Titans of History

  In 1888, Wilhelm’s grandfather died and his father became emperor, but tragically the new kaiser was already dying of throat cancer and Bismarck remained in total control. On his father’s death a few months into his reign, Wilhelm succeeded to the throne. Bismarck had already had to spend time paying off Wilhelm’s mistresses and buying back the young emperor’s love letters after his sexually perverse early adventures. Worse, from now on, Bismarck had to hide and suppress Wilhelm’s often insane and tactless comments on official documents, but soon the emperor’s speeches—which varied from boasting how German troops would massacre Chinese with the brutality of the Huns to proposing the shooting of German strikers by troops—were embarrassing the German elite.

  By 1890, Wilhelm was determined to rid himself of the ancient Bismarck using his own pro-labor policies to procure his resignation. He replaced him first with a worthy officer, General von Caprivi, and then with the antique Prince von Hohenlohe, but it was clear that Wilhelm was set on ruling himself. Bismarck had created the hybrid constitution of the German empire with all the trappings of democracy, but beneath them the royal Prussian prerogative was intact and absolute: this had suited Bismarck because his chancellorship depended on the favor of the kaiser. But now Bismarck was gone, the kaiser was determined to seize it himself, and over the next few years, Wilhelm, displaying some political skill, took control of German policy, particularly basing his power on his right to run the military through his personal military cabinets and to appoint the chancellor and ministers.

  The kaiser was advised during this successful new course of German politics by his unlikely best friend Prince Philip von Eulenberg, who was his ambassador to Vienna, an aesthete, musician, writer and believer in divine right, the power of the kaiser, social conservatism, German imperialism and psychic séances. Thanks to Eulenberg’s intrigues and plans, the kaiser managed to find and promote a candidate for chancellor, Bernard von Bulow, who saw himself as an imperial courtier instead of independent statesman. In 1900, Wilhelm appointed Bulow to the post, henceforth dominating policy. At the same time, the kaiser promoted the creation of the German Imperial Navy, launching an arms race with the British. His outbursts—his support for the Boers against the British, his disastrous visit to Morocco which outraged France, then his notorious Daily Telegraph interview in which he offended all the powers of Europe, particularly the British—exposed his emotional immaturity and mental instability yet also destabilized European politics.

  Although he now found himself dominant as home, he was undermined by a series of embarrassing political scandals that again revealed his own personal flaws: it emerged that he was surrounded by a secret homosexual clique and that his best friend Eulenberg led a homosexual double life. At one point, an old general, the chief of his military cabinet, died of a heart attack while dancing for the kaiser dressed in a ballet tutu. The kaiser never spoke to Eulenberg again—but the rising scandals in his court circle, homosexual and heterosexual alike—bewildered him and undermined his prestige. His interventions in German policy were often ill conceived and inconsistent but his foreign policies only contributed to a worsening international tension.

  In 1914, faced with the assassination of the Austrian grand duke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian terrorists, Wilhelm’s overexcited maneuverings helped guide Germany to the policy of encouraging and indeed guaranteeing the Austrian right to attack Serbia. Despite his personal pleas to Tsar Nicholas II for peace, he backed the plans to attack France through the Low Countries and was eager for war against Russia, even though all this implied a war on two fronts.

  Once war had started, Wilhelm again pushed for the alliance with the Ottomans, and backed submarine warfare (which ultimately pulled America into the war) as well as the brutal colonization of Russia. For Allied troops, the kaiser, nicknamed Kaiser Bill, was the ultimate enemy. His entire life had been a preparation for his role as Germanic warlord but when the war came, he was listless and depressive, overexcited and irrational in equal parts, proving totally incapable of political, military or strategic planning, let alone administration. His ministers and generals regarded him with contempt and he was intimidated by the real rulers of Germany from 1916, Field Marshal von Hindenburg and General Ludendorff. When defeat came in 1918, Wilhelm was hopelessly associated with the catastrophic militarism and imperial corruption that had brought Germany to defeat. He abdicated and went into Dutch exile where he fulminated against Jews and liberals, dying in 1941.

  LLOYD GEORGE

  1863–1945

  How can I convey to the reader any just impression of this extraordinary figure of our time, this siren, this goat-footed bard, this half-human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity.

  John Maynard Keynes, quoted in R.F. Harrod, The Life of John Maynard Keynes (1951)

  Much of the fabric of modern British society rests on the achievements of David Lloyd George. Known as the Welsh Wizard for his oratory, and as the Goat for his womanizing, he was a passionate Welshman of radical politics and modest beginnings. As chancellor of the exchequer, he established the foundations of the welfare state, and as prime minister during the First World War he led the country to victory.

  Lloyd George often found—and cast—himself an outsider in Westminster politics. One of his first causes, during the 1890s, was that of Welsh freedom. Yet with his great powers of oratory he rose fast through the Liberal Party. From 1899 he fiercely opposed the Second Anglo-Boer War.

  In 1905 Lloyd George was appointed to the Cabinet as president of the board of trade, and in 1908 he was promoted to chancellor under the new prime minister, H.H. Asquith. As chancellor, he proved to be a bold reformer with a strong social conscience, pushing through legislation introducing old-age pensions.

  In 1909 he went even further and announced the “People’s Budget,” which he intended to “wage implacable warfare against poverty.” The aim was to introduce a tax on land and higher-rate taxes on higher incomes to fund pensions, public works such as road-building, and new battleships to face the perceived threat from Germany. The House of Lords hated Lloyd George’s proposals, and their rejection of the budget led to a constitutional crisis and ultimately the 1911 Parliament Act, which abolished the Lords’ right of veto. Lloyd George extended the welfare state with the National Insurance Act of 1911, which introduced a way for working people to insure against future unemployment and to provide for their health care. Though unpopular with some at first, it made Lloyd George a hero to many.

  During the First World War, Asquith’s sleepy, passive conduct of the conflict contrasted with the tireless dynamism and the driving charisma of “LG.” As minister of munitions and then as secretary for war, Lloyd George mobilized almost the entire population in the war effort, drafting women to take over factory work traditionally reserved for men, who were now away fighting. As a result of this and other measures, there was a great leap in productivity. But Lloyd George became increasingly critical of Asquith’s handling of the war, and in December 1916 he allied himself with the Conservatives and some members of his own party to replace Asquith as prime minister, thereby splitting the Liberal Party.

  Lloyd George led the war effort by sheer force of personality, but he was unable to overcome the rigidity and stupidity of the generals. He never had the power to prevent the colossal human losses of trench warfare. He agreed with his French counterpart, Clemenceau, that the Allies desperately needed a unified command, which came about in April 1918. By November 1918, Germany having exhausted itself in its final offensives in the spring and summer of that year, the war was won. In the subsequent peace negotiations, Lloyd George attempted to find a compromise between the idealistic, conciliatory Americans and the vengeful French.

  Following the war, Lloyd George—long a believer in female emancipation—extended voting rights to women. He went on to help bring an end to the war of independence in Ireland, which had broken out in January 1919. In 1921 he negotiated a treaty allowin
g twenty-six southern counties to form the Irish Free State. But six northern counties remained part of the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland, with violent consequences for another eighty years.

  Despite these achievements, Lloyd George found himself in political difficulties. His reputation was marred by scandals surrounding the sale of peerages, and the Conservatives in his coalition government opposed his plans to increase public expenditure on housing and social services, forcing him to resign in October 1922. Although he became reconciled with the main bulk of the Liberal Party and returned as their leader in 1926, the Liberals were now a spent force, eclipsed by the rise of the Labour Party.

  After 1922 Lloyd George’s vanity and folly undermined him. His visit to Hitler handed the Nazis a propaganda coup, though he later came to oppose appeasement and called for rearmament. He had resigned as leader of the Liberals in 1931 because of ill health, but continued to sit as an MP, declining Churchill’s offer of a cabinet position during the Second World War on the grounds of his age. Long married to Margaret Owen, he had many mistresses, above all his secretary Frances Stevenson, whom he married in 1943. In that year he also voted for the last time in Parliament, in support of the Beveridge Report, which outlined the cradle-to-grave extension of the welfare state that Lloyd George had done so much to create. It was a fitting farewell to politics. Early in 1945 he was raised to the peerage, but he died before he could take his seat in the House of Lords.

  TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

  1864–1901

  He did not overturn reality to discover truth, where there was nothing. He contented himself with looking. He did not see, as many do, what we seem to be, but what we are. Then, with a sureness of hand and a boldness at once sensitive and firm, he revealed us to ourselves.

  From Toulouse-Lautrec’s obituary in the Journal de Paris

  Vicomte Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the iconic chronicler of Parisian nightlife, confronted society with a vibrant celebration of humanity in all its distortions. He is world-famous today principally for his posters, but while these are undeniably superb, they have obscured his brilliance as a painter and portraitist who brought poignant sensitivity to his studies of the women of the demi-monde. In truth he was the Rembrandt of the night.

  Toulouse-Lautrec’s art illuminates Paris’s artistic quarter in all its glory, immortalizing the chorus girls and entertainers who crowded its streets, cabarets and cafés. It was a ground-breaking departure in art. His work caused outrage, but he did not do it to shock. Rather, he wanted to “depict the true and not the ideal.” In so doing, he humanized his subjects because they were people he knew so well, giving them a nobility that society had always denied them.

  Toulouse-Lautrec’s style—clear, economical lines, bright colors and vigorous, often ironic representations—was as revelatory as his subjects. After he decided to become an artist, his wealthy aristocratic family arranged for him to be tutored by a family friend and society painter. Toulouse-Lautrec developed his distinctive style almost in spite of his training. Notwithstanding his eagerness to please, he found himself unable to copy a model exactly. “In spite of himself,” a friend recalled, “he exaggerated certain details, sometimes the general character, so that he distorted without trying or even wanting to.” A subsequent tutor found this freedom of expression “atrocious.” At age nineteen, he was given an allowance to set up his own studio, whereupon he moved to Montmartre and began to paint his friends.

  Toulouse-Lautrec soon became famous for his lithographs. Bold and clear, their elegant style anticipates art nouveau. They showed that art did not have to consist solely of oil on canvas, and as posters they turned advertising into an art form. The vast audience this gave him transformed his career. “My poster is pasted today on the walls of Paris,” he declared proudly of his first lithograph in 1891. His lithographs showed the great singing, dancing and circus stars of the Parisian night, especially the Moulin Rouge: Aristide Bruant dans son cabaret or Moulin Rouge—La Goulue and Jane Avril sortant du Moulin Rouge are now pasted on walls across the world. His paintings are remarkable for their humanity: his debonair boulevardier Louis Pascal shows that he could render men masterfully too, while his study for The Medical Inspection catches the pathos of whores queuing up in the surgery. Some of his most beautiful paintings show these women relaxing together or alone, such as Abandon, the Two Friends or the touching Red Haired Woman Washing. Both the stars and the ordinary girls were his friends and lovers.

  Like the rest of his family, Toulouse-Lautrec was enthusiastically sporty, but at the age of thirteen he broke his left thigh bone and a year later his right. Despite a long convalescence and numerous painful treatments, his legs never grew again. With a man’s torso on dwarfish legs, he never exceeded 5ft (1.52m) in height. The cause was a bone disease, probably of genetic origin.

  There is a clear irony in the contrast between the energy and physicality of Lautrec’s paintings and his own atrophied state. He was never reconciled to his condition. His compositions often hide the legs of his figures. Surrounded by unusually tall friends, “he often refers to short men,” commented one acquaintance, “as if to say ‘I’m not as short as all that!’” But the “tiny blacksmith with a pince-nez” was under no illusions about himself: “I will always be a thoroughbred hitched to a rubbish cart” was just one of a litany of self-deprecating remarks.

  Even in the raffish, boozy world of Montmartre, Lautrec’s alcohol consumption was legendary. He helped to popularize the cocktail. The earthquake—four parts absinthe, two parts red wine and a splash of cognac—was a particular favorite. Syphilis accelerated his physical and mental decline, and when his beloved mother left Paris suddenly in 1899, it precipitated a total mental collapse. He was sent to a sanatorium, where he produced one of his greatest series of drawings, At the Circus. But after a brief spell he returned to Paris.

  Toulouse-Lautrec degenerated into a haze of alcohol, the earthquake giving way to an esoteric diet of “eggs, which Monsieur eats raw mixed with rum.” Removed to one of his family’s châteaux, he was reduced to dragging himself along by his arms as his useless legs failed to work. Almost paralyzed and nearly totally deaf, Toulouse-Lautrec was just thirty-six when he died.

  “He would have liked the elegant, active life of all healthy sports-loving persons,” wrote his father after his death. His son achieved in art all the vitality missing from his life. The man who did more than any other to create the image of fin de siècle Paris imbued his works with an astounding energy.

  RASPUTIN

  1869–1916

  When the bell tolls three times, it will announce that I have been killed. If I am killed by common men, you and your children will rule Russia for centuries to come; if I am killed by one of your stock, you and your family will be killed by the Russian people! Pray Tsar of Russia. Pray.

  Rasputin

  Grigory Yefimovich Novykh was known as Rasputin, the debauched one and the Mad Monk.

  An illiterate itinerant peasant, Rasputin was able to wield considerable influence over Russia’s autocratic rulers. He rose to prominence as an enigmatic mystic, finding a ready audience for his peculiar brand of religious devotion at a time when many Russian aristocrats were fixated by mysticism and the occult. He appears to have embraced a distorted version of the Khlysty creed, reworking its emphasis on flagellation to advocate sexual exhaustion as the surest path to God.

  Introduced to the royal family in 1905, Rasputin eased the suffering of Tsarevich Alexei—the heir to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia who had been diagnosed with a hereditary bleeding disease, hemophilia. He swiftly became the confidant and personal adviser of Tsarina Alexandra (a German by birth), and when, in September 1915, Tsar Nicholas made himself commander-in-chief of the Russian armies following the outbreak of the First World War—spending much of his time at the front—fears grew that Rasputin was effectively running the country. Alexandra heeded Rasputin’s advice in sacking several ministers and appointing new ones—but ultimately authority
lay with her and the tsar, who ratified all decisions and, indeed, had rebuffed Rasputin’s advice to stay out of the war.

  Nicholas and Alexandra were actually inept, cruel, rigid and obtuse reactionaries. Nicholas, in a speech made in 1895, had deplored the “senseless dreams” of those seeking democracy, and had helped fund the murderous anti-Semitic Black Hundreds movement after crushing the 1905 Revolution. The country’s problems, then, were firmly down to the incompetence of the tsar and tsarina, but Rasputin provided a scapegoat.

  Rasputin’s close relationship with the tsarina provoked rumors of sexual deviance at the Russian court led by the Mad Monk, and before long his position had become a national scandal. He came to symbolize the perceived corruption of the tsar’s rule—with stories widespread about Alexandra’s supposed lesbianism and Nicholas’ impotence. Finally, in December 1916, a high-level plot involving senior politicians, noblemen and members of the imperial family—desperate to safeguard the regime—succeeded in eliminating the cleric. Rasputin was poisoned, shot (twice), beaten and eventually dumped into the River Neva, where he finally drowned. His astonishing resistance to poison and bullets suggested to some the mysterious potency of his powers.

  GANDHI

  1869–1948

  I know of no other man in our time, or indeed in recent history, who so convincingly demonstrated the power of the spirit over things material.

  Sir Stafford Cripps, British Labour politician, speech at

  the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference,

  London (October 1, 1948)

  Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was the father of the Indian Nation, whose use of peaceful protest to achieve political independence has served as an inspiration for generations of political leaders seeking an end to oppression. The embodiment of man’s capacity for true humanity, Gandhi came to be known by the name of Mahatma, meaning Great Soul.