Blood and Iron Part 3

Also, after Waterloo, when the British nation was running wild trying to imagine some distinction that as yet had not been bestowed on Wellington, the London tailors in a moment of inspiration added the Iron Duke's name to the great roll of scissor-snippers!

-- Beginning with Herbort's son, four Bismarcks, in three generations, were social lepers.

-- Klaus von Bismarck died about the year 1385, outside the holy favor of the church--as his father had died before him, and as did two sons, in their turn. But Klaus, ever shrewd in a worldly way, recommended himself as a king's fighting man; led the robber gang off with the loot in the name of his merry monarch, the Margrave of Bavaria.

-- For this most excellent service as a professional man-killer, Klaus was rewarded with a knight's fee of forest land, at Burgstal, an estate that remained in the family for two hundred years. There were deer, wild boar, wolves and bear in the Bismarck forest, and one day Conrad of Hohenzollern came that way on a royal hunting expedition.

-- Conrad could have stolen the Bismarck petty t.i.tle outright, but while he confiscated Burgstal forest, he offered Schoenhausen, on the Elbe, in exchange. However, Schoenhausen did not compare with the estate that the envious monarch took by force. The Burgstal forest is to this day one of the great game preserves of the German Emperor.

-- The Bismarcks also received in the exchange farming land known as Crevisse, lately confiscated by the Hohenzollerns from the nuns; and one of the conditions of the transfer to the Bismarcks was that these nuns should be supported.

6

Strong animal basis of Bismarck's rise to Power--The story is always the same, "Fight, or die like a dog!"

-- Thus, from time immemorial, the fighting Bismarcks wrote their t.i.tle to a share of this earth with the sword, which in spite of all Hague Conferences remains the best sort of t.i.tle man has been able to devise.

As time sped and what is called Civilization grew somewhat, men took on chicken-hearted ways; and in every pinch appealed to courts for decisions formerly decided by individual brawn; till finally, as in these latter degenerate days, if a fight becomes necessary, society hires policemen to stop the row.

-- Klaus von Bismarck preferred to do his own murdering, and consequently, Klaus stood first in the eyes of honest men of his own generation; but in this Twentieth Century, instead of putting incompetents to the test of the sword, society, committed to the soft doctrine that all life is sacred, burdens itself with lengthening the days of the daft. A far cry that from the ideals of the early Bismarcks! It is well to keep these facts in mind, in contemplating the extraordinary career of the great Otto von Bismarck, king-maker and unifier of Germany.

-- Modern timid-hearted folk, reading of the desperate makes.h.i.+fts of the old Bismarcks to get on in the world, would say off-hand, "There must be a strain of madness in the Bismarck brain?"

-- Unquestionably! This fighting family in each generation had its born revolutionists, its enormous egotists, its men who lived what orthodox opinion calls "G.o.dless lives"--although in their own philosophy the Bismarcks are always preaching that G.o.d is on their side. When the Elector decided to steal Burgstal forest, the Bismarcks set up this pious plea: "We wish to remain in the pleasant place a.s.signed to us by the Almighty." Four hundred years later we find Otto von Bismarck using again and again this peculiar reasoning, to justify, at least to explain, his own career: "If I were not a Christian, I would not continue to serve the King another moment. Did I not obey my G.o.d and count on Him, I should certainly take no account of earthly masters."

-- In three great wars of ambition in which 80,000 perished, he repeated this solemn formula about G.o.d; he repeated it on the blood-drenched field of Koeniggraetz; he repeated it in the Holstein war, and he repeated it again at Sedan and at Gravelotte.

-- Bismarck persisted in this peculiar conception of life, down to the last. While in retirement, after his downfall, one day the b.l.o.o.d.y past rose before him like a dream, and he exclaimed to Dr. Busch: "Politics has brought me vexation, anxiety and trouble; made no one happy, me, my family nor anyone else, but many unhappy. Had it not been for me, there would have been three great wars less; the lives of 80,000 would not have been sacrificed; and many parents, brothers, sisters and wives would not now be mourners. That, however, I have settled with my Maker!" Now, once and for all, what we understand this to mean is merely this: a super-abundance of faith. Many great leaders have had it--David, Cromwell, Bismarck.

-- In seeking biographic clues, through hereditary influences, we are impressed with the astounding animal-basis of strength behind the Bismarcks, from earliest recorded history. They were a deep-drinking, prolific gormandizing race, and every mother's son had to do battle by brawn backed by the sword, or die like a dog! This bred high tempers, turbulent manners and contempt for the weak.

-- Soldiers, diplomatists, brow-beaters, characterized the Bismarck clan down through centuries. Stormy and adventurous Bismarcks fought for the sheer delight of doing battle;--it mattered not, whether against the Turks or against some near-by king whose lands the German robber-knights l.u.s.ted for and wished to annex by appeal to the sword.

-- There is a story of a garrison brawl in which a Bismarck slew his companion in drink, then fled to Russia, then on to Siberia; soldier of fortune, he fights under any flag that promises a gay life and plenty of loot. Three hundred years later--how the wheel turns round!--Otto von Bismarck, as Russian Amba.s.sador to the King of Prussia, engaged in intrigues for the same old l.u.s.t of land, the same old nefarious business, but this time sprayed over by the high-sounding name, diplomacy.

-- Dr. Busch, the Saxon press-agent for Prince Bismarck, repeats the old tale of the winning of Alsace by the French king, through the aid of Otto von Bismarck's great-great-grandfather, a mercenary soldier; adding that while one Bismarck helped take Alsace away, another of that redoubtable family brought it back many years later, with the added joy of the prodigious money-fine of five billions of francs!

7

Boisterous Col. Bismarck, of the Dragoons; "The Wooden Donkey dies today!" French Cavalier Bismarck and his mushy prose-poems.

-- Burly strength and horse-play, rather than diplomacy, were always distinctive traits of that part of the Bismarck family immediately surrounding Otto von Bismarck; and in Otto's case, although the years gradually taught him that there are more ways of stopping a man's mouth than by cutting off his head, on the whole we seek in vain, among ancestral Bismarcks, for any striking characteristics in which the point does not turn either on gluttony or on deep-drinking.

-- They were enormous eaters. Bread and meat were not enough. They must have game, fish, cake, wines, and plenty of each. Hunger put them in a rage. They were iron men, with stomachs of pigs.

-- They were unbrooked master spirits, followed the hounds, fought duels, had noisy tongues, and gloried in personal independence.

When they loved they loved madly; when they hated it was the same.

They drank all night and were out again at dawn.

-- Yet in their way, they were high-minded gentlemen, devoted themselves industriously to their duties; and it may be that the turbulence of their lives borrowed something from the rude clash of opinion that often divided the best friends, during the stormy periods of history in which they fought as soldiers of fortune.

-- Otto von Bismarck's great-grandfather, Augustus, calling his cronies of the barracks around him, was wont to add zest to the carousal by introducing the trumpet call after each toast; to heighten the infernal racket, the boisterous colonel of dragoons ordered a volley fired in the drink-hall.

-- This terrible dragoon, master of the hounds, guzzler, companion and leader in all revels, was generally voted one of the amiable men in army circles. He was a noted shot. In one year of record his score was 154 red deer and 100 stag.

-- At the Ihna bridge was a ducking stool, for army punishments; it took the amusing style of a wooden donkey, and was so called by the dragoons as a rude joke.

After one of his hard drinking bouts, it was often the colonel's amusing habit to order his men to march to the bridge; on arriving the band struck up and the wooden donkey was thrown into the stream. "All offenders of my regiment are forgiven," Bismarck would bawl, "the donkey dies today!"

Then with all manner of opera bouffe the offending donkey would be put overboard--only to be brought out next morning, ready for official business.

-- But our fun-loving colonel's good times were now over. As commander of the gallant Ans.p.a.ch-Bayreuth dragoons, Augustus fought for Frederick the Great and was severely wounded at Czaslau. Austrian hussars surprised the transport wagons carrying the wounded to the rear, and with brutality common to the soldier-business of that rude day killed the defenseless Prussians, among whom was our Colonel von Bismarck.

-- Bismarck's grandfather, Karl Alexander, leaned toward the namby-pamby intellectual rather than to the social and convivial. He is remembered for his affected poetical style. Karl, brave soldier, attracted the eye of no less a judge of valor than the Great Frederick, who appointed this Karl Alexander von Bismarck an attache of the Prussian emba.s.sy at Vienna.

-- Karl, like other Germans of the sentimental period, aped the French poets; but when a German is sentimental, the mush-pots boil over.

Karl's writings show that peculiar over-inflated quality, "sentimentality," so much admired in the rococo period.

-- Karl William Ferd., Otto's father, and Louise Wilhelmina, Otto's mother, born Mencken, lived at Schoenhausen in troublous French times.

Oct. 14th, 1806, the terrible defeat at Jena put Prussia in the hands of the enemy.

Fortresses surrendered without firing a shot, and the panic-stricken king fled to the far eastern side of his domains, near Russia.

All this took place within three months after the marriage of Karl and Louise, who had now set up housekeeping at Schoenhausen.

-- The Bismarcks tried to escape in a coach, but the French unexpectedly appeared and ordered Karl back to the house. The French ransacked every room; Louise fled to the library and locked the ma.s.sive oak door; to this day it bears the marks of French bayonets; the Bismarcks then hid in the forest where they remained all night with panic-stricken neighbors; at dawn Karl and Louise ventured out, to find Schoenhausen a scene of destruction.

-- The one galling fact that Karl could not overlook, in Marshal Soult's raid, was the desecration of the genealogical tree. This huge painting with its s.h.i.+elds of the Bismarck descent was slashed from end to end, with bayonets!

-- Oh, Otto von Bismarck remembered this many, many years later, in making terms with the French after Sedan--do not for a moment forget that! Such is the amazing power of hereditary loves and hates;--and certainly the Bismarcks had no reason to admire the French.