped short, ruddy face, blond beard, bright blue eyes, big fists; high, shrill voice, strangely out of keeping with his physical bulk. For years afterward, this peculiar voice became the stock in trade of newspaper writers. However, it was what the giant said!

-- Bismarck wore a broad-brimmed slouch hat, military boots and his d.y.k.eman's overcoat. This rough, yellow-colored garment, for which he afterwards became famous, was long, baggy and loose. He used to wear it when floods were high along the River Elbe. In Berlin, at the time were only three notables who wore these yellow overcoats: the first, Bismarck; the second, the immortal Baron von Herteford, the last of his race, hereditary grand huntsman at Cleve, and the third was worn by Geo. Hesekiel, the German historian.

-- Bismarck, who was now to receive his first experience in handling men in political alignments, had inherited a country estate from the old family domains and was living the life of a squire; hunting foxes, with dogs and gay companions, pa.s.sing nights in taverns, drinking heavily, eating like a glutton, amusing himself as he pleased; a giant in intellect and in stomach; turbulent, tempestuous, rough, a bad man to cross, believe me, but among his cronies voted a prince of good fellows. Such is our German hero as he comes upon the great stage of affairs.

-- When this burly Bismarck made his first entrance at the Diet, or a.s.sembly of the Three Estates, held in the "White Saloon" of the Royal Palace at Coelin on the Spree, our future empire-maker and throne-overturner knew by practical experience absolutely nothing about the diagonal of political cross-purposes.