George Fraser - Flashman and the Tiger - And Other Extracts from the Flashman Papers

‘Down the drain, I’d say. So why are you exalted?’

‘Because I see at once how to frustrate them. I go to Prince Hohenlohe, the German Minister, and demand that as a reward for my services to the Congress – and because I am Blowitz – Prince Bismarck should give the treaty only to me, so that I may publish it in The Times tomorrow. Hohenlohe consults Bismarck, who refuses (as I knew he would). He says I must wait until it is signed. But,’ he raised a pudgy finger, ‘I know Bismarck. He is one for strict justice. Having said I must wait until tomorrow, he will now make the German papers wait also. So, in effect, I have gained a postponement … you see?’

I don’t know if Macchiavelli was a fat little cove with long whiskers, but he should have been.

‘When Prince Hohenlohe tells me my request is refused, I play my part. I am affronted. My disgust knows no bounds. I tell him I am leaving Berlin at once in protest. If Blowitz is to be treated with such contempt, they may keep their Congress and their treaty. Hohenlohe is dismayed, but I am adamant. I take my leave in what you call the dudgeon – and word flies from mouth to mouth that Blowitz is beaten, that he sulks like a spoiled child, my rivals rejoice at my failure – and breathe sighs of relief … and all the time the treaty is here –’ he tapped his breast, chortling ‘– and tomorrow it will appear in The Times and in no other paper in the world!’

He paused to draw breath and gloat; you never saw smugness like it, so I pointed to the one fly I saw in his ointment.

‘But you haven’t got the preamble or the clauses they’re adopting today.’

He gave a lofty wave. ‘ Soit tranquil , my ’Arree. From Hohenlohe I go tout suite to M. de St Vallier, the French Ambassador – who I know has a copy of the preamble. In confidence I show him the treaty. He is staggered, he goes pale, but when I ask for the preamble and clauses, he throws up the hands, crying why not, since already I have so much? He cannot give me his copy of the preamble, but he reads it aloud, page upon page, and now it is here –’ he tapped his brow ‘– and will be dictated to my secretary after we board the train.’

I ain’t given to expressions of admiration, as you know, but looking at that grinning cherub with his baby peepers and daft whiskers I confess I put a finger to my hat brim. ‘Though I still don’t see why you’re in such an almighty sweat to leave. Can’t you telegraph your story to London?’

‘From Berlin? Oh, my boy, you want to laugh! Where my every action is watched, my movements followed – why, let a telegraph clerk catch a glimpse of my message and I should be in a police cell!’ He grew earnest. ‘But it is not the authorities I fear – it is envious rivals. My little charade of pique will deceive the many, but not all. Some, knowing Blowitz, will suspect me still. They may board the train. They would rob me if they could. That,’ says he, clapping a hand on my knee, ‘is why I bring you with me. I am small, you are large. Who knows what they may attempt between here and Paris? But what have I to fear,’ cries he, with a great idiot laugh, ‘when the bravest soldier of the British Army, the partner of my fate, is by my side?’

A great deal, I could have told him, if Bismarck’s bullies were after him; he’d find himself relying on the communication cord. But no, that wasn’t likely; even Otto wouldn’t dare. Blowitz’s brother journalists were another matter, as I saw when we reached the station, and they were on the platform to see him off with covert grins and ironic tile-doffing; I hadn’t realised what respect and jealousy my stout friend attracted. He bustled down the train looking like an angry frog in his great fur coat and felt hat, ignoring their greetings, and I played up by taking his arm and wearing my most threatening scowl.

The secretary and Blowitz’s colleague, Wallace, were already aboard, and when we pulled out punctually on 12.30, Blowitz told the secretary to get out his book, folded his hands across his paunch, closed his eyes, and recited steadily for half an hour. It was fearful stuff, all in German, with an occasional phrase in French or English by way of explanation, and he didn’t even pause; once, when the train clanked to an unexpected halt and we were almost jolted from our seats, he forged right ahead with his dictation, and when it was done he sat drooping like a limp doll, and then went straight off to sleep. For concentration and power of mind, I don’t recall his equal.

Sure enough, there were fellows from the other papers on the train. Wallace spotted two Germans and an Italian in the next carriage, but once one of ’em had tried to look in on us, and I’d sent him about his business, they let us alone. They followed us when we alighted for refreshment at Cologne, but we baffled ’em by each taking a different way back to the train, so that they had to separate, one dogging Blowitz, another behind me, the third after the secretary – and no one at all to watch Wallace, who was lurking in the W.C. with treaty, preamble and all inside his shirt, until the time came for him to board another train to Brussels, where he would telegraph the whole thing to London. Wallace had wondered if the Belgians would accept such an important document; Blowitz told him that if there was any difficulty he was to send for the superintendent, tell him The Times was thinking of setting up (and paying handsomely for) a daily line to London, and that this despatch was by way of a test. Of course, if Brussels didn’t want the business …’nuff said.

So next morning, Saturday July 13, 1878, before the leading statesmen of Europe had even penned their signatures to the treaty, Otto Bismarck was goggling apoplectically at a telegram from London informing him that the whole sixty-four articles, preamble, etc., were in that day’s Times – with an English translation. Talk about a ‘scoop’! Blowitz was drunk with glory, conceit, and gratitude when I managed to tear myself from his blubbering embrace in Paris, and I wasn’t displeased myself. T’isn’t every day you play a part in one of the great journalistic coups, and whenever I see some curmudgeon at the club cursing at the labour of cutting open his Times and then complaining that there’s no news in the dam’ thing, I think, aye, you should see what goes to the making of those paragraphs that you take for granted, my boy. My one regret as I tooled back to London was that I hadn’t been able to bid a riotous farewell to Caprice; she’d been worth the trip, ne’er mind spoking Otto’s wheel, and I found myself smiling fondly as I thought of Punch and the gauzy lace clinging to that houri shape in the sunlight … Ah well, there would doubtless be more where that came from.

In case you don’t know, the great Berlin Treaty panned out to general satisfaction – for the time being anyway. ‘Big Bulgaria’ was cut in two; Roumania, you’ll be charmed to learn, became independent; Austria won the right to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina (which only an idiot would want to do, in my opinion, but then I ain’t the Emperor Franz-Josef); Russia got Bessarabia, wherever that may be; the Turks remained a power in the Balkans, more or less, and by some strange sleight of hand we managed to collar Cyprus (no fool, D’Israeli, for all he dressed like a Pearly King). There had been a move at one stage (this is gospel, though you mayn’t credit it) to invite my old comrade William Tecumseh Sherman, the Yankee general, to become Prince of Bulgaria, but nothing came of it. Pity; he was the kind of savage who’d have suited the Bulgars like nuts in May.

At all events, what they call ‘a balance’ was achieved, and everyone agreed that Bismarck had played a captain’s innings, hoch! hoch! und he’s ein jolly good fellow. So he ought to have been content – but I can tell you something that wasn’t suspected at the time, and has been known to only a handful since: the Congress left darling Otto an obsessed man. It’s God’s truth: the brute was bedevilled by the galling fact that little Blowitz had stolen a march on him, and he could not figure out how it had been done . Astonishing, eh? Here was the greatest statesman of the age, who’d just settled the peace of Europe for a generation and more, and still that trifle haunted him over the years. Perhaps ’twas the affront to his dignity, or his passion for detail, but he couldn’t rest until he knew how Blowitz had got hold of that treaty. How do I know, you may ask? Well, I’m about to tell you – and I’m not sure that Bismarck’s mania (for that’s what it amounted to) wasn’t the strangest part of the adventure that befell me five years later, and which had its origins in my meetings with Grant and Macmahon, Caprice’s picture, and the Congress of Berlin. 8