A letter to Roon shews the deep depression under which he laboured at this time, chiefly the result of ill-health.  “It was,” he said, “an unheard-of anomaly that the Foreign Minister of a great Empire should be responsible also for internal affairs.”  And yet he himself had arranged that it should be so.  The desertion of the Conservative party had, he said, deprived him of his footing; he was dispirited by the loss of his old friends and the illness of his wife; he spoke of his advancing years and his conviction that he had not much longer to live; “the King scarcely knows how he is riding a good horse to death.”  He would continue to do what he could in foreign affairs, but he would no longer be responsible for colleagues over whom he had no influence except by requests, and for the wishes of the Emperor which he did not share.  The arrangement lasted for a year, and then Roon had again to request, and this time received, permission to retire into private life; his health would no longer allow him to endure the constant anxiety of office.  His retirement occasioned genuine grief to the King; and of all the severances which he had to undergo, this was probably that which affected Bismarck most.  For none of his colleagues could he ever have the same affection he had had for Roon; he it was who had brought him into the Ministry, and had gone through with him all the days of storm and trouble.  “It will be lonely for me,” he writes, “in my work; ever more so, the old friends become enemies and one makes no new ones.  As God will.”  In 1873 he again assumed the Presidency.  The resignation of Roon was followed by a complete breach with the party of the Kreuz Zeitung; the more moderate of the Conservatives split off from it and continued to support the Government; the remainder entered on a campaign of factious opposition.

The quarrel was inevitable, for quite apart from the question of religion it would indeed have been impossible to govern Germany according to their principles.  We may, however, regret that the quarrel was not conducted with more amenity.  These Prussian nobles were of the same race as Bismarck himself; they resembled him in character if not in ability; they believed that they had been betrayed, and they did not easily forgive.  They were not scrupulous in the weapons they adopted; the Press was used for anonymous attacks on his person and his character; they accused him of using his public position for making money by speculation, and of sacrificing to that the alliance with Russia.  More than once he had recourse to the law of libel to defend himself against these unworthy insults.  When he publicly in the Reichstag protested against the language of the Kreuz Zeitung, the dishonourable attacks and the scandalous lies it spread abroad, a large number of the leading men among the Prussian nobility signed a declaration formally defending the management of the paper, as true adherents of the monarchical and Conservative banner.  These Declaranten, as they were called, were henceforward enemies whom he could never forgive.  At the bottom of the list we read, not without emotion, the words, “Signed with deep regret, A. von Thadden”; so far apart were now the two knight-errants of the Christian Monarchy.  It was in reality the end of the old Conservative party; it had done its work; Bismarck was now thrown on the support of the National Liberals.