From about the year 1844 Bismarck seems to have become very intimate with this religious coterie; his friend Moritz v.  Blankenburg had married Thadden’s daughter and Bismarck was constantly a visitor at Triglaff.  It was at Blankenburg’s wedding that he first met Hans v.  Kleist, who was in later years to be one of his most intimate friends.  He was, we are told, the most delightful and cheerful of companions; in his tact and refinement he shewed an agreeable contrast to the ordinary manners of Pomerania.  He often rode over to take part in Shakespeare evenings, and amused them by accounts of his visit to England[3].  He was present occasionally at the religious meetings at Triglaff, and though he never quite adopted all the customs of the set the influence on him of these older men was for the next ten years to govern all his political action.  That he was not altogether at one with them we can understand, when we are told that at Herr von Thadden’s house it would never have occurred to anyone even to think of smoking.  Bismarck was then, as in later life, a constant smoker.

The men who met in these family parties in distant Pomerania were in a few years to change the whole of European history.  Here Bismarck for the first time saw Albrecht von Roon, a cousin of the Blankenburgs, then a rising young officer in the artillery; they often went out shooting together.  The Belows, Blankenburgs, and Kleists were to be the founders and leaders of the Prussian Conservative party, which was Bismarck’s only support in his great struggle with the Parliament; and here, too, came the men who were afterwards to be editors and writers of the Kreuz Zeitung.

The religious convictions which Bismarck learnt from them were to be lasting, and they profoundly influenced his character.  He had probably received little religious training from his mother, who belonged to the rationalistic school of thought.  It was by them that his monarchical feeling was strengthened.  It is not at first apparent what necessary connection there is between monarchical government and Christian faith.  For Bismarck they were ever inseparably bound together; nothing but religious belief would have reconciled him to a form of government so repugnant to natural human reason.  “If I were not a Christian, I would be a Republican,” he said many years later; in Christianity he found the only support against revolution and socialism.  He was not the man to be beguiled by romantic sentiment; he was not a courtier to be blinded by the pomp and ceremony of royalty; he was too stubborn and independent to acquiesce in the arbitrary rule of a single man.  He could only obey the king if the king himself held his authority as the representative of a higher power.  Bismarck was accustomed to follow out his thought to its conclusions.  To whom did the king owe his power?  There was only one alternative:  to the people or to God.  If to the people, then it was a mere question of convenience whether the monarchy