United
Germany under Prussian leadership. The question of the recognition of
the new Kingdom of Italy was becoming prominent; all the Liberal party
laid much stress on this. The Prince Regent, however, was averse to an
act by which he might seem to express his approval of the forcible
expulsion of princes from their thrones. As the national and liberal
feeling in the country grew, his monarchical principles seemed to be
strengthened. The opinions which Bismarck was known to hold on the
French alliance had got into the papers and were much exaggerated; he
had plenty of enemies to take care that it should be said that he wished
Prussia to join with France; to do as Piedmont had done, and by the
cession of the left bank of the Rhine to France to receive the
assistance of Napoleon in annexing the smaller states. In his letters of
this period Bismarck constantly protests against the truth of these
accusations. "If I am to go to the devil," he writes, "it will at least
not be a French one. Do not take me for a Bonapartist, only for a very
ambitious Prussian." It is at this time that his last letter to Gerlach
was written. They had met at the end of April, and Gerlach wrote to
protest against the opinion to which Bismarck had given expression:

"After the conversation which I have had with you I was
particularly distressed that, by your bitterness against Austria,
you had allowed yourself to be diverted from the simple attitude
towards law and the Revolution. For you an alliance with France
and Piedmont is a possibility, a thought which is far from me
and, dear Bismarck, ought to be far from you. For me Louis
Napoleon is even more than his uncle the incarnation of the
Revolution, and Cavour is a Rheinbund Minister like Montgellas.
You cannot and ought not to deny the principles of the Holy
Alliance; they are no other than that authority comes from God,
and that the Princes must govern as servants appointed by God."

Bismarck answers the letter the next day:

"I am a child of other times than you. No one loses the mark
impressed on him in the period of his youth. In you the
victorious hatred of Bonaparte is indelible; you call him the
incarnation of the Revolution and if you knew of any worse name
you would bestow it upon him. I have lived in the country from my
twenty-third to my thirty-second year and will never be rid of
the longing to be back again; I am in politics with only half my