Book Description

Excerpt from Bismarck's Diplomacy at Its Zenith, Vol. 26 This study of Bismarck's diplomacy covers in detail the period beginning with the interview between the Austrian and Russian Emperors at Kremsier, on August 25, 1885, and ending with the Chancellor's speech in the Reichstag, on February 6, 1888. The period is one of the most crowded with events in Bismarck's entire career as Chancellor. It is marked by two great upheavals in the domain of the Eastern Question and by almost continuously strained relations between Russia and Austria. It witnessed two serious crises in the relations between Germany and France, both occurring in the year 1887. In the course of that same year there were concluded no less than four secret diplomatic agreements involving Germany directly or indirectly. No period is more illustrative of the principles and methods of Bismarck's diplomacy: none since 1871 is more significant for Germany's later history. At the time this work was undertaken, six years ago, there was practically no documentary material available for the study of the period, beyond the official publications of the parliamentary governments. So much has appeared since then that it is now possible to refer to documents for almost every episode, albeit still incompletely and with important exceptions. From the beginning, I had felt that the accounts of Bismarck's foreign policy given by himself and his German biographers were unsatisfactory; and I had striven accordingly to bring to bear all the other available evidence on the subject. Practically all my early conclusions have been confirmed by the more recently published documents. I am, of course, aware that I shall incur the charge of having cut the new cloth to my old pattern; and such has perhaps inevitably been the case in some degree. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.