1855

(OP) Austrian ambassador in Berlin reported that on visits to Berlin Bismarck was arguing that dualism in Germany could no longer be tolerated and Austria should be ejected from Germany. January Buol replaced Prokesch — who Bismarck despised but wanted to stay because, as he wrote to his brother, 'such a clumsy opponent I shall never get again' — with Rechberg and invited Manteuffel to replace Bismarck. Manteuffel refused. The Austrians tried to get the Bund to join their alliance against Russia. Bismarck countered them in the arcania of the Bund treaties and exploited the south German fear of France. (JS p127 — Buol's suggestion re Bismarck was made on 20/2.)

To Gerlach: 'Please don't take me for a Bonapartist, only for a very ambitious Prussian. From this perspective I consider it as impolitic to allow Austria to believe that we would never see a separate understanding with the West, as to ram it down Western throats that we would never tie ourselves to Russia.'

(JS) Bismarck summoned to Berlin, stayed until 18th.

Palmerston saw failures of Britain to prosecute the war effectively as reflecting serious domestic problems: 'The true cause [of failure] lies in the apathy and indifference the neglect, the incapacity, the want of forsight the want of thought, the want of resource on the part of men in authority in the Crimea, and I should fear, in the want of sufficiently stimulating, peremptory and directing instructions to those men from home.' (Syntax per original.)

Russell resigned from Cabinet after a radical MP gave notice of a motion for a select committee to inquire into the conduct of the war. Derby, who had been hesitant, agreed the Conservatives had to join the attack.

(JS) Bund rejected Austria's motion to mobilise and Austria withdrew it. Bismarck insisted any mobilisation had to be 'neutral' and 'in every direction', that is, stopping its anti-Russian and pro-French flavour.

Commons passed a motion for a committee of inquiry into the war (305-108, such a big majority that the shocked MPs burst out laughing). Aberdeen had presided over the war without enthusiasm and under constant attack for vacillation. Aberdeen resigned. Victoria tried everything to avoid making Palmerston PM. The Queen asked Derby to take over but Derby insisted on trying to get Palmerston to serve; he wouldn't. Not settled until 6/2, after many discussions between the Queen and leading aristocrats, when Palmerston became PM. (Disraeli was furious and always maintained Derby had made a huge error; Gladstone agreed. Disraeli was wrong in predicting that Palmerston was too old and would quickly fail.) Gladstone reluctantly joined but within days resigned over the inquiry and took some Peelites with him. Palmerston complained to his brother of the difficulty of finding talent to appoint: 'I have had a very harassing work of it to fill up all the vacant places. It is so difficult to find men fit to be appointed & willing to accept while there are shoals unfit, & pressing for appointments but I have nearly done.' Cf. 20/1, he focused on procurement, transport, health and sanitation of the army (received news from Florence Nightingale and read reports from soldiers at the front). (Derby was blamed by Disraeli and others for his failure to navigate the complex negotiations and form a ministry. Derby, like many others, underrated the prospects of Palmerston being to form and maintain a ministry.)

Letter from Keyserling: 'Do you not remember what in probably lucid moments you prophesied to me then [university]: a constitution must come, that's the way to outward honours, at the same time one must be inwardly devout?'

To Manteuffel: 'I was certainly no opponent of Austria's on principle when I come here four years ago but I should have had to disown every drop of Prussian blood had I wished to retain even a moderate affection for Austria as its present rulers understand it.'

Nicholas I died (married to Wilhelm's sister), Alexander II emperor (Wilhelm's nephew).

A conference convened in Vienna to discuss peace terms. Palmerston insisted on Britain's war aims being fulfilled: particularly the Ottoman Empire's preservation and limits on Russia's presence in the Black Sea. Britain was represented by Russell who embarrassed himself by agreeing to terms in Vienna, attacking them in the House of Commons, and was ridiculed. He resigned shortly after in July.

Eve of his 40th birthday, April 'One goes on imagining that one is at the beginning of one's life and that life proper is still to come [but in reality one was already] over the top and it is downhill all the way now to the Schönhausen crypt.'

Rechberg-Buol re Bismarck: '... with his petty politics and with his choice of means, in which he allows no considerations to deter him, not even those that a gentleman owes to his government as he does to himself, [Bismarck has] seriously harmed his reputation with his colleagues... Ambitious above all things, he has already shown on several occasions that he knows how to adapt his opinions to the circumstances. However ardent his hatred of Austria may appear today, in altered circumstances he would surely not withhold his services from a policy based on reaching an understanding with Austria.'

Moltke summoned to FW and told to take up post of Adjutant to the King's nephew, Prince FW. For 2 years Moltke attended the prince on his travels and got to know Wilhelm.

At FW's instigation, the police raided hotel rooms of a young aristocrat, von Rochow, which were used for gambling. There was an outcry about aristocratic officers being arrested by a civilian. Hinckeldey was in the firing line. He asked FW for support. FW promised to help then left him in the lurch, denying he had ordered the raid. Cf. 10/3/56.

FW, influenced by Saegert, had authorised an unofficial mission, behind Manteuffel's back, of Usedom (part of the Wochenblatt network) going to London to discuss an arrangement with the western powers. FW wanted to participate in the forthcoming Vienna peace discussions. On 5/7 FW wrote: 'Let Lord Clarendon, let the Queen with all her ministers know that I am not inclined towards Russia; I am not flirting with Russia. The Russian character is not to my taste.' The mission was a 'fiasco' (Barclay) and only suggested in London and Paris that FW was thoroughly unreliable. Usedom got so enraged with being undermined in intrigues he threatened Manteuffel with a duel. (The whole farce seems very characteristic of FW.)

Leopold diary: 'Our goal is and always was the struggle against a Bonapartism and an absolutism based on the revolution and revolutionary ideas. There is no such thing as a parti moscovite. The King, Ludwig, Stahl, and I do not have the remotest Russian sympathies. In Russia we see only the opposition to Bonaparte as well as a proven ally in the coming struggle.'

Russell forced to resign.

Motley to his wife after a visit to Bismarck: 'It is one of those houses where everyone does what one likes. Here there are young and old, grandparents and children and dogs all at once, eating, drinking, smoking, piano-playing and pistol-firing (in the garden), all going on at the same time.'

Trip to Paris ostensibly for the world exhibition. He met Prince Albert who was courteous but 'in his manner there was a kind of malevolent curiosity', he assumed because of his advice not to ally with Britain. Victoria was 'amiable and courteous like one unwilling to treat an eccentric fellow in an unfriendly way'. The conduct of people at Versailles led him to conclude that 'the breeding and manners' at the Imperial Court were not on a higher level than Berlin and 'the times were past when one could go to Paris to receive a schooling in courtesy and good manners.' Only in 'Legitimist circles' were manners good albeit with some exceptions among 'the younger gentlemen spoilt by their contact with Paris, who borrowed their habits not from the family but from the club.'

He spoke with Napoleon a few times. Napoleon was not hostile concerning Bismarck's opposition to a Prussian policy of alliance with the western powers and he spoke 'to the effect that [Prussia and France], which by reason of their culture and their institutions stood at the head of civilisation, were naturally thrown upon each other's assistance' (Bismarck paraphrasing Napoleon). This visit displeased some at court including the Queen Elizabeth, which was made clear to him at the end of September.

During this trip he told Prince Heinrich von Reuss that war with Austria was unavoidable.

'The following winter', the King asked Bismarck of his impression of Napoleon:

'It is my impression that the Emperor Napoleon is a discreet and amiable man but that he is not so clever as the world esteems him. The world places to his account everything that happens, and if it rains in eastern Asia at an unseasonable moment chooses to attribute it to some malevolent machination of the Emperor. Here especially we have become accustomed to regard him as a kind of génie du mal who is for ever only meditating how to do mischief in the world.' (To his brother he wrote that 'He looks frightened, like the frontal view of a rat.')

This also went down badly with the Queen. The displeasure at his discussions with Napoleon 'sprang from the idea of “Legitimacy”, or more strictly speaking from the word itself, which was stamped with its modern sense by Talleyrand and used in 1814 and 1815 with great success and to the advantage of the Bourbons as a deluding spell.'

Fall of Sebastopol, effectively ended the war. 6/10, Palmerston speech: 'Here are the two greatest nations of the world — I say it without vanity and without exaggeration, but without one particle of diminution, that England and France, standing as they do the head of everything that dignifies human nature, are presenting to the world the noblest possible spectacle of two great people casting into the shade of oblivion all former jealousies and rivalships and extinct animosities, and uniting for purposes generous and, as far as any sordid motives are concerned, entirely disinterested; looking for no trumpery or profit or gain, territorial or otherwise, for themselves, but seeking simply to establish the liberty of the world, in which they are deeply interested, upon a solid and permanent foundation, and making sacrifices, not wantonly or for abstract principles, but for sound political considerations.' The victory produced crisis in Tory high command: Disraeli wanted to shift towards demands for peace, and argued you couldn't have a government and opposition on the same side; Derby firmly rejected this and said it would be better for the party to disintegrate than to stick together on the basis of undermining a government prosecuting a just war.

Wilhelm Stieber was a ruthless Prussian policeman working in Berlin. In 1854 he became Director of the new Seventh Department for Criminal Police Affairs in the Berlin police force under Hinckeldey. He deployed bribery, physical intimidation, and perjury. In October the police revealed that papers belonging to Leopold Gerlach and Niebuhr had been secretly transcribed and transmitted to third parties. Suspicion fell on Carl Techen, a shady former army lieutenant who had been involved in espionage at the residence of the French minister in Berlin, and Ferdinand Seiffart. In early November two servants of Gerlach and Niebuhr were arrested and charged with making and selling copies of papers. Techen was arrested but released. It was discovered Gerlach's servant had been paid since at least July 1853 and many of the Gerlach-Niebuhr papers had ended up in the French embassy. The papers included highly sensitive diplomatic and military reports. Through this the French learned about Russian naval forces in the Baltic and morale at Sebastopol. Cf. January 1855.

Landtag elections. Only 1/6 of eligible voters bothered voting. Barclay: 205/352 were thought to be pro-government.

Leopold diary: Wilhelm is characterised by 'complete mindlessness, Prince Carl by perversity, and both by the absolute absence of any concept of honour'!

Bismarck re Buol: 'Everyone in Munich and Stuttgart is unanimous in condemning Buol; most of all, the opponents of Russia, who say that his direction of Austrian policy has been incredibly bad. At any rate, he has managed to destroy all faith in Austria and all respect for himself. Pfordten [the Bavarian minister] compared him to a locomotive, which doesn't know where it is going and, on being asked, answers only with steam and whistling.'