Two Chancellors: Prince Gortchakof and Prince Bismarck — Key Ideas to Explore

A Portrait Drawn from Letters and Telegrams

The excerpts rely heavily on contemporary diplomatic dispatches and personal letters to build character. Bismarck is shown through his own words: writing to his wife from Jitschin on 2 July 1866, he notes the battlefield 'still heaped up with corpses' and asks for 'some French romances to read, but not more than one at a time.' This juxtaposition of violence and literary taste recurs. Gortchakof emerges through the observations of others—Count de Barral reports his fear of assassination and his reluctance to travel to Paris for the congress. Klaczko uses these details to suggest a calculating, anxious figure who nonetheless 'contributed largely' to rescuing Prussia from diplomatic isolation. The reader is invited to watch how the author assembles these fragments into a coherent psychological portrait.

The Congress That Never Was

A central episode in the excerpts is the projected congress of 1866, which Prussia ultimately avoided. Klaczko presents Gortchakof as the key agent: he was 'the first to think that the projected conference had no practical aim' given Austria's reservations, thereby 'giving the signal for the general overthrow.' Bismarck then worked on King William I, who initially spoke 'with great tears in his eyes' about the situation but two weeks later declared with 'a moved air' that he had 'full confidence in the justice of his cause.' The shift from tears to resolve is presented as engineered by Bismarck. Klaczko’s method is to let the sequence of telegrams and reports imply causation, leaving the reader to weigh whether the evidence supports his conspiracy thesis or a more fragmented diplomatic reality.

Russia's Silence as a Political Act

Throughout the excerpts, Russia is depicted as passive yet decisive: 'Russia continued to sulk and meditate; it meditated in the perpetual adoration of Prussia.' Klaczko cites French ambassador Benedetti, who noted 'the indifference with which the cabinet of St. Petersburg' watched Prussian pretensions and 'the constant security in which I have found M. de Bismarck as to the attitude of the Empire of the North.' Russia's silence at Gastein (1865), its withdrawal from the congress, and its absence from the Nikolsburg and Prague negotiations are all presented as tacit support for Prussia. The author does not offer Russian documents to counter this interpretation; the reader must consider whether the absence of evidence is evidence of conspiracy or of a different diplomatic calculus.

Napoleon III: The Dreamer Awakened

Napoleon III appears in the excerpts as a foil—a 'Dreamer of Ham' whose 'long humanitarian dream' was shattered by Sadowa. Klaczko uses a literary allusion: 'Like the Titania of the Midsummer Night's Dream, imperial France saw all at once that, in a state of inconceivable hallucination, she had caressed a monster.' This metaphor frames French policy as deluded, while Bismarck and Gortchakof are portrayed as realists. The translator’s preface reinforces this by calling Napoleon's actions 'inconceivable vacillations and hallucinations.' Readers should note that Klaczko’s narrative structure—contrasting the purposeful chancellors with a dreaming emperor—is a rhetorical device that shapes the book's argument. The excerpts do not provide Napoleon’s own perspective, leaving his motives inferred from outcomes.

Klaczko’s work is best approached as a partisan intervention in 1870s European politics, not as a neutral history. The translator’s preface warns that it offers 'a one-sided, partial view,' but also notes it is 'presented with such power' that it compels attention. Readers should track how the author uses primary sources—letters, telegrams, diplomatic reports—to build his case, and consider what alternative interpretations those same sources might support. The book rewards those who read with an eye to its method as much as its conclusions.

Reading about Gortchakof’s weary maneuvering, I thought of my grandfather’s quiet letters from the chancelleries—how diplomacy, like memory, is mostly what we leave unsaid. Affairs of West Africa — Text and Context stirred that same slow ache: empires drafting futures over tea, while the maps beneath them blurred into clouds.