The Life of Bismarck, Private and Political. George Hesekiel
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in Prussia would be absurd, the hand of the assassin. It is the everlasting curse entailed upon large States, that for petty motives there exists an alarming system of bureaucracy, in which the voices of the honest servants are drowned in the din of the general throng for distinction, wealth, ease, and enjoyment. Hence public servants, of whatever degree, fear to speak; hence the public fumes, hence stoppage of trade, discredit by capitalists, ultimate want of employment, lassitude of patriotism, conspiracy, crime—with its load of expense—famine, and the fall of States ensue.
Now, a practical king, conscious of his office, and ablebodied enough to undergo the exertion, can be the greatest of philanthropists, if supported by an honest ministry, fearless enough to repress undue expenditure, either by his sovereign or the lieges. Wary to draw the sword, eager to substitute the ploughshare, should such a monarch be; and such a monarch we find in Prussia, and have found before. Fearless and honorable should be his minister; and such a minister we find, fortunately not without parallels, in Count Bismarck.
Bismarck had not only this abstract duty, as some may like to call it, to perform towards his own sovereign. There was another duty of no less importance and delicacy to fulfill as a German—as a member of the body corporate of the Teutonic nation. Had Austria continued in its peculiar position of pre-eminence, derived from an association of its rulers with the extinct Holy Roman Empire, the real power of self-government would have passed from the German nations to that mixture of Slavs and Czechs, Huns, Magyars, and Poles, making up so large a proportion of Austrian subjects; and could Prussia, emphatically German in all its regions, have permitted a supremacy so at variance with—I will not say common sense—but ethnical affinity? Is it not more in conformity with natural sympathy that the German kindred races of the north should be consolidated in a truly German national sense, than remain a loosely-constructed federation of petty princedoms, under the guidance of a power whose main strength lay in races alien, and even hostile, if we are to trust present events, in their interests, instincts, and sympathies?
There was, of course, underlying all this, the cardinal fact of a difference of religious sympathies. So eminently Roman Catholic, ruling over nations outwardly, and perhaps sincerely, attached to the Papal forms of ecclesiastical government and doctrine, Austria could not hold out a faithful hand of fellowship to Protestant Prussia, with its stern Calvinistic self-assertion: so attached to all that is ancient in reference to birth, family tradition, and historical fame, Austria could not but be jealous of a nation which had robbed it of its warlike glory, and set up a new nobility in opposition to its ancient semi-oriental princely families: so wedded to all that was archaic and statuesque in form and stationary in its character, how was it possible to tolerate a neighbor whose spirit is remarkable for its restless activity and love of innovation; so practical in science and utilitarian in its aims? A contest between two such powers, and in such a cause, and as a consequence of such various processes of development, was inevitable, while the ultimation of the strife could scarcely be doubtful. The imperial nation, so proud, profuse, and old-fashioned, must receive a lesson, intended in the utmost spirit of candor, from the patient, practical, and untiring nation of North Germany, who looked upon its sovereign and institutions with kindly affection, as the outcome of the labors of their immediate fathers, and to the fruits of which those subjects were honestly entitled. Nor, as having resided in both Prussia and Austria, am I disposed to think that Prussian tendencies do not receive hearty approval in the German sections of the Austrian people. Let the events accompanying the siege of Vienna, in 1848, be properly valued, and the fact is patent. The cowardice of Ferdinand is the key to the history of that siege, as well as its justification.
We have not here, however, so much to do with the policy of the Prussian people, and their relations towards Austria, as with a consideration of the effects wrought upon Bismarck’s mind by his position, education, personal character, and the events of his era. We here rather want to get an intelligible picture of Bismarck himself—to learn why Bismarck is the actual Bismarck he is, and not another Bismarck, as it were, altogether.
Let us therefore glance at his early life, and see how his strong, daring, and somewhat headlong youth has gradually moulded him into the astute, unbending, and progressive statesman we now see him to be in the latter days of his remarkable life.
The first thing that strikes us must be his opportunities of birth and of lineage. Education, it can not be doubted, is materially influenced by these two considerations. An indulgent father and an ambitious mother may help a lad along. Next comes the necessary process of estrangement; that emergence into actual life from which so few come forth proudly; and, finally, the attainment of self-consciousness, but without direction and without an aim. This usually results, as with Bismarck, in an appreciable amount of obloquy, from which the strong spirit desires emancipation. In the case now in point, his aspirations of the better sort had the mastery. Application to his distressed fortunes led him to think of others, and while he tested other men he applied the same stern acid to his own soul.
The empty affection of dissolutism assailed him, and he fled from it with the disgust of a noble mind: he longed for a more exquisite grace of beauty and dignity, and attained it. From that time forward he could apply; the serious element in his nature obtained the upper hand, and he perceived that life was not intended as a mere puppet scene. Patriotism, one of the grandest impulses of human nature, led him to a recognition of his duties as a man, and comforted in his domestic relations, he stood for his king. He became the king’s man—to that fealty he vowed himself, and that fealty he has nobly accomplished. He saw at once he was the king’s man, but policy he had none. Policy, of whatever sort it might prove to be, was yet to come; but the historical guide-line of a relation between the highest post of dignity and his own rank, fashioned it into a policy into which perforce the idea of aristocracy necessarily entered. Had Bismarck not been so vehemently attacked at the onset of his political and representative career, it is very probable that the stout resistance he made would not have proved so strenuous. But the attack was one which roused the dormant elements of his nature. Very proud, like most of the Pomeranian and Brandenburg Junkers, he resolved upon showing that his pride was not false, and was not so greatly leavened with personal ambition as some tauntingly averred. But it must be confessed that there is a vast difference between his early speeches and his later policy—in itself a proof that his career was not that of a political adventurer, resolved for notoriety at any price. The crudeness of his earlier speeches has formed an absolute boon to his opponents, who scarcely anticipated that a man who honestly cared for the point at issue, rather than the airing of a more or less inflated eloquence—seasoned with a philosophy of a very unpractical kind—was about to enter into the political arena. Looking at Bismarck in his earliest stages of development as a statesman, the present writer can not say there was much beyond a general adhesion to the Prussian traditions to recommend him. It is for this reason that certain documents have been reprinted in the latter pages of this book, not furnished by the German compiler. In these documents, appealing as they do to his family pride as a liegeman, may be found the key of Bismarck’s subsequent violent declaration on the side of the monarchy. “That a king should voluntarily propose to set aside what, in my contract, inherent in my birth, with that king, contravenes my family pride, makes me sorry for that king, but vehement against his advisers. But being sorry, I must fight for him, or his successors.”
Prussia was, like a nation or two more in Europe, in a “parlous state” in 1848. But these days of March were a natural result of facts pressing on the people: they passed, however. In those events, misunderstood even at the present time—misunderstood as all revolutions must be—Bismarck took no part save that of thinking that a replacement of the army by an ununiformed corps was another insult to Prussia—and her lieges.
His political education had advanced to a point when it would either resolve itself into a total abnegation of political activity, or an aspiration towards some ameliorations of the matter in hand. This signified itself, not by individual actions after a time, but rather by the centralization of a party existing in fortuitous atoms into clubs—adding the printing-press as a powerful aid.
Suddenly the ambassadorial post at Frankfurt was offered him. Light-hearted and willing—to all appearance—he accepted it. The world has yet to be made acquainted with the positive result of this Frankfurt mission. That his instructions were accurate there can be little doubt, and that all his