web counter

CRISTO RAUL.ORG

READING HALL THE DOORS OF WISDOM

 

THE FOUNDING OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE BY WILLIAM I.

BOOK I.

RETROSPECT. FOUNDING OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE.

CHAPTER I.

THE EARLIEST TIMES.

 

We know about when the Germans arrived in their present dwelling-place and entered the arena of European civilization, but it is by no means so easy to determine when there began to be a German nation, which exerted an influence as a political community.

In the very earliest times there seems to have been among the Germans no trace of a national consciousness. The small, isolated tribes are sometimes friendly to one another, and sometimes hostile; they break up into their component elements, or unite for the time with each other into larger groups, regardless of kinship, and then separate again, just as external circumstances may require. Only the most closely related hold together constantly, such as members of the same family, district, or retinue, where their common interest, the community of blood or fate, forces itself upon their material apprehension in their daily intercourse with one another. They are strong and self-reliant people, who can get along only with natures like their own, and who feel as much repelled by the slightest dissimilarity as by the greatest. Whenever they hold together as a whole, no adversary can be a match for them; and all their later enemies have agreed with Tacitus in exclaiming, “How fortunate that they are always quarrelling among themselves!”. Thus, then, they hold naturally to the individual. A national consciousness appears first as the outcome of an advance in civilization. So it was in the earliest times, and so it has been at every stage of our history. A long training in politics, in economics, and in mental discipline was necessary before the Germans succeeded in establishing a German national government.

Now, what form did this training of the German people take? What part did the state and religion, literature and political economy, play in developing them into a nation?

We cannot blind our eyes to the fact: their influence was as unfavorable as possible.

We shall entirely leave out of consideration the question whether the course of events was in other respects desirable, advantageous, or inevitable. We shall simply show conclusively that for long series of years the conditions were inimical to the establishment of a German nation upon a firm basis.

The step which was decisive in the advance of German civilization for a full thousand years was their admission into the Roman Empire and into the Roman Church. In connection with these they formed monarchies of considerable size, and learned to appreciate the significance of large political and ecclesiastical bodies. But whereas their former combinations included only small portions of the German race, their connections now reached far out beyond the limits of any one people. The small provinces and clans of earlier times did not become elements of a national unit, but of a universal empire, and of a universal Church. Like Augustus Caesar, Charlemagne was served by a heterogeneous body, composed of the most widely differing races. Not only all the Germans of the Continent, but also Romanized Gauls, Spaniards, Italians, and even countries of the Slavs and Avars, were subject to him. After its union with the Romish Papacy this sovereignty claimed even more: the right to force the whole world into the acceptance of the Christian faith, and to demand from all Christendom obedience to the Emperor and to the Pope. No common bond was to be formed, no common feeling to be created, between Franks and Saxons, Swabians and Bavarians; on the contrary, every national peculiarity was to be given up in view of the universal Christian idea.

It has been properly said that this Empire was not yet a State. It was at once more and less than a State: more, for it was State and Church combined, a hierarchy under two leaders, one monarch for war and one for peace; and less, inasmuch as, in the zeal for further conquest and for a more firmly established orthodoxy, all interest in the simplest questions of politics, and all means of settling the same, dwindled into  nothing. It gave up, in ever increasing measure, to  local rulers or communities the most important duties of state, as well as all participation in matters concerning jurisprudence,—the executive, and the army.

So it came about, that in the midst of a dominion which sought to embrace the entire Occident, the old Germanic individualism, the exclusive interest in only those who were most nearly related, the devotion to the special interests of the community or of the feudal connection, sprang up again into a full and vigorous growth. The contrast could not have been more striking between their actual narrow life and their political and ecclesiastical ideals, which knew no bounds.

It is true that when the Carolingian universal empire was broken up, the German duchies, whether owing to the accident of inheritance or to the unconscious influence of national relationship, united into a German monarchy. Hardly had this taken place before the Saxon Otto took up again the universal ideas of Charlemagne, the protectorship over the universal Roman Church, and, consequently, the seizure of the Roman imperial crown and the claim to the supreme authority throughout all Christendom. Three powerful imperial dynasties put their whole energy into the realization of this object, and the temporary successes of the first Otto, the third Henry, and the first Frederick, have fixed the wondering gaze of all succeeding generations upon the mighty forms of these iron conquerors. Yet each time the proud structure, built as it was on a loose foundation, fell to pieces even more precipitately than in the days of the Carolingians. For these later emperors also were obliged to purchase the assistance of their subordinate princes by granting them further privileges, thereby, of course, weakening still more the power of the monarchy. But just at this time, at the very central point of the system, broke out the ruinous quarrel between the two leaders, the Pope and the Emperor. The spiritual and secular potentates both north and south of the Alps took sides in the quarrel, and for two centuries the civil war which had been kindled by Rome devastated both Germany and Italy. No wonder that the Germans became gradually indifferent to the ambitious plans of their emperors, and that the last Staufens waged the war against the papacy almost wholly supported by Italian adherents. Their final and overwhelming downfall is well known. The victory of the universal spiritual and temporal sovereign was complete. It was at this time that the saying was uttered, “All great empires must be broken up into tetrarchates, that the crowned priest may rule over them all.”

It is easily seen that during these long civil wars which finally split up into countless local quarrels, no conscious national feeling could be developed. North and South Germany were as foreign to each other as if they were people of different races. The great Swabian and Bavarian poems of chivalry and love were as incomprehensible to the Northern Germans as the fables of Low Germany were to the people of the South. The commerce of the Levant, which was increasing rapidly, lay exclusively in the hands of the High Germans, while the growing power of the Hanseatic League was kept in the possession of the Low German cities. In only one important matter was there any successful co-operation of all the races,— in the great colonization of the East.

The Bavarian East Mark (afterwards the archduchy of Austria) had been Germanized long before; now followed German settlements in Bohemia and Moravia, in Silesia and Transylvania, invited and favored by the rulers, who were themselves foreigners, but often looked upon with envy and hatred by the natives. The German element spread even more thoroughly throughout the Baltic region, by means of conquests over the Slavs and the old inhabitants of Prussia, and by constant accessions from all the German races. Flemings, Westphalians, and Low Saxons poured into the Marks of Brandenburg, into Mecklenburg and Pomerania. The German Order summoned Saxon and Swabian, Thuringian and Frankish nobles to the conquest of Prussia, and these were soon followed by the corresponding contingent of citizens and peasants. The natives were either destroyed in war, or outnumbered and absorbed by the new-comers. Here, then, there was no more distinction of races. They were simply Germans, and the country became German land. While in the old home political disintegration grew apace, constant dangers, both internal and external, forced large colonial territories to hold together, and to organize a stronger central government.

Yet, however significant was the progress in this direction, everything remained unsettled as long as the German people did not succeed in establishing a well ordered constitution for the whole empire. But of this there seemed to be no hope. There was nothing more said about the old idea of imperial authority over all Christendom. Rudolph of Hapsburg and his two followers were German kings, without the vain show of the empty title of emperor, and this title remained almost meaningless when the later rulers assumed it again. Not only in Italy and Burgundy, in Hungary and Poland, was it all over with German rule; even in Germany itself the royal power had sunk into impotence, and no longer controlled the independent will of its vassal princes. The great houses of Hapsburg, Wittelsbach, and Luxemburg quarreled for the supremacy. Every State sought to extend its rights and possessions at the expense of its neighbours or its subjects. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were for Germany a time of universal and almost uninterrupted anarchy. The strength and zeal of the nation spent itself in the establishment and extension of principalities and communities of various sizes, into which the German land gradually split up, and they were more than three hundred in number. Here was an instance of what it means to a great people when the central authority, the source of all strength and justice, is seen to be resting upon so slight a support. That the lords of these territories, by their constant quarrels, disturbed the general prosperity, was the least of the resulting evils. In the interior of each country, by reason of the weakness of the imperial authority, might made right; the prince, the clergy, and the nobility divided among themselves the power and the possessions. The smaller cities lost their independence; throughout the Empire the free peasants sunk under the yoke of servitude. Externally, too, the Empire was unable to protect any one of its parts against its neighbours. East and West Prussia were yielded to the superior might of Poland; Schleswig-Holstein chose voluntarily to place itself under the Danish King; all the Netherland provinces fell into the power of the French house of Burgundy; and the Swiss Confederation no longer belonged to the Empire but in name. For many generations, under Charles IV. and his sons, as well as under their successors of the house of Hapsburg, no attempt to restrain the evil, and to reassert the power of the Empire, had any lasting effect. It was not until the time of the Emperor Maximilian I that there seemed to be a promise of better things. After endless pains, and in spite of the persistent opposition of the Emperor, a number of Imperial institutions of wide-reaching importance were brought into existence in the States,—an Imperial court, the organization of Imperial districts, an Imperial revenue law, and a State contingent of the Imperial army. Upon this ground the definite political framework of a great national life might have been developed, especially since the fruitful basis of such a life was already provided. The efforts of the Humanists to refresh the mental powers at the newly-opened springs of classical antiquity had started a movement which spread far and wide; and the bold demand of Luther for a reform of the too-worldly Church was filling all the German provinces with a harmonious religious enthusiasm, at the same time that he created for his translation of the Bible a language which was just as easily understood by the Low Germans as by the High, and which ever afterwards remained a tangible expression of the national unity. It is not our business to decide whether the mediaeval or the remodelled Church offers its adherents the surest passport to heavenly bliss; but two quite earthly considerations bear incontrovertibly upon our subject: a great majority of the German people, according to Romish testimony over seven-tenths, joined the mighty reform; and secondly, until this time the Pope had not only been the highest judge in matters of faith, but he had received from Germany enormous revenues, had exerted an omnipresent judicial power, had decided the occupancy of the throne in many German principalities, and had had the right to exert a powerful influence on the election of the German monarch. Had it come at that time to a complete throwing off of his authority, the most important step towards national unity, and towards the political independence of Germany, would have been taken.

At this moment, however, the young King Charles of Spain and Naples, of the Netherlands and of America, obtained the throne of Germany. He had a German name, but a Spanish heart In accordance with his religious convictions, as well as with the extent of his possessions, upon which the sun never set, he fell once more into the ruts of the mediaeval Church policy; he consequently came into close relation with the Papal Chair, and became the most persistent and determined opponent of the German Reformation. To be sure, he was not able to carry out his purpose to its fullest extent, since his ambition, which did not stop short of the whole earth, called forth the resistance of every one, sometimes even the disfavor of the Curia, and finally opposition in his own family. He was unable to crush out the German Protestants; but he did succeed in gathering about himself once more in the Empire a strong Catholic party. Thus was the nation torn by a bitter religious dissension; for the Protestant princes could not be forced back into the old Church, and the Catholic States were quite as unwilling to grant to their subjects permission to join the new. The Augsburg Diet of 1555 granted to each secular State the right to choose a Confession for itself and its subjects; so that the results of the strife which had begun so promisingly for a national unity, turned out to be exclusively favorable to individualism; and such ambiguous decisions were made at Augsburg, and of such questionable validity, about spiritual princes and their subjects, that the dispute between the two religious parties continued uninterruptedly, and at last led to the explosion of 1618, which, spreading further, brought upon Germany the woes of the Thirty Years’ War. In this war the last gasps of a national consciousness were smothered,  at first in religious hatred, and later in desperate self-defence, and in the relapse into barbarism. Against their own countrymen the one party led into the field Italians, Spaniards, and Poles, the other, Danes, Swedes, and Frenchmen. At last, German mercenaries and deserters were to be found in every branch of the army of either party. At the beginning, the Emperor and the Pope had every expectation of obtaining absolute sovereignty throughout all Germany; but then the fortune turned, and the end of it was the utter defeat of the Emperor, the recognition of each of the three contending Churches, and the increased sovereign rights of the German princes. The expenses of this horrible war were borne by all Germany in the shape of the fearful desolation of the country and of the wretched condition of the people, as well as in important cessions of territory to Sweden and France.

Imperial authority and national sentiment had sunk to zero. Individualism had taken entire possession of the German land and of the German spirit.

 

CHAPTER II.

AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA.

 

It is very evident that under such conditions as the Peace of Westphalia had brought about for Germany, the re-establishment of a successful imperial government could no longer be expected from the nominal central authorities,—the Emperor and the Imperial Diet (Reichstag).

The spirit of Individualism had torn the Empire into pieces. Only the further development of this very spirit in the special .governments could produce a remedy.

Whenever any one State could so far extend its dominions and influence according to this traditional and selfish principle, as to overshadow all the others and force them to recognize its ascendency, then, so far as this State was concerned, selfishness and national feeling would be once more united; then it would naturally become the representative of the common national interests.

In the same way, formerly, the kings of Wessex, by subduing the other Anglo-Saxon States, welded them into an English crown. In the same way the Capetian princes of France gradually forced all the West-Frankish princes and counts to recognize their royal supremacy, and thus created the French nation.

For the whole subsequent development of German politics, the circumstance is decisive that for the solution of this problem there arose not one power only, but two powers side by side. Both of these, Prussia and Austria, which had been founded in the old colonial region of the East, had as rivals risen to a height of power which enabled them to lay claim to the leadership of the entire nation.

Austria was the first to arise in the century succeeding the Peace of Westphalia.

To the old inherited lands of the House of Hapsburg, which had always been parts of the German Empire, were added as a result of the great victories of Prince Eugene, the whole of Hungary with its outlying provinces, Belgium and Lombardy; later followed the acquisition of Tuscany and Modena through younger sons of the imperial house, and finally of Galicia as the spoils of the first division of Poland. A dominion so extensive raised Austria to the first rank of the European powers, and made it seem to be far more than a match for the other German States, even when combined. Accordingly in Vienna they were conscious that they were in a position to reassert all the claims of the old Roman Empire of the Germans; and since the title of this highest of all honors in Christendom had been for centuries almost an inheritance of the House of Hapsburg, to take exception to this seemed to the leaders of Austrian politics to be a State crime. It was, to be sure, impossible to declare, as in the days of Charles V, that all the earth was subject to Austria; but at least the nucleus of the old Empire, Germany and Italy, was to continue to recognize the imperial supremacy. Accordingly, from the inheritance of the old Empire, that cardinal principle, namely, the union with the Romish Church, was unswervingly maintained by its successor. From the first days of the Reformation, the House of Hapsburg had labored to root out Protestantism; and even the humane Maria Theresa was convinced that a Protestant was more dangerous than a Jew, and that a successful political organization could be established only on the basis of the Most Holy Church of Rome. So it happened that in Austria the Catholic clergy enjoyed the highest honors, enormous wealth, and a favored position in the assembly of the States; they controlled the secular instruction and exercised a strict literary censorship. In return for this they gladly allowed the State to secure the constant support of the Church by the assertion of far- reaching rights of supremacy and superintendence, and were pleased that the subordination of the people was assured by the concurrence of them both. This state of things reacted on the relations of the Emperor to the German people. The high dignitaries of the German bishoprics and monasteries were always ready at elections, and in the political affairs of their rulers, to listen to the wishes of a court so well disposed. A considerable number of Catholic free-towns eagerly followed their example. Likewise the high position which the secular nobility also held in Austria continually allured German counts and knights into the imperial service, and in this way attached numerous noble families to the imperial interests. What of jurisdiction still remained to the Empire, as well as the remnants of feudal rights and reservations, influenced other classes of society. In short, dependents of Austria were to be found scattered through all Germany. Although it cannot be said that these represented the strongest and most promising elements of the Empire, yet they zealously and successfully strove to keep up the imperial power in Germany.

But there was another side of the picture. The inner strength of Austria did not at all correspond to the extent of its dominions and its ambitious schemes. The monarchy was a loose aggregation of a long series of individual States, in each of which the authority of the Crown was narrowly limited by State rights. Maria Theresa was the first to introduce into the German Bohemian section a supreme authority which rendered the nobility, until that time almost independent, submissive to the will of the Crown, and also freed the peasant from the burden of subjection to the lord of the soil. This was a very important step; of which, however, the results could not be complete, because the leading offices under this regime, in accordance with court practice, naturally fell to members of that very nobility whose power was to be checked; and because, by the quarrels of the Emperor Joseph II and his mother during their co-regency, the dignity and unity of the imperial power were lost. In Belgium, as well as in Hungary and the adjoining provinces, the old feudal constitution remained firm, and successfully resisted Joseph’s attempts at reform. Thus it was true that in the greater part of the Empire, at every essential change of policy, either in laws or in administration, at every demand for money or recruits, the Government was obliged to divide itself up into forces which acted in different, and often along contradictory, lines.

The ratio of the races to each other, too, was unfavorable to Austria’s relations to Germany. Even in the middle ages the German colonization of the old hereditary possessions had been far from being so complete as in the north-east of Germany. Of the inhabitants of these in the previous century, at a rough estimate, four out of seven were Germans. Afterwards the German element was so far outnumbered by the Slavs, Roumanians, Italians, and Magyars, in the acquisitions made since 1699, that these latter formed three-fourths of the population. To be sure, the advantage which the Germans gained by the alliance of the imperial forces in case of war was by no means impaired; but, on the other hand, the development of a community of material and moral interests was rendered more difficult. The exclusively Catholic policy of the Court at Vienna only increased this estrangement. The zeal of the ecclesiastical princes for the cause of Austria was fully equaled by the jealousy shown by the Protestant States in the interests of their Church; and, with like mistrust, the Austrian officials excluded from their borders every product of the German brain which might appear suspicious to the censorship of the Church. The result of this was, that only isolated and faint echoes of the great spiritual movement which called forth the development of our classical literature in Germany reached Austria, and these were without effect. The paths of the two peoples became more and more divergent.

As far as foreign relations were concerned, Austria was indeed, by reason of her Swabian and Belgian provinces, more intimately connected with Germany a hundred years ago than today. It was in the nature of things that the attention of the rulers of Hungary, Lombardy, and Tuscany should turn towards the south and east, to Italy and Turkey, whereas the questions which arose there awakened but a minor interest in Germany. The latter was often to feel keenly this difference of interests. Whenever the imperial armies marched for the defence of Swabia and Belgium, and in so doing necessarily protected the western frontiers of Germany, the partiality of Austria for Italy was shown in the division of the spoils at Germany’s expense. In the endeavor to increase its Italian possessions the court of Vienna gave up Strasburg; by the cession of Lorraine it paid for the acquisition of Tuscany; and to gain Venetia it sacrificed Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine. We see clearly that Germany had good reason to wish that other powers might rise by the side of Austria which should protect the northern and western borders of the German territory.

This task fell to Prussia.

Frederick William, the great Elector of Brandenburg, found his possessions after the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia in a sad condition: scattered through all parts of Lower Germany, East Prussia under Polish supremacy, all under the control of an almost independent nobility,— this was the state of things which presented itself to his unbiassed eye and energetic will. He succeeded first in shaking off the Polish yoke; then he turned his newly-acquired authority against the privileges of the estates, and got for himself the control of the military and the revenue in the Province. This took place also in Brandenburg, in Cleves, and in the county of Mark. His first and last object was to establish an ever-ready standing army; for centuries no power of any importance had cared for the protection of northern Germany, and he had learned that in the first place one must make life secure, and afterwards plan to improve its conditions. He succeeded so far as to drive out from Brandenburg and Prussia the Swedes, whose nation since the days of Gustavus Adolphus had grown to be one of the great powers; and he was able with an armed hand and a defiant brow, to confront even Louis XIV, at that time the disposer of the destinies of Europe. On the ground of these services, his son Frederick obtained, after great efforts, the royal crown of Prussia; and his successor, Frederick William I., became after him the founder of the first modern State in Germany. His was a nature in which the repulsive and the imposing, the uncouth and the admirable, were closely united. In his manners a rough and unrefined peasant, in his family a tyrant, in his government a despot, choleric almost to madness, his reign would have been a curse to the country, had he not united with his unlimited power a rare executive ability and an incorruptible fidelity to duty; and from first to last he consecrated all his powers to the common weal. By him effective limitations were put upon the independent action of the provinces, and upon the overgrown privileges of the estates. He did not do away with the guilds of the different orders, but placed them under the strict control of a strongly centralized superintendence, and compelled their members to make every necessary sacrifice for the sake of assisting him in his efforts for the prosperity and power of Prussia. It is astonishing to see with what practical judgment he recognized a needed measure both in general and in detail; how he trained a body of officials, suited in all grades to the requirements of their position; how he disciplined them in activity, prudence, and rectitude, by strict inspection, by encouraging instruction, and by brutal punishments; how he enforced order and economy in the public finances; how he improved the administration of his own domains, so that it became a fruitful example to all proprietors; and how, full of the desire to make the peasants free owners of the soil, although he did not yet venture on such a radical measure, he nevertheless constantly protected the poor against the arbitrariness and oppression of the higher classes. In matters connected with the Church, he held unswervingly to religion and to Christianity, but repelled every tendency toward sectarian bigotry. The royal family had long, been attached to the Calvinistic Church, and by far the larger part of the population were Lutheran; hence the King was naturally led to make the contending creeds subordinate to the unity of the State, and, in virtue of his patriarchal power, to stop the quarrels of the theologians. The number of his Catholic subjects was not large, but in Geldem and Lingen they also felt the beneficial effects of this course. When a Protestant zealot once asked him why he had in his army such dangerous subjects as Catholic chaplains, his reply was simple and significant: because there were Catholic soldiers. In short, there was no department of life to which he did not give encouragement and assistance; it is also true that there was none which he did not render subservient to his own will, and the products of which he did not make conducive to the one great end,—the independence and aggrandizement of the State. So that he who was the ruler of, at most, three million people, created, without exhausting the country, a standing army of eighty thousand men: a remarkably skillful and ready army, which he disciplined with barbarous severity on the slightest occasion, at the same time that he looked out for the welfare of every soldier even in the smallest detail, according to his saying, that “a king’s warrior must live better than a gentleman’s servant.” What he had in his mind, almost a hundred years before Schamhorst, was the universal obligation of military service; but it fared with him in regard to this as in regard to the freedom of the peasants: strong as he was, he could not turn the world he lived in upside down; he contented himself with bequeathing his best ideas to a more propitious future. The foundations of the government rested upon the estates in spite of all monarchical reforms.

Thus, beside the federative Empire of the Hapsburgs, arose the small, compact Prussian State, which, by reason of the concentration of its forces, was a match for its five-times-larger rival. The genius of Frederick the Great, the son of its founder, snatched from the Court of Vienna, in a bold attack, the noble province of Silesia, and then made good his claim to it in an unprecedented war of seven years duration, against a power ten times as numerous, but badly organized. This brought Prussia at once into the ranks of the great European Powers. It was all over with Austria’s sole leadership of the German Empire; at every step she was obliged to take into account the operations of her feared and hated rival. We emphasize the fact that this conflict was by no means carried on in a national spirit, nor with a view to improve the constitution of the German people. Both Prussia and Austria worked only for their own ends. It has been supposed that in 1756, when Frederick was threatened by Austria and broke with France, thereby drawing upon himself the fearful dangers of the Seven Years’ War, he did this in order to protect, with England’s assistance, the German land from a French invasion; but we know now, from documents, that this is erroneous, and that Frederick would have preferred the French alliance (and the consequent occupation of Hanover by French troops) to the English, if he could still have obtained the former. So much the more strikingly did the fact stand out at the end of the war, that Germany had more in common with Prussia than with the Court of Vienna. If Austria had gained the victory she would have delivered East Prussia to the Russians and placed Belgium under French protection; and by the recovery of Silesia she would have lost nothing of her position as a European Power.

It is needless to say how dangerous these cessions would have been to Germany. The defeat of Prussia would have been a fatal blow to German liberty. The splendid resistance of Frederick warded off this calamity from Germany, although he had nothing else in mind than the independence and greatness of Prussia. The same was true when, at the end of his reign, he collected about himself the majority of the foremost German princes in a firm league against the threatened encroachments of the Emperor Joseph II. His object was not to form a definite nation, but confessedly to keep the imperial system in its weak condition. For any strengthening of this would be a strengthening of the imperial idea, and this would be a hindrance to the free movements of Prussia and to the formation, by the side of Austria’s adherents, of a party devoted to the interests of Prussia.

His immortal services to Germany were these: he inspired by his own mighty personality a patriotic pride in the hearts of many thousand people; he protected with arms and bulwarks the German North, so long defenceless; he set before the eyes of the multitude of German proprietors for encouragement and example his own management of affairs, conducted in his father’s spirit; and in place of the immorality, which prevailed at that time in so many courts, he filled these proprietors with an honest zeal for the welfare of the people intrusted to them. Thus the second half of the eighteenth century became for the German race, outside of Austria, a period of earnest aspiration and of joyous advancement. For the second time in our history there arose a great literature, which in science and poetry opened a new era for the civilization of our people and their standing in Europe. After a long period of insignificance and wretchedness, Germany found herself again in a posi­tion to take her place among cultivated nations. What other people could point to a Frederick ? What other nation could show achievements in poetry and philosophy which surpassed those of our great men? When they saw the creations of Klopstock, Lessing, and Goethe, our people, though politically torn asunder, remembered and realized the bond of mental unity and affiliation which existed between them. Holsteiners and Swabians, Franks and Saxons, felt themselves associated with each other in the same mental struggle, in the same “Sturm und Drang”, in the rejection of everything artificial and conventional, in the passionate endeavor after pure nature,—the source of all truth and beauty. However disdainfully Frederick, with his classical taste, branded the creations of the new German era as flat and insipid: here his people left him in the lurch. It was in their midst that Lessing developed his power; the Prussian youth filled the lecture-rooms of Kant and Fr. August Wolf; and the Berlin public crowded with grateful enthusiasm to the representations of Gotz, as they did somewhat later to those of Schiller’s dramas. In these matters there were no longer any barriers between Prussia and the rest of Germany.

But out of this beautiful feeling of mental harmony there arose no thought of political unification.

Of course there was no lack of discontent with the existing political conditions; the helplessness of Germany among the European Powers, the hollowness of the imperial system, the wretched doings of the Diet at Ratisbon, the despotic influence of many a prince, the stupid arrogance of many of the nobility, — all this was painfully felt and jealously exposed in political tracts, in odes, and in the drama. The more the people became conscious of the inherent excellences of the German nation, the more unendurable seemed the conflict be­tween the conditions necessary to the development of these qualities and the actual state of things. But however severely the critics of the Illumination (Aufklarung) denounced this state of things, they had no positive solution to offer. These critics were led by the French influence which affected also certain phases of our poetry. They found a remedy for the abuses of existing government only in the unconditional liberation of each individual, leaving it then to these to create for themselves, by their independent judgment and wise deliberation, new institutions based on pure reason. By the side of this unlimited individualism there was no room in politics for a national idea. On the contrary, great minds were of the opinion that it was bigoted narrowness to confine political service to any one people, rather than in a spirit of truest philanthropy to set before one’s self as an aim the welfare of the whole world.

At the same time, under the influence of the mighty growth of our poetry, the people everywhere utterly gave up their interest in political questions. It was a generation that did not care for material comforts; not rich, and yet possessing moderate means, careless in their morals, but enthusiastic for the beautiful, giving itself up entirely to ideal sentiment and intellectual revelry. They were ready in every particular to feel at home and contented in the narrow confines of the small States. They had often a feeling of personal devotion to their prince; they loved the old, sweet native land, and believed that they were better off at home than elsewhere. In spite of all their admiration for Frederick, they thanked Heaven they had lower taxes to pay and fewer soldiers to furnish than the unhappy Prussians. “We all admired Fritz,” says Goethe, “but what had we to do with Prussia?” No one dreamed that this same Prussia could become an essential factor in the formation of a great German nation.

This then was the situation: in the minds of the people an increasing mixture of personal and cosmopolitan ideas; and in practical politics a dualism, the question of sovereignty between Prussia and Austria.

 

CHAPTER III.

FOREIGN RULE.—WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.

 

There came a time which set before the eyes of the German people a fearful Mene Tekel: a people that allows its unity to be destroyed is not worthy of existence.

The French Revolution broke out. In Germany, where not much was yet known about the deeds of Parisian Radicalism, the noblest men raved for a time over its high-sounding manifestoes, over the inalienable rights of man, over universal Liberty and Equality, and the fraternization of all nations. Cosmopolitan enthusiasm flared up once more with a brilliant blaze.

But bitter disappointment soon followed. This French freedom turned into the horrors of the Jacobin Reign of Terror. The Fraternization of the Nations became a pretext for a war of spoliation against all the neighboring countries. Borne aloft by the storms of the Revolution and by an unparalleled generalship, the first Napoleon became the master of all Europe. Nothing was more serviceable to him in this career than the fact that Germany was divided into small States. From the very first of his appearance on the scene, a large number of German princes hastened to be counted among his vassals. When he attacked Austria, Prussia remained neutral; while he was crushing Prussia, Austria looked calmly on. When he had reached the height of his power, the German Empire had been already annihilated: there was no longer any Germany. In its place, one spoke of the Rhenish Confederation under the august protection of the Emperor of the French. Napoleon arranged the same according to the principles laid down ten years before by Talleyrand, so that Prussia and Austria were pushed to the eastward, the one beyond the Elbe, the other beyond the Inn, and both quite shut out from the new Confederation. In the rest of Germany were established a number of States of medium size, large enough to give rise to a definite national feeling within themselves, but not strong enough to arouse a feeling of independence with regard to others; or, in other words, strong enough to render permanent the disunion of Germany, and weak enough to assure the supremacy of France. To this end he created in the South the royal crowns of Bavaria and Würtemberg, the Grand Duchies of Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, etc., and in the North the kingdoms of Westphalia and Saxony, as well as the Grand Duchy of Berg.

But there was a great difference between the methods of reconstruction in the North and in the South. The princes, who obtained power in South Germany by their voluntary adherence to Napoleon, belonged to native houses. A large majority of their subjects were descendants of old native families, and the inhabitants of the diminutive States which were annexed found their condition rarely made worse, and, indeed, often improved. Napoleon, relying upon the trustworthiness of his vassals, left them undisturbed in their internal administration, provided they supplied punctually the required contingent of troops. These troops then fought against Prussia and Austria, and their enthusiasm over the victories of the Invincible One spread far and wide among their friends at home. So it came about, that wherever discontent arose in these countries over the arbitrariness of officials and the pressure of taxation, the complaints of the people were directed rather against their native governments than against Napoleon. In other respects, burghers and peasants lived on in the old traditional customs; there arose an ardent longing for liberal constitutional rights, but hardly for a national independence.

In North Germany, west of the Elbe, it was quite otherwise. Except in the case of a few unimportant small States, the native princes were driven out and the land became the spoils of the foreign conqueror. Bonaparte princes reigned in Westphalia and Berg; the left bank of the Rhine, Oldenburg, a part of Hanover, and the Hanse Towns fell directly under the control of the French; a crowd of French officials, officers, and garrisons oppressed the country ; the Continental system brought poverty and wretchedness upon all classes; the French police kept up a suspicious and domineering surveillance over the schools, correspondence, and society. It was out of the question at once to forbid the use of the German language; but the attempt was made, as far as possible to supplant it by the French. Napoleon planned a vigorous campaign to root out every German characteristic from these countries; and consequently a patriotic wrath boiled in the hearts of the oppressed. One conspiracy followed another, but there was no central idea which looked far ahead into the future. Every one hated the foreign rulers; but the people of Brunswick and Hesse-Cassel, of Hanover and Altmark, kept apart from each other. Among the masses this feeling was reduced to an intense desire to expel the French and then to live peaceably, each under his hereditary prince, after the manner of their fathers. In this way, hatred of the stranger and provincial patriotism went hand in hand.

The re-establishment of Germany depended in every way upon Austria and Prussia. Everything turned on what position these Powers would take in reference to their great task.

There was as much suffering in Prussia from material wretchedness and from foreign oppression as there was west of the Elbe. The country was desolated and impoverished, burdened with exorbitant war-contributions, and, until the payment of these, encumbered with French garrisons. In addition to this they felt the burning shame of the loss of their military glory and of the blotting out of their great past; all hearts were filled with sadness that the creation of Frederick the Great had fallen and that the honor of Prussia suffered disgrace. But, while in Westphalia under a foreign government the patriotic sentiment could vent itself only in impotent tumults; while in Saxony both king and people felt that they were associates of the great Napoleon ; while in the pygmy States of Thuringia any spontaneous uprising was inconceivable, there was still in Prussia an hereditary king reigning over from four to five million inhabitants; there was in Prussia a government which was alone able, in spite of the French surveillance, to offer to the ambitious spirit of the people a live central idea, weapons for a rebellion, and ends worthy of a struggle. A gracious destiny had given at that time to the sorely-afflicted King, Frederick William III, two mighty helpers,—Stein and Scharnhorst, both gifted with strong powers of mind, invincible courage, and unlimited devotion. Both men understood that, after having fallen into such depths, the means at hand in the government of Frederick were not sufficient to bring about a restoration; but that it was necessary to arouse, not by a blind sense of duty, but by free enthusiasm, the exertion of all the powers of the people. Thus the thought of political freedom was the first weapon put into the hands of the Hohenzollern State; not freedom in the popular sense of an increase of the rights of the individual at the expense of the power of the State, but in the sense of positively strengthening the State through the patriotic co-operation of the people in every matter of public interest. On this principle all the productive powers of the nation should be allowed full swing, the people should universally receive instruction, and the consciousness of their having a share in politics would make private and public interests identical.

The old aims of Frederick William I, the freeing of the peasants and the introduction of a universal obligation to serve in the army, were approaching realization. Differences of rank were forgotten in the thirst for martial glory, which was shared by all. By the side of the system of royal officials arose the beginnings of self-government on the part of the citizens themselves. Plans began to be laid for rearranging the provincial estates and for establishing an Imperial Parliament. Everything was directed toward making the cause of the Fatherland appear to each citizen his own, thus filling him with a ready spirit of self-devotion on the eve of this holy war. To be sure, it is but a caricature of the actual facts to assert, as has been often done since, that the volunteers and militia of 1813 rushed into arms because the King had promised them a liberal constitution; no man who risked life and limb in that struggle to throw off the foreign yoke thought of any such bargain. And yet it is no less certain that the interminable protraction in the preparation of the constitution was a deviation from the course entered upon by Stein and afterwards by Hardenberg, and also from the very spirit of that great period.

The current of ideal conceptions, which bore along the Prussian statesmen of that time, carried with it irresistibly the greater part of the people. But there was no lack of apprehensions and of opposition. Many a burgher grumbled over the new liberty of following any trade, and over the trouble of municipal self-government; many a peasant on his farm found himself in no better condition as the result of freedom, but rather in a worse; and the abominably high rate of taxation oppressed all alike. There was no lack of small-hearted men who considered it madness to throw one’s self with the diminutive power of Prussia in the path of the French Colossus.

Political differences, too, arose. A number of influential officers saw in Scharnhorst’s projects the abandonment of all discipline in the army and the decay of the old Prussian military system. The declaration that the army should be “the people in arms” seemed to them to be the proclamation of an armed revolution.

No less offensive to a great part of the nobility of Kurmark, Pomerania, and Silesia were the popular reforms of Stein and Hardenberg. Indeed their ancestors had already in 1733 objected to the recruiting laws of Frederick William I., to even the first step toward universal obligation to serve, because in this way the peasants would be withdrawn from the dominion of the proprietors and placed under the control of the King. The removal of the hereditary subjection of the peasants meant in their eyes the overthrow of the entire social order. They thought that, at any rate, if the peasant was to be no longer subject to the proprietor, the land which had been formerly intrusted to him should now return into the hands of its owners; he might then, in the full enjoyment of his newly-found liberty, seek for himself elsewhere a shelter from wind and weather. They were angry that, in the future, even burghers could purchase fine estates or become officers in the army, and that the farther projects of the Reform party threatened even the privileges of the nobility in regard to taxation and, patrimonial tribunals.

And what was finally to be expected, if new and powerful Imperial constituencies were to rise out of a state of society so indiscriminately levelled? The way would be opened to all the disorders of the great French Revolution, to the downfall of the monarchy and of the entire edifice of the State. The King himself was not always free from such apprehensions. For years he put off the proclamation of the universal obligation to serve, and felt a hesitancy especially about the establishment of Imperial constituencies. Meanwhile, Hardenberg gradually succeeded in gaining his approval of the plan for a constitution based on such constituencies, so that he publicly mentioned the same in 1810, in a law relating to the finances.

While Stein and Scharnhorst laid at the foundation of their projects the right of the people to have a voice in the government, they proposed, as the highest aim of the War of Independence, the creation of a firmly united Germany—a conception no less ideal. The lesson of the last few years had made too deep an impression; Germany had been ruined through its own disintegration, and had dragged Prussia with it into the abyss. It was well known that the wild fancies of the Conqueror hovered about the utter annihilation of Prussia; if this should take place, then east as well as west of the Elbe not only political independence, but every trace of a German spirit, the German language and customs, German art and learning,—everything would be lost and wiped out by the foreigners.

But this fatal danger was perceived just at the time when every one had been looking up to Kant and Schiller, had been admiring Faust, the world-embracing masterpiece of Goethe, and had recognized that Alexander von Humboldt’s cosmological studies and Niebuhr’s Roman History had created a new era in European science and learning. In such intellectual attainments the Germans felt that they were far superior to the vanquisher of the world and his great nation ; and so the political interests of Prussia and the salvation of the German nationality exactly coincided. Schleiermacher’s patriotic sermons, Fichte’s stirring addresses to the German people, Humboldt’s glorious founding of the Berlin University, served to augment the resisting power of Prussia, while Scharnhorst’s recruits and militia were devoted to the defence of Ger­man honor and German customs. Every one felt that German nationality was lost, if Prussia did not come to its rescue, and, too, that there was no safety possible for Prussia, unless all Germany were free.

What a remarkable providence it was that brought together, as in the Middle Ages, on this ancient colonial ground a throng of the most energetic men from all districts of Germany! For neither Stein nor his follower Hardenberg, nor the generals, Schamhorst, Blucher, and Gneisenau, nor the authors, Niebuhr, Fichte, and K. F. Eichhorn, nor many others who might be mentioned, were born in Prussia; yet because their thoughts centred in Germany, they had become loyal Prussians. The name Germany had been blotted from the political map of Europe, but never had so many hearts thrilled at the thought of being German.

Thus on the most eastern frontier of German life, in the midst of troubles which seemed hopeless, the idea of German unity, which had lain dormant for centuries, now sprang up in a new birth. At first this idea was held exclusively by the great men of the times, and remained the invaluable possession of the cultivated classes; but once started it spread far and wide among the younger generation, inspired the ranks of the Prussian army, and thence rapidly extending became the common property of numerous circles, even beyond the Prussian borders.

Out of the glowing desire to sweep off from German land the foreign tyrant, with all his vassals and his creatures, arose in the fancy of the valiant youth the image of a compact Empire, strong in itself and ruled by a strong hand, the united strength of which no adversary could endanger. Arndt sang:

Das ganze Deutschland soil es sein.

So weit die deutsche Zunge klingt.”

It had been found by experience that neither Austria nor Prussia alone could be a match for the foreign oppressor, and that the sovereign smaller States were ready and eager to turn traitor. The thing to do, then, was to rally them all, Styrians, Brandenburgers, Bavarians, and Lower-Saxons, about the old Imperial banner, and to set up again in renewed vigor the Emperor upon the Imperial throne, before whose glory all petty individualism must keep silent, and all the States of Europe must bow their heads as in the old days of the Ottos and Hohenstaufens. With such hopes as these the flower of the Prussian nation, when the call to the struggle of independence sounded, streamed to their banners filled with trust in God and love of the Fatherland, equally ready for the wild charge or for protracted endurance, and rendered by their enthusiasm for the national idea indifferent to any kind of danger. However indefinite and vague many of their political notions were, they were certainly right in their conviction that the object of their efforts involved the true secret of a new and glorious future for Germany.

But the leading statesmen, Stein and Hardenberg, who were called to put into practical shape these ideals and to break the path for their realization, were forced soon to feel in all its naked truth the fact, that it was easier to defeat the mighty Napoleon than to bend the German sentiments of dualism and individualism to the spirit of national unity.

These men, assuming that others shared their spirit, had from the beginning, in full confidence and assurance, striven for close and helpful association with Austria. After the glorious but unfortunate battles of Lutzen and Bautzen, they found themselves under the necessity of securing at any price the assistance of Austria in the field, and thus Austria gained and kept ever after the political direction of the War of Independence. Here was a marked instance of the irresistible power of traditional sentiments, growing out of a long past, in determining the decisions of the present. Both powers fought hand in hand against Napoleon; but quite as certainly as the aim of Prussia’s policy was to be the creation of a united German Empire, just so surely did Austria see that her salvation depended upon the continuance of German disunion.

Indeed, whoever in the spring of 1818 passed from the Prussian headquarters to the Austrian capital, might well have believed himself transported into a new world. Austria, too, had suffered many losses through Napoleon; but yet she had remained a Great Power, internally independent; she had no French garrisons in her provinces, and had recently seen one of her archduchesses mount the throne of France. After four terrible ware peace seemed tolerably secure; everybody looked forward to a comfortable period of repose, and shuddered at the thought of fresh quarrels. To be sure, they had little affection for the dangerous Bonaparte, but there was hardly any of that burning hatred and bloodthirsty passion to be found here, which fired every Prussian heart. It is true that the Viennese cabinet took advantage of every opportunity to check the advance of the French power; but that which in Berlin was the one thing thought about, the freeing of the German people from the foreign yoke, appeared in Vienna to be only one isolated political need, surely not the first, and neither the most important nor the most pressing. This was inevitably so from the geographical position of Austria’s provinces, from the internal organization of her monarchy, and from the old traditions of her ruling family. In the severe distress arising from Napoleon’s violence the Vienna government saw only a temporary inconvenience, which indeed, they wished to shake off as soon as possible, but they considered that a permanent association with France would afterwards not only be easily attained by proper management, but would also be exceedingly advantageous.

Much more serious and likely to be lasting appeared to them their anxiety about the growth of the Russian power, which by its advance upon Turkey threatened to surround Hungary from three sides. As for positive hopes and plans, there was no project dearer to their hearts as Catholics than the recovery of the Austrian rule over Italy, and thereby of their dominant influence in the Vatican. In comparison with these vital questions German affairs stood in the background. In point of fact, the Austrians could have in these latter only a negative interest. What the cultivated classes in Prussia, wrote Metternich, call “German spirit,” has come to be with us no more than a myth. Of course, Germany must not remain French: that went without saying; and they were therefore ready, upon favorable conditions, to join a Russo-Prussian alliance. If the struggle were successful, then would Austria, as would be proper for that proud imperial house, claim a controlling voice at the German Courts, but, of course, never get so entangled in German matters as to be obliged to assume any dangerous responsibilities, or to be exposed to any reflex meddling of Germany in Austrian affairs. Of themselves, then, these two principles stood fixed: no such thing as a German Empire must be thought of; and secondly, Germany must not fall under the leadership of Prussia.

Antipathy towards Prussia was confessedly nothing new in Vienna; but this feeling was greatly heightened by the internal policy of the Prussian government, as urged by Stein. His suggestion of reforming the State by beginning at the bottom, and calling all the powers of the nation into political activity, so as to make the holy war a subject of spontaneous enthusiasm on the part of each individual: all that seemed to the statesmen on the Danube to be a revolutionary outrage. So that, as that sentiment gained ground in Prussia, and the Prussian people began to be filled everywhere with a passionate desire for political recognition, and finally drove the hesitating King irresistibly to decisive steps, the Viennese could not comprehend such dread­ful things in any other light than as the result of a widespread demagogical conspiracy; they felt sure that the whole country must be full of the machinations of secret societies, which, while pretending to work against Napoleon, in reality were conniving at the overthrow of all social and monarchical order. York’s revolt from the French on his own responsibility seemed to be their work, and most certainly Kutusow’s proclamation at Kalisch, in which he summoned the nations of the Rhenish Confederation to take part in a rebellion against Napoleon, and threatened with expulsion any of their princes who should not come over to the national party.

In loosely-united polyglot Austria it was impossible to allow either the system of secret societies, or popular movements, or any reforms which should begin with the lower classes; consequently they could not endure to see these spread in Germany, and then threaten to infect Austria across the borders. Accordingly, it was necessary to sustain the Monarchical principle against this Revolutionary one, and to support the sovereignty of the princes of the Rhenish Confederation against the Prussian Jacobins. This, too, promised further immediate advantages. It was hoped that in this way the princes of the Rhenish Confederation could be severed from the French alliance, so long as the war lasted; but afterwards they could be counted on to remain firm friends of Austria, as the defender of their royal autonomy against revolutionary Prussia with her unifying tendencies.

In all these views Emperor Francis and his influential minister, Count Metternich, agreed entirely.1 Francis would listen to nothing about a restoration of the Imperial dignity. Even in the summer of 1818, he had declared to his minister: “I should never be willing to be subject to a German Emperor; and as for being the new Emperor myself, I was never made for it The new Emperor would find enemies in the princes and in their subject-peoples, and would have the political schemers on his side. For my part, I shouldn’t consider myself capable of ruling over such a set.” Consequently Metternich came to the conclusion that, after all, it was not necessary to rack his brain over a future German constitution; the German States might each remain in full autonomy among the nations of Europe, and, through international negotiations, in case of war, be kept in alliance with Austria, just as he had, in fact, dealt with Italy. He expressed himself in this way at the beginning of the war to the Emperor Alexander of Russia, and afterwards also to the English plenipotentiaries, on both sides meeting with the desired acquiescence.

But in this matter the narrow-minded Emperor Francis saw further than his wise minister. If the German States should be left entirely independent, there was great danger lest the perfect community of their interests should very soon drive them, willingly or unwillingly, into the arms of Prussia; or, indeed, lest the proximity of France should incite them to a new Rhenish Confederation. Accordingly, the Emperor insisted upon some definite arrangement insuring both the exclusion of foreigners from Germany, and the influence of Austria in matters common to all Germans. It should not be, of course, an Empire, nor an Imperial Government, nor a Union; for anything of that kind was, as Metternich rightly observed, unthinkable without a head; but rather a Confederation of independent and co-equal sovereigns for the preservation of a common safety and of an internal peace, under the traditionally sanctioned presidency of Austria. When the Emperor had come to this decision, Metternich, with his usual cleverness, uttered the following apt aphorism: In the middle of the continent there should be no void, but rather an overfulness.

Metternich took care not to inform his Prussian friends prematurely of these intentions, but was so much the more eager in winning for Austria’s plans those influential Powers who habitually set an example to Europe. The Czar held in general to Prussia, yet he naturally was not anxious to support her plans for a mighty German Empire; for, as he said, if Germany becomes too strong, she will at last become quite independent of us. England favored Austria’s enterprises even more decidedly. The Prince-Regent, who in the phraseology of the sporting-world was the first gentleman of Europe, but who was otherwise a ruler capable of any baseness, had no other notion of German affairs, than that it was the duty of the Guelph Family to extend the dominion of Hanover, making it include half of North Germany, from the Elbe to the Maas. This idea by no means fell in with Prussia’s desire for acquisitions west of the Elbe, nor with Prussia’s persistent efforts for a practical Imperial system; consequently he was quite ready to support energetically Austria’s opposition to German unity.

On the side of Prussia, Stein enjoyed, to be sure, great personal popularity, but held at that time no official position, that could assure him of any lasting influence; and Hardenberg, in all matters more Prussian than German, yielded in blind confidence the most important positions, almost without resistance, to the Austrian Minister. In this way he conceded to him full power to make a treaty of alliance with the South German States of the Rhenish Confederation on the basis of complete independence—of Napoleon, he meant; and he was, in truth, horrified when Metternich upon that guaranteed to almost all the princes in the Rhenish Confederation, under purely nominal restrictions, unlimited sovereignty for the present and for the future, and the undisturbed possession of their territory as it had been heretofore, thus at once rendering impossible any German Imperial Constitution worthy of the name.

It may well be asked, what sort of an Imperial system would be possible, if, to say nothing of Bavaria and the rest of the Lesser States, there were to be among the members of the Empire two European Great Powers, each of which, even in Hardenberg’s opinion, should preserve complete independence. From 1812-1815 Stein and Hardenberg tried hard, by the repeated proposition of new plans, to effect the squaring of this circle.

We will not follow in detail their various attempts, all alike hopeless; at last Prussia settled upon the following fundamental propositions. The Empire should be divided into seven districts (Kreise), of which two should be under the leadership of Austria; two likewise under that of Prussia; Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Hanover were each to be at the head of one. The head of each district should have command of the army and form the highest court of appeal. The government of the Empire should then be intrusted to the five heads of the districts, the presidency regarded as a matter of honor falling to Austria, and the conduct of business to Prussia. These heads should at the same time form the legislative upper house of the empire; the lower house should be composed of the other princes, subordinate rulers, and the provincial representatives from the single States. For differences between the states a tribunal of confederates should be established. To the people of each State should be given a provincial constitution by the Confederate government, and at the same time a minimum of provincial rights; to every German citizen should be guaranteed protection of person and property, the right to emigrate without payment of duty, freedom of the press, religious freedom, equal recognition of all Christian sects, and the right of public trial. The great majority of the Petty States eagerly agreed to these propositions.

A strong Imperial system and an assurance of the rights of freedom were thus sought after in these plans, quite in the spirit of the War of Independence. In them appeared again Prussia's perfect confidence in the German spirit of her associates and her hopes to find the future members of the Confederation always filled with patriotic zeal. Both of the great Ministers were soon enough forced to see that by this exhibition of confidence they had entirely misjudged persons and things, and had brought into mortal danger, by their projects, as well the independence of Prussia as the common interests of Germany.

Difficulties arose the very first day. The princes of the Rhenish Confederation, Bavaria, Wutemberg, and Baden, were unwilling at the very outset to join a German confederation at all, but were determined to remain in complete independence as European Powers. Then they protested against the rights to be granted to the people; and when Stein urged this point with all his impetuous zeal, they decided to display their own magnanimity by giving their subjects a constitution, in order not to be forced to do so by the proposed confederation. In fact they repelled curtly any limitation whatever of their royal sovereignty and every manner of meddling in the management of their countries on the part of a confederation.

Austria behaved with more reserve. She never would have allowed the confederation any influence over the imperial patrimonial dominions, and least of all would she admit there Stein’s system of popular rights. Meanwhile she wished to retain the alliance of Prussia in the great European negotiations at the Congress of Vienna, and therefore let the Lesser States lead in the contest about a German constitution, while she for the time advocated, herself, a part of Prussia’s propositions.

The whole matter was temporarily crowded out of sight by the discussions in the Congress over the territorial boundaries of the Powers. Here again it was characteristic of Austria’s policy that she decidedly refused to accept her former possessions in Swabia and Belgium, which had been urgently pressed upon her by several cabinets, especially the former by Prussia. “We wanted,” said Metternich, “to establish our Empire without there being any direct contact with France.” He sought and found, in the place of these possessions, a rich indemnification for his country in Italy, in the immediate annexation of Lombardo-Venetia, and the indirect control over Tuscany and Modena.

Austria had indeed grown more and more out of Germany. She had no longer any interest in defending the Upper Rhine against the French; and the material basis for the development of any community of interest between Austria and Germany was already lost.

The territorial reconstruction of Prussia turned out quite differently. Both Austria and England desired alike that she should be kept as much as possible out of Germany, and therefore they wished to endow her with large territories in Poland. But the King had no inclination to increase the number of his Polish subjects; and in place of this wanted the whole of the Electorate of Saxony, whose King had remained to the last hour faithful to Napoleon. Austria, however, violently opposed this; and after a long and bitter quarrel the result was that Prussia received, in addition to Posen, Hither-Pomerania, half of Saxony, and her present provinces on the Rhine and Westphalia, quite separated as they were from her other possessions. By this she undertook the protection of the North German frontier as well against France as against Russia; and since her lands now stretched from the Niemen to the Maas, there could be no longer any German interest that was not at the same time Prussian. Prussia had grown again into Germany.

Now, although Hardenberg had in these negotiations experienced some very doubtful proofs of the trustworthiness of his Vienna friends, yet, when the question of a German Constitution came up again for discussion, he held unswervingly to his former position. The general course of debate was as follows: Prussia, backed by the Petty States, made her propositions for a strong Imperial system; Austria supported them with more or less modification; but the South German Lesser States opposed them energetically and unconditionally. Thereupon Austria declared, with many regrets, her opinion that they were impracticable.

At last, when the hour seemed to him to have arrived, Metternich, putting aside all wishes of Prussia, produced the project of Herr von Wessenberg, which openly advocated the system of a Confederation upon an international basis, of independent and co-equal sovereigns under Austria’s directing leadership. The Lesser States carried through a number of improving or weakening amendments, and thus this document received sanction as the Act of the German Confederation.

This empty production was received by the German nation at large partly with cold indifference, and partly with patriotic indignation. The majority of the German governments, too, were discontented with it. Mecklenburg said it was the best that could be done under the given circumstances. Hardenberg said, with a sigh, even such a Confederation was better than none at all. Some years later, Count Bernstorff, the Prussian minister, declared that the Act of Confederation was the immature result of over-hasty negotiation.

So much the greater was the satisfaction in the palace at Vienna. Metternich had been victorious at every point. He had thoroughly proved to the unwary Hardenberg his diplomatic superiority, and had completely effected what he had desired for Austria.

It is another question, whether he desired the best for Austria and Germany, whether he was not merely a skilful diplomat, but also a far-seeing statesman.

If Hardenberg’s scheme of a German constitution had been realized, then in the Supreme Imperial Council, in the Directory of the Five Heads of the Districts, Austria would surely have commanded the majority; for to her as the guardian of royal sovereignty the Lesser States would have turned, and not to Prussia, filled as she was with ideas of German unity. Prussia would have been subordinated, and Austria would have held the control of Germany. In that case the toils, the duties, and the dangers of the whole government would have fallen to her; to the Emperor Francis the assumption of these seemed too far-reaching, and Metternich was too indolent to wish it. This half-and-half state of things, which had just been attained, seemed much better, in which Austria would need to do nothing directly for Germany, and yet was so situated that she could restrain their every movement unfavorable to her interests. Metternich did not see that in the long run such a condition of things must necessarily become unendurable.

Prussia might well thank Heaven for the undeserved and gracious providence that nothing came of her plans for a strong Imperial government with such associates. So long as Austria was the firm supporter of the exclusive Lesser States in the Confederation, the members remained inimical to the development of common national interests and to the Prussian projects for unity. The weaker these members should become, the better, under existing circumstances, for Prussia and for the future national unity. Viewed in this way, the crow­ing out of the Stein-Hardenberg plans by the Act of Confederation was fortunate for the future of the nation. It by no means follows, of course, that the Act of Confederation was a satisfactory instrument, even for the national needs of its own times.

 

CHAPTER IV

FIRST YEARS OF THE DIET

 

Judged by what is demanded of a practical political organization, this German Act of Confederation, which had been produced with so much effort, possessed about all the faults that might render a constitution utterly useless.

Instead of a regular confederate government it established as the only legislative body of Germany a Diet composed of delegates sent from the thirty-nine sovereign States. It was announced as their mission that they should guard the external and internal safety; but their power to enact provisions for securing the same, and their authority to see that such laws were carried out, were left wholly indefinite. Upon the motion of the representative of the Kingdom of Saxony, it was decided that all more important matters, such as changes in the Constitution and permanent regulations affecting the whole Confederation, should be carried only by the unanimous vote of all the States; thus reminding one more strongly than ever of the old Parliament of Poland. Likewise, all matters of common interest, which did not concern the Confederation as such, were left to the informal agreement of all the States.

One sees at a glance, that this very demand for unanimity doomed at once and for all time the actions of the Confederation to unfruitfulness. The motions which had been zealously brought forward by Prussia and several of the smaller States for certain rights, which should be acknowledged as belonging to every German, were contracted in the Act of Confederation into a few meaningless and ill-defined phrases. Along these lines, too, the sovereignty of the royal governments was not to be encroached upon.

In every confederation that includes among its members very strong and very weak States, a greater number of votes is given to the smaller States than is proportionate to their actual power for the sake of preserving their political independence; but in this instance this principle became by exaggeration distorted to a ridiculous degree. In matters of usual business the eleven larger States had each one vote, while the twenty-eight smaller ones were grouped into six Curias, each Curia possessing one vote. Consequently it was possible for the Grand Duchies and the Petty States by holding together to vote down the combined opposition of Austria, Prussia, and the other Kingdoms, that is, one-tenth of the population against nine-tenths. In this Diet legislative power and political importance were disjoined as much as possible.

For a few matters only was a different method of voting reserved. Then this Close Council (Engerer Rath) as the body of seventeen votes was officially called, was exchanged for a Plenum, in which either unanimity or a majority of two-thirds was required; so that the six largest States, which held, together, twenty­eight votes out of seventy, could prevent the passage of any measure disagreeable to themselves.

The course of business dragged endlessly, as would naturally be expected in discussions among thirty-nine States. Everything was at first given into the hands of a committee; after their report the representatives had to get instructions from their respective Courts, and in the six lower Curias, two, four, or six different Governments had to agree about these instructions, a matter which often consumed months; if the business was especially annoying to any State, it left its representative an interminably long time without instructions; when finally the question was ready to be voted upon, new arguments and new objections came up, and instructions must be received afresh; or else the matter went back to the committee and often lay buried for years among their documents.

By force of necessity, in place of actual discussion in the Confederate Diet, diplomatic intriguing was very frequently employed at the smaller Courts by the larger; and whenever Prussia and Austria had the same object in view, no one else ventured, except in rare instances, to raise any objections. Accordingly, as in early times, not constitutional rights, but the mutual attitude of the Courts of Vienna and Berlin, decided the fate of Germany.

The provisions of the Act of Confederation were as unsatisfactory in regard to Germany’s relations with foreign Powers as in regard to her internal organization. Every sovereign had the right to maintain and to receive foreign embassies; he might make any sort of a treaty with non-German governments with the sole limitation that it should not be inimical to the safety of Germany. Even the trade in mercenaries, as carried on in the previous century, would not have been excluded by such a provision. This privilege of the individual States was the more dangerous, since three foreign Kingdoms were represented in the Confederation: England by Hanover, the Netherlands by Luxemburg, Denmark by Holstein.

The government of these countries would doubtless be administered in accordance not with German but with foreign interests, and the danger of this mongrel position, not only for the countries themselves, but for the whole public life of Germany, would soon enough appear. Moreover, it need scarcely be said that even the presiding Power, Austria, by reason of the preponderance of her crown-lands, which were independent of the Confederation, would hardly have a warmer heart for German interests than these three foreign Courts.

The uncertainty of all these things was completed by the incorporation of the Law relating to the German Constitution into the Acts of the Congress of Vienna, which united the five Great Powers, with the addition of Sweden, Spain, and Portugal, as the regulators of the common affairs of Europe. Austria and Prussia had advocated this measure in the belief that in this way the security of the Confederation would be guaran­teed by all Europe. But in St. Petersburg, Paris, and London the matter was looked at in quite another way, namely: after the Act of Confederation as a part of the doings of the Congress of Vienna had been put under the protection of the Powers, Germany herself could not change anything in it without the permission of these guaranteeing Powers, but stood under the guardianship of Europe, just as in the eighteenth century Poland had stood under that of Russia.

This indefiniteness was the more critical, since from the first very many German princes did not hesitate, in case of internal troubles or of disagreements with their neighbors, to call to their aid especially the mighty support of the Russian Emperor; as far as it was possible through diplomacy, the two Great Powers in the Confederation, Austria and Prussia, rejected any such intervention; but when, in 1831, a vote of the Confederation advocated by these two Powers was met by a protest on the part of the three foreign Powers, who considered themselves Protectors of the German Constitution, then the Confederate Diet under Prussia’s leadership resented determinedly this interference on the part of foreigners. Thereupon the foreigners let this individual case pass, but still asserted their claim; and, as we shall see, often tried later to enforce it in a dangerous way. So that the most important demand of a great people, national independence, had become for Germany, at the conclusion of her glorious war of liberation, instead of an acknowledged right, a question of force.

It must be confessed that a more wretched condition of unconstitutionality was never forced upon a great people just crowned with the laurels of victory, than was imposed upon the Germans by the Act of Confedera­tion. The mighty thoughts, which had prepared the way for the re-birth of Prussia and the liberation of Germany connected with it, gave way now to feelings of an opposite nature. It is no wonder that an angry cry of opposition arose on all sides.

The young heroes returning from the war filled the universities with their patriotic indignation, and by the founding of societies of students (Burzchentchaften), represented at all the universities, they sought to fill all the educated youth of Germany with their enthusiasm for unity, justice, and freedom. These societies, for the most part, cherished ambitions which were thoroughly ideal. They did not look to the overthrow of present conditions, but relied upon the training of the rising generation. By moral elevation and patriotic inspiration they hoped to lead the State of the future to the great goal of national unity. To be sure, their notions of this future State were generally indefi­nite, and were mere unpractical fancies; indeed this enthusiasm rose in some groups to the pitch of wild fanaticism, so that they were even ready to seize sword and dagger for tyrannicide. Yet such enthusiasts never succeeded in securing in the societies at large any great following for their projects.

Bavaria and Baden received their constitutions simultaneously ; and in Munich, as in Carlsruhe, the liberal majority of the representatives raised the cry for extension of their rights, and proposed a scheme which brought forward again all those Prussian demands, which had been rejected at Vienna, together with very important additions. An energetic movement on the part of the press in South Germany, Thuringia, and on the Rhine supported them in newspapers, journals, and larger works. Even today the names of Rotteck, Oken, C. Weicker, Görres are still remembered. At that time, and later also, these writers have been blamed for being unscientific, shallow, and semi-revolutionary ; and, in fact, it cannot be gainsaid that the liberal school of those days was often quite as untrained and unpractical as were the Teutons of the Burschenschaften. One cannot help noticing in these writings a mixture of incorrect and erratic notions of ancient German freedom, of English parliamentary rights, and of radical French ideas. They, too, fell into the chief mistakes of the European liberalism of the times, in that they,1n their zeal for individual rights, failed to see the need of a strong government, which alone could guard these rights from sinking into freedom destroying anarchy; and just for  this reason, too, when it came to the test, they proved too awkward to administer their government successfully. Yet in spile of all this, their important services in perilous times cannot be overlooked. To mention only one matter: in their respective States they brought, after untiring efforts, the finances, which had been thrown into confusion by a long course of wilfulness and extravagance, back to a firm basis of order and regularity. Furthermore, and this indeed was the main feature, just as the Burschenschaften kept alive the central thought of the liberation-period, German unity, so the South German Chambers kept alive in the national consciousness for a whole generation, and in spite of every defeat and opposition, that other one, the idea that the people should have a share in public affairs. We must indeed hold them in honorable memory, when we consider that we today are enjoying the full benefit of these rich blessings.

But for the time these efforts were to suffer a severe check.

Prince Metternich was indignant over them at every point. In order that he might control the German countries according to the old rights of the Hapsburgs, without at the same time undertaking the actual government of them, their disunion was necessary to him. He said that there was no more atrocious idea than that of uniting the German people into one Germany; and even this reason alone would make him the defender of royal sovereignty and the enemy of every limitation of the same by any popular movement.

Yet he hated every liberal tendency, because, if it once gained a footing in Germany, it might thence exert a disturbing influence upon the peace of Austria. After the impressions which he received in his youth from seeing the jubilation of 1789 in France lead directly to the bloody dictatorship of 1793, his notions of liberalism, radicalism, and communism ran into each other completely. He felt that unless the Burschenschaften and the liberal declaimers of the chamber were at once got out of the way, Germany and Austria would be inevitably the prey of a social revolution. He knew no other means of meeting such dangers than universal repression through police regulations. He felt sure that now was the time for extreme and thorough measures in all the German States. He saw now that the magnificent work of his own hands, the Confederate Diet, could be of no use in this pressing need, encum­bered as it was with such wearisome official formalities. It was necessary in some way to strengthen the hands of the leading powers of the Confederation. The Diet was an organized anarchy, sanctioned by the articles of the Act of Confederation; according to the old rule, then, this anarchy should be got rid of by a coup d’état; but this was impossible without the co-operation of Prussia, and whether this could be gained was very uncertain, in view of Prussia's position in the Confederation.

Just at this time, it happened that out of a small group of the Burschenschaften, which had always been kept down by the majority, there arose two young fanatics, one of whom stabbed the poet Kotzebue, whom he held to be a servile partisan of princes and a Russian spy, and the other directly afterwards attempted to assassinate Herr von Ibell, the Nassau President. The excitement that these crimes aroused was boundless. Even King Frederick William and Hardenberg were as angry as they were alarmed; and we can easily understand that the king should begin a strict investigation of the extent to which demagogism prevailed at each of the Prussian universities. Unfortunately these two outrages became the pretext for a noisy movement on the part of all the old opponents of the reforms that Stein had started in 1808, and which Hardenberg had followed up.

Those investigations fell under the management of bureaucratic and feudally inclined absolutists; and a glaring light is thrown upon the spirit in which they were conducted, not only by the arbitrariness and harshness which obtained everywhere, but by the fact that those men who had been the first to awaken and nourish the spirit of the War of Independence, namely, Stein and Gneisenau, Schon and Justus Gruner, Schleiermacher and Arndt, Jahn and Görres, were just the ones who were attacked in the proceedings of this court, or at least named as suspicious in its documents.

But then Metternich raised his voice. In pompous declarations he set before the eyes of his frightened associates in the Confederation the red spectre of a monstrous conspiracy, which was spread through all Germany, and which could be put down only by united efforts and by immediate action. Thus he won Prussia’s assent to the plan of convening a small number of the reliable Powers, of drawing up with them the necessary resolutions and of then forcing the Confederate Diet to accept these decrees.

In compliance with this request, nine Ministers assembled at Carlsbad to root out forever, in accordance with Metternich’s propositions, the infamous idea of German unity from the heads of Germans. It was agreed to put under police supervision the entire system of instruction in Germany, to subject to the censorship of the police every pamphlet containing less than twenty pages, to compel by military force every delinquent government to carry out these commands, and to establish in Mayence an Investigating Commission of the Confederation who should attempt to suppress the demagogues in all the German States. Prussia, which in this matter had in every case proposed the severest measures, wished to invest this body with judicial powers; but the Emperor Francis wrote, with almost cynical naivety that one of course was not yet sure whether anything would come of the Commission. He was quite right: nothing of any account did come of it. Yet the Decrees remained in force. Finally, Metternich would have liked to lay the same fetters on the chambers as on the universities. But difficulties arose in the way of this. It was decided to hold a new conference some months later in Vienna, and there to discuss the question of deputies, as well as to undertake a general revision of the Act of Confederation.

The resolutions agreed upon at Carlsbad were then laid before the Diet for acceptance. The thirty small States here learned for the first time the contents of these Decrees; but the Great Powers vehemently ob­jected to any further discussion or postponement of the decision. The small States were frightened into acquiescence. When the motion was put they voted unanimously, Yea; but the dissenters were graciously allowed to hand down to posterity their No in a private protest.

Thus had Metternich, inconsistently with his former views, called into life a Confederate power provided with dictatorial authority, an ominous caricature of German unity. Its right to existence rested on the clause of the Act of Confederation, which declared that the Confederation should care for the internal safety of Germany. But the Decrees struck at the very life of the first and chief principle of the Act of Confederation, the independence of the individual States. For if the expression “safety” might be stretched to the extent that it was here, then, whenever it might seem necessary, everything, not only the schools and the press, but the criminal and civil law of the individual States, might be regulated in the name of the Confederation, and even their police and their armies might all be made to swear fidelity to this Confederate power—all for the protection of the internal safety. As a result of this, the prospect opened for the Emperor Francis, not exactly of holding the position of German emperor, as Metternich exultingly fancied, but at least of being at the head of an all-powerful German police system. It was a heroic method of cure, which Metternich thought to employ for the protection of the German sovereigns against the plague of demagogism. The only question was whether the cure would not seem more dangerous to the patient than the disease.

In spite of their dislike to demagogues and journalists, a large number of the German courts were not, as a matter of fact, at all contented with the Carlsbad coup d'état. Several disapproved of the substance of the Decrees, and almost all of them were angry at the inconsiderateness and illegality of the method of procedure. Even Bavaria and Würtemberg, although they had taken an active part at Carlsbad, felt afterwards anxious about the extent to which those principles, which had been there agreed upon, might be carried, and about the possible way in which they might affect the independent position of the individual States.

Just at this time a certain turn of affairs, which took place in Berlin, was decisive. It was not occasioned by any dislike to Austria, but by internal political considerations. Two great questions came up for discussion.

The famous Law of May 22, 1815, had given promise to Prussia of an Imperial Constitution, a remodelling of the provincial estates in keeping with the spirit of the age, and, as a result of these changes, a representation of the people by delegates from the royal constituencies, who should have a voice in the discussion of laws concerning personal freedom and property, including questions of taxation. It was a very scanty morsel for the hunger of the liberal parties: there were to be representatives of the people, who were not even chosen by the people, who should have very restricted powers, and the right to exercise those only in so far that they might take part in the discussions, but without the right to vote.

Meanwhile the law had assured to the people a constitution, of whatever nature it might be; all the Liberals awaited impatiently the fulfilment of this promise, and Hardenberg was continually hard at work upon the preliminaries. Now he met at every step the stiff-necked opposition of that party of the nobility that had since 1808 resisted the plans of reform proposed by himself and Stein, and he heard the news from Carlsbad that Metternich wished to shape the constitutions of the individual States quite in accordance with the notions of that feudal party. He was determined never to admit that such interference was a function of the Confederation.

Then, too, it happened that a Prussian law of 1818 decreed the establishment of a system of moderate customs upon the frontiers, hitherto open. This would be of immense advantage to Prussia’s finances, but quite as annoying to her German neighbors, who were affected by it. There arose at once a cry of indignation over this new division in the German Fatherland, to which Prussia calmly replied with the observation that at present a tariff-union with Austria, Hanover, and Holstein was impossible, but advised the remaining States to join the Prussian system of customs. In 1819 the Prince of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen yielded to this proposition. But no one dreamed that this was the first step of a great national development. On the contrary, the cry arose everywhere that the Prussian tariff-law must be repealed in the name of the Confederation, and that the matter must be discussed at once in the approaching Conference at Vienna.

This disturbance was all that was needed to render the Carlsbad doctrines utterly repugnant both to the Royal Chancellor and to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Bemstorff, a highly educated, dispassionate, and prudent man. However ardently Harden- berg had striven for a strong Imperial government, he was now discontented, as he said, because the Confeder­al it management had turned out differently from what he had presupposed: one ought not to intrust them with such far-reaching powers, which they might misuse to the injury of Prussia and of Germany. With such instructions Bemstorff went to Vienna, and Metternich, pleased or displeased, had to make the best of it.

This time, all the governments were represented; this alone prevented a repetition of the proceedings at Carlsbad. The principles of the Act of Confederation were not to be changed, but more clearly and exactly de fined, so that they could be better put into practice. This was the origin of the second fundamental set of laws of the Confederation, namely, the Vienna Final Act, which advocated throughout a moderate individualism. The attacks upon the Prussian system of tariff fell through completely. The objections to it were dismissed as an item of business to be brought up in the Confederate Diet. The establishment of a Confederate Court of Justice, before which the opponents of the Prussian tariff-laws might have brought their suit, was prevented. As an amendment to the eleventh Article of the Act of Confederation, in which certain rights of the individual States were fixed, Bemstorff succeeded in having added to the sixth article of the Final Act a clause, according to which “the voluntary relinquishment by any member of any of its sovereign rights might take place in any part of the Confederation without the vote of the whole Confederate body, only on condition that it was done in favor of another member of the Confederation” — implying that in this case it could be done. Thus, any future tariff-treaties made by Prussia with other States were secured against opposition on the part of the Confederation.

No mention whatever was made of Metternich's wish to subject the representative constitutions of the individual States to the legislation of the Confederation; on the contrary, the very opposite of this was embodied in several articles. To be sure, the inviolableness of the monarchical principle was strongly emphasized, and it was declared no less expressly that no prince could by any resolutions passed by the provincial assembly of his state be hindered in the fulfilment of his duties as a member of the Confederation. But, at the same time, the duty of the sovereigns to establish provincial parliaments was repeatedly recognized; the regulation of the rights of the Estates was left, with other internal matters, to each State; the right of the Confederation to interfere was restricted to cases of insurrection; and the opinion was often expressed, that recognized existing constitutions could be changed only by constitutional proceedings.

Thus Individualism, challenged by the illegal stretching of the Confederate powers, manifested in the Carlsbad Decrees, won the day again, and this time favored liberal and national interests, in contrast to the Confederate Power which should naturally have been their protector. Restored and encouraged, Individualism roused itself also in its own stronghold, the Confederate headquarters at Frankfort, to further immediate triumphs; which, it is true, answered many Liberal longings, but which shamefully disregarded the serious needs of the nation.

As we have seen, the Confederation had for its aim the internal and external safety of Germany. We have already portrayed the way in which the internal safety was cared for; now let us consider what was done to secure external safety. Since 1816, the two Great Powers had kept proposing steps toward the establishment of some practical Confederate military organization. For such an “organic” or permanent arrangement, unanimity was required; Prussia carried on the affair with ardor, Austria with marked sluggishness, and the rest of the States with a reluctance which was hardly concealed; it must be confessed, too, that in their attitude towards the matter the Governments of these States were in most cases sure of the hearty acquiescence of their Chambers. No State wished to take upon itself the expense and the burdens of a standing army. The Governments strongly objected to letting the Confederate Power meddle with the most precious jewel of the Crown, military supremacy; and many Liberals considered the troops of the line to be the most dangerous tool of despotism. The conviction was current that after Napoleon’s fall peace was certain for a long time to come, and that in case of an emergency the large armies of Austria and Prussia were at hand, who from motives of self-interest would be obliged to protect the other States.

While the Lesser and Petty States continued to hold these views, the negotiations dragged on for five years, until finally a provisional military organization was effected, a shining example of the truth that the strongest position is that of passive resistance. According to this plan, the Confederate army should be composed of contingents from each State, grouped into ten army corps of thirty thousand (in round numbers) apiece, of which Prussia and Austria should each contribute three, Bavaria one, and the contingents from the other States should together make up the remaining three.

The demand in point of numbers was not large, being only one percent of the population; but so much the more weight was to be placed upon improvement in the quality, that is to say, upon uniformity in military training, equipment, and discipline; upon the organized support of the army; and especially upon a fixed singleness in the matter of supreme command. But, as a matter of fact, just the opposite of all this obtained. The arrangement of the contingent was, even in war, left entirely to the individual States; it was not allowable to absorb a small contingent in a large one, lest there should be even the appearance of supremacy on the part of one Confederate State over another. In peace there was no common supreme authority. In time of war, the Confederate Diet should choose a commander-in-chief, who should receive instructions only from the Diet and its War Department, and in whose headquarters the contributors of the contingents should exercise their sovereign rights constitutionally through independent officers of high rank.

Thus the matter was finally decided in 1821. But, as soon as the plan began to be carried out, countless protestations and objections were raised on the part of the thirty Petty States at the unheard-of and oppressive burdens laid upon them. Not for ten years was any settlement arrived at; and it was four years more before the organization of the ninth and tenth army corps (Saxony, Hanover, and the North German Petty States) was fixed, even upon paper. We shall later have occasion to consider how matters stood in reality. As a matter of fact, it was only Prussia, where indeed the want of means kept the actual military condition below the requirements of the law of the land, that did much more in this matter than the Confederate Constitution demanded.

Prince Metternich had let these unpleasant things, which he could not hinder, take their course. It may well be supposed that a stricter Confederate Constitution that would have forced him to be ready to place at. any time ninety thousand men at the disposal of a commander-in-chief, who might be a Prussian, would hardly have been agreeable. The need of money was felt in Austria even more than in Prussia, so that the peace-footing of the army, with double the population, was scarcely stronger than the Prussian. This made Metternich still more anxious to build further upon the foundation laid in Teplitz and in Carlsbad, and so to keep Prussia dependent in its politics upon the Imperial City.

In spite of the fact that his hopes in regard to internal German policy and the leadership of Prussia had been shipwrecked at the last Vienna Conference, he still waited for a favorable turn in politics at Berlin itself, which should bring the State of the Hohenzollerns again under the wings of the royal double eagle.

And he had good cause for waiting. For us, too, it will be worth our while to consider somewhat more closely the change in Prussia’s politics at this time, since the elements there at work have meanwhile gained a great significance for the further development of the constitution of Germany as a whole.

While Count Bernstorff was doing his utmost in Vienna to protect the future Prussian Constitution from any encroachment on the part of the Confederate Power, the King in Berlin was beginning to be doubtful about the execution of the law of May 22. He had signed, as recently as January 17,1820, the law, brought to a conclusion by Hardenberg, about tariff reform and public debts, which contained the specification, that no new law should be made without the consent of the Estates, and that to them a yearly report should be presented concerning the condition of the public debt.

The complaints of the South German Confederate Princes about the unmanageable actions of their Chambers had already, indeed, made him uneasy; and now followed, in the course of the year 1820, the alarming news of revolution, in Spain, in Portugal, in Naples, in Piedmont, and in Greece. Half Europe seemed shaken by a continuous earthquake: was this an opportune time to change the basis of the Prussian monarchy, the absolute supremacy of the Crown?

A large number of the high officials answered this question energetically in the negative. They pointed out that more than one-third of the State, composed of the most heterogeneous fragments, had been acquired within the last few years, or had been won back after being under a revolutionizing foreign rule; that in order to restore the unity of the State all branches of the administration had necessarily been remodelled and that this work was not yet accomplished; that the evil results of the war had not yet been made good, nor the deficit made up; and was it advisable to risk exposing the safe conduct of the Reform to the meddling interference of popular representatives, who would naturally, on account of their origin, be governed by local interests; who would perhaps, in accordance with the spirit of the times, be filled with the demagogic thirst for rule, and who would, at all events, be ignorant and inexperienced? That would be wilfully exposing the power of the Crown, and perhaps the unity of the State, to mortal danger.

Hand in hand with this bureaucratic opposition, the feudal spirit also was active in furthering the same end, if indeed led by other motives. The feudal Opposition repudiated likewise royal estates because they apprehended, not that the tendency to centralization would be checked, but that it would be fostered. Nor would they listen to Hardenberg’s proposition about provincial estates, that is to say, a parliament for each of the eight new provinces; but they demanded the revival of the old estates for each of the small States which were now united under the Prussian crown, for Kurmark and Neumark, for Magdeburg and the county of Mark, for Cleves, for Geldern, and so forth. Their ideal was the condition of things before the usurpation of the Great Elector. Their representatives asserted that the Act of Confederation renounced the principle of centralization out of respect for the legitimate sovereignty of the German princes. They claimed to be also the legitimate possessors of their seigniorial privileges, who in their small leagues had once ruled over their territories in virtue of their hereditary right; and that only upon this foundation could any natural and consequently lasting system of government be raised. Their theory was that the lord of the manor was the natural head of the household and its dependents; the magistrate, of the citizens; the pastor, of the parish; the provincial parliament, of the province; and the king, of the whole State.

Against such a closely-united structure, permeated from top to bottom with a controlling authority, and therefore pervaded with the spirit of obedience and discipline, the storms of revolution would break in vain. Each of these heads should exercise his authority with perfect freedom in all matters within his own jurisdiction, the lower untrammelled by bureaucracy and the king not harassed by an imperious parliament. It would be the government of a free king over a free people.

That is to say, nowhere revolution, and everywhere freedom. Room for every thing, except the small matter of the freedom of the citizen and of the peasant! It was quite as uncertain, too, whether, with all this free administration on the part of so many mediate authorities, there would be any power left to the Crown or unity to the State.

This feudal doctrine was most welcome to Prince Metternich, whose whole system rested upon the political disability of the people and the splitting-up of the German nation. How often had he represented to the King that Prussia could never be a united state on account of the diversity of its component parts! Provincial estates, he believed, were excellent; royal estates, dangerous. With the same idea he recommended the revival of internal excise duties in the place of the new system of taxes on imports. He said he would not trust the conservative faith of the Prussian officials across the street; but he was certain that the true and reliable bulwark against a great revolution was alone to be found in the principles of that party that advocated the re-establishment of the old estates. What more could be said, from an Austrian point of view, in favor of these principles, than that in following them out Prussia would soon rise to Austria’s condition of prosperity?

The King, importuned from all possible sides, hesitated a long time. Finally, on the 11th of July, 1821, the moment of decision came. A communal ordinance in the modern sense, drawn up by Hardenberg, was rejected, the establishment of provincial estates was decided upon, the summoning of the royal estates was postponed. The details of the establishment of the representative system were intrusted by the King to his clever son the Crown Prince, who was inclined to the old ideas. It was not until 1823, that the law about the provincial estates was completed; and when it finally appeared, the feudal party triumphed in so far, at least, that the nobility had the majority in all the Provincial Parliaments; but the high officials had taken care that the power of this whole organization should be as limited as possible, and that it should be strictly forbidden to make public the doings of the Parliaments, so that their transactions were concealed from the people of even their own provinces. This institution certainly caused no detriment either to the sovereignty of the Crown nor to the effective working of the State authority.

Metternich would have wished from his heart still greater successes to his admirers of the feudal party; but he was especially glad at the significant fact that Prussia had not become a constitutional monarchy. For even if the authority of the royal estates, promised in 1815, had been limited, the mere name would have puffed up the Prussian nation so that one could not tell what to expect from them, and would have made a vast difference in the influence of Prussia in South Germany. Here, however, King William of Würtemberg had already given the Prince abundant cause for anxiety and annoyance by his liberal notions; for he had almost openly advocated the plan of uniting on a true constitutional basis all the Lesser and the Petty States as a protection against the oppressive patronage of the two Great Powers, and so of establishing a German triad by founding a third Germany of pure blood by the side of the heterogeneous kingdoms of Austria and Prussia. How would it be now, if Prussia, too, became constitutional and then profited by the state of feeling aroused by Würtemberg, either simply for her own advantage or, indeed, for the pur­pose of injuring Austria ?

Therefore the decision of Frederick William against royal estates was a veritable balm to the heart of the Prince. He immediately invited Count Bernstorff and a few other trusted ministers to come again to Vienna to take counsel against Württemberg’s doings, which had not only excited the attention of the Chambers and the newspapers, but had even begun to infect the holy ground of the Confederate Diet. To be sure, Bernstorff rejected again very decidedly Metternich’s hobby of placing the matter of popular representation under the superintendence of the Confederation; but Würtemberg was forced by diplomatic pressure brought to bear upon it also by the foreign Great Powers, to recall its representative in the Confederate Diet, to suppress certain Stuttgart newspapers, and to renounce in penitence its beautiful dream of a German triad.

Metternich gained what he had desired: Prussia did not stand at the head of a constitutional Germany in opposition to Austria; but stood by the side of absolute Austria in contrast to the constitutional States. All trace of sympathy with Prussia, every memory of her services in the War of Liberation, was effaced for a long time to come from the hearts of South Germans. Prussia seemed more closely than ever devoted to the policy of the Holy Alliance and resignedly subservient to the influence of Prince Metternich.

In Prussia, too, a large number of the truest royalists were indignant at this condition of dependence, to which the nation of Frederick the Great had reduced itself through a blind fear of revolution. A certain letter, dated March 31, 1824, reads: “As far as our external relations are concerned, I am sorry to be obliged to agree with you entirely. If the nation had known in 1813, that within eleven years nothing but the memory would be left of that stage of prosperity, glory, and prestige that lay then within its reach, or rather which was reached, and that no actual trace of the same would remain, who would at that time have sacrificed everything in view of such a result? This question makes it the most sacred duty of a nation consisting of eleven million souls to maintain that position, which it gained by such sacrifices as the world had never seen before nor shall see repeated. But this is all forgotten now.”

He who wrote these words, fired with the spirit of the Wai1 of Independence, was no revolutionist, but Prince William of Prussia, afterwards Emperor of Germany.

This, then, is the sum of the doings of the Confederate Diet during the first decade of its existence: the creation of a police system, which was bound to no law, and of a Confederate military system, which was precisely similar to the Imperial army. Thus the German Confederation offered to the German people the spectacle of a Union inwardly barren and despotic, and outwardly dependent and defenceless. As the French soldiers were wading through the streets of Poland, up to their knees in mud, they exclaimed: Et cela s'appelle une patrie! Twenty years later the German cried: Und dies Deutschland wäre ein Vaterland! Since the authorized organ of German unity had branded as a crime every thought of an actual unity, Germany had sunk to the condition predicated of Italy by Metternich: of being a geographical name without political signific­tion. What Prince William in 1818 had said of Prussia’s glory was equally true of the whole German Fatherland: there was nothing left of it but the memory, and no tangible reality whatever.

When an aspiring race loses its fatherland, the consequence is inevitable: its mental efforts, too, lose their central thought of patriotic devotion. Everybody throughout our German States, who still had any heart or appreciation for political freedom, turned away from the Confederation and the Confederate Diet, the only representative of Germany as a whole, to the Constitu­tion of their own individual States as the last bulwark of popular freedom. Formerly the Liberal parties had complained that their hopes of a mighty Imperial government had been disappointed; they had now become the unwearied defenders of those clauses of the Vienna Final Act that declared the Confederation to be only an international league of independent States, and by no means authorized to meddle in the internal affairs of any country. Many a South German Government was well pleased with this turn of affairs; for although the Chambers were still often burdensome enough to them, they felt that, as a result of these assemblies, a very solid local patriotism and national feeling was growing up, which would be able effectually to drive away the threatening nightmare of the Burschenschaften.

Indeed, who had at that time any heart to sing and talk of the strength and heroism of the German people ? The victors of 1815 looked with wonder and envy upon France, which they had helped to conquer, where under a free Constitution brilliant parliamentary debates were holding the attention of all Europe, and kindling the enthusiasm of the German youth. It was well enough to regret that this was sowing many a dangerous error in German soil; but of what good were these regrets ? Even the warmest of German patriots would not deny that the French Charte provided a better constitution than the German Act of Confederation; and that the debates in the Chambers at Paris afforded more attractive reading than the minutes of the Confederate Diet, the publication of which, by the way, Metternich had stopped in 1824, on account of their inanity.

Every flaming speech which Foy or Manuel hurled against the feudalist or clerical Ultras in France, was greeted with genuine delight; the cutting words were applicable to that very political wisdom which Metternich and his admirers in Berlin were following with ostentatious devotion: and the people were wholly carried away with enthusiasm for the great George Canning, when he challenged the reactionary Powers with that proud declaration, that England was destined to be the champion of national freedom, and to hold in her hands the wind-bags of Aeolus, ready, when she thought best, to let loose the storm of revolution upon her enemies. Such enthusiasm over the attacks made by foreign Powers upon the leading States of the Confederation put the decay of patriotism at home in a melancholy light; yet how could it be otherwise, after the long war of extermination waged by Metternich and his associates against German nationalism? They had succeeded by their statecraft in making the German people again at once individualistic and cosmopolitan.

One thing more is needed to complete the picture of those troublous times. That is the fact that all this Liberal zeal, all this worship of Canning, all this resentment against reaction called forth in the widest circles a radically pessimistic frame of mind, but no ambition to take part in any positive political movement. People read the newspapers, got angry at the English Tories, rejoiced over the defeat of the Turkish armies, and of the Austrian diplomacy in 1829, clenched their fists against Polignac, talked over everything with their intimate friends, and then went to business or to bed.

It was not only the pressure of the police and of the literary censorship which made the people so quiet and peaceable. The great mass of the nation had just begun to rise again out of the poverty and the distress; occasioned by the war, to a tolerable condition of comfort. The anxiety about their daily bread weighed more heavily upon most of them than any worriment about political and national affairs; and even in the South German Chambers a discussion about commercial interests found much more attentive hearers than a complaint about the censorship or political procedures. Under such conditions each Government could with a little skill gain the control of its Chambers. It is true that the Liberal Opposition held their banners erect; but everywhere they could not show such successes as in the first few fortunate years after their establishment. So much the more reason had they to complain of the indifference of their fellow-citizens, to which was added the fact, that their more excitable leaders grew continually more radical in judgment and more violently opposed to the existing condition of things. But these did not succeed in gaining any remarkable influence; so far as one could see, there lay a profound political calm over all Germany.

 

CHAPTER V.

INFLUENCE OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1880.

 

The Revolution at Paris in July, 1830, caused great excitement in Germany, which, as we have seen, was outwardly so calm and inwardly so full of discontent. At first it was feared that the victorious French democracy would overflow the national boundaries; and, even after the accession of the peaceable Louis Philippe, many were for a long time anxious lest the Radical party, led by Lafayette, should draw the French Government into a revolutionary war-policy. In fact, the disposition of the nations far and wide seemed to favor such tendencies. In September, the Dutch rule in Belgium was broken; in November, the war of independence in Poland against the Emperor Nicholas began; and in the following February, the insurrection in the central portions of Italy broke out. So that, set on fire from all sides by the flames of revolution, the political atmosphere in Germany began at many places to approach the ignition point.

Petty tumults among the populace in some Prussian cities along the Rhine, which, however, were suppressed by the police and the citizens, opened the ball. Then the Confederate Diet was frightened by the excesses in its immediate vicinity, among the peasants of Hesse-Cassel, who tore down the custom-houses and drove out the hated officials of the mediatized Isenburg. The Diet sent against them troops from the nearest small States, who found on their arrival very little to do, since the villages that had been disturbed by the mobs had, in many cases, of themselves arrested the ring­leaders.

The events in Brunswick were of a more serious nature. Duke Charles, one of the most worthless princes of the age, was stoned while returning from the theatre, but made good his escape out of the country; the riot continued and his palace was set on fire by the mob. But when his brother William then took the reins of government and promised to combine with the existing Chamber of Deputies a new constitution, peace was completely re-established throughout the whole country.

The neighboring kingdom of Hanover became alarmed at an uprising among the Gottingen students, which, however, ended peaceably upon the arrival of a small company of troops; but which nevertheless induced the King to summon the Chamber of Deputies, in order to plan out a new constitution after the modern fashion.

In the kingdom of Saxony the riots began in Dresden and Leipzig. The citizens of both cities armed them­selves and suppressed the excesses of the common people, and then took the formation of a liberal constitution into their own hands. Thereupon, the old King surrendered the government into the hands of his successor as co-regent; and the latter hastened to promise the fulfilment of the popular demands. Some signs of fermentation were still visible in the country; but the public peace was not again disturbed.

Things took a like course in Hesse-Cassel with a similar result; in response to the threatening attitude of a large concourse of people in front of his palace in Cassel, the Elector William hastened to promise a new constitution, which, after hurried negotiations, was adopted on the 5th of January, 1831; but the Elector forsook his country in company with his mistress, whom the people had insulted, and relinquished the government to the Electoral Prince, Frederick William, as co-regent.

In South Germany the popular feelings were excited, but for the time did not express themselves in any unlawful measures. The Bavarian Chamber sharply attacked the Government on account of a severe press­law, and, much to the annoyance of King Louis, refused certain sums of money required for his art buildings.

In Baden, where the mild and moderate Grand Duke Leopold had a short time before come into power, the Liberal party gained again the majority in the second Chamber; the negotiations were spirited, and found an echo in all German countries; they gave the keynote to liberal public spirit for long years to come. Nevertheless, by mutual concessions, good feeling was preserved between the Government and the Chamber. At the discussion about the press-law, the Chamber decided upon perfect freedom of the Press and removal of all censorship; and the Government, at first with reluctance in view of the Carlsbad Decrees, finally yielded to the popular wishes. Later, however, when Karl Weicker proposed asking the Government to summon a German Parliament, which should act by the side of the Confederate Diet, the Minister emphatically declared that in this the Chamber was overstepping its rights; thereupon the majority, after a short debate, decided to lay the matter on the table. In Würtemberg, where the Parliament had no sittings, and where, under the powerful and clear-headed administration of King William, a high degree of prosperity had been developed, there was no sign of disturbance.

In view of these facts, the judgment to be passed by History upon the German movement of those years cannot be uncertain. It cannot be overlooked nor denied that, as a result of the reactionary and at the same time fruitless policy of the Confederation, discontent with existing conditions reigned almost everywhere, and that the fresh successes of the Liberals were joyfully hailed by the great majority of the people. Yet quite as unmistakably was it evident that to the mass of the population any tendency to revolutionary violence was still foreign. Their political demands were fair and moderate; and just so soon as the Governments showed a corresponding disposition to be fair in their turn, the citizens and peasants gladly assisted in preserving order, or in restoring it. The new Constitutions also bore testimony to this. Essential royal prerogatives remained the same. The especial limitation of the Sovereign Will in Hesse-Cassel did not spring from any radical theorizing, but simply from a too well founded anxiety about the personal character of the Elector, and also of his heir.

The Prussian ministers also viewed the situation in this light Throughout the extensive dominions of the monarchy there was no trace of political commotion; even in the Rhine provinces, the most excitable of all, the increasing prosperity in industry and commerce counterbalanced the seductive influence and impressions of French Freedom close at hand. Indeed, this was very natural. Since 1815, when the State was newly put together out of a hundred fragments of fragments, the Prussian Administration had done wonderful things for many sections of country, that had either been degenerating for ages under the rule of the crozier, or were impoverished by the long distresses of war. This decade has been aptly called the classical period of Prussian bureaucracy. All branches of the public service had been successfully reconstructed; in almost every case the right man had been found for the right place; a vigorous life had grown up over the ruins of  the past.

Above all, the people and the King were at one in the desire to preserve peace. Immediately after the Revolution the King of Prussia had expressed his determination in no way to meddle with French affairs: a decided contrast to the feelings of Austria and Russia, who would have been glad to see a crusade in favor of the Legitimists. And when, later, in the course of developments in Belgium, the danger of a French attack seemed imminent, Prussia was strenuously urged by representatives of the South German Courts at Berlin to take the lead in measures to ward off the threatened common danger.

Bavaria and Würtemberg armed with zeal. The remaining States of the 8th Confederate Corps proposed to give the command of the corps to the King of Würtemberg; they hoped in a few months to place one hundred thousand men in the field, a number far beyond the required Confederate contingent. They did not, however, wish to be in any way dependent on the Confederate Diet, nor to have a Confederate commander-in-chief appointed. Austria, too, they regarded with nothing but distrust. They believed that she was poorly equipped, and yet wished to involve Germany in a French war, in order to prevent the French from making an attack on Italy. King Louis of Bavaria was especially embittered against Austria, and used all his influence at Berlin to bring about the formation of a league independent of the Confederacy, with the object of supplying a common system of military operations.

At this time a hopeful and agreeable prospect opened before the minister, Count Bernstorff. Herr von Motz, the cleverest of Prussian statesmen, who had after endless pains covered the deficit in the budget, suc­ceeded at last also in bringing into full fruition the seed sown by the tariff-law of 1818. In 1828, Hesse-Darmstadt concluded a tariff-league with Prussia; and in 1829, a commercial treaty with Bavaria and Würtemberg followed, confessedly to serve as the preliminary of a complete tariff-union. If this succeeded, then there was no doubt but that Baden, Hesse-Cassel, Thuringia, and Saxony would very soon feel forced to follow their example — as, in fact, they did within a few years — and then the whole of Germany outside of Austria would be united, with the exception of the small States along the coast, into one large commercial territory, a unit among themselves and all alike closed to outsiders, under the leadership of Prussia, and independent of the Confederate Diet.

Then, in 1830, there reached Berlin that demand of South Germany for Prussian protection along the Upper Rhine and for a common military system, likewise independent of the Confederate Diet and its impotent military organization, but, most of all, independent of Austria with its unreliable support. It is true that the South Germans talked at first only about prepamtory measures in view of the immediate danger of war. But would it have been only an empty chimera to think of improving the opportunity, and of granting the desired protection against the present danger only on the condition of establishing a permanent military organization? The Tariff-Union offered an example; indeed, its results pointed directly along this line. Then there would have been formed within the broader Confederation with Austria and her dependencies a closer Prussian Confederation, founded upon vital national interests and adapted to develop these successfully and fruitfully : the first step towards s truly national German Empire.

These thoughts Count Bemstorff laid before the King in two memorials, at the same time that he directed that Metternich’s propositions for taking new measures against the revolution should be answered by a speech of the Prussian delegate to the Confederate Diet, to the effect that the best measure to be employed against the spirit of revolution was the abolition of those abuses of which so many German Courts were guilty. There was a ring to this, clearer than had as yet sounded in the Halls of the Diet.

It is very evident that in treading this path an extreme bitterness on the part of Austria was to be encountered. But it was also very certain that, in the actual condition of Europe, Austria could not give vent to this feeling, but rather needed the assistance of Prussia, and must accept her conditions. Therefore it was necessary for the Prussian Government, as quickly as possible, before the danger of a war and the consequent pliableness of the South German States should disappear, to come to some understanding with them, and, thus strengthened, to offer Austria the doubly valuable alliance of Prussia.

Thus everything depended on the quick decision and courage of the Prussian Cabinet; but, unfortunately, among all the excellent qualities of Frederick William just this one was wanting, the self-confidence which prompts a quick decision. He hesitated, and questioned seriously whether it would be honorable, and whether it would not be eminently dangerous to treat with the South German States behind Austria’s back. In December, 1880, he had made up his mind that he must first negotiate with Austria, and not until afterwards with the Southern States.

Upon that, General von Roder went in January, 1831, to Vienna with the proposition to form, as a preparation for the possibility of war, three independent armies: one Prussian with the tenth Confederate Corps on the Lower Rhine, one Prussian and South German on the Main, and one Austrian on the Upper Rhine. Unity of operations was not to be secured by the appointment of a commander-in-chief, but, as in 1813, by the establishment of general headquarters. It will be seen that this meant the subordination of Bavaria’s contingent and the three mixed Confederate Corps under Prussia’s command, and utter disregard of the Confederate Military Organization. Metternich prolonged negotiations until he had succeeded in suppressing the Italian rebellion in March, 1831, without provoking a French declaration of war; encouraged by this fact, he dismissed Roder with the announcement that not three, but two armies should be formed: one Austrian, with the addition of the seventh and eighth Confederate Corps, and one Prussian, in connection with the ninth and tenth; above all, the rules of the Confederate Military Organization should be universally binding; and, although the appointment of a commander-in-chief might be postponed for the present, it would later be indispensable.

The question was, how the Prussian monarch would receive this flat rejection of his propositions. Metternich’s hope, not simply of quieting him, but even of gaining him over, rested again upon the paltry, though formerly successful scheme of conjuring up the Red Spectre. He sent by Roder a letter to the King, dated April 2, in which he pictured in mysterious phrases the enormity of the social evil, and represented the close co-operation of the two Powers as the last and only means of salvation. There were no longer any riots or disturbances in Germany; but it was sufficient for his purpose that a few South German newspapers contained Radical articles, and that now also four North German States were in a fair way to have constitutional Chambers. If he found Prussia well disposed, he thought he might finally carry out his designs, which had been frustrated at Carlsbad, and subject not only the Press and the schools, but also the political suffrage of the people, to the supervision of the Confederate police.

The King hesitated for several months. Finally, the important decision was made in August, during his customaiy stay at the watering-place Teplitz, on the same ground where, twelve yearn before, he had given his consent to the projected coup d’état at Carlsbad. The King had this time at his side neither Bernstorff nor his influential friend, the General-Adjutant von Witzleben, but Prince Wittgenstein, who was decidedly reactionary, and inclined to favor Austria. To this must be added the energetic influence of the Czar Nicholas, who, to be sure, personally hated Metternich, but who, being just on the point of giving the death­blow to the Polish Revolution, applauded every counter­revolutionary movement. The German Liberals, on the contrary, gave on every occasion their hearty admiration and sympathy to the Polish cause, and thereby drew upon themselves, in the eyes of the Monarch, still stronger suspicions of entertaining revolutionary sentiments.

So that the King, immediately after his return from Teplitz, declared that he fully agreed with the note of Metternich dated September 15th, in which the two following principles were laid down: that in European matters Russia, Austria, and Prussia should hold together; and Austria and Prussia in the suppression of revolution upon German soil. Bernstorff, who had been ill for a long time, soon after this sent in his resignation; his successor, Ancillon, who had already from time to time taken his place, was formerly a fervent theologian, afterwards a weak politician, and now an unconditional adherent of Metternich.

Meanwhile the clouds of war along the European horizon had dispersed; Poland was subdued, and in regard to Belgian affairs the Powers were again agreed. Therefore, in view of the renewed prospect of long peace, Metternich made to the Prussian Court the now harmless concession that, in case of war, Roder’s plans should be carried out, and promised to join Prussia at the Diet in advocating a practical reform of the Confederate Military Organization. It is unnecessary to say that this promise remained unfulfilled in every particular. Certain it is, however, that this removed every difference between the two Powers. Prussia, purified from the heretical idea of a more limited Confederacy, had returned to the basis of the great Confederate Act. The contest with the supposed Revolution might now begin.

At the outset, the Diet passed a resolution forbidding the circulation of petitions for political purposes; this was to refer to numerous memorials in favor of the Polish fugitives and emigrants. Then the Confederate Commission for the Control of the Press, which was first appointed in 1819, but which had since become a dead letter, was again called into life, and through its instrumentality a number of Radical newspapers in Baden and Bavaria were immediately suppressed in the name of the Confederation. The publishers and writers, who were thus disarmed, then hit upon a new method of agitation. They began, especially in the Bavarian Palatinate, in Lower Franconia, and in Upper Hesse, to instigate popular meetings at which high-sounding speeches against royal tyranny were delivered, and occasionally a vivat shouted for the Republic.

This spread, in the spring of 1832, from place to place. The speeches grew more fiery and the audiences larger, until King Louis, who was already very discon­tented with his Chambers, began to be worried and angry at these noisy doings. Meanwhile, on the 27th of May, the anniversary of the adoption of the Bavarian Constitution, a large meeting was arranged in the Palatinate and was under these auspices officially sanctioned by the local police. From all parts of the country the people streamed in thousands to the slopes of the Schlossberg at Hambach; German and Prussian banners were unfurled amid loud flourishes of music, and the orators of the day celebrated approaching Liberty, German Unity, and the Fraternization of all free nations. Boisterous huzzas followed, spirited songs were sung, many a bottle of the good wine of the Palatinate was emptied, and then, after such brave deeds, the people dispersed and went home in high spirits. A few days later, Prince Wrede, famous for his defeat at Hanau, appeared, having been sent from Munich with four thousand soldiers to curb the raging revolution; but he was not able to find any sign of a revolution anywhere in the peaceable Palatinate.

Yet this day was to have very significant consequences. Hitherto, Bavaria and some of the Petty States had had misgivings in the Confederate Diet about too vigorous measures; but as in 1819 the assassination of Kotzebue, so in 1832 the festival at Hambach (though here only the blood of the grape was spilled), served Metternich as a pretext for spreading his reactionary fears. On the 28th of June and the 5th of July a set of Confederate Laws appeared, quite after the fashion of those drawn up at Carlsbad, which were especially directed to limiting the privileges of the Estates in the individual States; an especial Confederate Commission was appointed for five years to carry out these laws; whenever the Estates refused to pay the imposts necessary for the carrying on of the administration, the Confederation was to interfere, even without waiting for action on the part of the Government concerned; decrees of the Confederation were not to be subject to the criticism of the Estates; the fulfilment of no obligation of any State toward the Confederation was to be hindered by the legislation of that State. Then followed the prohibition of popular assemblies, of tricolor banners and cockades, of political societies, and of revolutionary songs. In short, Metternich had caused an important step to be taken in the development of the Confederate police system, and had made it possible, by controlling the speeches and doings of the individual States, to subject to its guardianship every phase of internal politics.

The successes of the Austrian Court did not stop here. The hot-headed leaders of the Radical party contributed their share toward strengthening the Austrian system. Ever since 1819, Metternich had talked about the monstrous conspiracy which was supposed to pervade all Germany; to be sure, no one had as yet been able to detect it anywhere, any more than Wrede had discovered a revolution in the Palatinate. But now it showed itself; there was a genuine conspiracy. Dr. Wirth, Privatdocent Rauschenplatt, and Lieutenant Koserita, with several others of similar disposition, had formed a dark conspiracy against no less a personage than the high and mighty Confederate Diet. The honorable Assembly was to be surprised and captured or blown up, and then on the spot the German Revolution was to be proclaimed. They counted on the breaking out of a mutiny among the Würtemberg troops, on seditions among the peasants of Hesse-Cassel, and on the sympathy of the Frankfort populace; they expected also accessions of Polish refugees from France and discontented artisans from Switzerland.

On the 3d of April, 1833, this tempest burst upon the capital of the Confederacy. The Revolutionary army, fifty-one men strong, stormed the main guard­house ; but before the insurgents could seize the Confederate Assembly, they were scattered by the Frankfort battalion. The citizens of Frankfort looked on with surprise and coolness. Eighty peasants, as they approached, were refused entrance into the city. The Poles did not appear on the scene at all.

Here at last, indeed, a conspiracy had come to light; and although outside of these one hundred and thirty criminals, the whole German nation was living in profound peace, it seemed to the Imperial and Royal Courts obviously necessary, not only to imprison the conspirators, but to set to work to save Europe. The ministers of Russia, Austria, and Prussia met in Teplitz, as soon afterwards also the two Emperors and the Prussian Crown Prince in Münchengrätz, and pledged mutual assistance in putting down all rebellion, especially every Polish insurrection.

The following year, Metternich convened the ministers of all the German States in Vienna, in order to work out in detail and complete the Confederate Decrees of 1819 and 1832. The results of this conference were noted down in a secret record and all the Governments bound themselves to follow exactly the directions contained therein, even if they were not consistent with the existing laws or constitutions of their States. After that, there was nothing more to be desired, from Metternich’s point of view, in the way of German unity and imperial government, at least as this was represented and exercised by the Confederate Diet.

The majority of the German Governments confessed in their own hearts that a hazardous game was being played. Most of them, too, eagerly tried to conceal from their subjects the limitations put upon their political rights, by fostering especially their material interests. In this connection they favored nothing more than the development of the Tariff-Union, which had now reached a fruitful state of prosperity, and which at the same time bound together more and inure closely in economical relations all Germany outside of Austria. So that the German countries, with but few exceptions, enjoyed the benefits of a prudent and successful administration, as at scarcely any former period. This has already been mentioned with regard to Prussia and Würtemberg.

In Hanover, under the new constitution of 1833, the creation of Dahlmann, there was a thorough remodeling of the State finances, and an active interest was manifested in the entire system of education.

Under the excellent leadership of the Minister, Von Lindenau, the new Saxon chambers worked with zealous industry upon a reformation of all central and local magistracies. Many long-standing evils were done away with, and it was not seldom that the Government proved itself more liberal and public-spirited than even the popular assemblies.

King Louis of Bavaria had remained, to be sure, since 1831, fixed in his conservative reaction from his former liberal ideas; but he was busily occupied in furthering the development of the fine arts at Munich, engaged Friedrich Thiersch in a successful reform of the Gymnasia, and was eagerly intent upon an improvement in the systems of agriculture and of manufactures, if indeed with less marked success than was achieved in Whrtemberg.

In Baden, the Minister, Winter, was a rough, coarse­grained character, of unimpeachable integrity, of firm and indomitable will, of practical and straightforward sentiments. He gained for himself a lasting memorial; for lie knew how, by quiet resistance to the influences of the Confederate Diet, to strengthen the constitutional idea by legislative reforms, and to satisfy pressing needs by national improvements. Characteristic of the standpoint of Liberalism at that time was the exclamation of Weicker upon Winter’s appointment as Minister: It is a blessing for the country, but a hard blow for the Opposition. The Diet had brought matters to such a pass that to be a Liberal and to belong to the Opposition, no matter under what ministry, went hand in hand.

Quite different from Winter’s position was that held in the neighboring Darmstadt by the Minister, Du Thil, and his confidential counsellor, Eckhardt; both of them were clear-headed, energetic men, filled with the ambition of furthering the public welfare in every direction, but always in keeping with their motto: Everything for the people, but not 6y the people. They were for a long time involved in a struggle with the Chamber, but finally accomplished their purposes; and the little country did not fare any the worse in consequence. They built roads, improved the schools, sustained an exemplary system of forestry, and with remarkable tact assisted in the development of trade and of industry.

All this does not mean an ideal condition of things. The weaknesses inherent in every bureaucratic constitution appeared during the long years of peace at this period often enough, in spite of all activity and prudence. There was the same continuance in old, worn-out ruts, the same blindness to the real needs of practical life, the same exaggeration of legal forms, and the same absence of social intercourse between rulers and subjects, between the officials and the people, not only in the smaller States but quite as much so in Prussia. An often unnecessary tone of superiority was considered indispensable for the maintenance of authority; and especially the police, spurred on by the uneasiness and anxieties of the highest officials, conducted themselves in such a domineering, suspicious, and petty fashion, that the prevalent discontent was not for a moment allowed to subside.

For, in spite of all the good features which we have just enumerated, the indignation at the laws of exemption of 1832 continually increased and spread through all classes of the population. To be sure, the outward quiet was no longer at any point disturbed; the news-papers lay in the fetters of the censorship, and the new Baden press-law was repealed by the Grand Duke in obedience to a command from the Diet. In the Chambers the Liberal party lost again its majority and kept itself carefully on the defensive, in order not to provoke the Confederation to further measures of violence.

But the dissatisfaction sank only so much the deeper into their hearts. Many thousands, who in 1830, at the riots in Cassel and Dresden, had helped to prevent the excesses of the mob, or who had harmlessly shouted at the Hambacher festival, now vowed that, if there should be another outbreak, they, too, would have an active hand in it. In view of the reaction, nine-tenths of the German citizens were filled with democratic ideas: the more moderate with enthusiasm for a parliamentary State, where the vote of the popular representatives can turn ministers out of office, as well as put them in; and the hot-headed, with visions of an ideal republic where both the legislative and the judicial functions should be controlled freely and ultimately by the will of the whole people.

Experience had not yet taught them that for every large institution some powerful factor is necessary, which by its fixedness shall be the representative of stability in politics; and that no other form of government offers such advantages in this way as an hereditary monarchy. Nor did they, naturally enough, at that time understand clearly that the parliamentary government in England could maintain its sure and prosperous career only in virtue of the fact that the representation of the people as well as the administration itself was guided by two firmly-established and politically- disciplined groups of nobility, which took turns in the ministry without any interruption of business. They left entirely out of consideration the fact, very decisive in the critical examination of Democracy, that the stability of the North American government rests entirely upon the President’s practical independence of Congress. Their conceptions, too, in regard to the fascinating picture of democratic equality were but little developed. Only a few clearly comprehended that the demand for equal rights is noble and proper, if this means equality in the right of protection and of recognition in the courts, or, in a word, equality before the law; but that it runs into just the opposite when it comes to signify the desire of equal enjoyment and equal influence, without regard to the productive power of the individual, and so starts on the inclined plane that leads to communistic violence.

It was now seen that the belief was absurd, that the censorship of newspapers and small pamphlets could put a stop to the spread of such ideas. The riflemen had been taken prisoners, but the heavy artillery continued to dd its work. The books of more than twenty sheets (which were free from the censorship) passed from hand to hand. Whoever wanted political information found the answer to every question in Rotteek and Weicker’s Staatslexicon, based on the French theories, which alone could save; and the entire radically minded public learned from Schlosser’s “History of the Eighteenth Century,” that the doings of princes, statesmen, and diplomats were in consequence of their position necessarily immoral, and unworthy of the respect of upright citizens. And no less groundless in the present state of feeling, proved the hope that the political fermentation could be quieted by improvements in the material condition of the people. Though it was true that the social wretchedness of the masses rendered possible the French Revolution of 1789, it was the continued prosperity and self-contentedness of the German citizens that made them feel so much the more an unwillingness to be robbed of the choicest blessings of freedom by the reactionary politics of the Confederate Diet.

But this was not enough. It is well known that the German, although by no means phlegmatic in political discussions, is stirred to the bottom of his heart only by religious struggles; and just now there arose in this department of thought two mighty movements of equal strength, but of opposite tendencies. The peace, which had hitherto prevailed in the Evangelical Church under the influence of Schleiermacher’s theory of the harmony between Faith and Knowledge, was suddenly disturbed in 1835 by David Strauss’s “Life of Jesus,” and by the works which followed soon after, of Christian Baur and other representatives of the Tubingen School. They undertook to prove that, with few exceptions, the New Testament writings were not historical works, but a collection of dogmatic theorizings which had been one hundred and fifty years in the process of crystallization. So that the basis of Christian orthodoxy was not allowed to be historical authority; but the truth of Christian dogmas was made to depend solely on their internal worth and upon the “witness of the Spirit and of Power.” It will be seen at once to what extent, from this point of view, in all religious life the objective authority of the Church must be replaced by the subjective judgment of each individual. The excitement was intense, the flood of writings on both sides almost endless, and the sympa­thies, at least of all the educated classes, were aroused to the highest pitch. Very soon the struggle passed from historical to philosophical grounds; whereas until then the Hegelian system had been without question looked upon as conservative in political and ecclesiastical matters, a group of his disciples now asserted that the strict carrying out of his principles must inevitably lead to pure atheism, and to the unlimited sovereignty of human reason.

The unusual activity of the Catholic Church, which manifested itself at that time, strove for ends exactly the opposite of these. Its persecution during the French Revolution and its oppression by the first Napoleon had turned toward it the sympathies of all its fellow-sufferers, and in the distressing years of war millions of people had again learned to seek consolation in religion; so that, by reason of the consciousness of the advantages of this position, the tendency arose both in France and in Italy to bring about again the old power of the Church and of the Pope over sinning humanity.

As Gregory VII had once declared that the authority of the State over the outward ordinances of the Church, which had then been exercised and recognized during the preceding four hundred years, was a sin against the commands of God, so now a zealous party, urged on chiefly by the Society of Jesus, promulgated a similar doctrine, quite indifferent to the fact that in all the States of Europe these very rights of supervision and authority had long ago been reasserted in greater or less measure, and everywhere had been acknowledged, or at least permitted, by the Curia. Upon its banners this party bore as a device: “Freedom for the Church” — for that very Church that had always refused to recognize the principle of religious freedom, that had raised the compulsory acceptance of its faith to one of its most important precepts, and that had imposed upon the laity unconditional allegiance to the dogmas of the clerical hierarchy. There could not but follow a struggle with the civil authorities.

In Prussia this showed itself first in the matter of instruction in the theological faculties of the Universities, and in the matter of intermarriage. After long negotiations, in 1837 it came to an open quarrel, and the Government had the Archbishop of Cologne brought under arrest to Minden for having been false to his word, and the Archbishop of Posen, who had been behaving in a similar manner, deposed by a sentence of the courts. The Chapter of the Cologne Cathedral and the Prince-Bishop of Breslau took sides with the Government; but among the Poles, as well as along the Rhine, the people were in a violent state of excitement. In Munich, the zealous clerical, Herr von Abel, who had lately become Prime Minister, allowed free course to the Ultramontane newspapers in their attacks upon Prussia; and on this occasion even Metternich, who had just permitted the Jesuits to come into Austria, from which they had always been prohibited by the Emperor Francis, made no protest against a degree of liberty on the part of the Press that was directly contrary to the decrees of the Confederate Diet.

Thus in all the German countries there arose a kaleidoscopic confusion of sentiments and opinions. The entire condition of things, as it had existed hitherto, was subjected without any material opposition to a bold criticism. Thereupon, in 1887, an event occurred which gave direction to political agitation for the next decade and determined a fixed and common aim for all parties: the overthrow of the Constitution in Hanover by the new King Ernest Augustus. Undertaken under false pretences, but chiefly due to a desire on the part of the king to obtain unlimited personal control over the public revenues, the overthrow of the Constitution stood in alarming contradiction to the laws of the land, as well as to the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna. The displeasure of all Germany showed itself openly, when by a fresh act of violence the King abruptly dismissed seven Gottingen Professors, who, following the example of Dahlmann, were deter­mined to remain faithful to their oaths of allegiance to the Constitution. Three of these he banished from the country. All German popular assemblies, universities, and courts of arbitration vied with each other in giving expression to the public indignation in the sharpest of resolutions and memorials. The written vindications of Dahlmann and Jacob Grimm had the widest circulation. A large society formed for the support of the proscribed Professors gained many members in all the German cities. On the other hand, in Hanover itself the belligerent ardor of the sober-minded Low-Saxon population, after the first outburst of resentment, was neither hot nor active, although an appeal was made by the Estates to the Confederate Diet.

Here the vote was divided. Most of the constitutional Governments wished to support the Estates; but Metternich spoke strongly in favor of the King, whom he personally esteemed; and in Berlin, although Frederick William was annoyed at the behavior of this newly crowned trouble-maker, yet he considered in a patriarchal way that he must prevent his brother-in-law from being too seriously compromised. The result was a decision, passed by eight votes against eight of the Opposition (among the former was that of the accused Government), to the effect that, under the present circumstances, the Confederation had no cause and therefore no right to interfere; in consequence of which, the people of Hanover were obliged to submit to the will of the King, and a new constitution was adopted, fashioned according to the demands of Ernest Augustus.

We have already shown how the Liberal party, after the Carlsbad Decrees, reverted to the support of Individualism, in so far that they objected to any further intervention on the part of the Central Organization, and sought the remedy for existing evils in strengthening as much as possible the constitutions of the individual States. Now, however, the events in Hanover showed, in a glaring light, upon what a loose foundation the provincial constitutions rested; for all the efforts of the constitutional States in opposing this open breach of faith were fruitless. It was evident, that so long as the present Confederate Constitution was not radically altered, no German State, or indeed, no German citizen, was secure from violence. Hence the watchword for the Liberal party in all the German States became: by the union of their forces to attain this one object, a change in the Confederate Constitution, and in close alliance to strive together for the overthrow of the Confederate Diet and for the creation of a new central power, which should be at once liberal and national.

 

CHAPTER VI.

FREDERICK WILLIAM IV.

 

Up to this time the Prussian people, in general, had taken little part in the public movements of the other German races. The time came, however, when they too were to be drawn into the most violent of these whirlpools.

On the 7th of June, 1840, King Frederick William III died, in a good old age, after a reign of forty-three years. However discontented those of Liberal tendencies had become at the delay in the establishment of a representative constitution, however little pleased the feudal party was at the final shape taken by the provincial Estates, it is certainly true that the King's sense of honor and of justice had always secured for him, in increasing measure, the respect and good will of his subjects. His people were thankful to him for preserving to his country during twenty-five years a prosperous peace; and if, sometimes, they found him hesitating and always looking more to sure than to extensive results, yet every one knew that his slowness in action was due to an almost over-anxious conscientiousness; no one doubted that his whole administration had been carried on with righteous motives and in the fear of God. He won the hearts of his people by being sparing of his words, modest in his appearance, and indisposed to any display or show. During the last years of his life, all parties understood, as a matter of course, that the peaceful old age of the revered monarch should not be disturbed: and, however many hopes were built upon the approaching change of rulers, yet, when the solemn hour came, a feeling of genuine mourning pervaded the whole land.

Not only did the people no longer feel any reason then for restraining their political aspirations, but the King, Frederick William IV, who now came to the throne, was also disposed in every way to bring life and activity into everything that he took hold of. Even as a boy, he manifested a marked self-consciousness and a firm will; he was highly endowed with talents and tastes of the greatest variety, which had from his earliest years been directed by his tutors along religious, aesthetic, and intellectual lines. As he grew up, he showed himself to be well-informed and of good taste, possessing a brilliant mind and versatile talents, at the same time thoroughly upright, sympathetic, and even emotional: always enthusiastic over every noble and worthy undertaking, and filled with a trusting confidence in God and in his fellow-men. Whenever he was once persuaded of a thing, he stood immovable in his convictions. If it was necessary to push operations, he was apt to recoil from a bold attack upon the obstacles to be surmounted, and seemed for the moment almost to give way; but he remained firm in his own mind, and at the first opportunity took up again the thwarted attempt. The force of his will showed itself rather passively than actively; he was more for holding on than for pushing ahead; his actions were always characterized less by practical sense than by warm­heartedness and adherence to general principles.

Most striking was the comparative absence of military genius in this son of the House of Hohenzollern. To be sure, he was fond of emphasizing the fact that he was every whit an officer, —and a Prussian officer; but his personal appearance, to start with, would hardly corroborate this statement—he was corpulent even in early life, beardless, and of a somewhat shambling gait — and his generals complained that at reviews and parades he performed his duties as Commander-in-Chief in a hurried and superficial manner, manifestly without any love for the business. In general, too, he did not care much for athletic exercises. An old cavalry colonel used to say that the King had too much nerve and too little muscle. On the other hand, his heart overflowed whenever he sat down to sketch, as indeed he could with a master hand, lovely landscapes, or outlines of romantic edifices, or when he listened to the contrapuntal fugues of old church music.

He was, furthermore, a man of fascinating amiability, and bound to himself the greatest geniuses of the age by an irresistible charm. Peter Cornelius used often to say that he never could speak of the King without tears of thankful emotion. Rauch was continually astonished at the exactness and justness with which the King, in spite of his short-sightedness, could criticise the outlines of a piece of sculpture; he never had seen anything like it. Leopold Ranke once said of him to Maximilian, King of Bavaria, in the presence of a company of famous men: “He is my teacher, he is your teacher, he is the teacher of us all.” Alexander von Humboldt, whose evil tongue at times did not spare even the King, yet considered that day incomplete in which he had not enjoyed his society. More than all, the King's confidential advisers in his political and ecclesiastical plans, the Gerlachs, Bunsens, and Radowitzes, stood, until the end of their lives, completely under the charm of his personal influence. Among such friends the richness of his imagination and the flow of his ideas seemed inexhaustible. He was a master of language, in earnest and in jest, in pathos and in humor, and always found the fitting, nay, even brilliant expression for every one of his political, aesthetic, and religious reflections. To many people that ease was astounding, with which he descended (in the sudden change of mood that marked him as a true child of Berlin) from the highest realms of inspiration to the plane of a current joke, which he appreciated with equal cleverness. The versatility of his nature was truly boundless, open as it was to every passing impression.

Yet, however variedly this peculiar mind shone externally, its inner kernel was, from the very first years of manhood, firmly and unalterably fixed by the events of the times. Fleeing, as a boy, into the remotest corners of the country before the Giant of the French Revolution, he early imbibed a dread of revolutions, and a hatred of France that lasted during his whole life. Like so many of his contemporaries, he too, in the midst of his present distress, turned his gaze backward upon the more illustrious past, upon the mighty emperors, the august prelates, the knightly princes and lords, before whose valor the half of Europe had once trembled.

When then, in 1813, the offensive and defensive alliance between Austria and Prussia led the German troops to victory and all the German States into the new union, his decision was formed, to grasp the brotherly hand of Austria for all time, and under all c ire ii instances loyally and unselfishly to do his part toward reviving the glory and the majesty of the Holy Empire. We may assume without question, that he at that time followed with the fullest sympathy Stein’s and Hardenberg’s plans in the matter of a German constitution: that is to say, the propositions which would have given Austria the first rank of honor, and Prussia the place next in importance, which would have made the heads of the provinces (Kreise) commanders in the army and rulers of the Empire, and would have formed the remaining princes and heads of ruling Houses into a brilliant Imperial assembly. This would be, then, a state in which there should be several degrees of official authority, so arranged that each official should preserve in his own sphere of action the full sanctity of a heaven-ordained prince.

Frederick William attached the greatest possible importance to this sanctity of rulers, and this principle formed the pith and central idea of all his moral and political opinions. It was the same doctrine with which Count de Maistre once opposed revolutionary notions of government, namely: that God is the foundation of all states and governments; that He accomplishes without exception the creation of the State in such a way, that He endows some single individual and his family with the gift of ruling; that as the palm-tree rises into the air high above the low shrubs which cluster about it, so such a family is surrounded by its subordinate companions; that such a God-ordained sovereign may then grant to his subjects certain individual rights, which, originating in this way, prove a lasting blessing, but which, being extorted arbitrarily by the subjects, destroy both themselves and the State; and that God then sets by the side of these mighty royal families, a number of smaller, but in like manner distinguished Houses, who determine the spread and development of the political system throughout the whole nation.

Frederick William, whose heart revolted from every form of despotic arbitrariness, felt very much inclined to grant to all his subjects these “individual rights,” as well as to allow the “lesser ruling families,” the noble lords, to enjoy princely authority in their own dominions; at the same time he considered it his first duty under all circumstances to assure for himself and his family their recognized supremacy over the rest of humanity. Above all, the royal crown seemed to him surrounded by a mystic radiance, which became for him who wore it the source of a divine inspiration not vouchsafed to other mortals. He said once, in 1844, to Bunsen: ’“You all mean well by me, and are very skilful in executing plans; but there are certain things that no one but a king can know, which I myself did not know when I was Crown Prince, and have perceived only since I became King.”1 It is readily seen how very well these ideas agreed, on the one hand, with his reverence for the Holy Roman Empire, and, on the other hand, with the fundamental principles of the old feudal party of Prussia.

The religious convictions of the King gave these ideas their final sanction. Deeply impressed with the indispensableness and the exaltedness of the Means of Grace provided by the Christian Church, he felt a strong desire to secure for its ministers a worthy and independent position, and to deliver them from the troublesome interference of secular authorities. He was ready, for the sake of carrying this out, to give up, for his part, the office of Supreme Bishop. “I long for the time,” he said, “when I can lay down this office in the hands of one who has been called to it.” With this idea, he hastened to end the strife with the Vatican by completely yielding the point under discussion, in return for certain concessions in personal questions; and the thought was ever present in his mind of reviving the dignity of the Bishop’s office even in the Evangelical Church, not only as an honorary title, but invested with full official power. Then he intended to abstain from taking any part in the government of the Church, in order so much the more effectually, as its protector, to guard it from any attack of heretical or anti-Christian factions.

Taking everything into account, one can define his position by saying, that he held unconditionally to the God-ordained absolute sovereignty of the King in matters of state: although he was determined to limit this materially in favor of independent ecclesiastical officers, of a nobility with local power, and of the personal rights of the citizens. He hated the uniform, strongly centralized system of the bureaucracy, which was fast becoming popular, and considered it a dead form constructed after an artificial model, which excluded every chance of interesting variety, and rendered impossible the desirable personal co-operation of the King.

These prejudices he continued to hold in an age in which a large majority of the people demanded impatiently a share in public matters, and in which the leading writers took a sceptical and critical position towards every traditional authority in Church and State. These men, moreover, wished to see a limitation put upon the absolute power of the Government in favor of more general freedom, certainly not for the sake of increasing the privileges of an aristocracy or of a hierarchy. In the presence of the spirit of these times, the King stood like the son of a past age, the citizen of another world, the speaker of a foreign tongue. This fact was of greater weight, since Frederick William, as the result of his individual and royal self-consciousness, carried on a decidedly personal government; he held his Ministers in strict subjection to his own will, and allowed his other confidential advisers only so much influence as was consistent with the assurance that all their movements would be entirely in conformity with his own views. It may be truly said, that the whole responsibility of every important act that took place during his reign falls, in the judgment of history, to him, and to him alone.

It is true that in a certain foreign complication, which reached its crisis just after his accession, he found himself borne along by the sympathetic enthusiasm of the entire German nation. At the time when the existence of the Turkish Empire was threatened by the Viceroy of Egypt, the French favored the latter; but the four other Great Powers made a treaty, on the 15th of July, for the protection of the Sultan. Hereupon the Minister Thiers declared the honor of France insulted and threatened war. The French began to make mighty preparations, and the newspapers already announced to the world with noisy boasting the reconquest of the left bank of the Rhine. This was a little too much for the awakened national sentiment of the Germans. We have already observed that just before this, a revulsion had taken place in the popular feeling, from individualism to new projects of unity. The time was past in which an English attack upon the Holy Alliance was talked about and admiring glances cast upon the freedom of the Great Nation. A cry of indignation arose throughout the length and breadth of Germany; millions joined in the refrain of the song, —

Sie sollen ihn nicht haben,

Den freien deutschen Rhein.

Even Metternich this time approved of the movement, and, strange to say, gave it the credit of being entirely free from those revolutionary sentiments, which, as he said, had unfortunately prevailed in the uprising of 1813. At his request King Frederick William sent, in October, 1849, General von Grolman and Colonel von Radowitz to Vienna to arrange necessary preparations for the common war. It was characteristic of his catholic German sentiment and of his mediaeval prejudices, according to which the dignity of the title of Roman Emperor and also the sovereignty of Italy belonged to the House of Hapsburg, that he voluntarily proposed to extend the protection of the Confederation over Austria’s provinces in Italy.

Metternich himself was astonished at this “epoch-making proposal”, and, in consideration of it, he for the second time approved of Prussia’s plan of campaign proposed in 1832, which would place the contingents of the Lesser and Petty States under Prussia’s command in the war against the French. It is true, that his approval was not given until the end of November, when the rise of the Guizot ministry in Paris put aside all thought of war, and, as in 1832, left Prussia’s plan of campaign without any practical importance. A question of the King, at this time, as to whether the consideration of a reform in the Constitution of the German Confederation would not be opportune the Chancellor at once turned aside evasively.

During these months Frederick William had been replying to the ostentatious homage of his subjects, first in Konigsberg and then in Berlin, in grandiloquent speeches, oratorically sublime, but politically meaning­less. Metternich used to say, that a ruler should speak Little and act much. The King’s talents in speech­making often beguiled him into breaking this rule, and the consequence always was, that he aroused hopes far i beyond what his actual plans sanctioned, and the resulting disappointment was so much the more bitter. Thus the Provincial Estates of Konigsberg supposed that they were acting quite in accordance with the King’s sentiments, when they begged him to put finally in force the Law of May 22, 1815. Like a dash of cold water came his short reply, that he should be obliged to decline this proposition, but that he did contemplate some progressive changes in the privileges of the Provincial Estates. As a matter of fact, he did allow these Estates, which had hitherto met only at the call of the King, to come together definitely every two years and also to print the reports of their proceedings. By this means great activity was at once introduced into the quiet life .of these assemblies; but they expressed themselves at times in a way which was very annoying to the King, and their utterances were often diametrically opposed to each other in different provinces. The Rhine Provinces, Prussia, and Posen sent urgent memorials, begging for the establishment of royal estates and the liberty of the Press; while Brandenburg and Pomerania vigorously protested against any concessions to such destructive tendencies. These different opinions clashed so seriously, that even many thoroughly conservative ministers and generals were anxious, as to whether it would be possible for the Administration, without the support of a powerful royal parliament, to maintain the unity of the State.

There was also a financial question to be considered: the development of the railway system had already begun in Germany; and more than any other country, Prussia, with its long distances, felt the need of making use of this mighty means of communication. A loan would be necessary for the building of state-railways, while private corporations, willing to construct the roads, would require from the State a guarantee of interest, which would be quite as burdensome to the public credit as a loan. According to. Hardenberg’s Law of January 17, 1820, the approval of the royal estates was as necessary for the one as for the other. The King’s dislike of royal estates suggested to him the expedient of having committees chosen in the different Provincial Parliaments, of inviting them to a general convention at Berlin, and of putting on them the responsibility of guaranteeing the interest. The attempt was made, but without success. The Committees recognized the need of building railways, but did not consider themselves competent to undertake to guarantee the interest.

If railways were wanted, it was necessary to choose, then, between an express suspension of the Law of 1820 and the creation of a royal parliament. In this dilemma it occurred to the King to call together for the settle­ment of this question all the Provincial Estates under the title of a United Provincial Diet; in future, however, to repeat this only in case of necessity, or at his own discretion, and to leave other financial matters, which had been, by the Law of 1820, referred to the hypothetical royal parliament, to the united Committees of the Provincial Parliaments, or to a delegation of the United Provincial Diet. He appointed a Commission consisting of four Ministers and one Court-Marshal to consider the matter more thoroughly, and then set off for the Rhine Provinces, where he took occasion to discuss the important question with Prince Metternich, as they were travelling together on the Rhine. He explained to Metternich that he was utterly opposed to a royal parliament and that a system of provincial assemblies was the only one suitable for his country; but that cases might occur, e.g., the acceptance of a loan, where no decision could be reached by the isolated expressions of opinion of eight independent bodies; and if, in such cases, he should call together of his own accord, for some purpose, these provincial assemblies to a short common consultation, he would not be tying his hands for the future by this precedent, the absolute supremacy of the Crown would not be impaired, nor would any question of a parliamentary constitution arise. Metternich replied: “If you do so, I am firmly convinced that, although you call together your six hundred as provincial representatives, they will return home as royal estates.” The King, however, considered that, in view of the preponderance of nobility in the Provincial Parliaments, he was sure of a conservative majority; and, moreover, thought that he was strong enough himself to prevent such encroachments in any case. Accordingly, the deliberations of the Commission about the summoning of a United Provincial Diet continued.

At this time, too, the King talked with Metternich and the Austrian delegates to the Confederate Diet about a reform in the German Confederation. In 1840, in consequence of the threatened war, he had caused important motions to be made at Frankfort concerning certain improvements in the German military system, and had so far succeeded, that in the future, mutual inspections of the contingents were held at regular intervals, whereby some of the worst sins of omission, at least, were stopped, or at any rate to some extent mitigated.

The much-vexed question of a Confederate fortress in South Germany gained also a point through his instrumentality. Austria had selected Ulm for the fortress; but the South German States demanded quite as determinedly the fortification of Rastadt; Prussia now settled the dispute by declaring that both cities should be made fortresses of the Confederation, and that she was very willing to contribute her share of the expense. This met with the approval of the Confederate Diet and Frederick William urged upon the Austrian statesmen the expediency of other undertakings, which should provide for the Confederate Diet further business of common interest. They praised his plans in the highest terms, and promised that an Austrian Plenipotentiary should be sent to Berlin to confer with him about them. This was done: the grand idea was discussed in several interviews, and the Plenipotentiary was dismissed with friendly assurances. But that was the end of it all. In Vienna there was a feeling against being bound by any definite engagements.

Meanwhile the tide of sentiment in Prussia kept rising higher. The King considered that all public business was to be conducted under his direction, and yet permitted to the citizens a healthy growth of their personal rights; among these latter he reckoned the free expression of opinion, and to this end he slackened the restrictions of the Press, so far as the existing Confederate laws would allow. He was especially liberal in this regard, since he expected from public opinion a strong support in his scheme of Confederate reform. His expectations were not immediately realized. The Press directed its efforts not so much to the advocacy of a Confederate as of a Prussian constitution. The cry for a royal parliament penetrated all classes of society; some few Radical and Communistic voices were also heard; the longer the uncertainty continued, the more urgent became the public clamor.

At the same time the King’s ecclesiastical projects met with opposition everywhere. The people feared lest violence should be done to their consciences; they feared the absolute sway of an intolerant orthodoxy and the oppression by the State of all dissenting subjects. Vigorous protests, spirited literary productions in themselves, followed from the University of Konigsberg, and from the magistrates of Berlin and of Breslau. In the midst of this excitement the Bishop of Treves inaugurated an exhibition of the so-called Sacred Coat of Christ, a relic of flagrant spuriousness, which nevertheless attracted millions of pious worshippers to Treves. Thereupon a Catholic priest in Silesia, one Johannes Ronge, sent an open letter to the Bishop, in which he condemned in strong terms such encouragement of stupid superstition. A certain pastor Czerski in the province Posen immediately afterwards solemnly renounced for himself and his parish all allegiance to the Catholic Church.

Some twenty other parishes followed his example, and their Council at Leipzig proclaimed the founding of a German Catholic Church with a thoroughly liberal creed. The spirit of this movement spread also among the Protestants. The Pastor Uhlich and Professor Wislicenus started a number of free societies under the name of “Friends of Light;” especially among the lower classes of the citizens and peasants these reforms were exceedingly popular, and were very zealously supported. The King, however, was filled with disgust. Doubtless he was right in his opinion, that in this case there was no revulsion from a worldly church to true religion, as in the times of Luther, but rather, on the contrary, a turning from the sacred mysteries of religion to the theories of human reason.

A negative religious movement of this kind could never lead to the establishment of a new church; therefore it was certainly unwise, instead of letting the senseless excitement spend itself, to try to restrain it by police regulations and devices, rousing for it in this way the sympathy of all liberal parties, and affording these latter, at the same time, a fruitful theme for political agitation. In Leipzig this resulted in deplorable scenes. Certain short-sighted regulations had led to the suspicion that the Saxon Government favored Jesuitical intrigues; Prince John had been unjustly suspected, and when he came to Leipzig in 1845, his residence was attacked, the troops had to be called out, and seven men were shot dead on the spot. This added fuel to the fire of the Radical party, which at this time was beginning to stir up the people with increasing audacity, and which found in the occurrence at Leipzig an apt illustration for its portrayals of the bloodthirsty German tyrants.

But the Radical party was not alone in the work of political agitation. Even in 1839 the plan had been carried out of uniting all the leaders of the Opposition in the individual Confederate States in a common attack upon the existing Confederate Constitution. Since that time, the most influential notables had convened once a year without any regard for minor party lines: the Radicals, Itzstein and Hecker, and the Moderates, Weicker, Soiron, and Bassermann of Baden, Heinrich von Gagern of Darmstadt, as prudent as he was determined, the Liberal Wippermann and the Radical Hildebrand from Hesse-Cassel, the extreme Revolutionaries, Robert Blum of Leipzig, Count Reichenbach of Silesia, Johann Jacoby of Konigsberg, beside many others of less notoriety.

At these great conventions, which were held sometimes in the Rhine Provinces, and sometimes in Leipzig, there was never any intimation of an immediate outbreak; the acquiescent attitude of the Chambers, the sympathetic tone of the Press and the current literature, the enlistment of new adherents from all quarters, and the adoption of stirring watchwords were looked upon as the evidences of the growth of the movement. Yet by no means did the Radical party abandon a special sort of revolutionary propagandism, which very soon spread beyond the German boundaries, and which made use of communistic tactics. Robert Blum’s modest dwelling in Leipzig became an established headquarters and resort for Polish refugees and conspirators, who were at this time preparing a heavy blow at the Powers who had shared in the Partition; these men recognized in the German and French Republicans their natural allies, and were always ready to promote closer union among them.

In Paris, Ledru-Rollin was leader of the republican committee; L. Blanc and Proudhon, both intimately connected by correspondence with German writers, kept up the literary agitation of the social democracy; the large society called “La Marianne” was influential in these directions, among the Paris working-classes; and a large number of German artisans, employed in Paris, were so filled with enthusiasm for the communistic philanthropists, that after their return to Germany they spread these ideas among their fellow-countrymen. German journeymen in Switzerland, too, found opportunity for similar cogitations; so much so, that the police in Baden were seriously troubled over the founding of several societies of this nature. A certain publishing-house set up by the Radicals in Herisau near Zurich, issued uninterruptedly revolutionary tracts, thousands of which were disseminated among the lower classes throughout Germany.

Tracts of the same sort were also sent over from North America, where, in several cities, societies had been formed for the same purpose by German immigrants. In these writings the business was handled very practically; to enthusiastic praises of Republicanism and fearful delineations of the German despots was added the summons to an armed revolution accompanied by drastic details of particular ends to be attained, e.g., the abolition of the nobility, the banishment of the Jews from Germany, the expulsion of all kings, dukes, and princes, the assassination of all government officials, together with exact technical instructions how to found secret societies for these purposes, how to procure money and weapons, and with what materials and on what principles barricades were to be successfully constructed. These doctrines were the more eagerly devoured by countless readers, since the hot summer of 1846 had occasioned a gloriously abundant vintage in South Germany, but had brought to the North a bad harvest and consequent famine; so that in one section revelling, and in the other wretchedness excited the discontent of the masses. The watch­word flew through the air: Things cannot remain this way. It must come to blows so soon as in Paris the old Louis Philippe shall close his eyes.

And now it seemed as if a malicious demon had collected in all corners of Europe fuel, out of which, once set on fire, now here, now there, threatening tongues of flame arose to terrify or to enrage mankind. In the beginning of 1846, the Prussian authorities in Poland discovered there a branch of the great Polish conspiracy. They arrested and brought to trial a considerable number of the members, among them the military leader, Mieroslawski, and afterwards suppressed without difficulty several small riots.

During the succeeding months, however, a rebellion broke out so much the more violently in Galicia, and in the small free city of Cracow, which had been left independent at the time of the Partition in 1815. In Galicia the Austrian Government let loose against the Polish nobility the Ruthenian peasants, who, long imbittered as they had been against their manorial lords, quickly stifled the uprising by horrible assassinations. In Cracow, the city was occupied by troops from the three neighboring Powers in common; then, in virtue of a new treaty, an end was made to her independence as a republic, by her incorporation into the Austrian monarchy. These events had a twofold effect upon Germany. At first the popular sympathy for the Polish cause was enhanced, aroused especially by the fearful butchery in Galicia,—however little a struggle between lords and subjects is likely in general to excite the sympathy of Liberals in behalf of the nobility. Then France and England protested against the annexation of Cracow by Austria, in the spirit of the interpretation of the Act of the Vienna Congress already mentioned: their argument being, that since the stipulation which recognized Cracow as a republic was inserted in the Act, it was impossible to abrogate this without the consent of the Powers belonging to the Congress. Of course this assertion, like the right to interfere in 1832 in the question of the German Constitution, was stoutly denied; but the fact of their interference shows how weak and unsettled the incipient national feeling in Germany still was, notwithstanding the uprising of 1840.

Although this question vitally concerned Germany’s independence, yet public sentiment, in accordance with the prevailing Polish tendencies, was overwhelmingly on the side of the Western Powers, however convincingly Clemens Perthes demonstrated that the insertion of a stipulation in the Act had been only to guard against the interference of a third party, and that the liberty of the contracting parties to change the conditions of their own accord was in no way restricted.

The more strongly, however, was German patriotism aroused over another event of this same year: namely, the 1 beginning of the quarrel between Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark. Inasmuch as this later led directly to the founding of the German Empire, I will defer a detailed account of it until its bearings may be more fully explained, and shall mention here only the general subject at issue. For a long time, influences had been at work in Copenhagen, that should gradually lead to the severing of the ancient political union of Schleswig and Holstein, and prepare the way for the complete incorporation of Schleswig in Denmark proper. This had been tolerated by the duchies inasmuch as the royal male line was expected soon to become extinct, and then, according to the invariable law of succession, the duchies would fall to the nearest agnate, the Duke of Augustenburg, whereas Denmark would be inherited by the female line: and thus the duchies would be freed from all Danish control.

But now King Christian announced to his subjects and to the world by an open letter that for Schleswig, and perhaps also for some parts of Holstein, the same law of succession should hold as for Denmark. Immediately a great outburst against Denmark arose throughout all Germany. All parties joined in it without exception: the Conservatives hastened to support the inherited right of the agnate; the Liberals to advocate the constitutional right of the duchies, and the Democrats from their point of view demanded respect for the will of the Schleswig-Holstein people. Everybody was dis­gusted that the Confederate Diet, although it recognized in its resolutions of September 15th the rights of Holstein, yet, with customary diplomatic politeness, expressed its confidence in the royal judgment of the Danish king. Everybody was enraged at such servile flattery, and it was insufferable that the highest authority in Germany found no word of sympathy for Schleswig. Even the otherwise moderate patriots now cried out: This state of things cannot last.

At this juncture, the deliberations in Berlin over the question of estates came to a close. The King had considerably increased the Commission, having added to it his brother William, who was at the time President of the Department of State, all the ministers and several generals. The Prince was, for a number of reasons, very apprehensive; he saw clearly that, when an impulse had been given to things in this direction, their own weight would carry them further; he feared lest the widespread dislike of standing armies, the result of long-continued peace, might possibly induce powerful royal estates to withhold the necessary money for the support of the Prussian army. Meanwhile, the great majority of the members of the Commission declared themselves in favor of the measure on account of its urgent necessity; so that finally the Prince also supported it without reserve. In doing this, he took He stand once for all. “ A new Prussia will come out of it,” he said. “The old Prussia will be buried with the proclamation of this law. May the new State become as great and noble as the old one has been in glory and in honor.” Every word of premonition and of hope, which the Prince thus uttered, has become true. The new Prussia brought to him at the outset personal danger and exile, and later the severest struggles for the sake of his army; and then be himself was its leader in raising it to an undreamed-of height of power and of glory.

How unspeakably effective the action of the King would have been, if, now that he had once arrived at the point of decision, he had come to a full and complete conclusion, upon the basis of which a quick and hearty agreement with the impending United Provincial Diet would have been possible! The result of an alliance of the Crown with such a choice selection of the ablest and most influential men of the nation would have been incalculable, a rock upon which the waves of that excited age would have broken in vain. What an extension of Prussian influence in South and Middle Germany! How the way would have been prepared for the conversion of the German Confederation into a German Empire! And verily, all this might have been attained without great sacrifices, merely by an unreserved fulfilment of the laws of 1815 and 1820, with a generous interpretation of any ambiguous points.

But the King’s fancy was probably flattered by the vision of a great and brilliant assembly of princes and counts, noble lords and stately grandees; and as to further powers even of these, he remained unchangeably fixed within the limits of his doctrine, in spite of the energetic assurances of his most influential ministers, that such a position was anomalous. The King believed that safety of person and property was due to subjects; and accordingly a certain amount of freedom in expressing their opinions; also the right to withdraw from a church no longer sympathetic; and further,—an extension of the promises of 1815 — the privilege not only of discussing, but of approving new systems of taxation and loans, so far as this might be consistent with the safety of the State. To the Crown, however, belonged the sole right of deciding in matters of State business: for instance, concerning the revenues from the domains and indirect taxes, and all expenses of the State; and of enacting laws, so far as these did not affect the personal and private rights aforementioned. It was an act of royal grace, if the Crown chose to listen to the voice of an advising Diet, and to accept from them petitions and memorials. In order to keep itself from being exposed in this high position to possible encroachments, the Crown was to summon the United Diet only for the approval of new taxes and loans, or whenever otherwise desirable in the unbiassed royal judgment, to allow committees of the various provincial parliaments, meeting once in four years, to transact other common business; and to assign to a small deputation of the Diet the yearly examination of the public finances, a duty that in 1820 had been con­ceded to the prospective royal estates. With these provisions, the letters patent appeared on the 13th of February, 1847, which summoned for the 11th of April the United Provincial Diet, to be divided into the Curia of the princes and the manorial lords, and the Curia of the lower nobility, the citizens, and the peasants.

It is no wonder that throughout all the provinces, in response to this, instead of the joyful gratitude which was expected, intense displeasure was manifested. In many points a disregard was discovered of the promises y contained in those old laws that had never been made void; and especially the refusal to grant yearly meetings of the Diet seemed to be a direct violation of the law of 1820.

The King was moved to explain his position to the Diet in his long and flowery Address, which he delivered with all possible pomp and display. “No power on earth,” he cried, “ shall induce me to transform the natural relation between Prince and People into a conventional and constitutional one. Never will I allow to come between Almighty God in Heaven and this Land a blotted parchment, to rule us with its paragraphs, and to replace the ancient, sacred bond of loyalty.” Then, after he had expressed his displeasure at the revolutionary and irreligious machinations of the times, he declared to the Representatives that they were a German Diet in the old, traditional sense, i.e., especially and essentially representatives and defenders of their own rights and the rights of all those Estates whose confidence had sent them thither; besides this, they were to exercise those rights which the Crown had recognized as theirs: that of giving their advice when asked for it, and of delivering to the Throne the petitions and appeals received from their provinces; but it was not at all their business to represent opinions, nor to advocate the prejudices of the times and of the schools. For the Crown must govern according to the laws of God and of the Land, and according to its own free choice; but never could it be, nor ought it to be, influenced by the will of majorities.

There were only a very few men in the Assembly that were desirous at that time of a parliamentary government; but most of them demanded a yearly meeting of the Diet and the complete fulfilment of the old promises. Their first act was an Address to the Throne, which asserted their rights as Representatives on the ground of the old laws. The King was confounded. Yet he wished to avoid a rupture at the very beginning of operations, and replied that he should probably summon the Diet again before 1851. But this did not do much good. He was forced to see his plans about an income-tax and a railway-loan rejected, because no approval was considered possible, until the rights of the members as Representatives, which dated from 1820, should receive unconditional recognition. It was with great difficulty that the elections of the committees took place, since most of the members considered them illegal.

Whereas the advocates of the royal propositions, Von Manteuffel and Von Bismarck-Schonhausen, were everywhere in the country looked upon with suspicion as the adherents of a despotic cause, a boisterous popular applause surrounded the leaders of the opposition: the Pomeranian Count Schwerin, the East Prussian Alfred von Auerswald, the Westphalian Baron Georg von Vincke, the Rhinelanders Ludolf Camphausen, Beekerath, and Hansemann; even Metternich credited them with an astonishing cleverness and skill, that had shown itself more than a match for the Com­missioners of the Crown. However that may have been, the proceedings of the Diet were a disappointment to the King. Its transactions stimulated a liberal sentiment in every house in the land, and won for the King the undeserved reputation of being an incorrigible absolutist. In the rest of Germany, the hopes built upon Prussia were demolished, and reckless abuse poured in across all the frontiers. from the democratic press in Saxony and Bavaria, in Baden and Darmstadt. The influential position of Prussia in Germany and respect for royalty had both received a severe blow.

At this time in Bavaria a storm of quite another character broke in upon the monarchical authority. King Louis I. had ruled for nearly ten years with the assistance of the Ultramontane Ministry of Abel, in spite of the continued complaints of the Protestants and German Catholics. In the year 1846, the achievements of the Ultramontane party began to be regarded by the arbitrary Prince as insufficient, and their pretensions as inconvenient. The immediate occasion of the rupture was the passion that the Sovereign of sixty years suddenly conceived for a pretty, clever, and immoral danseuse, Lola Montez, a diva by no means devoted to the Church, whose elevation to the rank of countess Abel and his colleagues therefore refused to confirm. The King dismissed the Ministry, and formed a Libarel Cabinet. This was followed by an excited uprising of the clerical party, which knew well how to make the most of its temporary position as defender of morals, and which renounced at once and entirely the ultra-royalist sentiments that it had hitherto paraded. The aged Gorres wrote at this time just before his death: “When the odor of decay permeates society, then the fountains of the abyss break forth upon it, and the floods roll over it. In the language of the children of men it is called a revolution; in the language of the supernals it is a revulsion toward the standard of eternal order.”

This language of the supernals was understood. The Countess Lola did her part in stirring up indignation by all sorts of improprieties. Her house was threatened, the King insulted, and, finally, after ever-increasing riots, the danseuse was driven out of the country, while the soldiery looked on and smiled. It is a fact, that the clerical party was not alone in its anger at the enormity of the disgrace. All the citizens of Munich and the University were united in their irritation against the King. Every one in Bavaria turned away in bitter resentment from such a polluted throne.

At this time, too, the last, the supposed inviolable support of the old system, the authority of Prince Metternich, was falling more and more into contempt. The threatening signs of the times gave him chance enough to be proud of the insight with which he had foretold the approach of the social revolution. The only question was, whether his exclusive use of police preventive measures, instead of those reforms that the situation demanded, did not increase rather than alleviate the evil, and whether his refusal to admit the educated and property-holding classes to any active share in the government did not drive them directly into the arms of the revolution. Though now an old man over seventy years old, he lived to see this take place.

In Hungary, Louis Kossuth had been calling into life since 1842 an active democratic movement in the Lower House and in the counties; Metternich, who generally took little part in internal politics, strove by a whole series of reform-laws, to pacify this uneasiness: he fared just as did the Prussian King with his United Diet. The offers which ten years before would have been acceptable, now came too late to satisfy the constantly increasing demands. The agitation went on its way regardless of them.

And even in his acknowledged field of universal pre-eminence, in foreign politics, the Chancellor of State experienced one failure after another. In his blind zeal to maintain in opposition to the social revolution all existing institutions, whether they were intrinsically tenable or not, he had everywhere, in Germany, in Switzerland, in Italy, and in Turkey, allied himself to the decaying relics of the past, and had suppressed the vigorous buds of future promise.

In Turkey, the Sultanry was now challenged by a rapidly spreading anarchy; and the struggling Christians looked more and more to Russia for help, instead of to Austria.

In Italy, the then liberally-minded Pope, Pius IX, had borne, in 1846, the banner of national independence; since that time there had been commotions in all the States of the peninsula; in Sicily, an open rebellion broke out; the Austrian Government in Tuscany, Modena, and Lombardy found itself faced by the unconcealed hostility of the people. King Charles Albert of Sardinia had strengthened his army and was awaiting a favorable moment for attack. Lord Palmerston, long since dissatisfied with Austria, was doing everything in his power to encourage the national sentiment in the whole peninsula.

Lastly, in Switzerland, the Radical and Jesuitical parties had been standing since 1848 armed and ready to close with each other; of which the former was at the same time the representative of Confederate reform in the direction of centralization, and the latter, of a more complete sovereign independence to be enjoyed by each individual Canton. Metternich, of course, with the approval of Frederick William and Guizot, supported the Jesuitical party. He proposed a conference of the five Great Powers about the matter. Palmerston readily assented, and then did his best to delay the proceedings, while at the same time he secretly sent to Berne the summons to make an end of things as quickly as possible. Thereupon the Assembly, controlled by a majority of Radicals, began operations without delay. In three weeks the Cantons of the Jesuitical party were overpowered, and the Radical rule established in the whole of the Confederation. Such an ignominious defeat as this, in which he was held up as the victim even to the point of ridicule, the old gray-haired Chancellor had not yet sustained.

To the German Radicals, on the other hand, the triumph of their Swiss sympathizers, who had begun with insignificant skirmishes and ended with a great national crisis, seemed a brilliant pattern for their own intended reform. No less strongly were the champions of German Unity affected by the evident analogy between German Individualism and the principle of Canton-rights now crushed out in Switzerland. It seemed, indeed, a shame and a disgrace, if the great German People were not able to accomplish what the small nation of the Swiss had so brilliantly effected. Both sides gave frequent and definite expression to these sentiments, even before the Swiss contest had terminated.

On the 12th of September, 1847, several hundred Liberals of Baden met at Offenburg, under the leadership of the hot-headed and vain deputy Hecker, who was gifted with eloquence, if not fertile in ideas. This assembly accepted with zealous unanimity a programme laid out by the journalist Von Struve, a cold-blooded fanatic, which demanded the repeal of the hated Confederate Laws of 1819 and 1832, and then further proposed: unlimited freedom of the Press, unconditional religious freedom, the right of forming clubs and of holding meetings, the obligation of the military to swear allegiance to the Constitution, representation of the people in the Confederate Diet, replacement of the standing armies by a militia consisting of the whole people, a proportionate income-tax instead of the taxation hitherto in vogue, protection of Labor against Capital, trial by jury, abolition of all privileges, and in place of the system of officials the right of the people to govern themselves. Clearly, nothing was lacking to the proclamation of a social-democratic republic but the name.

Another assembly, of totally different character met on the 10th of October at Heppenheim on the Bergstrasse. It was composed of prominent men of the Constitutional party: Romer of Würtemberg, Heinrich von Gagern of Hesse-Darmstadt, Hergenhahn of Nassau, Hansemann and Mevissen of Prussia, Mathy, Bassermann, and Von Soiron of Baden, beside Von Itzstein, the leader of the Baden Radicals. Here the discussion was limited to demands for a German Parliament. Most of the members believed that it would be possible to form this side by side with the Confederate Diet. Then Mathy rose and showed, that in an international Confederation of sovereign States there could be no common parliament nor a common government; and, surely, a parliament without a government was a political anomaly. He moved, therefore, a resolution to demand a parliament and a government under Prussia’s leadership for those allied States that belonged to the Tariff-Union. This was seconded and strongly supported by Gagern; whereupon it was adopted by the meeting. Afterwards, however, it was felt that the term “Tariff-Union Parliament” did not have a sound that would catch the common ear and attract the masses; and so Bassermann brought forward on the 2d of February, 1848, in the Baden Chamber the proposition, accompanied by convincing arguments, for the summoning of a German Parliament by the side of the Confederate Diet. The news spread quickly through all the German countries, and this proposition was everywhere taken up with tremendous applause, as the most effective watchword for future operations.