Bismarck meanwhile was living quietly at St. Petersburg, awaiting events.  At last the summons came; on June 28, 1861, Roon telegraphed to him that the pear was ripe; he must come at once; there was danger in delay.  His telegram was followed by a letter, in which he more fully explained the situation.  The immediate cause of the crisis was that the King desired to celebrate his accession, as his brother had done, by receiving the solemn homage of all his people; the Ministry refused their assent to an act which would appear to the country as “feudal” and reactionary.  A solemn pledge of obedience to the King was the last thing the Liberals wanted to give, just for the same reasons that the King made a point of receiving it; his feelings were deeply engaged, and Roon doubtless hoped that his colleagues would at last be compelled to resign; he wished, therefore, to have Bismarck on the spot.

Bismarck could not leave St. Petersburg for some days; he, however, answered by a telegram and a long letter; he begins in a manner characteristic of all his letters at this period: 

“Your letter disturbed me in my comfortable meditations on the quiet time which I was going to enjoy at Reinfeld.  Your cry ’to horse’ came with a shrill discord.  I have grown ill in mind, tired out, and spiritless since I lost the foundation of my health.”

And at the end: 

“Moving, quarrelling, annoyance, the whole slavery day and night form a perspective, which already makes me homesick for Reinfeld or St. Petersburg.  I cannot enter the swindle in better company than yours; but both of us were happier on the Sadower Heath behind the partridges.”

So he wrote late at night, but the next morning in a postscript he added:  “If the King will to some extent meet my views, then I will set to the work with pleasure.”  In the letter he discusses at length the programme; he does not attach much importance to the homage; it would be much better to come to terms on the military question, break with the Chamber, and dissolve.  The real difficulty he sees, however, is foreign policy; only by a change in the management of foreign affairs can the Crown be relieved from a pressure to which it must ultimately give way; he would not himself be inclined to accept the Ministry of the Interior, because no good could be done unless the foreign policy was changed, and that the King himself would probably not wish that.

“The chief fault of our policy is that we have been Liberal at home and Conservative abroad; we hold the rights of our own King too cheap, and those of foreign princes too high; a natural consequence of the difference between the constitutional tendency of the Ministers and the legitimist direction which the will of his Majesty gives to our foreign policy.  Of the princely houses from Naples to Hanover none will be grateful for our love, and we practise towards them a truly evangelical love of our enemies at the