The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
dirty on him in England with John Gully, I’d had no wish ever to meet him again—especially at such a disadvantage as now. Well, when you’ve caused a man to be cut up by a prize pug, and made him look an idiot into the bargain, you bar renewing his acquaintance in a lonely castle with four of his hired thugs ushering you into his presence.
Equally alarming was the discovery that he was at the bottom of the plot that had snared me: if it had looked sticky before, it looked a lot worse now.
“Welcome to Schönhausen, Mr Flashman,” says he, with the vaguest curl of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Pray be seated.”24
Bersonin set a chair for me at the table end opposite Bismarck, and then took station by the door. The other three stood by the fireplace, Rudi leaning against the overmantel. Bismarck studied me along the table’s length: he looked as nasty as ever, with those pale blue eyes and his arrogant stare. His face had roughened up a bit, though, since I first knew him, and he was sporting a heavy moustache; booze and guzzling had added a good deal of flesh to him, especially about the neck.
My heart was thumping like a hammer, and as always when I am scared half out of my wits my face was going red. Bismarck misread the signs.
“You don’t appear pleased to see me,” says he, laying aside his pistol. “But then, why should you? There is a score to settle on my side; I still miss a tooth, thanks to your pugilist friend.” He paused, while I quaked. “However, don’t imagine that I contrived your coming all the way here from England just to settle a personal difference. It happens, amazing though it may seem, that I need you. What do you think of that?”
“My God,” says I, “if that’s so, why the devil didn’t you ask me, like a civilised human being, instead of going through that damned charade in Munich? Of all the ridiculous, dangerous—yes, and damned bad-mannered—”
“Don’t be a fool. We will not pretend that if I had asked you, you would have come. It was necessary to use guile and force, in turn, to ensure your presence here. And to further ensure that you would be—pliable. For you have been left in no doubt what will happen to you if you do not do exactly what I require.”
“I’ve been left in no doubt that I’ve been bloody well kidnapped! And assaulted and falsely accused! I’ve been left in no doubt that you’re a damned villain. And—”
“Shall we leave these vapourings?” he broke in harshly. “You know something of what I am, and I know exactly what you are—a brutal, lecherous ruffian. Yes, but with certain abilities, which you will use as I direct.”
“What the devil is it you want, curse you? What use can I possibly be to you?”
“That is better. Give him a brandy, Kraftstein, and a cigar. Now then, Mr Flashman, you will listen to me, and what I tell you will never be repeated—never, as you love your life.”
As I think back on it now, it is still difficult to believe that it happened—that I really sat in that long room, with a glass and a cigar, while that cold, masterful man who was to be the greatest statesman of his age, outlined to me the amazing plan which was to be the first, small stepping-stone in his great career. It was mad, incredible nonsense, but it is true. Bismarck then was nothing—in the political sense, anyway. But he had dreamed his dreams (as Lola had told me years before) and now he was setting about in that cold, German certainty, to make them realities. Strange, isn’t it, that without me he could not have begun as he did? He needed the lecherous, brutal ruffian (an incomplete description, but Bismarck always was a great one for half-truths).
“Let me begin by asking you a question,” says he. “What do you know of Schleswig and Holstein?”
“Never even met ’em,” says I. Rudi laughed aloud, and de Gautet gave his sidelong smile.
Bismarck didn’t show any amusement. “They are states,” he said, “not persons. I shall tell you about them.”
And he began to explain what historians call “the Schleswig-Holstein question”. I won’t bore you with it here, because even diplomats agree that it is the most infernally complex affair that ever bedevilled European politics. Nobody has ever got to the bottom of it—indeed, Palmerston once said that only three people understood it: one was Pam himself, and he had forgotten it, another was a famous statesman, and he was dead, and the third was a German professor, and he had gone mad thinking about it. So there. But the nub was that the two states, which lay directly between Denmark and the German Confederacy, were nominally ruled by the King of Denmark, although most of the inhabitants were Germans. Both Germany and Denmark claimed Schleswig and Holstein, and the people living there were forever arguing about who they should belong to.
That, then, was the famous question25—and of course, Bismarck knew the answer.
“It is beyond dispute,” says he, “that these two states are German by right. It has become of the first import that they should be German in fact.”
I couldn’t see what the devil this had to do with me, and said so.
“Be silent, and listen,” he snarled. “You will see very soon. Now, answer me: in the intervals between your drinking and whoring and hunting, do you take any interest in politics?”
“Well, I’m a Tory, I suppose. Haven’t ever bothered to vote, mind you. Why?”
“Gerrechter Herr Gott,” says he. “This, gentlemen”—he glanced at the others—“is a specimen of the ruling caste of the most powerful country on earth—for the present. Incredible, is it not?” His eyes scornful, he turned back to me. “You know, in effect, nothing of affairs of state—your own, or any others. Very good. But even you, Mr Flashman, must be aware that of late, all over Europe, there have been storm clouds gathering. There is a dangerous sentiment of liberalism, fostered by so-called progressive groups of intellectuals, which is infecting the populaces of states. Discontent and disaffection have been created; everywhere there are movements for reform”—he spat the word out—“reform, that slogan of the shiftless by which they mean destruction of stability in the hope that they will find some pickings among the ruins. Reform! Yes, your own country has given in to it, as probably even you have heard—”
“Should think I have. My guv’nor lost his seat in the House.”
“—and with what result? Concession has bred anarchy, as it always does. Are your masses satisfied? Of course not: they never are.”
“Not that he ever spent much time there, of course …”
“But as yet England has not reaped the full consequence of her statesmen’s stupidity. It will come in time, just as it is coming all over Europe. We have been wasted and enfeebled by peace these thirty years past, until there is hardly a man in Europe—I except Metternich—with the vision to see beyond the borders of his own state, to look past the petty trivialities of his own domestic politics, at the dark picture of the continent. They blind themselves to what is happening all about them; they consider only how to safeguard their own miserable little countries, with no thought for the whole. They cannot see, it seems, that unless those who lead and rule Europe stand together for the preservation of order and government, they will be swept away piecemeal on a rising tide of revolution.”
He had worked himself into a mild passion by this time; his eyes were bright and he was crouched forward in his chair, hurling his words down the table at me.
“Well,” says I, “I grant you things are a bit slack, here and there, and my wife has remarked that good servants are getting damned hard to find. But if you think England’s in for revolution, you’re well off the mark. We leave that sort of thing to Frogs and niggers.”
“I am not interested in your imbecile observations. I tell you what is, in Europe, and what its consequences must be unless measures are taken to prevent it. Here, in Germany, we have the cancer in a malignant form: the liberal movements are afoot throughout the confederacy. As a member of the Prussian Diet I see them at work openly in Berlin; as a rural landowner I am aware of them even in the countryside.