"The Grand Duke of Baden, with whom I was yesterday, knows a good deal about the recent crisis. He says the cause of the breach between the Emperor and Chancellor was a question of power, and that all other differences of opinion about social legislation and other things were only secondary. The chief ground was the Cabinet Order of 1852, which Bismarck pressed on the attention of the Ministers without the Emperor's knowledge, and so hindered them from going to make their reports to the Emperor. The Emperor wanted the Order rescinded, while Bismarck was against it. Nor had the conversation with Windthorst led to the breach. A talk between the Emperor and Bismarck about this conversation is said to have been so tempestuous that the Emperor subsequently said when describing it, 'He (Bismarck) all but threw the inkstand at me.'" To Hohenlohe Bismarck said, as Hohenlohe remarked that the resignation had surprised him, "Me also," and that three weeks before he did not think things would end as they had. Bismarck added: "However, it was to be expected, for the Emperor is now quite determined to rule alone."
Finally the Prince's Journal has the following:
"Two things struck me in these last three days: one that no one has any time and every one is in a greater hurry than before; and secondly, that individualities have expanded. Every individual is conscious of himself, while before, under the predominating influence of Prince Bismarck, individualities shrank and were kept down. Now they are all swollen like sponges placed in water. That has its advantages, but also its dangers. The single-minded will is lacking."
The period between the great Chancellor's fall and his death nine years later was marked by so many incidents as to make it almost as _mouvementé_ as the period of the fall itself. He retired to Friedrichsruh, all the more immediately as the new Chancellor, General von Caprivi, showed such indecent haste in taking possession of the official residence that a portion of Bismarck's furniture was broken and rendered useless. That Bismarck retired with the angry feelings of a Coriolanus in his heart, or, as Anglo-Saxon slang would have it, of a "bear with a sore head," became evident only a few weeks later. He was visited by the inevitable interviewer, and chose the _Hamburg News_ as the medium of communicating to the world his opinion of the new _régime_ and the men who were conducting it; and made use of that paper with such instant vigour and acerbity that little more than two months from his retirement elapsed before the new Chancellor thought it advisable to issue instructions to Germany's diplomatic representatives warning them carefully to distinguish between the "present sentiments and views of the Duke of Lauenburg and those of the erstwhile Prince Bismarck," and to pay no serious attention to the former. Bismarck replied in the _Hamburg News_ that he would not allow his mouth to be closed, and set about proving that he meant what he said. Nothing the men of the "new course" could do met with his approval. The first thing he fell foul of was the Anglo-German agreement of July 1, 1890, which gave Germany Heligoland in exchange for Zanzibar, deploring the badness of the bargain for Germany, and evidently not foreseeing the importance that island's position, commanding the approaches to the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser, was afterwards to possess. Besides the friendliness with England, the detachment of Germany from Russia in favour of Austria, also a feature of the "new course," did not please him as tending to drive Russia into the arms of France.