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BOOK V.
REVIVAL OF THE CONFEDERATE DIET.
CHAPTER I.
COUNT BRANDENBURG IN WARSAW.
Even in the middle of the critical nineteenth century
the mission of Count Brandenburg to Warsaw, and its results, gave rise to
remarkable, almost dramatic stories. Such mythical legends are usually supposed
to be found only among the traditions of most ancient times, or at the latest
in the romantic Middle Ages. We forget that the modern races are also gifted
with imagination, and that they like as much as ever to see their theories and
fancies expressed concretely. The generation that watched the events of 1850
was filled with the idea that Prussia’s honor demanded a war with Austria and
Russia; and when this expectation was frustrated, the age created for its own
satisfaction a hero who should suffer a tragic end in the direful catastrophe.
The accepted account, which was published immediately
after Brandenburg’s death, and rumored abroad with many modifications, is well
known. According to this version, Brandenburg had been received in Warsaw with
uncivil arrogance. The first word of the Czar had been, “I ordered my
brother-in-law to come”; to which Brandenburg had replied, “Such a remark is
not proper for Prussian ears to hear”. In this fashion the interview had
continued. Wounded to the quick and physically exhausted, Brandenburg had
returned to Berlin. Against his own convictions he had represented the pacific
inclinations of the King, and upon his return had at once sunk into a serious
illness, during which in his delirium he had repeatedly begged for his helmet
and sword, until after a few days of suffering he died of a broken heart.
This mythical fabrication has remained for a whole
generation uncontradicted, although the story in the main and in its coloring
is exactly contrary to historical circumstances. For as a matter of fact, Count
Brandenburg was the very man who at the critical moment gave to Prussian
politics the turn which they took in favor of yielding to the proposed terms of
peace.
The office of the Count had been, in general, to convince
the Czar Nicholas of the justification of the Prussian policy, and so to win
Russia’s approval of the Prussian proposals with regard to the question of the
German Constitution. A ministerial memorial which he took with him asserted
above all things the impossibility of Prussia’s recognizing the assembly then
in session at Frankfort as the German Confederate Diet, inasmuch as the same
after its dissolution in 1848 could be revived only by the unanimous vote of
all the German Governments. This point was to be maintained at all hazards.
Then Brandenburg was further to announce Prussia’s demand that the German
Constitution should be decided upon in open conferences, and to make known the
chief propositions that Prussia would there bring forward. These were the
following six points, the most important of which quite agreed with the latest programme of Schwarzenberg, which he had confidentially
offered and then quickly withdrawn : —
1. In the presidency of the Confederation,
Prussia shall share equally with Austria.
2. There shall be a Confederate Council of
seventeen votes, having the same functions as the old Confederate Assembly.
3. The duties of the executive proper shall
devolve upon Prussia and Austria in common.
4. A popular representation shall not exist for
the present in the Confederation.
5. Austria shall be admitted with all her
provinces into the Confederation.
6. Individual states shall have the right to form
a Union among themselves, provided its conditions shall not conflict with the
conditions of the German Confederation.
In respect to the Hessian and Holstein questions,
Brandenburg’s instructions were limited to repeating the demand that these
should not be determined by the Confederate Diet, but by commissioners from the
two Great Powers sanctioned by all the German Governments. As to the manner of
this settlement nothing was said. We have, however, already noted that the
Berlin Cabinet was as anxious for the restoration of the sovereign authority in
both countries as were the two Imperial Courts. The King had, as we have seen,
long ago assured Emperor Nicholas of this with regard to Holstein; and he had
no misgivings about expressing himself quite as freely to the Emperor of
Austria in relation to the contest over the Constitution in Hesse.
Just as Count Brandenburg was about to leave Berlin
with these instructions, the news came that the Emperor Francis Joseph and
Prince Schwarzenberg, upon their return from the meeting in Bregenz, intended
to repair to Warsaw. The King, then, immediately instructed Brandenburg by all
means to await there the arrival of the Austrians. He also announced this to
the Emperor Francis Joseph in an autograph letter, which, in sharp contrast
with the warlike spirit manifested at Bregenz, was filled with words of warm
friendship, calling upon the Emperor, at its close, to give up the idea of the
Confederate Diet, which would occasion only strife, and to turn to his Prussian
friend and ally, whose interests in Hesse-Cassel were the same as his own;
namely, that that bad example which had been given to the world by the Hessian
officers and functionaries might be effectually obliterated.
Count Brandenburg arrived in Warsaw on the afternoon
of the 17th of October. Before the lapse of more than an hour, the Emperor
invited him to an audience, at which Nicholas welcomed him most graciously, received
from him a letter from the King, and after the first greetings allowed the
count at once to discourse upon the current topics. Brandenburg declared
Prussia’s inability to recognize the so-called Confederate Diet, her
willingness to work for a reform of the Confederation in open conferences, and
her suggestion that the Danish and Hessian questions should be settled by
special commissions. “The Emperor,” reported Brandenburg to the King, “listened
to me attentively during the whole of the discourse, which lasted several
hours. He said that he understood our wishes, and had himself recognized the
need of reform in the Constitution of the Confederation, having often spoken of
this matter himself. He believed, however, that under the present circumstances
it would be best to recognize the Constitution that had been in force for the
last thirty years, and then to proceed to the reforming of it.
When Brandenburg laid before the Emperor the six
propositions, he purposely observed that in settling these points with Austria,
the Czar’s mediation might have a great effect. But Nicholas immediately took
up the remark, and protested repeatedly and decidedly that he did not intend to
mediate at all. He had the best wishes for both parties, and desired above all
things order and quiet; but he should not meddle in any way. Brandenburg did
not fail to understand that Nicholas refused to interfere in the German
question, only because he wished to leave the Austrians entirely free in their
decision of the matter. So that, strictly speaking, there could be no
negotiations held in Warsaw with the Russian Emperor, but only with Prince Sehwarzenberg.
In the further course of the conversation, the Emperor
praised the determination of the Hessian elector to look to the Confederate
Diet for aid, and especially emphasized the necessity for an immediate
disarming of Holstein. It was evident that his whole attitude turned upon this
point. “If,” wrote Brandenburg, “these two questions can be settled by commissions,
the Emperor will probably quietly acquiesce. It is less certain, however, what
would happen in the contrary case, and whether he would be satisfied with being
convinced of Prussia’s barren good-will.
The Russian chancellor, Count Nesselrode, proved to be
more tractable in his conferences with Brandenburg than the Emperor. He
considered the six propositions a very suitable basis for an understanding
between the two German Powers, and succeeded in obtaining from the Emperor the
permission, given somewhat reluctantly, to recommend them as such to Prince Schwarzenberg.
The Russian ambassador in Vienna, Baron Meyendorff, likewise urged them upon
the attention of the Prince, although the latter had repeatedly asserted after
the meeting at Bregenz that a war was the only possible means of bringing
Prussia to reason.
To this Meyendorff replied, that, inasmuch as
peaceable means had not yet been exhausted, any offensive movement on the part
of Austria would find Russia on the side of the enemy. Thereupon
Schwarzenberg’s cry for war was pitched in a somewhat lower key. He expressed
his willingness to come to terms, provided that Prussia would disband the
Union, and would send a deputy provisionally to the Confederate Diet with the
understanding that he might be recalled in six months, if within that time no
result had been reached about a Confederate Constitution. Meyendorff brought
these terms on the 23d of October to Warsaw, where the Prussian Prime Minister
rejected them as being utterly inadmissible.
Meanwhile, the Czar Nicholas kept reverting to the
Holstein question. “Your proposal,” said he to Brandenburg, “about settling it
by a commission which shall confer with a Danish plenipotentiary, would consume
altogether too much time. The simplest and the quickest way would be for
Prussia herself to send troops at once against the Holsteiners.”
Brandenburg answered, “As to the obligations which Prussia has herself
individually assumed, she has either discharged them already or is ready to
discharge the remainder whenever the necessary conditions shall be fulfilled by
the other side. As to her obligations as a member of the German Confederation,
she will always be ready to do anything requested of her by a universally recognized
Confederate authority. At present, however, no such authority exists. It is
precisely in order to accomplish the desire of the Czar for a speedy pacification
that measures are now being urged which may effect a reconciliation with
Austria. It is also certain that the Ducal Government in Holstein is ready to
abide by the decision of such a commission as Prussia proposes.”
The Emperor remained fixed in his opinion. “It is
Prussia’s duty,” he said, “to put an end to the war, which she has kindled and
carried on. She must do this by effecting an actual peace, i.e. by the
pacification of Holstein, and she must not oppose measures to secure this end,
that may be decided upon in Frankfort. If an order is sent from Frankfort to
Kiel prohibiting all hostilities, and commanding immediate disarming of the
troops, what is to hinder you,” he asked, “from issuing a similar order from
Berlin?” Brandenburg promised to consider the matter, but gave very little hope
of securing the royal approval of a course of conduct that implied concurrence
with the action of the Confederate Diet, and that would thus mean, in effect,
the recognition of that body. His caution only increased the importunity of
the Emperor. To General Rochow, with whom he had been for years accustomed to
converse familiarly, the Czar said, “You ought to dispatch an army against the Holsteiners, scatter them to the winds, and then hang
General Willisen.”
Sorrowfully, but firmly, the Emperor, on the 22d of
October, announced to Count Brandenburg his final decision. He said that he
should be obliged to regard Prussia’s continued opposition to measures
determined upon by the Confederate Diet for the pacification of Holstein as a
personal insult to himself, and should be obliged to resort to arms. He himself
would feel it his duty to recognize the Confederate Diet so soon as that body
should take the first step toward the desired object. He afterwards said again
to Herr von Rochow, “I shall be perfectly willing to see Prussia at the head of
her Union, and Austria with her allies in session at Frankfort. But,” he
continued, “neither of them may claim the right to prescribe laws for the
other, nor to trespass upon her territory. Whoever does that will have to count
on being my enemy.” Rochow sighed, as he reflected that the Emperor
unfortunately considered Hesse and Holstein as belonging to the territory of
the Confederate Diet.
All of these remarks of the Emperor were not to be
looked upon as official. Nicholas remained true to his first declaration that
he would in no way interfere, and that consequently negotiations were not to be
carried on with him, but only with Austria. Yet his attitude produced a great
impression upon Brandenburg; and when, on the 24th of October, Nesselrode
represented to the latter that a reconciliation with Austria was not at all
impossible, but that it would certainly become so in the event of a collision
between the Prussian and Bavarian troops in Hesse-Cassel, Brandenburg wrote to
Berlin that he also shared this opinion, and offered his advice that
instructions should be given to the Prussian troops in Hesse-Cassel not to
attack any Bavarians whom they might encounter in the electorate, but
temporarily to remain inactive in their vicinity.
Brandenburg could not, to be sure, express these private
sentiments to Count Nesselrode, but was obliged still to affirm that Prussia
would not suffer the so-called Confederate troops to enter Hesse-Cassel; yet he
concurred the more heartily with the proposals of the Russian minister,
especially with his suggestion to get entirely rid of the Holstein question
before entering upon the work of reforming the German Confederation.
Brandenburg in his reports to Berlin pressed the question whether it would not
be better, at the same time that Prussia’s unwillingness to recognize the Confederate Diet should be emphasized, to take steps — as a
matter of fact, simultaneously with those taken at Frankfort — towards the
pacification of Holstein, i.e., the subjection of the land to the Danish king.
But the feeling in Berlin just at this time was far
from favorable to the entertainment of such ideas. Indignation at the arbitrary
convocation of the Confederate Diet and its unauthorized doings outweighed
every other consideration. Radowitz averred that he did not believe that their
opponents seriously meditated war. Since 1848 the Austrians had not seemed to
him to be so very formidable. As to the Russians, it was said that it would
take them six months to prepare for an attack. Thus he became the exponent of
the conviction that peace would be the more certainly insured, the less
Prussia showed fear and hesitancy, and the more strongly fortified and ready
she seemed to be at the critical points. If she had only been actually fortified
and ready! But we have seen how paltry were the results of Stockhausen’s
precautionary measures.
Nevertheless, the King was still unable to endure the
thought that an unlawful body, and one that he abhorred as he did the Frankfort
assembly, should, in spite of his remonstrances, send its armies into the midst
of Prussian provinces, and even allow them to manoeuvre on the north coast of the kingdom itself. On the 22d of October, upon the
unanimous vote of the Ministry, he sanctioned the sending of the following
instructions to General Count Groben, who had been appointed to the command in
Hesse : namely, that at the approach of Bavarian troops, he should first try
all possible peaceable measures before resorting to armed force; but if the
former failed, he should then act only in accordance with military regulations,
and drive back the Bavarians wherever he found them.
Radowitz communicated this to Count Brandenburg, and
wrote to him on the 25th that the Minister of War had declared it impossible
for Prussia to assume the obligation to respect any occupation of Hessian land
by Bavarian troops, or on that account to abstain from offensive movements.
Radowitz said everything indicated that the Hessian affair was intended by the
enemies of Prussia to serve only as a pretext for subjecting her to foreign
domination and to a shameful humiliation. He rejected decidedly Brandenburg’s
suggestion to take measures against Holstein similar to those taken by the
Confederate Diet, and simultaneously with them, and declared that even an
accidental co-operation with that body must be avoided.
On the 25th of October, the same day upon which Radowitz
sent this despatch, the Emperor Francis Joseph and
Prince Schwarzenberg arrived in Warsaw. Shortly before, Schwarzenberg had
declined the Prussian proposition to settle the Hessian affair by a commission;
and at the same time that Schwarzenberg began the negotiations for peace on the
26th at Warsaw, the Confederate Diet at Frankfort passed the vote to instruct
the Bavarians to march into Hesse, whereupon corresponding orders were sent
from Berlin to General Count Groben. So that in Warsaw the distinguished
gentlemen conversed, as it were, with revolvers in their hands.
In Vienna, as in Frankfort, the diplomatists from the Lesser
States were in a state of feverish excitement. They urged their Austrian
colleagues not to make the least concession to that overbearing Prussia. They
could not forget the imperial election of 1849, and were eager for war in the
hope of putting an end once for all, with Russia’s help, to the
disproportionate power of Prussia. Prince Schwarzenberg sympathized with the
feelings of his South German friends, but was more cautious in his movements
than they, since he well knew that it would be chiefly he that would have to
bear the burden of the war. For this reason, too, he was especially anxious to
retain the good-will of Russia.
The Emperor Nicholas, however, was as little desirous
as ever of a war, and wished that a reconciliation might be effected between
the two German powers. He agreed with Austria in the principal points, and sent
on the 26th of October a sharp monition to Berlin, not to interfere with the
Confederate troops in Hesse; yet at the same time, he continually importuned
Austria to build bridges at any expense for the enemy to retire over, and, in
every matter of honor and diplomacy, to exhibit a compliant spirit.
On the forenoon of October 26th, Brandenburg had his
first audience with the Austrian monarch. The Emperor treated the Count in
every way with respect and courtesy, but entered into no political discussion.
He confined himself to formulating his position into a few sentences, beyond
which he did not go even in later conversations. “I am exceedingly anxious,”
said he, “that an understanding may be reached, and earnestly wish that some
satisfactory form for the same might be hit upon; yet I believe that I stand
with my Government upon the legal basis of the treaties, and this I cannot
under any circumstance abandon.”
Immediately upon this audience there followed a short
conversation between Brandenburg and Schwarzenberg, in which there was just
time enough before its interruption for Schwarzenberg to say that it was not
sufficient for Prussia to declare the Union Constitution to be impracticable:
she must promise its abandonment in so many words. In the evening, the two
Ministers held a long conference together. Brandenburg afterwards reported that
the discussion was carried on without the least exhibition of passion, in the
most cordial tone, and with all the friendliness of a meeting between old
acquaintances, that sincerely wished to come to an understanding with each
other.
Brandenburg remarked that he was not empowered to
change at all the wording of the decision of the 8th of October about the
infeasibility of the Union Constitution. But what could occasion Austria any
anxiety in the matter, he asked, if Prussia pledged herself to avoid in the
final Constitution everything that could conflict with the formation of the
more comprehensive alliance? In reply to Schwarzenberg’s remonstrances, lie
explained further that the object of the Union was to provide a legislative organ
for the Governments thus united; that this should be established with the least
possible parliamentary machinery; and that consequently the possibility of
executing the Constitution of the 26th of May seemed to him in any case most unlikely.
“Accordingly,” said Brandenburg at the close, “ let us not delay over this, but
proceed with our deliberations. When I return to Berlin, I shall see whether a
more satisfactory interpretation cannot be applied to the protocol of the 8th
of October.”
Schwarzenberg could not help recognizing that this
plan for the Union differed very little from the goal towards which the efforts
of the spring of 1849 had been directed. He said that he could readily agree to
such a definition of the Union; and after the above- mentioned promise to
reconsider the matter in a more favorable light in Berlin, they proceeded in
their discussion.
Brandenburg then brought forward his six propositions
about the future Confederate Constitution. Schwarzenberg's response was very
short and concise. With gratification he accepted those points that contained
concessions to Austria: the formation of a Confederate Council of seventeen
votes, the similarity of its functions with those of the old Confederate Diet,
no popular representation, and the admission of the whole of Austria into the
Confederation. But he rejected the measures that involved concessions to
Prussia: the equal authority of Prussia and Austria in the presidency, and the
assignment of the executive power to Austria and Prussia exclusively. The first
of these he wished to refer to the arbitration of all the members of the
Confederation; instead of the latter, he proposed the “establishment of a
powerful executive,” without naming the incumbents.
These were, however, very vital points for Prussia. If
both Great Powers were together to control in the future the German army and
German diplomacy, that would be of itself exceedingly perilous for Prussia; yet
she might even then be successful in a negative way, by hindering any dangerous
measure. But if, as Schwarzenberg proposed, a third party were to be admitted
into the executive, making of it a “Directory,” in which matters could be
determined by a majority-vote, then it was all over with Prussia’s independence.
Brandenburg contented himself with saying that he would make a further report
upon this subject
Against the sixth point, the right of the states to
form unions among themselves, the Prince had no objection to make, since, as he
observed, this was already sanctioned by Article XI of the Act of Confederation.
But in this way his recognition of the existing Union lost all its
significance; for hitherto he had asserted that its assumptions were contrary
to the conditions of Article XI, and that it was therefore unlawful and must be
abolished. Brandenburg passed over this uncertainty, and counted the sixth
point as won.
The question was now taken up that most interested
the Prussian king, one might almost say which alone interested him; namely, by
whom, and acting in what capacity, shall the proposed reform of the
Confederation be determined and instituted?
On this point especially, Russian influence had had
its effect upon Schwarzenberg. Ide had originally, as Emperor Nicholas told
Brandenburg in the interview the week before, demanded as the preliminary
condition to any negotiations whatever, Prussia’s recognition of the existing
Confederate Diet, and the understanding that this body should then proceed to
decide upon the reform of the Confederation. Meyendorff and Nesselrode had,
however, afterwards convinced him how harmless it would be in this case to
gratify the feelings of Frederick William, and to allow the proposed reforms to
be determined upon, not in Frankfort, but, as Prussia desired, in independent
congresses, — provided only that the Prussian Government would then, as it
might be hoped she would, agree to the proposals made in the congresses by the
imperial courts with regard to Hesse. Holstein, and the German Constitution.
This was so unanswerably true, that Schwarzenberg, however
much he would have liked to see Prussia humiliated as well in technical points,
could not very well maintain his objections. Therefore he did not now demand
Prussia’s express recognition of the Confederate Diet, provided she would leave
it unmolested. He declared that he was ready to advocate a reformation of the
Confederation by independent congresses to be held in Vienna, similar to those
which in 1819 had instituted the Vienna Final Act. To these congresses deputies
should be sent by the eleven Governments whose representatives were now in
session at Frankfort, but they should not be looked upon as composing the “Confederate Diet,” and by the twenty-one united States, but not as representing
the “Union.” Brandenburg agreed to the proposal in the main, but demurred
against Vienna as the place of meeting. He also reserved his criticism of the
reference to the doings of 1819.
Next in order were the questions relating to Hesse and
Holstein. On these, the Prussian minister found his Austrian colleagues
inaccessible. Schwarzenberg persevered in his rejection of the Prussian
proposal to let both of these questions be settled by commissioners appointed
from both Powers, and unswervingly insisted on the right and duty of the
Confederate Diet to render assistance to two sovereigns that counted themselves
among its members. In the Holstein affair the well-worn arguments and
counter-arguments were repeated with as little result as ever. The geographical
position of this country did not, however, demand an immediate settlement of
the difficulty, as was the case with Hesse.
Tn the discussion of the troubles in this latter
country, Brandenburg worked hard, but in vain, to convert Schwarzenberg to the
Prussian doctrines. “We cannot,” said the Prince, “recognize as valid the
Prussian objections to the entry into the electorate of those troops that may
be required by the sovereign of the land. The entry will take place.” Count
Brandenburg mourned that this should occur just at the moment when they were
in other respects so near a settlement. “We do not protest against the entry of
foreign troops in itself, and should not do so at all, if it were necessary,
and if it took place as a measure dictated jointly by us both. If it should
happen now, it would evidently take place only in order to give your
Confederate Diet something to do, and in order to force us indirectly to
recognize this body’s existence. The Hessian troops are quite adequate to the
requirements of keeping the peace, which has been nowhere disturbed. What,
then, is the need of foreign troops? Why not settle the quarrel over the
Constitution in a constitutional way, or by arbitration ? ”
Brandenburg’s arguments were irrefutable, and the
Prince did not attempt to gainsay them. His reply was monosyllabic in the
extreme: he was sorry for the consequences, but he could not do otherwise. This
produced upon Brandenburg the impression of a final, irrevocable decision.
With this the interview ended. Later, in the audience-chamber
of the Empress, it was agreed that for the sake of future reference and
negotiations, Brandenburg should make a note of the results upon paper.
Thus far the Prussian representative had not won much.
He had as good as abandoned the Union : to be sure, Austria had in return
consented to the holding of independent congresses for the reform of the Confederation.
But if in Berlin it had been hitherto regarded as a matter of course that
during these sessions the Confederate Diet would be adjourned or even suspended,
there was certainly no suspicion entertained that the Confederate Diet was
about to take immediate and summary measures with regard to Hesse. That meant,
according to all the votes recently passed in Berlin, war—and, as Nesselrode
had just given them to understand, war with Russia as well.
Brandenburg weighed the matter carefully, and came
again to the conclusion that the object to be attained was not worth such a
sacrifice. This was strengthened by the emphatic assertion of Nesselrode, that
Schwarzenberg was ready to give Prussia any desirable guaranty that the
occupation of Hesse by Confederate troops had no other end in view than the
restoration of the sovereign authority of the land, and that after this result
should be attained, the troops would immediately quit the electorate.
So Brandenburg wrote to Berlin on the 27th of October:
“The burning question, especially since the Russian declarations, is and will
be the Hessian. My advice is, in case the Bavarians actually march into the
country, to regard the matter from a practical standpoint, and by avoiding
hostilities to occupy the land together. It seems to me that this would
practically obviate the danger lest from the fact that Prussia permitted the
punishment of Hesse her recognition of the Confederate Diet should be
inferred.” Again he extolled the condescension and courtesy of the Emperor of
Austria, although the latter continually insisted that lie stood upon the
legal basis of the treaties.
The repeated interviews with Schwarzenberg resulted in
a so-called “temporary agreement,” arrived at on the 28th of October, which,
however, as a matter of fact, was nothing more than the recognition by Prussia
of the three Austrian demands — the Confederate Council of seventeen votes, no
popular representation in the Confederation, and the admission of the whole of
Austria with her dependencies—and the enumeration of the three points urged
by Prussia with Austria’s corresponding counter-propositions, as we have
detailed them above, and in addition, Austria’s exaction that Prussia should
dissolve the Union, and not molest the Confederate Diet.
Furthermore, it was stated in this agreement that
under these conditions, and after the six points should be settled, Austria
would consent to lay the same, as propositions made by herself in common with
Prussia, before all the other German Governments, and then to invite them all
to take part in congresses to be held for the revision of the Aet of
Confederation. As the place for holding these. Prussia proposed Dresden, and
Austria, Vienna. Austria assumed as a model for these the ministerial
congresses of 1819; and consequently she insisted that the result of these
congresses should, by a definite vote of the Confederation, receive all the
sanction and validity of a Confederate act, and be regarded as one of the
fundamental laws of the Confederation.
To all this, Brandenburg remarked that a further
decision with regard to the Union Constitution would be announced later, which
should be consistent with the sixth proposition; that a recognition of the
existing Confederate Diet was neither to be intended nor implied, if Prussia
should leave the same unmolested; that against the analogy drawn between the
proposed congresses and those held by the ministers in 1819, Prussia had
nothing to say, but only reserved the questions of the place of meeting and of
the presidency to further negotiations; and lastly, that Prussia was willing to
let the result of these congresses be regarded as a fundamental law of the
Confederation, although, of course, a definite vote upon it could only be
passed by the new central Confederate organization, which should result from
these congresses.
Schwarzenberg expressed neither assent nor objection
to these observations of the Prussian Prime Minister. On the following day, the
29th of October, the august assembly broke up; and on the morning of the 31st,
Brandenburg returned with his “ temporary agreement” to Berlin.
On his arrival, the Prime Minister found Berlin in a
state of increasing excitement and eagerness for war.
Among the people the sentiments already known to us, contempt
for the Hessian Elector and Hassenpflug, resentment at the revival of the
Confederate Diet, and especially their furious rage at Austria’s presumption
and Bavaria’s audacity, had been fanned into a flame by the news of the
movements of the troops toward Hesse; and as strong a patriotic feeling of
indignation was reported to exist in all the provinces.
Nor had the determination of the King and the
Government slackened, not to endure the effrontery of the so-called Confederate
Diet and its penal measures against Hesse. On the 29th of October, two days
before Brandenburg’s return, the Ministerial Council, in a full session, had
carefully considered the question, whether it would be advisable to hold this
ground even at the risk of a war with Austria. Radowitz asserted the
affirmative, and moved that instructions be sent to General Groben to proceed,
and that upon the receipt of the news of the entry of the Bavarians the whole
Prussian army be mobilized at once, unless perhaps with the exception of the corps
in Konigsberg and Posen, for which it would be possible to await Brandenburg’s
return. Without a single dissenting voice, it was voted that Radowitz should
lay these suggestions before the King as the unanimous vote of the Ministry.
But Count Brandenburg did not, in the face of all
this, suffer his resolution to waver. He had come back from Warsaw with the
firm conviction that these misunderstandings must not be allowed to lead to a
war—a war in which Prussia would have united against her South Germany,
Austria, and Russia, no ally at her side, and France, whose attitude would be
entirely uncertain and unreliable, at her back.
The grounds for his conviction are perfectly clear, in
view of the preceding events; but it is quite as evident that a hard and bitter
fight must await the Count in his endeavor to carry it out. The hesitating and
inconsistent conduct of Prussia after the close of the Erfurt Parliament had
made her position every week more untenable. Although Austria had just granted
the chief demand of Prussia, namely, that the reform of the Confederation might
be discussed in general congresses, the two Powers stood with their hands on
their hilts, and opposed to each other as directly as possible in the questions
of the Union and of the overthrow of the Constitution in Hesse-Cassel.
Yet the actual difference was exceedingly slight between
the final aims of the two Courts. The King repudiated the Constitution of the 26th
of May quite as decidedly as the court of Vienna, and declared that it could
not be carried out; but Prince Schwarzenberg demanded its formal abolition,
though this would have rendered him no safer in the future than the Prussian
formula. In the affair of Hesse-Cassel, too, the King as well as the Emperor
desired to see the land subjected to the will of the Elector; the quarrel was
only as to who should assist Austria in overthrowing the Constitution, — the
Confederate Diet, or Prussia.
For the sake of such points of controversy to involve
Prussia in a tremendous war seemed to Brandenburg absurd. But unfortunately the
Prussian Government looked upon the execution of its wishes as a matter of
honor, and the failure to see them carried out as a humiliation to Prussia; how
could she now, when her enemies threateningly began to brandish their weapons,
withdraw like a coward? Thus she was forced to decide between the two mournful
alternatives of a useless war and a shameful peace. No wonder that there was a
sharp difference of opinions!
On the forenoon of November 1st, Brandenburg made his
official report to the Ministry concerning his visit to Warsaw. He closed with
the recommendation, that, upon the basis of what had been there accomplished,
negotiations should be continued with Vienna. Radowitz arose on the spot to
express his decided disapprobation. He called attention to Schwarzenberg’s
hostile attitude to the Union, and to the six propositions; and then passing on
to the consideration of the Hessian affair, he declared that so soon as Prussia
allowed the Confederate Diet to carry out its penal measures toward
Hesse-Cassel, the supremacy of that hated body would be established throughout
entire Germany. Accordingly, the entry of the Bavarians into the electorate
must be followed at once by the entry of Prussian troops, repulsion of the
enemy, mobilization of the entire army, proclamation of a manifesto to the
nations, and convention of the Chambers. If this course should be considered
too dangerous, then it was high time to change the tactics and to unite with
Austria and Russia, to send word to Vienna that Prussia would take part in the
congresses upon the basis of the negotiations in Warsaw, and would agree to the
proposed execution of penal measures in Hesse in the name of the Confederation.
He should himself, however, be unable to join in following out this latter
course.
The Ministers, Von Ladenberg and Von der Heydt,
seconded him energetically. On the other hand, Baron Manteuffel, who had drawn
a long breath at Brandenburg’s appearance upon the scene, arose in the
interests of conservative principles, and advocated the permission of the
Confederate measures in Hesse. Herren von Rabe and Simons sided with
Manteuffel.
At the end of the session, Brandenburg stated quite as
bluntly and decidedly as Radowitz had done, that his continuance at the head of
the Ministry depended upon the decision of this matter. Under the existing
circumstances he could not, he said, assume the responsibility of a war. If a war
was to be avoided, the Bavarians in Hesse-Cassel must not be attacked :
otherwise, the mobilization of the troops must take place speedily as
possible.
Just at this moment, the news was received by telegraph
that the Bavarian troops had crossed the Hessian frontier and had begun the
execution of penal measures in Hanau. Thereupon General Count Groben, who
already had instructions in that event to occupy Fulda, now received further
orders to send a garrison to Cassel. Thus Prussia’s military as Avell as
political honor Avas at stake. The decision could not longer be postponed.
In the afternoon, accordingly, the Ministerial Council
again assembled. The King presided, and the Prince of Prussia was also present.
Count Brandenburg, at the opening of the discussion,
asserted categorically, that when once Schwarzenberg relinquished his demand
that Prussia should recognize the Confederate Diet and send deputies to it,
Prussia’s chief reason for protesting against the punishment of Hesse was
removed. It was also to be hoped, he said, that when Prussia was willing to
declare not only the impracticability but also the abolition of the Union
Constitution, Austria would concede to her a share in the presidency of the
Confederation. A battle in Hesse, however, would be the signal for a tremendous
and dangerous war.
When the King then arose to speak, it was evident that
Brandenburg’s reports and arguments had not failed to produce a certain effect
upon him. He sought some middle way, in which, by making a few concessions to
the enemy, a part of his own fond projects might be saved. “The Union
Constitution,” said he, “can for the time be given up, and then revived after
the more comprehensive alliance has been established. Moreover, when Austria
has once admitted the plan of holding the much-desired congresses, a concession
on our part in the Hessian matter is justifiable. We should be called upon to
garrison both of the Prussian military roads having halting-stations in Hesse-Cassel,
and to occupy the intervening country, so that the Bavarians may spread
themselves out in the south, and the occupation of the country would be accomplished
in common. In that case, the sovereign authority of the land could not be
restored without Prussia’s aid, and the Elector would be forced to turn from
the Confederate Diet to Prussia. Meanwhile, Prussia would be gaining time to
offset Austria’s preparations by the mobilization of the whole Prussian army.”
Brandenburg took the liberty of observing, at this
point, that although Austria had not agreed to such a joint occupation of
Hesse-Cassel, he felt sure that, if the acquiescent course intimated by His
Majesty should be pursued, there would then be no need of any mobilization.
Hereupon, Radowitz excitedly interrupted him and cried,
“Very true ! There would be no need of mobilization if we should satisfy all of
Austria’s demands, withdraw from Hesse-Cassel, and abandon Sehleswig-Holstein,—but we must immediately call all the troops into active service if we wish to
defend Prussia’s honor and independence.” He explained then at length that
mobilization did not by any means imply an immediate war; that simultaneously
with the mobilization, the negotiations begun at Warsaw might be continued in
Vienna; that, without attacking the Bavarians in Hesse, the Prussians might get
possession of as large tracts of land as possible; that this method of
procedure offered far greater advantages than the one proposed by Brandenburg,
although it ran, to be sure, a greater risk of immediate war, and for that
reason made the mobilization indispensable as a precautionary measure.
The Prince of Prussia, too, spoke in favor of the plan
of Radowitz, because, aside from all other considerations, a formal abolition
of the Union, such as Schwarzenberg demanded, meant the subjection of Prussia
to Austria.
On the other side, Manteuffel emphasized the dangers
to which the beginning of a war would give birth, by arousing revolutionary
passions among the people. He declared roundly that Prussia had no right
whatever to interfere with Hessian affairs, but that, on the other hand,
Austria had good reasons for demanding the complete dissolution of the Union.
The Minister of War, Stockhausen, confined himself to
the short but weighty remark, that, as things were now, mobilization of the
troops would occasion at once a war with Austria and Russia, and that Prussia
was by no means equal to these antagonists.
At this point the King dismissed the council with the
order to meet on the following forenoon with a view to continuing the
discussion.
On this day, the 2d of November, 1850, a day fraught
with mighty consequences, the die was cast by the announcement of His Majesty’s
royal will. Immediately after the opening of the session, in a lengthy and
comprehensive address, he expressed his view of the situation as follows : —
To the entry of the Bavarians into Hesse-Cassel,
Prussia has responded by a similar order, so that these moves offset each
other. From Austria’s warlike preparations, to which Prussia gave no occasion,
it must be supposed that Austria desires war. Prussia must therefore, by
mobilization of her army, put herself in a condition to accept the challenge,
although she may at the same time offer to continue the negotiations begun at
Warsaw. If Prussia, thus thoroughly equipped, takes part in negotiations, she
can then, without danger to her honor, modify her claims, and show a
disposition to conciliate that under other circumstances would be a weakness.
It has never been so necessary as now for Prussia to win for herself the hearts
of the whole people. This will be accomplished by the mobilization of the army.
All parties in the land, with very few insignificant exceptions, will joyfully
stand by the Government. An enthusiasm will spread throughout the kingdom,
which cannot fail to have its effect upon its enemies and its influence upon
the pending negotiations.
According to all this, it was in the King’s judgment
advisable,
1. To mobilize the army at once.
2. At the same time to continue negotiations with
Austria, and to declare that Prussia would not execute the Constitution of May
26th, but on the contrary considered it nullified.
3. To refrain from hostilities in Hesse-Cassel,
and in case the proposed guaranty should be given by Austria, to promise to
limit Prussia’s occupation of the land to the military roads with
halting-stations and the country lying between them.
4. In Holstein, simultaneously with the
inhibition of the Confederation, to give notice to the Ducal Government that
Prussia's protection would be withdrawn if the Duchy did not cease from all
hostilities against the Danes.
5. To send word to Vienna that the mobilization
of the army was to take place solely for the purpose of defending the Prussian
frontiers from any hostile attack.
By these measures he believed that the Government
would have the people upon its side.
A most surprising circumstance then followed. The King
requested the Ministry to state whether it was ready to carry out his plan with
him. He added that if not. if the Ministry preferred to follow Brandenburg’s
proposition to continue amicable negotiations, with Vienna and not mobilize the
troops, then he would not hold himself aloof from the course determined upon by
the Ministry. They should then be free to pursue the course that they
considered the best; but they must then alone assume the responsibility for the
consequences.
Inasmuch as the King had never been accustomed to
think and act in accordance with the principles of parliamentary government and
of ministerial responsibility, we must conclude that in his own mind he had
already decided in favor of Brandenburg, only he was unwilling to confess it.
But if Brandenburg was unwilling to undertake a war
for ends which he considered worthless, the Prince of Prussia on the other
hand, with his straightforward, soldierly spirit, protested against any
cessions whatever. Whether the demands made by Prussia were reasonable or not,
he was opposed to yielding one inch of ground when Prussian troops were
standing face to face with the enemy, and when the Imperial Courts were
haughtily crying their ultimatum: Submission or war.
Even before Brandenburg had the time to reply to the
question of the King, the Prince arose, and in a passionate outburst of
patriotism demanded immediate mobilization, and the continuance of negotiations
under arms, which, he declared, was the only course that could keep Prussia’s
banner unspotted, the only honorable and practicable course, and the only one
which would gain the sympathy of the people and the army: in short, the only
line of conduct that would maintain Prussia’s honor untarnished.
He evidently did not see, as did his royal brother, in
the mobilization of the army a means of excusing still greater concessions.
Count Brandenburg was by no means indifferent to the
attitude of the Prince, yet remained unshaken in his convictions, and
proceeded, as a reply to the royal propositions, to expound his own in the form
of an outline of a despatch which should be sent to
Vienna. The train of thought in this outline was as follows:
Prussia hopes that a successful result will be
attained in the general congresses which it had been agreed shall be soon held
for a revision of the Confederate Constitution. A complete abolition of the
Union Constitution does not lie in the competence of Prussia, but can take
place only with the consent of the allied Governments. Prussia, however, as
president of the Union, declares that she will not try to execute the
Constitution, and considers the same, for her part, entirely given lip. After
what Schwarzenberg has expressed, Prussia’s sufferance of the entry of foreign
troops into Hesse-Cassel cannot any longer be construed as a recognition of the
assembly at Frankfort. She can accordingly permit their entry so soon as she
has received all the necessary guaranties with regard to the duration and
purpose of the occupation of the electorate, and with regard to the security of
the Prussian military roads, which would otherwise be endangered. Meanwhile,
the Prussian troops in Hesse-Cassel shall receive instructions to refrain from
making any offensive move. The Holstein affairs can also be adjusted quite as
peaceably. Prussia proposes as a place for holding the congresses either
Dresden or Nuremberg. It would be desirable for the two Powers, at the very
beginning of the congress, to propose jointly the six propositions discussed at
Warsaw. If this cannot be done, then both the Powers may take part in the
congresses bound by no obligations. Inasmuch as, after what has been said, there
is no longer any difference that threatens a rupture between the Powers, it is
expected that the warlike preparations, which the other side has been making,
will now cease. Otherwise, it would be necessary for Prussia also to put
herself into a condition of readiness for a conflict; and this would be a
measure that under the present circumstances would not only be superfluous, but
would create apprehension on all sides.
It is clear that the sending of this despatch involved both the abolition of the Union
Constitution and assent to the punishment of Hesse. Nothing could imply this
more plainly than the mention of the conditions upon which these two
concessions were temporarily made to depend. For, without doubt, Austria would
at once reply that the allied Union princes would of course agree to anything
proposed by Prussia, and that the desired guaranty with regard to the
stipulated use of the military roads would be granted by the Confederate Diet,
and be as binding as possible.
After having read this document to the Council,
Brandenburg remarked that he was well aware this course of procedure might lead
to the downfall of the Union, and to the dissolution of the Chambers; but the
opposite policy would surely bring upon Prussia a war which she could not
successfully carry on. “A mobilization of the troops,” he said, “would at this
juncture certainly enkindle the war; but if Austria should attack us in spite
of our concessions, it would be an act of depredation, and we should have
Russia upon our side.”
At the request of the King, the Ministry then
withdrew to an ante-chamber to decide the question put to them by His Majesty.
They returned after a very few moments, and Brandenburg announced their decision,
which was as follows: the majority of the Ministry had not been able to change
their convictions and to advocate the mobilization; on the contrary, they
considered it imperatively necessary that Prussian movements should be stopped
in Hesse-Cassel, that the proposed despatch should be
sent to Vienna with the request that Austria's preparations for war should
cease, and that, unless Austria should reply to the despatch in an unfriendly manner, no mobilization should take place; they were convinced
that the immediate mobilizing of the troops would put a stop to negotiations
and provoke a war, to which Prussia’s strength was not equal.
Radowitz thereupon reported that the minority held
quite as firmly to their previous convictions; and he then set forth an outline
of the message which in their opinion should be sent to Vienna, and which in
the main accorded well with the five principles propounded by the King.
The King then made the final and decisive speech. “ I
concur in every point,” said Frederick William, “ with the opinions of the
minority. But since the majority persist in their verdict, I hereby repeat the
declaration that I see myself forced, since I am fully determined to retain the
Ministry, to grant them freedom to act as they choose. I hope that the members
of the majority may never see the day when they shall repent the step — to my
mind so ruinous — which they have taken today.”
This closed the session.
General von Radowitz immediately resigned. Herren von
Ladenberg and von der Heydt followed his example. After the protestations of
November 1st, this was a surprise to no one. But very unexpected was the fate
which suddenly broke in upon the victors of November 2d.
So far as we have been able to gather information upon
the matter, Count Brandenburg had at no time during the recent negotiations
given any signs of a diminution or any interruption of his physical powers; nor
did he show any unusual symptoms during the following night, in the course of
which he was twice awakened that he might give orders concerning certain
matters which the King, by the mouth of the royal counsellor Niebuhr, referred
wholly to the Minister’s judgment. At both of these times he seemed to be quite
well and ready for work.
On the morning of the 3d he felt ill, and was not able
to be present at the meeting of the Ministry, although he signed and sent to
Vienna the despatch which he had the day before drawn
up and submitted to the Cabinet. After that his condition grew rapidly worse.
On the 4th, a violent elimination of bile temporarily relieved him, but soon
afterwards an intense fever, accompanied by nervous delirium, seized him; and
while Berlin was being excited and set in commotion by the threatening news of
increased warpreparations on the part of the enemy,
and of the consequent Prussian mobilization in spite of the verdict of the
Prime Minister, this remarkable man lay dying, and expired on the 6th of
November, 1850.
If the before-mentioned reports about his delirious
ravings are at all founded, it is easy to explain them from the fact that in
his lucid moments news repeatedly came to him of the passionate thirst for war
which was filling the city with excitement, and from which he anticipated only
disaster.
CHAPTER II. OLMUTZ.
On the 3d of November, the most exciting news and
events followed closely upon one another in Berlin. General Tictzen was on the march toward Cassel. General Groben announced the occupation of
Fulda, where he hourly awaited the approach of the Bavarians from the south.
From Vienna Count Bernstorff sent word that the Emperor Francis Joseph had
returned from Warsaw on the 30th of October, and that immediately afterwards
orders had been sent in all directions to put the army upon a war-footing. In
Bohemia, it was said, there were eighty (according to others a hundred)
thousand men, who were being pushed in all directions to the northern
frontiers, and who depended with confidence upon aid from Saxony. As a matter
of fact, the number was seventy-six thousand.
The negotiations for peace seemed to the Ministers at
Berlin for these reasons to be the more urgent, and the more pity was it that
the leader of the majority, Count Brandenburg, had suddenly fallen seriously
ill. Herr von Ladenberg, the Minister next in seniority, opened a
hastily-summoned meeting of the Ministerial Council with the notice that since
he had tendered his resignation to the King, he was not entitled to take part
in political discussions, nor to take upon himself the duties of the sick
Premier. After Herr von Manteuffel upon this had assumed the office of president,
Radowitz made a similar announcement, with the additional observation that the
King had already promised to accept his resignation, and that he was consequently
unable to attend to the current business of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Von der Heydt had also asked for his discharge at the same time with Ladenberg.
It was therefore decided to propose to the King that
Brandenburg should take charge of the Department of Foreign Affairs; and that
so long as his illness lasted, Manteuffel should take his place. The despatch drawn up by Brandenburg the day before was
formally approved, and, after it had been sent to the Count for his signature,
forwarded to Vienna. Groben received orders to maintain the positions already
taken, but to advance no farther. At the same time, it was voted to inform the
Ducal Government at Kiel, that, if the Prussian demands should be refused, the
Duchies need count upon no further effort of Prussia to mediate. The Prussian
troops that were still on the Holstein frontier were on the 4th withdrawn from
there and moved southward. Likewise, the troops in Hohenzollern and in the
southern part of Baden were ordered to retire across the Murg.
Nevertheless, the Austrian Ambassador, Herr von Prokesch,
communicated on the same day a threatening note from the Imperial Cabinet
demanding that the electoral sovereignty should be respected, and that
consequently the Prussian troops should be immediately withdrawn from
Hesse-Cassel. Rochow sent word that Emperor Nicholas would also, on his part,
look upon a refusal to comply as a signal for war. With the greatest
impatience, therefore, Manteuffel awaited the Austrian answer to Brandenburg’s
pacifying despatch, which unfortunately could not
reach Vienna before the 5th of November. He put off Prokesch by referring to
this pending measure, and sent telegram after telegram to Bernstorff, pressing
him to urge Schwarzenberg to make an immediate reply.
On the 5th of November, favorable news came from
several quarters: from Hanover, announcing that the new Munchhausen Ministry
was little desirous of war; and from the Hague, that the Prime Minister Thorbecke declared himself ready to recall from the Frankfort
Confederate assembly the deputy of Luxemburg, whereby the number of votes was
reduced to eight, and no longer represented a majority of the old Confederate
Diet.
But all this was of no moment in view of the attitude
of Russia, Austria, and the Lesser States, about whom the most threatening
tidings were received from all sides. Groben reported that the Bavarian
commander, the Prince of Thurn and Taxis, turned a deaf ear to all efforts to
avoid an encounter. From Dresden came the news of preparations for the
mobilization of the Saxon troops. From Bavaria came the intelligence that the
Austrian army-corps in Vorarlberg, said to number thirty thousand men, had
crossed the Bavarian frontier and was hastening in forced marches towards the
north. The Grand Dukes of Oldenburg and of Weimar sent urgent monitions to the
Prussian King, warning the Berlin Court not to trust to false pretences of peaceful agreements, lest they should be
suddenly taken by surprise and unexpectedly attacked. A despatch from Bernstorff, dated the 2d, announced that in Vienna not only Russian, but
also French aid was counted upon as certain, that Schwarzenberg was without
question intent upon waging a war of annihilation against Prussia, and that the
ambassadors who advocated an “entire Germany” (retention of Austria in the
Confederation) were extremely anxious and fearful lest Prussia should by full
compliance disarm Austria, then join the Confederate Diet, and thus escape
being ruined by a disastrous war. It was declared that for all this the Danish
war was to blame, which had aroused so violently the Emperor Nicholas against
Prussia.
Many of these facts and sentiments had become publicly
known, and had raised the popular indignation to a high pitch. An oppressive
sultriness pervaded all Berlin. The population was excited, and passionately
wondered when the Government would at last come to any decision, and by energetic
action remove this load from the hearts of the people. The rumors of Brandenburg's
delirious summons to war increased the frenzy of the multitudes. Manteuffel was
extremely ill at ease. He consulted with Prokesch as to how the danger might be
avoided, and begged the Russian Ambassador to assure his Emperor of Prussia’s
desire for peace.
But the King, always ungracious whenever he was
obliged to hear about the Frankfort assembly and its doings, would listen to no
proposition of further compliance, but held firmly to his ground, that,
inasmuch as consent had been granted to the entry of the Bavarians into Hesse
upon the condition that the required guaranties should be given, no concessions
could under any circumstances be made until these were forthcoming.
Manteuffel telegraphed this fact to Bernstorff in
Vienna and to General Peucker in Frankfort, accenting
with strong emphasis the responsibility of those who, at a time when the
prospects for peace were so auspicious, would unchain the Furies of war by
their wanton conduct in Hesse. Prussian troops took possession, meanwhile, of
the whole region of country between the Prussian military roads. They were
everywhere received by the people as their deliverers and liberators. The
leaders of the Hessian Opposition carefully concealed their well-founded doubts
as to whether the Prussians had really come into the country to save the
Hessian Constitution.
Upon his reception of Manteuffel’s telegram in
Frankfort, Peucker communicated its contents to the
Austrian Ambassador, Count Thun, who remarked that the Confederate Diet wished
by all means to avoid a conflict, but was, on the other hand, bound by its duty
toward the Elector to carry out the decrees it had passed, and that the latter
had very justly protested against the presence of the Prussian troops in Hesse.
The Count at once summoned his colleagues together in
order to discuss the matter. He spoke, himself, in favor of conciliatory
measures; but Hassenpflug demanded unconditional execution of the decrees. The
majority were especially influenced to side with Hassenpflug by the fact that
Groben’s position near Fulda did not lie between the Prussian military roads.
Consequently, no restrictive orders were sent to Taxis; indeed, it was
believed that the encounter might already have taken place.
Peucker’s prompt report of these transactions, and the receipt of a telegram from
St. Petersburg concerning the Russian military preparations decided Manteuffel
in his line of conduct: he saw before his very eyes the outbreak of the war,
and considered now, himself, the mobilization as unavoidable. At once, on the
evening of the 5th of November, he secured (it may well be believed, without
much trouble) the King’s approval of the measure.
He telegraphed immediately the news of this decision
to Vienna, Frankfort, and St. Petersburg. He said that it had been necessary,
in view of the universal warlike preparations on the part of Prussia's
opponents, and in consideration of the fact that the. uncertainty with regard
to the final turn of affairs had caused a tension of feelings, especially in the
army, which must be taken into account. Moreover, the Prussian Ambassadors were
to affirm in the strongest terms possible that this measure was taken not as an
offensive move, but only as a precaution: the peaceable intentions expressed in
Brandenburg’s despatch of the 3d were still in every
point unchanged.
On the following morning, Manteuffel brought all this
before his colleagues in the Ministry for official confirmation. The King, who
appeared in the course of the discussion, signed the order for mobilization;
and Ladenberg and Von der Heydt, whose resignation the King had not yet
accepted, said that they were now ready to remain in office.
When the news of Brandenburg’s death was announced,
the King conferred the temporary presidency of the Ministerial Council upon
Ladenberg, so that it might seem as if the minority of the 2d of November had
already won the upper hand, especially since General Groben, in consideration
of the thirst for war shown at Frankfort, had received instructions anew to act
without restraint.
The result of the order for mobilization was precisely
what the King on the 2d had prophesied: an unbounded shout of delight arose
from the people, the press, and the army. The men of the militia, whom the year
before the hussar patrols were often obliged to hunt up and drag into the lines
for the Baden campaign, now flocked in crowds to the standards. Even the
countless manifestations of inefficiency in the administration of the Prussian
army at that time did not cool down the ardor of the troops. The Austrian
battalions, though filled almost exclusively with mutinous hónveds,
could hardly have long withstood their sanguine enthusiasm.
Meanwhile the Prussian despatch of the 3d of November had been received by Schwarzenberg on the 5th. The
concessions contained therein only confirmed the Prince in his old conviction,
that King Frederick William would never be able to bring himself to wage war
against Austria, and that, accordingly, there was no urgent reason why the
Imperial Cabinet should make any important concessions in return.
In vain Baron Meyendorff represented to Schwarzenberg
the opposition which Manteuffel, as champion of the peace policy, had to
contend against in Berlin; and that it was very desirable to strengthen him in
this position by friendly advances. In vain did the despatches of Prokesch press the same point, and advise the support of Manteuffel, that
actual facts might demonstrate the statement of Radowitz to be false which
declared that Austria would answer every concession only with fresh demands.
Schwarzenberg still insisted that military movements could not cease until the
cause had been removed.
The Prince at once wrote an answer to Brandenburg’s despatch, in which, amid a perfect shower of roses in the
shape of friendly words and phrases, he refused roundly and decidedly to accede
to Prussia’s wishes. Whereas Brandenburg had expressed the hope that, after his
explanations concerning affairs in Hesse and Holstein, the general congresses
for a reform of the Confederation might be held without delay, and that during
their sessions these special subjects of controversy might be laid aside,
Schwarzenberg’s despatch of the 6th affirmed just the
opposite: there could be no thought of convening the congresses until after the
Prussian troops should have been entirely removed from Hesse, all resistance on
the part of Prussia against the chastisement of Holstein withdrawn, and the
abolition of the Union Constitution formally accomplished. He said that it
would afford him pleasure to give the desired guaranty with regard to the
Prussian military roads in Hesse, but demanded that that should not
unwarrantably be made the excuse for an occupation of the land. He further
asserted that until these matters were settled, Austria could not possibly
desist from her preparations for war.
When the Prince received, on the same day, the
telegram about the Prussian mobilization, he remarked to the Russian Ambassador
that he now had not the least doubt but that peace would be preserved, since
this positive move would provide Prussia with a bridge for an honorable
retreat. He talked as if he had been present at the King’s speech in the
session of November 2d.
With the same intrepidity as that manifested by the
Austrian statesman, the Prince of Taxis marched in Hesse against the Prussian
position near Fulda. On the 8th of November, the outposts of the two armies
stood face to face. Messages under flags of truce went back and forth. Groben
very emphatically warned
the enemy not to come nearer. But when at one point
the Bavarian vanguard pressed forward among the Prussian outposts, the latter
fired a few shots, which were returned from the other side. Five Austrian men
and one Prussian horse were wounded; further harm was prevented on both sides
by the immediate interference of the officers, who thirsted less for blood than
did the Frankfort diplomatists sitting around their green table.
At the same hour the Prussian Ministerial Council was
busy framing a reply to the despatch just received
from Austria. In spite of Ladenberg’s presidency, the
prevailing sentiment was still a very strong desire for peace. Manteuffel urged
that after Prussia had said the Constitution of May 26th should not be carried
out, it was a mere quibble of forms to refuse to concede to Austria’s wish and
propose to the allied Governments its definite abolition. Furthermore,
Manteuffel considered that since Prussia had, in consequence of the conduct of
the Ducal Government at Kiel, given up its attempt to mediate, there could be
no harm in informing the Vienna Cabinet of this fact, and in withdrawing then
Prussia's opposition to the penal measures instituted by the Confederation
against Holstein.
The discussion was to be brought to a close in the
evening. Then came Groben’s telegram about the skirmish at Bronzell. Its effect
was no slight one. It was argued that weighty negotiations ought not to be
disturbed by such a small affray among the soldiers, and that after all the
advanced position at Fulda was not at all necessary for the protection of the
military roach It was unanimously decided to instruct the General to withdraw
to the latter, if it was defensible.
Therefore the reply to be sent to Vienna was decided
upon as quickly as possible. It began with the two concessions relating to the
Union and Schleswig-Holstein. In regard to Hesse, it was requested that the
proposed guaranty about the duration and purpose of the penal measures
instituted by the Confederation should be given not only by Austria, but also
by all her allies; and it was also desired, in view of the confused state of
the executive and police authority, and the presence of foreign troops in the
country, that Prussia’s right to garrison her military roads during the
continuance of these conditions should be recognized. On the 9th of November,
the King, after making a few minor changes, approved the despatch.
The excitement aroused in Frankfort by the firing at
Bronzell was greater than in Berlin. The representatives that advocated an
“entire Germany” talked of violation of the Confederate oath and of a
declaration of war.
Schwarzenberg preserved his cool and haughty attitude,
warned the Frankforters not to be impatient, and yet
sent word to Berlin on the 10th, that Prokesch must demand his passports unless
satisfactory information were immediately received concerning the withdrawal of
the Prussians from Hesse-Cassel. Manteuffel at once replied that he regretted
exceedingly the affair at Bronzell, which he said must have been without doubt
occasioned by the precipitate pushing forward on the part of the Bavarians. He
showed Prokesch at the same time the despatch which
had just been sent to Vienna. This appeased the latter to a very great degree.
He was delighted with the abandonment of Schleswig-Holstein; and Schwarzenberg
at once, on the 11th of November, called upon the Confederate Diet to give to
Prussia the required guaranty concerning the duration and object of the penal
measures in Hesse.
Schwarzenberg, however, called the attention of the
Prussian Ambassador to the fact that after this guaranty had been given,
Prussia would have no reason whatever for holding possession of the military
roads, and thus making the execution of the Confederate plans more difficult. A despatch sent to Berlin on the 13th, in which
Schwarzenberg politely accepted Prussia’s concessions and spoke of a speedy
convention of the congresses, reiterated in the strongest terms his demand for
the evacuation of Hesse-Cassel. He was strengthened in this position by the
advent, on the same day, of Prince Gortschakoff in Frankfort, who had come to
announce officially Russia’s recognition of the Confederate Diet as the highest
central authority in all Germany, and in this way to show to the world Russia's
perfect sympathy with Austria’s system and policy.
Thus by Prussia’s compliance, one mooted point after
another was gradually cleared away. A few days later, the Government fulfilled
its promise of bringing before the College of Princes in the Union the formal proposition
of abolishing the Constitution of the 26th of May. This was the more a surprise
to the College, since just before this the summons had been received from
Prussia to prepare their troops for war, and to place them under Prussian
orders.
It was a crushing and unwelcome blow to their
deliberations. The deputies declared, one and all, that they were not empowered
to vote for such a measure. In reply to their reports to their Governments,
they received either no response whatever, or, as Radowitz had predicted, from
those members that had long been “doubtful,” Baden, Nassau, and
Mecklenburg-Schwerin, the declaration that the abolition of the Constitution
meant the downfall of the Union itself. The College of Princes did not get so
far as to take a formal vote on the matter. As for a new offensive and
defensive alliance, which had formerly been often spoken about as desirable in
this event, — such a plan was not considered worth mentioning.
Thus far, however, and no farther, was King Frederick
William ready to show a spirit of compliance; or, to state the matter more
exactly, he had hitherto complied with what he in his own heart had wished for.
He fully agreed with the Imperial Courts that the sovereign authority of the
land must be restored in Hesse-Cassel and in Holstein, and he was truly thankful
to Heaven for being at last and entirely rid of the liberal Constitution of the
26th of May.
He looked upon it as a clear and brilliant triumph of
his policy, that he had persuaded Austria to accept of the plan of holding open
congresses for the reformation of the Confederation. This grand and important
work had been torn from the hands of that hated assembly at Frankfort; and now
he was obstinately determined not to yield to that unlawful “Club ’ the honor
of supporting the sovereign authority in Hesse and Holstein. So glorious a task
must be intrusted only to the united German
Governments, and by them, according to his old proposition, to an
Austro-Prussian commission.
We have already heard him assert, on the 1st and 2d of
November, his conviction that this end could be best gained by his insisting
upon the maintenance of Prussian garrisons along the military roads in Hesse,
and the consequent limitation of the Bavarians to the southern portion of the
country.
In that case, he thought, the Confederation could not
execute its proposed penal measures, and the Elector would be himself forced to
ask Prussia to assist in his reinstatement. If this method succeeded in
Hesse-Cassel, it could be applied to Holstein as a matter of course. He should,
to be sure, in his treatment of the two countries, act much more humanely and
graciously than the rude, uncouth Bavarians and Hasscnpflug’s revengeful associates were now doing in Hanau and Fulda; but in the work of
restoration itself, his own conservative principles should be seen to be not a
hair’s-breadth behind those of the Imperial Courts.
The Prussian troops, then, were to keep possession of the
military roads; this was the corner-stone of the royal policy. However often
and however urgently Schwarzenberg demanded Groben’s retreat, however
categorically Taxis announced his intended immediate advance, however fully the
Confederate Diet on the 15th of November granted the desired guaranty
concerning the military roads having halting-stations in Hesse, the King
adhered firmly to his order that Groben should hold his position and keep back
the Bavarians from these military roads.
It was in vain that the Minister of War, Stockhausen,
affirmed that Austria had already collected one hundred and thirty thousand men
in Bohemia, and twenty thousand men in Bavaria, and that Bavaria, Würtemberg,
and Saxony were exerting all their energies in getting ready for war; in vain
he declared that the Prussian position in Hesse was untenable. The King, on the
18th of November, ordered the message to be sent to Vienna that he should be
obliged to regard any attack upon his troops in Hesse as a declaration of war,
— first of all, on the part of the Elector; and that he, the King, hoped
Austria would not allow herself to be led into a fratricidal war by such a
Government as that of Hesse-Cassel. The Confederate Diet hereupon yielded to
the supplications of the Elector, and agreed to a temporary postponement of military
operations.
Thus Manteuffel’s fears increased, lest his work of
bringing about peace should suffer shipwreck in very sight of the haven. Fresh
sources of apprehension arose rapidly one after another. On the 19th, there came
a note from the little Duchy of Brunswick that almost took his breath away. It
read as follows: The report had reached them that the so-called Confederate
Diet was planning, after its orders should have been carried out in
Hesse-Cassel, to send its army to execute a similar chastisement upon Holstein,
and that this army was to cross over land belonging to Brunswick ; the people
of the latter Duchy, however, had no intention to submit to such presumption on
the part of an illegal body, and asked whether Prussia would grant to her ally,
the Duke of Brunswick, the necessary assistance and protection.
With terror, Manteuffel thought how pleasing this
protest against the Confederate Diet would sound in the ears of the King, and
what anger his support of it would excite in Vienna and St. Petersburg.
There followed, almost at the same moment, indications
of a general European complication that would involve incalculable
consequences. The French PrincePresident, Louis
Napoleon, had stationed an “ army of observation ” of forty thousand men upon
his eastern frontier; and the French newspapers asserted that France would
suffer neither an Austrian protectorate over Italy nor the execution of the
ambitious designs of Russia and Austria in Germany. What would happen if these
threats should be actually carried out, and if the Prussian war-party should
depend upon such support?
All these matters came up for discussion in a session
of the Ministerial Council held on the 20th November, at which the King
presided. At first, the Monarch approved the outline of the Address from the
Throne prepared for the opening of the Chambers. The Address, as far as the
German situation was concerned, accorded throughout with the ideas of
Ladenberg, and contained the following sentiments : —
The King will take up again his plans for a Union, so
soon as the Constitution for all Germany shall be reformed; in this latter,
Prussia’s position must be improved; in the Hessian affair Prussia’s remonstrances
have not met with the proper consideration; until they do, Prussia must remain
under arms and thoroughly equipped. Such words could not fail, in the
estimation of all Europe, to sound very much like war.
With regard to the Brunswick note, the King was
delighted with this bold protest against the presumption of the so-called
Confederate Diet. It was decided to send a despatch to Vienna with the declaration that the Duke was fully justified in his refusal
to allow the troops to cross his territory, and in his request for Prussia’s
protection; and that there was, moreover, one very simple means of smoothing
away all the difficulties, namely, the postponement of the execution of penal
measures in Holstein until after the whole matter should be definitely settled
in the congresses.
The King remarked to his Ministers that by advocating
this method of procedure, he had no idea of sustaining the Holsteiners in their refractory conduct toward their King-Duke. On the contrary, he advised
the sending of a fresh monition to the Government at Kiel to show a compliant
spirit and be reconciled to their sovereign.
The King’s attitude toward the French threats against
Austria was the same that he maintained at the time of the revolts in the
spring of 1849 toward the German princes who opposed his supremacy. He was the
farthest possible from entertaining the idea of taking advantage of bis enemy’s
embarrassment. He felt an almost physical antipathy towards the Bonaparte
family, as he did also towards the Revolution. Such assistance was a source of
great danger, he said; it could neither be asked for nor accepted; it should rather
be opposed. He wished to make an attempt to induce Austria, in view of this
French move, to join with Prussia; and to persuade the Vienna Court of the
necessity of a complete and immediate union of action with Berlin. The
Ministers were requested to consider this matter.
However glad Manteuffel was that the King showed no
inclination to form an alliance with France against Austria, he had, like his
colleagues, many misgivings about saying anything to the Vienna Court about the
French doings, at least to express such sentiments as those the King
entertained. For the danger of a rupture with Austria had been evidently
increased by the last votes that had been passed; and how would it be, if
Schwarzenberg should then be in a position to communicate to the French
potentate Prussia’s hostile proposals ?
The King, meanwhile, let the matter rest there; but,
as we shall see, he by no means gave up his ideas.
On the 21st of November, the Chambers were opened by
the reading of the Address from the Throne, which, on account of the vigorous
expressions it contained, was throughout the whole length and breadth of Germany
interpreted as a challenge of war, and was just for that very reason accepted
with hearty applause by a decided majority of the deputies.
Prokesch delivered at last, on the following day,
Austria’s reply to Prussia’s demand for a guaranty with regard to the military
roads. It had been written on the 20th in Vienna, and was based upon the Confederate
vote of the 15th, with which it was in harmony. It stated concisely and without
ambiguity, that the Confederate troops entered the country solely for the
purpose of preserving order and of restoring the sovereign authority, and that
so soon as this end should be attained they should be immediately withdrawn.
The promise was given that the military roads with halting-stations in Hesse,
which were built for the convenience of Prussian troops crossing the country,
should be made use of only in strict accordance with the treaties; and the hope
was then expressed that Prussia would no longer render the salutary work of
restoring the monarchical authority difficult by further occupation and
obstruction of the roads, to which indeed the treaties gave them no light.
The despatch was written in
a conciliatory tone; Prokesch also felt authorized to add confidentially that if
Prussia should open the roads to the Confederate troops, Austria would make no
objection to Prussia’s leaving some few troops at the halting-stations. An
immediate and satisfactory answer was urgently desired. A note written by
Schwarzenberg at the same time portrayed the distress of the troops and
destitution of the population in the vicinity of Fulda. “It is positively
impossible,’’ he said, “for such a state of things to continue. Is the King
willing to take upon himself the responsibility of such an amount of
wretchedness and misery? We cannot think so.”
Prussia thus received the most satisfactory
assurances of the safety of her own provinces. But the real wishes of the
King, the exclusion of the Confederate troops from Cassel and consequent
prevention of the execution of the proposed penal measures, were pointblank
refused. The critical moment had come. Prokesch most emphatically declared that
a negative answer from Prussia would be straightway followed by the beginning
of a war.
Prokesch was supported in his assertion by the no less
emphatic avowal of Baron Budberg, the Russian
Ambassador. The latter conversed with Ladenberg, Manteuffel, and
Adjutant-General Gerlach. He told them that the Emperor Nicholas was already
exceedingly annoyed at Prussia’s justification of Brunswick’s behavior, and
considered his own honor assailed in every attempt to place obstacles in the
way of the execution of the penal measures proposed by the Confederation ; and
that he had already ordered the mobilization of the grenadier corps and the
Cossacks on the Don, since he saw in a quarrel over Hesse-Cassel the signal of
a war for himself. This was, as was soon to be seen, no exaggeration. Prussia
stood before a momentous decision.
On the 23d of November, Manteuffel laid the Austrian despatch before the Ministerial Council, remarking that
although it did not contain all that had been demanded on the 9th, yet matters
were in the main settled, especially after the confidential communication of
Prokesch. Austria’s object, he said, was simply the execution of the penal
measures, which Prussia had promised not to hinder; if, then, the latter kept
the military roads closed, this would be an inconsistency behind which hostile
intentions might be suspected; Prussia would be unnecessarily and without good
cause bringing on a war.
Stockhausen and Simon not only agreed with him, but
even proposed that Prussia should withdraw her troops entirely from Hesse,
since, as they said, she of course did not wish to be concerned in the internal
disorders of Hesse.
None of the other Ministers, however, would advocate
such a line of conduct. In the expression of their individual opinions, they
attacked several points in Manteuffel’s deductions. Ladenberg went so far as to
aver that the whole business of the so-called guaranties was a piece of
dissimulation behind which lay the design to attack Prussia unawares.
“ We have already abandoned,” he said, “one principle
that lay at the bottom of our sending troops into Hesse-Cassel; we must so much
the more firmly insist upon the other, the security of our military roads. The
Austrian explanations have proved to be entirely insufficient. Nothing is said
about lessening the size of the Confederate army in Hesse, which is unnecessarily
large for the professed purpose; and it is very noticeable that no mention
whatever is made of the project of sending General Legeditsch to Holstein. Indeed, we should have every reason to ask in so many words the
very grave question, whether beside the punishment of Hesse the troops that the
Coalition have sent into that country are not perhaps designed to carry out
some further purpose. The withdrawal of our divisions under such circumstances
would be a defeat that could not be made good. We owe it to our Chambers not to
decide upon such a measure without their consent.”
Thus opinions differed. It was impossible to come to
any conclusion. It was resolved to hold another session of the Cabinet
forthwith, at which the present situation of things should be laid before the
King.
A proposition had already been made in the session of
the 19th to remove the difficulties by a personal interview between Manteuffel
and Schwarzenberg. The Ministers decided at the time to refer this plan to the
King. Frederick William had let the matter lie undetermined. But now, when the
probability of war stood before his eyes, and he neither wished to yield
nor to make war, lie fell back upon this expedient. On
the 24tli of November, a Count Stolberg was despatched to Vienna with the commission to portray the uncomfortable position of the
Government in face of public opinion; to request Schwarzenberg to pass over
temporarily the two special questions concerning Hesse and Holstein, and to
proceed at once to the convention of the congresses for the settlement of the
German question; at the same time to extend to the Prince the invitation of
Manteuffel to meet him at any place convenient to the Prince; and to report
forthwith concerning the acceptance of the same.
Yet before any reply could be obtained through this
channel, Schwarzenberg had decided to put an end to the increasing complaints
of Taxis and the Confederate Diet. Taxis received orders to begin his march
upon Cassel on the 27th of November, and to overcome by force of arms any
opposition that he might encounter from Groben. Manteuffel also received on the
25th the following note from Prokesch : —
“ On account of the difficulties connected with the
furnishing of supplies, the imperial Austrian and royal Bavarian troops, which
have been led into Hesse-Cassel for the purpose of restoring the sovereign
authority, can no longer remain in their present position. The undersigned has
therefore been commissioned by the imperial Government to request in its name
that within forty-eight hours, that is, before the noon of next Wednesday, the
27th of November, a final answer may be given to the following questions : —
“Inasmuch as the guaranties demanded by Prussia have
been granted by Austria, may the above-mentioned troops now move on, without
opposition, towards Cassel?
Have the proper orders been sent to Lieutenant-General
Groben?
The undersigned most respectfully etc.
Prokesch.”
Manteuffel hastened to report this ultimatum to the
King at Potsdam, and at one o’clock in the afternoon received the following
reply : —
“ Telegraph at once to Vienna that I have sent you to
the Prince as the bearer of friendly messages, and that I expect you will be
cordially received. Then the inquiry with regard to the place of meeting. The
same word may be sent to Prokesch.”
The Minister contented himself for the present with
telegraphing to Bernstorff that he expected an immediate reply from Stolberg,
and that he himself was ready to set out at a moment’s notice. Then, in order
to obtain more detailed instructions, he called a meeting of the Cabinet, at
which the King presided, and the Heir-Apparent was present.
After a specific statement of the dangers connected,
with the opening of the military roads to the Confederate troops, the King went
on to say, —
“To avoid compliance with Austria’s demands, a personal
conference of Manteuffel with Schwarzenberg is necessary, whether this takes
place in Oderberg, Olmütz, or Vienna. At this
interview, Manteuffel must represent to the Prince the impossibility of further
concessions, in view of the sentiment that exists among the people and in the
army. He must then try to transfer negotiations to a new basis. He must seek to
have the Hessian question referred to the general congresses ; to this end he
must call the attention of the Prince to the dangers which threaten from the
side of France, and remind him how in 1815 the outbreak of an impending war was
hindered by Napoleon’s return. He shall express the hope that in Hesse the
Elector may soon return with his troops to Cassel, and that then all foreign
soldiers may leave the electorate. He shall call attention to the fact that the
so-called Confederate Diet has, by the withdrawal of the deputy from Luxemburg,
lost every appearance of being the authorized representative of the
Confederation.
“The desired result can best be brought about in
Hesse, if the Hessian officials and communities can be induced by Prussian
mediation to acknowledge again the authority of the Elector, to pay the taxes,
and to request the Elector’s return to Cassel. The end would thus be attained
by peaceable means. The Confederate troops would not need to proceed over our
military roads, and Prussia could demand that she should not be interfered with
in her efforts for peace. Prussian plenipotentiaries must be therefore despatched to Hesse-Cassel to prosecute this work of
mediation.”
The special points were then settled upon, towards which
Manteuffel in the proposed interview should direct his exertions. These were, —
1. Austria’s assent to the six propositions
brought forward at Warsaw.
2. The immediate convention of the general congresses.
3. The reference of the Hessian and Holstein questions
to the decision of these congresses.
Thereupon Manteuffel repeated his directions to
Bernstorff, to get an answer as quickly as possible from Schwarzenberg. On the
morning of the 26th, in accordance with the intentions of the King, Manteuffel
gave instructions to the Counsellor Niebuhr with regard to a message to the
Elector at Frankfort, and also to the Privy Counsellor Delbrück with regard to
negotiations with the leaders of the Opposition of the Estates at Cassel.
But just then he received through Prokesch a telegram
from Schwarzenberg, which rendered everything again uncertain. The Prince wrote
that he would be ready for a meeting so soon as he received satisfactory news
concerning the opening of the military roads and the withdrawal of the
Prussians from Cassel. Manteuffel replied in the course of the afternoon that
the object of the meeting was precisely to try to decide about all these points
of controversy, including the Hessian affairs, in which certain events had just
taken place that materially increased the prospects of a peaceful solution.
Inasmuch as the answer to the questions proposed by Prokesch was to depend upon
the result of the meeting, Manteuffel asked again whether Schwarzenberg would
withdraw the condition upon which he gave his consent to an interview.
As an announcement was received from Groben that Taxis
had threatened to force his advance in the event of opposition, the Ministry
requested the King to call a meeting of the Council that very day. After the
three despatches had been read, the King declared
with great composure that his intentions were not in the least changed in
consequence.
He read to the Ministers an autograph letter to the
Emperor Francis Joseph, to the effect that Prussia, in view of the mediatory
plans undertaken by her, had the right to request that she be not molested in
her endeavors; and that since the advance of the Confederate troops north of
the military roads would consequently be unnecessary, Prussia saw no reason
why she should allow this advance. At the end of the letter he referred to the
threatened danger from the movements of the French.
A similar letter from the queen to her sister, the
Archduchess Sophia, was enclosed. The King said that Manteuffel should forward
both of these letters through the hands of Schwarzenberg to the persons
addressed, and for this purpose should at all events bring about a meeting.
Manteuffel expressed his readiness to obey every order of the King, but
observed that he did not expect that this step would do any good; on the other
hand, he feared lest, in case his requests were not granted, his journey should
compromise the honor of the Government.
The King did not, however, share his fears. “Schwarzenberg,”
said the King, “ cannot in any way refuse an interview, if Manteuffel announces
himself as the bearer of these two letters and of special messages from the
King. It doesn’t depend so much upon the success attendant upon this step as
upon the step itself. If it is unsuccessful, then the whole responsibility of
the war is thereby thrown off Prussia’s shoulders.” The King then closed the
session.
With no very light heart did Manteuffel go from this
meeting of the Council. He awaited in feverish suspense further news from
Bernstorff, before he should proceed to carry out the orders of the King. At
last a despatch arrived, which had been sent after
eight o’clock, and the contents of which were, that Schwarzenberg had after a
long discussion finally made up his mind not to decline holding the interview,
but intended first to get the approval of the Emperor before fully deciding.
Bernstorff hoped to receive a definite reply the same evening.
It was already ten o’clock. After the lapse of an
hour, Manteuffel felt that he must not delay any longer, and telegraphed to
Bernstorff that lie was about to set out the next morning with a special
message from the King and with autograph letters from Their Majesties, to be
delivered at the proposed interview. As a place of meeting, he suggested Olmütz,
and asked that a reply might intercept him the next day at Breslau.
An hour later, Bernstorff’s anxiously-awaited telegram
came to hand, which was worded as follows : “ At the orders of the Emperor,
Schwarzenberg will set out on the 28th for Olmütz. If you leave Berlin
to-morrow evening, you will arrive at the same time with him.”
According to the later reports of Bernstorff, Schwarzenberg
had with the greatest reluctance agreed to the proposal of an interview. It had
cost the Ambassador a great deal of pains to persuade him to ask the Emperor’s
opinion, rather than to reject the proposal at the outset. Finally he yielded;
and on the 27th he sent a request to the Confederate Diet at Frankfort, to
postpone the advance of the Bavarians until further notice.
Meanwhile Delbrück and Niebuhr had started for their
respective destinations. Towards noon Manteuffel sent to Prokesch a short note
of the following import: Since he was about to leave the city, in order to
deliver to the Austrian Emperor and Prince Schwarzenberg direct messages from
Their Royal Majesties, this note would imply of itself the necessity of
deferring an answer to the note of the 25th until his return, and he should
feel assured beforehand of the assent of the Ambassador.
Accordingly, he departed in the evening to journey
towards a catastrophe in Prussian politics, towards what was to seem to him to
be a threefold salvation from mortal danger, to the King almost, if not quite,
a triumph, but to the rest of the world a fearful humiliation and defeat.
On the evening of the 28th of November, the two
Ministers arrived at the hotel Zur Krone in Olmütz, and began at once their conference
at six o’clock, which was continued and ended the next day. No detailed account
of the course of conversation at this interview has ever yet been made public;
yet, from everything that preceded and followed it, there can be no doubt left
concerning its main features.
Manteuffel had long been an open enemy of Prussia’s
whole scheme of a Union. He felt, as a strict official of the state, a radical
aversion to the estates, officers, and functionaries in Hesse-Cassel; and he
was quite ready to subject Holstein to the rule of the Danish King, and to help
in settling the succession according to the latter’s wishes.
He might very well say to Schwarzenberg: What are we
really quarrelling about ? Have we not in everything the same interests and the
same aims ? Does anything at all stand in the way of our coming to an agreement
but your unreasonable wilfulness in setting up again,
in a manner very insulting to the Prussian King, the old Confederate Diet, and
in now commissioning that body alone to restore order in two countries that lie
within our sway? Are we not wholly at one so soon as you are willing to co-operate
with us in these matters, — with us who have there the same object in view as
yourself ? And isn’t it better that we should secure subordination in
Hesse-Cassel by peaceful mediation, than that your Bavarian regiments should
continue by their dragoonades to arouse the
indignation of the whole world?
From the Austrian point of view there could be found
reasons enough for assenting to these sentiments, in accordance with which
Austria would gain everything that she had desired in the matter, and on her
part needed only to make a few technical concessions at the expense of the
Confederate Diet, which Schwarzenberg, apart from this, intended to subject to
a thorough reform.
Yet it appears that the Prince, who to begin with had
come to Olmütz against his will and only at the command of his Emperor, took
part in the negotiations with the same reluctance, and in every contested
matter demanded unconditional concession. Indeed, the Prussian and French
ambassadors in Vienna reported to their Governments during the following days,
that Schwarzenberg had declared Manteuffel's offers insufficient, and had not
until the 29th, and then only at the command of the Emperor, been willing to go
on in the negotiations. So that it was due to the personal interposition of
Francis Joseph that an enormous shedding of blood was at this time prevented.
So far as the particular questions were concerned, the
Prince had already in Warsaw yielded to Prussia’s desire to commit the duty of
reforming the Confederation to general congresses in which all the German
Governments should be represented. He had done so with good reason; for this
method offered to a friend of reform — and the Prince had in his mind great schemes
of reform — better chances for success than could be hoped for with the
inflexible formalities connected with the Confederate Diet.
If, now, Prussia should show signs of supporting the
Austrian policy with regard to Holstein, then Austria might indeed, without
discarding her principles, gratify the King, by putting the management of the
affair into the hands of an Austro-Prussian commission, instead of one
appointed by the Confederate Diet. For the latter had as yet only sent a
monition to Holstein, and had not yet taken any further steps as a body. So
that, in yielding to the wish of Prussia, it would not in this case seem to be
backing down from any undertaking.
The case was different, however, in Hesse-Cassel. If
Manteuffel, although against his own convictions and only because of the royal
orders, could assert that further concessions in the electorate were impossible
on account of the heated passions of the people and the army, so might
Schwarzenberg with equal positiveness declare that it would never do to
compromise Bavaria’s military honor by stopping, at the command of Prussia, the
execution of the Confederate penal measures when they were in full swing, and
letting them end in nothing. How could these two impossibilities be reconciled?
The way was pointed out by the conservative policy and principles to which both
of these statesmen were devoted.
To the Confederate Diet had been committed the task of
putting down the opposition manifested against Hassenpflug’s September decrees; after this had been done, its troops were to leave the
country. But it was very evident to both Ministers that the Confederation ought
not to consider its duty then ended, but should rather, by reforming the
Hessian Constitution, close up forever the source of such troubles.
This matter, so weighty in its consequences, Schwarzenberg
was ready to refer to the general congresses, and in accordance with Prussia’s
desire, to an Austro-Prussian commission appointed by these congresses.
Manteuffel, in his turn, and in conformity with his utterances of the 23d,
agreed to allow the Confederate troops to cross the Prussian position on the
military road, and to carry out in every respect their orders. He was quite
delighted with the idea that they were to bear the odium of the chastisement of
Hesse alone and without Prussia, quite forgetting that, after so long a
resistance, the granting of their requests would only occasion exactly the same
bitterness of feeling as if Prussia had taken part. With regard to Prussian
troops in Hesse, we have seen that Schwarzenberg had already said he should
make no objections to the plan of leaving a small company of them upon the
military road; and the point was now to be passed over in silence, so as to
avoid every appearance of a retreat of the Prussian troops before the
Bavarians.
The possession of the capital city, Cassel, was also a
difficult question. So far Austria had suffered no Prussian troops there, and
Prussia no Bavarian. It was now agreed that the future garrison should consist of
one Prussian battalion, and one composed of the troops chosen by the Elector,
whereby it was tacitly implied that the latter should be Austrian. On the other
hand, Schwarzenberg insisted, for the sake of the principle involved, that the
consent of the Elector to this arrangement was necessary, which, then, should
be solicited by both Governments together. Schwarzenberg added confidentially
the promise that the troops now in Hesse should advance only slowly, and not
arrive in Cassel before the consent of the Elector should have been attained.
Finally, Manteuffel brought up the six Warsaw
propositions as a basis of the reform of the Confederate Constitution to be
undertaken by the congresses. But in this matter Schwarzenberg held firmly to
the position taken by him in Warsaw. lie again accepted the propositions
conceding the admission of the whole of Austria into the Confederation, the
formation of a Confederate Council consisting of seventeen votes and having the
functions of the old Confederate Diet, the absence of any popular representation
in the Confederation, and the right to form unions according to his own
interpretation, to which Manteuffel had made no objections, of Article XI of
the Act of Confederation.
On the other hand, the Prince inexorably refused to
share the presidency of the Confederation with Prussia; he advocated, indeed,
the formation of a strong executive, but would not bind himself to the promise
of allowing this to be intrusted to Austria and
Prussia. This was, however, as we have seen, for Prussia just the most critical
point; so that in this matter no conclusion was obtained. As to the details of
the Confederate reform, both Powers were to attend the congresses entirely
free, bound by no obligations. Schwarzenberg finally made a concession of no
great importance by accepting Prussia’s proposal of Dresden, as the place for
holding these congresses, instead of Vienna.
Thus the Olmütz Agreement1 was signed by both
Ministers on the 29th of November, 1850. Schwarzenberg then laid before
Manteuffel the following memorandum, to which the latter gave assent at once in
the name of Prussia : —
His Majesty, the King of Prussia, is hereby requested
to appoint some day near at hand for the announcement of his decree
countermanding the order of the 6th of November for the mobilization of the
troops. When this information shall be received, His Majesty, the Emperor of
Austria (with the certain assurance of the consent of the other Governments
represented in the Confederate assembly), will upon the same day proclaim the
cessation of all preparations for war, and ordain the following measures : the
granting of furloughs to the battalions of the militia and to the fourth
battalion of every regiment, the reversal of the order to enlist recruits, and
the immediate withdrawal of the troops that were already stationed upon the
frontiers.
Schwarzenberg observed that the main point to be
considered was that the disbanding should take place before the beginning of
the congresses: Austria could not issue the invitations to these until the army
should be already reduced to its peace-footing in the manner above mentioned.
When we consider the final result of the conference at
Olmütz, we see that Manteuffel had not at all succeeded in putting through the
first commission with which he had been charged, — the acceptance by Austria of
the six Warsaw propositions. A memorial drawn up by the Privy Counsellor Abeken, on the Olmütz Agreement, says very naively
concerning this point: Parity with Austria was in the first place not to be
secured; and, in the second place, its refusal would not have meant an actual
declaration of war.
To the second commission included in Manteuffel’s
instructions, the early opening of the general congresses, Schwarzenberg had
given his assent, and had also, with regard to the place of meeting, yielded to
Prussia’s wishes; but he had, on the other hand, made the previous disarming of
the militia a condition of their convention.
In the third point, the reference of the Holstein and Hessian
questions to the congresses, Manteuffel had been wholly successful in respect
to Holstein, but only partially so in respect to Hesse-Cassel: the punishment
of the country was to be left to the Confederate Diet, and the question of the
Constitution to an Austro- Prussian commission. Schwarzenberg allowed the presence
of Prussian troops upon the military road, concerning which the above-mentioned
memorial remarks that if Prussia were now to withdraw her troops from
Hesse-Cassel, it would be an act purely of her own free choice.
The King passed over the agreement about the occupation
of Cassel and the assent of the Elector as an unimportant matter of courtesy;
to the advance of the Bavarians across the military roads he also acceded,
although with a heavy heart; but he nevertheless would not give up his
endeavors to anticipate the penal measures of the Diet by a peaceful mediation
between the Elector and his subjects. This did honor to his humane sentiments;
but since it was not consistent with what had been decided at Olmütz, it would
have put him and his commissioners in an unpleasant situation if Austria and
the Confederate Diet had insisted, regardless of his endeavors, upon the
execution of the penal measures as agreed upon at Olmütz.
Thus Manteuffel, for the sake of sweet peace, had
sacrificed important parts of his instructions. There is not the least doubt
but that he found himself unable to maintain his independence before the
superior presence of Schwarzenberg. His most glaring act of compliance, even
from his own political standpoint, was his assent to Schwarzenberg’s memorandum
about the common disarmament. For although they had agreed to refer the Hessian
Constitution, the pacification of Holstein, and the reform of the German Confederation,
to certain bodies named by Prussia, yet there had not been the least
understanding about the probable result of these various negotiations, and it
is very clear that Prussia armed could assert her wishes with very much more
emphasis than if she were disarmed.
Schwarzenberg had been very cautious in this respect.
Whereas the memorandum bound Prussia to a complete return to a peace-footing,
it left Austria free to maintain still three battalions of every infantry
regiment, all her cavalry and artillery, the forty thousand soldiers of the
armies engaged in Hesse and Holstein, and, if the Lesser States so desired, all
their forces upon a complete war-footing. Manteuffel’s assent to such a
memorandum forces one to the belief that he wished to arrange it so that the
ratification of the Agreement would render it impossible for his enemies at
home to make any opposition to the policy pursued by himself and Schwarzenberg.
When, in the ministerial session of the 2d of December,
the ratification of the whole Agreement was discussed, the Prince of Prussia
expressed the most serious misgivings concerning the wisdom of disarming before
the end of the Dresden congresses. Ladenberg, indeed, advocated the rejection
of the entire Agreement. The King considered it a great victory, that Austria
had now yielded assent, not only to the general congresses, but also to the
plan of referring the Hessian and Holstein questions to commissions from both
Powers. He quieted his fears about the disarmament with the thought that
Prussia could at any time order again a mobilization, whereas the bad condition
of Austria’s finances would prevent her from doing the same. Very true! If
Austria had not bound herself to only an apparent disarmament. Upon the royal
ratification of the Agreement, Ladenberg withdrew from the Ministry.
In the Lower House, the deputy, Bismarck-Schonhausen, declared at once that the postponement of the
disarmament until the close of the Dresden congresses was most earnestly to be
desired. Two weeks later General von Manteuffel himself designated the overhasty
acceptance of this measure as the chief cause of the unfavorable result of the
later negotiations.
In Vienna the news of the preservation of peace was
everywhere hailed with delight. The people of that city were as indifferent to
the Confederate Diet, Holstein, and Hesse as possible; but a Prussian war
seemed to them exceedingly undesirable. Austrian paper rose, the agio sank, and
their hearts were quickened by hopes of continued comfort and ease. The old
man Radetzky, who had been exceedingly loath to assume the command, now thanked
the Emperor in the warmest terms for avoiding a conflict with their good
comrades of 1813. These were also the sentiments of Generals Hess, Welden,
Clam, and Schonhals. Without reserve they expressed
to the Prussian Ambassador at the same time their disapproval of
Schwarzenberg’s policy and their delight at the happy escape from the prospect
of war.
The Olmütz settlement filled the diplomatists of the
Confederate Diet and the South German Governments, on the other hand, with
genuine wrath. To be sure, Prussia’s dreams of 1849 were over, and the
righteous punishment of Hesse was having its proper course; but as for the
rest, the Confederate Diet had been rudely set aside, Prussia, whose prestige
was undiminished, had been united with Austria, and the Lesser States had been
again assigned a second place. However assuringly Schwarzenberg pointed out to them a glorious future, the present disappointment
was hard to bear, after all the alluring portrayals of a thorough annihilation
of the power of the Hohenzollerns.
But in Prussia! How many men in the country had any
remote idea of the technical questions of form, the happy solution of which had
filled the King’s heart with the consciousness of victory? For them the
question was simply: Shall the Confederate Diet be allowed to trample the
German Nation under foot? Shall Hassenpflug treat in the same way the people of
Hesse-Cassel? and the King of Denmark the German duchy of Schleswig-Holstein?
The Prussian people had shouted for joy — for what
reason, they had as little idea as the rest of Europe — when their King set his
face against all this; and to preserve Prussia’s honor and Germany’s safety
they had hastened to the standards with glowing enthusiasm. But now the tide
had turned; the sword fell from the hand already stretched forth to strike, and
bitter tears rolled down the checks of many a brave warrior. Prussia had given
way before the oft-conquered Austria, and before a scarcely disciplined band of
Bavarians; and it was to be considered a great satisfaction that in return for
this Prussia would be allowed to share in the support of Hassenpflug and the
Danish oppressors. From a thousand hearts the cry arose that the work of
Frederick the Great had been for the second time undone
Today, a generation later, the glorious revival of
Prussia allows us to consider more calmly the events of that time. No one will
even now deny that the Olmütz Agreement was a defeat for Prussia; but we can
regard its causes in a different light.
In the first place, the position of Prussia was infinitely
more difficult than at the time of a similar complication sixteen years later.
In the Hessian matter, as well as in that of the Union, she had now to face
Austria, the four German Kingdoms, and Russia; and in the Schleswig-Holstein
question all the Great Powers of Europe opposed her. No Government could ever
be blamed for yielding at the right time and in the right way to such
superiority of power.
Moreover, by the withdrawal of the Kings from the
Union, this had in Frederick William’s mind lost the character of an imperial
alliance, and had in its dismemberment become distasteful and an annoyance to
him; while the resistance of the people of Schleswig-Holstein and of
Hesse-Cassel to the sovereign authority of those countries seemed to him, no
matter how other matters of justice and right stood, to be under all circumstances
unlawful.
Consistency demanded that immediately after the rejection
of the propositions by the Erfurt Parliament, the dissolution of the Union
should be proclaimed, and likewise that immediately after the Danish Peace of
the 2d of July, Prussia should consult with the other Great Powers concerning
the future constitution of the Duchies of the Elbe under Danish sovereignty.
This would have meant, to be sure, a break with all the traditions of 1848, and
Prussia’s entrance into “ the reactionary camp; ” but since this would all have
been done voluntarily, the honor of the Prussian state, so far as its relations
with foreign Powers were concerned, would have remained unsullied.
Instead of this, we have seen the King, at the time of
the division in the Ministry and his own anger at the insulting revival of the
Confederate Diet, persisting in the maintenance of his old positions, which
were daily becoming more untenable, announcing continually Prussia’s resistance
to the imputations of the enemy, and finally, after being threatened with war
by Austria and Russia, doing now just what he himself had for months been
anxious to do. It cannot be denied that this cast a dark shade across Prussia’s
shield of honor. Her friends’ respect for her sank, and her enemies in Vienna
and Copenhagen in their exultation believed that anything might be possible
after that. The Prince of Prussia never forgot the impressions of that day.
It has often been asked, whether Stockhausen was right
in his assertion that Prussia was not equal to a struggle with so many
opponents. The enthusiasm of the Prussian troops and the mutinous disposition
of the Hónveds, who formed a large part of the Austrian army, might convince
one that Prussia would have in the first instance repulsed the enemy. But even
if this be granted, the question still remains: Would the victory have been so
overwhelming, and the conduct of the war and the diplomacy so energetic and
efficient, that after a few weeks she could have dictated the terms of peace ?
King Frederick William was filled with spirit and
self-consciousness; but even his warmest admirers have never held him up as a
practical politician or a soldier by nature. Very soon after the conference at Olmütz,
he said to the English ambassador, the Earl of Westmoreland, that Austria had
consented to much more than he could have demanded, and that the greatest piece
of good fortune in the matter was that Prussia’s victory over Austria had been
prevented, a victory which would have been inevitable in the present disunited
condition of Austria. This remark accords with Manteuffel’s famous saying, that
a war between Prussia and Austria would be like an ancient Japanese duel, in
which each of the participants ripped open his own bowels.
When the leaders cherished such sentiments, a speedy
overthrow of the enemy and great benefit from the victory were hardly to be
expected. If Austria could have kept up until spring, then two hundred thousand
Russians would have entered the field, the Lesser States would have completed
their preparations, and the situation would have been as dangerous for Prussia
as that in 1757 after the battle of Kolin.
England offered only polite phrases. A coalition with
France was rendered impossible by the personal sentiments of the King; and
Schwarzenberg would certainly have had no scruples in obtaining the favor of
Louis Napoleon by sending to him those royal letters, and by the offer of
territory on the Rhine. From a military point of view, one cannot help coming
to the conclusion that it was fortunate there was a Manteuffel at hand to take
upon himself the responsibility of purchasing peace in such a way as was done
at Olmütz.
Meanwhile, the two German Powers got ready to settle
the German, Hessian, and Holstein questions in common, agreeably to the recent
mutual understanding. The hopes of Prince Schwarzenberg rose at that time very
high. After he had victoriously annihilated the Prussian schemes for
constitutions and a restricted union, lie had no doubt but that he should be
able to bring Germany as a whole under the control of united Austria, and to
arrange this according to his own devices.
CHAPTER III. THE DRESDEN CONGRESS.
On the third of December, a furious storm of indignation
arose in the Prussian Lower House against the Olmütz Agreement, and in
consequence of this the Parliament was on the 4th adjourned till the 3d of
January
King Frederick William impatiently urged the opening
of the “much-desired and longed-for” Dresden Congress, from which he expected
for the German Constitution the most Utopian results. His wishes were still along
the same lines as indicated in the instructions of the Counts Canitz and Brandenburgs: these
were, as we may remember, recognition of the King’s right to form a closer
union within the more comprehensive Confederation; for this latter a Confederate
assembly after the old pattern, but with Prussia sharing in the presidency;
over the assembly a strong executive power in the hands of Austria and Prussia,
who should be admitted into the Confederation with all their provinces ; so
that in the future there should be no Prussian, or Austrian, but only German
politics, to be controlled by Prussia and Austria acting conjointly.
The dream of German Unity would then be realized in
the form of a duumvirate, the joint supremacy of Austria and Prussia. There was
no plan projected for a German Parliament. The King intended to establish a
system of popular representation in his own future Union; and, moreover, if
some one else should propose the same for the more comprehensive Confederation,
he was resolved not to oppose this at the outset, but to consider the question
further.
An outline of these ideas was communicated to the
associates in the Union. One can hardly say that they were received with warm
enthusiasm. The Petty States had, it is true, keenly felt the insufficiency of
the Confederate arrangements in the tempests of 1848, and had therefore turned
gladly, first to the Constitution of the Cathedral of St. Paul, and afterwards
to the Prussian Union. But after the experiences of the last two years they
were afraid of every new experiment, since every one so far had especially
endangered their own lot; so that without venturing any direct opposition
against Prussia, and in spite of all their former protests, they began to
revert in their minds with an unexpressed longing to the old Confederate Diet
with its powerless and useless but yet comfortable existence in the Eschenheim palace.
Quite other plans were the aim of the imperious soul
of Prince Schwarzenberg and the aspiring ambition of the Lesser States ; and
after the events at Olmütz they believed they might cast aside all doubts as to
their success. They were, to be sure, sorry that there had been no defeat of
Prussia upon the battle-field; but, although the Prussian King considered the Olmütz
Agreement to be a victory for his own dearest principles, his enemies received,
on the other hand, the impression that Prussia before all things feared a war,
and that it was only necessary to make use alternately of conservative phrases
and moderate threats to force from her all that they wanted, and make their
success sure.
Their eyes were not by any means fixed upon a simple
revival of the old Confederate Diet. They had indeed in the spring called it
into life again as an instrument with which to fight Prussia. But Schwarzenberg’s
remark at the time was very seriously meant, when he said that he intended no
barren revival of the ancient conditions, but only to secure a legitimate basis
for a very thorough reform.
He, too, had in no way changed his aims since 1849. He
would now no more than then listen to any plan of a restricted union within a
more comprehensive alliance, nor of any popular representation in the
Confederate legislation. He was endowed by nature with no appreciation whatever
of freedom or of national wants; but his whole nature was the more thoroughly
imbued with an ambition to promote material interests. Accordingly, he rejoiced
to recognize in the Prussian programme two of his own
doctrines; namely, the admission of entire Austria into the Confederation, and
the formation of a strong executive to control the whole.
Yet he was as far as possible from entertaining a thought
of granting to Prussia equal rights with Austria in this supreme control. On
the contrary, the presidency of the Confederate Diet and in the executive
should be, in Schwarzenberg’s opinion, exclusively in the hands of Austria;
and, moreover, the executive should not consist of the two Great Powers alone,
but of the four Kingdoms with them.
By this latter proposition he gained for his policy,
beyond a doubt, the favor of the Lesser States, and he then allured them
further by holding up before them the prospect of establishing the system of
groups, which meant the mediatization of the Petty States, the prospect of the
entrance of Austria into the Tariff-Union, and finally the wholesale limitation
of the rights of the estates and of freedom in their states, which, as we have
seen, could best be done, according to his notion, by the military.
If all this proved successful, then Germany would be
split up into six absolutely-governed states; Prussia would be thrust back into
her former rank of one of the German Lesser States, and, in respect to her relations
to the rest of Europe, into the age before Frederick the Great; German Unity
would be realized simply in the fact that all the German states would be
obeying the same monarch as the Galician Ruthenians, the Bohemian Czechs, and
the Italian Lombards.
It is obvious that between these two systems there
could be no compromise, no reconciliation. Which would conquer? And if neither,
then what would happen?
The solemn opening session of the Congress in Dresden,
which took place on the 23d of December, gave the impression that Prince
Schwarzenberg was already master of the whole situation. As a matter of course,
he assumed the office of president, and made the introductory speech. Thereupon
Herr von Beust, as host, gave an address of welcome, and then the Prussian
Prime Minister rose to speak for the first time. Immediately after him came
Baron von der Pfordten as representative of the next
largest kingdom. Prussia found herself, as if in the proper order of things,
right in the midst of the Lesser States.
Prince Schwarzenberg proposed the appointment of
several committees to prepare drafts of the different Articles of the
Constitution. This was approved without discussion, as also a few days later
the lists of names nominated by the Prince to be members of the various
committees.
On the 24th of December, the Prince, in company with
Herr von Manteuffel, made a visit to Berlin, in order to use his personal
influence in securing as rapid a transaction of the business as possible. He
was received most cordially. The King, following the inclination of his heart
toward Austria, promised to do everything in his power that could be at all
consistent with the interests of Prussia. In his immediate presence, too, owing
to the absence of Bunsen and Radowitz, the preponderating sentiment was
favorable to Austria.
Herr von Manteuffel manifested likewise a constant desire
to come to an understanding without delay. He not only acquiesced at once in
the wish of Schwarzenberg and recalled from Vienna Count Bernstorff, who was
far too independent to be agreeable to the Prince, but lie also appointed in
his place, and at the suggestion of Schwarzenberg, a man who was well-nigh the
most incapable of all the Prussian diplomatists of the time, a certain Count
Arnim-Heinrichsdorff. No less pleased was the Prince
with the choice of the second Prussian representative with full powers to
Dresden, the former Minister of Finance, Count Alversleben-Erxleben,
who seemed likely to be useful to Austria on account of his thoroughly
conservative tendencies.
Nothing definite was settled in Berlin. The first word
of the Prince was the declaration that it would not be possible to secure the
functions of the executive for Austria and Prussia alone, since all the Lesser
States opposed this plan very decidedly. Manteuffel yielded by saying that in
that case it would be necessary to come to some understanding about a
directory. Against the admission of entire Austria into the Confederation,
Manteuffel had no objections to make; he inquired about a system of alternation
in the presidency, and was contented when the Prince carelessly observed that
he personally was quite in favor of such a plan. (He knew well enough that the
Kingdoms would no more agree to this than to the placing of all the executive
power in the hands of the Great Powers alone.) The Austrian statesman returned
then to Dresden animated by the most encouraging hopes.
There the committees were now formed; and the first
one, appointed to determine the future authorities and territorial extent of
the Confederation, began its work with ardor, under Austrian presidency. But
the irreconcilable differences in purpose made themselves felt in the very
first sitting. Two supreme organs were to be created, — a Plenum for the
legislation and a Directory for the executive.
Prince Schwarzenberg first opened the discussion over
the latter, and declared that if the executive was to act vigorously and
quickly, it would be impossible to grant a share and vote in the same to the
Petty States. Therefore he proposed a college, which should be composed of
Austria and Prussia, each with two votes, the four Kingdoms, each with one
vote, and Baden, the two Hesses, Holstein, and
Luxemburg together, with one vote, — seven persons and nine votes. The more
executive authority Prussia as well as Austria intended to vest in this body,
the more vital for the whole of the Constitution was the question of its
composition. And now Prince Schwarzenberg proposed, one might say with
incredible coolness, a system of composition in which Austria, in case of
conflict in opinion with Prussia, would be certain of controlling six votes out
of nine I Count Alversleben asserted upon the spot
that this system was impossible. With keen perception he skilfully emphasized the fact that that meant the sacrifice of the Petty States, the
allies up to this time of Prussia, and that to that system the King would never
give his consent.
The excitement among the Petty States was tremendous,
and only partially quieted by the decided assertion of Alversleben.
In the second sitting various proposals about the formation of the executive
were discussed. All of them gave to it nine votes, of which each of the Great
Powers should have two, the remainder being divided in the Prussian proposals
among all the other states, and by Austrian among the larger states only, under
various combinations. The discussion waxed warm. Each proposal found its
advocates and opponents. The members grew excited, and there was disagreement
in all directions. There could be no thought of bringing the matter to a vote.
Count Alversleben was a firm
and sedate man, thoroughly monarchical in his principles, and a Prussian
patriot of the truest kind; he had, moreover, been educated from his childhood
in parliamentary business, was prudent in every particular, and very far-seeing
in weighing every possibility. The first trial was enough to fix his opinion of
the whole situation. The cold-hearted, ambitious behavior of Prince
Schwarzenberg had within forty-eight hours produced an entire change in the
feelings of the members. Those who had been hitherto enemies of the old
Confederate Diet, the small states of the Union, saw before their eyes, as the
result of the Austrian reform, their own complete suppression; so that their
already budding longing for simple return to the old Confederate Diet blossomed
forth into full vigor.
Alversleben shared in every respect their opinions, and consequently became almost
unreservedly their leader for the whole remaining time of the Congress. He
considered the Prussian plan of reform hopeless, and recognized in the Austrian
aims a mortal danger threatening Prussia’s rank as a Power. Accordingly, he
sent reports to Berlin concerning the feelings of the Petty States, and
received the approbation of the Minister on account of his opinion that Prussia
would have no longer any reason to oppose a proposition that the executive
should be committed to the charge of the Close Council of the old Confederate
Diet.
The Petty States were not more excited over the
proposal of Austria than Schwarzenberg was over the Prussian representative. He
was at a loss to understand such decisive opposition at the very outset, after
all the fine things that had been said in Berlin. “Alversleben’s conduct,” he wrote to Prokesch, the Austrian ambassador in Berlin, “ is a
double riddle to me.”
Prokesch turned to the adjutant-general and confidential
friend of the King, Herr von Gerlach, and urgently begged him to try to
influence His Majesty to send Manteuffel again to Dresden with unconditional
full powers and with definite orders to effect a conclusion of negotiations. “The
representatives of the Gotha party,” he said, “ are taking advantage of the
expected rupture between Austria and Prussia; disorganization is gaining ground
in the Congress.”
Schwarzenberg turned to Manteuffel himself in a
private letter, and in it he affirmed his oft-repeated opinion that in Germany
there was need of a regular standing army at home of about one hundred thousand
men in order to suppress all opposition of the Estates, the Press, and the
People ; and that whatever states could not provide their contingent of troops
should not be allowed a share in the executive, in which condition were all the
Petty States. The letter produced little effect upon Manteuffel. He considered
that the Lesser States, too, and even Bavaria itself, were not in a condition
to maintain a standing army, and that consequently, according to
Schwarzenberg’s own principles, only the two Great Powers could have a place in
the executive.
Yet it seemed altogether too shameful that in the
much-eulogized Congress an open rupture should occur the very first day. It was
only too evident that then nothing would remain but a return to the old
Confederate Diet; and from what has preceded, it is easy to understand that
against this the innermost nature of the King rebelled. Anything that was endurable
should be preferred to this wretched disaster. It was therefore decided to send
Manteuffel to Dresden to try to effect a compromise, although only upon the
basis of the perfect equality of the two Great Powers in the presidency of the
Confederate Diet and of the executive.
On this latter point, Schwarzenberg talked again as
graciously as in Berlin; and concerning the participation of the Petty States
in the executive, he allowed himself to be persuaded to yield a little from the
strictness of his theories. The two statesmen agreed in the scheme of adding to
the nine votes proposed by Austria two more for the Petty States, making an
executive of nine persons with eleven votes; and this was to be laid before
the committee as a common proposal of the two Great Powers.
Prince Schwarzenberg could regard this result as a
victory: for even with eleven votes, he would be certain under all
circumstances of the majority consisting of the six votes. With regard to
Prussia’s being upon an equal footing with Austria, he had spoken very
encouragingly, but had this time no more than before made any binding promises.
He had indeed succeeded in obtaining from Manteuffel almost his definite consent
to the establishment of this new executive so soon as the plan of the eleven
votes should be accepted by the Congress, before the other Articles of the Constitution
were determined. Manteuffel, however, paid him back in his own coin with
gracious words, which were not binding at all.
Meanwhile Schwarzenberg returned triumphantly to
Vienna, leaving Austria to be represented by Count Buol-Schauenstein,
the former ambassador in St. Petersburg, a haughty man, reckless of
formalities, dogmatic and stubborn in disposition, and thoroughly penetrated
with the political views of his master.
After the two Great Powers had come to an agreement
about the constitution of the executive, the first and second committees held a
joint session to consult in common about the functions of the future Confederate
authorities, not only as to their mutual relations, but also with regard to
their relations to the individual states. Prince Schwarzenberg had taken care
that in both committees his friends should be in the majority; so the motion to
consider all Austrian and Prussian lands as Confederate territory was carried
through without difficulty.
The project of an executive consisting of eleven
members met with the same success in the first committee; but in the joint
session the two Mecklenburgs and Holstein, i.e.,
Denmark, made a decided objection to it. Denmark desired no executive whatever,
and Mecklenburg wished to put it solely into the hands of Austria and Prussia.
It goes without saying that this objection did not affect the report of the
committee.
The functions of the executive were very much more
extended than those that the Close Council of the old Confederation exercised.
Yet the Lesser States did not push the matter so far as Schwarzenberg intended;
and especially the Petty States, in their fear of Schwarzenberg’s ambition,
invariably strove to hinder, so far as possible, any change whatever.
Accordingly, it was decided that the functions of both Confederate authorities
should be determined by law, but that in doubtful cases the presumption should
be in favor of the Plenum, and that the latter should be permitted to pass
judgment on matters lying outside of its functions.
Then came the question, what decisions of the Plenum
should require unanimity, which ones a qualified majority, and which ones a
simple majority-vote. The committee showed its anti-Prussian tendencies by its
finding that in the matter of deciding whether any alliance made by a German
state endangered the safety of the Confederation or its individual members a
simple majority-vote of the Plenum would be sufficient. It was considered
desirable to have at hand some convenient way to prevent every attempt to
revive the Prussian Union.
In other matters the general sentiment was in favor-of
keeping up the demand of the law for unanimity or of requiring in its place a
qualified majorityvote. Thus the principles of the
confessedly abortive Confederate military organization were to be altered only
in case of unanimous consent; for an increase in the military burdens was
opposed by Bavaria, and also by Reuss and Schwarzburg.
Measures respecting a German marine were to require a majority of three-fourths.
The Kingdoms even demanded unanimity for the establishment of a war-marine; and
only after great exertion did Count Alvensleben, supported alone by Hanover,
Oldenburg, and Hanse-towns, succeed in preventing the motion that there should
be no German fleet at all.
The old Confederate principle required unanimity for
every decree that concerned organic regulations and common interests. When
motions to the contrary were brought forward and in part accepted by the
committee, Denmark made an exhaustive protest, with the declaration that the
suppression of the liberum veto would be the beginning of centralization and of
the disorganization of the Confederation.
It would not be of interest nowadays to enumerate all
the motions and decisions in detail. It will be enough to indicate the general
principles which underlay them. The control of the Confederate authorities over
the affairs and Constitution of the individual states remained upon the same
footing as determined by the Confederate laws of 1820 and 1832, with the
exception that the Executive was now to have the right in especially urgent
cases of taking steps for the preservation of the peace, without waiting for
orders from the Plenum.
No less consonant with Schwarzenberg’s sentiment was
the motion made in the third committee by Bavaria and Saxony for common
tariff-laws among all the Confederate states. Count Alvensleben was able for
some time to delay the discussion over this vital question of the German
Tariff-Union; nor could the committee fail to recognize the material obstacles
to an immediate admission of Austria into that Union. The committee limited
itself accordingly to a series of articles about preliminary measures, tending
to increase the facility of domestic trade, so that in 1858 a definite result
might be reached with regard to common tarifflaws.
Unfortunately, the satisfaction which Schwarzenberg
had promised to the Lesser States for such praiseworthy efforts was somewhat
marred by the conduct of his good friends, Beust and Pfordten,
in another matter in the first committee, where these gentlemen were very active
in explaining the need of a popular representation by the side of the
Confederate Plenum. Count Buol affirmed on the spot the unchangeable opposition
of Schwarzenberg. Yet it was disagreeable for him to find on his side in this
most important question, beside Hesse-Cassel and Luxemburg, only the Mecklenburgs and Denmark, who were otherwise so excessively
repugnant to him, while all the other states supported the proposition of
Bavaria.
To be sure, Herr von Beust explained that one should
not think of a parliament after the fashion of that of the Cathedral of St.
Paul; no one would wish to revive such a nightmare. It was only desired, for
some branches of legislation, to have delegates present from the chambers of
the individual states, that their advice and counsel might be asked. Yet
Schwarzenberg remained unyielding towards the proposition, even in this shape,
if for no other reason, simply because he was determined as soon as possible to
abolish the Austrian Constitution of 1849, and then there would be no “
Imperial Council ” to send delegates to Frankfort.
Thus it was that everything depended upon Prussia’s action
in the committee. Count Alvensleben, however, had instructions neither to bring
forward nor to oppose such a proposition. Accordingly, Schwarzenberg energetically
urged the Berlin Cabinet to unite with Austria in suppressing this evil
purpose. He received, too, effectual support, since, as we are aware, Prussia
laid stress upon a popular representation in its restricted Union, but not for
the more comprehensive alliance.
When one surveys the results of the discussion, it is
impossible to call them satisfactory. All positive decisions were dictated by a
blind fear of revolution; on the other hand, the most crying national needs,
such as a reform of the Confederate military organization and the creation of a
German marine, met with obstinate opposition.
Meanwhile, the first two of the committees succeeded
so far, by the beginning of February, in the main features of their work upon
the projected Confederate authorities, that Schwarzenberg, in his impatient
zeal, decided to take the decisive step. He requested Herr von Manteuffel to
meet him on the 16th of February in Dresden, and then, as had formerly been
agreed, to make the announcement to the assembly that the two Great Powers
intended, upon the basis of the decisions of the committees, to convene the new
Confederate authorities in Frankfort, while the members of the Congress in
Dresden should continue comfortably to work out the remaining articles of the
Confederate Constitution.
The Prince believed that no one would have the courage
to oppose the Great Powers or to refuse to send deputies to the new Confederate
Plenum; and if any instances of such action should unexpectedly occur, the
right of the refractory state to enter the Confederation could be reserved till
later, and the Government be otherwise ignored: its isolation would soon enough
make it feel uncomfortable.
Let us here call to mind a circumstance which Prince
Schwarzenberg had forgotten. A year before, Prussia, who at that time stood
outside of the Confederate Diet, had counted it an advantage of the general
congresses that those who there agreed could establish their Constitution
without the dissenters, whereas in the Confederate Diet every constitutional
measure could be defeated by the veto of Homburg or Liechtenstein.
Schwarzenberg had at that time, as presiding head of the Confederate Diet,
rejected this theory as unlawful and antinational. He was still, as ever, the
chief defender of the Confederate laws; and yet in the coolest manner
possible, and in spite of all Confederate laws, he now supported that Prussian
doctrine.
The reason for his conduct is, it is true, easy to be
seen. Herr von Manteuffel had hitherto shown himself in every particular
compliant and willing to make advances. It was advisable to take advantage of
this state of his mind, so long as it lasted, and to put into force the
measures so fortunately approved of by him — the directory of eleven and the
admission of entire Austria — before possible events in Berlin might cause a
revulsion from this position. Afterwards, Prussia might assert her claim to parity
in the presidency: there would be ways enough of rendering that harmless.
But pride had prepared the way for its own fall. In
Berlin there had been strong faith hitherto in the possibility of sincere
co-operation with Austria; and in order to come to an understanding, and thus
to escape the old Confederate Diet, Prussia had in different matters and step
by step made concessions, some of them of very questionable expediency, always
with the idea that any definite arrangement would be reserved until the work of
framing the Constitution should be completed.
Now this most important point was to be thrown aside
by the new proposition of Schwarzenberg, according to which, the new
Confederate Government, doubled in influence by the admission of entire
Austria, and with a sure anti-Prussian majority, was to begin its active
operations at once, before either Prussia’s equality in authority had been
insured or her free right to form a union. This could never be allowed.
Furthermore, European conditions were this time as
propitious for Prussia as they had formerly at Olmütz been adverse. Russia took
only a slight interest in the admission of Austria into the Confederation:
France and England, however, protested openly against it; so that not only
would this measure not be forced upon Prussia, but it could not be realized without
Prussia’s active help. It was therefore unanimously decided in Berlin to reject
Austria’s proposition.
When Manteuffel requested from Count Alvensleben a
report on the matter, the latter answered on the 9th of February : “ In the
course of the discussion it has on all sides been repeatedly acknowledged that
before the whole has been gone over, there can be no binding votes passed upon
a single detail. This will also be brought forward as the objection to the
proposition to set the new Confederate authorities at once in power. The
decisions of the committees are not to be printed for distribution among the
members until the 15th of February. If that proposition is then made, there
will be a general excuse offered that further instructions will be necessary
before voting upon this question, and it will be impossible not to grant a
delay of two weeks for the reception of these instructions. The accomplishment
of Schwarzenberg’s scheme would bring the new executive into active operation a
few weeks earlier than if the normal course were pursued ; but it would produce
a very bad impression, and the whole odium would fall upon Prussia. For the
world is accustomed to expect violent conduct on the part of Schwarzenberg; but
it would be said, Prussia had weakly allowed herself to be influenced, and had
abandoned her old allies.”
The same sentiments were expressed in a report from
Count Bernstorff to the King, sent from Vienna on the 11th of February:
“According to Schwarzenberg’s plan, no notice is to be taken of any objection
from the Petty States. Prussia is to assist in this; that is, to drop her
allies, and with her own hand help form a Directory in which she would always
be in the minority, and which would be of great advantage to her bitterest
enemies. Russia is expected to support Austria. The two Powers, which a short time
ago were ready to fight Prussia on account of violation of the treaties of
1815, now urge a reckless abolition of these treaties. If the question
concerned the transference of the executive into the hands of the two Great
Powers alone, this would be a progressive step for the attainment of which it
would be worth while making considerable sacrifice. But rather than establish a
many-headed Directory, in which Austria would not share the power with Prussia
but with the Lesser States, it would be decidedly better for Prussia to return
to the old Confederate Diet. She would then be standing upon the basis of the
treaties and in the old position; and beside her German allies, she would have
upon her side England, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Moreover, it is certain
that, in the event of the realization of Schwarzenberg’s plan,
Holstein-Lauenburg and Luxemburg- Limburg will withdraw from the Confederation.
To silence this opposition, Schwarzenberg will perhaps for the present let the
Confederate authorities enter upon their duties provisionally, and consist for
the time of the two Great Powers and the four Kingdoms alone, while to the
other three Curias by themselves will be left the
arrangement and division of their votes. In this case this provisional
executive, in which Prussia would have two votes against six, might be sure of
a long continuance.”
The effect of these reports was sweeping. I do not
find that a single dissenting voice was heard in Berlin. Nor was there now any
difference of opinion with regard to the doctrine that, in comparison with
Schwarzenberg’s plans, the old Confederate Diet, though so often and justly
condemned, would offer a tolerable expedient. Manteuffel was accordingly to go
to Dresden, and at once to state to Schwarzenberg that the recognition of
Prussia’s claim to equal power with Austria was the indispensable preliminary
condition of any further concessions.
Agreeable, then, to Schwarzenberg’s proposal, the
conference between the two Ministers began in Dresden on the 16th of February,
and continued through the whole week. It was evident at the outset that
Prussia’s claim to parity in the Confederate presidency had no prospect of
being satisfied. To begin with, Schwarzenberg asserted the establishment of the
new authorities to be extremely urgent, saying that it was not proper to
postpone it by the introduction of a question that after all was not so very
simple. He promised that so soon as they were in Frankfort, the participation
of Prussia in the presidency should be the very first matter with which he
would himself charge the new Plenum.
As evidence of his good intentions, he began to discuss
the various functions that would, in the order of business, fall to the
president, such as the opening of communications received, assignment of them
to the proper parties, appointment of the sessions, etc.; he considered in each
case whether Prussia could be allowed to share in the same or not. What he
believed he might approve of here, he would also present for acceptation and
most urgently advise in Frankfort. More than this, he insisted, would not be consistent
with his duty; a certain right to preference in honor the dignity of the
Emperor could by no means relinquish.
All this was far below what Prussia desired in the way
of perfect equality with Austria or alternation in the presidency. Manteuffel
then went to Berlin to make his report personally to the King, but returned
with instructions to yield no point of the whole extent of Prussia’s demands.
Schwarzenberg, thereupon, conceded some points in the order of business.
Manteuffel, too, avoided for the time the statement of any decisive ultimatum.
No clear understanding, however, was reached; and Manteuffel was obliged to
declare that until this should be accomplished, a definite vote of the Congress
upon the reports of the committees would have to be postponed, and more, than
all, the installation of the new Confederate authorities.
On the 23d of February a full session of the Congress
was held. Austria moved the acceptance of the committee’s reports, and joined
with this motion the proposition to install the executive forthwith. Prussia
recognized the importance of the matter, but just on that account considered it
necessary to give the Governments time for deliberation and instructions, and
therefore moved a postponement of the vote for fourteen days. Inasmuch as
Austria could bring forward no good cause for objecting to this postponement,
Prussia’s motion was passed unanimously.
Bavaria thought it would nevertheless be interesting
to take an informal vote then, in order to get some idea of the opinions the
deputies then held; and accordingly such a trial was made. It became evident by
this how successfully Count Alvensleben had used his influence. Of thirty-five
states, no less than eighteen (beside the very small states, all the Grand
Duchies) voted against the reports of the committees. Holstein, Luxemburg, and
Homburg refrained from voting. To every unprejudiced observer it was evident
that this more than anything else forever doomed the proposition of a Directory
of eleven votes to which Manteuffel had agreed six weeks before.
The question unavoidably arose, what would happen if
further deliberations led to no agreement. The answer lay so near that Baron Pfordten considered a vigorous protest in order. “Something
new,” he cried, “must be achieved in Dresden. Bavaria will never give her
assent to a vote of the Congress to return to the old Confederate Diet, since
that would be a violation of the solemn promises that have been made to the
German nation.”
Herr von Beust seconded the patriotic remarks of his
friend with equal warmth. It was the spontaneous expression of grief at the
disappointment of those alluring hopes which Schwarzenberg’s schemes had
offered to the ambition of the Lesser States. Otherwise it had no significance.
For, if it was possible to prevent the Congress from passing a vote to return
to the old Confederate Diet, it least of all became the members of the existing
Confederate Diet to hinder the other states from entering the same.
When Manteuffel left Dresden, he promised
Schwarzenberg that he would again report to the King, and then send the Prince
without delay a definite statement of Prussia’s views, which should determine
once for all her position in the Congress. This he did as early as the 27th of
February. His letter to the Prince had quite another tone than that which
Schwarzenberg had hitherto been accustomed to hear from his Prussian colleague.
Manteuffel began with the asseveration that he was not expressing his own
personal opinions, but those which were the inevitable result of stubborn facts
and circumstances, and from which no Prussian Cabinet would ever swerve.
He then went on to say, that if Austria considered the
admission of her entire monarchy into the Confederation as a necessity, so did
Prussia likewise hold it quite as indispensable that she should be on an equal
footing with Austria in the presidency. Prussia, he said, could not allow this
to depend upon the result of future negotiations with the new Confederate
authorities after they were already in Frankfort. Before the new Constitution
could be put into force, these two vital questions must be satisfactorily
settled. Accordingly, he enclosed Prussia's proposals with regard to the
Confederate presidency, remarking at the same time that no opportunity would be
offered for negotiating and discussing, but rather that this statement marked
the uttermost limit of Prussia's compliance. If Austria would accept these
proposals and assist in causing them to be passed by the Congress, then Prussia
would be ready to support a motion from Austria concerning the formation of the
executive, which would have more probability of being accepted than the project
of a Directory of eleven brought forward by both of the Powers. Nor would
Prussia refuse to consider in an unprejudiced spirit any other proposal, even
if it should come from one of the Petty States.
Manteuffel said further that Austria must not in this
matter count upon the sympathy of the Conservative party in Prussia; for these
Conservatives were true to the traditions of Old Prussia, filled with a desire
for good friendship with Austria, but more than all with zeal for the
independence and honor of the Prussian State.
In order to leave no doubt whatever concerning the
Prussian resolves, Manteuffel closed with the observation that if no
understanding with Vienna could be reached, Prussia would rest upon the basis
of the old treaties which Austria had appealed to in 1850.
We can readily believe that the receipt of this
semiofficial letter filled Prince Schwarzenberg with profound astonishment.
The mere fixing of an ultimatum, quite aside from its contents, was more than
Manteuffel had ventured to take upon himself in any matter whatever upon which
he had conversed with the Prince,— then, the full equality of Prussia with
Austria to a greater degree even than had been verbally expressed by Manteuffel
in Dresden — further, this parity set down as an indispensable condition for
the admission of Austria entire into the Confederation — and finally, Prussia’s
undisguised abandonment of the proposition for a Directory of eleven, which had
meant Austria’s certain supremacy in the new executive — all this, comprehended
in the contents of one sheet, far exceeded the bounds of Schwarzenberg’s
patience.
But what could be done? Prussia was thoroughly united
at home, and had not only the majority of the members of the Congress, but also
the European Powers upon her side. In a word, the whole object of his hopeful
exertions, and all that which had been so easy to gain from Manteuffel in
private conversation, had been dashed to the ground the last moment before completion.
It was the turning-point in all the transactions of the Dresden Congress.
Schwarzenberg’s first step now was to send a circular
on the 2d of March to the refractory Governments, in which, quite as if
Manteuffel's letter had not been written, he represented to them, in view of
the doings of the session of February 23d, that it would be an exceedingly bold
step for the Petty States, who together made up only one-tenth of the
population of the Confederation, to venture an opposition to the united wishes
of the two Great Powers and the Kingdoms. “Under the present circumstances,” he
said, “which themselves speak so plainly, we believe we should only lower
ourselves in the eyes of our Confederate allies by further explanations.” The
small states knew, of course, how things were in Berlin, and hastened to send
thither a copy of the circular: the only possible consequence of this was an
increase of the suspicions felt towards Schwarzenberg's violence and
untrustworthiness.
The Prince, then, on the 4th of March answered the Prussian
message with a semi-official letter to Manteuffel, covering twenty-three
quarto pages, and containing a prolix repetition of the whole discussion up to
this point, a complaint over the folly of coupling together two questions so
utterly unlike in essential importance, as the admission of entire Austria and
the parity of Prussia, and finally the declaration that Austria was ready to
make every just concession, but that the honor of sending the “Presiding Deputy”
and of conducting the sessions must remain in the hands of Austria.
The whole wrath of his soul he then poured out in a
private letter to Manteuffel on the same day: “ Our common propositions,” he
said, “ to which the representatives of nine-tenths of the German Confederation
have given their assent, have been dropped by Prussia, probably from
conscientious scruples concerning strict adherence to Confederate principles
and rights. This new turn has filled all hearts in Paris with delight. I have
sure indications, and am not surprised to find, that we have more than one
Judas in our midst. In Dresden there will now spring up a multitude of new
memorials as instructive as they will be absurd. I must therefore abandon the
idea of returning thither to listen to such productions; such a sacrifice my
country cannot twice demand at my hands. The ears of the Gotha faction stick
out in spite of every disguise.”
It is an evidence of the calm state of mind which now
reigned in the Prussian Cabinet, that all these cutting expressions of
affection did not produce a strong impulse to break entirely with Austria. On
the contrary, however decided the Prussians felt in the question of a German
Constitution, they had, nevertheless, an ardent desire to retain in other
respects friendly relations with Austria, partly on account of Russia’s
attitude, and partly from fears of encroachments from the side of the French
Republic under the leadership of the revolutionary upstart, Louis Napoleon, who
had just made the suggestion to the Prussian ambassador that the German and
other European questions should be settled by calling a congress of the Great
Powers.
Manteuffel sent on the 10th of March a second letter,
in which he did not depart in a single point from his ultimatum of the 27th of
February, yet expressed Prussia’s readiness to enter into a mutually defensive
alliance with entire Austria. “The more serious European complications become,”
said he, “the more unyieldingly shall we persist in our close relations with
Austria.”
This made a great impression in Vienna, where Louis
Napoleon was regarded with as much suspicion as in Berlin. In the Prince’s
answer of the 17th of March, the petulant tone of his former letter did not
appear at all, but in its place expressions of hearty thanks for the proposals
of an alliance. The Prince, however, suggested that a more explicit
consideration of the matter should be postponed until after the close of the
Dresden Congress, which he hardly liked to believe would end in nothing.
The correspondence between the two Ministers was kept
up for several weeks. New propositions about parity and about the executive
were made by either side. The fate of them all was the same: they were rejected
by Austria when they favored Prussia’s interests, and vice versa. They suffered
shipwreck upon the same rock which had so nearly caused the ruin of the
Congress at its very first session — the rivalry of the two Great Powers. Until
this was settled in some way or other, there could be for Germany no other
constitution than the loosely-connected confederacy of states established in
1815.
The actual recognition of this truth was first shown by
Prussia, who summoned on the 27th of March her former allies in the Union to
send deputies to the Confederate Diet before the 12th of May. Soon afterwards,
Prince Schwarzenberg also became convinced that the hopes built upon Dresden
were vain, and returned to Prussia’s offer of a special treaty of alliance.
On the 13th of April he sent an outline of such a
treaty to Berlin, in the introduction to which the desire of both monarchs was
mentioned to enter the Confederation with all their possessions and
dependencies; but in view of the objections made to this by England and France,
“quite invalid though these objections were,” for the present the formation was
proposed of a defensive alliance for the protection of their possessions. In
the text, however, Prussia’s obligations were limited to a willingness to
assist with all her powers in case of an attack upon the Austrian portion of
Italy, whereas
Austria offered the same promise of help in case any
Prussian province was threatened, without discrimination.
From this outline the Berlin Cabinet erased the
introduction; added to the Italian the other provinces of Austria that had
belonged hitherto to the German Confederation; named, on the other hand, as
claiming Austrian protection and aid, the Prussian Confederate lands as well as
also East and West Prussia; proposed mutual help in case of insurrections in
Galicia, Cracow, and Posen; and held, moreover, this treaty open to Russia, but
limited the whole to three years. For no one in Berlin felt any duty or inclination
to identify Prussia forever with the policy of the Court of Vienna in the
Orient and in Italy.
Schwarzenberg was not well pleased with these
alterations. He still sought to gain Prussia’s consent to the admission of all
the provinces of both Powers into the Confederation; and with the same idea he
declined the mention of East and West Prussia in the treaty, since that implied
Prussia’s intention to withdraw these provinces from the Confederation. He
declared it superfluous to say anything about mutual aid in case of Polish
insurrections, since that was already included in the terms of the treaties of
1833.
Finally it was agreed to omit everything that could
excite misgivings in the minds of either side, and simply to promise that
within the next three years each of the two Governments would, to the extent of
all its powers, assist the other, if any one of the latter’s possessions inside
or outside of the German Confederation should be attacked.
During the course of these private negotiations between
the two Great Powers, the committees of the Congress in Dresden had been at
work upon their tasks as conscientiously and as industriously as if the results
of their labors were to open a new era in the world’s history. In the middle of
April they were able to announce that their reports would be ready for
presentation by the end of the month; whereupon Prussia moved to close the
Congress on the 5th of May with the simple declaration that the reports of the
committees should be presented to the Confederate Diet for the discussion.
But Baron Beust could not endure the thought that the
assembly which had met in the Saxon capital should prove to be so unsuccessful.
He hastened to Vienna to urge upon Prince Schwarzenberg his opinion that
although the Congress might not accept the decisions of the committees as laws,
yet it ought at least to stamp them with its approval, that they might then be
laid before the German Governments to be followed at their option. Inasmuch as
this would inevitably have brought up again all the contested points between
Austria and Prussia, the only result of Beust’s plan
would have been the breaking up of the Congress in an open quarrel.
Schwarzenberg agreed with Beust’s desire not to let the Congress close with such a purely negative result, and
therefore sent to Berlin the suggestion to appoint the last session for the
15th of May, and before this time to draw up six reform decrees of unquestioned
merit and desirability. But since he included with great assurance in his
enumeration of the same the proposition of the third committee to prepare an
extensive tariff league, Prussia sent back forthwith her rejection of the whole
suggestion.
Upon this Schwarzenberg was again beside himself. “
The Congress,” said he to the Prussian agent, “must not be allowed to be so
wholly unsuccessful. Whether little or much, something must be accomplished. I
shall persist in bringing forward my six points.”
On the 2d of May, Count Buol made the motion in the
Congress to invite the Governments to express their opinions on the
propositions of the committees, and for this purpose to appoint a session to be
held upon May 15th. Since this did not involve a vote nor a decree, no
objection could be made to it. Yet if Prince Schwarzenberg based upon this any
hopes of attaining a result agreeable to his wishes, he was doomed to be
thoroughly disappointed.
On the forenoon of the 15th, every member of the
august assembly was present. Austria began with a prolix and eulogistic
criticism of the work of the committees, and at the close made the
above-mentioned motion to accept the six points offered. Prussia replied to
every question with a short and very concise explanation, at the same time
proposing that the decisions of the committees be referred to the Confederate
Diet. Then other states followed with various opinions, in some cases very
diffusely expressed. The result was, that upon no single point was any agreement
reached that could serve to direct’ future transactions.
In the afternoon the formal closing session took
place. To Prince Schwarzenberg fell the duty, this time a rather melancholy
one, of making in his address as presiding deputy the usual complimentary
remarks about the assembly and its aims. The climax of his speech consisted in
the phrase, which has so long remained fixed in the nation’s memory, that
although the Congress had created no new Constitution, it had provided without
doubt much “valuable material” for further negotiations.
He could derive a little consolation from the fact
that on the following day, the 16th of May, the secret treaty of alliance with
Prussia was signed in Dresden, and thus Austria’s supremacy in Italy insured
for three years by Prussia’s military support. But the alluring hope of a final
mediatization of Prussia was gone forever.
Thus Austria’s system of an “entire Germany” proved to
be quite as abortive as the Imperial Constitution of the Cathedral of St. Paul,
the League of the Three Kingdoms, and the Prussian Union! The productions of
the revolutionary movement had been thrust aside by both Great Powers; but
Prussia and Austria had opposed to each other the weight of their influence,
and neither had been able to overpower the other. There was nothing left but
the old Confederate Diet, which in May began again its operations, recognized
on all sides.
Whoever passed a judgment only according to outward
appearances, might well believe that after all the enthusiasm and hopes, after
all the ardent discussions and the bloody encounters, Germany had arrived at
exactly the same point where she had stood on the 1st of February, 1848.
No one looked upon this result with more satisfaction
than old Prince Metternich. In a memorial dated Nov. 10th, 1855, he said: “All
endeavors which partyspirit during the years 1848
and 1849, and until the present day, has brought to bear against the principles
of the Confederation in its lawful shape, have proved themselves to be empty
strivings, directly contrary to the nature of things. The questions which the
Austrian Cabinet discussed in the year 1813 were then and will always be the
only possible legitimate ones; and these are capable of no other practical
solution than that which they have found in the Act of Confederation.”
CHAPTER IV. THE NEW CONFEDERATE DIET.
In one particular the revived Confederate Diet strove
to appear unquestionably the continuation of the old one; namely, in its
suppression of the liberal and democratic tendencies of the times. These had
developed in the year 1848 a power hitherto unheard of in Germany; and now the
corresponding reactionary spirit of the Confederate Diet left its prototype at
Carlsbad far behind. In this common cause individualistic tendencies seemed to
have been suddenly eradicated. The Governments of the single states with but
few exceptions vied in conforming to the conservative decrees of the Diet, or
in prompting such decrees themselves. The German Central Authority had never
before been allowed to influence so largely the internal affairs of the
individual states as now, when — to use the words of Frederick William IV — its
task was to wipe away from the German Constitutions the foulness which had come
upon them in that year of shame.
Some things of that nature had already been accomplished
when the Confederate Diet assembled with its former full number in May, 1851.
In Mecklenburg-Schwerin, in spite of all opposition from the Grand Ducal
Government, the old power of the nobility was restored by the decision of a
tribunal of arbitration. Saxony had in May, 1850, when in her Chambers one-
half of the members urged the plan of joining the Prussian Union, and the other
half pressed the recognition of the Frankfort imperial Constitution, dissolved
the Chambers, declared the laws of 1848 to be invalid, and renewed the
Constitution of 1831.
Würtemberg had followed this example, when her popular
representatives refused to grant to the Government the money necessary for the
preparations which had been decided upon in Bregenz for the carrying out of the
chastisement of Hesse-Cassel: the representatives were sent home, and the
Constitution of 1819 put into force again.
In both Saxony and Würtemberg, the Ministers, after
resolutely taking the reins again into their hands, maintained a vigorous
administration, which also gave much attention to the fostering of material
interests. The old nobility, once more reinstated in their rights, was thankful
to them; and a great share of the citizens were glad to be rid of political
agitation, so detrimental to commerce and to trade.
Similar tendencies made themselves felt everywhere. It
would fill a large volume to tell of them in the German countries in detail. We
must content ourselves with noticing their general direction. Everywhere we
meet just the opposite of the Democratic tide of 1848.
Let us repeat briefly the most important aims of that
former movement.
Wherever the attempt was not actually made to raise
the banner of a republic, the aim was to reduce the monarch to the position of
an executive of the sovereign will of the People or of the People’s
representatives, by limiting his power in legislation to that of a merely
postponing veto, by giving to the Lower Chamber the unbounded right of refusing
the taxes, by obliging all officers and functionaries to swear loyalty to the
Constitution, and by committing important branches of the administration to the
care of persons chosen to those offices.
These powerful bodies representing the People were
then in their turn made dependent upon the People’s sovereign will by being
chosen for short terms by universal suffrage, by the granting of the unlimited
right of forming societies and holding meetings, by unconditional freedom of
the Press, and by the imposing of limits as narrow as possible upon the
authority of the police.
According to the principles of equality, all peculiar
rights due to rank were to be done away with, and the nobility, if not simply
abolished, to be forced to give up their privileges enjoyed hitherto. The
Church should yield obedience in outward legal matters to the laws of the
democratic state, science and education should be freed from every
ecclesiastical influence, and no one be forced to make a confession of his
religious faith.
This system had nowhere probably reached the stage of
being fully realized; but it had in numerous states so far penetrated the body
politic, that the sudden overthrow of the former strongholds of authority, the
flood of new laws, often provisional and incomplete, and the sanctioned license
of the masses, occasioned great confusion and uncertainty in all branches of
the administration, together with unlawful proceedings and acts of violence of
all kinds.
That in hundreds of these places something had to be
done is as clear as that the first step in the line of remedy was necessarily
the strengthening of magisterial authority. In the more comprehensive
organizations, the task, and not a light one, was to discriminate between the
legitimate demands of the times and the abnormal excrescences, to remove the
latter, and to incorporate the former in fitting fashion into the monarchical
system.
But the ancient and wise doctrine, that the best
security, both for order and for liberty, is offered by a Constitution composed
of the united elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, was either
unknown to the party that was now forcing its way into the leadership of the
Reaction, or it appeared to them ridiculous. “ Politics,” it was then said, “
is nothing but a contest for power; and whoever strives for the power is a fool
to grant his opponents any share in it. The Democrats have sought to reduce the
monarch to a mere mouthpiece of the popular representation: we will either have
no representatives of the people at all, or at most allow them only a
consulting voice. The Democrats would emancipate officials from the orders of
the King, and the people from obedience to the authorities : we will put the
people under the control of the police, and the police at the beck of the
monarch. The Democrats have mixed up nobility and proletariat in one mass, and
given over the Church to the destructive caprices of the clubs and a false
science: we will give back to the nobles their local and political rights, and
place the infatuated people again under the guardianship of the reinstated and
strengthened Church.”
Thus in that reactionary movement absolutistic,
feudal, and clerical tendencies worked side by side in varying combinations and
with varying effectiveness.
Austria took the lead and set a vigorous example.
Since the Revolution had been here crushed out by tremendous military
operations, and since the Prime Minister, Prince Schwarzenberg, recognized a
governmental system as useful only so far as it obliged the people to render,
as in a military system, unconditional obedience, the element of absolutism
here outweighed by far all others. The March Constitution at Kremsier had been
from the start a dead letter; although, to please the popular fancy, quite as
lifeless constitutions for every crown-land had been on paper appended to it.
Without doubt the decisive argument was the fact,
that, in view of the complicated state of affairs in Hungary, more difficulties
seemed to stand in the way of the execution of the Constitution than of its
abolition. Only the unassailed omnipotence of the
Government seemed to be able to insure the unity or even the very existence of
the Empire. Therefore it was deemed best to pay no further attention to the
special peculiarities of each province, nor to the so-called fundamental
rights, nor to the establishment of an independent parliament.
The whole monarchy was to be divided into administrative
districts, all organized alike, and a bureaucracy to be instituted which should
be an authority over the subjects and strictly under the control of the
Imperial Government. In this way a thoroughly centralized system was to be
called into life; and to secure its stability, wherever a “state of siege” was
not actually announced, the military authorities were invested with extensive
powers in order to insure this universal dominion.
But to a still greater degree the vast official
machinery of the Catholic Church was made to serve the same purpose. The most
alluring prospects were held out to the Roman Curia, Jesuits and Liguorians were called back into the empire, the whole
department of education was placed under the supervision of the bishops, and
all secular officials were instructed to sustain the censorship and moral
precepts of the Church. Schwarzenberg believed that he now might say like the
first Napoleon : “With my soldiers, police, and clergy, I can do in the country
what I please.”
The nobility, especially after the Hungarian magnates
had again dared to express their minds, received only fragmentary crumbs from
the benefits of this system. The peasants remained free from socage service;
and to correspond with this, the nobles were assured the liberty of
establishing entails. Their estates were separated from the property of the
community, and the prospect was held out to them of being allowed to have a
consulting voice in the government. Larger political privileges were not
granted to them.
Three messages from the Emperor himself on the 20th of
August, and three more on the 31st of December, 1851, announced to the people
of Austria the abolition of the Constitution, and the doctrines of absolute
centralization. No voice was raised in opposition. The Diets were dissolved,
the Press lay fast in fetters, any resistance would have been stifled on the
spot and severely punished. Not until some time later did the sequel prove that
unlimited authority is not always a source of strength.
After the Imperial Government had in August, 1851,
determined upon this course of action, an urgent appeal was sent in September
to Berlin, advising the employment of the same means in Prussia to eradicate
completely the products of the Revolution, and above all things to put out of
existence that Constitution of 1850.
Not officially in the Ministry, but yet among those
personally about the King, such ideas had already taken definite form. In place
of a Constitution drawn up and generally agreed upon according to the compacts,
a royal patent was proposed, and in place of the elections according to the
number of heads (as it was termed), the historical system of Estates. The King
would have the interests of the State to care for, and the Estates the
interests of the Estates. In short, no imitation of Napoleonic despotism, such
as Prince Schwarzenberg aimed at, was intended, but rather a return to the
system of the United Provincial Parliament of 1847.
Since all this coincided exactly with the inmost
convictions of Frederick William, the temptation for the Monarch was very
great; for any revolutionary resistance to the measures was at this time as
much out of the question in Prussia as in Austria. On the other hand, there was
in Prussia no present distress, no disquietude in the country, no great strife
with the Chambers. There was no excuse nor occasion for a coup d'etat beyond
the personal opinion of certain influential men, that the Constitution of 1847
was better than that of 1850.
But at the proclamation of the latter, the King had
solemnly thanked the Chambers for the improved revision of the Constitution,
had told them that they had thus made it possible for him to establish a royal
regime upon a constitutional basis, and had then declared with a solemn vow and
oath his sanction of the same. Could it be dreamed of that only two years later
he should retract these declarations as being evident mistakes, and upon that
renounce the obligations of his oath ?
The King wished to hear what one of his Liberal
friends had to say about it, and had the question laid before Bunsen, his
ambassador in London. As might have been expected, Bunsen sought earnestly to
dissuade him from a coup d'etat, which would begin with a violation of an oath,
and which in its results would disturb the internal peace from its very
foundation.
I have been assured by reliable authorities that the
advocates of a coup d’état did not, however, upon that give up their plan. They
declared that the “Liberal babbler ” in London was not capable of judging in
the matter. Their opinion was, that it was more virtuous to break a sinful oath
than to keep it. They questioned whether, if King Herod had broken his solemn
promise made to Herodias to give her the head of John the Baptist, it would
have been a sin in the sight of God.
Against them indeed arose a Royalist of the purest water,
a man who was at that time looked upon by every Liberal as an enemy of all
freedom, the governor of the province of Pomerania, Baron von Senft-Pilsach. He wrote to the King in respectful and earnest
words, urging His Majesty not to allow himself to be misled by any pious
sophistry from the straight path of honor and fidelity; for the cool-blooded
and strong-hearted people of North Germany would never get over nor forget a
violation by a King of his royal oath.
The King made up his mind that this was the truth, and
nothing more was said about a charter.
Meanwhile the Minister of the Interior, Herr von
Westphalen, persuaded his colleagues very soon that the desired break with the
Revolution might be easily and successfully accomplished by a little skill,
even if the Constitution of 1850 were allowed to remain.
The necessary skill, he said, consisted in a perfectly
harmless interpretation of certain articles of the Constitution and paragraphs
of the laws.
An exceedingly useful doctrine was then adopted;
namely, that a long list of those articles, especially those under the second
section of the Constitution, which treated “ of the rights of Prussians,”
involved general principles that could receive binding force only after special
laws should be passed concerning the details of execution; so that until the
passage of these latter, the old laws concerning these subjects would remain in
force. According to this simple doctrine, the legal force was taken away from
such phrases as equality before the law, abolition of the privileges of the
Estates, religious freedom and the right to form new religious societies
holding services of public worship, abrogation of proprietary police, and so
forth.
I shall not take the trouble of following in detail
this science of getting rid of a law by considering its interpretation as
applied to certain particular branches of the administration; for our purposes
it will be enough to mention the results arrived at by this process. In
Prussia, the bureaucracy, the nobility, and the Church, shared about equally in
the profits, as they did not in Austria.
Against the unlawful demands of a government official
there was in fact no redress whatever possible further than to enter a
complaint with the proper Minister. The right of the police to make regulations
with threats of punishment knew no limits. The district authorities, in virtue
of their right to supervise matters, interfered with the independent government
of the cities as they pleased, with, without, and contrary to, the laws.
Inasmuch as the law concerning the liberty of the Press empowered the judge, in
case of abuse of the same, to take away their license from booksellers and
publishers in certain cases, therefore Herr von Westphalen argued that the law
did not say that the withdrawal of their license should be confined to these
cases, and accordingly he permitted the police to take away the license
wherever it seemed to be desirable. So that what was brought about in Austria
by an open sic volo, sic jubeo,
namely, a great extension of the bureaucratic power, was achieved in Prussia by
a hitherto unheard-of interpretation of the laws.
In the same way the feudal party made sure of its
portion of the booty. The proprietors of large estates received again the
police authority of which they had been deprived by the Constitution. The old
provincial Estates and the district assemblies, both inconsistent with the
principles of the Constitution, were called into existence again, and, what was
more than all, the Upper House, the members of which had hitherto been elected,
was now, in accordance with a very doubtful interpretation of the law, turned
into a House of Peers, in which counts and proprietors of manorial estates were
in a decided majority, and thus possessed a sure bulwark against possible later
attempts to legislate unfavorably to them.
As far as the Church was concerned, the Constitution
was in this instance literally and to its fullest extent carried out. To the
Catholic hierarchy was left the independent arrangement and administration of
their own affairs without any of the former reservations about the rights of
supervision held by the State. The education and the official position of the
priests, the control of the property connected with the parish churches, the
ecclesiastical means of enforcing morality among the laity — all this was
henceforth wholly in the hands and at the will of the bishops. Religious houses
of all orders, more especially of the Jesuits, filled the land, and gained a
mighty influence among all classes.
In both Catholic and Protestant districts, the local
supervision of the common schools was once for all intrusted to the priest or pastor of the parish. In a word, the Crown showed itself still
more unselfish in this department, and more ready to yield in limitations of
its power to the Church than to the nobility. In the Protestant Church, to be
sure,- there was no hierarchy that could assert itself after the fashion of the
Catholic system, except in the supervision of the schools. Yet among the
Protestants the prevailing sentiment made itself felt in many ways. The
independence of the Church in respect to the State was seen when a clergyman
refused to obey the laws of the land upon the ground of some biblical command —
for instance, in the question of marrying a divorced man to another wife — and
then was defended in his position by the civil authorities.
Further, the care of the State for the maintenance of
the established Church was evident from the marked pressure brought to bear
upon unbelievers and the indifferent. Societies of Dissenters were branded as
political clubs of the most dangerous sort, and every means of police
oppression was employed to exterminate them. Every ambitious government
official knew that his advancement depended upon his pious habits, devotion to
the ordinances of the Church, frequent attendance upon divine service, interest
in religious societies, and subscriptions to benevolent institutions.
The edifying effect of these regulations was very soon
evident. The dominant party was so sure of success that no person regarded by
it with disfavor could expect to be spared. This was carried so far that even
the Heir-Apparent, who by no means belonged to that party, was in many
instances obliged to experience slight but yet pointed incivilities, on account
of his difference of opinion.
This then was the attitude and policy of the two Great
Powers, and under these influences the new Confederate Diet assembled with the
task of healing the State Constitutions which had been suffering since 1848
from Democratic poison. On the 8th of July, 1851, Austria and Prussia brought
forward together a motion, which in the first place included several propositions
about the maintenance of a body of troops to insure the protection of the
Confederate assembly, and about the formation of a central police organization,
and then referred to the right and duty of the Confederation, in accordance
with Article II of the Act of Confederation as well as with the decision of a
committee of the Dresden Congress, to provide for the internal safety of
Germany, and therefore not to suffer the political conditions of the individual
Confederate states to militate against the aims, laws, and decrees of the
Confederation, as unfortunately was too often the case in consequence of the
enactment of the Frankfort “fundamental rights,” the democratic electoral laws,
the revolutionary inclinations of numerous public officials, and the license of
the Press.
In such states, it was contended, the superficial
appearance of good order was deceiving. From them proceeded the influences that
unsettled the other states in their fundamental principles, scarcely yet fixed.
It was true that in general the maintenance of internal peace and order was
consigned by the laws of the Confederation to the individual Governments ; but
this was no rule to go by, when it was necessary in these individual states to
exterminate institutions which were contrary to the laws of the Confederation,
or threatened to thwart its essential aims.
Based upon these considerations the motion was made as
follows : “The Confederate assembly shall by a special decree assert its
fundamental right, in case of need, to demand from the Governments of those Confederate
states whose condition seems dangerous to the common welfare, that they shall
bring the ordinances of their Constitutions and of their laws, as well as their
own personal attitude towards questions of public order, into conformity with
the fundamental laws of the Confederation and with the duty incumbent upon
every member of the Confederation of not endangering the common safety.
“Furthermore, the assembly shall appoint a committee
of its own, that shall as speedily as possible report upon the measures best
adapted to the carrying out of these principles. If the demand made to the
Governments be not voluntarily complied with, then those means shall be
employed that arc sanctioned by the laws of the Confederation, and first of
all, commissioners of the Confederation shall be sent with appropriate powers
into the respective states.” Appended to this was a second motion, with the
reservation of the possibility of further enactments, forbidding, in the name
of the Confederation, the printing of any communistic or republican
publications.
It was a very comprehensive and radical cure that was
planned for the healing of the states so disordered by the democratic epidemic
: a regular corps of troops for the defence of the
Confederation, Confederate police, Confederate ordinances against the vicious
Press, Confederate measures against the odious State Constitutions. If this
should all be realized, Germany would have a Central Authority over the
individual states with a power greater than the Majority in the Cathedral of
St. Paul had the remotest idea of vesting in their German Emperor: instead of
being a definitely limited imperial government, it was to be an actually
unlimited central Confederate police system.
The members of the committee to whom the motions had
been referred for consideration (beside Austria and Prussia, including Bavaria,
Saxony, Hanover, Baden, and Darmstadt), weighed the subject with very mixed
feelings; they were quite ready to suppress the Democracy, but yet were not
without anxiety as to where the powers of the Confederation were to end, in
view of such indefinite phraseology as “the common safety,” “the monarchical
principle,” “the highest welfare of the Confederation.”
Their report of the 16th of August reveals their
hesitation and their doubts. They hoped that the Governments of the individual
states would of their own accord take hold of the work. They considered it
impossible that any Government should refuse to acquiesce in the demands of the
Confederation; so that special measures of the Confederation would be necessary
only in case other obstacles stood in the way of some Government.
They therefore urged the Governments to go on their
own accord. They even rose to the hope that if all the Governments should show
themselves united and energetic, the nation would then acknowledge that in this
unity the power was to be found for the sake of which brave patriots had
favored a Confederation having a single head. They remarked further very
discreetly that it was more necessary just now to prevent any occasion for the
interference of the Confederation in the internal affairs of the single members
than to insure the right of so interfering.
Yet in spite of all their scruples, there was no
thought of opposing this first motion of the two Great Powers, further than to
modify some few expressions. It was recommended by the committee and accepted
on the 23d of August; the commission proposed in the motion was straightway
chosen: Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Darmstadt. So far as the Press was
concerned, however, the prohibition of objectionable newspapers by the
Confederate Diet as proposed by the Great Powers proved unpopular, and another
committee was appointed to draw up a Confederate Presslaw.
The Reaction-Commission, as the Representatives in the
Confederate Diet were accustomed, themselves, with a smile, to call their
creation of August 23d, very soon found their hands full. Beside Hesse-Cassel,
whose hour of agony had long since begun, the Constitutions of Anhalt, Bremen,
Hamburg, Frankfort, Hanover, Lippe, Saxe-Coburg, Liechtenstein, Hesse-Homburg,
and Waldeck came gradually under the treatment of the Confederate Diet.
Here again it would be very wearisome for the reader
of to-day to work his way through the numerous writings back and forth in these
controversies, in which the primary object had been long since forgotten. In
most cases, aristocratic corporations that had lost their standing during the
years of the Revolution demanded and obtained restoration at the hands of the
Confederation. What respect was manifested for Confederate and state laws,
what practical judgment and what party zeal were frequently manifested in the
course of these restorations, we will at least illustrate by one example, which
was remarkable in many respects : the chastisement of Hesse-Cassel.
We have already seen how, at the very outset, this
punishment of the people of Hesse wanted all lawful foundation. The Government
had continued to refuse to lay before the Estates, as the Constitution
prescribed, the statement of the budget, and yet had four times imperiously
demanded unusual grants. Actual reasons for this delay in the presentation of
the budget were not to be discovered, and the Estates merely did their duty
when they refused to grant further appropriations before a budget should be
presented. Likewise, when Hassenpflug commanded the officers of the Finance
Department, by a decree, to raise the taxes, they were quite right in refusing
to obey an order against the express prohibition of the Constitution.
When Hassenpflug made his complaint about this to the
Confederation, it was most certainly the business of the Confederate Diet in
the first place to direct him to fulfil his own duty and present the statement
of the budget. Instead of that, the Diet without delay eon- firmed Hassenpflug
in his position that the conduct of the Estates meant a withholding of the
revenues, that according to the Confederate law of 1832 this meant rebellion,
and that in the ease of rebellion the Confederate Diet, according to Articles
XXVI and LVII of the Vienna Final Act, had the duty of lending aid, if the
distressed Government in question should not have the necessary force with
which to protect itself.
Therefore, in order to restore order, the chastisement
of Hesse was forthwith decreed in spite of the positive declaration in the
Vienna Final Act that such measures should not be resorted to until all other
constitutional means had been tried. Of such means to be employed in just such
cases as this, there were many; namely, beside the Union Court of Arbitration,
the court for deciding similar matters provided in the Hessian Constitution,
and the Confederate Court of Arbitration appointed by the law of 1834.
But then the troubles would have been settled
peaceably, the sending of Confederate troops to Cassel would not have been
possible, and this fine opportunity for damaging the Prussian Union would have
been lost! Accordingly, not a word was said about those courts of settlement.
On the contrary, a Bavarian army corps, increased by some additional Austrians,
marched into Hesse-Cassel under the direction of a civil commissioner of the
Confederation, Count Rech- berg, and a commissioner of the Hessian Government,
Scheffer, a converted Democrat, who, as is usual in such cases, became a doubly
zealous Absolutist.
During November, as we have seen, active operations
could not extend farther than the districts of Hanau and Fulda on account of
the Prussian intervention. Here the resistance of the Hessian officials and
taxpayers was broken by that means invented by Louis XIV in his persecution of
the French Protestants; namely, that of dragoonades,
or, as the Germans called it, Bequartierung (quartering soldiers upon one), in contrast to the regular quartering of
soldiers, or Einquartierung. Ten, twenty, or
thirty men were placed in the house of a rebel, and he was obliged to entertain
them. A broad hint was also given to the soldiers that they might make their
presence as disagreeable to their host as they chose. Of course, the sure consequence
of this must be nuisances of all sorts in the house : the rooms were soiled and
besmeared, the inmates were not infrequently grossly ill-treated, and finally
the man’s property was ruined.
The attempt of the Prussian King, through Herren
Niebuhr and Delbruck, to mediate between the Elector at Wilhelmsbad and the leader of the Opposition in Cassel, began favorably, but amounted to
nothing after all. Then came the decision at Olmütz in accordance with which
Prussia left the continuance of the punishment of Hesse to the Vienna Court and
its allies, and the further settlement of the affairs in Hesse-Cassel was to be
accomplished by commissioners of both Courts and their allies in the name of
all the German Governments. To this end Prussia appointed General von Peucker, and Austria appointed Count Deiningen.
To the latter, the Confederate Diet at once committed the direction of the
penal measures in the place of Rechberg.
Peucker received instructions, with a view to stopping as soon as possible the
sufferings of the Hessian people, to continue the conciliatory efforts in Wilhelmsbad as well as in Cassel; in the former place he
was to propose the dismissal of Hassenpflug and the return of the Elector to
Cassel, and in the latter place to urge the levying of the taxes voluntarily.
The legal right of the matter was then to be determined at the Dresden
Congress.
In Wilhelmsbad the General
accomplished no more than Niebuhr. There could be no thought entertained of Hassenpflug’s dismissal; and the Elector would not return
to Cassel until the rebels should have been completely subdued, and various
necessary measures proclaimed.
While the Bavarian troops, after having crossed the
Prussian military road, were slowly approaching Cassel, Peucker hastened thither on the 17th of December, and pressingly urged upon the highest
court of justice the actual necessity and the lawful propriety of submitting,
especially after this had been demanded by all the German Governments upon the
basis of the Olmütz Agreement, and after it had been intimated that the legal
claims of both sides would be discussed in Dresden.
The judges were inclined to yield. Then came on the
19th a note from Leiningen, in which the disarming of the militia, the
dissolution of the committee of the Estates, and the acknowledgment of the war
establishment, were demanded, and a military punishment at the hands of the
Bavarian troops threatened for any attempt at resistance. Thereupon the judges
declared unanimously that it was impossible to submit to these terms. The entrance
of the Bavarians into Cassel and the overthrow of all the authorities was then
most imminent.
Peucker’s protest sent to Leiningen obtained only the reply that he, Leiningen,
had no instructions as commissioner of Austria, and must, as commissioner of
the Confederate Diet, carry out the latter’s commands. Manteuffel shrugged his
shoulders and said: “We gave up in Olmütz all right to have anything to say in
the matter.” The King was indignant. He neither wished to see Bavarian troops,
contrary to the Agreement at Olmütz, in Cassel, nor to see them in the
execution of Hesse’s punishment playing a part in connection with the Hessian
Constitution (as would happen by the dissolution of the committee of the
Estates).
On the other hand, Prince Schwarzenberg positively
refused to promise to let the legal merits of the question be decided at the
Dresden Congress. “With rebels,” he said, “one does not treat; one forces them
to submit.” On the 19th of December, meanwhile, the highest Court of Appeals
had decided to yield to the order of September 4th (the raising of the taxes).
The militia were also ready to give up their arms. Yet on the 22d a Bavarian
brigade appeared in Cassel, and in the most oppressive way the Bequartierung, now clearly only an aet of vengeance, began.
At last, on the 26th, Leiningen announced that he had
received, as Austrian commissioner, his instructions to co-operate with Peucker; but this did not prevent him from continuing at the
same time his functions as commissioner of the Confederate Diet.
The city council of Cassel received directly from
Hassenpflug orders to recognize distinctly their duty to levy taxes based upon
the directions of the 4th of September. They replied that their functions had
nothing at all to do with the levying of taxes. Then they were given notice,
that, since they had once received the orders, they would be obliged to obey.
They were then maltreated a whole week by excessive consignments of soldiers in
their homes. The Electoral authorities further sent to Deiningen a list of one hundred and thirty names of persons who, it was said, on account
of former misdoings, richly deserved such treatment. Deiningen then, in accordance with instructions from Frankfort, carried out the
oppressive measures in several instances.
Meanwhile, he himself put an end to these disgraceful
enormities on the 4th of January, 1851; and when, on the 7th, the city council
presented the desired declaration of acquiescence, somewhat modified by Peucker, the submission under the order of the 4th of
September was complete and the object of the chastisement attained.
Nevertheless the question of the suspension of the committee of the Estates
remained the same; and there followed on the 10th the establishment of
Austrian and Bavarian councils of war, passing sentences in the case of any
transgressions that Deiningen might refer to them. It
was understood that they should also have the power to punish such misdemeanors
as had occurred before the beginning of the enforcement of penal measures by
the Confederation. No proof is needed to show that this was as well a violation
of the Hessian law of the land as an exaggeration of the rights and functions
of the Confederation.
Yet it was generally believed that the submission of
the Cassel city council was virtually the end of the disorders. What was there
now to do ?
The Austrian Minister resident in Cassel, Count
Hartig, wrote on the 2d of January: “The further the chastisement of Hesse
progresses, the more difficult does Leiningen’s situation become. The
instruments of the Government try at every opportunity to use these penal
measures as an excuse and a means for venting their small spite upon individuals,
and at the same time to lay the blame of every hateful step upon the higher
authorities.... With the completion of her punishment, Hesse’s affairs enter
upon a new stage, which I consider a more serious one by far. Count Leiningen
is already convinced that if, on the one hand, no government is possible with
this Constitution, it is also true that with these conditions and elements at
the head of affairs a government is equally impossible.”
Now, although Hesse-Cassel had been ruled for nearly
twenty years under the Constitution of 1831, Hartig’s assertion, that with this
no government was possible, had in the minds of Schwarzenberg and Manteuffel
already won the credence of an Article of Faith. No less certainly did they
believe that after the law of 1849 the elections to the Assembly of the Estates
had taken place upon the basis of universal suffrage. “All officials and
functionaries,” wrote Prince Schwarzenberg on the 7th of January, “took an
interest in the preservation of an impracticable Democratic Constitution, while
the hands of the Government were tied by a sovereign Assembly of Estates that
had been instituted by general elections.”
As a matter of fact, after the law of 1849, one-third
of the Chambers were elected by the large landed proprietors, and the other
two-thirds by electors possessing a certain amount of property. With such a
knowledge of the facts, these high and mighty men decided the fate of a brave
German race. In their blind theorizing they were preparing to give this race
over into the power of a Prince whom their own representatives had just
declared to be unfit to rule.
The two Ministers were, however, not yet quite ready
to decide to overthrow entirely the Constitution of 1831. The King of Prussia,
indeed, after the rebellion had been suppressed, demanded that a formal
investigation of the matter should be held, in which both sides should be heard
with regard to the cause of the rebellion and the legal basis of Hassenpflug’s September ordinances. He according instructed
his Minister, to this end, to propose the revival of the Confederate Court of
Arbitration of 1834. This might then also be further commissioned by the
Confederate Diet to investigate the question as to how far the principles of
the Hessian Constitution were in accord with the laws of the Confederation.
This was, in truth, the expression of a sentiment that
the constitutional system which had become so precious to the hearts of the
people ought not to be torn away with arbitrary wilfulness.
It was the last pulse of sympathy with a country upon whom misfotune had burst with fury, because she had preferred to hold loyally to the Prussian
Union rather than to the unlawful Confederate Diet. But the King stood quite
alone in his pity. His proposition of referring the matter to the Confederate
Court of Arbitration met, so far as I can discover, with neither favor nor
opposition. It was quietly passed by and ignored.
Prince Schwarzenberg at this time built great hopes
upon the Dresden Congress, which was not only to determine the general outlines
of the German State Constitutions, but also to provide a strong Confederate
executive to insure their being carried out. This executive would then also
adjust the laws and the government of the state of Hesse-Cassel. Until such a
fortunate time, however, it would be impossible to leave the Hessian Government
without active support. It would therefore be necessary to deal for the time
with one matter after another, to interfere in the name of the Confederation
whenever it was necessary, and, through the agency of the two commissioners, to
prevent a return of anarchy.
The Prince did not trouble himself about
technicalities. He did not worry about a legal authorization of such a method
of procedure on the part of the commissioners, however impossible it would
have been to
find any basis for the same. It was enough that they
had the power in their hands. The Elector must never be left defenceless at the mercy of people in their exasperation.
If there was no other way, Leiningen could resume his office of executor of the
penal measures; for although they were virtually at an end, this had not been
proclaimed officially.
Very soon an instance occurred where the principle had
to be settled. The time set by the Constitution for the convening of the
assembly of the Estates, March 2d, was at hand. Hassenpflug declared that there
was no possibility of getting along with this democratic set of men; they would
immediately irritate himself, his colleagues, and his subordinates, and would
thus arouse anew a rebellious feeling throughout the whole land. The convening
of the assembly must therefore be prevented. His second point of doctrine,
however, was, that the electoral Government was bound by its oath to stand by
the Constitution, and therefore could not forbid the assembly to meet. Nothing
was left but for the Confederation to ward off this evil from the country.
These words are enough to characterize the man. He had sworn to be governed by
the Constitution and to preserve it. Therefore he had scruples about violating
it; but he did not hesitate to prompt a third party to overthrow it.
Prince Schwarzenberg and Herr von Manteuffel had the
same feelings. General Peucker was the only one who
offered any opposition. He vigorously objected to the scheme, and reminded them
that Hassenpflug himself had on the 4th of September given as the aim of his
ordinance the preservation of the Constitution, and that the Confederate Diet
had named the restoration of lawful order as the object of their penal
measures; so that certainly neither could have meditated the overthrow of the
Constitution. It was, however, all in vain. Leiningen received orders, if Peucker should not be willing to join him, to carry out the
proposed measures alone, as commissioner of the Confederate Diet. Manteuffel
sent instructions, on the other hand, to Peucker, in
case this should happen, to remain perfectly quiet.
The prohibition of the assembling of the Estates
opened the second Act in the violent proceedings. The penal measures already
executed had been illegal enough; yet they had been wrapped, however flimsily,
in certain casuistical terms. But henceforth there was to be no more
ceremoniousness. It was believed that in Hesse-Cassel the Government and People
were both alike dangerously diseased, and that only some higher power could
restore them to health.
On the 21st of January, Manteuffel wrote: “It will be
found impossible to restore by force the lost confidence between People and
Government in Hesse-Cassel. If the Confederate troops should be withdrawn, the
Government could not possibly preserve its authority, especially since it would
be hard for it to convince others that in its decisions the interests of the
country outweighed every other consideration. If the previous penal measures
can be said to have served the officials of the Government as a means of satisfying
their own private passions, how will these officials behave when they are no
longer subject to foreign control, nor need fear the censure of any lawful
authorities at home ? The Electorate cannot then be left to itself. The
intervention of the Confederation is necessary, not only to crush out the
opposition, but to establish a condition of things that shall insure the
maintenance of morals and of the laws. It is not the preservation of the
Hessian Constitution that is at stake, but protection against wilfulness and passion.”
Such impartial considerations gave rise to the
proposition to appoint in common with Austria two civil commissioners well
informed in such matters, who should first execute suitable measures in the
exceptional cases still pending, and then prepare the way for the settlement of
the question as to how the unnatural state of things in the country might be
remedied. This meant the proclamation of a new Constitution and of the
constitutive power of the Confederation. On the 27th of January, Prince
Schwarzenberg expressed his assent to this line of conduct.
Herr von Manteuffel, accordingly, on the 11th of
February, in a draft which he intended to send to Vienna, developed in detail
the points of view from which the commissioners were to act. Their chief task was
to be a revision of the Constitution; in place of election by “number of
heads,” there should be summoned genuine conservative representatives of the
interests of the landed proprietors, the cities, and the peasants; the
two-Chamber system was advocated, but more especially the settlement of fixed
limits to the functions of the Chambers. Inasmuch as such a new arrangement
could not be established for some weeks, an interregnum should be declared in
which the country would be governed in common by representatives of the
Confederation and of the electoral Government, until the new Constitution
should afford the necessary security against arbitrariness and despotism. The
commissioners must therefore sustain so far as possible the sovereign
authority, and at the same time share directly in the government themselves,
exerting in the name of the Confederation that control over the administration
that according to the Constitution fell to the assembly of the Estates. It was
proposed at the same time that the commissioners should receive their powers
from all the German Governments that is to say, by decrees of the Congress at
Dresden, where, according to the King’s wishes, a Court of Arbitration might
also be instituted to decide the matter finally.
Prince Schwarzenberg had misgivings about allowing the
Dresden Congress to become entangled in the business; and personally, Herr von
Manteuffel also had his fears concerning it. It seemed advisable, to be sure,
to reserve the possibility of submitting the results of the commissioners’
efforts to the new Confederate authorities that should he appointed at the
Congress ; hut for the present, each commissioner had better receive his powers
from his own Government in the name of the Confederation. Prince Schwarzenberg
declared that Austria could have no better representative in this matter than
Count Leiningen. As for Prussia, General Peucker was
far too scrupulous about justice and law to be expected to execute such
commissions. He received, accordingly, in March, his frequently solicited
release from the thankless task. His successor, Herr Uhden, was an old
acquaintance and patron of Hassenpflug, and had been Minister of Justice during
the period before the “March days.” He was a man that concealed under
condescending urbanity a deep-seated fanaticism on the subject of feudal
theories and practical absolutism.
When he arrived in Cassel on the 12th of March, he
found the electoral Government filled with suspicion towards Prussia, and
Hassenpflug angry over his trial in Griefswald.
Uhden, in his first report, expressed the wish that that trial might be
quashed; but Manteuffel showed only little inclination to procure a non-suit.
To start with, the commissioners, especially Uhden, to whom Leiningen gladly
left such arduous labors, buried themselves in historical studies that bore
upon the question of revising the Constitution, “ in order to gain real data
and to avoid the appearance of following abstract theories.”
Counsellor of State Scheffer provided the scientific
material for these investigations. By the middle of April, Uhden had already
drawn up an electoral law, to which Hassenpflug gave his hearty approval. He
then mentioned the divisions in the corps of officers and the urgent necessity
of relieving the officers from the constitutional oath. The commissioners
readily agreed to this, and were about to give at once their assent to an
ordinance from the Elector to this effect. But then Hassenpflug returned to his
doctrine, that inasmuch as the Elector had sworn to sustain the Constitution,
he could abrogate no one of its articles. Consequently he said that this must
be authorized by the commissioners, and only be proclaimed by the Elector.
Uhden thought, however, that such an arbitrary striking out of an Article of
the Constitution exceeded his powers; Manteuffel, too, dreaded wearisome discussions
on the subject in the Prussian Chamber, and came to an understanding with
Schwarzenberg that the question should be referred to the Confederate Diet,
whose authority was soon acknowledged on all sides.
When the full sessions of this distinguished assembly
had begun to be held in Frankfort, Uhden announced on the 2d of June, that
before the new Constitution could appear, the preservation of the peace
demanded not only the ordinance concerning the officers’ oath but also a whole
list of arrangements with reference to the civil officials, the higher court of
appeals, the district counsellors, the newspapers, and clubs. All these
matters, he said, could not be regulated by the Elector, who was bound by his
oath to the Constitution; and consequently the intervention of the
Confederation was indispensable.
Unfortunately Uhden was obliged to confess that he
knew no legal excuse for such interference; but he said that the actual needs
of the situation were imperative. Otherwise, uncertainty and insecurity would
continue, loyal hearts would become discouraged, and the disaffected emboldened
to further riotous actions. He did not advise that the Confederation should
request the Elector to proclaim at once new laws; for in the present excited
state of the country, unfortunate results might well be feared. The best plan
would be for the Confederation to decree that the Government should work out a
code of laws under the control of the commissioners. Manteuffel, having agreed
with Schwarzenberg on this point, decided to make a motion in the Confederate
Diet, the passage of which would prepare the way for further action.
This time, however, the evil-doers were not to succeed
in concealing their guilt under foreign cover. The two deputies in the
Confederate Diet, Count Thun and General von Rochow, were obliged to inform the
commissioners that there was no chance for such a motion to win a majority. “
It could succeed,” wrote Rochow, “only on the express condition that a formal
approval of the course of conduct hitherto pursued by the Great Powers in the
Hessian affair be not demanded, and that the full powers granted by us be
limited to a definite length of time. The two Powers agreed to these
conditions; and on the 11th of June, 1851, a decree was passed, by a majority
of ten votes against seven, that the further conduct of affairs in Hesse-
Cassel, and steps toward a definite settlement of the same, should be intrusted to Austria and Prussia, and that this power
should be granted**for the present for the term of six weeks; if the matter
should not then be ripe for settlement, the Confederate assembly would expect a
report, and reserved for itself the right of further decision.
The two Courts did not, however, have the remotest •
intention of being deflected from their course by this holding back on the part
of the Confederate Diet. It had committed to them the conduct of the Hessian
affair; this seemed to them to mean full powers to do even that which the
majority of the Confederate Diet did not wish, and for which Uhden himself
could not find that the Confederation had any authority. Unhindered, the
commission went forward. The welfare of the Hessian country — so it stood in
the decree of the 11th of June — was to be looked after and the common safety
of Germany.
Uhden went to Berlin and laid before Manteuffel the
outlines of several laws, which the Minister considered faultless, and which
Schwarzenberg praised unreservedly. From the 26th of June on, then, and
through the month of July, a storm of ordinances, issued by the commissioners
and proclaimed by the Elector, poured over the wretched land, of which three
took the form of definite laws : the abolition of the constitutional oath for
officers; the limitation of the responsibility of officials, in case of
violation of the Constitution, to independent acts, thus inculcating
unconditional obedience to the commands of their superiors; and finally a law
which forbade as rebellion punishable by a court-martial any criticism by
officials concerning the legality of the laws decreed by the commissioners of
the Confederation.
There appeared further seven other ordinances, which
were to be considered provisional until determined upon by the Estates. These
were the limitation of the functions of the district counsellors, extension of
the police control of the Government, a new organization of the whole system
of the administration of justice, the abolition of the Estates’ right of
presentation in appointments to the highest tribunal, limitation of the right
to summon legal help against misuse of the prerogatives of office by the
officials of the administration, and finally an increase of the cost of a
license to possess weapons.
This is not the place for a discussion of the actual
worth of these laws. Even if one grants that certain of them promised material
amelioration of the existing evils, the illegality of their promulgation cannot
be gainsaid, since the Confederation itself had not the authority to make the
laws; and neither had it given to the Great Powers and their commissioners full
powers to institute such measures, nor would it have been able to do so. And
even if it be possible to justify such means as might under the peculiar circumstances
seem to be necessary for the preservation of peace and order, the greater part
of these ordinances had in their content not the least connection with such an
aim, and the legal incompetence of the originators could not be covered even by
the excuse of a constraining salus publica.
By the side of these acts Uhden and Leiningen went to
work with redoubled zeal upon the development of the new Constitution, holding
daily conversations upon the subject with Hassenpflug and Scheffer. It is
enough for us to consider one or two prominent points. At the outset the “ true
” Estates were defined as “ the nobility, the cities, and the peasants, whose
representatives are such in virtue of the fact that they represent nothing
further than the interests of their own class, and consequently belong
naturally to that class themselves. From this follows the principle in general
that in all classes the electors may choose for a representative only a man
from their midst.
“The representation of the Estates falls into two
divisions or Chambers. The first Chamber includes the princes and persons of
princely rank, the vicechancellor of the university,
the Catholic bishop, three Protestant superintendents, and representatives of
the religious institutions and of the nobility.” — These, as facts afterwards
proved, formed, by reason of the smallness of the country, a dignified and illustrious
company of seldom more than fourteen persons. — “ The second Chamber consists
of sixteen members coming from among the remaining landed proprietors, and
chosen by an election in which all those eligible shared; sixteen
representatives of the small farmers and peasants, chosen by the chief
officials of the villages and their compeers in the electoral district; and
finally sixteen deputies from the cities, chosen by the burgomasters, city
fathers, and presidents of the guilds.”
To the objection that this would as good as exclude
the educated classes from the representation of the cities, Uhden replied: The
element of intelligence would be represented in the Chamber by the commissioners
of the Government; intelligence was a characteristic of no one class, and
consequently was not adapted to being honored by a special representation.
Without any such scientific explanations and euphemisms, Manteuffel had also
intimated on the 11th of February that barristers, notaries, physicians, and
all such peace-disturbers, ought to be kept out of the Chamber.
Quite in keeping with such views were the actual
rights that were allotted to the “true” Estates. Without their consent no laws
could be passed that concerned personal rights and property or the administration
of justice, no taxes could be imposed or existing ones increased, and no loan
be made. They received, furthermore, the right of making petitions, of giving
advice, of entering complaints, and of demanding explanations: whether the
Government was to be obliged to make the explanations was not stated. Every
three years an outline of the administration of the finances should be laid
before the Estates, not that they should decide upon anything, or oversee the
public expenses, but only that they might know about them. By these regulations
the Government was allowed free course in spending the public revenues: the
chief aim of Hassenpflug’s overthrow of the
Constitution, next to the abolition of the Union, was attained.
Justice forces us, however, to acknowledge that the
commissioners in their work did not quite exclusively have the interests of the
Elector at heart, but did actually now and then oppose some questionable
demands of Hassenpflug. Thus, the Minister complained that they would not
grant him absolute power to remove and pension all officials; that they
rejected his opinion, that, in case the two Chambers did not agree in their
decisions, it fell to the Government to give to one side of the question by its
approval the force of law ; that they crossed out from the order of business
for the Chamber of the Estates the clause to the effect, that, after the
pertinence of a bill as a whole had been admitted, amendments proposed by the
Estates to the separate Articles should have the value only of petitions, which
the Government might or might not grant as it saw fit. Such a degradation of
the true Estates was a little too much even for Herr Uhden.
On the 22d of July, Hassenpflug announced to the
Confederate Diet that by continuing the strict police regulations, the
Government could now guarantee internal order without the assistance of foreign
troops. Both commissioners thereupon closed their labors on Hessian soil and
repaired to Frankfort, where Uhden wrote out their main report to the
Confederate Diet, as well as a long list of memorials about the provisional
laws and about the new Constitution, all together covering more than one
hundred pages of the printed minutes of the Confederate Diet, so that it was
not until the beginning of October that the prolific author could lay his
productions before his Government. But new points of disagreement sprang up
between the commissioners and the electoral Government.
Hassenpflug proposed to the Great Powers that the
Confederate Diet should expressly approve the new Constitution, guarantee its
enforcement, and direct the electoral Government to introduce it without delay,
and this because, without such a command from the highest authority, the
Elector, on account of his oath to support the old Constitution, would be
hindered from having anything to do with the new one. On the other hand, the
commissioners proposed that the Confederation should give the draft of the Constitution
its approval provisionally, and should reserve a definite decision about it
until the opinion of the assembly of Estates, which was to be summoned on the
basis of the new Constitution, should have been heard on the subject. The
Constitution must, however, although provisionally, be introduced at once with
full binding force. Manteuffel agreed with this sentiment that the “ true
’’Estates must be given the opportunity to express themselves in the matter.
Prince Schwarzenberg entertained the contrary opinion.
“ The Government of Hesse-Cassel,” he wrote on the 1st of December, “declares
that its old constitutional oath prevents it from introducing a new
Constitution without an express command from the Confederation. But to such an
extent as that the Confederation has never yet interfered with the internal
government of a country. On the other hand, there is no doubt but that the
Constitution of 1831 contains many regulations that are inconsistent with
Confederate rights; and therefore it is the privilege and function of the
Confederation to nullify that Constitution. Then the way will be open for the
Government to introduce a new Constitution, not only provisionally but
definitely, which is in every respect to be preferred.”
Manteuffel finally did not have much of anything to
say against this view of the subject, but requested the Prussian deputy to the
Confederate Diet to report to him what Hesse-Cassel’s attitude was in the
quarrel that had broken out between Prussia and Austria about the Tariff-Union.
When the report proved to be entirely unfavorable to Prussia, he instructed the
deputy to insist upon only a provisional introduction of the new Constitution.
At last a compromise was effected between the
different views of the subject, and the Great Powers introduced the following
motion on the 3d of January, 1852: The Confederate Diet shall nullify the
Constitution of 1831, approve the new constitutional draft as a whole, and
express to the electoral Government the expectation that by the immediate
proclamation of this Constitution a certain termination of the Hessian
difficulties may be hastened, and further, that the definite assent to this
Constitution by the Confederation and the formal guaranty of its execution
shall be deferred to a later vote after the opinion of the assembly of Estates
with regard to the matter shall have been heard. This motion was referred to a
committee consisting of Würtemberg, Darmstadt, and Mecklenberg;
the deputy from the last named, Von Oertzen, being
the chairman.
The report was made on the 6th of March. It was again
evident, as on the 11th of June, that the ruling influence of the Great Powers
in the assembly had, after all, its limits. The committee was ready to approve
of the propositions of the two Powers, as far as the present was concerned, but
wished to leave the question open in respect to the future. The abolition of
the Constitution of 1831 seemed to the committee feasible on account of the
numerous clauses contained in it that were contradictory to the principles of
the Confederation, and easily possible according to Art. II. of the Act of
Confederation and Art. I. of the Vienna Final Act, touching the maintenance of
internal security. This naturally involved the introduction of the new revised
Constitution provisionally with full validity. At the same time the committee
asserted the necessity of submitting this constitution to the criticism of the
assembly of the Estates; and this must not be merely an expression of opinion,
but the assembly must be requested to vote upon it. Of course nothing could be
more satisfactory than for the Government and the Estates to agree on the
subject; but if this hope should prove vain, then it should be the duty of the
Confederate Diet to settle the remaining differences.
Accordingly the committee moved, —
1. The approval of the ordinances instituted by
the commissioners.
2. The nullification of the Constitution of 1831,
together with the supplementary laws of 1848 and 1849.
3. That the electoral Government be requested,
after consideration of this committee’s report, to proclaim as law the
Constitution decided upon by the commissioners in common with the Government;
to lay the same before the assembly of Estates to be summoned in accordance
with the provisions of this Constitution; and to report the result to the
Confederation.
4. That the Confederate Diet express its approval
of the draft only as a whole, and reserve any criticism of the separate
provisions.
5. That the Confederate Diet await a report
affirming the pacification of the country and the disappearance of all signs of
a state of war.
6. That the Confederate Diet reserve for itself
the right to decide, after the receipt of the above-mentioned report, upon
further measures for the definite settlement of the matters connected with the
Constitution of Hesse-Cassel.
The motion corresponded with the original sentiments
of Manteuffel and the commissioners. Schwarzenberg was the more willing to
agree to it, since Luxemburg, Oldenburg, Waldeck, Schwarzburg,
Weimar, and the Saxon Duchies, together with the free cities, would have
nothing to do with the whole business, and also some other voices were raised
against certain clauses of the motion.
On the 27th of March the motion was accepted by a
Majority of ten votes ; and on the 13th of April, 1852, the proclamation of the
new Constitution took place at Cassel. The summoning of the “true,” or, as it
was worded in the Address from the Throne, the “actual,” Estates followed on
the 16th of July.
Everybody believed that, after the horrors of the
penal measures, and in view of the continued severe police regulations, as well
as of the laws instituted by the commissioners, it would be very easy for
Hassenpflug to secure amenable Chambers and therewith to gain for the Elector
and himself, for an indefinite period, unhampered control of the public
revenues and absolute power in the administration of the government.
Even though everything had not been attained that the
two Great Powers had longed for, yet the Confederate control over the
individual states, directed by those Powers and made effective wherever
extermination of liberal ideas and institutions was in order, had risen to such
a height as Metternich had not undertaken to scale either in 1819 or in 1834.
With those two formulas of “the Welfare of the Country” and “ the Public
Safety,” the Confederate power under the guidance of Schwarzenberg and
Manteuffel cleared all the barriers of legal rights as easily as did in 1793 in
Paris with the same phrases the Comité de
Salut Public and the Comité de Sûreté Générale. That form of German Unity which
had been kept along through thirty years by Metternich’s sagacity and Prussia’s
compliance, the duumvirate of Austria and Prussia, had now taken on an
unheard-of strength in contrast with the independence of the individual states.
But it was all an empty illusion. So far as the effect
of the new system was concerned, it fared the same with this Central Authority
as with its predecessors of 1819 and 1832: in spite of its being so prolific
along the line of political police institutions, it was sadly barren in all
other departments. Thus its energy aroused among the people on the one side
bitter hatred, and its impotence on the other renewed contempt. In spite of all
the patronage bestowed upon it by princes and the nobility, as was the fashion
then at Frankfort, the Governments of the individual states regarded the
dictatorial conduct of the Central Authority more with mistrust than with gratitude.
The result was the same as after the passage of the Carlsbad Decrees,— a
universal strengthening of individualistic tendencies. Bather no central
authority than one so arbitrary and so impotent!
Still another circumstance was a very decisive factor.
The basis of the system, the hearty concord between the two Great Powers, which
even at the time of Metternich was in important subjects very problematical,
became dead at the roots as a result of the events of 1848 and 1849. However
joyously the two Courts marched hand in hand in their war against Liberalism,
the far-reaching difference of their relations to the interests of Germany as a
whole, although concealed for thirty years as successfully as possible,
appeared after the March Revolution in its true light, and could not be again
banished from view. It forced with iron resistlessness, the leading statesmen
of both sides, strive against it as they might, into a continued struggle over
the great party-questions of 1849.
BOOK VI.
GERMANY AT THE TIME OF THE CRIMEAN WAR.
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