His master-mind was to unseat and seat princes, kings and emperors, in the fullness of time, rearranging the map of Germany to suit himself; engaging in three wars of ambition, signally victorious in each; and winning for himself imperishable fame during his active career of forty years. * * * * * ¶ By a singular turn, Bismarck knew or cared so little for politics, at this time, that his very entry into the "White Saloon," in which the Liberals decided to settle with this stubborn King Fr: Wm. IV, was wholly by accident. The Saxon Provincial Diet at Meresburg had chosen Dyke Captain von Brauchitsch of Scharteuke, in the Circle of Jerichow, as Deputy at the United Diet, and had selected Dyke Captain von Bismarck of Schoenhausen as his proxy. As Herr von Brauchitsch was very ill, his substitute was summoned. ¶ Bismarck appeared as representative of the Knight's Estate of Jerichow, and vassal and chivalric servitor of the King. How go the Fates! If the eminent von Brauchitsch had not had the toothache, that day, there might not have been a United Germany--is it not true? ¶ In the group that gathered in the "White Saloon" at Coelin on the Spree, Bismarck met many men whose opinions were well known to him; his brother, the Landrath, his cousins, the Counts von Bismarck-Bohlen and von Bismarck-Briest; his future father-in-law, Herr von Puttkammer; von Thadden, von Wedell, and many others. Says Hesekiel: ¶ "Unfortunately these gentlemen in general, as Herr von Thadden once bluntly said of himself, were not even bad orators, but no orators at all. Nor could the two Freiherrs von Manteuffel contend in eloquence with the brilliant rhetorics of the Liberals, such as Freiherr von Vincke, Camphausen, Mevissen, Beckerath, and others. ¶ "Few persons today can read those speeches of the First United Diet, once so celebrated, without a melancholy or satirical smile. Those were the blossom-days of liberal phraseology, causing an enthusiasm of which we cannot now form any adequate idea!" * * * * * ¶ Troublous times indeed; and the King an autocrat of autocrats, forced by the liberal ideas of the hour, breaking everywhere. We can imagine William saying angrily: "Confound the impudence of the Liberals with their crazy liberty, fraternity and equality. We supposed that all this nonsense was blown to bits by the guns at Waterloo!" ¶ The bedeviled King began to show a streak of Prussian stubbornness; in these angry words he incautiously addressed those delegates who had dared to ask for a Constitution: ¶ "I refuse to allow to come between Almighty God in Heaven and this Prussian land so much as a blotted piece of parchment to rule us with paragraphs, and to replace thereby the sacred bond of ancient loyalty!"