Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz (15 page)

Yet he continued to try and convince his father that Bismarck and his unconstitutional policies were a liability to the monarchy, insisting that all constitutional conflict could be ended if Bismarck resigned and the King accepted the two-year service term. Angered at his son’s persistence, the King told him he would obtain his military reforms through regular dissolutions of parliament if necessary until he had secured ‘obedience’. Fritz also spoke to Bismarck, who shocked him by saying that a constitutional regime was ‘untenable’ in Prussia. Asked why he still bothered with the constitution at all, Bismarck said he would observe existing laws as long as he reasonably could.

The dilemma involved Vicky in much soul-searching with regard to her status in Prussia. She found it ‘very disagreeable’ to be seen by others as meddling and intriguing in politics, which she knew was not ‘a ladies’ profession’ in Germany any more than it was in England. How easy it would be, she knew, to choose a quiet life and live in peace with everybody, whose affection she would gain ‘if I sought it by having no opinion of my own’; but she would not be ‘a free-born Englishwoman’ and her mother’s child if she took the simpler option. It was still impossible for her to break free of her inheritance and the conviction that she had been sent to Prussia with a mission. She took heart from the fact that the aristocracy, who so disliked Queen Augusta, were at least still civil to her, ‘though they looked upon me with jealousy as a stranger and as an Englishwoman,’ and with her youthful optimism acknowledged that they saw that she was full of goodwill and wanted nothing more than to be friends with them.
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Her optimism and good faith were to be sorely tested in the years ahead.

Fritz had been ordered to join his father at Gastein, where discussions were taking place with Emperor Franz Josef about the latter’s suggestion of calling a conference of reigning German princes for the settlement of German affairs at Frankfurt. Efforts were being made to reach a compromise between Austria and Prussia, both struggling for supreme power in the future of the German Confederation. The King considered it his duty but his Minister wanted to prevent him, asking him bluntly if Austria was going to dictate to Prussia. Bismarck pleaded, cajoled, raged at his master, and eventually got his way with the excuse that Prussia’s invitation had arrived so late that it was an insult. Fritz would also have welcomed Prussian participation at Frankfurt, knowing that the question of rivalry in the Confederation between his country and Austria could only be solved by either such a meeting, or armed conflict.

Despite King Wilhelm’s absence the conference opened on 17 August, and Fritz felt that the honour of his family and state had been insulted; the proceedings had no right to open without Prussian participation. To Vicky such matters of personal pride were less important than the question of peaceful German co-existence, and she saw a chance of salvaging the situation in Queen Victoria’s visit to Coburg to see the widow of Baron Stockmar. Though Fritz was at one with Bismarck in believing that Prussia ought to wrest the leadership of the German Confederation from Austria, and that unification should precede liberalization (unlike Vicky and the Prince Consort), he thought it was only right that his father should make every effort to co-operate with Austria. He and Vicky accepted the Queen’s offer to try and persuade the King to go to Frankfurt. When Wilhelm paid her a courtesy call at the end of August, after Fritz and Vicky had returned home, she told him she favoured a rapprochement between Prussia and Austria. Primed carefully by Bismarck, the King told her that the Viennese ministry was out to ruin Prussia, and that Emperor Franz Josef was bent on increasing the influence of the Catholic church; as the two leading Protestant countries of Europe, Britain and Prussia should combine to restrain Austria. Realizing that his new Minister-President’s influence made further argument useless, the Queen broke off the discussion. Without Wilhelm the Frankfurt conference achieved nothing.

After the cabinet voted to dissolve parliament on 2 September, Fritz asked his father whether he supported Bismarck’s views on the future of government in Prussia, and reported to Vicky that the King believed there would be no more constitutions in twenty years’ time. On asking him what would replace constitutions, the King said he did not know as he would probably not live long enough to find out, adding that the King of Prussia was never intended to be a weak figurehead in the face of a more powerful parliament. ‘When I asked him how often he intended to dissolve parliament, he replied that dissolutions would continue until it became obedient, or until barricades were raised in the streets, or until he ascended the scaffold.’
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It confirmed his son’s worst fears; he was now positive his father’s direction would lead to revolution, civil war, and the downfall of the monarchy.

The King’s threat to suspend the constitution was forcing Fritz into a hostile stance towards the government and ministry. When he asked for permission to abstain from crown council meetings, indicating his intent to embark on a policy of passive resistance to the administration, the King refused, declaring he needed his son’s support more than ever, and that refusal to attend crown council meetings indicated that he was under the influence of the King’s enemies. The conversation ended with King William making a hollow threat to abdicate ‘and you can see what you will do to Prussia with your ideas.’
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Fritz had more to say on the subject. Encouraged by Vicky, the British diplomat Robert Morier, and the privy counsellor in the ministry of justice, Heinrich von Friedberg, he wrote to the King that he would create difficulties in crown council meetings if forced to attend. The King passed his son’s letter to Bismarck, who agreed that the Crown Prince’s behaviour was the result of the influence of his liberal associates. Fritz had written that he could no longer consider himself a part of the ministry or an adviser to the king, in view of the government’s unconstitutional actions.

Fritz wrote that same day to Bismarck telling him that he had given expression to his ‘serious misgivings for the future’, and that His Majesty knew he was ‘a decided opponent of the Ministry’. Bismarck replied that he could ‘only hope that your Royal Highness will one day find servants as faithful as I am to your father. I do not intend to be of the number.’
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A few days later Fritz agreed to continue attending council sessions, on condition that he could express his opinions in writing to his father. Such a strategy was not without risk. Vicky learned that the King believed Fritz was expressing opinions inculcated in him by others, from whose adverse influences he should be extricated by any means possible. Meanwhile Baron Stockmar was warning Fritz that high-ranking members of the military élite still harboured the possibility of having him declared officially unfit to rule, and hoped to remove him and his line from the succession in favour of the more ideologically sound Prince Friedrich Karl and family.

This continual unpleasantness with his father made Fritz thankful for his happy home life, and he was never happier than when with Vicky and the children. Yet the continual treatment for Willy’s left arm was a sore trial for the family. They agreed to electrical stimulus to try and shock the deformed muscles into movement, and to strapping his neck and shoulders into a cage-like contraption for an hour a day to correct the sideways tilt of the head, but the results were negligible. As one of the most maternal of women, Vicky was always distressed to see her eldest child being treated thus, and it was hard for her not to feel some sense of revulsion or even guilt at his deformity, especially when she looked at other children the same age with perfectly formed limbs. Despite his tantrums she and Fritz found him a lovable child, while Ditta and Henry were very quiet and shy with strangers, but in the security of their domestic circle they were cheerful and affectionate.

Vicky was equally happy in this domestic circle, especially as she never felt confident in the company of most of her in-laws, aware that they regarded her as a creature from another species. By the summer of 1863 she knew that the ladies of the Berlin court thought it ‘a pity their future King had married one so plain and so unornamental for society.’
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Her skin flushed red in the intense heat of the Berlin ballrooms, and she felt ill at ease at balls and social functions, where it was an effort to keep her eyes open through fatigue. Like her father she had always loved getting up early and going to bed at a sensible hour, and she found it difficult to stay awake until the small hours.

After autumn manoeuvres, the family left Potsdam at the end of September for a few weeks at Balmoral. Vicky was much amused at the sight of Fritz wearing the kilt, or a ‘little skirt’.
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Bertie invited them to Sandringham for his birthday celebrations on 9 November, and they arrived in Norfolk a few days in advance, having lingered on the journey south in order to compare the provincial art galleries with those in Germany. But on 6 November Fritz was summoned home for the opening of Parliament, due to take place three days later. He returned for the ceremony, and the King gave him permission not to continue attending council meetings on condition that he avoided any more opposition. Afterwards he travelled back to England, and on the journey he was told that King Frederik VII of Denmark had just died.

The problem of Schleswig-Holstein, both duchies of the German Confederation, had given rise to Palmerston’s immortal quip that only three people had ever understood all the issues: the Prince Consort, now dead, a German professor, who had since gone mad, and he himself, who had regrettably forgotten all about it. On the accession of Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg to the Danish throne as King Christian IX, both duchies demanded their own government. Fritz, Augusta, and Queen Victoria all supported the claims of Duke Friedrich of Schleswig-Holstein (‘Fritz Holstein’), married to the Queen’s niece Adelaide of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. With the support of several other German states he issued a proclamation announcing that he had assumed government of both on the death of King Frederik. Denmark, on the other hand, intended to continue governing them itself.

Everyone was greatly preoccupied with the problem when Fritz rejoined Vicky and the children at Windsor. By the time Bertie and Alix arrived a few days later the family had foreseen trouble, for, as King Christian’s eldest daughter Alix defiantly declared, ‘the duchies belong to Papa’. They came into collision with Vicky and Fritz, and also with Fritz Holstein’s mother-in-law Feodora, who was also staying at Windsor. On 18 November at breakfast there was a sharp difference of opinion between Fritz and the Queen. He argued that Britain had done Prussia a disservice by agreeing to the terms of the London Protocol of 1852, and that despite her German sympathies the Queen was too dependent on the will of her ministers.
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In her distress she poured out her heart to King Leopold, complaining that Fritz was ‘very violent’, that no respect was paid to her opinions now, and that it ‘makes visits like Fritz and Vicky’s
very painful
and
trying
.’
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The King advised her that she should forbid any further mention of the matter in her presence. It was the most unpleasant visit Fritz and Vicky had yet paid to Britain, not just because of the family atmosphere but also as they feared war on a scale considerably beyond the family rows at Windsor and Sandringham. They knew Bismarck had no sympathy with the liberal Fritz Holstein, and characteristically the Minister-President kept silent to all but a few close associates. He intended to take the duchies for Prussia, which he admitted had no claim, but their amalgamation would give Prussia added prestige.

Though Fritz shared Bismarck’s goal of a united Germany, with Prussia as leader, as a friend of Fritz Holstein from university days he would have been glad to see him assume undisputed rule of the territories. At the same time he had every understanding of Denmark’s plight. As he had expected, Bismarck gave him no prior warning of events until the last minute; on 16 January 1864, with Austria’s approval, he sent King Christian an ultimatum to evacuate and renounce all claim to the duchies within twenty-four hours. Opinion in the Diet of the German Confederation was almost as hostile to Prussia as it was in England, for Bismarck had acted without consulting the other states apart from Austria. He did not trust Fritz as he believed that, if the latter was told in advance, the news would be betrayed to Queen Victoria. ‘It is hard that a frontier line should also be the line of demarcation between the interests of mother and daughter,’ he had written to the King, ‘but to forget the fact is always perilous to the state.’
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Prussia’s future position as leader of the German states depended on subduing Austria, a policy which required Russian support, and Bismarck was eager to weaken links between Prussia and Britain’s rival, Russia. One way to achieve this was to persist in his insinuations to the King of filial disloyalty on the part of the Crown Prince, the result being that from this time onwards there was an irrevocable decline in relations between the King on one hand and his son and daughter-in-law on the other. Henceforth, the King told Fritz, he would no longer be permitted to see government dispatches.

The King and Bismarck were still suspicious of Fritz after his contrary attitude regarding the Danzig affair, but he could hardly be kept at home while Prussia was at war, so he was sent to report to headquarters. Field-Marshal Wrangel had been appointed supreme commander of the allied armies of Prussia and Austria; though now eighty years of age and no longer capable of running a war, he was the only German officer who held a rank higher than the commander of the Austrian troops. Prince Friedrich Karl was commander of the Prussian forces.

The Danish forces were heavily outnumbered, and King Christian and his ministers hoped that England would come to their rescue in the event of war; Palmerston and Russell wished to do so, but Queen Victoria was as pro-German as ever, and Britain remained neutral. On 1 February Prussia and allied forces marched into Schleswig, and within a few days Fritz was promoted to joint command with Wrangel, whose evident senility he charitably excused on the grounds that the veteran officer was ‘half crazy’, his former energy having ‘turned to obstinacy and stubbornness’. Depressed at Bismarck’s hold on his father, Fritz prayed that God would give him enlightenment to see through the man ‘who has proved to be Prussia’s undoing.’
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When the King bestowed on him the Order of the Red Eagle with Swords he was deeply touched by this paternal mark of favour, while writing to Duncker of his shame at being ‘decorated after so little experience and active service, while as yet no officer has received any mark of distinction, although deserved by many.’
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The men serving under him, he felt, would ask what honours were still left for really brave deeds on the field of battle.