Blood and Iron Part 23

The secret object was to do nothing that would not favor Austria; with the idea that, in the end, the devious course of politics would bring Austria final control of the German lands, everywhere.

-- It was in this absurd Parliament that Bismarck was to perfect himself in political intrigue. Frankfort made no organic laws; these were mysteriously settled at Vienna; the meetings of the Diet were held in secret; at best, the voting was along lines that gave to Austria and not to Prussia the deciding voice.

-- It did not take Bismarck long to find that at Frankfort the King of Prussia was but a cipher. Furthermore, what raised Bismarck's ire was the impotence of the Parliament. Frankfort had been unable to put down the blood-letting of '48, and Bismarck detested weakness of any kind, mental, physical or spiritual.

He was, and always remained, a profound extremist; but his position was tempered by ma.s.sive common sense.

-- The world dearly loves a flunkey--and flunkeyism was universal at Frankfort.

The many members fluttered about in gay military dress, wore stars of sham authority, gold crosses, medals dangling from bright ribbons.

Names prefixed by count, duke, margrave--crests on the coach door and Latin mottoes--hyphenated family names, indicated all manner of political marriages de convenience. Bestarred gentlemen, one and all, if you please!

-- Bismarck wrote home soon enough, for he was choking with anger, not on account of the aristocratic airs of Frankfort (for Bismarck dearly loved a t.i.tle), but choking with anger because his beloved King of Prussia was a n.o.body in this crazy Parliament. "I find them a drowsy, insipid set of creatures, only endurable when I appear among them as so much pepper," are his sarcastic words.

-- Had Bismarck not been a diplomat, he might have made his mark as a radical writer. His letters very often show almost anarchistic dissent. At vulgar characterization, no man could outsnarl Bismarck.

Also this Pomeranian giant's correspondence at times fairly stinks with frightful smells. When in these black moods, he released nasty fumes around the heads of rivals.

We are surprised, likewise, to find growing in the mire of his thoughts, here and there, violets worthy of the poet Freiligrath. The man's power to be poetical or insulting, as he willed, is indeed as strange as it is rare.

-- Bismarck's pen pictures of fellow amba.s.sadors--how they flirted, danced, drank to excess, their maudlin ideas of government, although regarding themselves as veritable political seers--show the powerful satirical and a.n.a.lytical side of Bismarck's brain.

And although Bismarck mocked with sardonic immensity his colleagues, yet with an under-play worthy of the Devil, our Otto proceeded to make these owlish and absurd gentlemen puppets in the hands of Prussia.

-- Alas, time does not permit us to set forth the charming letters Bismarck writes home. There is that moonlight swim in the Danube; the interview with Metternich, the old war-horse of kings; the gypsy ball and the weird fiddling gypsies; his visits to robber-infested parts of Hungary, making the trip in part in a peasant's cart, "loaded pistols in the straw at our feet, and near by a company of lanciers carrying c.o.c.ked carbines, against the imminent visits of robber bands."

He describes how he visited Ostend, going sea-bathing at that famous resort; rambling on through Holland, smoking a long clay pipe; then on to Sweden for the shooting; next to Russia for wild boars.

-- His letters often have a lyrical quality, telling of waterfalls of the Pyrenees, the fascinating fairyland of Mendelssohn, dark-eyed Spanish beauties, open-air concerts, London garroters, old musty houses with peculiar smells, or what you will. Bismarck dwells often on eating and drinking; and in one letter from Paris speaks of a dinner at which he drank St. Julien, Lafitte Branne, Mouton, Pichon, Larose, Latour, Margaux, and Arneillac!

-- These, and hundreds of other letters comprise charming interludes between black moods of political intrigue, wherein he used his vitriolic pen to lampoon his beribboned, bejeweled farce-comedy fellow-amba.s.sadors.

-- "Germany is tied together with red tape," writes Bismarck at this stage of his political apprentices.h.i.+p, at Frankfort; and he hit the nail on the head.

-- Promise yourself a delightful month reading Bismarck's four octavo volumes telling of his change of heart toward Austria, as shown little by little in Frankfort dispatches, doc.u.ments and proceedings, interspersed with satirical stories in Bismarck's extremely individualistic style. Throughout, you receive glimpses of the man's great mind. No less an authority than the Herr Prof. von Sybel tells us of these Bismarck writings, bearing on the formation of the German Empire: "They possess a cla.s.sic worth, unsurpa.s.sed by the best German prose writers of any age."

36

Applying Socratic methods to game of politics; Bismarck's bold and masterful preparations for German unity.

-- Now then, during these years 1851-'61, Bismarck was doing two things: Perfecting himself in the dastardly art of political intrigue; likewise, he was going about like a modern Socrates, talking with men of high or low degree everywhere; studying what might be called the human nature side of the German problem of unity and nationality; studying it, not in an aimless way, but to mould men to his own gigantic political ends, when the right time arrived.

-- Thus, with the stiff wind of adverse political affairs straight in his teeth, remember that Bismarck's great strength was always his knowledge of men.

During the years of which we now write he made it his business to visit the various petty German courts, to gaze on princelings who would be kings; busied himself with court gossip till he found out the inner political jealousies.

Thus fortified, Bismarck knew the one man or woman to touch in the various parts of Germany, to help along Prussian ambition--when the supreme moment to strike had come at last.

-- This supreme moment he awaited with diabolical patience through the slow-going years.

No human being could hasten or r.e.t.a.r.d Bismarck's ultimate victory; for he remained the one truly masterful man in Europe.

He sat at gambling tables, he wheedled secrets from the prost.i.tutes of princes; he stood by and egged on human dog-fights; he took part in church-rows about doctrines; he had inside glimpses of the venality of Austrian kept-press-writers, "the sc.u.m of the earth," he calls them, "who sell opinions as the petty merchant sells b.u.t.ter and eggs."

Bismarck seemed to be the only man in Europe who really was able to grasp the solution of the German problem.

-- Also, the granite soil of his heart is shown again and again. What a hater he was!

For example, refusing to go to Ma.s.s for the repose of Schwarzenberg's soul, Bismarck gave the reason: "He is the man who said: 'I will abuse Prussia and then abolish her.'"

-- You see, our Otto is one of those uncomfortable Germans who in his own amazing personality expresses the National ideal of earnestness; Otto is frightfully in earnest in his cups, or over his half dozen eggs for breakfast--as you please. He frightens timid souls.

-- His temper few men could curb, much less sit calmly by and receive without retiring in bad order. Incident after incident at Frankfort might be cited, but what is the use?

-- With fiendish earnestness Bismarck plotted to break the bones of two democratic editors whose writings threw the Prussian mastiff into periodical black rages. Bismarck justified his cruelty by insisting that "bounds must be set for these infamous press scribblings." He means that attacks on the Divine-right of kings must at all hazards be choked off. He always hated journalists, called the press "a poisoned well," and as for himself he is on record to this effect: "I always approached the ink-bottle with great caution."

-- But mark this well: Our Otto, in his turn, craftily used the press to present the smooth side of his own political intriguing; indeed he had his very valuable Prussian press bureau; and we have authority for the statement that the Bismarckian idea of journalism was to have "hireling scribes well in hand, men who stabbed like masked a.s.sa.s.sins and mined like mobs."

-- During the decade we call Bismarck's apprentices.h.i.+p, 1851-'61, he was thus engaged: 1851, envoy at Frankfort Diet; 1852, Prussian amba.s.sador at Vienna, during the illness of Count Arnim; St.

Petersburg, 1859; Paris, 1862.

Thus, he had an opportunity to get acquainted with all the leading diplomatists on the European chessboard, to study them in their own haunts, and to perfect himself in playing with pitch without blackening his hands.

-- Bismarck told Francis Joseph, "I am firm to put an end to the attacks on Prussia in the Austrian press!"

This boldness won the Emperor, and in confidence he remarked to a friend: "Ah, that I had a man of Bismarck's audacity."

-- Also, he told Joseph, "Prussia will never yield in the matter of the commercial union, with Austria."

The Emperor remarked on Bismarck's youth--37 years--and was much impressed. "Bismarck had the wisdom of a man of 70!" was Joseph's comment.

-- You begin to get a clearer idea of what this thing called patriotism means? Nay, do not scoff at our Otto; he is only carrying on the old, old game called reaching out after place and power; is doing exactly what you would do yourself, if you had the will to rise to the mountain-tops where live the Bismarcks and the Caesars.

Mask after mask Bismarck used to cover his real intent, from 1847 to 1870, the long years he was scheming to establish a German Empire; and he did his work well; more than that cannot be said of any man.

Therefore, his fame is secure in the Valhalla of Mankind.

-- Here is an amusing bit, showing the craft and cunning of our master: When Napoleon the Little, through his coup d'etat made himself Emperor of France, December 2, 1851, and while Frankfort's Parliament was trying to decide "what" to say about it, officially, a French journal in Frankfort printed an enthusiastic endors.e.m.e.nt of the new Emperor.