till 1859, when he was allowed to return to Berlin, and entered
the official service. He afterwards undertook many special mis-
sions, and his knowledge of the revolutionary movement and of
foreign affairs was specially useful to his master. In 1865 he
vainly endeavoured, probably on Bismarck's instructions, to per-
suade Marx, then desperately poor, to join the staff of the official
Staats Anzeiger. He is said to have drafted the Anti-Socialist
Law of 1878. Mr. Spargo in his Karl Marx, His Life and Work,
says that in 1871 Marx received from Bucher information of
" secret affairs of the French and German Governments " which
he conveyed regularly to the leaders of the Paris Commune.
Mr. Spargo thinks Bucher was " betraying Bismarck." More
probably the Chancellor wished the communications to be
made. Bucher died in Switzerland in 1892.



THE WEAPON IS TESTED 231

this had been the necessary prelude to any new federal
union. German union without Prussian aggrandize-
ment he could have had five years before, without the
pains and odium of a needless war. What next ? If
Prussia dare devour no more, at least, for the present, she
could make herself the unquestioned mistress in Germany.
One great obstacle loomed ahead. France, the enemy
by all necessities of history and character, the source of
sedition, the would-be regulator of Europe, at once
maenad and moralist — proud, wanton France must be
humbled.

Before this supreme task could be attempted, a three-
fold labour of conciliation must be undertaken. Austria
must be kept from falling back into the arms of France.
The best way to accomplish this was to regain the friend-
ship of the South German Governments. But that would
be impossible, or useless, till the German people in general,
and the Prussian people in particular, had been placated.
Bismarck therefore promised to base the parliament of
the new Confederation upon a suffrage universal for
adult males, and asked the Landtag for an indemnity
for the military expenditure unconstitutionally in-
curred during the previous four years. Young and
raw as the constitutional movement was, it was shrewd
to offer this salve for the conscience of rigorous politicians.
They, for the most part, were only too glad to accept the
vague promise of a return to legality. Commoner minds
already revolved dizzily about considerations more con-
crete or more sentimental. The enlargement of the king-
dom opened new opportunities to the official class : the
material basis of Hanoverian discontent was a material
basis, also, of Prussian cupidity. More important was the
general exhilaration of the national spirit. We can



232 THE BISMARCKIAN TRANSFORMATION

only understand the revulsion of feeling by constantly
recalling the miserable memories which had oppressed
German life. After a century of weakness and failure the
heroic chieftain, after two centuries of desolation the
organizer of victory, had come. Blood and iron ! The
Junker's bombast had justified itself in the millions of
the war indemnities, the 28,000 square miles of territory
and four millions of population added to the Hohenzollern
realm. In these six thrilling weeks how had the humble
been exalted and the mighty laid low. Who says "Metter-
nich " now ? Ohniitz is avenged. Take heart, ye fearful ;
we shall live to see that the name " Napoleon " has no more
terror. Who would not bear a dose of arbitrary rule
for such results ? Time enough hereafter to think o f
academic constitution-mongering. Had Bismarck lied
and cheated ? The great right eclipsed the little wrong.
Had he deliberately chosen to provoke a Bruderkrieg ?
The surgeon's knife is merciful. Let professors, poets,
and moralists keep their places. Thwarted for centuries,
the butt of all scoffers, the soft-hearted serf, henceforth
German Michael shall proudly face the sun, sure of himself
and his destiny.

Into the cradle of this new-born pride, second thoughts
cast a shade of fear. Hanoverian plots, Polish obstinacy,
the first movements of Clerical and Socialist organization,
uncertainty in north and south, Napoleon's reiterated
demands, all bore warning that he who chooses the path of
violence must live in armour. A man will fight harder to
keep something than first to get it. Mere goodness and
mere learning come easiest to poor despised men. Give
them " a stake in the country," or even a ribband share
of military glory, and you shall see how small a thing is in-
tellect and its moral imperatives. By no mere accident



THE WEAPON IS TESTED 233

was the philosopher of " The Will to Live " a German ;
and by no accident was he led to abuse the " Government
and University philosophers " of his time. For a genera-
tion Schopenhauer's hammer-blows upon the old struc-
ture of abstract thought had resounded. At last there
was a new sort of Government. What more natural
than that it should have a new sort of philosophy to sup-
port it ? Darwinism, the idea of development as the
result of struggle by tooth and claw, was undermining
older and softer systems of thought, Carlyle was blowing
the trumpet of great men, prominent among them
Frederick of Prussia. The Utilitarians had beaten the
Chartists. The late Lord Acton spoke of Sybel and
Treitschke " bringing historical teaching into contact
with real life, creating a public opinion more powerful
than the laws, and entirely remodelling the methods
of thought of the generation then springing into man-
hood." Events, however, are the great teachers. The
old German idealism was discrowned at Sadowa. Hence-
forth, expediency would rule this as much as other States,
and, because the spirit of government mellows only with
experience, would take at first the crudest forms. Ex-
pediency, in its English home, may be set in contrast
with the pursuit of philosophical truth ^ ; but when it
represents a free and mobile balance of social interests,
when it has to run the gauntlet of cultured criticism and
to satisfy the demands and traditions of an old yet virile
community, it is, with all its faults, something incompar-
ably above the regime introduced by Otto von Bismarck.
His daring blows and clever tricks, the poise of his spirit,
his fortune and success, extort a passing admiration ; but,
when we come to ourselves, we know that his Real-
^ As in Lecky's Rationalism in Europe, II, 133.



234 THE BISMARCKIAN TRANSFORMATION

politik could not long survive the period of transition in
which it was born.



IV. The Supreme Stroke

Bismarck, with his steely smile, well knowing that an
outburst of pride so sudden and violent could not last,
and must be used quickly, was busy in his Press Bureau
settling an account more important than that of the Land-
tag. To the correspondent of the Paris Steele he showed
Napoleon's offer of an alliance, in return for the Palatinate
and Western Hesse, which he had induced the Emperor
to put into writing. Spurred by this revelation, recog-
nizing the exclusion of Austria as final, and fearful of
worse than they had just suffered, the South German
States turned to the big brother in Berlin for the only
insurance policy that seemed open to them. Secret
treaties of offence and defence were concluded in August,
1866, by which the armies of Bavaria, Baden, and Wiirt-
temberg were to be placed under Prussian command in
case of war, and all the States mutually guaranteed their
territorial integrity. Hesse-Darmstadt joined them
a few months later. Thus the second great step in the
organization of the new German Union was achieved.
It would have been futile, after this, to form the Southern
Confederation foreseen by Austria and France. To a
Zollverein was added a Kriegverein.

The consolidation of the aggrandized Prussian King-
dom and the planning of the North German Confederation
proceeded coincidently. The only serious obstacle to



THE SUPREME STROKE 235

the first object lay in the resistance of Hanoverians,
Schleswigers, and Poles, represented to this day by tiny
parties in the Reichstag. Frankfurt, whose burgo-
master had hanged himself in despair when the Prussian
general threatened that he would burn down the city if
he did not get an indemnity of twenty-five million thalers,
vainly protested. In the Prussian Chamber it was remarked
that no professor of law now recognized the mere right of
conquest ; but Bismarck refused to carry out the clause
of the Treaty of Prague promising to use the French
expedient of the plebiscite. Reluctantly King William
brought himself to agree to the suppression of the small
dynasties. The deposed sovereigns were heavily com-
pensated ; the Duke of Nassau, for instance, received
nearly three millions sterling. The blind King George
of Hanover obstinately refused to recognize the new order.
The sixteen million thalers due to him were, therefore,
sequestrated ; and, when he organized a Guelf legion in
France, the interest on the sum was seized by Bismarck,
and used for secret services, chiefly for the corruption of
the press. This sum of about £110,000 became known
as the Reptile Fund by a double entendre. Bismarck had
said that he would pursue the Hanoverian reptiles to
their holes ; to other folk, the reptiles were Bismarck's
press agents.

During the winter, the union of the twenty-two North
German States was established. Bismarck was under
no temptation to withdraw the promise of universal
suffrage which he had made during the war, or to deprive
the lesser States of their autonomy. Universal suffrage
is the necessary sugar coating of the conscription pill. It
is, moreover, perfectly safe to allow a free popular election
of powerless deputies. To attempt the absorption of the



236 THE BISMARCKIAN TRANSFORMATION

lesser States would not only have been to outrage Europe
and make twenty Schleswigs or Hanovers ; it would have
been to make impossible the continuance of the antiquated
electoral system on which Prussian absolutism was and still
is based. Particularist princes and wide constituencies
would keep a check upon one another. A Parliament
may be recruited by the most democratic appeal, and
yet be powerless ; a State may preserve autonomy in its
domestic affairs, and yet lose all the substance of indepen-
dent sovereignty. The constitution of the North German
Bund, substantially continued in the Empire of to-day,
was a highly ingenious device for affecting constitutional
and parliamentary virtues, while keeping to the Prussian
monarchy the essentials of absolute power. It had (and
has) three organs— an Executive, with the King of Prussia
as perpetual president ; a Bundesrath, or council of
representatives of the federated Governments ; and a
Reichstag, or assembly directly representing the whole
people. The president, through a Chancellor personally
chosen (Bismarck, of course), took full military and
diplomatic rights, including those of making war (when
it could be described as " defensive ") and peace, com-
manding all troops, regulating their organization, ap-
pointing commanders, naming ambassadors, and con-
cluding treaties. At the same time, as head of the internal
affairs of the Confederation, he appointed the Executive,
with the right, if necessary, to march troops into any
recalcitrant State. The Federal Council, with its standing
committees, afforded a purely bureaucratic channel for
recommendations of the lesser States to the supreme
authority. Prussia held in it seventeen of the forty-
three seats. Saxony four, Mecklenburg-Schwerin and
Brunswick each two, eighteen other States each one.



THE SUPREME STROKE 237

For any change in the constitution a two-thirds majority
was necessary. Finally, a Reichstag of 297 deputies
(one per 100,000 of populp-tion) had the right of discussing
and voting on laws and finance. But it must be con-
voked by the King-President, who could dissolve it ;
its votes only became effective with his sanction ; the
Chancellor, his representative, might appear before it
and give explanations if he wished, but need not do so ;
it had no sort of control over the Chancellor or over the
Secretaries of State, who were only his assistants. There
was no real Ministry, only a body of royal servants.
The annual votes, dear to the House of Commons, were
denied from the first, military expenditure being fixed
for five years (to the end of 1871).

The whole Confederation adopted the Prussian system
of universal military service, with three years in the active
army and four in the reserve. The chief internal matters
which became a federal concern were commerce and com-
munications, including the general regulation of railways,
customs, posts and telegraphs, money, weights and
measures, banking, sanitary measures, commercial, mari-
time, and penal law. The federal budget depended on
two sources of revenue — customs, indirect taxation, and
postal receipts, and proportionate contributions, caUed
" matricular," by each State to make up the balance.
The scheme contained no statement of popular rights or
liberties. It was criticized on this and other grounds,
but was adopted by the Governments on February 2, by
a constituent assembly (by 230 to 53 votes) on April 16,
and came into force on July i, 1867.

With the opening of a new chapter of German life,
a reahgnment of parties became necessary. In June, 1866,
the Progressives, through their central electoral committee,



238 THE BISMARCKIAN TRANSFORMATION

had protested once more against the infringement of the
budget rights of the Prussian Diet, and had connected
the origin of the war with this conflict. While declaring
that the war must be prosecuted, they had warned the
constituencies against its being used in " the interests of
dynastic policy, or for the prevention of a free Germanic
union on pretext of loyalty to foreign Princes." In
December, they had demanded the full unification of
Germany, and the creation of a parliament with " de-
cisive " legislative rights. All these issues were now
closed, and in a sense very unfavourable to the Pro-
gressives. By a majority of three to one, the Prussian
Government had got its bill of indemnity ; the war had
been triumphantly concluded ; throughout the country
there was a stampede to the Right. Out of these cir-
cumstances the National Liberal Party was born.

In the first place, fifteen members of the Progressive
party united with nine" Old Liberals," and, in a mani-
festo, declared that, the Prussian conflict having been
superannuated by the " deeds of the nation in arms,"
what was wanted was a strong but liberal government.
To these were gradually added Liberal deputies from the
annexed provinces (Bennigsen had been leader of the
Liberal Opposition in Hanover), and some Liberal-Con-
servatives detached from the old Conservative party. The
programme of the combination, upon which Bismarck was
long to rely, issued on June 12, 1867, contained the
following points : the Prussian Government, by asking
for an indemnity, had recognized the constitutional rights
of Parliament ; the German Empire and German freedom
must be realized simultaneously by the same means ;
the Budget rights of Parliament must be completed,
and individual responsibility of Ministers and officials



THE SUPREME STROKE



239



for illegal actions must be introduced ; finally, measures
must be taken to abolish restrictions on trade and in-
dustry, to abrogate the " estate " basis of representation
in State, province, and commune, and the jurisdiction
of the landlords, to abolish the stamp duty on publications
and the system of publishers' security, and to re-organize
the judiciary in a liberal direction. Over against this
party of middle-class Liberal Imperialists, the remainder
of the Progressive Party, the three Socialist deputies
who appeared in the Reichstag for the first time in 1867
(of them we shall speak later) , and the nationalist groups,
stood the Conservatives, representing for the most part
the landlord class, the nobility, bureaucracy, and clergy.
In the south, opinion continued to be much more robustly
democratic : the South German People's Party, formed
in 1868, advocated disestablishment, secular and free
education, labour protection laws, progressive income-
tax, and other measures in advance of the time. The
North German Reichstag effected, however, during the
three years of its life, some notable reforms, including
a uniform cheap postage system, freedom of marriage
and migration, and a code of criminal law. It also decided
upon the construction, by 1878, of a fleet of sixteen
ironclads and fifty-five lesser ships.

Save for their military treaties with Prussia — and
such arrangements are valueless when the parties cease
to value them — the three southern States, Bavaria, Wurt-
temberg, and Baden, were left to take care of themselves,
without even the shadow of an ancient Bund to
cover their nakedness of resource. Baden was merely
a liberal dependency of Prussia. Wiirttemberg jealously
rejected Bavaria's overtures for the formation of a South
German Union which, beside, broke upon the fact that



240 THE BISMARCKIAN TRANSFORMATION

the rulers would not have a Union with a Parliament,
and the peoples would not have it without. But for the
personal feebleness of the Bavarian monarchy, the next
chapter of German history might have been written very
differently. Bismarck bided his time, with an occasional
tart word of warning, " As regards war with France,"
he told Prince Hohenlohe in April, 1868, " it was as im-
possible to say anything definite about it as about the
kind of weather to be expected in July. The French
plan of campaign was to invade South Germany with
50,000 men. Though Prussia would instantly have
200,000 men at Coblentz, and within a brief delay 500,000
wherewith to march on Paris, still it required time. If
we were prepared, so much the better." A month later,
" he repeated that the French could only place 320,000
men in the field, whereas North Germany could have
500,000 at its immediate disposal." And in June, 1869,
he remarked that a breach of the military treaty would
lead to Bavaria being partitioned between the Northern
Confederation and Austria.

Thwarted in the central Rhineland, and desperately
anxious, after the Mexican disaster, for some bone to
throw to the wolves of the Liberal and Republican oppo-
sition, the French Emperor turned northward in search of
the lost " compensation." The Grand Duchy of Luxem-
burg had been left by the collapse of the old Germanic
Bund a helpless fragment between Prussia and France.
Its sovereign, the King of Holland, was quite ready for a
transaction. Bismarck at first seemed to agree, then,
when the treaty of cession was ready for signature, set
his press to work up national feeling, put up Bennigsen
to raise the question in the Reichstag, and, at last, on
the pretence of fearing public opinion, withdrew Prussia's



THE SUPREME STROKE 241

consent. Again Napoleon had been snubbed ; nor can
the rebuff be said to have been softened by theneutra-
Hzation of Luxemburg, under the treaty of London in
May, 1867, involving the retirement of the German garrison.
The establishment of the Customs Parliament, the military
treaties with the south, the refusal of a plebiscite in Schles-
wig, the growing talk of the need of a " passage of the
Main " — that is, a union of the Northern Confederation
with the South German States — the renewed French
tentatives toward an alliance with Austria and Italy,
an attempt of France in January, 1869, to obtain control
of the chief Belgian railways, and its failure, all expressed
and stimulated the rising jealousy between the oldest
and the youngest of Continental Powers. In April, 1868,
Moltke began to prepare the plans of a Prussian campaign
against France. On neither side, however, was the
prospect very clear. The French elections in 1869 pro-
duced a strong minority unsympathetic to the Govern-
ment ; and the Emperor, already a victim of attacks of
hematuria, felt his hold upon affairs slackening. Austria
was held back by fear of her German population and the
Hungarians. Italy, irritated at the re-occupation of
Rome by French troops, hesitated ; General Failly's
boast after the defeat of the Garibaldians, " the chassepots
have done wonders," proved fatal. On the other hand,
the demand for German unity seemed to have weakened ;
King William told Loftus, the British Ambassador,
that it would probably remain for his grandson to realize.
The military budget was fixed to the summer of 1871.
Then the veto of the Reichstag would revive. But
feeling against this excessive burden still ran strong.
" Bismarck sees before him the prospect of a conflict
of f;rst-rate magnitude hopelessly embarrassing to his

R



242 THE BISMARCKIAN TRANSFORMATION

foreign policy," Morier wrote in April, 1870. " The anti-
Prussian stream is running higher in South Germany
than I have ever known it since 1866, and it is exactly on
this very question of militarism that it runs so high."
The ship of State, it was said, had stranded in the Main,
and could get neither backward nor forward. Bismarck's
relations with the King were cold and sometimes strained.
But the southern States had adopted the Prussian needle-
gun, Prussian instructors, and universal conscription ;
and, while Marshal Niel, ready as he was to rush into war,
had failed to impose the rigours of Prussian militarism
on the French nation, the Chancellor knew that Moltke
was ready and the army equal to its task. This was the
decisive fact in the situation.

He had long regarded war with France as necessary.^
He knew that no other war could unite the German
peoples ; and the flirtations of Paris, Vienna, and Florence
hastened without alarming him. Twice by means of the
sword he had accomplished his purpose, destroyed his
critics, and doubled his personal power. There is no reason
to suppose that he positively preferred this way if the same
end could be reached by other means. But there is good
reason to conclude that he preferred and invited the
arbitrament of force rather than postpone the issue to
what might be a less favourable opportunity. It was
only long afterwards, in the day of his own eclipse and
suffering, that he would feel a momentary compunction
for such a choice. Now, in the spring of 1870, in his fifty-
fifth year and at the height of his powers, it is not humane

1 Sybel : Die Begriindung des Deutschen Reiches, VII, 36. Bis-
marck: Gedanken und Erinnerungen, II, 51, no. Sybel did not
live to discover how incompatible was his picture of Bismarck
as a peace-loving statesman with the facts. Treitschke's Hohen-
zollernism still less bears the light of modern research.



THE SUPREME STROKE 243

scruples that we shall expect to find operating in this
relentless mind. For what had he striven with tears to
save Austria from humiliation after Sadowa, except to
prepare for a reckoning with France ? The legerdemain
of diplomacy, from which Napoleon III had suffered
successively in Poland, in Schleswig, in Bohemia, in
Luxemburg, in Belgium, might give more pinchbeck
results. To carry the antique chariot of the King of
Prussia triumphantly across the Main would require a
blow in comparison with which these were mere pinpricks.
During his visit to Paris in 1867 with King William {Ego
et Rex Metis/), two things had rejoiced the Chancellor — •
the ridicule of the little German Courts in " The Grand
Duchess of Gerolstein " at the Opera, and the sight of
Krupp's new steel cannon in the Exposition designed to
display French supremacy in the arts of peace. It was
no fruit of friendship or pure admiration that the Man
of Iron gathered on the boulevards of Baron Haussmann.
The origins of the Hohenzollern candidature for the
Spanish throne, and the steps by which it became the
ostensible casus belli, are still not completely revealed. ^
It seems certain, however, that if Bismarck did not first
procure it, it was, after an early stage, mainly his personal
work. It was in September, 1868, that the Bourbon

^ In addition to the various memoirs of Bismarck, diaries
and other remains of his assistants, Lothar Biicher, Abeken, Bern-
hardi, and Busch, Aus dem Lehen Konig Karls von Rumdnien, M.
Emile OlHvier's L'Empire Liberal, memoirs of General Lebrun,
Count Benedetti, Lord Loftus, and Die Thronkandidatur Hohen-
zollern und Graf Bismarck, by W. Schulze, must be referred to.
Les Origines Diplomatique s de la Guerre de i8yo is in course of
pubUcation by the French Foreign Oflice ; La Candidature
Hohenzollern by Pierre Lehautcourt, and La Guerre de i8yo :