Preliminary Notes

At the start there is a section on some of Tolstoy’s ‘historical forces’ — institutions, ideas, technologies, material forces and so on. I think it’s useful to consider this at the start of the story.

There’s some notes from Pflanze’s first volume on some ideas in Germany at the time.

There’s a brief sketch of his childhood and character.

You can skip all preliminaries and go straight to 1815. Or skip the whole backstory and go straight to summer 1862 as Bismarck holidayed in the south of France with the beautiful Catherine Orlov as he awaited Roon’s fateful message from Berlin.

Here and there I pause and consider the situation: e.g at the start of 1848 on the revolutions; at the end of 1863, a stocktake on the European chessboard and what Bismarck was really thinking about the infamous Schleswig-Holstein crisis, which he regarded as probably his finest diplomatic achievement because he was relatively weak at this early point in his career and the crisis was incredibly intricate; at the end of 1866, on the new constitution for the North German Confederation. Here and there I add my perspective on contemporaries’ or historians’ views on what was going on.

Some of the things I’ve put in here are just interesting, not particularly important, but convey a sense of how people thought and felt at the time. I’ve put in publication of some books, art etc just because it’s interesting to keep overall context in mind.

I’ve put some dates, quotes, events in bold. There’s not great logic to this. Sometimes it’s just what seems particularly interesting. It’s so complex I think it’s useful to have some signposts for critical events, thoughts and so on.

I’ve put in some things that will seem irrelevant but my thinking is: for someone trying to track other stories in this period, what seems irrelevant may be a useful detail or a clue that something they are reading may have an error.

I’ve put in quite a lot of British politics that isn’t necessary to follow just the Bismarck story. Partly it’s because in the background a question I keep in mind is: how do British elites track what’s important, track dangers, how (and how much) do they think about these things, how much are they focused on other domestic or imperial concerns, how much is the focus on Parliament and media?

This is partly because I’ve a longer range interest in how British elites watched and dealt with Germany from its mostly-irrelevance pre-1848 through the Bismarck transformation to World War II. It’s interesting to note at some points how history was turning in central Europe but in Westminster the focus was on the internal party game, personal rivalries, or a now-forgotten crisis on the other side of the world. It’s also interesting how much the Westminster game was influenced by perceptions of ‘public opinion’ in an age pre-polling. It’s important to keep all these things in mind to keep a good sense of the time. Bismarck himself noted when he visited here in 1862, just before taking power in Prussia, how our elites were much more interested and expert in Asian affairs than Prussian/German. Part of my interest in Bismarck is: how should a state today organise its thinking about the most profound dangers, so what can we learn from how Bismarck operated and how Britain sensed and considered and adapted to him?

I end this document in August 1867. It feels a natural break. The war with Austria is over, the new constitution is established, it’s been discussed in and forced through the new Reichstag, and the diplomatic crisis over Luxembourg, prompted by Napoleon realising Bismarck had scammed him in 1866, has fizzled out. When the players return in September 1867, it feels like a distinct phase since he took power in September 1862 is over and a new phase, ending in 1871, has begun.

The point of this chronology is as a tool to a) help people understand the past, present and future better and b) help limit the spread of errors in history books. So PLEASE note errors you spot and leave them in comments on my blog, from typos to wrong dates to duff quotes — anything. Hopefully someone with good technical skills has an idea about the best format for it on the internet so people can play with versions and it becomes more useful.

Some abbreviations:

OP = Pflanze’s 3 volume biography, by far the best and deepest.

JS = Steinberg’s biography. Kissinger calls it the best but he’s wrong, it has many errors but also lots of interesting material unavailable in other English accounts.

LG = Lothar Gall biography.

KL = Katharine Lerman biography.

EF = Edgar Feuchtwanger biography.

Hawkins = The Forgotten Prime Minister:The 14th Earl of Derby:Volume II

Brown = Palmerston: A Biography

Mosse = The European Powers and the German Question. Mosse’s book is very useful and has a lot of stuff I have not seen in any other English-language book. It can be a bit patchy — it has lots of welcome detail then it suddenly skips a few weeks or even months for no obvious reason. E.g it goes into a lot of detail, rightly, over Schleswig Holstein, then skips over autumn 1864 to the end of 1865 very quickly.

Evans = The Pursuit of Power: Europe, 1815-1914, Richard Evans. Evans strongly opposes me/Brexit politically and I strongly disagree with him about much of current affairs but I try to be objective and separate disagreements and this book is very good! Bismarck doesn’t feature much but it’s a great overall consideration of the 1815-1914 period.

GC = The Prussian Army, Gordon Craig. Someone should do an update of this valuable book given the extra sources we’ve discovered since.

WAF = The Mission of Vincent Benedetti to Berlin 1864-1870, Willard Allen Fletcher. A specialist detailed look at the French Ambassador in Berlin. Benedetti was involved in some famous stories. E.g after a discussion he allowed Bismarck to keep a draft of a deal which Bismarck kept then leaked at a crucial moment to the British media to nudge Britain towards neutrality in 1870.

Stern = Gold and Iron: Bismark, Bleichroder, and the Building of the German Empire, Fitz Stern

I’ve used ‘Clark’ foolishly and as I finish I realise it sometimes refers to Christopher Clark’s recent book on 1848, sometimes to his book on Prussia, and sometimes to an old book on Franz Joseph and Bismarck (by a different Clark) which is essential reading for the serious sleuth. Most books focus on Prussia but this focuses on Austria and provides all sorts of fascinating material you need to understand to make sense of the story. ‘Clark’ from 1862-6 probably refers to the book on Franz Joseph. Needs fixing but I can’t face it now.

Some of these notes were done 20 years ago and were pasted from other documents then forgotten about as I had a job for a year or two. Sometimes as I’ve proofread I’ve spotted that things from that long ago have been mangled and quotation marks have vanished. It’s possible that things that seem like they’re from me are pasted from elsewhere, either contemporaries or historians. There will be other errors. Often five or six different books give five or six different versions of key dates or quotes and I’ve chosen the one that seems to fit best. I cannot document all such decisions. In 2024 I will look at fine-tuning a LLM on some version of this document and a large corpus of original material (like diaries and original documents) and try running it through one of the new AI-plagiarism-tools.

The introduction to this chronology is on my blog.

14 December 2023