Bismarck: A Life by Jonathan Steinberg

Bismarck: A Life by Jonathan Steinberg

Author:Jonathan Steinberg
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Autobiography, History
ISBN: 9780199782529
Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr
Published: 2011-04-06T20:11:49+00:00


On 20 April Prince Karl Anton and Prince Leopold let Madrid know that they were no longer interested. On 13 May Bismarck wrote to Delbrück to express his rage and frustration:

The Spanish affair has taken a miserable turn. The undoubted reasons of state have been subordinated to princely private interests and ultramontane, feminine interests. My annoyance about all this has heavily burdened my nerves for weeks.90

On 21 May Bismarck returned to Berlin and on the 28th told Prince Karl Anton that he had finally changed the King’s mind. On 8 June he withdrew again to Varzin to let the royal family negotiate the candidacy without him so that as usual he could shift the blame for whatever went wrong onto princely intrigues. On 19 June Prince Leopold finally sent his acceptance letter to Madrid, which was made public on 2 July. On 5 July the new British Foreign Secretary, Lord Granville, paid his first visit to his new department where the long-serving and experienced Permanent Under-Secretary Edmund Hammond told him that ‘he had never during his long experience known so great a lull’.91 At 12.10 the same day the British Ambassador Layard sent a telegram in which he reported that through an indiscretion he had got news of the acceptance of the Crown of Spain by Prince Leopold.92 The following day, the new French Foreign Secretary, the Duc de Gramont, announced to the French Chamber of Deputies that the Hohenzollern candidacy for the Spanish throne constituted a serious attempt to change the European Balance of Power to the detriment of the French Empire. The honour and interests of France had been severely injured. He hinted that France would regard it as grounds for war.93 Later that day, 6 July 1870, the Prussian Ambassador in Paris, Karl Freiherr von Werther (1808–92) arrived at Bad Ems, where the royal family were taking the water of the Lahn, and met Alfred Waldersee, the military attaché in Paris, who as a royal General Adjutant had joined the King there. He told Waldersee in great excitement that

‘the devil is loose in Paris. It looks like war.’ When yesterday morning he had gone to Gramont to take leave for the holidays, he found him in a very excited mood. A telegram from Madrid said that Prince Leopold Hohenzollern was supposed to be presented to the Cortes as successor to the vacant throne. Gramont was beside himself. He had complained of lack of consideration and deceit on our part and said straight out, the thing was impossible. France could never concede that, the Ministry would be questioned in the chamber. Werther was to an extent in a difficult situation because he had not heard a word about the whole business. He could only take evasive action. Luckily for him that he had previously planned this journey to Ems. I thought he ought not to have gone. The King received him almost at once after his arrival in a long audience. It is really uncomfortable that Bismarck is in Varzin.



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