PRINCE BISMARCK AKD HIS POLICY. 



By Arthur Bott. 



[Read before the Albany Institute 16th January, 1877.] 



Otto Edward Leopold von Bismarck was born at 

 Schoenhausen on April 1, 1815. 



There were six children, three of whom died when 

 young. The survivors were, Bernhard ; the third child, 

 Otto, the subject of our sketch ; and the youngest, a girl, 

 Malviua. 



His boyhood was spent at Kniephoff, Pomerania — 

 an estate, which his father had inherited, and occupied in 

 the year 1816. 



Otto was the favorite child of his father, who nearly 

 spoiled him by indulgence, but his education at school 

 was according to the spirit of the times, more severe. In 

 his boyhood he showed marked traits of character; he was 

 truthful and sincere, but very reticent. He had great 

 strength of will and an insatiable thirst for knowledge. 

 He loved country life in all its phases. His mother exer- 

 cised great influence in the formation of his character. 

 She was of an earnest, somewhat cold nature ; a quiet, 

 but highly gifted lady, with a touch of religious fanati- 

 cism. She possessed unbounded ambition and great 

 strength of will, and firmly believed in Prussia's manifest 

 destiny. She regulated his studies, roused his ambition, 

 and imbued him with a sense of his duties to the king, 

 Prussia and the German nation. I^apoleon L had scarcely 

 been conquered, Germany's humiliation was fresh in the 

 nation's mind. The holy alliance was considered the only 

 safeguard against a repetition of this degradation. These 

 impressions received from the mother, were germs, which 

 in late years, guided many of his actions. 



It was during the time of the Schwarzroth-goldene 



