Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz (27 page)

Bismarck immediately vetoed any serious consideration of a Battenberg-Hohenzollern alliance for political reasons. It was to Germany’s advantage not to be involved in the Orient, and thus avoid difficulties with Russia and Turkey. He believed Gladstone did not want a Europe with friendly Russo-German relations, and that as the English-born Crown Princess was known to be an admirer of Gladstone, he was quite prepared to expose her to the press as the agent of a foreign power. If the marriage took place he would resign.

Willy, and friends of his in government and military circles, may have thought the Crown Princess’s passionate partisanship of Sandro was nothing more and nothing less than a way of finding a spiritual son of hers, but little attention should be paid to such gossip. While she and Willy were clearly estranged almost beyond the point of no return, and while Henry was a disappointment, any suggestion that she should have seen Sandro as a younger reincarnation of the Prince Consort, or another Waldemar to replace her promising, much-mourned youngest son, was wild exaggeration. Only a little more feasible was Willy’s declaration that his father, on becoming Emperor, meant to appoint Sandro
Statthalter
of Alsace-Lorraine, a position which he had no right to offer to anybody other than the German Crown Prince. Before he let the Battenberger assume such a post, Willy asserted, he would put a bullet through his head.
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It was ironic as Willy had known and liked Sandro during his days at the Kassel Gymnasium, and there had been a possibility at one stage of Sandro marrying Dona’s sister Calma.

Fritz did not approve of the marriage proposal. He knew Sandro’s hold on power was precarious, and he wanted a better fate for his daughter than as the wife of an exiled ex-sovereign prince. At first he forbade Vicky to encourage the match any further. His pride may have been genuinely insulted at the idea of the son of a morganatic marriage becoming his son-in-law, and he was probably also anxious to avoid another family row as he knew his parents were united in their opposition. To him it was a ‘monstrous idea’ and a weight on his mind, and he told Vicky that Sandro ought to ‘keep away until we are in a position to see our way more clearly.’
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Vicky told Queen Victoria, who passed on the information to Victoria of Hesse, that Moretta was ‘violently in love with Sandro; says she never cared for anyone else, or ever will marry any one else; – that she will wait any time for him & has refused to look at any other Princes who might be good partis for her. Uncle F[ritz] was very angry & tried to put it out of her head – but he did not succeed & she is more than ever anxious abt. it.’
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He might have persuaded his wife and daughter gently into seeing the affair in a more realistic light had it not been for the reactions of Bismarck and Queen Victoria. Sandro’s interview with the Kaiser, asking for the hand of his granddaughter, ended violently with Wilhelm, recalling his family’s opposition to Elise Radziwill, trembling with anger and the Prince threatening to leave Bulgaria if thwarted. On the other hand Bismarck, who would not countenance any match that might provoke Russia, suggested cynically that the young man would do better to marry a millionairess; his throne would be safer if he could strengthen his position by bribery. When Sandro accepted an invitation to Balmoral a few months later, Queen Victoria was delighted with him. His stubborn resistance to Russia won her admiration, but she was equally taken with his good looks and compared him to ‘beloved Papa’ in letters to her children. With her mother on her side, and with Bismarck advocating bribery and corruption, Vicky championed him as a son-in-law more strongly than ever.

Fritz was extremely fond of his three younger daughters, but Moretta’s statement in her memoirs, written in the late 1920s, that her engagement was approved of by both her parents at this stage,
²⁴
was probably no more than an understandable desire to avoid reopening old wounds. For once it is almost impossible to refute the charge in this case that he was influenced by Vicky somewhat against his own judgment, too bowed down by the blows of the passing years to quarrel with anyone, let alone the wife who had been his mainstay for nearly thirty often difficult years, with whom he was still ardently in love. The Prince of Wales’s approval of Sandro as a husband for his niece weakened his resistance even further. He liked and admired Sandro as a person, and had it not been for the
mésalliance
factor he would have thought him most suitable for Moretta. At length Vicky’s persuasion, Moretta’s heartfelt letters and Bertie’s endorsement reconciled him to the morganatic element, but he knew it would be folly to encourage the betrothal in the face of combined opposition from his father and Bismarck. If and when he was Kaiser it would be a different matter, but as Crown Prince there was little they could do but wait. Bismarck saw advantages in Moretta entering the Roman Catholic church and marrying Crown Prince Carlos of Portugal, who might have been a King in waiting but was ugly and extremely fat. Neither Moretta nor her mother considered the Portuguese throne a model of stability.
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Willy and Dona readily joined Bismarck in condemning the match, while Ditta loyally took her mother’s side. She felt ashamed that Willy should behave so badly to their Grandma in England, who had ‘always been kindness itself to him since his birth’.
²⁵
Henry shared Wilhelm’s view in that such a match was not right for the dignity of the Hohenzollerns, but as he was in love with his cousin Irene, whose eldest sister Victoria was married to Sandro’s eldest brother Louis, he found himself in a dilemma.

It was clear that Bismarck intended to prevent Moretta from marrying Sandro. When Queen Victoria sanctioned the marriages of his brothers into her brood and gave her support to this one as well, the Chancellor declared that it was her intention to bring about a permanent estrangement between Germany and Russia to British advantage. Moreover, he scoffed that with her fondness for matchmaking, and being unaccustomed to contradiction, she would probably arrive at Potsdam with the parson in her travelling bag and the bridegroom in her trunk to perform the wedding on the spot.

When the Prince of Wales visited Berlin, Bismarck told him that the affections of princesses counted for nothing when weighed in the balance against national political interests. For once he had an ally in Empress Augusta, who had wanted Ella of Hesse to marry her grandson Prince Friedrich of Baden, but when Ella pledged herself to Grand Duke Serge of Russia Queen Victoria was blamed. When the latter ardently championed the Sandro–Moretta romance, Augusta regarded it as an insult to herself and her family; her old friend was deliberately encouraging the marriage of a Prussian princess to a morganatically-born prince while ‘plucking the finest fruits’, the Romanovs, for her beloved Hessian relations. That the Queen was the grandmother of Moretta just as much as of Ella, and vehemently opposed the latter’s engagement on acount of her distrust of Russia, seemingly counted for nothing. Then when the
Almanach de Gotha
, the directory of royal and noble status and genealogy, suddenly demoted the Battenbergs from Part I to Part II, containing the lesser aristocracy (including the Bismarcks, to add insult to injury), the Queen was furious, believing the Empress to be responsible. The Empress warned Vicky and Fritz separately that the marriage must never come about, calling it a ‘pointless project’ that must be abandoned.

Meanwhile Vicky and Moretta, braving the Empress’s wrath, watched events in Bulgaria with ill-disguised admiration for her ruler. During the autumn of 1885 he repulsed a Serbian invasion of his territory, supported by Austria-Hungary, at the battle of Slivnitza, and Vicky sent him a twenty-eight-page letter of congratulation. Frustrated by her refusal to give in, Bismarck and his cronies whispered it was really she and not Moretta who was in love with the Battenberg prince. It was certainly easier for them to attack her than Queen Victoria, who applauded Sandro just as vigorously in her own way, compared him to the Prince Consort, and never missed an opportunity of inviting him to stay with her. Nevertheless she foresaw Russian jealousy at his success and knew that the Tsar’s patience was wearing dangerously thin.

By April 1886 Sandro’s position was increasingly tenuous. The popularity he had won after his victory the previous year was strongly resented at St Petersburg, and only one thing might save his position, immediate marriage to a suitably-connected princess. It was not to be. One August morning a gang of Russian officers burst into his palace at Sofia, forced him at gunpoint to sign a hastily-improvised deed of abdication, and sent him under arrest to the Austrian frontier. Public opinion in Bulgaria demanded his return a week later, but he had had enough. He sent a conciliatory telegram to Tsar Alexander III which was treated with contempt, and after receiving further threats he ratified his deed of abdication.

Though furious with Russia, Vicky admitted that the dignity of his departure was ‘an honourable one for him and his people and he can lay down his crown of thorns with a clear conscience’.
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‘His
noble
character and rare abilities, and his gallant conduct indeed deserve praise and admiration, as his hard fate must call forth sympathy,’ she wrote to Lord Napier. ‘Seldom did so much injustice and ingratitude fall to any man’s share. He did his duty from first to last, and deserves the approval of all honest men and good soldiers.’
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Vicky felt more and more ill at ease in the atmosphere of Berlin. She, Fritz and their three younger daughters regularly visited Italy, where they enjoyed the lakes and mountains of the north, Venice, Florence and the Riviera. Returning to the capital in the autumn of 1885, she wrote to Countess Dönhoff how bitterly she felt the contrast ‘when come back to the heavy dull stiffness, to the cold ugliness of north Germany and the neighbourhood of Berlin! The moral atmosphere of the Court, the political and official world seems to
suffocate
me!’
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In 1884 Fritz told Bismarck that he intended to include some of the National Liberals, including their leader Johannes Miquel, in his government when he came to the throne, and he would be glad to have Bismarck retain the Chancellorship. Bismarck said he had no objection to the Crown Prince attempting to govern with the National Liberals, but if he wanted to go further towards the left, he would soon be rushing headlong down the slope to republicanism.
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He was concerned about reports from other ministers and members of the
Reichstag
suggesting the Crown Prince no longer had the stamina to resist any attempts his strong-willed wife might have about attempting to bring the
Deutsch-Freisinnige Partei
to power when they were Emperor and Empress. Some of her letters to Fritz underlined a fervent belief that the damage done by Bismarck could be rectified if the Chancellor relinquished control over domestic policy to the party’s leaders. She readily conceded that Bismarck remained the man for ‘exceptional circumstances’; his ‘power, energy, clear-headedness [and] genial courage’ had accomplished much for them during foreign policy crises, but domestic policy required other qualities which could be found in the progressive left, who unlike him had ‘the insight and the drive to improve and dignify the situation’ and were committed to ‘bringing out the best in human nature’. They would foster the development of what she saw as right for Germany; a strong government that could protect the country from danger abroad with a good and strong army, an efficient but small navy; most important of all, they would have nothing to do with absolutism or imperialism on one hand, or ‘the development of a workers’ state’ on the other.
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If Fritz felt that she was pandering to extreme radical or leftist elements, he did not argue with her. Whether this was because he accepted her judgment without question, or because he simply did not have the vigour to argue with her, is debatable. But some of those around them, mainly Bismarck’s supporters (or men who owed their advancement to him), readily believed the latter, and blamed her for undermining her husband’s self-confidence. Baron Friedrich von Holstein of the Foreign Office, a recluse whose office safe was known as the ‘Poison Cupboard’ because of its wealth of incriminating secrets about anyone of importance in contemporary life, was no admirer of the Crown Prince or Princess. He felt that the Crown Prince’s character grew weaker by the year, in inverse proportion to the increase of her influence, and said he could not believe that he would ever assert his own will in opposition to hers. Gustav von Sommerfeld complained that the heir was ‘not a man at all, he has no ideas of his own, unless she allows him.’
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Radolinski told Holstein and others that when the Crown Prince ascended the throne, his wife would be Emperor in all but name. Holstein thought he might be persuaded to renounce his place in the succession, as he was ‘already a prey to misgivings both on foreign affairs [England] and on domestic policy’.
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If there was a struggle for the throne his son Wilhelm, who possessed greater determination of character and was an ‘ardent soldier, anti-democratic, anti-English’
³³
would surely be the people’s choice as well as that of the ministers.

Bismarck knew the Crown Princess would prevent her husband from renouncing the throne while his father was alive, but if a political crisis was to occur during his reign or could be conveniently contrived for the purpose, he might consider abdication. Some were prepared to suggest that when Kaiser Wilhelm died, the Crown Princess should not be permitted to become Empress, but forced to flee or be banished from Germany, or even imprisoned, presumably on a trumped-up charge of being an agent of a foreign power. Others, led by Waldersee, Deputy Chief of General Staff, demanded that the Crown Prince should be asked or forced to renounce his place in the succession so that his son would become his grandfather’s heir.