Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz (19 page)

Already Vicky knew she was having problems with her children. Like Queen Victoria she was candid to the point of bluntness about them, partly from a desire to encourage them to strive for greater things, partly to discourage vanity. Nevertheless she created a deeper bond with the five younger children, those whom she was allowed to nurse herself. Unhappily the three elder ones seemed to sense their mother’s disappointment, or her continual fault-finding where they were concerned, and grew up to resent her indulgent attitude towards their smaller siblings. As their father was often absent, she became the dominant influence in their formative years. In her letters to her mother Charlotte was criticized as ‘stupid and backward’, while Henry was ‘slow and plodding’. Though Queen Victoria was no stranger to the art of finding or magnifying faults in most of her own children, she counselled patience, assuring Vicky they would surely turn out far better than she feared.

Vicky always insisted on an active role in helping to prepare them for their future life and education. In 1866 she asked Queen Victoria for copies of memoranda written by her father and Baron Stockmar to use in setting up a similar educational guide to that used at Buckingham Palace. She felt that Charlotte’s French governess was exceeding her station; ‘I cannot and will not abandon all right of interfering with the children’s education and must reserve to myself to judge of what they are to learn & who is to teach them.’
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In September 1869 Fritz was chosen to represent Prussia at the opening of the Suez canal. Emperor Franz Josef, Emperor Napoleon and Empress Eugenie would be there as well, and for Bismarck it was a good way of disguising any future intentions he might have entertained with a view to threatening to declare war on France. Emperor Franz Josef, he knew, had been on Fritz’s conscience since the war of 1866, and in the event of a Franco-German conflict, it would suit his purposes for Habsburg and Hohenzollern to have an informal reconciliation. Both men got on very well together, and the Austrian Emperor knew better than to bear the Crown Prince any malice for merely discharging his duty. Another acquaintance of Fritz during his time in north Africa, according to rumour, was a Spanish courtesan, Dolores Cada. It was said that evidence of syphilitic infection soon appeared and was discreetly treated by the Khedive’s physician.
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Nevertheless this skeleton in the cupboard would return to haunt him some eighteen years later.
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Meanwhile Vicky took a holiday from Berlin and stayed in Cannes, taking Willy and Henry. They were joined by her sister Alice, at twenty-six already prone to chronic rheumatism and neuralgia, and they spent a pleasant few weeks in each others’ company. Always self-deprecating about her personal appearance, Vicky had convinced herself – or so her letters to Queen Victoria suggested – that she was the ugly one and her sad-faced, hollowcheeked sister was much the prettier. This may have been a way of trying to get Alice back into the Queen’s good books, for both sisters had incurred her wrath by their ‘awful and disgusting’ preference for nursing their babies themselves instead of handing them over to wet-nurses. Moreover Alice had been tactless or brave enough to speak out against Helena’s marriage to Christian, as she thought ‘Lenchen’ was being sacrificed to the selfish whims of their mother, adamant on keeping at least one married daughter nearby at her constant beck and call. Vicky was mildly jealous of King Wilhelm’s obvious preference for Alice, convinced her father-inlaw thought she was ugly and a bore in comparison. The King’s obvious preference may have been born from a desire to irritate Queen Augusta, who called Alice an atheist for daring to question the infallibility of the Bible and showing an interest in the teachings of free-thinkers who challenged the issue.

Ever since the treaty of Prague Vicky and Fritz had lived in continual dread of a third war; they suspected Bismarck was biding his time, allowing the North German Confederation and its mutual alliance to mature before drawing the sword against France. A pretext was not long in coming. In 1868 the childless Queen Isabella of Spain had abdicated, and the Prime Minister Marshal Prim recommended Leopold, a younger son of Prince Hohenzollern, as her successor. After the Prince discussed his son’s candidature with a few friends, including Fritz, he wanted nothing to do with such a potentially unstable throne in a country of which they knew nothing. Negotiations between the Spanish and Prussian governments had remained secret, and on Leopold’s refusal in April 1870 Fritz thought the affair was closed.

He reckoned without Bismarck, who saw how to pick a quarrel with France through skilful manipulation of the matter. To Napoleon and his advisers, the idea of a Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne would be blatant encirclement. Prussia had demonstrated her military prowess twice in the past six years, and Prince Leopold’s brother Karl had been elected Prince of Roumania in 1866. Like Fritz, King Wilhelm initially opposed the candidature for a similar reason; it did not suit the dignity of his family to accept a throne after the previous monarch had been deposed.

Fritz and Vicky were at Potsdam, where Vicky had given birth to a third daughter Sophie, on 14 June, when they heard that Leopold had accepted the throne after all. They were not surprised to hear that negotiations had been reopened several days previously; the King and his statesman had let the news become public knowledge without bothering to inform their Crown Prince. Their shock was nothing to that of the government in Paris, who demanded that Leopold must renounce the throne again. Wearily Fritz told Vicky that this could only end in mobilization; Vicky told him not to give up hope so easily; he should go and face the King, and demand to be kept informed. When he went to Berlin he found Bismarck, who pretended to take Fritz into his confidence, saying he hoped the business could be settled amicably. Fritz did not share Vicky’s acute perception; Bismarck was mild and ostensibly communicative when matters were playing into his hands and his schemes seemed to be working, hysterical if they were not. If Vicky had been present she would have known better than to take him at face value, but Fritz was deceived and returned happily to the Neue Palais. The next thing he heard was what he had hoped for; Leopold had withdrawn his acceptance again. Fritz was confident that this was the end of it but Vicky, suffering from post-natal depression and taught by bitter experience not to be too optimistic, thought otherwise. She dreaded the prospect of France, confident of military superiority, making capital from the issue by declaring war; like Fritz she thought Prussia was outnumbered in terms of troops and not ready to fight.

Not for some time did Fritz realize that he had been tricked into believing that Bismarck did not want war. His presence at Berlin would have been a sign that he was indulging in subterfuge to spark off the war for which he was waiting. That he was at Varzin, supervising the autumn harvest and entertaining guests, meant that either he had laid the snare and was waiting for France to walk into it, or the air was clear and everyone could look forward to peace after all. Fritz was one of the many who believed the latter.

Against his better judgment, Napoleon and his government sent the King a telegram demanding that Leopold’s candidature for the Spanish throne should not be renewed. From Ems Wilhelm dictated a politely-worded message that he could give no guarantee one way or the other. Bismarck received it for approval while dining with Roon and Moltke, and thought it too conciliatory. Setting to work with his pen he deleted about two-thirds of it; what was left read as an abrupt snub. On receiving this, the famous ‘Ems telegram’, the French government felt grossly insulted; and on 15 July France declared war. So well had Bismarck played his role that Fritz and Vicky were not alone in believing Napoleon to be the aggressor.

When Fritz called on Bismarck a couple of days later, the latter told him that there was no way of avoiding war; Prussian honour was at stake. When the King, reluctant for a full-scale campaign against France, talked at the war council of partial mobilization, he persuaded his father that this would not be enough. After the meeting he walked out gravely to the crowds assembled around the station at Wildpark, and publicly announced the result to an enthusiastic reception. Three days later, he noted in his diary: ‘General enthusiasm: Germany rises like one man, and will restore its unity.’
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Fritz had faith in Prussia’s ability to organize her soldiers to advantage in battle, but Vicky believed the odds were fearfully against them, and wondered how many of the women would be mourning the loss of a husband or son by Christmas. Maybe England would come to the rescue, but much as Queen Victoria appreciated her German family connections, she still had a corner in her heart for Napoleon and Eugenie. Moreover, the Prussia of the 1850s that Prince Albert had seen as the way towards an united liberal Germany had been replaced by a sabre-rattling kingdom in which liberalism was no longer the dominant force. While France was the apparent aggressor, Lord Loftus and Lord Bloomfield, present and former British ministers in Berlin, had warned Lord Clarendon at the Foreign Office of Bismarck’s lack of scruples in his pursuit of German unity, and that it would be all too tempting to lay blame on the French.

Fritz and Vicky hoped that Britain might send troops to fight alongside Germany against France. The rest of the family, wrote Vicky, felt that England ‘would have had it in her power to prevent this awful war, had she in concert with Russia, Austria and Italy, declared she would take arms against the aggressor’.
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She was concerned lest public opinion in Germany would criticize her as England, it was said, had sided with the French against them and had ‘interpreted her neutrality to the exclusive benefit of France’. It would be glorious, she wrote to Queen Victoria, if England helped them to victory ‘and if our nations stood once more as in the greatest days of old, side by side in the field of honour.’ While she admitted that Emperor Napoleon was ‘not the scourge of Europe his uncle was’, that she knew he would rather be at peace, and that she had strong personal regard for him and Eugenie, who had always shown them kindness, ‘one must really admit that they have behaved ill in every way’.
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On Sunday 24 July Sophie was christened in the Friedenskirche. What should have been a happy occasion was overshadowed by ‘anxious faces and tearful eyes, and a gloom and foreshadowing of all the misery in store’.
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The men in their uniforms and high boots were an uncomfortable reminder of the battlefields they would soon witness, and the King trembled so much that he had to ask the stony-faced Queen Augusta to hold their grandchild. Fritz had been given command of the Bavarian and Württemberg troops, and asked the respective Kings to stand as godparents.

On the Monday husband and wife took Communion together in the chapel, and early next morning Fritz took his leave. Having agreed with Vicky that they would spare each other a formal parting, he left a farewell note. He was in command of the Third Army, the others being under General von Steinmetz and Prince Friedrich Karl, with the King in supreme command, and General von Blumenthal his Chief of Staff. On 30 July he established his first headquarters at Speyer, about a hundred miles from the French border.

Within a week they had reached France, and won victories at Weissenberg and Wörth. At headquarters after the second battle he poured out his heart to his friend Gustav Freytag, who had accompanied him as an official chronicler of the campaign. He detested ‘this butchery’, had ‘never longed for war laurels, and would willingly have left such fame to others without envying them.’
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Thankfully the butchery was to be of short duration. At the end of August the German forces won a decisive battle at Sedan, near the frontier of neutral Belgium. Emperor Napoleon and his commanders surrendered on 1 September and three days later a republic was proclaimed in Paris, but the new French leaders vowed to fight until the Germans were defeated.

Contrary to general expectations, the victor had been determined within one month of fighting, but Fritz’s sense of triumph was shortlived. Like Vicky, he believed in the superiority of the hardworking Prussians to the licentious French, but he could not forget how often he had enjoyed French hospitality at its finest. Soon after the surrender he talked privately with Napoleon, and learnt that he had never wanted war in the first place; contrary to popular belief he was not the real aggressor. It had never occurred to Fritz that declaration of hostilities had been provoked by Bismarck’s trickery. Eager to ensure that the former sovereign was treated well, he appealed to King Wilhelm to ask him to hand over his sword in private, and let him retire to the late King’s castle at Bellevue, promising him that he could join his wife and son in England after the war.

In Berlin and Windsor, reaction was less charitable. Carried away by Prussian success, Vicky’s expressions of regret for Emperor Napoleon, who ‘brought his fall upon himself’, were tempered with uncharacteristically priggish judgments. ‘May we all learn what frivolity, conceit and immorality lead to!’
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Queen Victoria called the Emperor’s fall a ‘judgment from heaven’ and retribution on a guilty government and vainglorious nation, ‘the fulfilment of beloved Papa’s most earnest wishes!’
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Vicky was pleased that the Prussian character was ‘now appreciated and seen in its true light, its superiority acknowledged with pleasure and pride’, and regretted the harm it had done to Bertie, Affie, ‘and to the young and brilliant aristocracy of London!’
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Vicky and her children had left Berlin for Homburg near the French border, where barracks had been put at her disposal to organize a military hospital. Visiting the hospital every day, she was a model of efficiency, insisting that there was more to medical care than covering the wounded with filthy rags to keep them warm; the rags were to be burnt, wounds were to be properly dressed, walls and floors of the wards were to be scrubbed thoroughly with disinfectant. Wounded German and French soldiers were resigned to their fate as they were brought in to die on the floors of makeshift huts. Her concern for their plight deeply touched them as they saw that here was somebody who genuinely cared for their condition and was prepared to do something about it, and they clung to her hands and skirts as she went past, mouthing words of gratitude that made it hard for her not to give way to tears in front of them.