views in political matters—­ideas which she imparted to her consort, she found herself, within a few years after her marriage, in complete opposition to Prince Bismarck.  The latter regarded her as a very dangerous opponent, and responded to her openly avowed disapproval of his political methods by using his influence with her father-in-law, old Emperor William, urging him to interfere with her management of her children; and above all, to appoint as members of her household personages with whom she could have no possible sympathy, political or otherwise, and who were, in every sense of the word, devoted to the Iron Chancellor.  In fact, Prince Bismarck acknowledges in his reminiscences, as published by his Boswell, Dr. Busch, that he caused the crown princess—­as Empress Frederick was then—­to shed many a bitter tear, by his interference, through her father-in-law, in her domestic affairs.

Bismarck made no secret of his enmity towards Empress Frederick and her husband before the latter ascended the throne, and it is on record that he even officially insisted that secrets of state should not be confided to “Unser Fritz,” for fear that the latter’s consort might communicate them to her English relatives.  He even went so far as to accuse her of having, during the war of 1870, betrayed to non-German relatives Prussian military secrets, which were used by the French against her adopted country, and served to prolong the conflict.  These odious charges, “which have been abundantly disproved” and for which “there was not even the shadow of a foundation,” are merely referred to here in order to show the intense bitterness of the personal animosity entertained by the chancellor towards Empress Frederick.  Yet it was he, Bismarck, who, through the old emperor, had the right of selecting and nominating, not merely the instructors and attendants of her boys, but her own gentlemen and ladies-in-waiting—­nay, even the physicians and surgeons to be called in cases of illness.

CHAPTER VI

It is to the part played by Prince Bismarck in selecting the attendants and tutors of the present emperor that must be ascribed the strained relations that notoriously existed between the kaiser and his mother during the few years immediately preceding and following his accession to the throne; while there is no doubt whatsoever that the last eighteen months of Emperor Frederick’s so prematurely-ended life, were saddened and embittered by the feeling that a conspiracy was on foot to prevent his succession to the throne on the ground of the incurable malady from which he was suffering—­a conspiracy in which some of the principal participants were members of his household and physicians who had been forced upon him by his father at instigation of Prince Bismarck.

If I mention this, it is not so much with the idea of evoking a very painful chapter of the history of the Court Berlin, as it is for the purpose of explaining, and in a measure of excusing, the charges of unfilial conduct brought against the present emperor, and which contributed so much to his unpopularity both at home and abroad during the early years of his reign.