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Updated: May 19, 2025
Prince Hohenlohe is telling of a visit he made in June to the Grand Duke of Baden, whom he found irritated by Bismarck's proposal, made in connection with the arrest of a Prussian police officer by the Swiss, to close the frontier against the canton Aargau.
Bismarck's attitude to him, as described in his Memoirs, is rather like that of an old family retainer who has earned by long and faithful service the right to assert his views and to pit his judgment against his master's.
Now it was Parliamentary debates; in the opinion he formed at this time he never wavered. His distaste for Parliamentary life was probably increased by an event which took place about this time. As so often before in the course of debate he had a sharp passage of words with Vincke; the latter referred contemptuously to Bismarck's diplomatic achievements.
Though both Doctor Wilhelm and Frederick von Kammacher disapproved of Bismarck's exceptional anti-Socialist law and its consequences, they were filled with hero worship of the man, Doctor Wilhelm the more so, since the home of his childhood stood on the edge of Sachsenwald, scarcely an hour's ride from Friedrichsruh.
Probably the Afghan question, or Nihilism, brought Russia to accept Bismarck's advances; but when the fear of an Anglo-Russian war passed away, and the revolutionists were curbed, this agreement fell to the ground; and after the fall of Bismarck the compact was not renewed .
All this undoubtedly had its effect on Napoleon's mind, but it appears that conditions in Europe just at that particular moment had an even greater influence in causing him to abandon his Mexican scheme. Within a few days of the receipt of Seward's ultimatum Napoleon was informed of Bismarck's determination to force a war with Austria over the Schleswig-Holstein controversy.
This step was followed by Bismarck's dispatching an ultimatum to Hanover, Saxony, and Hesse Cassel respectively, all of which had voted against Prussia in the Federal Assembly, followed, on its non-acceptance, by the dispatch of Prussian troops to occupy the States in question. Hard on this act of brutal violence came the declaration of war with Austria.
And he painted Bismarck's portrait in striking colors, a portrait a la Saint-Simon. The man Bismarck was one that no one wished to understand, because one always lends to others his own ways of thinking, and credits them with a readiness to do that which he would do were he placed in their situation.
On all sides there were diatribes against Britain's high-handed and lawless behaviour, and some German papers affected to believe that Hamburg might next be chosen for bombardment by the British fleet. These outbursts, in the case of Germany, may have been due to Bismarck's desire to please Russia, and secondarily France, in all possible ways. It is doubtful whether he gained this end.
What a triumph was it of Bismarck's skill that the addition of 4,000,000 subjects to the Prussian Crown and complete dominion over Northern Germany should appear, not as the demand which, as a ruthless conqueror, he enforced on his helpless enemies, but as the solution of all difficulties which was recommended to him in reward for his moderation by the ruler of France!
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