1857

The Neuchâtel affair (cf. 9/56) sprang back to life. Gerlach, recovering from the death of his daughter, and cross with Manteuffel for cooperating with Napoleon, pushed FW to reignite the row. He was forced to back down in March. Barclay: there is no reference in FW's writings of an 1857 event much bigger than this, the financial crisis.

Gladstone told Derby he wanted Palmerston out even if it meant a Tory government. He opposed Palmerston's economic and foreign policies.

The Arrow incident was debated in Parliament after coming into the news (via The Times) in January. Press and parliament were divided. Some argued strongly that Britain was in the right and connected free trade to Britain's imperial mission of civilising China. Others suspected it had been handled very poorly by the local decision makers and Britain's position was questionable. Disraeli scented victory and in the last night of debate on 2 March he challenged Palmerston to go to the country on a platform of 'No Reform! New Taxes! Canton blazing! Persia invaded'.

British government was defeated over The Arrow. 4th Cabinet agreed there'd have to be an election. 5th announced dissolution of Parliament. Palmerston turned the election campaign into a judgement on his leadership and stressed that although he always wanted peace, it must be peace 'with honour, peace with safety, peace with the maintenance of our national rights, peace with security to our fellow countrymen abroad. Disraeli argued that, devoid of ideas, Palmerston was distracting the people with foreign politics: 'His external system is turbulent and aggressive that his rule at home may be tranquil and unassailed... Such arts and resources may suit the despotic ruler of a Continental State exhausted by revolutions, but they do not become a British Minister governing a country proud, free, and progressive, animated by glorious traditions, and aspiring to future excellence'. 'The general election of 1857 is unique in our history: the only election ever conducted as a simple plebiscite in favour of an individual' (AJP Taylor). Brown: Palmerston got most of the national media onside and the 'peace' campaigners like Cobden were overwhelmed.

Conference opened in Paris for settlement of disputes between Prussia and Switzerland. Napoleon told Bismarck that he was not interested in the left bank of the Rhine — it would simply create a coalition against France — and he was more interested in Italy. If it came to war with Austria over Italy then he wanted Prussian neutrality — and they shared, he claimed, an interest in undermining England's naval power. He asked Bismarck to speak to the King about this. Bismarck warned against making such an offer saying it was bound to be refused, it would leak, and 'you would get stuck in the mud'. Napoleon thanked him for his frankness and assurance of silence.

Palmerston won the election. Over 50% of seats were uncontested (compared to over 55% in 1847). Hawkins: where there were contests they remained largely a result of intense local allegiances with 'national issues a gloss overlaying local politics'. Palmerston punted a new Reform Bill to the 1858 session and, ill, kept the new government modest in its initial plans. Conservatives again predicted Palmerston's government would soon crumble from divisions.

Cowley-Clarendon: I spoke to Bismarck re the SH duchies. He said that detaching the duchies from Denmark and giving them to the Duke of Augustenburg would not be in Prussian interests and if it were to happen 'Prussia would be far more likely to find therein an enemy than a friend.' NB. This was his attitude in 1863.

Leopold Gerlach-Bismarck: 'How can a man of your intellect sacrifice principle to one single man such as this LN [Napoleon]? He impresses me too, notably by his moderation, which in a parvenu merits double recognition, but he is and remains our natural enemy, and the fact that he is and will inevitably remain that will soon emerge.' (Possibly around now Gerlach wrote: 'Just hold fast to the belief that Bonaparte is our only important adversary. Everything else is secondary... Believe me, Bonapartism is the arch enemy of Christianity, and that will become even more apparent this time than during its first appearance.')

The Indian Mutiny began. Brown: news didn't arrive in London until late June. This diverted much of British attention from Europe. Ended June 1858.

Memo to Manteuffel (OP p134): The princes of the lesser states are aware that their 'exaggerated sovereignty' is an 'evil for Germany... They know very well that Prussia's disunited situation is difficult enough in itself to bear and that the unnatural compulsion of the small intervening states to assert their independence has become a severe handicap for us and for German life and development. Only outside Germany are the means available to consolidate our position in the interest of Germany itself.' (Cf. Booklet 3/58.)

Reply to Gerlach's 29/4. He denied that he had been fooled or impressed by Napoleon: 'The man does not impress me at all... The ability to admire people is but moderately developed in me, and it is rather a defect in my vision that it is sharper to detect weaknesses than strengths... I completely subordinate this [a principle to be applied to France and its Legitimacy] to my specifically Prussian patriotism. France interests me only in so far as she reacts upon the condition of my country, and we can only deal politically with the France which exists, and this France we cannot exclude from the combinations... As a romanticist I can shed a tear for his fate [Louis Philippe]. As a diplomat I would be his servant were I a Frenchman. Being what I am, however, I count France only as a piece and to be sure an unavoidable one in the chess game of politics, no matter who happens to be her ruler. In this game it is my business to serve only my own king and my own country. I cannot feel it right, either in myself or others, that sympathies and antipathies with regard to foreign Powers and personalities should take precedence over my sense of duty in the foreign service of my country; such an idea contains the embryo of disloyalty to the ruler or to the country which we serve... Not even the king himself has the right to subordinate the interests of the country to his own feelings of love or hate towards foreigners.' Austria has an 'innate and natural interest ... in preventing Prussia from growing stronger and in lessening her influence in Germany'. She 'pursues this design zealously and cleverly', and has shown 'numerous and striking proofs of perfidy and untrustworthiness as a member of the same federation.' The German middle states in time of war look on us with fear and distrust 'and no angel can talk the distrust out of them so long as there exist maps at which they can cast a glance.'

'If we desire to go on living in such isolation, unheeded and occasionally bullied, I have of course no power to change it. If, however, we desire to come once more into consideration we cannot possibly attain that aim by building our foundation solely on the sand of the German Bund and calmly awaiting its collapse. As long as each of us is convinced that a part of the European chess board will remain closed against us by our own choice, or that we must tie up one arm on principle while everyone else employs both his to our disadvantage, this sentimentality of ours will be turned to account without fear and without thanks. I do not at all desire that we should conclude an alliance with France and conspire against Germany. But is it not more sensible to be on friendly than on indifferent terms with the French so long as they leave us in peace? All I want to do is to rid other people of the belief that they may adopt whomsoever they wish as brothers but that we would rather have our skin cut into strips then defend it with French aid. Courtesy is a cheap coin, and if it does no further service than that of ridding the others of the belief that they are always sure of France against us and we at all times in want of help against France, that is a great thing gained for the diplomacy of peace. If we despise this resource, and even act contrarily, then I do not know why we do not rather save or reduce the expenses of our diplomacy... What can I here or any other of our envoys effect if we create an impression of being friendless or of relying upon Austria's friendship?... Our prescription for every evil is to throw ourselves upon the neck of Count Buol and to pour out our brotherly hearts to him. When I was in Paris a certain count sued for a divorce after having caught his wife, formerly a circus-rider, in flagrante delicto for the twenty-fourth time; he was held up to the admiration of the court by his lawyer as an example of a gallant and indulgent husband, but his magnanimity is nought compared with ours in regards to Austria.

'Our domestic relations suffer scarcely more from their own defects then they do from the painful and universal feeling of our loss of reputation abroad and the totally passive part played by our policy. We are a vain nation. We feel hurt directly we cannot swagger, and much, even in regard to our pockets, is forgiven and permitted a government which gives us importance abroad... We are the best natured and most harmless of politicians and yet no one in reality trusts us. We are regarded as unsafe allies and harmless foes, precisely as if we behaved like Austria in foreign affairs and were as rotten at home... To go on in this way we really do not require the whole apparatus of our diplomacy...

'You tell me that the man [Napoleon] is our natural enemy and that it will soon be proved he is so and must remain so. I could dispute this, or say with equal Justice: “Austria, England are our enemies and that they are so has long ago been proved...” ... I consider it expedient ... to go on allowing people to believe ... that the tension with regard to France is not an organic defect, an innate weakness of our nature, upon which everyone else can speculate with safety.'

Gall: Gerlach replied on 6/5: 'My principle is and remains the struggle against revolution.You will not persuade Bonaparte that he is not on the side of revolution. Nor does he wish to be anywhere else for that is what gives him his decisive advantages... But if my principle, like that of opposition to revolution, is right ... it must always be adhered to in practice as well.'

In a followup letter on 11th, Bismarck added: 'So far as concerns foreign countries I have, throughout my life, had a sympathy for England only and her inhabitants, and I am, in certain hours not yet free from it. But the people there will not let us love them, and as soon as it were proved to me that it was in the interests of a sound and well-thought out Prussian policy I would, with the same satisfaction, see our troops fire on French, Russians, English, or Austrians.'

Gerlach:Your ideas are right in many details 'but, if you will forgive me, it lacks the head and tail of policy, namely principle and objective'. Napoleon is committed to Revolution. In a triple alliance with Russia and France, Prussia would be the weakest therefore Prussia would unavoidably have to help Napoleon, i.e the advance of Revolution. 'Revolutionary absolutism is by its very nature out to conquer since it can only sustain itself at home when the same conditions prevail all around it.'

In a further letter on 30th, Bismarck added that the difference lay 'in the foliage and not in the root': 'In replying to your last two letters I labour under a sense of the imperfection of human expression, especially in writing. Every attempt to make ourselves clear engenders fresh misunderstandings. It is not given us to commit to paper or to put into words our whole selves, and we cannot make others receive from the fragments which we bring forth the same sensations as they gave ourselves. This arises partly from the inferiority of speech compared to thought, partly because the external facts to which we refer seldom present themselves to two persons in the same light...

'The principle of the battle against the Revolution I acknowledge to be mine also, but I do not take it to be correct to view Napoleon as the only representative of the Revolution, or even as its representative par excellence, and I do not believe it is possible to carry out principle in politics as something whose remotest consequences break through every other consideration and which forms to a certain extent the only trump suit in the game, the lowest card of which still beats the highest of every other suit.

'How many entities are there left in the political world today that have not their roots in revolutionary soil?... England [has] her foot today consciously planted on the glorious revolution of 1688... Even for that territory which the German princes of today have won ... no perfectly legitimate title of possession can be shown and in our own political life we cannot avoid the use of revolutionary supports. Many of the conditions referred to have become naturalised by antiquity and we have accustomed ourselves to them... [T]he principles of the American and English revolutions were, independently of the measure of bloodshed and the religious disturbances that shaped themselves differently according to the national character, pretty much the same as those which in France caused an interruption in the continuity of the law... [We see now] the open acknowledgement and propagation of the fundamental ideas of the Revolution on the part of the English government... What then is there peculiar to Napoleon III and the French revolution generally?... The Revolution is much older than the Bonapartes and much broader in its foundations than France. If one wants to attribute to it a terrestrial origin, such origin must not be sought in France but rather in England, if not still earlier in Germany or in Rome... The impulse to conquest is no less an attribute of England, North America, Russia, and other countries than of Napoleonic France and as soon as power and opportunity are at hand moderation and love of justice have a hard task in keeping even the most legitimate monarchy within bounds. The impulse in question does not seem to dominate Napoleon III as an instinct... He did not call the revolutionary conditions of the country into existence, nor did he gain his sovereignty by opposition to a lawfully constituted authority; he fished it up as unclaimed property out of the whirlpool of anarchy. If he were now to lay it down again, he would greatly embarrass Europe, which would more or less unanimously beg him to take it up again...

'We must ... go through with the reality or the appearance of closer relations with France. Only by this means can we bring Austria so far on the road to reason and renunciation of its extravagant Schwarzenberg ambition as to seek an understanding with us ... and only by this means can we stop the further development of direct relations between the German middle states and France. England too will begin to recognise how important an alliance with Prussia is when she begins to fear that she may lose it in favour of France... A visit from Napoleon would ... render our voice more effective than it is now. They [the German states] will become considerate and even affectionate to us in precise proportion to their fear of us. Confidence in us they will never have. Every glance at the map robs them of that. They know that their interests and particular desires stand in the way of the general direction of Prussian policy... Fear, if we but knew how to inspire it, would place the whole Bund at our disposal. That fear would be inspired by ostensible tokens of our good relations with France.'

Somewhere in this letter he makes the striking comment: 'We cannot make an alliance with France without a certain degree of meanness, but in the Middle Ages very admirable people - even German princes - used a drain to make their escape, rather than be beaten and strangled.' (Quoted in AJPT) Gall quotes similarly but says this sentence was in a letter to Leopold Gerlach 19-20/12/53.

In Memoirs he concludes the chapter saying that after a further reply from Gerlach he did not continue this correspondence.

OP (p98): He was set on coercion, not war — coercion by threat followed by negotiated settlement, or coercion by violence and a settlement from the fortunes of war. The former was less dangerous and preferable, the latter more dangerous but given Austria's nature and the dynamics in Germany probably more likely.

Gall: a few days after his last Gerlach letter he wrote to Manteuffel making a similar point: 'Bonapartism is a consequence not the creator of revolution.' Gall: everyone had to re-evaluate after Crimea. The prospects of Bismarck taking a leading role were 'never dimmer' than summer 1857 and they remained dim.

(OP) Bismarck talked with Rechberg.

Malet-Clarendon: Bismarck said to me re the SH duchies: 'I said the other day to Count Rechberg that we were like two cowards marching on a battery, each anxiously watching [for] a sign of hesitation in the other, to justify his own turning back.'

Massacre at Cawnpore. Interestingly Disraeli discounted the news and tried to downplay the need for reprisals (as he did with Bulgaria 20 years later). He wrote: 'I for one protest against taking Nana Sahib as a model for the conduct of the British soldier. I protest against meeting atrocities by atrocities. I have heard things said and seen things written of late which would make me almost suppose that the religious opinions of the people of England had undergone some sudden change, and that, instead of bowing before the name of Jesus we were preparing to revive the worship of Moloch.'

FW letter: 'The revolution is stalking the world once more. May God have mercy!' He was in Marienbad where the doctors had sent him. His health had been declining. He was obese. He drank too much. His memory was failing.

FW and FJ met in Vienna. At Pillnitz on the way back from Vienna, FW suffered a stroke. Although he recovered he complained to Leopold at the end of July of his loss of energy and memory.

Bismarck noticed the King was ill during a parade and he sensed 'his diminished flow of thought'.

Tsar and Napoleon met at Stuttgart.

While hunting in Sweden he fell over a rock and severely injured his shin 'and unfortunately I neglected it in order to go elk hunting'. Cf. recurrence of this injury in St P. summer 1859 with near fatal consequences.

Reports of recapture of Delhi and relief of Lucknow helped Palmerston. The stock market had declined steadily from summer 1856, now fell precipitously. Hit bottom November, and gradually started recovering. Wholesale prices fell in 1858 then recovered. Foreign trade of the Zollverein fell in 1858 and 1859 then rose 1860. 1858-60 formation of new joint stock companies nearly stopped.

Palmerston drew up a new Reform Bill — moderate, kept borough franchise at £10, lowered county suffrage to £20, gave vote to officers of Army and Navy, lawyers, doctors, clergy, clerks of manufacturers etc.

British economy suffered from the instability caused by the mutiny. America's economy was suffering and there was a banking crisis that cascaded to London. Domestic banks were shaky and the Bank of England couldn't bail them all out. Expenses for India were mounting. Discussions over the East India Company, decided 25/11 that a new government of India would be created to replace its rule.

FW condition worsened by trip on in which he sat in the same train carriage as the Tsar who was a very heavy smoker, and FW found tobacco 'as intolerable as the smell of sealing wax' (and the fact that the King had to have his letters sealed outside his presence 'had a very serious side to it'). King fell seriously ill.

Leopold diary: 'If this immensely gifted man dies or deteriorates, how much will end with him? Stände, the United Diet, the House of Lords, the Supreme Church Council, Sanssoucci and its buildings, artists, friendships, humour, and above all that truly Christian feeling of one's own sinful nature.'

With the prospect of Wilhelm imminently becoming king, he had a long walk with Bismarck. They discussed whether he should accept the constitution unaltered or demand its revision. Bismarck advised against. There was 'no urgent need' to touch the constitution and focus should be on improving Prussia's position viz the German states and Europe. When he returned to Sans-Souci, he found ?Edwin Manteuffel 'agitated' about his walk and he suggested Bismarck return to his post. He replied: 'I am much more necessary here.'

FW signed a document giving Wilhelm limited authority to govern for 3 months, renewed a few times until October 1858.

Moltke appointed Chief of the General Staff, provisional at first, partly because Wilhelm was acting on behalf of his brother, permanent from 18 September 1858. He had 64 men. He reorganised them into 4 geographic areas and created a Railway Department and a Military History Department. Moltke was interested in railways. He had been on the board of a railway company in the 1840s and put his own assets into company stock.

Showalter: railway building in 1850s was focused mainly on commercial factors, not military. Even the eastern railway built at government expense to the Russian border was done for economic reasons and its routing and infrastructure were not 'directly' influenced by military considerations.

Palmerston forced to call an emergency session of Parliament to deal with banking/financial crisis, to approve a bill of indemnity authorising the Governor of the Bank of England to issue extra banknotes.

Bismarck to Leopold Gerlach: he complained that Edwin Manteuffel 'treated me as a doubtful political intriguer who had to be got out of Berlin as soon as possible.'

OP: In one of these 1857 letters to Gerlach he argued that since the 1832 Reform Act, British policy rested on shifting parliamentary majorities and she could not be relied on, though Britain was an 'unnatural enemy' given her interests are not in conflict, and once the Austro-British coalition passed she could become a 'natural ally' for Prussia (GW, XIV, 436,440,468).