

BISMARCK-SCHONHAUSEN, OTTO EDUARD LEOPOLD, VON. 



81 



confusion of the Confederation, which must eventu- 

 ally " be ended, not amended." Hence he gave 

 years to the task of detaching the friends of Austria 

 one by one and set his face resolutely against every 

 attempt to involve the Germanic Confederation in 

 Austria's external complications. When Austria 

 proposed to make the decisions of the majority of 

 the Diet binding upon the minority with a view of 

 giving the Germanic Confederation greater weight 

 in the councils of Europe, Bismarck upheld the 

 rights of the separate states with the same energy 

 and success as in later times he crushed those 

 rights. 



Prussia's obligations to the Confederation were a 

 source of weakness which one day would have to be 

 cured, he foretold, ferro et igne. The dreamy poli- 

 tics of word and pen disgusted many men of all 

 political schools, and this explains the success of the 

 man of will and deed when he arose. The Bis- 

 inarckian method violated every principle of Ger- 

 man ideal politics. Making " might before right " 

 his motto, the man of blood and iron set all scruples, 

 consistency, political obligations, at defiance, nor 

 refrained from deception, treachery, or Machiavel- 

 ian intrigue to advance the interests of Prussia and 

 reach the practical aims he had in view. Traveling 

 back and forth between Frankfort and Berlin, he 

 impressed his views upon the King and Manteuffel 

 with such force that he dictated the whole foreign 



B)licy of the Government, and when the Prime 

 inister demurred, regardless of that official disci- 

 pline which he mercilessly enforced when he became 

 chief, he went behind the latter's back to the King. 

 He made the rounds of the German courts and 

 gradually gained a like ascendency over princes 

 and their ministers, gaining one after another over 

 to the policy he had prescribed for Prussia. Russia's 

 friendship he desired Prussia to preserve and culti- 

 vate as her chief external buttress, as an alliance 

 that would cost the least, for the eyes of Russia 

 were turned toward the East. He even dallied with 

 Napoleon III, the man of December, whom Berlin 

 Conservatives regarded as the child of the Revolu- 

 tion. In the Crimean War he drove a wedge between 

 Austria and Germany by holding the Confederation 

 entirely aloof. When Wilhelm, the future Emperor, 

 assumed the reins of government in 1858 as Prince 

 Regent and installed a more Liberal Cabinet under 

 Baron von Schleinitz, the latter, who had his own 

 foreign policy, banished Bismarck in 1859 to the 

 St. Petersburg embassy. The new era. however, 

 could not submerge him, nor would he let his aims 

 be forgotten, for he wrote a long memorandum to 

 tlir Prince Regent, suggesting that Austria be led 

 on to a violation of the articles of confederation so 

 as to prejudice her position before the German 

 states. In the Italian war the cleft between Aus- 

 tria and Germany was opened wider. 



In 1862 Bismarck was transferred to the lega- 

 tion at Paris, but only remained long enough to 

 take the measure of Napoleon III and insidiously 

 encourage his dangerous ambition. Gen. von Roon 

 was then at work forging the instrument of Prus- 

 sia's greatness. He had completed his vast scheme 

 of army reorganization, but the people would not 

 pay the blood tax. Expecting Parliament to re- 

 fuse supplies. Wilhelm, who had become King, and 

 in opening the Diet had laid down the doctrine 

 that the Prussian monarchy was founded on divine 

 right, and that constitutions were acts of royal 

 grace, in the first conflict with Parliament over the 

 military budget was ready to abdicate. He had 

 thought of Bismarck as the man of the hour, but 

 was afraid of the wrath of the people. The Minis- 

 ter of War, who was in constant communication, 

 had telegraphed to him to come, and when the 



Bst.mng nian appeared the vacillating monarch 

 VOL. xxxvin. 6 A 



committed his fortunes into his keeping. On Sept. 

 28, 1862, Bismarck was appointed Prime Minister 

 and Minister of Foreign Affairs. 



When the former champion of absolutism con- 

 fronted the Chamber as Prussian Premier he pro- 

 voked a storm that shook the edifice of state. The 

 Moderate Liberals flocked over to the Progressives. 

 The Government had few faithful friends even 

 among the Conservatives, many of whom still re- 

 lied on the guidance of Austria to rescue Germany 

 from the democratic revolution. Bismarck no 

 longer lived in terror of parliaments and the de- 

 mocracy. Long before he had proposed to win 

 over the middle classes by concessions. He was 

 now a constitutionalist, so far as he was anything. 

 He had long freed himself from dogma, was an op- 

 portunist, to whom political doctrines, parties, pas- 

 sions were the armory from which to select his 

 weapons. To make Prussia strong for the coming 

 conflicts had been the aim of his diplomacy, and it 

 was the object for which he was made minister. 

 He did not begin his ministry of combat with rash 

 defiance, although he had promised the King to 

 govern, if necessary, without Parliament and with- 

 out a budget, and he had no hope of winning over 

 a majority. Still he took great pains to explain 

 the situation and to disclaim all reactionary mo- 

 tives. The nmbitious object of the armaments he 

 revealed to Parliament and the world with that 

 audacious frankness for which he became famous. 

 If the Diet would not vote the money he said he 

 would take it where he could get it. For four 

 years the budgetless Government braved the storm 

 of national indignation and weathered crisis after 

 crisis while bringing the army up to a strength and 

 degree of efficiency of modern training and equip- 

 ment, excelling any army in the world. For the 

 Liberals the principle of representative govern- 

 ment was at stake. Bismarck, while overriding the 

 Constitution, made light of the constitutional 

 question. It was the question of Prussia's growth 

 and destiny ; and not by speeches and majorities, 

 but by blood and iron, would this have to be settled. 



In 1864 Bismarck made the first move in his bold, 

 aggressive game by precipitatingthe dormant Schles- 

 wig-Holstein question upon the startled world. 

 This disarmed the Prussian opposition when it was 

 growing strong and angry enough to hurl him from 

 power, perhaps to doom him to death on the scaf- 

 fold, which was sometimes as honorable, he said, as 

 on the battlefield. The Danish duchies were a bait 

 to draw Austria into conflict with the Diet and 

 into antagonism toward German interests. To es- 

 cape the snare the Austrian Government most un- 

 willingly joined in the military occupation, becom- 

 ing more deeply entangled and placing herself more 

 hopelessly in the wrong thereby. The war was so 

 suddenly begun and so quickly ended that France 

 and England were dumfounded. Napoleon had 

 been lulled by overtures of a Prussian alliance, and 

 Palmerston was just beginning to bluster when the 

 campaign was over and the deed accomplished. 



With Austria no compromise was possible after 

 the refusal of King Wilhelm, which Bismarck 

 wrung from him by the sweat of his brow, to join 

 in the Congress of Princes convoked by Austria at 

 Frankfort in the autumn of 1863 for the purpose 

 of considering a comprehensive scheme for reor- 

 ganizing the Confederation. The Elbe duchies 

 were kept as a convenient apple of discord which 

 would give a casus belli at any desired moment 

 while Bismarck during the next two years laid his 

 plans for the final struggle not over the fate of the 

 duchies, about which the Austrians cared nothing, 

 but over the German hegemony and the very exist- 

 ence of Austria as a German state. Many times 

 the rupture was staved off because Bismarck had 



