>>214043294
>On the frontlines while approaching Paris, he entertained a regiment with a sumptuous dinner of sardines, caviar, various kinds of wurst, boiled beef and macaroni, boiled mutton, then ending the dinner with cheese, fresh butter, and fruit. An observer of his dietary habits reported that “he ate until the walls burst”—roast beef or beef steak with potatoes, cold roast, venison, fried pudding, and desert. He drank wine with every meal, even at breakfast, along with milk and lemon water, and beer or sparkling wine during his afternoon. In the wine cellars in France he once tried mixing a dozen different vintages of wine then proceeded “to mix various liquors in the most outrageous manner.” He ate a great deal of caviar to promote thirst, since he believed he could sleep only after drinking a goodly amount of beer. He had been a chain smoker of cigarettes from morning to night; later he switched to cigars. At the Congress of Berlin, while presiding over the division of Africa by the colonial powers, he ate pickled herrings with two hands. Unsurprisingly, the appellation Bismarck Herring for pickled herring persists to this day.