Bismarck’s Britain | History Today
In mid-September 1883 the British steamer Pembroke Castle, traversing the North Sea, made an unscheduled stop in Denmark. Upon landing at Copenhagen the dignitaries on board, including British prime minister William Ewart Gladstone, received an invitation to dine with the Danish royal family at Fredensborg Palace, where Gladstone spent a convivial evening with the Danish king and his guest, Tsar Alexander III of Russia.
The unscheduled meeting between Britain’s prime minister and the Russian emperor raised eyebrows in London and elicited a rebuke from Queen Victoria. But in Berlin it caused a shockwave. Germany’s ‘Iron Chancellor’, Otto von Bismarck, was deeply engaged in a long-running campaign to oust the British leader. The 19th century’s greatest proponent of realpolitik was also one of its most wily meddlers in the affairs of his rivals. News that Gladstone had met the tsar stoked Bismarck’s paranoia about an Anglo-Russian alliance, causing him to take ever more radical measures in his quest for a change of leadership in London.
It was not always so. In the first half of the 1870s Bismarck and Gladstone had been de facto allies, sharing common ground, especially over Bismarck’s suppression of political Catholicism in Germany. Bismarck was grateful for Gladstone’s support, and when the first Gladstone government fell in 1874 Bismarck wrote to him to express his regret and they continued to correspond thereafter.
In 1876 outrage over Ottoman atrocities in Bulgaria prompted Gladstone’s return to the political stage, but his overtures to Russia and his hostility towards the Habsburg Empire alienated Bismarck. Berlin greeted Gladstone’s election victory in April 1880, according to historian James Stone (2010), as the ‘political equivalent of a natural disaster’.
Bismarck launched a smear campaign to force Gladstone’s downfall. Despatches went out to German embassies warning of the danger posed by Gladstone’s ‘republican’ and ‘revolutionary’ regime. Despatches to St Petersburg stressed Gladstone’s sympathy for pan-Slavic forces that would no doubt try one day to overthrow the tsar. To Vienna, Bismarck flagged Gladstone’s support of the ‘so-called principle of national self-determination’, and warned that England was on the same path that had led to the French Revolution.
The chancellor began a public propaganda blitz, publishing reports highlighting the failings of the British Liberal government and distributing them to German newspapers. Those stories quickly appeared in Britain. The London Daily News had regular columns devoted to the news in European capitals and beyond. Correspondents in Berlin provided their British readers with daily updates on the content of the North German Gazette, the Kölnische Gazette, and the Nationale Zeitung, among others.
Bismarck then used his secret slush fund, known as the ‘Reptile Fund’, to purchase a news outlet in London, the North German Correspondence. He also maintained a close friendship with Edward Steinkopff, the owner of the Pall Mall Gazette who also reportedly had influence over the St James Gazette.
Such was the state of affairs when Gladstone made his unplanned visit to Copenhagen. Horrified by the prospect of a possible Anglo-Russian treaty, Bismarck ramped up his efforts by creating foreign policy traps to embarrass and delegitimise the prime minister. Bismarck had always strongly opposed colonial adventures, considering them an expensive waste of time. Yet, just months after the Copenhagen meeting, he suddenly embarked on a series of provocations and demands for German colonies.
Bismarck’s son Herbert described the chancellor’s goal with typical bluntness: ‘That our policy will avail itself of this most favourable moment to squash Gladstone against the wall, so that he can yap no more.’ In practice, this meant seeking out conflicts where Gladstone would have to choose between his principles and his practicality, so that ‘his prestige will vanish even more among the masses of the stupid English electorate’. A campaign of foreign policy annoyances and embarrassments followed. When the Conservatives came to power in 1885 Bismarck abruptly abandoned his colonial designs with the remark: ‘Lord Salisbury’s friendship is worth more to me than twenty colonies full of swampland.’ This strongly suggests that his sudden colonial zeal had been designed to embarrass and weaken Gladstone.
Bismarck’s campaign against Gladstone had a willing ally in Britain: the Tory Party. In July 1884 leading Conservative politician Randolph Churchill reached out to Herbert von Bismarck, then ambassador in London, to propose that Bismarck use his influence to scupper the upcoming London Conference on Egyptian affairs in order to secure the fall of the Gladstone government. Two weeks later Churchill contacted Bismarck again, begging anew for the chancellor to use his influence to force a change in Westminster.
By late 1884 German meddling was so blatant that the Liberals sought to spark a patriotic backlash by calling Bismarck out. On 26 December 1884 an anonymous article in the Liberal-affiliated Daily News revealed the chancellor’s plan. It was a bold move, but not enough to save Gladstone. The prime minister was forced to resign in March 1885 after the defeat of his budget, but his reputation had already been shredded by the incessant onslaught of domestic and foreign policy failures, capped by the death of General Gordon in Khartoum in January and by the frenzy of press criticism whipped up at home and abroad, stoked by internal rivals and Bismarck’s agents.
Bismarck had prevailed, but his campaign came at a cost. Though Bismarck had always stressed that his quarrel was with the Liberal government, not with the English people, his meddling struck a sour note that would linger long after the episode was forgotten.
Jill Kastner is an independent scholar and visiting fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. She is the co-author of A Measure Short of War: A Brief History of Great Power Subversion (Oxford University Press, 2025).
