Chapter XXI Throttling Bavaria
The Etiquette of Dress—Bülow in a Fix—That “Place in the Sun”—“That Idiot Bismarck”
—Prussianize the British Empire
In the grandchamber where Bismarck sat so long enthroned and Caprivi, the general “commanded to the office,” as he might have been ordered to occupy a bastion, spent troublesome years; at the desk where Prince Hohenlohe’s thoughtful face shone between colossal oil-lamps; in the very chair where the Iron One swore lustily at petty kings, sat Bernhard von Bülow, Chancellor and Major-General.
Don’t forget the Major-General, for the War Lord had more trouble making him that than conferring the Imperial Chancellorship. Military titles are sadly embroidered with precedents and rules and things.
Frederick the Great used to own silk mills, therefore his ministers of State were compelled to wait upon him in satin breeches and long-tailed satin coats, and no man who loved his job would appear more than six times in the same garments before the Majesty, since the royal merchant would have considered himself cheated out of the sale of so many ells. Frederick’s descendant, the War Lord, is interested in army cloth—hence his dislike for mufti.
Jovial, talkative, on good terms with himself, Bernhard felt quite guilty in his velvet jacket—a present from the Princess, his wife—when he heard a sharp voice call out his name. It came from the garden path adjoining the high French windows.
“Must be coming from the War Ministry. What’s up?” thought the Chancellor, ringing frantically for a dress coat. If those sentinels would only challenge Majesty, there might be time to change.
In the summer of 1905 the proverbial Bülow luck was still in full swing. At the moment it sent Phili Eulenburg to the rescue, for the ex-ambassador, still undisgraced, was, as usual, in attendance upon the War Lord.
“Fine chap, that,” said Phili, pointing to one of the sentinels who guarded the inner court of the Chancellor Palace; “may I put him through the paces just to show I did not get my epaulettes for form’s sake?”
“Anything as long as you don’t make me ridiculous, Phili.” Maybe the War Lord was curious to see whether his friend had any military talents. Perhaps he remembered that Bismarck, talking to Maximilian Harden or Moritz Busch, let drop a remark to the effect that persons of the Eulenburg type made great generals—sometimes, vide Alcibiades, Cæsar, Peter the Great, Frederick, etc.—good diplomats never!
“Advance,” “retreat,” “right,” “left,” “charge,” “about face,” crowed Phili, repeating the last order several times.
“Pack ein” (“Cheese it!”), said the War Lord, “if these are the only commands you remember.” However, when the pair entered through the glass doors, Bernhard, to his intense satisfaction, was resplendent in a frock-coat, with the ribbon of the Red Eagle in buttonhole, Majesty missing the chance to scold him for a sybarite. To Wilhelm’s mind, male humanity is “nude” when unaccoutred with knapsack and bayonet, or else unshrouded in evening dress at nine a.m. Bülow had flatly refused to array himself en frac in daytime, and in his hussars’ breeches he always fidgeted “in a nerve-racking way.” So he must be allowed a Prince Albert coat—Chancellor’s exclusive privilege, of course! Bismarck used to ride to the old Kaiser’s palace in a fatigue cap, but at the door donned the steel helmet. But let none of lesser rank and importance imitate these worthies.
“Here’s a pretty kettle of fish,” said the War Lord, acknowledging Bülow’s respectful greetings by a wave of the hand. “Phili tells me that Victor will require pretty strong proof it’s defensive before he joins our war. And Udo has secured tell-tale correspondence to the same effect, which will be sent to you presently.”
“Italy making demands before she has even lost a battle?” cried Phili, without indicating quotation marks.
Bülow knew of course that the bon mot was Bismarck’s, but the War Lord thought it original. “Don’t repeat that to the Princess, please,” he said to Bülow, “lest she put our Phili on her index. As to Victor, what do you think of the ingrate?”
“With Your Majesty’s permission, I rather think that the information” (Bülow looked straight at Eulenburg, then thought better of it) “of—Count Wedell is not well founded. Your Majesty knows how such rumours arise. Maybe King Victor has, at one time or another, expressed himself to the effect that he meant strictly to adhere to the stipulations of the Triple Alliance, whereupon some person in the secret found out that the Triple Alliance obliges Italy to take up arms only in case Germany or Austria are attacked. Presto, the mischief-maker concludes that King Victor is not in sympathy with Germany’s world politics, etc. etc.”
“Maybe, but Udo’s and Phili’s reports must be sifted to the bottom,” commanded the War Lord. “I told Wedell to put a man of pronounced political instinct on the work—an Italian, of course; there shall be a wrestling match between Dago cunning and German political shrewdness.”
Up to then the War Lord had spoken quite to the point. Now he indulged in one of those saltomortales of uncontrolled thought that tends to incoherency.
“We must get rid of Otto,” he said abruptly, pounding his knee with his terrible right.
Prince Bismarck’s Christian name had been Otto, and Wilhelm got rid of him. Count Bülow, perceiving no connection with matters discussed, wondered whether the War Lord had reference to the former occupant of the Chancellor Palace, or maybe to a dog or horse. So, to be on the safe side, he smiled broadly and asserted: “Precisely, Your Majesty.”
“Of course, there is that Schweinhund (pig-dog) Ruprecht.”
Bülow began to scent a connection; however, the War Lord saved him further cogitation by doing all the talking.
“A madman, this Ruprecht; thinks his petty State an Indian Empire. Period: Thirteenth century, or thereabout. Dwells longingly on such scenes as Mohammed Toghlak enacted, having hundreds of rebels tossed about by elephants on steel-capped ivories, and then trampled to death to the sound of trumpets and beating of drums. ‘I would like to treat our Socialists that way,’ he told me time and again.”
“Using wild boars instead of elephants, I suppose,” said Phili. The sally caused the War Lord much merriment.
“Egad,” he laughed, “your mileage from Liebenberg is not thrown away; you liquidate the bill by bons mots every time.”
“I dare you tell the Reichstag,” cried Phili.
“Bülow shall,” said the War Lord; “but”—facing the Chancellor once more—“those muttons! With Italy a possible quantité négligeable, we must make doubly sure of Bavaria’s unquestioned and enthusiastic support of Berlin. Now, Phili, who has been living there many years, tells me that the Bavarian people as a whole——”
“The great unwashed,” put in Phili, who will live up to his reputation as a wit or burst—in Germany one need not be a Mark Twain to succeed.
“The Bavarian unwashed,” repeated the War-Lord, “do not like Prussia. The only means of gaining national support for our war in Bavaria, then, is by favour of the Crown. Otto’s is a harlequin’s cap, and you can’t ask people to rally around a War Lord more beast than man, and certainly as crazy as a march-hare. It follows: we need a sane man in Munich, Bülow—nothing short of a sane man will serve our purpose. I understand that Maximilian Joseph, ‘the creature of that upstart, Napoleon,’ had a royal diadem built which has never been used. Pull it from the vaults of the Munich Hofburg, Bülow, and place it on Luitpold’s head, and if he persists in his silly refusal, on Ludwig’s.”
“Majesty knows these gentlemen’s objections: ‘There can be no real king in Bavaria, they say, until the constitutional incumbent is dead,’” spoke the Chancellor gravely.
“Then kill Otto,” cried the War Lord. “What, miss our place in the sun for a madman! Not if I know Wilhelm, Imperator Rex. Briefly, Bülow, as there is no king in Bavaria, we must make one—one who recognises that he is Rex Bavariæ par la grace de Roi de Prusse and, accordingly, is willing to do the King of Prussia’s bidding.”
“But the people, will they rally to a standard bearer of that kind?” asked the Chancellor.
“The mob,” cried the War Lord. “What has the mob to do with it? We show him a puppet in ermine and purple with Maximilian Joseph’s unused crown on his silly pate, and ‘hurrah,’ ‘Heil Dir im Siegeskranz.’”
“With the aid of the loyal Press,” suggested Phili.
“Of course, the Press bandits are part and parcel of the plebs; let Königgrätzerstrasse see to them at once. And, Bülow,” continued the War Lord, “the Norddeutsche Allgemeine—not a word!”
“That’s where Majesty shows his wisdom,” said Phili, nearly doubling up in a profound bow. And as the War Lord seemed to enjoy the compliment, he added: “I am not the bird to befoul his own nest; but if it be true, as the London papers sometimes assert, that Germany produces no real diplomats, I point to Your Majesty and say: Here stands the greatest of them all, greater than Cavour and Bismarck, Talleyrand and Wotton.”
“Talleyrand was a great liar,” mused the War Lord.
“And preserved Prussia.” This from the Chancellor.
“My motto,” said Wilhelm, “is: ‘Keep a silent tongue where one’s own interests are concerned, lest the itch of controversy produce a scab that even the unknowing may perceive.’ He was boldly plagiarising Wotton, but if his auditors noticed the theft they were wise enough to keep it to themselves.
“Your Majesty’s idea is that, in case Italy prove disloyal, Bavaria must act the buffer, the people offering stubborn resistance.”
“—— stubborn!” cried the War Lord, striding toward the great wall where a series of maps were displayed on rollers. Of course Phili got ahead and pushed the button. “—— stubborn!” repeated Wilhelm. “Look at the Bavarian frontier—as naked of fortresses as a new-born babe of a dinner dress—no defensive works to speak of. If the Italians make good their threats against Austria and reach Innsbruck, good-bye Munich! The whole of Bavaria would be at the mercy of the Dago dogs of war! Bülow,” cried the War Lord, “Phili brought documents to show that the Italian General Staff is mapping out a road to Berlin via Munich, Leipzig, Potsdam. That idiot Bismarck,” he added, with an oath, “the question of collars and epaulettes was not the only one he decided in favour of the Bavarians. Four years previously he failed to squeeze Bayreuth out of them—Bayreuth, one of the Hohenzollerns’ earliest possessions. With small pressure he might have regained the principality in 1866 in place of the miserable few millions of thalers as war indemnity that the Bavarians had to pay. We could have made Bayreuth-land an armed camp, a second Heligoland, as it-is-to-be!”
The “collars and epaulettes affair,” to which the War Lord referred, cropped up in November, 1870, during the pourparlers for the Bavarian-Prussian treaties. King Ludwig insisted that Bavarian army officers should continue to wear the badge of their rank on their collar, while King Wilhelm said their shoulder straps were the correct place. The Chancellor, Bismarck, saved the situation by arguing: “If in ten years’ time, perhaps, the Bavarians are arrayed in battle against us, what will history say when it becomes known that the present negotiations miscarried owing to collars and epaulettes?”
No wonder Prince Pless (Hans Henry XI., late father-in-law of Princess Mary, née Cornwallis-West) said to the Iron Chancellor: “Really, if at the time we were discussing the criminal code we had known what sort of people these Sovereigns are, we should not have helped to make the provisions against lèse-majesté so severe.”
“Now if Bayreuth were in our hands,” continued the War Lord, “the Italians could whistle for the new road to Berlin, as the English can for the promenade to Hamburg, since Salisbury, good old man—God rest his soul—presented us with that little islet in the North Sea.”
“Maybe Bavaria could be induced to fortify her frontiers on the Austrian border,” suggested the Chancellor.
“And I postpone my war until half a dozen Liéges and Namurs and Metzs and Strassburgs are built—man alive,” thundered the War Lord. “Life is short, and the longer England and France are left in possession of the best colonies, the harder it will be for us to Prussianise them when things are being adjusted to our liking.”
“Prussianise England and France, excellent idea, très magnifique!” crowed Phili the irrepressible.
“Not quite so fast,” said the War Lord. “I was thinking of India and Ceylon, of Cochin China and Tonking, of Algeria, Hongkong, the Straits Settlements and the French Congo, of Madagascar and Natal, of Rhodesia, Gibraltar, the Senegal and other dainties in the colonial line.”
“Even so—a jolly mouthful for Prussianisation, Majesty.”
“You don’t suppose I would tolerate the loose discipline encouraged by Downing Street and Quai d’Orsay,” cried the War Lord. “Subject peoples and tribes must have a taste of the whip and spur. Where would Poland be without them—yes, and Alsace-Lorraine! But those Bavarians, Bülow. I hope I made it perfectly clear that Otto must go and that severest pressure must be brought on Luitpold.”
“Together with the Italian problem, the matter shall have my closest attention,” said the Chancellor.
“And don’t forget that they are a crazy lot at best, and hand and glove with Franz Ferdinand’s black masters.”
“Matters can’t be hurried, though,” ruminated Bülow, “and I am afraid there is little store to be set by Luitpold.”
“His ambition is to go thundering down the ages as the man who refused a crown,” sneered Phili.
“Thank Heaven he is eighty-four,” said the War Lord piously.
“And Ludwig tickled to death with the idea of becoming king,” added Eulenburg.
The War Lord was making his adieux, when he suddenly turned upon Bülow. “What are you going to do with Ruprecht?”
“Promise him a field marshal’s baton in our war.”
“The right bait,” assented Wilhelm, “but I pity the country under his supreme command. Do you know,” he added, “that the lowest of his subjects would not permit him to cross his threshold?”