1859

(Brown; another book ?? says 30 June, it makes more sense in January than June) Palmerston-Granville: 'I am very Austrian north of the Alps but very anti-Austrian south of the Alps... the Austrians have no business in Italy and they are a public nuisance there. They govern their own provinces ill and are the props and encouragers of bad government in all the other states of the peninsula... I should therefore rejoice and feel relieved if Italy up to the Tyrol were freed from Austrian domination and military occupation.' However he also feared a weakening of Austria in central Europe that might tempt Russia and Hungary to expand and lead to a 'dismemberment' of Austria.

At a ball in January, Bismarck heard gossip he would be moved to St Petersburg.

(OP) At a reception Napoleon shocked the Austrian Ambassador by saying, 'I regret that our relations are not as good as I wished, but please report to Vienna that my personal feelings toward the Kaiser are unchanged.'

(Steinberg) Roon thought Bonin would try to drop Roon's plan.

(Steinberg) Roon was opposed by the new War Minister, Bonin, who disliked his plan and 'babbled on impatiently like a small boy' after admitting he still had not read Roon's paper. 2 days later Bonin told the Cabinet that Roon would lead a commission to explore the ideas but Roon was sceptical of progress.

Bismarck asked Wilhelm not to send him to St Petersburg and advised that appointing Usedom would cause problems (he was 'more of a gossiping courtier than a statesman' and his wife would 'embarrass us'). The King said — you should take this is a sign of my confidence in you. Memoirs — my advice was not taken and Usedom was a disaster: he boasted of underground connexions and his office in Italy was manned by an Austrian spy. (See row with the King in February 1869.)

Bismarck: 'Your Royal Highness has not a single statesmanlike intellect in the whole ministry... [Bonin] cannot keep a drawer in order, never mind a ministry. And Schleinitz is a courtier but no statesman.'

The king: 'Do you take me for a sluggard? I will be my own Foreign Minister and Minister of War.'

Bismarck: 'At the present day the most capable provincial president cannot administer his district without an intelligent district secretary and will always rely upon such a one. The Prussian monarchy requires the analogue in a much higher degree. Without intelligent ministers your Royal Highness will find no satisfaction in the result.'

Wilhelm II born in Berlin.

Bismarck appointed ambassador to Russia, left Frankfurt 6 March for Berlin where he stayed until 23rd. He referred to it as 'honourable exile'.

Franco-Piedmontese treaty: codified discussions between Napoleon and Cavour in July 1858. In the event of an Austria-Piedmont war with Austria the aggressor, France would support Piedmont and create a Kingdom of Upper Italy under the House of Savoy. OP: Bismarck was the only major figure to predict this move by Napoleon and he advocated that Prussia use the moment to seize North Germany.

Landtag referred to the Cabinet a petition requesting that 'every legal limitation of the interest rate in the lending of money and other forms of capital be repealed as soon as possible'. Cf. January 1860.

Palmertson-Cowley: 'If [Austria] were dismembered, France and Russia would shake hands across Germany and the independence of Europe would be gone. But France ought to evacuate the Roman states'.

Napoleon pamphlet on Italy published. He would liberate Italy and reduce the power of the Habsburg Empire. This 'set of tremors' put Bismarck in power (Steinberg).

(JS) He wrote to Leopold Gerlach: 'In foreign affairs I have nothing to write and feel depressed. When, as now in Berlin there are neither pre-nor post-considerations, neither plans nor signs of a stirring of the will, so the awareness of an entirely purposeless and planless employment lowers the spirits. I do nothing more than what I am directly ordered to do and let things simply slide.'

Palmerston challenged the government to state its policy on Italy. Disraeli replied that they had sent Cowley to Vienna to seek a compromise.

The Times published details of the imminent Reform bill and a leader approved them. (Blake: the Bill was introduced on 28th and leak was the day before.) Derby had been working on it since summer 1858, looking for a modest measure that he could keep the Tories united behind, with intense ministerial negotiations through the winter. He was furious about the leak, suspected Disraeli, Disraeli denied it. Disraeli presented the plan to Parliament later that day. Weeks of debate followed. Russell and others opposed it, some radicals, some ultra Tories. Derby stuck to his guns: it's a modest measure the country can unite behind and it won't be amended by either extreme.

The Tory Reform Bill depressed Gerlach who wrote, 'What difficult times these are. The wretched ministry, the reawakened [national] endeavours in Germany, and the confused reforms in Austria... The turn with the reform bill in England has made such an impression on me that I dreamed about it all night. In old England with a Tory ministry there is no resistance against advancing democracy, that is, against advancing socialism... It seems to me sometimes that we are obsolete.'

Early March Lord Russell called a meeting of the Liberal Party to discuss parliamentary reform. Palmerston and Russell still sparring for leadership and to replace Derby when he fell.

(OP) Secret treaty by which Napoleon secured the benevolent neutrality of Russia as prelude to war with Austria (as Bismarck had foreseen in April 1856).

Moltke wrote that it would take 6 weeks to concentrate 250,000 troops on the Rhine and Main. Two weeks could be saved by double-tracking some existing line and completing some others.

Bismarck left Frankfurt (Steinberg 6 March) for Berlin then onto St.P. (Before leaving, the Austrians tried to bribe him via a local banker. After trying and failing to get the agent to put the offer in writing, Bismarck threatened to throw him down the hotel stairs. He told Wilhelm about this. After he became minister he suppressed such activities but nothing happened because, he claimed, the agent was protected by Schleinitz and the King's wife (Memoirs 1p235). He also had dinner with Mayer Carl von Rothschild, head of the family bank in Frankfurt — 'a real old Jew haggler [Schacherjude]' with 'tons of silver, golden spoons and forks'. On his advice, Bismarck appointed Bleichröder to be his private banker. It was a more than a week-long trip, first by train to Königsberg then 8 days in carriages and snow — he had to get out of his carriage and push at various points. He put up initially in the Demidov Hotel (Nevsky Prospekt) until in July he found a house in the English quarter by the bridge over the Greater Neva. Memoirs: Nicholas helped Austria in 1849 with 150,000 troops to subdue Hungary and re-establish Austria's authority, without asking for anything — an 'act of disinterested friendship', which was continued at the time of Olmütz, based on Nicholas' view of FJ as his 'successor and heir in the leadership of the Conservative triad' and his lack of confidence in FW (and his own son). (Interesting that Nicholas so distrusted his own people that he hired two Prussian soldiers to give) him a special form of massage because he did not trust any Russians to be next to him with his face down and lying down!

He discerned three generations in St P society. First, 'the highest quality', 'that of the European and classically cultured grands seigneurs from the reign of Alexander I' which was dying out: men such as Nesselrode and Mentchikoff, and, below them on account of his 'overweening vanity', Gorchakov — 'men who were classically educated, who spoke well and fluently not only in French, but German also, and belonged to the cream of European civilisation.' Second, the generation contemporary with Tsar Nicholas who were 'usually limited in conversation to affairs of the court, theatres, promotions and military events.' Some were intellectually closer to the old guard, like Shuvalov — 'the keenest intellect with whom I had relations there.' The third generation had 'less courtesy, occasionally bad manners and as a rule stronger antipathy towards German and especially Prussian elements, than the two elder generations.' Foreign diplomats had to wear a noticeable livery and this was a 'judicious regulation of the police' that allowed diplomats, who normally would not wear uniform or orders, to escape 'unpleasantness and the resulting altercations which a civilian without an order, and who was not known as an eminent man, might easily experience' from 'the police and members of the higher society... In Napoleonic Paris I observed the same thing... Nevertheless within the circle of the court and of “society” perfect high tone still prevailed, and also in the homes of the aristocracy, especially as far as the ladies held the sway. But politeness of manners decreased considerably when one met younger men in places uncontrolled by the influence of the Court or of distinguished ladies.'

Gorchakov would sometimes show him confidential dispatches from his agents in Berlin, unopened, 'to coquet with his confidence' as Bismarck described it in his Memoirs. It, combined with later experiences, made him hostile to the tendency to include gossip and wit in official reports as he saw how such caused ripples of misunderstanding and bad blood. Ambassadors should not, he said, include 'all the foolish talk and spiteful things that arise at the ambassador's place of residence.' Gorchakov was friendly 'so long as he had the feeling of looking upon me as a younger friend' but these relations became untenable when Bismarck became a minister. 'Hinc irae... His benevolence turned to disfavour.'

The Russians had broken our cipher. This was easier because all embassies were obliged to employ Russian servants who would be hired by Russian authorities. In Vienna too there was constant skullduggery to acquire secret communications. 'I once had in my hands a secret Austrian official document and this sentence has remained in my memory: “Kaunitz, not being able to find out which of his four clerks had betrayed him, had them all four drowned in the Danube by means of a boat with a valve.”' He also recounted a conversation with the Russian ambassador in Berlin in 1853/4 in which the latter alluded to the possibility of kidnapping officials if they were sent to the Aegean.

He did not get on with the Prussian first secretary, Schlözer who referred to him as 'the Pasha' and regarded him as 'a man such as I have never encountered before, who knows no consideration for anyone, a brute, always snatching at dramatic coups, out to impress, a know-all without ever having seen it all... Bismarck is politics personified. Everything is fermenting within him, pressing to be activated and given form.'

At some point he went hunting and shot a bear, he kept two of the cubs in his house in St P and later donated them to Frankfurt zoo. Keudell wrote how the cubs wreaked havoc in the home.

Disraeli speech on Reform Bill: 'I have no apprehension myself that if you had manhood suffrage tomorrow the honest brave and good natured people of England would resort to pillage, incendiarism and massacre. Who expects that? ... Yet I have no doubt that ... our countrymen are subject to the same political laws that affect the condition of all other communities and nations. If you establish a democracy you must in due course reap the fruits of a democracy.' How? Great impatience at taxation combined with great increases in expenditure; 'wars entered into from passion ... peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained'; 'property less valuable ... freedom less complete.'

British government defeated on Russell's motion on the Reform Bill. Palmerston did not think Derby would dissolve Parliament if he lost the vote so rallied opposition. On 4 April Derby announced dissolution of Parliament (on 19th), an election, and in the Lords 'presented Russell's career as a sordid tale of selfish subterfuge', undermining one government after another for his own ends (Hawkins, p213). Disraeli thought they'd gain 40-60 seats.

Letter to Johanna: 'One cannot imagine how low the Austrians are here... the hatred is beyond measure... The entire Russian foreign policy has no other aim but to get even with Austria. Even the calm and gentle Emperor spits fire and rage...'

In London, Malmesbury learned that Piedmont had agreed to disarmament as a precondition of a Congress, as demanded by Austria, but the same day (19th) Austria sent an ultimatum to Sardinia-Piedmont demanding disarmament in three days on pain of Austrian military intervention. Austria's blunder set the stage for war. In London, there had been cross party agreement on the crisis but now it ruptured. Russell accused Derby of having disguised a pro-Austrian policy and liberals spoke out in support of Italian freedom.

In response to Austrian demands Wilhelm ordered the army onto war footing but held in its garrisons.

(OP) Buol sent an ultimatum to Sardinia. Austria declared war on 26th. (Steinberg: FJ decided for war on Piedmont on 27th.) Huge Austrian blunders, war ends July. During the Italian War Bismarck still hoped to influence policy in Berlin as he had tried at Frankfurt.

To wife: After a funeral he sat in church and talked with Gorchakov. 'In the black festooned church, after it emptied, I sat with Gorchakov on the black velvet pew with a covering of skulls and we 'politicked', that is, worked, not chatted. The preacher had cited the passing of all things in the psalm (grass, wind, dry) and we planned and plotted as if one would never die.' [As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. Psalm 103]

(Siemann) Austrian troops entered Piedmont. That day the French Ambassador in St Petersburg (the Duke of Montebello) talked to Bismarck who sent a telegraph to Berlin.

To sister, who had asked if he was reading the Kreuzzeitung: 'yes the advertisements, all foreign affairs I haven't read for weeks, for this total rubbish wouldn't even be of interest to a medic.'

To Alvensleben (OP p137): 'The current situation yet again holds the jackpot for us if we just let Austria's war with France really bite and then move south with all our armies carrying the border posts in our knapsacks and banging them in again either at the Lake of Constance or wherever the Protestant confession ceases to predominate.' Prussia could unite its two halves and rally Germany 'especially if the Prince Regent will do them the favour of rebaptising the kingdom of Prussia as the kingdom of Germany'. This was 'the safest play'. At the very least Prussia should either change its relationship to the Bund or 'release ourselves from it'. (EF says such advice 'couldn't be taken seriously but it seems to me it was meant seriously and could be taken seriously.)

The Times printed Tennyson's poem 'Riflemen Form!' People enlisted in the Volunteer Rifle Movement as fears of a French invasion spread. The London stock exchange panicked.

Bismarck to Schleinitz: 'I have brought away, as the result of my experience, from the eight years of my official life at Frankfurt, the conviction that the present arrangements of the Bund form for Prussia an oppressive and, in critical times, a perilous tie, without affording us in exchange the same equivalents which Austria derives from them, while she retains at the same time a much greater freedom of separate action. The two powers are not measured by the princes and governments of the smaller states with the same measure; the interpretation of the objects and laws of the Bund are modified according to the requirements of the Austrian policy.' Look at the organisation of the Bund, naval issues, Zollverein, laws on the press etc. 'Invariably we found ourselves confronted by the same compact majority, the same demand on Prussia's compliance.'

The German princes are with Austria in resisting the development of Prussia's power and influence. 'The completion of the present formation of the Bund, by placing Austria at its head, is the natural aim of the policy of the German princes and their ministers. This can only be achieved in their sense at the expense of Prussia, and is necessarily directed against her alone, as long as Prussia will not limit herself to the useful task of ensuring her allies, who have an equal interest and duty in the matter as herself, against too great a preponderance on the part of Austria, and to bear, with never-failing complacency and devotion to the wishes of the majority, the disproportion of her duties to her right in the Bund. This tendency of the policy of the middle States will reappear with the constancy of the magnet after every transitory oscillation, because it represents no arbitrary product of single circumstances or persons, but forms for the smaller states a natural and necessary result of the conditions of the Bund. We have no means of coming to a satisfactory and reliable arrangement with her within the circle of the present Diet treaties.'

Our only chance to change the dire Bund situation is in times of disruption and crisis like now — in normal times we can't make progress, in crises we're told it's the wrong time to raise disputes. 'For us, however, an opportunity, if we leave the present one unused, will perhaps not turn up again so soon and we must afterwards once more resignedly confine ourselves to the fact that in more orderly times the matter admits of no alteration.'

The smaller states are trying to drag Prussia into war using the Bund. They want us to 'stake our lives and property for the political wisdom and thirst for action of governments to whose existence our protection is indispensable' but they want us to accept 'theories of the rights of the Bund the recognition of which would put an end to all independence of Prussian policy'. 'I am going, perhaps, too far in expressing the view that we ought to seize upon every legitimate occasion which our allies offer us, to attain that revision of our mutual relations which Prussia needs that she may be able to live permanently in orderly relations with the smaller German states. I think we should readily take up the gauntlet, and should look upon it as no misfortune, but as an improving step of the crisis toward convalescence, were a majority in Frankfurt to arrive at a resolution in which we perceive an overstepping of its competency, an arbitrary alteration of the object for which the Bund exists, and a breach of the treaties in connection with the Bund. The more unequivocally such a violation comes to light the better. In Austria, France, Russia, we shall not easily find the conditions again so favourable for allowing us an improvement of our position in Germany, and our allies of the Bund are on the best road to afford us a perfectly just occasion for it, and without even our aiding their arrogance...

'I prefer the word “German” rather than “Prussian” to be written on our flag only after we are more closely and suitably united with our countrymen than previously; it will lose its charm when used as it is now in connection with the Bund... ... I see in our relationship to the Bund a Prussian infirmity that we shall sooner or later have to repair ferro et igni [iron and fire] unless we undergo a cure for it in good time and at a favourable season. If the Bund were simply abolished today without putting anything in its stead, I believe that by virtue of this negative acquisition better and more natural relations than heretofore would be formed between Prussia and her German neighbours.' (It's unclear in OP but EF makes clear these quotes are from the same letter.)

Rechberg, Bismarck's old opponent in Frankfurt, became Austrian foreign minister: a disciple of Metternich and supporter of Holy Alliance (Pflanze).

British general election. (Brown refers to the election as 'later in March', p428.) The Conservatives gained ~30 seats in a quiet election but not enough for a majority. In May Disraeli had tried to persuade Palmerston to join the Conservative government, with control of foreign policy and the chance to 'dictate the terms' of a Reform measure. Palmerston declined. Opinion supported Italy. Palmerston made it a feature of his election address. Malmesbury thought the French Embassy was secretly distributing cash to help liberal candidates. Derby was seen as pro-Austrian like the Queen. Disraeli was left cold by Italian nationalism but he could see opinion and pushed Derby to tack accordingly.

The day after going riding then returning home with a fur, Bismarck had 'rheumatism in all my limbs which gave me trouble for a long while'. When it came time for him to fetch his wife to St P, he had recovered except for a pain in the leg he had injured hunting in Sweden in 1857 (see above). He accepted advice from a doctor recommended by former Grand Duchess of Baden. He turned out to be a charlatan who put some sort of bandage on his leg which turned into a disaster, then tried to deal with the wound 'with some sort of metallic blade. The pain was unbearable and the result unsatisfactory... I realised the ignorance and unconscientiousness of my physician [who] with an apologetic smile [explained] it was a mistake of the chemist's.' The chemist and the quack blamed each other and hid their correspondence. 'I have been asked since whether this poisoning might have been done on purpose. For my part, I merely ascribe it to the ignorance and audacity of this medical swindler' who had been made director of all the children's hospitals in St P. This disaster badly damaged a vein in his leg.

Metternich died, 15 June very elaborate funeral full of symbolism stretching back to the pre-1815 days and the Holy Roman Empire. On his family's coat of arms was the motto, 'Strength in law'. In 1829 Metternich contemplated future historians analysing him. 'Unmoved by the errors of our time - errors which will always lead society to the abyss — we have had the satisfaction, in a time full of dangers, to serve the cause of peace and the welfare of nations, which never will be advanced by political revolutions. In the reports and lampoons of our epoch, a fixed significance has been attached to our name. We have not been able to recognise ourselves in these descriptions. It belongs to posterity alone to judge according to our deeds...' He hoped for a 'calmness and impartiality which are always wanting to those who have taken an active part in the events'. His ally Kübeck was more realistic: 'Alas, history is rarely more just in its judgements than the contemporary world which, after all, passes on the information to it. And even though the contemporaneous passions recede more into the background, and the causes and effects of action can be better placed in their context, the perspectives of the various parties continue to resonate from the present into the future for a long time, and posterity is no less susceptible to invectives, slander, and insinuations, and it is no less gullible than the contemporary world. The appeal to posterity is therefore little consolation for the men who are presently subjected to slander and a hope in vain for those who are celebrated. One's own conscience, this divine court, stands above both the contemporary times and posterity' (diary, 26/5/49).

Siemann argues many standard beliefs about him are wrong: he was not an absolutist, he was not all-powerful in Vienna, he did not create 'a proto police state', there was no 'Metternich system', he supported economic and social reform. Generally Metternich was very complimentary about the English constitution, a 'historically evolved constitutionalism' and was influenced by Burke as well as his trips to England where he watched Parliament.

Battle of Magenta.

That day he wrote to his wife about St P: 'With these short nights even the dawn brings no real coolness, but the night air is sheer balsam, and in the secretive dusk, which hovers over the water at midnight, I could ride and drive around for hours, if the rising light did not remind me of the next day and its cares and work and if sleep did not demand its tribute.'

Meeting of ~300 Liberals, Radicals, Whigs, Peelites with Palmerston and Russell at Willis's Rooms, seen as a successful reconciliation with each pledging to serve the other depending on who the Queen sent for. Blake (p406): 'That meeting may fairly be called 'a turning-point' in English political history. It is true that if all the historians who have used this expression are right, English history would be as full of turnings as the Hampton Court maze; but there are occasions when it is legitimate. The meeting marks the real beginning of that union of Whigs, Peelites and Liberals which became the Liberal party of the later nineteenth century. The experiment had already been tried under Aberdeen; and it had ended after a bare two years in bathos and discredit. No one could have been confident in the aftermath of that fiasco that the alliance could ever be put together again.' Again, an important force was extreme distrust of Disraeli, often described in terms like 'Jew adventurer' (Graham to Herbert).

Disraeli tried to preempt opposition votes by himself engineering a swift no confidence vote but his trick failed and there was a debate over 9-10 June with a vote in the early hours of the 11th which was narrowly lost. (Malmesbury published a Blue Book of diplomatic correspondence in the Lords in the first week of June to refute charges made by the liberals. But Disraeli never published it in the Commons! Many thought this could have made the difference in the confidence vote as the telegrams improved the government's reputation and showed many accusations had been false. Hawkins does not explain why Derby did not notice this and insist that Disraeli publish it. Disraeli had been dripping poison in Derby's ear about Malmesbury for a year and perhaps prioritised this vendetta. Hawkins, p229. Also Disraeli thought Malmesbury was being manipulated by officials and was thoroughly disastrous.)

Derby government fell, replaced by Palmerston. Victoria turned to Granville first but he could not form a government. She then turned to Palmerston. Palmerston wanted to give Clarendon the FO but Russell demanded it and got it. He first offered the Treasury to George Cornewall Lewis but Gladstone demanded it and got it. The main thing separating Gladstone and Palmerston now was personality and style. (Gladstone reflected that you'd have to be 'a very bad minister indeed' if you don't do ten times as much good in office than out of it.) He offered Cobden President of the Board of Trade but he declined given his hostility to Palmerston on foreign policy and told him, 'I believed you to be warlike, intermeddling, & quarrelsome, & that your policy was calculated to embroil us with foreign nations; — & at the same time I have expressed a general want of confidence in your domestic politics.' Disraeli thought the new government wouldn't last long.

During the election Palmerston had said Britain should stay neutral but he favoured Austria being pushed north of the Alps. British opinion was confused. They were anti-Austrian and anti-French, happy to see Austria pushed north but unhappy at Napoleon strengthening. (Cf. Greville end June.) Palmerston wanted Austria out of Italy and to reform itself as he thought a powerful Austria north of the Alps 'to be of the utmost importance for the general interests of Europe'. He therefore lamented the continued Austrian presence in Italy after the Treaty of Villafranca. As the year went on, he and Russell became more supportive of Piedmont viz Italy. Cf. January 1860.

Derby constantly referred to the unpatriotic behaviour of the liberals in pursuing party interest over the national interest during a crisis, scuppering moderate reform and encouraging dangerous radicalism. In July he said his strategy would be 'masterly inactivity' and Disraeli similarly wrote: 'We shall have to keep together a great party ... whose strength will really increase in proportion to their inaction. But a party does not like to be inert; and to combine repose with a high tone of feeling in the troops is difficult.'

There were six parliaments between 1841 and 1868. The only one where the Government commanded the support of Parliament at the beginning and end was Palmerston 1859-65, all other governments cracked up. 'Parliament then truly was what in legal theory it still is, a sovereign body to which Cabinets were really, not fictitiously, responsible, and which could make and unmake governments at will' (Blake). It was also dominated by the aristocracy. Cobden to a friend in 1858: 'During my experience the higher classes never stood so high in relative social and political rank compared with the other classes as at present. The middle classes have been content with the very crumbs from their table ... Half a dozen great families meet at Walmer and dispose of the rank and file of the [Liberal] party just as I do the lambs which I am now selling for your aldermen's table.'

(OP) Wilhelm, like FW during Crimea, could not arrive at a clear policy. He was sympathetic to Austria but opposed Buol's ultimatum. He was alarmed by Napoleon's attack and at the rage across Germany. He wished neither to ally with Austria nor exploit the situation. After Magenta, Wilhelm ordered mobilisation of six corps as a warning to Napoleon and proposed in London and St P 'armed mediation'. In Vienna he demanded the command of Bund contingents. The first troop trains were scheduled to depart 1 July, this was cancelled then restored.

(JS) Moltke called a meeting to discuss the failure of the Prussian mobilisation which led to a major reorganisation of the General Staff including a new railroad department. (But if army mobilised on 14 June this date seems likely to be wrong?)

Roon-Perthes: 'Our Prussian pride is headed for another deep humiliation. We have done too much for us now to do nothing ... and now we cannot do anything more because without England the risk would be greater than the reward. It is a horrible dilemma. That comes from too much trembling, timidity and hesitation.'

Battle of Solferino. Franco-Piedmontese army under Napoleon defeated Austria. (So many wounded it prompted founding of the Red Cross.) Evans: it was the last battle in world history in which the armies were commanded by their respective sovereigns.

OP: After Wilhelm's diplomacy post-Magenta, Russia threatened that she would not allow Prussia to join Austria and defeat France. Bismarck bitterly complained about 'pulling Austria's chestnuts out of the fire'. Bismarck pushed the Russian line hard and made no secret of his disagreement with his own government, news of which filtered back and Wilhelm considered a reprimand or recall.

To Johanna: 'I feel terribly homesick for you and everything ... lying here so alone... My thoughts have moved at the moment closer than ever to the possibility, when the occasion serves, of giving it all up. Who knows how long we shall live together in this world, and who knows what times we will see.'

He went to Berlin looking for medical help after the quack had botched his leg. While lying in a Berlin hotel he read in the newspapers of the plans for the Nationalverein (launched in September) and talked to Viktor von Unruh, an industrialist and leading liberal. They had known each other for years, disagreed but respected each other (in 1856 Bismarck had tried to protect him from persecution). Unruh recounted in his memoirs how Bismarck had told him that Prussia's goal must be 'to remove Austria from Germany proper' and expect opposition from the other German states, 'quite natural, since the individual states knew quite well that Austria could not absorb them whereas Prussia made them fear for their lives... Prussia is completely isolated... There is but one ally for Prussia if she knows how to win and handle them ... the German people!' Laughing at Unruh's astonishment he said, 'I am the same Junker as ten years ago ... but I would have no perception and no understanding if I could not recognise clearly how things really stand.'

Gall (p147) dates this to March just before Bismarck left Berlin.

But Wilhelm won't do it. In Memoirs, Bismarck blames Schleinitz ('devoted to the Austrian interest'), William's wife, and the press babble ('phrase-making') which always opposed action.

'There was no clear conception of the nature of the goal, the direction in which it was to be sought, or the means of attaining it.' Prussia nearly joined the war which would have got Prussia fighting against France and enmity from Russia. 'The Regent and his minister at that time believed in the truth of the saying: 'Il y a quelqu'un qui a plus d'esprit que Monsieur Talleyrand, c'est tout le monde.' Tout le monde, however, in point of fact takes too long about finding out what is right, and, as a rule, the moment when the knowledge might be useful is already gone by before tout le monde gets at the back of what ought really to have been done.' Memoirs, p310ff. In 2p311, he claims Schleinitz was fed information from officials which he used to attack Bismarck's position in the royal household, and was even in league with people in the pay of France. Later in the 1870s, Schleinitz was blamed by Bismarck for promoting the accusations against Bismarck in the Kreuzzeitung.

(Friedjung) Bismarck: 'We are not even acting as Austria's reserve, we are actually taking the war off her hands altogether. With the first shot on the Rhine, the German war alone will count, because Paris will be threatened. Austria will get a breathing space; will she use it to help us to improve our position in Germany? ... And if the war goes badly, the federal states will abandon us as ripe plums fall from a tree in a wind, and every prince on whom French troops are billeted will run for shelter to a revived Confederation of the Rhine.'

Wilhelm ordered five corps to the Rhine but the rolling stock had scattered amid the chaos and Moltke said it would take another 11 days to start large scale movements.Villafranca rendered it all moot. On 25 July Wilhelm ordered demobilisation. The chaos showed the need for serious reorganisation of the railways to serve the army. In July there were exercises with a new system that worked well. Moltke also started sending officers to France to evaluate its railways. (Showalter, p69ff)

Napoleon and FJ agree the Treaty of Villafranca.

Evans: Cavour had encouraged nationalist uprisings in central and northern Italy which forced out Austrian backed rulers in Bologna, Tuscany, Modena and Parma. Napoleon now feared Piedmont would be too successful. He made peace without consulting with Cavour and left Austria in possession of Venetia.

OP (p138): 'Prussia had antagonised all and gained nothing.' The new Cabinet in November had been welcomed across Germany. Many German nationalists were hopeful given Wilhelm's support for Radowitz in 1850. The 1859 war 'aroused the question of German unity from a decade of uneasy slumber'. Conservatives and liberal nationalists were disturbed by Napoleon's attack on a Bund member. Memories sparked of the first Napoleon's war in Italy as preface to expanding French borders and attacking Germany. The war exposed the weakness of the Bund again. Debates over big or small Germany: the strength of 'big' lay mainly in the south among farmers and rural nobles, small town burghers and politically active Catholics; the strength of 'small' lay mainly in Protestant Germany among the upper Mittelstand, especially businessmen, professionals and intellectuals.

Gall (p150): there had been no 'jackpot' that Bismarck had claimed; German opinion generally supported Austria and thought she was fighting France to protect Germany; since they made peace so fast when Prussia mobilised, it shows how little room for manoeuvre there really was; there was very little German support for Prussia exploiting the situation to advance a version of small German unification; Bismarck 'probably admitted as much to himself'.

Roon described the army reforms to Parliament.

By September Wilhelm, after a year of lobbying from Manteuffel et al, was sick of Bonin. He decided to bypass the Ministry and give Roon the job of drafting a reform bill.

Unruh wrote to Bismarck: Austria is hostile, we are waiting 'with great suspense' to see if Prussia will support us and mobilise energy in the national question, and that you become Foreign Minister. 'Now more than ever Prussia needs a clear, firm, bold policy. The bolder it is, the less risky it will be, relatively speaking.' Bismarck received the letter at Baden-Baden whence he had been summoned to talk to Wilhelm. He spoke to Unruh again at the end of September who told him about the launch of the Nationalverein and how Metz had called out to great applause, 'Rather the most severe Prussian military government than the misery of petty disunion'. Years later Unruh said he and Bismarck had discussed a 'temporary military despotism' (though it's murky what each of them meant by this!). (Gall dates the Unruh conversation to March 1859.)

Nationalverein founded in Frankfurt. Showalter: 'an elite body, not a mass movement' dominated by intellectual and commercial middle class. It reflected the view of middle class liberals that the Confederation could not meet the economic, political and cultural needs of the liberal movement. Its members were attracted to Prussia's tolerant Protestantism in contrast to Pius IX's ambitions. Its supporters wanted a military force that could defend against France. Liberals were ambivalent about the Prussian army — on one hand it was a force that could promote Germany, on the other it provoked fear.

OP: The connections between the Congress of German Economists (1858), the Nationalverein (1859) and Progressive Party (1861) were strong with many belonging to all three. The 'small' German leaders dominated it. It succeeded 'by virtue of the vagueness of its first platform in uniting moderates and democrats who had split in 1848-9' over the offer of the crown to FW. While there were inevitable differences its leaders were relatively moderate and willing to accept unification under a constitution preserving the authority of the Hohenzollerns. It was elite with a few thousand members led by Bennigsen, not a mass movement. Its membership fees were too high for workers to join. (The Nationalverein evaded the laws on political clubs by founding a national organisation without local branches, which had not been foreseen.)

Hamerow (p317ff): contra Bismarck's claims, it opposed both 'a violent revolution from below as well as a conquest from above', both 'the revolutionary party which wants to construct a new Germany out of a general overturn, ... and to the specifically Prussian party which would like to treat Germany like an artichoke to be consumed by old Prussia leaf by leaf.' It cheered the creation of the Progressive Party but it barred the masses from membership by charging 3 marks per year. Membership: 5k 1860, 15k 1861, 25k 1862, 23k 1863, 21k 1864, 11k 1865, 5k 1866. Hamerow: the growing patriotic events, displays, festivals etc were worrying to the old guard — e.g it was noted that Wilhelm hurried out of a music festival before the first notes of Des Deutschen Vaterland. But Prussia did not persecute it, Wilhelm thought that would only give it 'an increasing and dangerous importance', Vienna agreed.

To sister: 'I have almost gone mad from annoyance, hunger and too much business... The left leg is still weak, swells up when I walk on it, the nerves have yet to recover from the iodine poisoning, I sleep badly ... flat and embittered and I don't know why.'

Letter to Joanna from Warsaw: he was enjoying himself in Poland, talking with the two Kings, eating and drinking well, sleeping well, and happy.

Wilhelm & Alexander met in Breslau. Russia still looking for revenge against Austria over Crimea. Wilhelm won't join the Franco-Russian alliance but promised not to help Austria.

Disraeli to Derby: '[I]t is at this moment the fashion of the Court of France, and the example circulates in all circles, to speak disparagingly of England; that by not taking part in the Italian war, we have sunk into a second-rate Power'.

Conference in Württemberg of middle states to discuss Bund reform and ideas to force their views more on Austria and Prussia.

100th anniversary of Schiller's birth — festivals, parades, speeches. The year had seen revival of nationalism and anti-French sentiment.

In November his injured leg produced a blood clot that lodged in his lungs and his doctors expected it to be fatal. It was serious enough that he settled his will and 'anticipated my end with that calmness which is induced by unendurable pain' (Memoirs, p260). OP: over winter he stayed at von Below's to recover. (OP mentions that Below thought his illness mainly psychological but does not mention the blood clot and near death.) Slowly recovered and in March 1860 he was well enough to travel to Berlin where he stayed until May.

Bonin's resistance to the decision of September had infuriated Wilhelm. He sent a note criticising Bonin's arguments and on 29 November Bonin resigned and was replaced by Roon. Roon made clear to Wilhelm he did not agree with 'all this constitutional business' but neither was he a Gerlach-like reactionary (GC, p143). JS: Roon was appointed on 29th but the order was dated 5/12. Showalter: Bonin resigned on 27 November.

Palmerston-Clarendon: 'Governments and nations are less influenced by resentment for former antagonism or by gratitude for former services than by considerations of present or prospective interest.'

Vienna: under pressure of the year's disasters, made significant shifts towards greater economic freedom including freedom of enterprise throughout Habsburg possessions and ending corporative control of production. Hamerow (p121): after this 'the entire system of corporative industrial regulation in central Europe began to crumble.' Nassau followed 1860, Saxony 1861, Württemberg and Baden in 1862, Frankfurt 1864. By the middle of the decade 16 states and 34 million people in the German Confederation had come under the system of industrial freedom. This was a disaster for the artisan masses. Cf. August 1860.