-- Finally, Bismarck's great chance came. William asked Bismarck to force the army bill.

Now indeed will the giant rage, snapping his teeth in the face of the hurricane,--yes, four long years he is to rule without color of law.

43

On comes the storm--Not by speechmaking but by blood and iron are the great questions to be decided, says Bismarck!

-- At least, we admit that William I was a thoroughbred Hohenzollern in innate admiration of the iron fist!

Now this was the situation: The secret war-chest against Austria had to be filled in one way or another; but the difficulty was found in the fact that the common people, acting under a mysterious instinct not to be explained but very real withal, had already begun to show unrest about an approaching War of the Brothers, as the sentimentalists called the irrepressible conflict between Austria and Prussia. The upshot was that Bismarck's political secrets while not definitely understood in detail, were quite generally divined by close students of the German problem. The Liberals were intent on their own interests, in Prussia, and believed that their political solution depended on hampering the King, regardless of his cause. Hence the Liberal deputies of the Chamber s.p.u.n.kily stood out against William's heavy demands for cannon and gunpowder.

-- Bismarck, as King's Minister, had to face the political storm. He did not dare to say that he wanted the money for war; he wanted the money--was not that enough?

Thereupon, Bismarck proceeded to domineer over the delegates.

The Chamber was willing to do something, but how about the rumor that these huge appropriations are to be hereafter a permanent item in the budget? Bismarck would not make the delegates' minds easy; he wanted money, much money, 12,000,000 thalers in fact, for the army--and the least the delegates could do was to vote the funds. If they did not give the cash gracefully, why he would coerce the deputies--that was all!

-- "It is not by speechifying and majorities," he thundered, "that the great questions of the time will be decided--that was the great mistake in '48 and in '49,--BUT BY BLOOD AND IRON."

-- Members of the Chamber shrank in horror.

There were extremely powerful and learned men there, to combat Bismarck's point of view, and our political conspirator on his emperor-hunt had to listen to some of the most merciless rebukes he was ever to hear, during his long and highly exciting career. But he took them all, without a whimper.

-- "We have too many Catalines existing among us that have an interest in social uprisings," Bismarck thundered. "Germany considers not the Liberalists of Prussia, but her own power. Bavaria, Wuertemberg and Baden may flirt with liberalism, but no German would think on that account of asking them to a.s.sume the role of Prussia. Prussia must brace herself, for the fitter moment. Prussia's borders are not favorable to the development of a healthy state."

-- The giant Pomeranian King's Man with his turbulent support of his monarch, now advanced reasons to show his side, and concluded by mocking his hearers to do their worst.

-- "What matter if they hang me, provided the rope binds this new Germany more firmly to the throne?"

-- A few days after this sensational defiance of Democratic leaders, Bismarck announced his decision: "We shall carry on the finances of the state without the conditions provided for in the Const.i.tution."

-- Bismarck was not surprised at the storms of protest. "Some progressive journals hope to see me picking oak.u.m for the benefit of the state." The comic newspapers pictured Bismarck as a ballet dancer, pirouetting over eggs marked Right, Law, Order, Reform, Const.i.tution.

-- The King became alarmed.

-- "I see how this will end," said the King. "Over there, near the opera house, in front of my windows, they will cut off your head, and mine a little afterwards."

-- "And after that, sire?" asked Bismarck s.p.u.n.kily.

-- "After that, why we shall be dead!"

-- "Oh, well, all must die," cut in Bismarck indifferently, "and the question is can a man die more honorably than for his country? I am fighting for your cause, and you are sealing with your own blood your rights as King, by the grace of G.o.d.

-- "Your Majesty is bound to fight! You cannot capitulate! You must, even at the risk of bodily danger, go forth to meet any attempt at coercion!"

-- As Bismarck spoke, the King grew more and more animated. "He began to a.s.sume the part of one fighting for kingdom and fatherland," wrote Bismarck, in explaining the situation.

-- The giant's very soul glowed with fiery indignation. It was not in his nature to hesitate, as to means. He wanted these 12,000,000 thalers for the army--and was not that enough? True, he could not say in the open that he wished to expel Austria--but must an elephant step on your foot?

-- He had no scruples, moral or material; such are for lesser men.

Hamlet-questioning princes, if you please, may soliloquize on life and its inner meaning; but not your Otto von Bismarck, with his clear view of the little lives of men and with his correct conviction that if the intervening thirty-nine German states are to be made a unit in a German Empire, then under Heaven or under h.e.l.l, the thirty-nine states must be seized, even in a hurricane of bullets if necessary.

Could anything be simpler? Had not the "German problem," as it was called, been talked to death generation after generation, and had not lawyers, poets, preachers, philosophers and petty princes unnumbered come and gone with their impossible enterprises looking to National glory and political legitimacy?

-- Bismarck was, as usual, everlastingly correct in his political instincts; and furthermore he had the iron will to power to support him in this great Prussian conflict; yes, and the wizardry in manipulating human nature that, in the end, would cause even obstinate, opposed political leaders to do our giant's bidding.

-- What he demanded was absolute, blind, unquestioning obedience from this a.s.sembly; then, the Prussian army must fight like fiends; and lastly, he would take personal responsibility for the issue. Mahommet himself never urged war on Christian dogs with more zeal than did this fiery Bismarck, battling with his own German kind. To shame them, to beat them over their backs with hot irons if necessary--anything would he do to force Prussia to fight Austria, and arouse thus with a sense of blood-brotherhood the thirty-nine states, for Germany's great glory. This was his religion--and do you now get the man behind it?

-- Of course, it was all cleverly masked under the plea of Prussian army reforms, pure and simple, and in general the fight between Bismarck and the Chamber seemed to turn on the right of a Minister to force appropriations for the support of the government, regardless of parliamentary unwillingness. Bismarck held to his general principle that the Deputies had no authority to refuse the King funds to enlarge the army. The deputies were pledged to support the government, not to starve or ignore it, was Bismarck's contention.

-- The Liberals raged and stormed, called him "demented Bismarck,"

"Napoleon worshiper," "hollow braggart," "a country gentleman of moderate political training, inconsistent, nonchalant, insolent to a degree;--pray when did Bismarck ever express a political thought?"

King William's choice was exceedingly unpopular, but between Von Roon and Bismarck there was now to be set up the most efficient military instrument known to history; that is to say, an all-powerful Prussian army of gigantic proportions, armed with the newly-invented needle-guns. Such was to be Von Roon's contribution. Bismarck's was to arouse at home the slumbering great "German National sentiment" that made failure impossible, at the front. Under G.o.d, Bismarck believed in the justness of his cause.

-- In the interim, before the first cannon was to roar, Bismarck, the political wizard, was to tie the hands of every other European monarch--either by bribes, idle promises or what you will--that the war might be fought to a finish without hazard of Allies coming to the rescue of the Emperor on the South.

-- The parliamentary debaters who thundered against Bismarck came on with all manner of attacks. The learned v. Sybel, the great authority on the French revolution, cried out his many historical warnings; Dr.

Virchow, known for his work on skeletons of the mammoth, battled along other historical lines; Dr. Gneist, the very learned member, exclaimed in a burst of moral indignation, "This army reorganization of yours has the marks of Cain on its brow!" And to this insulting speech, von Roon immediately replied, "That speech of yours bears the stamp of arrogance and impudence!" Virchow challenged Bismarck to a duel, for defamatory remarks on the doctor's scientific attainments. To this Bismarck replied:

-- "I am past the time of life when one takes advice from flesh and blood, in such things as now confront us. When I stake my life for a matter, I do so in that faith which I have strengthened by long and severe struggling--but also in honest and humble prayer to G.o.d, a faith which no word of man, even that of friend in Christ and servant of his church, can overthrow!"

-- Magnificent, magnificent you are, at this supreme moment, you big bull-dog Bismarck, and you can whip them three to one, when the great day comes.

-- Bismarck gained in power as he exercised his strength. He kept Prussia steady during the perilous times of the Crimean war; even urged an alliance with the French--think of that!--to gain secret ends for Prussia; but the Prussian king, who hated rulers of revolutionary origin, was opposed to Bismarck's master-scheme; that is to say, William held in contempt Napoleon III, hero of the trick, known as the coup d'etat, which won a crown. But Bismarck had no such scruples.

At St. Petersburg, Bismarck won the Czar--for which the liberals hated Otto the more. His arts of diplomacy were expanding in all directions.

Foreshadowing the war with Austria, Bismarck planned to keep Italy, France, Russia, England and Belgium quiet by various intrigues of politics--and how well he succeeded we shall learn later on.

44

The storm increases--Bismarck decides to defy the Chamber and rule alone!

-- In the general turmoil, along comes a fanatic named Cohen, who attempts to kill Bismarck.

This was in May, 1866. The war broke within thirty days! Cohen fired point-blank three shots, and there was a personal struggle. The giant coolly handed the would-be murderer over to the guards, then went home. His greeting to his wife was characteristic. "They have tried even to kill me, my dear, but do not mind, no harm has been done. Let us go out to dinner."

It was a time of a.s.sa.s.sins and their plots follow. Struck down by the police, Ferd Cohen, step-son of Karl Blind, meets in the eyes of the Democrats a martyr's death; his body is crowned with flowers, as though the corpse were a consecration of Prussian Liberalism on the altar of liberty.

The frenzy takes still other forms; suicide cults become notorious; here and there, we read that some lunatic patriot "seeks voluntary death, for the sacred cause of the people."