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BOOK I.
RETROSPECT.
FOUNDING OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE.
CHAPTER I.
THE EARLIEST TIMES.
We know about when the Germans arrived in their
present dwelling-place and entered the arena of European civilization, but it
is by no means so easy to determine when there began to be a German nation,
which exerted an influence as a political community.
In the very earliest times there seems to have been
among the Germans no trace of a national consciousness. The small, isolated
tribes are sometimes friendly to one another, and sometimes hostile; they break
up into their component elements, or unite for the time with each other into
larger groups, regardless of kinship, and then separate again, just as external
circumstances may require. Only the most closely related hold together
constantly, such as members of the same family, district, or retinue, where
their common interest, the community of blood or fate, forces itself upon their
material apprehension in their daily intercourse with one another. They are
strong and self-reliant people, who can get along only with natures like their
own, and who feel as much repelled by the slightest dissimilarity as by the
greatest. Whenever they hold together as a whole, no adversary can be a match
for them; and all their later enemies have agreed with Tacitus in exclaiming, “How
fortunate that they are always quarrelling among themselves!”. Thus, then, they
hold naturally to the individual. A national consciousness appears first as the
outcome of an advance in civilization. So it was in the earliest times, and so
it has been at every stage of our history. A long training in politics, in economics,
and in mental discipline was necessary before the Germans succeeded in
establishing a German national government.
Now, what form did this training of the German people
take? What part did the state and religion, literature and political economy,
play in developing them into a nation?
We cannot blind our eyes to the fact: their influence
was as unfavorable as possible.
We shall entirely leave out of consideration the
question whether the course of events was in other respects desirable,
advantageous, or inevitable. We shall simply show conclusively that for long
series of years the conditions were inimical to the establishment of a German
nation upon a firm basis.
The step which was decisive in the advance of German
civilization for a full thousand years was their admission into the Roman
Empire and into the Roman Church. In connection with these they formed monarchies
of considerable size, and learned to appreciate the significance of large
political and ecclesiastical bodies. But whereas their former combinations
included only small portions of the German race, their connections now reached
far out beyond the limits of any one people. The small provinces and clans of earlier
times did not become elements of a national unit, but of a universal empire,
and of a universal Church. Like Augustus Caesar, Charlemagne was served by a
heterogeneous body, composed of the most widely differing races. Not only all
the Germans of the Continent, but also Romanized Gauls, Spaniards, Italians,
and even countries of the Slavs and Avars, were subject to him. After its union
with the Romish Papacy this sovereignty claimed even more: the right to force
the whole world into the acceptance of the Christian faith, and to demand from
all Christendom obedience to the Emperor and to the Pope. No common bond was to
be formed, no common feeling to be created, between Franks and Saxons, Swabians
and Bavarians; on the contrary, every national peculiarity was to be given up
in view of the universal Christian idea.
It has been properly said that this Empire was not yet
a State. It was at once more and less than a State: more, for it was State and
Church combined, a hierarchy under two leaders, one monarch for war and one for
peace; and less, inasmuch as, in the zeal for further conquest and for a more
firmly established orthodoxy, all interest in the simplest questions of politics,
and all means of settling the same, dwindled into nothing. It gave up, in ever increasing
measure, to local rulers or communities
the most important duties of state, as well as all participation in matters
concerning jurisprudence,—the executive, and the army.
So it came about, that in the midst of a dominion
which sought to embrace the entire Occident, the old Germanic individualism,
the exclusive interest in only those who were most nearly related, the devotion
to the special interests of the community or of the feudal connection, sprang
up again into a full and vigorous growth. The contrast could not have been more
striking between their actual narrow life and their political and
ecclesiastical ideals, which knew no bounds.
It is true that when the Carolingian universal empire
was broken up, the German duchies, whether owing to the accident of inheritance
or to the unconscious influence of national relationship, united into a German
monarchy. Hardly had this taken place before the Saxon Otto took up again the
universal ideas of Charlemagne, the protectorship over the universal Roman Church, and, consequently, the seizure of the Roman
imperial crown and the claim to the supreme authority throughout all
Christendom. Three powerful imperial dynasties put their whole energy into the
realization of this object, and the temporary successes of the first Otto, the
third Henry, and the first Frederick, have fixed the wondering gaze of all
succeeding generations upon the mighty forms of these iron conquerors. Yet each
time the proud structure, built as it was on a loose foundation, fell to pieces
even more precipitately than in the days of the Carolingians. For these later emperors
also were obliged to purchase the assistance of their subordinate princes by
granting them further privileges, thereby, of course, weakening still more the
power of the monarchy. But just at this time, at the very central point of the
system, broke out the ruinous quarrel between the two leaders, the Pope and the
Emperor. The spiritual and secular potentates both north and south of the Alps
took sides in the quarrel, and for two centuries the civil war which had been
kindled by Rome devastated both Germany and Italy. No wonder that the Germans
became gradually indifferent to the ambitious plans of their emperors, and that
the last Staufens waged the war against the papacy
almost wholly supported by Italian adherents. Their final and overwhelming
downfall is well known. The victory of the universal spiritual and temporal
sovereign was complete. It was at this time that the saying was uttered, “All
great empires must be broken up into tetrarchates, that the crowned priest may
rule over them all.”
It is easily seen that during these long civil wars
which finally split up into countless local quarrels, no conscious national
feeling could be developed. North and South Germany were as foreign to each
other as if they were people of different races. The great Swabian and Bavarian
poems of chivalry and love were as incomprehensible to the Northern Germans as
the fables of Low Germany were to the people of the South. The commerce of the
Levant, which was increasing rapidly, lay exclusively in the hands of the High
Germans, while the growing power of the Hanseatic League was kept in the
possession of the Low German cities. In only one important matter was there any
successful co-operation of all the races,— in the great colonization of the
East.
The Bavarian East Mark (afterwards the archduchy of
Austria) had been Germanized long before; now followed German settlements in
Bohemia and Moravia, in Silesia and Transylvania, invited and favored by the
rulers, who were themselves foreigners, but often looked upon with envy and
hatred by the natives. The German element spread even more thoroughly throughout
the Baltic region, by means of conquests over the Slavs and the old inhabitants
of Prussia, and by constant accessions from all the German races. Flemings,
Westphalians, and Low Saxons poured into the Marks of Brandenburg, into
Mecklenburg and Pomerania. The German Order summoned Saxon and Swabian,
Thuringian and Frankish nobles to the conquest of Prussia, and these were soon
followed by the corresponding contingent of citizens and peasants. The natives
were either destroyed in war, or outnumbered and absorbed by the new-comers.
Here, then, there was no more distinction of races. They were simply Germans,
and the country became German land. While in the old home political
disintegration grew apace, constant dangers, both internal and external, forced
large colonial territories to hold together, and to organize a stronger central
government.
Yet, however significant was the progress in this
direction, everything remained unsettled as long as the German people did not
succeed in establishing a well ordered constitution for the whole empire. But
of this there seemed to be no hope. There was nothing more said about the old
idea of imperial authority over all Christendom. Rudolph of Hapsburg and his
two followers were German kings, without the vain show of the empty title of
emperor, and this title remained almost meaningless when the later rulers
assumed it again. Not only in Italy and Burgundy, in Hungary and Poland, was it
all over with German rule; even in Germany itself the royal power had sunk into
impotence, and no longer controlled the independent will of its vassal princes.
The great houses of Hapsburg, Wittelsbach, and Luxemburg quarreled for the supremacy.
Every State sought to extend its rights and possessions at the expense of its neighbours
or its subjects. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were for Germany a time
of universal and almost uninterrupted anarchy. The strength and zeal of the
nation spent itself in the establishment and extension of principalities and
communities of various sizes, into which the German land gradually split up,
and they were more than three hundred in number. Here was an instance of what
it means to a great people when the central authority, the source of all
strength and justice, is seen to be resting upon so slight a support. That the
lords of these territories, by their constant quarrels, disturbed the general
prosperity, was the least of the resulting evils. In the interior of each
country, by reason of the weakness of the imperial authority, might made right;
the prince, the clergy, and the nobility divided among themselves the power and
the possessions. The smaller cities lost their independence; throughout the
Empire the free peasants sunk under the yoke of servitude. Externally, too, the
Empire was unable to protect any one of its parts against its neighbours. East
and West Prussia were yielded to the superior might of Poland;
Schleswig-Holstein chose voluntarily to place itself under the Danish King; all
the Netherland provinces fell into the power of the French house of Burgundy;
and the Swiss Confederation no longer belonged to the Empire but in name. For
many generations, under Charles IV. and his sons, as well as under their
successors of the house of Hapsburg, no attempt to restrain the evil, and to
reassert the power of the Empire, had any lasting effect. It was not until the
time of the Emperor Maximilian I that there seemed to be a promise of better
things. After endless pains, and in spite of the persistent opposition of the
Emperor, a number of Imperial institutions of wide-reaching importance were
brought into existence in the States,—an Imperial court, the organization of
Imperial districts, an Imperial revenue law, and a State contingent of the
Imperial army. Upon this ground the definite political framework of a great
national life might have been developed, especially since the fruitful basis of
such a life was already provided. The efforts of the Humanists to refresh the mental
powers at the newly-opened springs of classical antiquity had started a
movement which spread far and wide; and the bold demand of Luther for a reform
of the too-worldly Church was filling all the German provinces with a
harmonious religious enthusiasm, at the same time that he created for his
translation of the Bible a language which was just as easily understood by the
Low Germans as by the High, and which ever afterwards remained a tangible
expression of the national unity. It is not our business to decide whether the
mediaeval or the remodelled Church offers its
adherents the surest passport to heavenly bliss; but two quite earthly
considerations bear incontrovertibly upon our subject: a great majority of the
German people, according to Romish testimony over seven-tenths, joined the
mighty reform; and secondly, until this time the Pope had not only been the
highest judge in matters of faith, but he had received from Germany enormous
revenues, had exerted an omnipresent judicial power, had decided the occupancy
of the throne in many German principalities, and had had the right to exert a
powerful influence on the election of the German monarch. Had it come at that
time to a complete throwing off of his authority, the most important step
towards national unity, and towards the political independence of Germany,
would have been taken.
At this moment, however, the young King Charles of
Spain and Naples, of the Netherlands and of America, obtained the throne of
Germany. He had a German name, but a Spanish heart In accordance with his religious
convictions, as well as with the extent of his possessions, upon which the sun
never set, he fell once more into the ruts of the mediaeval Church policy; he
consequently came into close relation with the Papal Chair, and became the most
persistent and determined opponent of the German Reformation. To be sure, he
was not able to carry out his purpose to its fullest extent, since his
ambition, which did not stop short of the whole earth, called forth the
resistance of every one, sometimes even the disfavor of the Curia, and finally
opposition in his own family. He was unable to crush out the German
Protestants; but he did succeed in gathering about himself once more in the
Empire a strong Catholic party. Thus was the nation torn by a bitter religious
dissension; for the Protestant princes could not be forced back into the old
Church, and the Catholic States were quite as unwilling to grant to their
subjects permission to join the new. The Augsburg Diet of 1555 granted to each
secular State the right to choose a Confession for itself and its subjects; so
that the results of the strife which had begun so promisingly for a national
unity, turned out to be exclusively favorable to individualism; and such
ambiguous decisions were made at Augsburg, and of such questionable validity,
about spiritual princes and their subjects, that the dispute between the two
religious parties continued uninterruptedly, and at last led to the explosion
of 1618, which, spreading further, brought upon Germany the woes of the Thirty
Years’ War. In this war the last gasps of a national consciousness were
smothered, at first in religious hatred,
and later in desperate self-defence, and in the
relapse into barbarism. Against their own countrymen the one party led into the
field Italians, Spaniards, and Poles, the other, Danes, Swedes, and Frenchmen.
At last, German mercenaries and deserters were to be found in every branch of
the army of either party. At the beginning, the Emperor and the Pope had every
expectation of obtaining absolute sovereignty throughout all Germany; but then
the fortune turned, and the end of it was the utter defeat of the Emperor, the
recognition of each of the three contending Churches, and the increased
sovereign rights of the German princes. The expenses of this horrible war were
borne by all Germany in the shape of the fearful desolation of the country and
of the wretched condition of the people, as well as in important cessions of
territory to Sweden and France.
Imperial authority and national sentiment had sunk to
zero. Individualism had taken entire possession of the German land and of the
German spirit.
CHAPTER II.
AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA.
It is very evident that under such conditions as the
Peace of Westphalia had brought about for Germany, the re-establishment of a
successful imperial government could no longer be expected from the nominal
central authorities,—the Emperor and the Imperial Diet (Reichstag).
The spirit of Individualism had torn the Empire into
pieces. Only the further development of this very spirit in the special
.governments could produce a remedy.
Whenever any one State could so far extend its
dominions and influence according to this traditional and selfish principle, as
to overshadow all the others and force them to recognize its ascendency, then,
so far as this State was concerned, selfishness and national feeling would be
once more united; then it would naturally become the representative of the
common national interests.
In the same way, formerly, the kings of Wessex, by
subduing the other Anglo-Saxon States, welded them into an English crown. In
the same way the Capetian princes of France gradually forced all the West-Frankish
princes and counts to recognize their royal supremacy, and thus created the
French nation.
For the whole subsequent development of German
politics, the circumstance is decisive that for the solution of this problem
there arose not one power only, but two powers side by side. Both of these,
Prussia and Austria, which had been founded in the old colonial region of the
East, had as rivals risen to a height of power which enabled them to lay claim to
the leadership of the entire nation.
Austria was the first to arise in the century succeeding
the Peace of Westphalia.
To the old inherited lands of the House of Hapsburg,
which had always been parts of the German Empire, were added as a result of the
great victories of Prince Eugene, the whole of Hungary with its outlying provinces,
Belgium and Lombardy; later followed the acquisition of Tuscany and Modena
through younger sons of the imperial house, and finally of Galicia as the
spoils of the first division of Poland. A dominion so extensive raised Austria
to the first rank of the European powers, and made it seem to be far more than
a match for the other German States, even when combined. Accordingly in Vienna
they were conscious that they were in a position to reassert all the claims of
the old Roman Empire of the Germans; and since the title of this highest of all
honors in Christendom had been for centuries almost an inheritance of the House
of Hapsburg, to take exception to this seemed to the leaders of Austrian
politics to be a State crime. It was, to be sure, impossible to declare, as in
the days of Charles V, that all the earth was subject to Austria; but at least
the nucleus of the old Empire, Germany and Italy, was to continue to recognize
the imperial supremacy. Accordingly, from the inheritance of the old Empire,
that cardinal principle, namely, the union with the Romish Church, was
unswervingly maintained by its successor. From the first days of the
Reformation, the House of Hapsburg had labored to root out Protestantism; and
even the humane Maria Theresa was convinced that a Protestant was more
dangerous than a Jew, and that a successful political organization could be
established only on the basis of the Most Holy Church of Rome. So it happened
that in Austria the Catholic clergy enjoyed the highest honors, enormous
wealth, and a favored position in the assembly of the States; they controlled
the secular instruction and exercised a strict literary censorship. In return
for this they gladly allowed the State to secure the constant support of the
Church by the assertion of far- reaching rights of supremacy and
superintendence, and were pleased that the subordination of the people was
assured by the concurrence of them both. This state of things reacted on the
relations of the Emperor to the German people. The high dignitaries of the
German bishoprics and monasteries were always ready at elections, and in the
political affairs of their rulers, to listen to the wishes of a court so well
disposed. A considerable number of Catholic free-towns eagerly followed their
example. Likewise the high position which the secular nobility also held in
Austria continually allured German counts and knights into the imperial
service, and in this way attached numerous noble families to the imperial
interests. What of jurisdiction still remained to the Empire, as well as the
remnants of feudal rights and reservations, influenced other classes of
society. In short, dependents of Austria were to be found scattered through all
Germany. Although it cannot be said that these represented the strongest and
most promising elements of the Empire, yet they zealously and successfully
strove to keep up the imperial power in Germany.
But there was another side of the picture. The inner
strength of Austria did not at all correspond to the extent of its dominions
and its ambitious schemes. The monarchy was a loose aggregation of a long
series of individual States, in each of which the authority of the Crown was
narrowly limited by State rights. Maria Theresa was the first to introduce into
the German Bohemian section a supreme authority which rendered the nobility,
until that time almost independent, submissive to the will of the Crown, and
also freed the peasant from the burden of subjection to the lord of the soil.
This was a very important step; of which, however, the results could not be
complete, because the leading offices under this regime, in accordance with
court practice, naturally fell to members of that very nobility whose power was
to be checked; and because, by the quarrels of the Emperor Joseph II and his
mother during their co-regency, the dignity and unity of the imperial power
were lost. In Belgium, as well as in Hungary and the adjoining provinces, the
old feudal constitution remained firm, and successfully resisted Joseph’s
attempts at reform. Thus it was true that in the greater part of the Empire, at
every essential change of policy, either in laws or in administration, at every
demand for money or recruits, the Government was obliged to divide itself up
into forces which acted in different, and often along contradictory, lines.
The ratio of the races to each other, too, was unfavorable
to Austria’s relations to Germany. Even in the middle ages the German
colonization of the old hereditary possessions had been far from being so
complete as in the north-east of Germany. Of the inhabitants of these in the
previous century, at a rough estimate, four out of seven were Germans.
Afterwards the German element was so far outnumbered by the Slavs, Roumanians, Italians, and Magyars, in the acquisitions made
since 1699, that these latter formed three-fourths of the population. To be
sure, the advantage which the Germans gained by the alliance of the imperial
forces in case of war was by no means impaired; but, on the other hand, the
development of a community of material and moral interests was rendered more
difficult. The exclusively Catholic policy of the Court at Vienna only
increased this estrangement. The zeal of the ecclesiastical princes for the
cause of Austria was fully equaled by the jealousy shown by the Protestant
States in the interests of their Church; and, with like mistrust, the Austrian
officials excluded from their borders every product of the German brain which might
appear suspicious to the censorship of the Church. The result of this was, that
only isolated and faint echoes of the great spiritual movement which called
forth the development of our classical literature in Germany reached Austria,
and these were without effect. The paths of the two peoples became more and
more divergent.
As far as foreign relations were concerned, Austria
was indeed, by reason of her Swabian and Belgian provinces, more intimately
connected with Germany a hundred years ago than today. It was in the nature of
things that the attention of the rulers of Hungary, Lombardy, and Tuscany
should turn towards the south and east, to Italy and Turkey, whereas the
questions which arose there awakened but a minor interest in Germany. The latter
was often to feel keenly this difference of interests. Whenever the imperial
armies marched for the defence of Swabia and Belgium,
and in so doing necessarily protected the western frontiers of Germany, the
partiality of Austria for Italy was shown in the division of the spoils at
Germany’s expense. In the endeavor to increase its Italian possessions the
court of Vienna gave up Strasburg; by the cession of Lorraine it paid for the
acquisition of Tuscany; and to gain Venetia it sacrificed Belgium and the left
bank of the Rhine. We see clearly that Germany had good reason to wish that
other powers might rise by the side of Austria which should protect the
northern and western borders of the German territory.
This task fell to Prussia.
Frederick William, the great Elector of Brandenburg,
found his possessions after the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia in a sad
condition: scattered through all parts of Lower Germany, East Prussia under
Polish supremacy, all under the control of an almost independent nobility,—
this was the state of things which presented itself to his unbiassed eye and
energetic will. He succeeded first in shaking off the Polish yoke; then he
turned his newly-acquired authority against the privileges of the estates, and
got for himself the control of the military and the revenue in the Province.
This took place also in Brandenburg, in Cleves, and in the county of Mark. His
first and last object was to establish an ever-ready standing army; for
centuries no power of any importance had cared for the protection of northern
Germany, and he had learned that in the first place one must make life secure,
and afterwards plan to improve its conditions. He succeeded so far as to drive
out from Brandenburg and Prussia the Swedes, whose nation since the days of
Gustavus Adolphus had grown to be one of the great powers; and he was able with
an armed hand and a defiant brow, to confront even Louis XIV, at that time the
disposer of the destinies of Europe. On the ground of these services, his son
Frederick obtained, after great efforts, the royal crown of Prussia; and his
successor, Frederick William I., became after him the founder of the first
modern State in Germany. His was a nature in which the repulsive and the
imposing, the uncouth and the admirable, were closely united. In his manners a
rough and unrefined peasant, in his family a tyrant, in his government a
despot, choleric almost to madness, his reign would have been a curse to the
country, had he not united with his unlimited power a rare executive ability
and an incorruptible fidelity to duty; and from first to last he consecrated
all his powers to the common weal. By him effective limitations were put upon
the independent action of the provinces, and upon the overgrown privileges of
the estates. He did not do away with the guilds of the different orders, but
placed them under the strict control of a strongly centralized superintendence,
and compelled their members to make every necessary sacrifice for the sake of
assisting him in his efforts for the prosperity and power of Prussia. It is
astonishing to see with what practical judgment he recognized a needed measure
both in general and in detail; how he trained a body of officials, suited in
all grades to the requirements of their position; how he disciplined them in
activity, prudence, and rectitude, by strict inspection, by encouraging
instruction, and by brutal punishments; how he enforced order and economy in
the public finances; how he improved the administration of his own domains, so
that it became a fruitful example to all proprietors; and how, full of the
desire to make the peasants free owners of the soil, although he did not yet
venture on such a radical measure, he nevertheless constantly protected the
poor against the arbitrariness and oppression of the higher classes. In matters
connected with the Church, he held unswervingly to religion and to
Christianity, but repelled every tendency toward sectarian bigotry. The royal
family had long, been attached to the Calvinistic Church, and by far the larger
part of the population were Lutheran; hence the King was naturally led to make
the contending creeds subordinate to the unity of the State, and, in virtue of
his patriarchal power, to stop the quarrels of the theologians. The number of
his Catholic subjects was not large, but in Geldem and Lingen they also felt the beneficial effects of this course. When a
Protestant zealot once asked him why he had in his army such dangerous subjects
as Catholic chaplains, his reply was simple and significant: because there were
Catholic soldiers. In short, there was no department of life to which he did
not give encouragement and assistance; it is also true that there was none
which he did not render subservient to his own will, and the products of which
he did not make conducive to the one great end,—the independence and aggrandizement
of the State. So that he who was the ruler of, at most, three million people,
created, without exhausting the country, a standing army of eighty thousand
men: a remarkably skillful and ready army, which he disciplined with barbarous
severity on the slightest occasion, at the same time that he looked out for the
welfare of every soldier even in the smallest detail, according to his saying,
that “a king’s warrior must live better than a gentleman’s servant.” What he
had in his mind, almost a hundred years before Schamhorst,
was the universal obligation of military service; but it fared with him in
regard to this as in regard to the freedom of the peasants: strong as he was,
he could not turn the world he lived in upside down; he contented himself with
bequeathing his best ideas to a more propitious future. The foundations of the
government rested upon the estates in spite of all monarchical reforms.
Thus, beside the federative Empire of the Hapsburgs,
arose the small, compact Prussian State, which, by reason of the concentration
of its forces, was a match for its five-times-larger rival. The genius of
Frederick the Great, the son of its founder, snatched from the Court of Vienna,
in a bold attack, the noble province of Silesia, and then made good his claim
to it in an unprecedented war of seven years duration, against a power ten
times as numerous, but badly organized. This brought Prussia at once into the
ranks of the great European Powers. It was all over with Austria’s sole
leadership of the German Empire; at every step she was obliged to take into
account the operations of her feared and hated rival. We emphasize the fact
that this conflict was by no means carried on in a national spirit, nor with a
view to improve the constitution of the German people. Both Prussia and Austria
worked only for their own ends. It has been supposed that in 1756, when
Frederick was threatened by Austria and broke with France, thereby drawing upon
himself the fearful dangers of the Seven Years’ War, he did this in order to
protect, with England’s assistance, the German land from a French invasion; but
we know now, from documents, that this is erroneous, and that Frederick would
have preferred the French alliance (and the consequent occupation of Hanover by
French troops) to the English, if he could still have obtained the former. So
much the more strikingly did the fact stand out at the end of the war, that
Germany had more in common with Prussia than with the Court of Vienna. If
Austria had gained the victory she would have delivered East Prussia to the
Russians and placed Belgium under French protection; and by the recovery of
Silesia she would have lost nothing of her position as a European Power.
It is needless to say how dangerous these cessions
would have been to Germany. The defeat of Prussia would have been a fatal blow
to German liberty. The splendid resistance of Frederick warded off this calamity
from Germany, although he had nothing else in mind than the independence and
greatness of Prussia. The same was true when, at the end of his reign, he
collected about himself the majority of the foremost German princes in a firm
league against the threatened encroachments of the Emperor Joseph II. His
object was not to form a definite nation, but confessedly to keep the imperial
system in its weak condition. For any strengthening of this would be a
strengthening of the imperial idea, and this would be a hindrance to the free
movements of Prussia and to the formation, by the side of Austria’s adherents,
of a party devoted to the interests of Prussia.
His immortal services to Germany were these: he inspired
by his own mighty personality a patriotic pride in the hearts of many thousand
people; he protected with arms and bulwarks the German North, so long defenceless; he set before the eyes of the multitude of
German proprietors for encouragement and example his own management of affairs,
conducted in his father’s spirit; and in place of the immorality, which
prevailed at that time in so many courts, he filled these proprietors with an
honest zeal for the welfare of the people intrusted to them. Thus the second half of the eighteenth century became for the German
race, outside of Austria, a period of earnest aspiration and of joyous
advancement. For the second time in our history there arose a great literature,
which in science and poetry opened a new era for the civilization of our people
and their standing in Europe. After a long period of insignificance and
wretchedness, Germany found herself again in a position to take her place
among cultivated nations. What other people could point to a Frederick ? What
other nation could show achievements in poetry and philosophy which surpassed
those of our great men? When they saw the creations of Klopstock, Lessing, and
Goethe, our people, though politically torn asunder, remembered and realized
the bond of mental unity and affiliation which existed between them. Holsteiners and Swabians, Franks and Saxons, felt
themselves associated with each other in the same mental struggle, in the same
“Sturm und Drang”, in the rejection of everything artificial and conventional,
in the passionate endeavor after pure nature,—the source of all truth and
beauty. However disdainfully Frederick, with his classical taste, branded the
creations of the new German era as flat and insipid: here his people left him
in the lurch. It was in their midst that Lessing developed his power; the
Prussian youth filled the lecture-rooms of Kant and Fr. August Wolf; and the
Berlin public crowded with grateful enthusiasm to the representations of Gotz,
as they did somewhat later to those of Schiller’s dramas. In these matters
there were no longer any barriers between Prussia and the rest of Germany.
But out of this beautiful feeling of mental harmony
there arose no thought of political unification.
Of course there was no lack of discontent with the
existing political conditions; the helplessness of Germany among the European
Powers, the hollowness of the imperial system, the wretched doings of the Diet
at Ratisbon, the despotic influence of many a prince, the stupid arrogance of
many of the nobility, — all this was painfully felt and jealously exposed in
political tracts, in odes, and in the drama. The more the people became
conscious of the inherent excellences of the German nation, the more
unendurable seemed the conflict between the conditions necessary to the
development of these qualities and the actual state of things. But however
severely the critics of the Illumination (Aufklarung)
denounced this state of things, they had no positive solution to offer. These
critics were led by the French influence which affected also certain phases of
our poetry. They found a remedy for the abuses of existing government only in
the unconditional liberation of each individual, leaving it then to these to
create for themselves, by their independent judgment and wise deliberation, new
institutions based on pure reason. By the side of this unlimited individualism
there was no room in politics for a national idea. On the contrary, great minds
were of the opinion that it was bigoted narrowness to confine political service
to any one people, rather than in a spirit of truest philanthropy to set before
one’s self as an aim the welfare of the whole world.
At the same time, under the influence of the mighty
growth of our poetry, the people everywhere utterly gave up their interest in
political questions. It was a generation that did not care for material
comforts; not rich, and yet possessing moderate means, careless in their
morals, but enthusiastic for the beautiful, giving itself up entirely to ideal
sentiment and intellectual revelry. They were ready in every particular to feel
at home and contented in the narrow confines of the small States. They had often
a feeling of personal devotion to their prince; they loved the old, sweet
native land, and believed that they were better off at home than elsewhere. In
spite of all their admiration for Frederick, they thanked Heaven they had lower
taxes to pay and fewer soldiers to furnish than the unhappy Prussians. “We all
admired Fritz,” says Goethe, “but what had we to do with Prussia?” No one
dreamed that this same Prussia could become an essential factor in the
formation of a great German nation.
This then was the situation: in the minds of the
people an increasing mixture of personal and cosmopolitan ideas; and in
practical politics a dualism, the question of sovereignty between Prussia and
Austria.
CHAPTER III.
FOREIGN RULE.—WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.
There came a time which set before the eyes of the
German people a fearful Mene Tekel: a people that allows its unity to be
destroyed is not worthy of existence.
The French Revolution broke out. In Germany, where not
much was yet known about the deeds of Parisian Radicalism, the noblest men
raved for a time over its high-sounding manifestoes, over the inalienable
rights of man, over universal Liberty and Equality, and the fraternization of
all nations. Cosmopolitan enthusiasm flared up once more with a brilliant
blaze.
But bitter disappointment soon followed. This French
freedom turned into the horrors of the Jacobin Reign of Terror. The
Fraternization of the Nations became a pretext for a war of spoliation against
all the neighboring countries. Borne aloft by the storms of the Revolution and
by an unparalleled generalship, the first Napoleon became the master of all
Europe. Nothing was more serviceable to him in this career than the fact that
Germany was divided into small States. From the very first of his appearance on
the scene, a large number of German princes hastened to be counted among his
vassals. When he attacked Austria, Prussia remained neutral; while he was
crushing Prussia, Austria looked calmly on. When he had reached the height of
his power, the German Empire had been already annihilated: there was no longer
any Germany. In its place, one spoke of the Rhenish Confederation under the
august protection of the Emperor of the French. Napoleon arranged the same
according to the principles laid down ten years before by Talleyrand, so that
Prussia and Austria were pushed to the eastward, the one beyond the Elbe, the
other beyond the Inn, and both quite shut out from the new Confederation. In
the rest of Germany were established a number of States of medium size, large
enough to give rise to a definite national feeling within themselves, but not
strong enough to arouse a feeling of independence with regard to others; or, in
other words, strong enough to render permanent the disunion of Germany, and
weak enough to assure the supremacy of France. To this end he created in the
South the royal crowns of Bavaria and Würtemberg, the Grand Duchies of Baden,
Hesse-Darmstadt, etc., and in the North the kingdoms of Westphalia and Saxony,
as well as the Grand Duchy of Berg.
But there was a great difference between the methods
of reconstruction in the North and in the South. The princes, who obtained
power in South Germany by their voluntary adherence to Napoleon, belonged to
native houses. A large majority of their subjects were descendants of old
native families, and the inhabitants of the diminutive States which were
annexed found their condition rarely made worse, and, indeed, often improved.
Napoleon, relying upon the trustworthiness of his vassals, left them undisturbed
in their internal administration, provided they supplied punctually the
required contingent of troops. These troops then fought against Prussia and
Austria, and their enthusiasm over the victories of the Invincible One spread
far and wide among their friends at home. So it came about, that wherever
discontent arose in these countries over the arbitrariness of officials and the
pressure of taxation, the complaints of the people were directed rather against
their native governments than against Napoleon. In other respects, burghers and
peasants lived on in the old traditional customs; there arose an ardent longing
for liberal constitutional rights, but hardly for a national independence.
In North Germany, west of the Elbe, it was quite
otherwise. Except in the case of a few unimportant small States, the native
princes were driven out and the land became the spoils of the foreign
conqueror. Bonaparte princes reigned in Westphalia and Berg; the left bank of
the Rhine, Oldenburg, a part of Hanover, and the Hanse Towns fell directly
under the control of the French; a crowd of French officials, officers, and
garrisons oppressed the country ; the Continental system brought poverty and
wretchedness upon all classes; the French police kept up a suspicious and
domineering surveillance over the schools, correspondence, and society. It was
out of the question at once to forbid the use of the German language; but the
attempt was made, as far as possible to supplant it by the French. Napoleon
planned a vigorous campaign to root out every German characteristic from these
countries; and consequently a patriotic wrath boiled in the hearts of the
oppressed. One conspiracy followed another, but there was no central idea which
looked far ahead into the future. Every one hated the foreign rulers; but the
people of Brunswick and Hesse-Cassel, of Hanover and Altmark, kept apart from
each other. Among the masses this feeling was reduced to an intense desire to
expel the French and then to live peaceably, each under his hereditary prince,
after the manner of their fathers. In this way, hatred of the stranger and
provincial patriotism went hand in hand.
The re-establishment of Germany depended in every way
upon Austria and Prussia. Everything turned on what position these Powers would
take in reference to their great task.
There was as much suffering in Prussia from material
wretchedness and from foreign oppression as there was west of the Elbe. The
country was desolated and impoverished, burdened with exorbitant war-contributions,
and, until the payment of these, encumbered with French garrisons. In addition
to this they felt the burning shame of the loss of their military glory and of
the blotting out of their great past; all hearts were filled with sadness that
the creation of Frederick the Great had fallen and that the honor of Prussia
suffered disgrace. But, while in Westphalia under a foreign government the
patriotic sentiment could vent itself only in impotent tumults; while in Saxony
both king and people felt that they were associates of the great Napoleon ;
while in the pygmy States of Thuringia any spontaneous uprising was
inconceivable, there was still in Prussia an hereditary king reigning over from
four to five million inhabitants; there was in Prussia a government which was
alone able, in spite of the French surveillance, to offer to the ambitious
spirit of the people a live central idea, weapons for a rebellion, and ends
worthy of a struggle. A gracious destiny had given at that time to the
sorely-afflicted King, Frederick William III, two mighty helpers,—Stein and
Scharnhorst, both gifted with strong powers of mind, invincible courage, and
unlimited devotion. Both men understood that, after having fallen into such
depths, the means at hand in the government of Frederick were not sufficient to
bring about a restoration; but that it was necessary to arouse, not by a blind
sense of duty, but by free enthusiasm, the exertion of all the powers of the
people. Thus the thought of political freedom was the first weapon put into the
hands of the Hohenzollern State; not freedom in the popular sense of an increase
of the rights of the individual at the expense of the power of the State, but
in the sense of positively strengthening the State through the patriotic
co-operation of the people in every matter of public interest. On this
principle all the productive powers of the nation should be allowed full swing,
the people should universally receive instruction, and the consciousness of
their having a share in politics would make private and public interests
identical.
The old aims of Frederick William I, the freeing of
the peasants and the introduction of a universal obligation to serve in the
army, were approaching realization. Differences of rank were forgotten in the
thirst for martial glory, which was shared by all. By the side of the system of
royal officials arose the beginnings of self-government on the part of the citizens
themselves. Plans began to be laid for rearranging the provincial estates and
for establishing an Imperial Parliament. Everything was directed toward making
the cause of the Fatherland appear to each citizen his own, thus filling him
with a ready spirit of self-devotion on the eve of this holy war. To be sure,
it is but a caricature of the actual facts to assert, as has been often done
since, that the volunteers and militia of 1813 rushed into arms because the
King had promised them a liberal constitution; no man who risked life and limb
in that struggle to throw off the foreign yoke thought of any such bargain. And
yet it is no less certain that the interminable protraction in the preparation
of the constitution was a deviation from the course entered upon by Stein and
afterwards by Hardenberg, and also from the very spirit of that great period.
The current of ideal conceptions, which bore along the
Prussian statesmen of that time, carried with it irresistibly the greater part
of the people. But there was no lack of apprehensions and of opposition. Many a
burgher grumbled over the new liberty of following any trade, and over the
trouble of municipal self-government; many a peasant on his farm found himself
in no better condition as the result of freedom, but rather in a worse; and the
abominably high rate of taxation oppressed all alike. There was no lack of
small-hearted men who considered it madness to throw one’s self with the
diminutive power of Prussia in the path of the French Colossus.
Political differences, too, arose. A number of influential
officers saw in Scharnhorst’s projects the abandonment of all discipline in
the army and the decay of the old Prussian military system. The declaration
that the army should be “the people in arms” seemed to them to be the
proclamation of an armed revolution.
No less offensive to a great part of the nobility of Kurmark, Pomerania, and Silesia were the popular reforms of
Stein and Hardenberg. Indeed their ancestors had already in 1733 objected to
the recruiting laws of Frederick William I., to even the first step toward
universal obligation to serve, because in this way the peasants would be
withdrawn from the dominion of the proprietors and placed under the control of
the King. The removal of the hereditary subjection of the peasants meant in
their eyes the overthrow of the entire social order. They thought that, at any
rate, if the peasant was to be no longer subject to the proprietor, the land
which had been formerly intrusted to him should now
return into the hands of its owners; he might then, in the full enjoyment of
his newly-found liberty, seek for himself elsewhere a shelter from wind and
weather. They were angry that, in the future, even burghers could purchase fine
estates or become officers in the army, and that the farther projects of the
Reform party threatened even the privileges of the nobility in regard to
taxation and, patrimonial tribunals.
And what was finally to be expected, if new and
powerful Imperial constituencies were to rise out of a state of society so
indiscriminately levelled? The way would be opened to all the disorders of the
great French Revolution, to the downfall of the monarchy and of the entire
edifice of the State. The King himself was not always free from such
apprehensions. For years he put off the proclamation of the universal
obligation to serve, and felt a hesitancy especially about the establishment of
Imperial constituencies. Meanwhile, Hardenberg gradually succeeded in gaining
his approval of the plan for a constitution based on such constituencies, so
that he publicly mentioned the same in 1810, in a law relating to the finances.
While Stein and Scharnhorst laid at the foundation of
their projects the right of the people to have a voice in the government, they
proposed, as the highest aim of the War of Independence, the creation of a
firmly united Germany—a conception no less ideal. The lesson of the last few
years had made too deep an impression; Germany had been ruined through its own
disintegration, and had dragged Prussia with it into the abyss. It was well
known that the wild fancies of the Conqueror hovered about the utter annihilation
of Prussia; if this should take place, then east as well as west of the Elbe
not only political independence, but every trace of a German spirit, the German
language and customs, German art and learning,—everything would be lost and
wiped out by the foreigners.
But this fatal danger was perceived just at the time
when every one had been looking up to Kant and Schiller, had been admiring
Faust, the world-embracing masterpiece of Goethe, and had recognized that
Alexander von Humboldt’s cosmological studies and Niebuhr’s Roman History had
created a new era in European science and learning. In such intellectual
attainments the Germans felt that they were far superior to the vanquisher of
the world and his great nation ; and so the political interests of Prussia and
the salvation of the German nationality exactly coincided. Schleiermacher’s
patriotic sermons, Fichte’s stirring addresses to the German people, Humboldt’s
glorious founding of the Berlin University, served to augment the resisting
power of Prussia, while Scharnhorst’s recruits and militia were devoted to the defence of German honor and German customs. Every one felt
that German nationality was lost, if Prussia did not come to its rescue, and,
too, that there was no safety possible for Prussia, unless all Germany were
free.
What a remarkable providence it was that brought
together, as in the Middle Ages, on this ancient colonial ground a throng of
the most energetic men from all districts of Germany! For neither Stein nor his
follower Hardenberg, nor the generals, Schamhorst,
Blucher, and Gneisenau, nor the authors, Niebuhr, Fichte, and K. F. Eichhorn,
nor many others who might be mentioned, were born in Prussia; yet because their
thoughts centred in Germany, they had become loyal
Prussians. The name Germany had been blotted from the political map of Europe,
but never had so many hearts thrilled at the thought of being German.
Thus on the most eastern frontier of German life, in
the midst of troubles which seemed hopeless, the idea of German unity, which
had lain dormant for centuries, now sprang up in a new birth. At first this
idea was held exclusively by the great men of the times, and remained the
invaluable possession of the cultivated classes; but once started it spread far
and wide among the younger generation, inspired the ranks of the Prussian
army, and thence rapidly extending became the common property of numerous circles,
even beyond the Prussian borders.
Out of the glowing desire to sweep off from German
land the foreign tyrant, with all his vassals and his creatures, arose in the
fancy of the valiant youth the image of a compact Empire, strong in itself and
ruled by a strong hand, the united strength of which no adversary could
endanger. Arndt sang:
Das ganze Deutschland soil es
sein.
So weit die deutsche Zunge klingt.”
It had been found by experience that neither Austria
nor Prussia alone could be a match for the foreign oppressor, and that the
sovereign smaller States were ready and eager to turn traitor. The thing to do,
then, was to rally them all, Styrians, Brandenburgers, Bavarians, and Lower-Saxons, about the old
Imperial banner, and to set up again in renewed vigor the Emperor upon the
Imperial throne, before whose glory all petty individualism must keep silent,
and all the States of Europe must bow their heads as in the old days of the
Ottos and Hohenstaufens. With such hopes as these the
flower of the Prussian nation, when the call to the struggle of independence
sounded, streamed to their banners filled with trust in God and love of the
Fatherland, equally ready for the wild charge or for protracted endurance, and
rendered by their enthusiasm for the national idea indifferent to any kind of
danger. However indefinite and vague many of their political notions were, they
were certainly right in their conviction that the object of their efforts
involved the true secret of a new and glorious future for Germany.
But the leading statesmen, Stein and Hardenberg, who
were called to put into practical shape these ideals and to break the path for
their realization, were forced soon to feel in all its naked truth the fact,
that it was easier to defeat the mighty Napoleon than to bend the German
sentiments of dualism and individualism to the spirit of national unity.
These men, assuming that others shared their spirit,
had from the beginning, in full confidence and assurance, striven for close and
helpful association with Austria. After the glorious but unfortunate battles of
Lutzen and Bautzen, they found themselves under the necessity of securing at
any price the assistance of Austria in the field, and thus Austria gained and
kept ever after the political direction of the War of Independence. Here was a
marked instance of the irresistible power of traditional sentiments, growing
out of a long past, in determining the decisions of the present. Both powers
fought hand in hand against Napoleon; but quite as certainly as the aim of
Prussia’s policy was to be the creation of a united German Empire, just so
surely did Austria see that her salvation depended upon the continuance of
German disunion.
Indeed, whoever in the spring of 1818 passed from the
Prussian headquarters to the Austrian capital, might well have believed himself
transported into a new world. Austria, too, had suffered many losses through
Napoleon; but yet she had remained a Great Power, internally independent; she
had no French garrisons in her provinces, and had recently seen one of her
archduchesses mount the throne of France. After four terrible ware peace seemed
tolerably secure; everybody looked forward to a comfortable period of repose,
and shuddered at the thought of fresh quarrels. To be sure, they had little
affection for the dangerous Bonaparte, but there was hardly any of that burning
hatred and bloodthirsty passion to be found here, which fired every Prussian
heart. It is true that the Viennese cabinet took advantage of every
opportunity to check the advance of the French power; but that which in Berlin
was the one thing thought about, the freeing of the German people from the
foreign yoke, appeared in Vienna to be only one isolated political need, surely
not the first, and neither the most important nor the most pressing. This was
inevitably so from the geographical position of Austria’s provinces, from the
internal organization of her monarchy, and from the old traditions of her
ruling family. In the severe distress arising from Napoleon’s violence the
Vienna government saw only a temporary inconvenience, which indeed, they wished
to shake off as soon as possible, but they considered that a permanent
association with France would afterwards not only be easily attained by proper
management, but would also be exceedingly advantageous.
Much more serious and likely to be lasting appeared to
them their anxiety about the growth of the Russian power, which by its advance
upon Turkey threatened to surround Hungary from three sides. As for positive
hopes and plans, there was no project dearer to their hearts as Catholics than
the recovery of the Austrian rule over Italy, and thereby of their dominant
influence in the Vatican. In comparison with these vital questions German
affairs stood in the background. In point of fact, the Austrians could have in
these latter only a negative interest. What the cultivated classes in Prussia,
wrote Metternich, call “German spirit,” has come to be with us no more than a
myth. Of course, Germany must not remain French: that went without saying; and
they were therefore ready, upon favorable conditions, to join a Russo-Prussian
alliance. If the struggle were successful, then would Austria, as would be
proper for that proud imperial house, claim a controlling voice at the German
Courts, but, of course, never get so entangled in German matters as to be
obliged to assume any dangerous responsibilities, or to be exposed to any
reflex meddling of Germany in Austrian affairs. Of themselves, then, these two
principles stood fixed: no such thing as a German Empire must be thought of;
and secondly, Germany must not fall under the leadership of Prussia.
Antipathy towards Prussia was confessedly nothing new
in Vienna; but this feeling was greatly heightened by the internal policy of
the Prussian government, as urged by Stein. His suggestion of reforming the
State by beginning at the bottom, and calling all the powers of the nation into
political activity, so as to make the holy war a subject of spontaneous
enthusiasm on the part of each individual: all that seemed to the statesmen on
the Danube to be a revolutionary outrage. So that, as that sentiment gained
ground in Prussia, and the Prussian people began to be filled everywhere with a
passionate desire for political recognition, and finally drove the hesitating
King irresistibly to decisive steps, the Viennese could not comprehend such
dreadful things in any other light than as the result of a widespread
demagogical conspiracy; they felt sure that the whole country must be full of
the machinations of secret societies, which, while pretending to work against
Napoleon, in reality were conniving at the overthrow of all social and
monarchical order. York’s revolt from the French on his own responsibility
seemed to be their work, and most certainly Kutusow’s proclamation at Kalisch, in which he summoned the nations of the Rhenish
Confederation to take part in a rebellion against Napoleon, and threatened with
expulsion any of their princes who should not come over to the national party.
In loosely-united polyglot Austria it was impossible
to allow either the system of secret societies, or popular movements, or any
reforms which should begin with the lower classes; consequently they could not
endure to see these spread in Germany, and then threaten to infect Austria
across the borders. Accordingly, it was necessary to sustain the Monarchical
principle against this Revolutionary one, and to support the sovereignty of the
princes of the Rhenish Confederation against the Prussian Jacobins. This, too,
promised further immediate advantages. It was hoped that in this way the
princes of the Rhenish Confederation could be severed from the French alliance,
so long as the war lasted; but afterwards they could be counted on to remain
firm friends of Austria, as the defender of their royal autonomy against
revolutionary Prussia with her unifying tendencies.
In all these views Emperor Francis and his influential
minister, Count Metternich, agreed entirely.1 Francis would listen to nothing
about a restoration of the Imperial dignity. Even in the summer of 1818, he had
declared to his minister: “I should never be willing to be subject to a German
Emperor; and as for being the new Emperor myself, I was never made for it The
new Emperor would find enemies in the princes and in their subject-peoples, and
would have the political schemers on his side. For my part, I shouldn’t consider
myself capable of ruling over such a set.” Consequently Metternich came to the
conclusion that, after all, it was not necessary to rack his brain over a
future German constitution; the German States might each remain in full
autonomy among the nations of Europe, and, through international negotiations,
in case of war, be kept in alliance with Austria, just as he had, in fact,
dealt with Italy. He expressed himself in this way at the beginning of the war
to the Emperor Alexander of Russia, and afterwards also to the English
plenipotentiaries, on both sides meeting with the desired acquiescence.
But in this matter the narrow-minded Emperor Francis
saw further than his wise minister. If the German States should be left
entirely independent, there was great danger lest the perfect community of
their interests should very soon drive them, willingly or unwillingly, into the
arms of Prussia; or, indeed, lest the proximity of France should incite them to
a new Rhenish Confederation. Accordingly, the Emperor insisted upon some
definite arrangement insuring both the exclusion of foreigners from Germany,
and the influence of Austria in matters common to all Germans. It should not
be, of course, an Empire, nor an Imperial Government, nor a Union; for anything
of that kind was, as Metternich rightly observed, unthinkable without a head;
but rather a Confederation of independent and co-equal sovereigns for the
preservation of a common safety and of an internal peace, under the
traditionally sanctioned presidency of Austria. When the Emperor had come to
this decision, Metternich, with his usual cleverness, uttered the following apt
aphorism: In the middle of the continent there should be no void, but rather an overfulness.
Metternich took care not to inform his Prussian
friends prematurely of these intentions, but was so much the more eager in
winning for Austria’s plans those influential Powers who habitually set an
example to Europe. The Czar held in general to Prussia, yet he naturally was
not anxious to support her plans for a mighty German Empire; for, as he said,
if Germany becomes too strong, she will at last become quite independent of us.
England favored Austria’s enterprises even more decidedly. The Prince-Regent,
who in the phraseology of the sporting-world was the first gentleman of Europe,
but who was otherwise a ruler capable of any baseness, had no other notion of
German affairs, than that it was the duty of the Guelph Family to extend the
dominion of Hanover, making it include half of North Germany, from the Elbe to
the Maas. This idea by no means fell in with Prussia’s desire for acquisitions
west of the Elbe, nor with Prussia’s persistent efforts for a practical
Imperial system; consequently he was quite ready to support energetically
Austria’s opposition to German unity.
On the side of Prussia, Stein enjoyed, to be sure,
great personal popularity, but held at that time no official position, that
could assure him of any lasting influence; and Hardenberg, in all matters more
Prussian than German, yielded in blind confidence the most important positions,
almost without resistance, to the Austrian Minister. In this way he conceded to
him full power to make a treaty of alliance with the South German States of the
Rhenish Confederation on the basis of complete independence—of Napoleon, he
meant; and he was, in truth, horrified when Metternich upon that guaranteed to
almost all the princes in the Rhenish Confederation, under purely nominal
restrictions, unlimited sovereignty for the present and for the future, and the
undisturbed possession of their territory as it had been heretofore, thus at
once rendering impossible any German Imperial Constitution worthy of the name.
It may well be asked, what sort of an Imperial system
would be possible, if, to say nothing of Bavaria and the rest of the Lesser
States, there were to be among the members of the Empire two European Great
Powers, each of which, even in Hardenberg’s opinion, should preserve complete
independence. From 1812-1815 Stein and Hardenberg tried hard, by the repeated
proposition of new plans, to effect the squaring of this circle.
We will not follow in detail their various attempts,
all alike hopeless; at last Prussia settled upon the following fundamental
propositions. The Empire should be divided into seven districts (Kreise), of which two should be under the leadership
of Austria; two likewise under that of Prussia; Bavaria, Wurtemberg,
and Hanover were each to be at the head of one. The head of each district
should have command of the army and form the highest court of appeal. The
government of the Empire should then be intrusted to
the five heads of the districts, the presidency regarded as a matter of honor
falling to Austria, and the conduct of business to Prussia. These heads should
at the same time form the legislative upper house of the empire; the lower
house should be composed of the other princes, subordinate rulers, and the
provincial representatives from the single States. For differences between the
states a tribunal of confederates should be established. To the people of each
State should be given a provincial constitution by the Confederate government,
and at the same time a minimum of provincial rights; to every German citizen
should be guaranteed protection of person and property, the right to emigrate
without payment of duty, freedom of the press, religious freedom, equal
recognition of all Christian sects, and the right of public trial. The great
majority of the Petty States eagerly agreed to these propositions.
A strong Imperial system and an assurance of the
rights of freedom were thus sought after in these plans, quite in the spirit of
the War of Independence. In them appeared again Prussia's perfect confidence in
the German spirit of her associates and her hopes to find the future members of
the Confederation always filled with patriotic zeal. Both of the great
Ministers were soon enough forced to see that by this exhibition of confidence
they had entirely misjudged persons and things, and had brought into mortal
danger, by their projects, as well the independence of Prussia as the common
interests of Germany.
Difficulties arose the very first day. The princes of
the Rhenish Confederation, Bavaria, Wutemberg, and
Baden, were unwilling at the very outset to join a German confederation at all,
but were determined to remain in complete independence as European Powers. Then
they protested against the rights to be granted to the people; and when Stein
urged this point with all his impetuous zeal, they decided to display their own
magnanimity by giving their subjects a constitution, in order not to be forced
to do so by the proposed confederation. In fact they repelled curtly any
limitation whatever of their royal sovereignty and every manner of meddling in
the management of their countries on the part of a confederation.
Austria behaved with more reserve. She never would
have allowed the confederation any influence over the imperial patrimonial
dominions, and least of all would she admit there Stein’s system of popular
rights. Meanwhile she wished to retain the alliance of Prussia in the great
European negotiations at the Congress of Vienna, and therefore let the Lesser
States lead in the contest about a German constitution, while she for the time
advocated, herself, a part of Prussia’s propositions.
The whole matter was temporarily crowded out of sight
by the discussions in the Congress over the territorial boundaries of the
Powers. Here again it was characteristic of Austria’s policy that she decidedly
refused to accept her former possessions in Swabia and Belgium, which had been
urgently pressed upon her by several cabinets, especially the former by Prussia.
“We wanted,” said Metternich, “to establish our Empire without there being any
direct contact with France.” He sought and found, in the place of these
possessions, a rich indemnification for his country in Italy, in the immediate
annexation of Lombardo-Venetia, and the indirect control over Tuscany and
Modena.
Austria had indeed grown more and more out of Germany.
She had no longer any interest in defending the Upper Rhine against the French;
and the material basis for the development of any community of interest between
Austria and Germany was already lost.
The territorial reconstruction of Prussia turned out
quite differently. Both Austria and England desired alike that she should be
kept as much as possible out of Germany, and therefore they wished to endow her
with large territories in Poland. But the King had no inclination to increase
the number of his Polish subjects; and in place of this wanted the whole of the
Electorate of Saxony, whose King had remained to the last hour faithful to
Napoleon. Austria, however, violently opposed this; and after a long and
bitter quarrel the result was that Prussia received, in addition to Posen,
Hither-Pomerania, half of Saxony, and her present provinces on the Rhine and
Westphalia, quite separated as they were from her other possessions. By this
she undertook the protection of the North German frontier as well against
France as against Russia; and since her lands now stretched from the Niemen to
the Maas, there could be no longer any German interest that was not at the same
time Prussian. Prussia had grown again into Germany.
Now, although Hardenberg had in these negotiations
experienced some very doubtful proofs of the trustworthiness of his Vienna
friends, yet, when the question of a German Constitution came up again for
discussion, he held unswervingly to his former position. The general course of
debate was as follows: Prussia, backed by the Petty States, made her propositions
for a strong Imperial system; Austria supported them with more or less
modification; but the South German Lesser States opposed them energetically and
unconditionally. Thereupon Austria declared, with many regrets, her opinion
that they were impracticable.
At last, when the hour seemed to him to have arrived,
Metternich, putting aside all wishes of Prussia, produced the project of Herr
von Wessenberg, which openly advocated the system of
a Confederation upon an international basis, of independent and co-equal sovereigns
under Austria’s directing leadership. The Lesser States carried through a
number of improving or weakening amendments, and thus this document received
sanction as the Act of the German Confederation.
This empty production was received by the German
nation at large partly with cold indifference, and partly with patriotic
indignation. The majority of the German governments, too, were discontented
with it. Mecklenburg said it was the best that could be done under the given
circumstances. Hardenberg said, with a sigh, even such a Confederation was
better than none at all. Some years later, Count Bernstorff, the Prussian
minister, declared that the Act of Confederation was the immature result of
over-hasty negotiation.
So much the greater was the satisfaction in the palace
at Vienna. Metternich had been victorious at every point. He had thoroughly
proved to the unwary Hardenberg his diplomatic superiority, and had completely
effected what he had desired for Austria.
It is another question, whether he desired the best
for Austria and Germany, whether he was not merely a skilful diplomat, but also a far-seeing statesman.
If Hardenberg’s scheme of a German constitution had
been realized, then in the Supreme Imperial Council, in the Directory of the
Five Heads of the Districts, Austria would surely have commanded the majority;
for to her as the guardian of royal sovereignty the Lesser States would have
turned, and not to Prussia, filled as she was with ideas of German unity.
Prussia would have been subordinated, and Austria would have held the control
of Germany. In that case the toils, the duties, and the dangers of the whole
government would have fallen to her; to the Emperor Francis the assumption of
these seemed too far-reaching, and Metternich was too indolent to wish it. This
half-and-half state of things, which had just been attained, seemed much
better, in which Austria would need to do nothing directly for Germany, and yet
was so situated that she could restrain their every movement unfavorable to her
interests. Metternich did not see that in the long run such a condition of
things must necessarily become unendurable.
Prussia might well thank Heaven for the undeserved and
gracious providence that nothing came of her plans for a strong Imperial
government with such associates. So long as Austria was the firm supporter of
the exclusive Lesser States in the Confederation, the members remained inimical
to the development of common national interests and to the Prussian projects
for unity. The weaker these members should become, the better, under existing
circumstances, for Prussia and for the future national unity. Viewed in this
way, the crowing out of the Stein-Hardenberg plans by the Act of Confederation
was fortunate for the future of the nation. It by no means follows, of course,
that the Act of Confederation was a satisfactory instrument, even for the
national needs of its own times.
CHAPTER IV
FIRST YEARS OF THE DIET
Judged by what is demanded of a practical political
organization, this German Act of Confederation, which had been produced with so
much effort, possessed about all the faults that might render a constitution
utterly useless.
Instead of a regular confederate government it established
as the only legislative body of Germany a Diet composed of delegates sent from
the thirty-nine sovereign States. It was announced as their mission that they
should guard the external and internal safety; but their power to enact
provisions for securing the same, and their authority to see that such laws
were carried out, were left wholly indefinite. Upon the motion of the
representative of the Kingdom of Saxony, it was decided that all more important
matters, such as changes in the Constitution and permanent regulations
affecting the whole Confederation, should be carried only by the unanimous vote
of all the States; thus reminding one more strongly than ever of the old Parliament
of Poland. Likewise, all matters of common interest, which did not concern the
Confederation as such, were left to the informal agreement of all the States.
One sees at a glance, that this very demand for unanimity
doomed at once and for all time the actions of the Confederation to
unfruitfulness. The motions which had been zealously brought forward by Prussia
and several of the smaller States for certain rights, which should be
acknowledged as belonging to every German, were contracted in the Act of
Confederation into a few meaningless and ill-defined phrases. Along these
lines, too, the sovereignty of the royal governments was not to be encroached
upon.
In every confederation that includes among its members
very strong and very weak States, a greater number of votes is given to the
smaller States than is proportionate to their actual power for the sake of
preserving their political independence; but in this instance this principle
became by exaggeration distorted to a ridiculous degree. In matters of usual
business the eleven larger States had each one vote, while the twenty-eight
smaller ones were grouped into six Curias, each Curia
possessing one vote. Consequently it was possible for the Grand Duchies and the
Petty States by holding together to vote down the combined opposition of
Austria, Prussia, and the other Kingdoms, that is, one-tenth of the population
against nine-tenths. In this Diet legislative power and political importance
were disjoined as much as possible.
For a few matters only was a different method of
voting reserved. Then this Close Council (Engerer Rath) as the body of seventeen votes was officially called, was exchanged
for a Plenum, in which either unanimity or a majority of two-thirds was
required; so that the six largest States, which held, together, twentyeight votes out of seventy, could prevent the
passage of any measure disagreeable to themselves.
The course of business dragged endlessly, as would
naturally be expected in discussions among thirty-nine States. Everything was
at first given into the hands of a committee; after their report the
representatives had to get instructions from their respective Courts, and in
the six lower Curias, two, four, or six different
Governments had to agree about these instructions, a matter which often
consumed months; if the business was especially annoying to any State, it left
its representative an interminably long time without instructions; when finally
the question was ready to be voted upon, new arguments and new objections came
up, and instructions must be received afresh; or else the matter went back to
the committee and often lay buried for years among their documents.
By force of necessity, in place of actual discussion
in the Confederate Diet, diplomatic intriguing was very frequently employed at
the smaller Courts by the larger; and whenever Prussia and Austria had the same
object in view, no one else ventured, except in rare instances, to raise any
objections. Accordingly, as in early times, not constitutional rights, but the
mutual attitude of the Courts of Vienna and Berlin, decided the fate of
Germany.
The provisions of the Act of Confederation were as
unsatisfactory in regard to Germany’s relations with foreign Powers as in
regard to her internal organization. Every sovereign had the right to maintain
and to receive foreign embassies; he might make any sort of a treaty with
non-German governments with the sole limitation that it should not be inimical
to the safety of Germany. Even the trade in mercenaries, as carried on in the
previous century, would not have been excluded by such a provision. This
privilege of the individual States was the more dangerous, since three foreign
Kingdoms were represented in the Confederation: England by Hanover, the
Netherlands by Luxemburg, Denmark by Holstein.
The government of these countries would doubtless be
administered in accordance not with German but with foreign interests, and the
danger of this mongrel position, not only for the countries themselves, but for
the whole public life of Germany, would soon enough appear. Moreover, it need
scarcely be said that even the presiding Power, Austria, by reason of the
preponderance of her crown-lands, which were independent of the Confederation,
would hardly have a warmer heart for German interests than these three foreign
Courts.
The uncertainty of all these things was completed by
the incorporation of the Law relating to the German Constitution into the Acts
of the Congress of Vienna, which united the five Great Powers, with the
addition of Sweden, Spain, and Portugal, as the regulators of the common
affairs of Europe. Austria and Prussia had advocated this measure in the belief
that in this way the security of the Confederation would be guaranteed by all
Europe. But in St. Petersburg, Paris, and London the matter was looked at in
quite another way, namely: after the Act of Confederation as a part of the
doings of the Congress of Vienna had been put under the protection of the
Powers, Germany herself could not change anything in it without the permission
of these guaranteeing Powers, but stood under the guardianship of Europe, just
as in the eighteenth century Poland had stood under that of Russia.
This indefiniteness was the more critical, since from
the first very many German princes did not hesitate, in case of internal
troubles or of disagreements with their neighbors, to call to their aid
especially the mighty support of the Russian Emperor; as far as it was possible
through diplomacy, the two Great Powers in the Confederation, Austria and
Prussia, rejected any such intervention; but when, in 1831, a vote of the
Confederation advocated by these two Powers was met by a protest on the part of
the three foreign Powers, who considered themselves Protectors of the German
Constitution, then the Confederate Diet under Prussia’s leadership resented
determinedly this interference on the part of foreigners. Thereupon the
foreigners let this individual case pass, but still asserted their claim; and,
as we shall see, often tried later to enforce it in a dangerous way. So that
the most important demand of a great people, national independence, had become
for Germany, at the conclusion of her glorious war of liberation, instead of an
acknowledged right, a question of force.
It must be confessed that a more wretched condition of
unconstitutionality was never forced upon a great people just crowned with the
laurels of victory, than was imposed upon the Germans by the Act of
Confederation. The mighty thoughts, which had prepared the way for the
re-birth of Prussia and the liberation of Germany connected with it, gave way
now to feelings of an opposite nature. It is no wonder that an angry cry of
opposition arose on all sides.
The young heroes returning from the war filled the
universities with their patriotic indignation, and by the founding of societies
of students (Burzchentchaften), represented at
all the universities, they sought to fill all the educated youth of Germany
with their enthusiasm for unity, justice, and freedom. These societies, for the
most part, cherished ambitions which were thoroughly ideal. They did not look
to the overthrow of present conditions, but relied upon the training of the
rising generation. By moral elevation and patriotic inspiration they hoped to
lead the State of the future to the great goal of national unity. To be sure,
their notions of this future State were generally indefinite, and were mere
unpractical fancies; indeed this enthusiasm rose in some groups to the pitch of
wild fanaticism, so that they were even ready to seize sword and dagger for
tyrannicide. Yet such enthusiasts never succeeded in securing in the societies
at large any great following for their projects.
Bavaria and Baden received their constitutions simultaneously
; and in Munich, as in Carlsruhe, the liberal majority of the representatives
raised the cry for extension of their rights, and proposed a scheme which
brought forward again all those Prussian demands, which had been rejected at
Vienna, together with very important additions. An energetic movement on the
part of the press in South Germany, Thuringia, and on the Rhine supported them
in newspapers, journals, and larger works. Even today the names of Rotteck, Oken, C. Weicker, Görres are still remembered. At that time, and later also, these writers have been
blamed for being unscientific, shallow, and semi-revolutionary ; and, in fact,
it cannot be gainsaid that the liberal school of those days was often quite as
untrained and unpractical as were the Teutons of the Burschenschaften.
One cannot help noticing in these writings a mixture of incorrect and erratic
notions of ancient German freedom, of English parliamentary rights, and of
radical French ideas. They, too, fell into the chief mistakes of the European
liberalism of the times, in that they,1n their zeal for individual rights,
failed to see the need of a strong government, which alone could guard these
rights from sinking into freedom destroying anarchy; and just for this reason, too, when it came to the test,
they proved too awkward to administer their government successfully. Yet in
spile of all this, their important services in perilous times cannot be
overlooked. To mention only one matter: in their respective States they
brought, after untiring efforts, the finances, which had been thrown into
confusion by a long course of wilfulness and
extravagance, back to a firm basis of order and regularity. Furthermore, and
this indeed was the main feature, just as the Burschenschaften kept alive the central thought of the liberation-period, German unity, so the
South German Chambers kept alive in the national consciousness for a whole
generation, and in spite of every defeat and opposition, that other one, the
idea that the people should have a share in public affairs. We must indeed hold
them in honorable memory, when we consider that we today are enjoying the full
benefit of these rich blessings.
But for the time these efforts were to suffer a severe
check.
Prince Metternich was indignant over them at every
point. In order that he might control the German countries according to the old
rights of the Hapsburgs, without at the same time undertaking the actual government
of them, their disunion was necessary to him. He said that there was no more
atrocious idea than that of uniting the German people into one Germany; and
even this reason alone would make him the defender of royal sovereignty and the
enemy of every limitation of the same by any popular movement.
Yet he hated every liberal tendency, because, if it
once gained a footing in Germany, it might thence exert a disturbing influence
upon the peace of Austria. After the impressions which he received in his youth
from seeing the jubilation of 1789 in France lead directly to the bloody
dictatorship of 1793, his notions of liberalism, radicalism, and communism ran
into each other completely. He felt that unless the Burschenschaften and the liberal declaimers of the chamber were at once got out of the way,
Germany and Austria would be inevitably the prey of a social revolution. He
knew no other means of meeting such dangers than universal repression through
police regulations. He felt sure that now was the time for extreme and thorough
measures in all the German States. He saw now that the magnificent work of his
own hands, the Confederate Diet, could be of no use in this pressing need,
encumbered as it was with such wearisome official formalities. It was
necessary in some way to strengthen the hands of the leading powers of the
Confederation. The Diet was an organized anarchy, sanctioned by the articles of
the Act of Confederation; according to the old rule, then, this anarchy should
be got rid of by a coup d’état; but this was impossible without the
co-operation of Prussia, and whether this could be gained was very uncertain,
in view of Prussia's position in the Confederation.
Just at this time, it happened that out of a small
group of the Burschenschaften, which had always been
kept down by the majority, there arose two young fanatics, one of whom stabbed
the poet Kotzebue, whom he held to be a servile partisan of princes and a Russian
spy, and the other directly afterwards attempted to assassinate Herr von Ibell, the Nassau President. The excitement that these
crimes aroused was boundless. Even King Frederick William and Hardenberg were
as angry as they were alarmed; and we can easily understand that the king
should begin a strict investigation of the extent to which demagogism prevailed
at each of the Prussian universities. Unfortunately these two outrages became
the pretext for a noisy movement on the part of all the old opponents of the
reforms that Stein had started in 1808, and which Hardenberg had followed up.
Those investigations fell under the management of
bureaucratic and feudally inclined absolutists; and a glaring light is thrown
upon the spirit in which they were conducted, not only by the arbitrariness and
harshness which obtained everywhere, but by the fact that those men who had
been the first to awaken and nourish the spirit of the War of Independence,
namely, Stein and Gneisenau, Schon and Justus Gruner, Schleiermacher and Arndt,
Jahn and Görres, were just the ones who were attacked
in the proceedings of this court, or at least named as suspicious in its documents.
But then Metternich raised his voice. In pompous
declarations he set before the eyes of his frightened associates in the
Confederation the red spectre of a monstrous
conspiracy, which was spread through all Germany, and which could be put down
only by united efforts and by immediate action. Thus he won Prussia’s assent to
the plan of convening a small number of the reliable Powers, of drawing up with
them the necessary resolutions and of then forcing the Confederate Diet to
accept these decrees.
In compliance with this request, nine Ministers
assembled at Carlsbad to root out forever, in accordance with Metternich’s
propositions, the infamous idea of German unity from the heads of Germans. It
was agreed to put under police supervision the entire system of instruction in
Germany, to subject to the censorship of the police every pamphlet containing
less than twenty pages, to compel by military force every delinquent government
to carry out these commands, and to establish in Mayence an Investigating Commission of the Confederation who should attempt to suppress
the demagogues in all the German States. Prussia, which in this matter had in
every case proposed the severest measures, wished to invest this body with
judicial powers; but the Emperor Francis wrote, with almost cynical naivety
that one of course was not yet sure whether anything would come of the
Commission. He was quite right: nothing of any account did come of it. Yet the
Decrees remained in force. Finally, Metternich would have liked to lay the same
fetters on the chambers as on the universities. But difficulties arose in the
way of this. It was decided to hold a new conference some months later in
Vienna, and there to discuss the question of deputies, as well as to undertake
a general revision of the Act of Confederation.
The resolutions agreed upon at Carlsbad were then laid
before the Diet for acceptance. The thirty small States here learned for the
first time the contents of these Decrees; but the Great Powers vehemently
objected to any further discussion or postponement of the decision. The small
States were frightened into acquiescence. When the motion was put they voted
unanimously, Yea; but the dissenters were graciously allowed to hand down to
posterity their No in a private protest.
Thus had Metternich, inconsistently with his former
views, called into life a Confederate power provided with dictatorial
authority, an ominous caricature of German unity. Its right to existence rested
on the clause of the Act of Confederation, which declared that the
Confederation should care for the internal safety of Germany. But the Decrees
struck at the very life of the first and chief principle of the Act of
Confederation, the independence of the individual States. For if the expression
“safety” might be stretched to the extent that it was here, then, whenever it
might seem necessary, everything, not only the schools and the press, but the
criminal and civil law of the individual States, might be regulated in the name
of the Confederation, and even their police and their armies might all be made
to swear fidelity to this Confederate power—all for the protection of the
internal safety. As a result of this, the prospect opened for the Emperor
Francis, not exactly of holding the position of German emperor, as Metternich
exultingly fancied, but at least of being at the head of an all-powerful German
police system. It was a heroic method of cure, which Metternich thought to
employ for the protection of the German sovereigns against the plague of
demagogism. The only question was whether the cure would not seem more
dangerous to the patient than the disease.
In spite of their dislike to demagogues and journalists,
a large number of the German courts were not, as a matter of fact, at all
contented with the Carlsbad coup d'état. Several disapproved of the
substance of the Decrees, and almost all of them were angry at the inconsiderateness
and illegality of the method of procedure. Even Bavaria and Würtemberg,
although they had taken an active part at Carlsbad, felt afterwards anxious
about the extent to which those principles, which had been there agreed upon,
might be carried, and about the possible way in which they might affect the
independent position of the individual States.
Just at this time a certain turn of affairs, which
took place in Berlin, was decisive. It was not occasioned by any dislike to
Austria, but by internal political considerations. Two great questions came up
for discussion.
The famous Law of May 22, 1815, had given promise to
Prussia of an Imperial Constitution, a remodelling of
the provincial estates in keeping with the spirit of the age, and, as a result
of these changes, a representation of the people by delegates from the royal
constituencies, who should have a voice in the discussion of laws concerning
personal freedom and property, including questions of taxation. It was a very
scanty morsel for the hunger of the liberal parties: there were to be
representatives of the people, who were not even chosen by the people, who
should have very restricted powers, and the right to exercise those only in so
far that they might take part in the discussions, but without the right to
vote.
Meanwhile the law had assured to the people a
constitution, of whatever nature it might be; all the Liberals awaited
impatiently the fulfilment of this promise, and Hardenberg was continually hard
at work upon the preliminaries. Now he met at every step the stiff-necked
opposition of that party of the nobility that had since 1808 resisted the plans
of reform proposed by himself and Stein, and he heard the news from Carlsbad
that Metternich wished to shape the constitutions of the individual States
quite in accordance with the notions of that feudal party. He was determined
never to admit that such interference was a function of the Confederation.
Then, too, it happened that a Prussian law of 1818
decreed the establishment of a system of moderate customs upon the frontiers,
hitherto open. This would be of immense advantage to Prussia’s finances, but
quite as annoying to her German neighbors, who were affected by it. There arose
at once a cry of indignation over this new division in the German Fatherland,
to which Prussia calmly replied with the observation that at present a
tariff-union with Austria, Hanover, and Holstein was impossible, but advised the
remaining States to join the Prussian system of customs. In 1819 the Prince of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen yielded to this proposition. But
no one dreamed that this was the first step of a great national development. On
the contrary, the cry arose everywhere that the Prussian tariff-law must be
repealed in the name of the Confederation, and that the matter must be
discussed at once in the approaching Conference at Vienna.
This disturbance was all that was needed to render the
Carlsbad doctrines utterly repugnant both to the Royal Chancellor and to the
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Bemstorff, a
highly educated, dispassionate, and prudent man. However ardently Harden- berg
had striven for a strong Imperial government, he was now discontented, as he
said, because the Confederal it management had turned out differently from
what he had presupposed: one ought not to intrust them with such far-reaching powers, which they might misuse to the injury of
Prussia and of Germany. With such instructions Bemstorff went to Vienna, and Metternich, pleased or displeased, had to make the best of
it.
This time, all the governments were represented; this
alone prevented a repetition of the proceedings at Carlsbad. The principles of
the Act of Confederation were not to be changed, but more clearly and exactly
de fined, so that they could be better put into practice. This was the origin
of the second fundamental set of laws of the Confederation, namely, the Vienna
Final Act, which advocated throughout a moderate individualism. The attacks
upon the Prussian system of tariff fell through completely. The objections to
it were dismissed as an item of business to be brought up in the Confederate
Diet. The establishment of a Confederate Court of Justice, before which the
opponents of the Prussian tariff-laws might have brought their suit, was
prevented. As an amendment to the eleventh Article of the Act of Confederation,
in which certain rights of the individual States were fixed, Bemstorff succeeded in having added to the sixth article of
the Final Act a clause, according to which “the voluntary relinquishment by any
member of any of its sovereign rights might take place in any part of the
Confederation without the vote of the whole Confederate body, only on condition
that it was done in favor of another member of the Confederation” — implying
that in this case it could be done. Thus, any future tariff-treaties made by
Prussia with other States were secured against opposition on the part of the
Confederation.
No mention whatever was made of Metternich's wish to
subject the representative constitutions of the individual States to the
legislation of the Confederation; on the contrary, the very opposite of this
was embodied in several articles. To be sure, the inviolableness of the
monarchical principle was strongly emphasized, and it was declared no less
expressly that no prince could by any resolutions passed by the provincial
assembly of his state be hindered in the fulfilment of his duties as a member
of the Confederation. But, at the same time, the duty of the sovereigns to
establish provincial parliaments was repeatedly recognized; the regulation of
the rights of the Estates was left, with other internal matters, to each State;
the right of the Confederation to interfere was restricted to cases of
insurrection; and the opinion was often expressed, that recognized existing
constitutions could be changed only by constitutional proceedings.
Thus Individualism, challenged by the illegal stretching
of the Confederate powers, manifested in the Carlsbad Decrees, won the day
again, and this time favored liberal and national interests, in contrast to the
Confederate Power which should naturally have been their protector. Restored
and encouraged, Individualism roused itself also in its own stronghold, the
Confederate headquarters at Frankfort, to further immediate triumphs; which, it
is true, answered many Liberal longings, but which shamefully disregarded the
serious needs of the nation.
As we have seen, the Confederation had for its aim the
internal and external safety of Germany. We have already portrayed the way in
which the internal safety was cared for; now let us consider what was done to
secure external safety. Since 1816, the two Great Powers had kept proposing
steps toward the establishment of some practical Confederate military
organization. For such an “organic” or permanent arrangement, unanimity was
required; Prussia carried on the affair with ardor, Austria with marked
sluggishness, and the rest of the States with a reluctance which was hardly
concealed; it must be confessed, too, that in their attitude towards the matter
the Governments of these States were in most cases sure of the hearty
acquiescence of their Chambers. No State wished to take upon itself the expense
and the burdens of a standing army. The Governments strongly objected to
letting the Confederate Power meddle with the most precious jewel of the Crown,
military supremacy; and many Liberals considered the troops of the line to be
the most dangerous tool of despotism. The conviction was current that after
Napoleon’s fall peace was certain for a long time to come, and that in case of
an emergency the large armies of Austria and Prussia were at hand, who from
motives of self-interest would be obliged to protect the other States.
While the Lesser and Petty States continued to hold
these views, the negotiations dragged on for five years, until finally a
provisional military organization was effected, a shining example of the truth
that the strongest position is that of passive resistance. According to this
plan, the Confederate army should be composed of contingents from each State,
grouped into ten army corps of thirty thousand (in round numbers) apiece, of
which Prussia and Austria should each contribute three, Bavaria one, and the
contingents from the other States should together make up the remaining three.
The demand in point of numbers was not large, being
only one percent of the population; but so much the more weight was to be
placed upon improvement in the quality, that is to say, upon uniformity in
military training, equipment, and discipline; upon the organized support of the
army; and especially upon a fixed singleness in the matter of supreme command.
But, as a matter of fact, just the opposite of all this obtained. The
arrangement of the contingent was, even in war, left entirely to the individual
States; it was not allowable to absorb a small contingent in a large one, lest
there should be even the appearance of supremacy on the part of one Confederate
State over another. In peace there was no common supreme authority. In time of
war, the Confederate Diet should choose a commander-in-chief, who should
receive instructions only from the Diet and its War Department, and in whose
headquarters the contributors of the contingents should exercise their
sovereign rights constitutionally through independent officers of high rank.
Thus the matter was finally decided in 1821. But, as
soon as the plan began to be carried out, countless protestations and
objections were raised on the part of the thirty Petty States at the unheard-of
and oppressive burdens laid upon them. Not for ten years was any settlement
arrived at; and it was four years more before the organization of the ninth and
tenth army corps (Saxony, Hanover, and the North German Petty States) was
fixed, even upon paper. We shall later have occasion to consider how matters stood
in reality. As a matter of fact, it was only Prussia, where indeed the want of
means kept the actual military condition below the requirements of the law of
the land, that did much more in this matter than the Confederate Constitution
demanded.
Prince Metternich had let these unpleasant things,
which he could not hinder, take their course. It may well be supposed that a
stricter Confederate Constitution that would have forced him to be ready to
place at. any time ninety thousand men at the disposal of a commander-in-chief,
who might be a Prussian, would hardly have been agreeable. The need of money
was felt in Austria even more than in Prussia, so that the peace-footing of the
army, with double the population, was scarcely stronger than the Prussian. This
made Metternich still more anxious to build further upon the foundation laid in
Teplitz and in Carlsbad, and so to keep Prussia dependent in its politics upon
the Imperial City.
In spite of the fact that his hopes in regard to
internal German policy and the leadership of Prussia had been shipwrecked at
the last Vienna Conference, he still waited for a favorable turn in politics at
Berlin itself, which should bring the State of the Hohenzollerns again under
the wings of the royal double eagle.
And he had good cause for waiting. For us, too, it
will be worth our while to consider somewhat more closely the change in
Prussia’s politics at this time, since the elements there at work have
meanwhile gained a great significance for the further development of the
constitution of Germany as a whole.
While Count Bernstorff was doing his utmost in Vienna
to protect the future Prussian Constitution from any encroachment on the part
of the Confederate Power, the King in Berlin was beginning to be doubtful about
the execution of the law of May 22. He had signed, as recently as January
17,1820, the law, brought to a conclusion by Hardenberg, about tariff reform
and public debts, which contained the specification, that no new law should be
made without the consent of the Estates, and that to them a yearly report
should be presented concerning the condition of the public debt.
The complaints of the South German Confederate Princes
about the unmanageable actions of their Chambers had already, indeed, made him
uneasy; and now followed, in the course of the year 1820, the alarming news of
revolution, in Spain, in Portugal, in Naples, in Piedmont, and in Greece. Half
Europe seemed shaken by a continuous earthquake: was this an opportune time to
change the basis of the Prussian monarchy, the absolute supremacy of the Crown?
A large number of the high officials answered this
question energetically in the negative. They pointed out that more than
one-third of the State, composed of the most heterogeneous fragments, had been
acquired within the last few years, or had been won back after being under a
revolutionizing foreign rule; that in order to restore the unity of the State
all branches of the administration had necessarily been remodelled and that this work was not yet accomplished; that the evil results of the war
had not yet been made good, nor the deficit made up; and was it advisable to
risk exposing the safe conduct of the Reform to the meddling interference of
popular representatives, who would naturally, on account of their origin, be
governed by local interests; who would perhaps, in accordance with the spirit
of the times, be filled with the demagogic thirst for rule, and who would, at
all events, be ignorant and inexperienced? That would be wilfully exposing the power of the Crown, and perhaps the unity of the State, to mortal
danger.
Hand in hand with this bureaucratic opposition, the
feudal spirit also was active in furthering the same end, if indeed led by
other motives. The feudal Opposition repudiated likewise royal estates because
they apprehended, not that the tendency to centralization would be checked, but
that it would be fostered. Nor would they listen to Hardenberg’s proposition
about provincial estates, that is to say, a parliament for each of the eight
new provinces; but they demanded the revival of the old estates for each of the
small States which were now united under the Prussian crown, for Kurmark and Neumark, for Magdeburg and the county of Mark,
for Cleves, for Geldern, and so forth. Their ideal
was the condition of things before the usurpation of the Great Elector. Their
representatives asserted that the Act of Confederation renounced the principle
of centralization out of respect for the legitimate sovereignty of the German
princes. They claimed to be also the legitimate possessors of their seigniorial
privileges, who in their small leagues had once ruled over their territories in
virtue of their hereditary right; and that only upon this foundation could any
natural and consequently lasting system of government be raised. Their theory
was that the lord of the manor was the natural head of the household and its
dependents; the magistrate, of the citizens; the pastor, of the parish; the
provincial parliament, of the province; and the king, of the whole State.
Against such a closely-united structure, permeated
from top to bottom with a controlling authority, and therefore pervaded with
the spirit of obedience and discipline, the storms of revolution would break in
vain. Each of these heads should exercise his authority with perfect freedom in
all matters within his own jurisdiction, the lower untrammelled by bureaucracy and the king not harassed by an imperious parliament. It would
be the government of a free king over a free people.
That is to say, nowhere revolution, and everywhere
freedom. Room for every thing, except the small matter of the freedom of the
citizen and of the peasant! It was quite as uncertain, too, whether, with all
this free administration on the part of so many mediate authorities, there
would be any power left to the Crown or unity to the State.
This feudal doctrine was most welcome to Prince
Metternich, whose whole system rested upon the political disability of the
people and the splitting-up of the German nation. How often had he represented
to the King that Prussia could never be a united state on account of the
diversity of its component parts! Provincial estates, he believed, were
excellent; royal estates, dangerous. With the same idea he recommended the
revival of internal excise duties in the place of the new system of taxes on
imports. He said he would not trust the conservative faith of the Prussian
officials across the street; but he was certain that the true and reliable
bulwark against a great revolution was alone to be found in the principles of
that party that advocated the re-establishment of the old estates. What more
could be said, from an Austrian point of view, in favor of these principles,
than that in following them out Prussia would soon rise to Austria’s condition
of prosperity?
The King, importuned from all possible sides,
hesitated a long time. Finally, on the 11th of July, 1821, the moment of
decision came. A communal ordinance in the modern sense, drawn up by Hardenberg, was rejected, the establishment of provincial estates was decided upon,
the summoning of the royal estates was postponed. The details of the establishment
of the representative system were intrusted by the
King to his clever son the Crown Prince, who was inclined to the old ideas. It
was not until 1823, that the law about the provincial estates was completed;
and when it finally appeared, the feudal party triumphed in so far, at least,
that the nobility had the majority in all the Provincial Parliaments; but the
high officials had taken care that the power of this whole organization should
be as limited as possible, and that it should be strictly forbidden to make
public the doings of the Parliaments, so that their transactions were
concealed from the people of even their own provinces. This institution
certainly caused no detriment either to the sovereignty of the Crown nor to the
effective working of the State authority.
Metternich would have wished from his heart still
greater successes to his admirers of the feudal party; but he was especially
glad at the significant fact that Prussia had not become a constitutional
monarchy. For even if the authority of the royal estates, promised in 1815, had
been limited, the mere name would have puffed up the Prussian nation so that
one could not tell what to expect from them, and would have made a vast
difference in the influence of Prussia in South Germany. Here, however, King
William of Würtemberg had already given the Prince abundant cause for anxiety
and annoyance by his liberal notions; for he had almost openly advocated the
plan of uniting on a true constitutional basis all the Lesser and the Petty
States as a protection against the oppressive patronage of the two Great
Powers, and so of establishing a German triad by founding a third Germany of
pure blood by the side of the heterogeneous kingdoms of Austria and Prussia.
How would it be now, if Prussia, too, became constitutional and then profited
by the state of feeling aroused by Würtemberg, either simply for her own
advantage or, indeed, for the purpose of injuring Austria ?
Therefore the decision of Frederick William against
royal estates was a veritable balm to the heart of the Prince. He immediately
invited Count Bernstorff and a few other trusted ministers to come again to
Vienna to take counsel against Württemberg’s doings, which had not only excited
the attention of the Chambers and the newspapers, but had even begun to infect
the holy ground of the Confederate Diet. To be sure, Bernstorff rejected again
very decidedly Metternich’s hobby of placing the matter of popular
representation under the superintendence of the Confederation; but Würtemberg
was forced by diplomatic pressure brought to bear upon it also by the foreign
Great Powers, to recall its representative in the Confederate Diet, to suppress
certain Stuttgart newspapers, and to renounce in penitence its beautiful dream
of a German triad.
Metternich gained what he had desired: Prussia did not
stand at the head of a constitutional Germany in opposition to Austria; but
stood by the side of absolute Austria in contrast to the constitutional States.
All trace of sympathy with Prussia, every memory of her services in the War of
Liberation, was effaced for a long time to come from the hearts of South
Germans. Prussia seemed more closely than ever devoted to the policy of the
Holy Alliance and resignedly subservient to the influence of Prince Metternich.
In Prussia, too, a large number of the truest
royalists were indignant at this condition of dependence, to which the nation
of Frederick the Great had reduced itself through a blind fear of revolution. A
certain letter, dated March 31, 1824, reads: “As far as our external relations
are concerned, I am sorry to be obliged to agree with you entirely. If the
nation had known in 1813, that within eleven years nothing but the memory would
be left of that stage of prosperity, glory, and prestige that lay then within
its reach, or rather which was reached, and that no actual trace of the same
would remain, who would at that time have sacrificed everything in view of such
a result? This question makes it the most sacred duty of a nation consisting of
eleven million souls to maintain that position, which it gained by such
sacrifices as the world had never seen before nor shall see repeated. But this
is all forgotten now.”
He who wrote these words, fired with the spirit of the
Wai1 of Independence, was no revolutionist, but Prince William of Prussia,
afterwards Emperor of Germany.
This, then, is the sum of the doings of the Confederate
Diet during the first decade of its existence: the creation of a police system,
which was bound to no law, and of a Confederate military system, which was precisely
similar to the Imperial army. Thus the German Confederation offered to the
German people the spectacle of a Union inwardly barren and despotic, and
outwardly dependent and defenceless. As the French
soldiers were wading through the streets of Poland, up to their knees in mud,
they exclaimed: Et cela s'appelle une patrie! Twenty years later the German cried: Und dies
Deutschland wäre ein Vaterland! Since the
authorized organ of German unity had branded as a crime every thought of an
actual unity, Germany had sunk to the condition predicated of Italy by
Metternich: of being a geographical name without political significtion.
What Prince William in 1818 had said of Prussia’s glory was equally true of the
whole German Fatherland: there was nothing left of it but the memory, and no
tangible reality whatever.
When an aspiring race loses its fatherland, the
consequence is inevitable: its mental efforts, too, lose their central thought
of patriotic devotion. Everybody throughout our German States, who still had
any heart or appreciation for political freedom, turned away from the
Confederation and the Confederate Diet, the only representative of Germany as a
whole, to the Constitution of their own individual States as the last bulwark
of popular freedom. Formerly the Liberal parties had complained that their
hopes of a mighty Imperial government had been disappointed; they had now
become the unwearied defenders of those clauses of the Vienna Final Act that
declared the Confederation to be only an international league of independent
States, and by no means authorized to meddle in the internal affairs of any
country. Many a South German Government was well pleased with this turn of
affairs; for although the Chambers were still often burdensome enough to them,
they felt that, as a result of these assemblies, a very solid local patriotism
and national feeling was growing up, which would be able effectually to drive
away the threatening nightmare of the Burschenschaften.
Indeed, who had at that time any heart to sing and
talk of the strength and heroism of the German people ? The victors of 1815
looked with wonder and envy upon France, which they had helped to conquer,
where under a free Constitution brilliant parliamentary debates were holding
the attention of all Europe, and kindling the enthusiasm of the German youth.
It was well enough to regret that this was sowing many a dangerous error in
German soil; but of what good were these regrets ? Even the warmest of German patriots
would not deny that the French Charte provided a
better constitution than the German Act of Confederation; and that the debates
in the Chambers at Paris afforded more attractive reading than the minutes of
the Confederate Diet, the publication of which, by the way, Metternich had
stopped in 1824, on account of their inanity.
Every flaming speech which Foy or Manuel hurled
against the feudalist or clerical Ultras in France, was greeted with genuine
delight; the cutting words were applicable to that very political wisdom which
Metternich and his admirers in Berlin were following with ostentatious
devotion: and the people were wholly carried away with enthusiasm for the great
George Canning, when he challenged the reactionary Powers with that proud
declaration, that England was destined to be the champion of national freedom,
and to hold in her hands the wind-bags of Aeolus, ready, when she thought best,
to let loose the storm of revolution upon her enemies. Such enthusiasm over the
attacks made by foreign Powers upon the leading States of the Confederation put
the decay of patriotism at home in a melancholy light; yet how could it be
otherwise, after the long war of extermination waged by Metternich and his
associates against German nationalism? They had succeeded by their statecraft
in making the German people again at once individualistic and cosmopolitan.
One thing more is needed to complete the picture of
those troublous times. That is the fact that all this Liberal zeal, all this
worship of Canning, all this resentment against reaction called forth in the
widest circles a radically pessimistic frame of mind, but no ambition to take
part in any positive political movement. People read the newspapers, got angry
at the English Tories, rejoiced over the defeat of the Turkish armies, and of
the Austrian diplomacy in 1829, clenched their fists against Polignac, talked
over everything with their intimate friends, and then went to business or to
bed.
It was not only the pressure of the police and of the
literary censorship which made the people so quiet and peaceable. The great
mass of the nation had just begun to rise again out of the poverty and the
distress; occasioned by the war, to a tolerable condition of comfort. The
anxiety about their daily bread weighed more heavily upon most of them than any
worriment about political and national affairs; and even in the South German
Chambers a discussion about commercial interests found much more attentive
hearers than a complaint about the censorship or political procedures. Under
such conditions each Government could with a little skill gain the control of
its Chambers. It is true that the Liberal Opposition held their banners erect;
but everywhere they could not show such successes as in the first few fortunate
years after their establishment. So much the more reason had they to complain
of the indifference of their fellow-citizens, to which was added the fact, that
their more excitable leaders grew continually more radical in judgment and more
violently opposed to the existing condition of things. But these did not
succeed in gaining any remarkable influence; so far as one could see, there lay
a profound political calm over all Germany.
CHAPTER V.
INFLUENCE OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1880.
The Revolution at Paris in July, 1830, caused great
excitement in Germany, which, as we have seen, was outwardly so calm and
inwardly so full of discontent. At first it was feared that the victorious
French democracy would overflow the national boundaries; and, even after the
accession of the peaceable Louis Philippe, many were for a long time anxious
lest the Radical party, led by Lafayette, should draw the French Government
into a revolutionary war-policy. In fact, the disposition of the nations far and
wide seemed to favor such tendencies. In September, the Dutch rule in Belgium
was broken; in November, the war of independence in Poland against the Emperor
Nicholas began; and in the following February, the insurrection in the central
portions of Italy broke out. So that, set on fire from all sides by the flames
of revolution, the political atmosphere in Germany began at many places to
approach the ignition point.
Petty tumults among the populace in some Prussian
cities along the Rhine, which, however, were suppressed by the police and the
citizens, opened the ball. Then the Confederate Diet was frightened by the
excesses in its immediate vicinity, among the peasants of Hesse-Cassel, who
tore down the custom-houses and drove out the hated officials of the mediatized
Isenburg. The Diet sent against them troops from the nearest small States, who
found on their arrival very little to do, since the villages that had been
disturbed by the mobs had, in many cases, of themselves arrested the
ringleaders.
The events in Brunswick were of a more serious nature.
Duke Charles, one of the most worthless princes of the age, was stoned while
returning from the theatre, but made good his escape out of the country; the
riot continued and his palace was set on fire by the mob. But when his brother
William then took the reins of government and promised to combine with the
existing Chamber of Deputies a new constitution, peace was completely
re-established throughout the whole country.
The neighboring kingdom of Hanover became alarmed at
an uprising among the Gottingen students, which, however, ended peaceably upon
the arrival of a small company of troops; but which nevertheless induced the
King to summon the Chamber of Deputies, in order to plan out a new constitution
after the modern fashion.
In the kingdom of Saxony the riots began in Dresden
and Leipzig. The citizens of both cities armed themselves and suppressed the
excesses of the common people, and then took the formation of a liberal constitution
into their own hands. Thereupon, the old King surrendered the government into
the hands of his successor as co-regent; and the latter hastened to promise the
fulfilment of the popular demands. Some signs of fermentation were still
visible in the country; but the public peace was not again disturbed.
Things took a like course in Hesse-Cassel with a
similar result; in response to the threatening attitude of a large concourse of
people in front of his palace in Cassel, the Elector William hastened to
promise a new constitution, which, after hurried negotiations, was adopted on
the 5th of January, 1831; but the Elector forsook his country in company with
his mistress, whom the people had insulted, and relinquished the government to
the Electoral Prince, Frederick William, as co-regent.
In South Germany the popular feelings were excited,
but for the time did not express themselves in any unlawful measures. The
Bavarian Chamber sharply attacked the Government on account of a severe presslaw, and, much to the annoyance of King Louis,
refused certain sums of money required for his art buildings.
In Baden, where the mild and moderate Grand Duke
Leopold had a short time before come into power, the Liberal party gained again
the majority in the second Chamber; the negotiations were spirited, and found
an echo in all German countries; they gave the keynote to liberal public spirit
for long years to come. Nevertheless, by mutual concessions, good feeling was
preserved between the Government and the Chamber. At the discussion about the
press-law, the Chamber decided upon perfect freedom of the Press and removal of
all censorship; and the Government, at first with reluctance in view of the
Carlsbad Decrees, finally yielded to the popular wishes. Later, however, when
Karl Weicker proposed asking the Government to summon a German Parliament,
which should act by the side of the Confederate Diet, the Minister emphatically
declared that in this the Chamber was overstepping its rights; thereupon the
majority, after a short debate, decided to lay the matter on the table. In Würtemberg,
where the Parliament had no sittings, and where, under the powerful and
clear-headed administration of King William, a high degree of prosperity had
been developed, there was no sign of disturbance.
In view of these facts, the judgment to be passed by
History upon the German movement of those years cannot be uncertain. It cannot
be overlooked nor denied that, as a result of the reactionary and at the same
time fruitless policy of the Confederation, discontent with existing conditions
reigned almost everywhere, and that the fresh successes of the Liberals were
joyfully hailed by the great majority of the people. Yet quite as unmistakably
was it evident that to the mass of the population any tendency to revolutionary
violence was still foreign. Their political demands were fair and moderate; and
just so soon as the Governments showed a corresponding disposition to be fair
in their turn, the citizens and peasants gladly assisted in preserving order,
or in restoring it. The new Constitutions also bore testimony to this.
Essential royal prerogatives remained the same. The especial limitation of the
Sovereign Will in Hesse-Cassel did not spring from any radical theorizing, but
simply from a too well founded anxiety about the personal character of the
Elector, and also of his heir.
The Prussian ministers also viewed the situation in
this light Throughout the extensive dominions of the monarchy there was no
trace of political commotion; even in the Rhine provinces, the most excitable
of all, the increasing prosperity in industry and commerce counterbalanced the
seductive influence and impressions of French Freedom close at hand. Indeed,
this was very natural. Since 1815, when the State was newly put together out of
a hundred fragments of fragments, the Prussian Administration had done wonderful
things for many sections of country, that had either been degenerating for ages
under the rule of the crozier, or were impoverished by the long distresses of
war. This decade has been aptly called the classical period of Prussian
bureaucracy. All branches of the public service had been successfully
reconstructed; in almost every case the right man had been found for the right
place; a vigorous life had grown up over the ruins of the past.
Above all, the people and the King were at one in the
desire to preserve peace. Immediately after the Revolution the King of Prussia
had expressed his determination in no way to meddle with French affairs: a
decided contrast to the feelings of Austria and Russia, who would have been
glad to see a crusade in favor of the Legitimists. And when, later, in the
course of developments in Belgium, the danger of a French attack seemed
imminent, Prussia was strenuously urged by representatives of the South German
Courts at Berlin to take the lead in measures to ward off the threatened common
danger.
Bavaria and Würtemberg armed with zeal. The remaining
States of the 8th Confederate Corps proposed to give the command of the corps
to the King of Würtemberg; they hoped in a few months to place one hundred
thousand men in the field, a number far beyond the required Confederate
contingent. They did not, however, wish to be in any way dependent on the
Confederate Diet, nor to have a Confederate commander-in-chief appointed.
Austria, too, they regarded with nothing but distrust. They believed that she
was poorly equipped, and yet wished to involve Germany in a French war, in
order to prevent the French from making an attack on Italy. King Louis of
Bavaria was especially embittered against Austria, and used all his influence
at Berlin to bring about the formation of a league independent of the
Confederacy, with the object of supplying a common system of military
operations.
At this time a hopeful and agreeable prospect opened
before the minister, Count Bernstorff. Herr von Motz, the cleverest of Prussian
statesmen, who had after endless pains covered the deficit in the budget,
succeeded at last also in bringing into full fruition the seed sown by the
tariff-law of 1818. In 1828, Hesse-Darmstadt concluded a tariff-league with
Prussia; and in 1829, a commercial treaty with Bavaria and Würtemberg followed,
confessedly to serve as the preliminary of a complete tariff-union. If this
succeeded, then there was no doubt but that Baden, Hesse-Cassel, Thuringia, and
Saxony would very soon feel forced to follow their example — as, in fact, they
did within a few years — and then the whole of Germany outside of Austria would
be united, with the exception of the small States along the coast, into one
large commercial territory, a unit among themselves and all alike closed to
outsiders, under the leadership of Prussia, and independent of the Confederate
Diet.
Then, in 1830, there reached Berlin that demand of
South Germany for Prussian protection along the Upper Rhine and for a common
military system, likewise independent of the Confederate Diet and its impotent
military organization, but, most of all, independent of Austria with its
unreliable support. It is true that the South Germans talked at first only
about prepamtory measures in view of the immediate
danger of war. But would it have been only an empty chimera to think of
improving the opportunity, and of granting the desired protection against the
present danger only on the condition of establishing a permanent military
organization? The Tariff-Union offered an example; indeed, its results pointed
directly along this line. Then there would have been formed within the broader
Confederation with Austria and her dependencies a closer Prussian
Confederation, founded upon vital national interests and adapted to develop these
successfully and fruitfully : the first step towards s truly national German
Empire.
These thoughts Count Bemstorff laid before the King in two memorials, at the same time that he directed that
Metternich’s propositions for taking new measures against the revolution should
be answered by a speech of the Prussian delegate to the Confederate Diet, to
the effect that the best measure to be employed against the spirit of
revolution was the abolition of those abuses of which so many German Courts
were guilty. There was a ring to this, clearer than had as yet sounded in the
Halls of the Diet.
It is very evident that in treading this path an
extreme bitterness on the part of Austria was to be encountered. But it was
also very certain that, in the actual condition of Europe, Austria could not
give vent to this feeling, but rather needed the assistance of Prussia, and
must accept her conditions. Therefore it was necessary for the Prussian
Government, as quickly as possible, before the danger of a war and the
consequent pliableness of the South German States
should disappear, to come to some understanding with them, and, thus
strengthened, to offer Austria the doubly valuable alliance of Prussia.
Thus everything depended on the quick decision and
courage of the Prussian Cabinet; but, unfortunately, among all the excellent
qualities of Frederick William just this one was wanting, the self-confidence
which prompts a quick decision. He hesitated, and questioned seriously whether
it would be honorable, and whether it would not be eminently dangerous to treat
with the South German States behind Austria’s back. In December, 1880, he had
made up his mind that he must first negotiate with Austria, and not until
afterwards with the Southern States.
Upon that, General von Roder went in January, 1831, to Vienna with the proposition to form, as a preparation
for the possibility of war, three independent armies: one Prussian with the
tenth Confederate Corps on the Lower Rhine, one Prussian and South German on
the Main, and one Austrian on the Upper Rhine. Unity of operations was not to
be secured by the appointment of a commander-in-chief, but, as in 1813, by the
establishment of general headquarters. It will be seen that this meant the
subordination of Bavaria’s contingent and the three mixed Confederate Corps
under Prussia’s command, and utter disregard of the Confederate Military
Organization. Metternich prolonged negotiations until he had succeeded in
suppressing the Italian rebellion in March, 1831, without provoking a French
declaration of war; encouraged by this fact, he dismissed Roder with the announcement that not three, but two armies should be formed: one
Austrian, with the addition of the seventh and eighth Confederate Corps, and
one Prussian, in connection with the ninth and tenth; above all, the rules of
the Confederate Military Organization should be universally binding; and,
although the appointment of a commander-in-chief might be postponed for the
present, it would later be indispensable.
The question was, how the Prussian monarch would receive
this flat rejection of his propositions. Metternich’s hope, not simply of
quieting him, but even of gaining him over, rested again upon the paltry,
though formerly successful scheme of conjuring up the Red Spectre.
He sent by Roder a letter to the King, dated April 2,
in which he pictured in mysterious phrases the enormity of the social evil, and
represented the close co-operation of the two Powers as the last and only means
of salvation. There were no longer any riots or disturbances in Germany; but it
was sufficient for his purpose that a few South German newspapers contained
Radical articles, and that now also four North German States were in a fair way
to have constitutional Chambers. If he found Prussia well disposed, he thought
he might finally carry out his designs, which had been frustrated at Carlsbad,
and subject not only the Press and the schools, but also the political suffrage
of the people, to the supervision of the Confederate police.
The King hesitated for several months. Finally, the
important decision was made in August, during his customaiy stay at the watering-place Teplitz, on the same ground where, twelve yearn
before, he had given his consent to the projected coup d’état at
Carlsbad. The King had this time at his side neither Bernstorff nor his
influential friend, the General-Adjutant von Witzleben, but Prince
Wittgenstein, who was decidedly reactionary, and inclined to favor Austria. To
this must be added the energetic influence of the Czar Nicholas, who, to be
sure, personally hated Metternich, but who, being just on the point of giving
the deathblow to the Polish Revolution, applauded every counterrevolutionary
movement. The German Liberals, on the contrary, gave on every occasion their
hearty admiration and sympathy to the Polish cause, and thereby drew upon
themselves, in the eyes of the Monarch, still stronger suspicions of
entertaining revolutionary sentiments.
So that the King, immediately after his return from
Teplitz, declared that he fully agreed with the note of Metternich dated
September 15th, in which the two following principles were laid down: that in
European matters Russia, Austria, and Prussia should hold together; and Austria
and Prussia in the suppression of revolution upon German soil. Bernstorff, who
had been ill for a long time, soon after this sent in his resignation; his
successor, Ancillon, who had already from time to
time taken his place, was formerly a fervent theologian, afterwards a weak
politician, and now an unconditional adherent of Metternich.
Meanwhile the clouds of war along the European horizon
had dispersed; Poland was subdued, and in regard to Belgian affairs the Powers
were again agreed. Therefore, in view of the renewed prospect of long peace,
Metternich made to the Prussian Court the now harmless concession that, in case
of war, Roder’s plans should be carried out, and promised to join Prussia at
the Diet in advocating a practical reform of the Confederate Military
Organization. It is unnecessary to say that this promise remained unfulfilled
in every particular. Certain it is, however, that this removed every difference
between the two Powers. Prussia, purified from the heretical idea of a more
limited Confederacy, had returned to the basis of the great Confederate Act.
The contest with the supposed Revolution might now begin.
At the outset, the Diet passed a resolution forbidding
the circulation of petitions for political purposes; this was to refer to
numerous memorials in favor of the Polish fugitives and emigrants. Then the
Confederate Commission for the Control of the Press, which was first appointed
in 1819, but which had since become a dead letter, was again called into life,
and through its instrumentality a number of Radical newspapers in Baden and
Bavaria were immediately suppressed in the name of the Confederation. The
publishers and writers, who were thus disarmed, then hit upon a new method of
agitation. They began, especially in the Bavarian Palatinate, in Lower
Franconia, and in Upper Hesse, to instigate popular meetings at which
high-sounding speeches against royal tyranny were delivered, and occasionally a
vivat shouted for the Republic.
This spread, in the spring of 1832, from place to
place. The speeches grew more fiery and the audiences larger, until King Louis,
who was already very discontented with his Chambers, began to be worried and
angry at these noisy doings. Meanwhile, on the 27th of May, the anniversary of
the adoption of the Bavarian Constitution, a large meeting was arranged in the
Palatinate and was under these auspices officially sanctioned by the local
police. From all parts of the country the people streamed in thousands to the
slopes of the Schlossberg at Hambach; German and Prussian banners were unfurled
amid loud flourishes of music, and the orators of the day celebrated approaching
Liberty, German Unity, and the Fraternization of all free nations. Boisterous
huzzas followed, spirited songs were sung, many a bottle of the good wine of
the Palatinate was emptied, and then, after such brave deeds, the people
dispersed and went home in high spirits. A few days later, Prince Wrede, famous
for his defeat at Hanau, appeared, having been sent from Munich with four
thousand soldiers to curb the raging revolution; but he was not able to find
any sign of a revolution anywhere in the peaceable Palatinate.
Yet this day was to have very significant consequences.
Hitherto, Bavaria and some of the Petty States had had misgivings in the
Confederate Diet about too vigorous measures; but as in 1819 the assassination
of Kotzebue, so in 1832 the festival at Hambach (though here only the blood of
the grape was spilled), served Metternich as a pretext for spreading his
reactionary fears. On the 28th of June and the 5th of July a set of Confederate
Laws appeared, quite after the fashion of those drawn up at Carlsbad, which
were especially directed to limiting the privileges of the Estates in the
individual States; an especial Confederate Commission was appointed for five
years to carry out these laws; whenever the Estates refused to pay the imposts
necessary for the carrying on of the administration, the Confederation was to
interfere, even without waiting for action on the part of the Government
concerned; decrees of the Confederation were not to be subject to the criticism
of the Estates; the fulfilment of no obligation of any State toward the
Confederation was to be hindered by the legislation of that State. Then
followed the prohibition of popular assemblies, of tricolor banners and
cockades, of political societies, and of revolutionary songs. In short,
Metternich had caused an important step to be taken in the development of the
Confederate police system, and had made it possible, by controlling the
speeches and doings of the individual States, to subject to its guardianship
every phase of internal politics.
The successes of the Austrian Court did not stop here.
The hot-headed leaders of the Radical party contributed their share toward
strengthening the Austrian system. Ever since 1819, Metternich had talked about
the monstrous conspiracy which was supposed to pervade all Germany; to be sure,
no one had as yet been able to detect it anywhere, any more than Wrede had
discovered a revolution in the Palatinate. But now it showed itself; there was
a genuine conspiracy. Dr. Wirth, Privatdocent Rauschenplatt, and Lieutenant Koserita,
with several others of similar disposition, had formed a dark conspiracy
against no less a personage than the high and mighty Confederate Diet. The
honorable Assembly was to be surprised and captured or blown up, and then on
the spot the German Revolution was to be proclaimed. They counted on the breaking
out of a mutiny among the Würtemberg troops, on seditions among the peasants of
Hesse-Cassel, and on the sympathy of the Frankfort populace; they expected also
accessions of Polish refugees from France and discontented artisans from
Switzerland.
On the 3d of April, 1833, this tempest burst upon the
capital of the Confederacy. The Revolutionary army, fifty-one men strong,
stormed the main guardhouse ; but before the insurgents could seize the Confederate
Assembly, they were scattered by the Frankfort battalion. The citizens of
Frankfort looked on with surprise and coolness. Eighty peasants, as they
approached, were refused entrance into the city. The Poles did not appear on
the scene at all.
Here at last, indeed, a conspiracy had come to light;
and although outside of these one hundred and thirty criminals, the whole
German nation was living in profound peace, it seemed to the Imperial and Royal
Courts obviously necessary, not only to imprison the conspirators, but to set
to work to save Europe. The ministers of Russia, Austria, and Prussia met in
Teplitz, as soon afterwards also the two Emperors and the Prussian Crown Prince
in Münchengrätz, and pledged mutual assistance in putting down all rebellion,
especially every Polish insurrection.
The following year, Metternich convened the ministers
of all the German States in Vienna, in order to work out in detail and complete
the Confederate Decrees of 1819 and 1832. The results of this conference were
noted down in a secret record and all the Governments bound themselves to
follow exactly the directions contained therein, even if they were not
consistent with the existing laws or constitutions of their States. After that,
there was nothing more to be desired, from Metternich’s point of view, in the
way of German unity and imperial government, at least as this was represented
and exercised by the Confederate Diet.
The majority of the German Governments confessed in
their own hearts that a hazardous game was being played. Most of them, too,
eagerly tried to conceal from their subjects the limitations put upon their
political rights, by fostering especially their material interests. In this
connection they favored nothing more than the development of the Tariff-Union,
which had now reached a fruitful state of prosperity, and which at the same
time bound together more and inure closely in economical relations all Germany
outside of Austria. So that the German countries, with but few exceptions,
enjoyed the benefits of a prudent and successful administration, as at scarcely
any former period. This has already been mentioned with regard to Prussia and Würtemberg.
In Hanover, under the new constitution of 1833, the
creation of Dahlmann, there was a thorough remodeling of the State finances,
and an active interest was manifested in the entire system of education.
Under the excellent leadership of the Minister, Von
Lindenau, the new Saxon chambers worked with zealous industry upon a
reformation of all central and local magistracies. Many long-standing evils
were done away with, and it was not seldom that the Government proved itself
more liberal and public-spirited than even the popular assemblies.
King Louis of Bavaria had remained, to be sure, since
1831, fixed in his conservative reaction from his former liberal ideas; but he
was busily occupied in furthering the development of the fine arts at Munich,
engaged Friedrich Thiersch in a successful reform of the Gymnasia, and was
eagerly intent upon an improvement in the systems of agriculture and of
manufactures, if indeed with less marked success than was achieved in Whrtemberg.
In Baden, the Minister, Winter, was a rough, coarsegrained character, of unimpeachable integrity, of
firm and indomitable will, of practical and straightforward sentiments. He
gained for himself a lasting memorial; for lie knew how, by quiet resistance to
the influences of the Confederate Diet, to strengthen the constitutional idea
by legislative reforms, and to satisfy pressing needs by national improvements.
Characteristic of the standpoint of Liberalism at that time was the exclamation
of Weicker upon Winter’s appointment as Minister: It is a blessing for the
country, but a hard blow for the Opposition. The Diet had brought matters to
such a pass that to be a Liberal and to belong to the Opposition, no matter
under what ministry, went hand in hand.
Quite different from Winter’s position was that held
in the neighboring Darmstadt by the Minister, Du Thil, and his confidential
counsellor, Eckhardt; both of them were clear-headed, energetic men, filled
with the ambition of furthering the public welfare in every direction, but
always in keeping with their motto: Everything for the people, but not 6y the
people. They were for a long time involved in a struggle with the Chamber, but
finally accomplished their purposes; and the little country did not fare any
the worse in consequence. They built roads, improved the schools, sustained an
exemplary system of forestry, and with remarkable tact assisted in the
development of trade and of industry.
All this does not mean an ideal condition of things.
The weaknesses inherent in every bureaucratic constitution appeared during the
long years of peace at this period often enough, in spite of all activity and
prudence. There was the same continuance in old, worn-out ruts, the same
blindness to the real needs of practical life, the same exaggeration of legal
forms, and the same absence of social intercourse between rulers and subjects,
between the officials and the people, not only in the smaller States but quite
as much so in Prussia. An often unnecessary tone of superiority was considered
indispensable for the maintenance of authority; and especially the police,
spurred on by the uneasiness and anxieties of the highest officials, conducted
themselves in such a domineering, suspicious, and petty fashion, that the prevalent
discontent was not for a moment allowed to subside.
For, in spite of all the good features which we have just
enumerated, the indignation at the laws of exemption of 1832 continually
increased and spread through all classes of the population. To be sure, the
outward quiet was no longer at any point disturbed; the news-papers lay in the
fetters of the censorship, and the new Baden press-law was repealed by the
Grand Duke in obedience to a command from the Diet. In the Chambers the Liberal
party lost again its majority and kept itself carefully on the defensive, in
order not to provoke the Confederation to further measures of violence.
But the dissatisfaction sank only so much the deeper
into their hearts. Many thousands, who in 1830, at the riots in Cassel and
Dresden, had helped to prevent the excesses of the mob, or who had harmlessly
shouted at the Hambacher festival, now vowed that, if
there should be another outbreak, they, too, would have an active hand in it.
In view of the reaction, nine-tenths of the German citizens were filled with
democratic ideas: the more moderate with enthusiasm for a parliamentary State,
where the vote of the popular representatives can turn ministers out of office,
as well as put them in; and the hot-headed, with visions of an ideal republic
where both the legislative and the judicial functions should be controlled
freely and ultimately by the will of the whole people.
Experience had not yet taught them that for every
large institution some powerful factor is necessary, which by its fixedness
shall be the representative of stability in politics; and that no other form of
government offers such advantages in this way as an hereditary monarchy. Nor
did they, naturally enough, at that time understand clearly that the
parliamentary government in England could maintain its sure and prosperous
career only in virtue of the fact that the representation of the people as well
as the administration itself was guided by two firmly-established and
politically- disciplined groups of nobility, which took turns in the ministry
without any interruption of business. They left entirely out of consideration
the fact, very decisive in the critical examination of Democracy, that the
stability of the North American government rests entirely upon the President’s
practical independence of Congress. Their conceptions, too, in regard to the
fascinating picture of democratic equality were but little developed. Only a
few clearly comprehended that the demand for equal rights is noble and proper,
if this means equality in the right of protection and of recognition in the
courts, or, in a word, equality before the law; but that it runs into just the
opposite when it comes to signify the desire of equal enjoyment and equal
influence, without regard to the productive power of the individual, and so
starts on the inclined plane that leads to communistic violence.
It was now seen that the belief was absurd, that the
censorship of newspapers and small pamphlets could put a stop to the spread of
such ideas. The riflemen had been taken prisoners, but the heavy artillery
continued to dd its work. The books of more than twenty sheets (which were free
from the censorship) passed from hand to hand. Whoever wanted political
information found the answer to every question in Rotteek and Weicker’s Staatslexicon, based on the French
theories, which alone could save; and the entire radically minded public
learned from Schlosser’s “History of the Eighteenth Century,” that the doings
of princes, statesmen, and diplomats were in consequence of their position
necessarily immoral, and unworthy of the respect of upright citizens. And no
less groundless in the present state of feeling, proved the hope that the
political fermentation could be quieted by improvements in the material
condition of the people. Though it was true that the social wretchedness of the
masses rendered possible the French Revolution of 1789, it was the continued
prosperity and self-contentedness of the German citizens that made them feel so
much the more an unwillingness to be robbed of the choicest blessings of
freedom by the reactionary politics of the Confederate Diet.
But this was not enough. It is well known that the
German, although by no means phlegmatic in political discussions, is stirred to
the bottom of his heart only by religious struggles; and just now there arose
in this department of thought two mighty movements of equal strength, but of
opposite tendencies. The peace, which had hitherto prevailed in the Evangelical
Church under the influence of Schleiermacher’s theory of the harmony between
Faith and Knowledge, was suddenly disturbed in 1835 by David Strauss’s “Life of
Jesus,” and by the works which followed soon after, of Christian Baur and other
representatives of the Tubingen School. They undertook to prove that, with few
exceptions, the New Testament writings were not historical works, but a
collection of dogmatic theorizings which had been one
hundred and fifty years in the process of crystallization. So that the basis of
Christian orthodoxy was not allowed to be historical authority; but the truth
of Christian dogmas was made to depend solely on their internal worth and upon
the “witness of the Spirit and of Power.” It will be seen at once to what
extent, from this point of view, in all religious life the objective authority
of the Church must be replaced by the subjective judgment of each individual.
The excitement was intense, the flood of writings on both sides almost endless,
and the sympathies, at least of all the educated classes, were aroused to the
highest pitch. Very soon the struggle passed from historical to philosophical
grounds; whereas until then the Hegelian system had been without question
looked upon as conservative in political and ecclesiastical matters, a group
of his disciples now asserted that the strict carrying out of his principles
must inevitably lead to pure atheism, and to the unlimited sovereignty of human
reason.
The unusual activity of the Catholic Church, which
manifested itself at that time, strove for ends exactly the opposite of these.
Its persecution during the French Revolution and its oppression by the first
Napoleon had turned toward it the sympathies of all its fellow-sufferers, and
in the distressing years of war millions of people had again learned to seek
consolation in religion; so that, by reason of the consciousness of the
advantages of this position, the tendency arose both in France and in Italy to
bring about again the old power of the Church and of the Pope over sinning
humanity.
As Gregory VII had once declared that the authority of
the State over the outward ordinances of the Church, which had then been
exercised and recognized during the preceding four hundred years, was a sin
against the commands of God, so now a zealous party, urged on chiefly by the
Society of Jesus, promulgated a similar doctrine, quite indifferent to the fact
that in all the States of Europe these very rights of supervision and authority
had long ago been reasserted in greater or less measure, and everywhere had been
acknowledged, or at least permitted, by the Curia. Upon its banners this party
bore as a device: “Freedom for the Church” — for that very Church that had
always refused to recognize the principle of religious freedom, that had raised
the compulsory acceptance of its faith to one of its most important precepts,
and that had imposed upon the laity unconditional allegiance to the dogmas of
the clerical hierarchy. There could not but follow a struggle with the civil
authorities.
In Prussia this showed itself first in the matter of
instruction in the theological faculties of the Universities, and in the matter
of intermarriage. After long negotiations, in 1837 it came to an open quarrel,
and the Government had the Archbishop of Cologne brought under arrest to Minden
for having been false to his word, and the Archbishop of Posen, who had been
behaving in a similar manner, deposed by a sentence of the courts. The Chapter
of the Cologne Cathedral and the Prince-Bishop of Breslau took sides with the
Government; but among the Poles, as well as along the Rhine, the people were in
a violent state of excitement. In Munich, the zealous clerical, Herr von Abel,
who had lately become Prime Minister, allowed free course to the Ultramontane
newspapers in their attacks upon Prussia; and on this occasion even Metternich,
who had just permitted the Jesuits to come into Austria, from which they had
always been prohibited by the Emperor Francis, made no protest against a degree
of liberty on the part of the Press that was directly contrary to the decrees
of the Confederate Diet.
Thus in all the German countries there arose a
kaleidoscopic confusion of sentiments and opinions. The entire condition of
things, as it had existed hitherto, was subjected without any material
opposition to a bold criticism. Thereupon, in 1887, an event occurred which
gave direction to political agitation for the next decade and determined a
fixed and common aim for all parties: the overthrow of the Constitution in
Hanover by the new King Ernest Augustus. Undertaken under false pretences, but chiefly due to a desire on the part of the
king to obtain unlimited personal control over the public revenues, the
overthrow of the Constitution stood in alarming contradiction to the laws of
the land, as well as to the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna. The
displeasure of all Germany showed itself openly, when by a fresh act of
violence the King abruptly dismissed seven Gottingen Professors, who, following
the example of Dahlmann, were determined to remain faithful to their oaths of
allegiance to the Constitution. Three of these he banished from the country.
All German popular assemblies, universities, and courts of arbitration vied
with each other in giving expression to the public indignation in the sharpest
of resolutions and memorials. The written vindications of Dahlmann and Jacob
Grimm had the widest circulation. A large society formed for the support of the
proscribed Professors gained many members in all the German cities. On the
other hand, in Hanover itself the belligerent ardor of the sober-minded
Low-Saxon population, after the first outburst of resentment, was neither hot
nor active, although an appeal was made by the Estates to the Confederate Diet.
Here the vote was divided. Most of the constitutional
Governments wished to support the Estates; but Metternich spoke strongly in
favor of the King, whom he personally esteemed; and in Berlin, although
Frederick William was annoyed at the behavior of this newly crowned
trouble-maker, yet he considered in a patriarchal way that he must prevent his brother-in-law
from being too seriously compromised. The result was a decision, passed by
eight votes against eight of the Opposition (among the former was that of the
accused Government), to the effect that, under the present circumstances, the
Confederation had no cause and therefore no right to interfere; in consequence
of which, the people of Hanover were obliged to submit to the will of the King,
and a new constitution was adopted, fashioned according to the demands of
Ernest Augustus.
We have already shown how the Liberal party, after the
Carlsbad Decrees, reverted to the support of Individualism, in so far that they
objected to any further intervention on the part of the Central Organization,
and sought the remedy for existing evils in strengthening as much as possible
the constitutions of the individual States. Now, however, the events in Hanover
showed, in a glaring light, upon what a loose foundation the provincial
constitutions rested; for all the efforts of the constitutional States in
opposing this open breach of faith were fruitless. It was evident, that so long
as the present Confederate Constitution was not radically altered, no German
State, or indeed, no German citizen, was secure from violence. Hence the
watchword for the Liberal party in all the German States became: by the union
of their forces to attain this one object, a change in the Confederate Constitution,
and in close alliance to strive together for the overthrow of the Confederate
Diet and for the creation of a new central power, which should be at once
liberal and national.
CHAPTER VI.
FREDERICK WILLIAM IV.
Up to this time the Prussian people, in general, had
taken little part in the public movements of the other German races. The time
came, however, when they too were to be drawn into the most violent of these
whirlpools.
On the 7th of June, 1840, King Frederick William III
died, in a good old age, after a reign of forty-three years. However
discontented those of Liberal tendencies had become at the delay in the
establishment of a representative constitution, however little pleased the
feudal party was at the final shape taken by the provincial Estates, it is
certainly true that the King's sense of honor and of justice had always secured
for him, in increasing measure, the respect and good will of his subjects. His
people were thankful to him for preserving to his country during twenty-five
years a prosperous peace; and if, sometimes, they found him hesitating and
always looking more to sure than to extensive results, yet every one knew that
his slowness in action was due to an almost over-anxious conscientiousness; no
one doubted that his whole administration had been carried on with righteous
motives and in the fear of God. He won the hearts of his people by being
sparing of his words, modest in his appearance, and indisposed to any display
or show. During the last years of his life, all parties understood, as a matter
of course, that the peaceful old age of the revered monarch should not be
disturbed: and, however many hopes were built upon the approaching change of
rulers, yet, when the solemn hour came, a feeling of genuine mourning pervaded
the whole land.
Not only did the people no longer feel any reason then
for restraining their political aspirations, but the King, Frederick William IV,
who now came to the throne, was also disposed in every way to bring life and
activity into everything that he took hold of. Even as a boy, he manifested a
marked self-consciousness and a firm will; he was highly endowed with talents
and tastes of the greatest variety, which had from his earliest years been
directed by his tutors along religious, aesthetic, and intellectual lines. As
he grew up, he showed himself to be well-informed and of good taste, possessing
a brilliant mind and versatile talents, at the same time thoroughly upright,
sympathetic, and even emotional: always enthusiastic over every noble and
worthy undertaking, and filled with a trusting confidence in God and in his
fellow-men. Whenever he was once persuaded of a thing, he stood immovable in
his convictions. If it was necessary to push operations, he was apt to recoil
from a bold attack upon the obstacles to be surmounted, and seemed for the
moment almost to give way; but he remained firm in his own mind, and at the
first opportunity took up again the thwarted attempt. The force of his will
showed itself rather passively than actively; he was more for holding on than
for pushing ahead; his actions were always characterized less by practical
sense than by warmheartedness and adherence to general principles.
Most striking was the comparative absence of military
genius in this son of the House of Hohenzollern. To be sure, he was fond of
emphasizing the fact that he was every whit an officer, —and a Prussian
officer; but his personal appearance, to start with, would hardly corroborate
this statement—he was corpulent even in early life, beardless, and of a
somewhat shambling gait — and his generals complained that at reviews and
parades he performed his duties as Commander-in-Chief in a hurried and
superficial manner, manifestly without any love for the business. In general,
too, he did not care much for athletic exercises. An old cavalry colonel used
to say that the King had too much nerve and too little muscle. On the other
hand, his heart overflowed whenever he sat down to sketch, as indeed he could with
a master hand, lovely landscapes, or outlines of romantic edifices, or when he
listened to the contrapuntal fugues of old church music.
He was, furthermore, a man of fascinating amiability,
and bound to himself the greatest geniuses of the age by an irresistible charm.
Peter Cornelius used often to say that he never could speak of the King without
tears of thankful emotion. Rauch was continually astonished at the exactness
and justness with which the King, in spite of his short-sightedness, could criticise the outlines of a piece of sculpture; he never
had seen anything like it. Leopold Ranke once said of him to Maximilian, King
of Bavaria, in the presence of a company of famous men: “He is my teacher, he
is your teacher, he is the teacher of us all.” Alexander von Humboldt, whose
evil tongue at times did not spare even the King, yet considered that day
incomplete in which he had not enjoyed his society. More than all, the King's
confidential advisers in his political and ecclesiastical plans, the Gerlachs, Bunsens, and Radowitzes, stood, until the end of their lives, completely
under the charm of his personal influence. Among such friends the richness of
his imagination and the flow of his ideas seemed inexhaustible. He was a master
of language, in earnest and in jest, in pathos and in humor, and always found
the fitting, nay, even brilliant expression for every one of his political,
aesthetic, and religious reflections. To many people that ease was astounding,
with which he descended (in the sudden change of mood that marked him as a true
child of Berlin) from the highest realms of inspiration to the plane of a
current joke, which he appreciated with equal cleverness. The versatility of
his nature was truly boundless, open as it was to every passing impression.
Yet, however variedly this peculiar mind shone
externally, its inner kernel was, from the very first years of manhood, firmly
and unalterably fixed by the events of the times. Fleeing, as a boy, into the
remotest corners of the country before the Giant of the French Revolution, he
early imbibed a dread of revolutions, and a hatred of France that lasted during
his whole life. Like so many of his contemporaries, he too, in the midst of his
present distress, turned his gaze backward upon the more illustrious past, upon
the mighty emperors, the august prelates, the knightly princes and lords,
before whose valor the half of Europe had once trembled.
When then, in 1813, the offensive and defensive
alliance between Austria and Prussia led the German troops to victory and all
the German States into the new union, his decision was formed, to grasp the
brotherly hand of Austria for all time, and under all c ire ii instances
loyally and unselfishly to do his part toward reviving the glory and the
majesty of the Holy Empire. We may assume without question, that he at that
time followed with the fullest sympathy Stein’s and Hardenberg’s plans in the
matter of a German constitution: that is to say, the propositions which would have
given Austria the first rank of honor, and Prussia the place next in
importance, which would have made the heads of the provinces (Kreise) commanders in the army and rulers of the
Empire, and would have formed the remaining princes and heads of ruling Houses
into a brilliant Imperial assembly. This would be, then, a state in which there
should be several degrees of official authority, so arranged that each official
should preserve in his own sphere of action the full sanctity of a
heaven-ordained prince.
Frederick William attached the greatest possible
importance to this sanctity of rulers, and this principle formed the pith and
central idea of all his moral and political opinions. It was the same doctrine
with which Count de Maistre once opposed revolutionary notions of government,
namely: that God is the foundation of all states and governments; that He accomplishes
without exception the creation of the State in such a way, that He endows some
single individual and his family with the gift of ruling; that as the palm-tree
rises into the air high above the low shrubs which cluster about it, so such a
family is surrounded by its subordinate companions; that such a God-ordained
sovereign may then grant to his subjects certain individual rights, which,
originating in this way, prove a lasting blessing, but which, being extorted
arbitrarily by the subjects, destroy both themselves and the State; and that
God then sets by the side of these mighty royal families, a number of smaller,
but in like manner distinguished Houses, who determine the spread and
development of the political system throughout the whole nation.
Frederick William, whose heart revolted from every
form of despotic arbitrariness, felt very much inclined to grant to all his
subjects these “individual rights,” as well as to allow the “lesser ruling
families,” the noble lords, to enjoy princely authority in their own dominions;
at the same time he considered it his first duty under all circumstances to
assure for himself and his family their recognized supremacy over the rest of
humanity. Above all, the royal crown seemed to him surrounded by a mystic
radiance, which became for him who wore it the source of a divine inspiration
not vouchsafed to other mortals. He said once, in 1844, to Bunsen: ’“You all
mean well by me, and are very skilful in executing
plans; but there are certain things that no one but a king can know, which I
myself did not know when I was Crown Prince, and have perceived only since I
became King.”1 It is readily seen how very well these ideas agreed, on the one
hand, with his reverence for the Holy Roman Empire, and, on the other hand,
with the fundamental principles of the old feudal party of Prussia.
The religious convictions of the King gave these ideas
their final sanction. Deeply impressed with the indispensableness and the
exaltedness of the Means of Grace provided by the Christian Church, he felt a
strong desire to secure for its ministers a worthy and independent position,
and to deliver them from the troublesome interference of secular authorities.
He was ready, for the sake of carrying this out, to give up, for his part, the
office of Supreme Bishop. “I long for the time,” he said, “when I can lay down
this office in the hands of one who has been called to it.” With this idea, he
hastened to end the strife with the Vatican by completely yielding the point
under discussion, in return for certain concessions in personal questions; and
the thought was ever present in his mind of reviving the dignity of the
Bishop’s office even in the Evangelical Church, not only as an honorary title,
but invested with full official power. Then he intended to abstain from taking
any part in the government of the Church, in order so much the more
effectually, as its protector, to guard it from any attack of heretical or
anti-Christian factions.
Taking everything into account, one can define his
position by saying, that he held unconditionally to the God-ordained absolute
sovereignty of the King in matters of state: although he was determined to
limit this materially in favor of independent ecclesiastical officers, of a
nobility with local power, and of the personal rights of the citizens. He hated
the uniform, strongly centralized system of the bureaucracy, which was fast
becoming popular, and considered it a dead form constructed after an artificial
model, which excluded every chance of interesting variety, and rendered
impossible the desirable personal co-operation of the King.
These prejudices he continued to hold in an age in
which a large majority of the people demanded impatiently a share in public
matters, and in which the leading writers took a sceptical and critical position towards every traditional authority in Church and State.
These men, moreover, wished to see a limitation put upon the absolute power of
the Government in favor of more general freedom, certainly not for the sake of
increasing the privileges of an aristocracy or of a hierarchy. In the presence
of the spirit of these times, the King stood like the son of a past age, the
citizen of another world, the speaker of a foreign tongue. This fact was of
greater weight, since Frederick William, as the result of his individual and
royal self-consciousness, carried on a decidedly personal government; he held
his Ministers in strict subjection to his own will, and allowed his other
confidential advisers only so much influence as was consistent with the
assurance that all their movements would be entirely in conformity with his own
views. It may be truly said, that the whole responsibility of every important
act that took place during his reign falls, in the judgment of history, to him,
and to him alone.
It is true that in a certain foreign complication,
which reached its crisis just after his accession, he found himself borne along
by the sympathetic enthusiasm of the entire German nation. At the time when the
existence of the Turkish Empire was threatened by the Viceroy of Egypt, the
French favored the latter; but the four other Great Powers made a treaty, on
the 15th of July, for the protection of the Sultan. Hereupon the Minister
Thiers declared the honor of France insulted and threatened war. The French
began to make mighty preparations, and the newspapers already announced to the
world with noisy boasting the reconquest of the left bank of the Rhine. This
was a little too much for the awakened national sentiment of the Germans. We
have already observed that just before this, a revulsion had taken place in the
popular feeling, from individualism to new projects of unity. The time was past
in which an English attack upon the Holy Alliance was talked about and admiring
glances cast upon the freedom of the Great Nation. A cry of indignation arose
throughout the length and breadth of Germany; millions joined in the refrain of
the song, —
Sie sollen ihn nicht haben,
Den freien deutschen Rhein.
Even Metternich this time approved of the movement,
and, strange to say, gave it the credit of being entirely free from those
revolutionary sentiments, which, as he said, had unfortunately prevailed in the
uprising of 1813. At his request King Frederick William sent, in October, 1849,
General von Grolman and Colonel von Radowitz to Vienna to arrange necessary preparations for
the common war. It was characteristic of his catholic German sentiment and of
his mediaeval prejudices, according to which the dignity of the title of Roman
Emperor and also the sovereignty of Italy belonged to the House of Hapsburg,
that he voluntarily proposed to extend the protection of the Confederation over
Austria’s provinces in Italy.
Metternich himself was astonished at this “epoch-making
proposal”, and, in consideration of it, he for the second time approved of
Prussia’s plan of campaign proposed in 1832, which would place the contingents
of the Lesser and Petty States under Prussia’s command in the war against the
French. It is true, that his approval was not given until the end of November,
when the rise of the Guizot ministry in Paris put aside all thought of war,
and, as in 1832, left Prussia’s plan of campaign without any practical importance.
A question of the King, at this time, as to whether the consideration of a
reform in the Constitution of the German Confederation would not be opportune
the Chancellor at once turned aside evasively.
During these months Frederick William had been
replying to the ostentatious homage of his subjects, first in Konigsberg and
then in Berlin, in grandiloquent speeches, oratorically sublime, but
politically meaningless. Metternich used to say, that a ruler should speak
Little and act much. The King’s talents in speechmaking often beguiled him
into breaking this rule, and the consequence always was, that he aroused hopes
far i beyond what his actual plans sanctioned, and
the resulting disappointment was so much the more bitter. Thus the Provincial
Estates of Konigsberg supposed that they were acting quite in accordance with
the King’s sentiments, when they begged him to put finally in force the Law of
May 22, 1815. Like a dash of cold water came his short reply, that he should be
obliged to decline this proposition, but that he did contemplate some
progressive changes in the privileges of the Provincial Estates. As a matter of
fact, he did allow these Estates, which had hitherto met only at the call of
the King, to come together definitely every two years and also to print the
reports of their proceedings. By this means great activity was at once
introduced into the quiet life .of these assemblies; but they expressed
themselves at times in a way which was very annoying to the King, and their
utterances were often diametrically opposed to each other in different
provinces. The Rhine Provinces, Prussia, and Posen sent urgent memorials,
begging for the establishment of royal estates and the liberty of the Press;
while Brandenburg and Pomerania vigorously protested against any concessions to
such destructive tendencies. These different opinions clashed so seriously,
that even many thoroughly conservative ministers and generals were anxious, as
to whether it would be possible for the Administration, without the support of
a powerful royal parliament, to maintain the unity of the State.
There was also a financial question to be considered:
the development of the railway system had already begun in Germany; and more
than any other country, Prussia, with its long distances, felt the need of
making use of this mighty means of communication. A loan would be necessary for
the building of state-railways, while private corporations, willing to
construct the roads, would require from the State a guarantee of interest,
which would be quite as burdensome to the public credit as a loan. According
to. Hardenberg’s Law of January 17, 1820, the approval of the royal estates was
as necessary for the one as for the other. The King’s dislike of royal estates
suggested to him the expedient of having committees chosen in the different
Provincial Parliaments, of inviting them to a general convention at Berlin, and
of putting on them the responsibility of guaranteeing the interest. The attempt
was made, but without success. The Committees recognized the need of building
railways, but did not consider themselves competent to undertake to guarantee
the interest.
If railways were wanted, it was necessary to choose,
then, between an express suspension of the Law of 1820 and the creation of a
royal parliament. In this dilemma it occurred to the King to call together for
the settlement of this question all the Provincial Estates under the title of
a United Provincial Diet; in future, however, to repeat this only in case of
necessity, or at his own discretion, and to leave other financial matters,
which had been, by the Law of 1820, referred to the hypothetical royal
parliament, to the united Committees of the Provincial Parliaments, or to a
delegation of the United Provincial Diet. He appointed a Commission consisting
of four Ministers and one Court-Marshal to consider the matter more thoroughly,
and then set off for the Rhine Provinces, where he took occasion to discuss the
important question with Prince Metternich, as they were travelling together on
the Rhine. He explained to Metternich that he was utterly opposed to a royal
parliament and that a system of provincial assemblies was the only one suitable
for his country; but that cases might occur, e.g., the acceptance of a loan,
where no decision could be reached by the isolated expressions of opinion of
eight independent bodies; and if, in such cases, he should call together of his
own accord, for some purpose, these provincial assemblies to a short common
consultation, he would not be tying his hands for the future by this precedent,
the absolute supremacy of the Crown would not be impaired, nor would any
question of a parliamentary constitution arise. Metternich replied: “If you do
so, I am firmly convinced that, although you call together your six hundred as
provincial representatives, they will return home as royal estates.” The King,
however, considered that, in view of the preponderance of nobility in the
Provincial Parliaments, he was sure of a conservative majority; and, moreover,
thought that he was strong enough himself to prevent such encroachments in any
case. Accordingly, the deliberations of the Commission about the summoning of a
United Provincial Diet continued.
At this time, too, the King talked with Metternich and
the Austrian delegates to the Confederate Diet about a reform in the German
Confederation. In 1840, in consequence of the threatened war, he had caused
important motions to be made at Frankfort concerning certain improvements in
the German military system, and had so far succeeded, that in the future,
mutual inspections of the contingents were held at regular intervals, whereby
some of the worst sins of omission, at least, were stopped, or at any rate to
some extent mitigated.
The much-vexed question of a Confederate fortress in
South Germany gained also a point through his instrumentality. Austria had
selected Ulm for the fortress; but the South German States demanded quite as
determinedly the fortification of Rastadt; Prussia
now settled the dispute by declaring that both cities should be made fortresses
of the Confederation, and that she was very willing to contribute her share of
the expense. This met with the approval of the Confederate Diet and Frederick
William urged upon the Austrian statesmen the expediency of other undertakings,
which should provide for the Confederate Diet further business of common
interest. They praised his plans in the highest terms, and promised that an
Austrian Plenipotentiary should be sent to Berlin to confer with him about
them. This was done: the grand idea was discussed in several interviews, and
the Plenipotentiary was dismissed with friendly assurances. But that was the
end of it all. In Vienna there was a feeling against being bound by any
definite engagements.
Meanwhile the tide of sentiment in Prussia kept rising
higher. The King considered that all public business was to be conducted under
his direction, and yet permitted to the citizens a healthy growth of their
personal rights; among these latter he reckoned the free expression of opinion,
and to this end he slackened the restrictions of the Press, so far as the
existing Confederate laws would allow. He was especially liberal in this
regard, since he expected from public opinion a strong support in his scheme of
Confederate reform. His expectations were not immediately realized. The Press
directed its efforts not so much to the advocacy of a Confederate as of a
Prussian constitution. The cry for a royal parliament penetrated all classes of
society; some few Radical and Communistic voices were also heard; the longer
the uncertainty continued, the more urgent became the public clamor.
At the same time the King’s ecclesiastical projects
met with opposition everywhere. The people feared lest violence should be done
to their consciences; they feared the absolute sway of an intolerant orthodoxy
and the oppression by the State of all dissenting subjects. Vigorous protests,
spirited literary productions in themselves, followed from the University of
Konigsberg, and from the magistrates of Berlin and of Breslau. In the midst of
this excitement the Bishop of Treves inaugurated an exhibition of the so-called
Sacred Coat of Christ, a relic of flagrant spuriousness, which nevertheless
attracted millions of pious worshippers to Treves. Thereupon a Catholic priest
in Silesia, one Johannes Ronge, sent an open letter to the Bishop, in which he
condemned in strong terms such encouragement of stupid superstition. A certain
pastor Czerski in the province Posen immediately afterwards solemnly renounced
for himself and his parish all allegiance to the Catholic Church.
Some twenty other parishes followed his example, and
their Council at Leipzig proclaimed the founding of a German Catholic Church with
a thoroughly liberal creed. The spirit of this movement spread also among the
Protestants. The Pastor Uhlich and Professor Wislicenus started a number of free societies under the name of “Friends of Light;”
especially among the lower classes of the citizens and peasants these reforms
were exceedingly popular, and were very zealously supported. The King, however,
was filled with disgust. Doubtless he was right in his opinion, that in this
case there was no revulsion from a worldly church to true religion, as in the
times of Luther, but rather, on the contrary, a turning from the sacred
mysteries of religion to the theories of human reason.
A negative religious movement of this kind could never
lead to the establishment of a new church; therefore it was certainly unwise,
instead of letting the senseless excitement spend itself, to try to restrain it
by police regulations and devices, rousing for it in this way the sympathy of
all liberal parties, and affording these latter, at the same time, a fruitful
theme for political agitation. In Leipzig this resulted in deplorable scenes.
Certain short-sighted regulations had led to the suspicion that the Saxon
Government favored Jesuitical intrigues; Prince John had been unjustly
suspected, and when he came to Leipzig in 1845, his residence was attacked, the
troops had to be called out, and seven men were shot dead on the spot. This
added fuel to the fire of the Radical party, which at this time was beginning
to stir up the people with increasing audacity, and which found in the
occurrence at Leipzig an apt illustration for its portrayals of the
bloodthirsty German tyrants.
But the Radical party was not alone in the work of
political agitation. Even in 1839 the plan had been carried out of uniting all
the leaders of the Opposition in the individual Confederate States in a common
attack upon the existing Confederate Constitution. Since that time, the most
influential notables had convened once a year without any regard for minor
party lines: the Radicals, Itzstein and Hecker, and the Moderates, Weicker, Soiron, and Bassermann of Baden, Heinrich von Gagern of Darmstadt, as prudent as he was determined, the
Liberal Wippermann and the Radical Hildebrand from
Hesse-Cassel, the extreme Revolutionaries, Robert Blum of Leipzig, Count
Reichenbach of Silesia, Johann Jacoby of Konigsberg, beside many others of less
notoriety.
At these great conventions, which were held sometimes
in the Rhine Provinces, and sometimes in Leipzig, there was never any
intimation of an immediate outbreak; the acquiescent attitude of the Chambers,
the sympathetic tone of the Press and the current literature, the enlistment of
new adherents from all quarters, and the adoption of stirring watchwords were
looked upon as the evidences of the growth of the movement. Yet by no means did
the Radical party abandon a special sort of revolutionary propagandism, which
very soon spread beyond the German boundaries, and which made use of
communistic tactics. Robert Blum’s modest dwelling in Leipzig became an established
headquarters and resort for Polish refugees and conspirators, who were at this
time preparing a heavy blow at the Powers who had shared in the Partition;
these men recognized in the German and French Republicans their natural allies,
and were always ready to promote closer union among them.
In Paris, Ledru-Rollin was leader of the republican
committee; L. Blanc and Proudhon, both intimately connected by correspondence
with German writers, kept up the literary agitation of the social democracy;
the large society called “La Marianne” was influential in these directions,
among the Paris working-classes; and a large number of German artisans,
employed in Paris, were so filled with enthusiasm for the communistic
philanthropists, that after their return to Germany they spread these ideas
among their fellow-countrymen. German journeymen in Switzerland, too, found
opportunity for similar cogitations; so much so, that the police in Baden were
seriously troubled over the founding of several societies of this nature. A
certain publishing-house set up by the Radicals in Herisau near Zurich, issued uninterruptedly revolutionary tracts, thousands of which
were disseminated among the lower classes throughout Germany.
Tracts of the same sort were also sent over from North
America, where, in several cities, societies had been formed for the same
purpose by German immigrants. In these writings the business was handled very
practically; to enthusiastic praises of Republicanism and fearful delineations
of the German despots was added the summons to an armed revolution accompanied
by drastic details of particular ends to be attained, e.g., the abolition of
the nobility, the banishment of the Jews from Germany, the expulsion of all
kings, dukes, and princes, the assassination of all government officials,
together with exact technical instructions how to found secret societies for
these purposes, how to procure money and weapons, and with what materials and
on what principles barricades were to be successfully constructed. These
doctrines were the more eagerly devoured by countless readers, since the hot
summer of 1846 had occasioned a gloriously abundant vintage in South Germany,
but had brought to the North a bad harvest and consequent famine; so that in
one section revelling, and in the other wretchedness
excited the discontent of the masses. The watchword flew through the air:
Things cannot remain this way. It must come to blows so soon as in Paris the
old Louis Philippe shall close his eyes.
And now it seemed as if a malicious demon had
collected in all corners of Europe fuel, out of which, once set on fire, now
here, now there, threatening tongues of flame arose to terrify or to enrage
mankind. In the beginning of 1846, the Prussian authorities in Poland
discovered there a branch of the great Polish conspiracy. They arrested and
brought to trial a considerable number of the members, among them the military
leader, Mieroslawski, and afterwards suppressed
without difficulty several small riots.
During the succeeding months, however, a rebellion
broke out so much the more violently in Galicia, and in the small free city of
Cracow, which had been left independent at the time of the Partition in 1815.
In Galicia the Austrian Government let loose against the Polish nobility the
Ruthenian peasants, who, long imbittered as they had been against their
manorial lords, quickly stifled the uprising by horrible assassinations. In
Cracow, the city was occupied by troops from the three neighboring Powers in common;
then, in virtue of a new treaty, an end was made to her independence as a
republic, by her incorporation into the Austrian monarchy. These events had a
twofold effect upon Germany. At first the popular sympathy for the Polish cause
was enhanced, aroused especially by the fearful butchery in Galicia,—however
little a struggle between lords and subjects is likely in general to excite the
sympathy of Liberals in behalf of the nobility. Then France and England protested
against the annexation of Cracow by Austria, in the spirit of the
interpretation of the Act of the Vienna Congress already mentioned: their
argument being, that since the stipulation which recognized Cracow as a
republic was inserted in the Act, it was impossible to abrogate this without
the consent of the Powers belonging to the Congress. Of course this assertion,
like the right to interfere in 1832 in the question of the German Constitution,
was stoutly denied; but the fact of their interference shows how weak and
unsettled the incipient national feeling in Germany still was, notwithstanding
the uprising of 1840.
Although this question vitally concerned Germany’s
independence, yet public sentiment, in accordance with the prevailing Polish
tendencies, was overwhelmingly on the side of the Western Powers, however
convincingly Clemens Perthes demonstrated that the insertion of a stipulation
in the Act had been only to guard against the interference of a third party,
and that the liberty of the contracting parties to change the conditions of
their own accord was in no way restricted.
The more strongly, however, was German patriotism
aroused over another event of this same year: namely, the 1 beginning of the
quarrel between Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark. Inasmuch as this later led directly
to the founding of the German Empire, I will defer a detailed account of it
until its bearings may be more fully explained, and shall mention here only the
general subject at issue. For a long time, influences had been at work in
Copenhagen, that should gradually lead to the severing of the ancient political
union of Schleswig and Holstein, and prepare the way for the complete
incorporation of Schleswig in Denmark proper. This had been tolerated by the
duchies inasmuch as the royal male line was expected soon to become extinct,
and then, according to the invariable law of succession, the duchies would fall
to the nearest agnate, the Duke of Augustenburg, whereas Denmark would be
inherited by the female line: and thus the duchies would be freed from all
Danish control.
But now King Christian announced to his subjects and
to the world by an open letter that for Schleswig, and perhaps also for some
parts of Holstein, the same law of succession should hold as for Denmark.
Immediately a great outburst against Denmark arose throughout all Germany. All
parties joined in it without exception: the Conservatives hastened to support
the inherited right of the agnate; the Liberals to advocate the constitutional
right of the duchies, and the Democrats from their point of view demanded
respect for the will of the Schleswig-Holstein people. Everybody was disgusted
that the Confederate Diet, although it recognized in its resolutions of
September 15th the rights of Holstein, yet, with customary diplomatic
politeness, expressed its confidence in the royal judgment of the Danish king.
Everybody was enraged at such servile flattery, and it was insufferable that
the highest authority in Germany found no word of sympathy for Schleswig. Even
the otherwise moderate patriots now cried out: This state of things cannot
last.
At this juncture, the deliberations in Berlin over the
question of estates came to a close. The King had considerably increased the
Commission, having added to it his brother William, who was at the time
President of the Department of State, all the ministers and several generals.
The Prince was, for a number of reasons, very apprehensive; he saw clearly
that, when an impulse had been given to things in this direction, their own
weight would carry them further; he feared lest the widespread dislike of standing
armies, the result of long-continued peace, might possibly induce powerful
royal estates to withhold the necessary money for the support of the Prussian
army. Meanwhile, the great majority of the members of the Commission declared
themselves in favor of the measure on account of its urgent necessity; so that
finally the Prince also supported it without reserve. In doing this, he took He
stand once for all. “ A new Prussia will come out of it,” he said. “The old
Prussia will be buried with the proclamation of this law. May the new State
become as great and noble as the old one has been in glory and in honor.” Every
word of premonition and of hope, which the Prince thus uttered, has become
true. The new Prussia brought to him at the outset personal danger and exile,
and later the severest struggles for the sake of his army; and then be himself
was its leader in raising it to an undreamed-of height of power and of glory.
How unspeakably effective the action of the King would
have been, if, now that he had once arrived at the point of decision, he had
come to a full and complete conclusion, upon the basis of which a quick and
hearty agreement with the impending United Provincial Diet would have been
possible! The result of an alliance of the Crown with such a choice selection
of the ablest and most influential men of the nation would have been
incalculable, a rock upon which the waves of that excited age would have broken
in vain. What an extension of Prussian influence in South and Middle Germany!
How the way would have been prepared for the conversion of the German Confederation
into a German Empire! And verily, all this might have been attained without
great sacrifices, merely by an unreserved fulfilment of the laws of 1815 and
1820, with a generous interpretation of any ambiguous points.
But the King’s fancy was probably flattered by the
vision of a great and brilliant assembly of princes and counts, noble lords and
stately grandees; and as to further powers even of these, he remained unchangeably
fixed within the limits of his doctrine, in spite of the energetic assurances
of his most influential ministers, that such a position was anomalous. The King
believed that safety of person and property was due to subjects; and
accordingly a certain amount of freedom in expressing their opinions; also the
right to withdraw from a church no longer sympathetic; and further,—an
extension of the promises of 1815 — the privilege not only of discussing, but
of approving new systems of taxation and loans, so far as this might be
consistent with the safety of the State. To the Crown, however, belonged the
sole right of deciding in matters of State business: for instance, concerning
the revenues from the domains and indirect taxes, and all expenses of the
State; and of enacting laws, so far as these did not affect the personal and
private rights aforementioned. It was an act of royal grace, if the Crown chose
to listen to the voice of an advising Diet, and to accept from them petitions
and memorials. In order to keep itself from being exposed in this high position
to possible encroachments, the Crown was to summon the United Diet only for the
approval of new taxes and loans, or whenever otherwise desirable in the
unbiassed royal judgment, to allow committees of the various provincial
parliaments, meeting once in four years, to transact other common business; and
to assign to a small deputation of the Diet the yearly examination of the
public finances, a duty that in 1820 had been conceded to the prospective
royal estates. With these provisions, the letters patent appeared on the 13th
of February, 1847, which summoned for the 11th of April the United Provincial
Diet, to be divided into the Curia of the princes and the manorial lords, and
the Curia of the lower nobility, the citizens, and the peasants.
It is no wonder that throughout all the provinces, in
response to this, instead of the joyful gratitude which was expected, intense
displeasure was manifested. In many points a disregard was discovered of the
promises y contained in those old laws that had never been made void; and
especially the refusal to grant yearly meetings of the Diet seemed to be a
direct violation of the law of 1820.
The King was moved to explain his position to the Diet
in his long and flowery Address, which he delivered with all possible pomp and
display. “No power on earth,” he cried, “ shall induce me to transform the
natural relation between Prince and People into a conventional and
constitutional one. Never will I allow to come between Almighty God in Heaven
and this Land a blotted parchment, to rule us with its paragraphs, and to
replace the ancient, sacred bond of loyalty.” Then, after he had expressed his
displeasure at the revolutionary and irreligious machinations of the times, he
declared to the Representatives that they were a German Diet in the old,
traditional sense, i.e., especially and essentially representatives and
defenders of their own rights and the rights of all those Estates whose
confidence had sent them thither; besides this, they were to exercise those
rights which the Crown had recognized as theirs: that of giving their advice
when asked for it, and of delivering to the Throne the petitions and appeals
received from their provinces; but it was not at all their business to
represent opinions, nor to advocate the prejudices of the times and of the
schools. For the Crown must govern according to the laws of God and of the
Land, and according to its own free choice; but never could it be, nor ought it
to be, influenced by the will of majorities.
There were only a very few men in the Assembly that
were desirous at that time of a parliamentary government; but most of them
demanded a yearly meeting of the Diet and the complete fulfilment of the old
promises. Their first act was an Address to the Throne, which asserted their
rights as Representatives on the ground of the old laws. The King was confounded.
Yet he wished to avoid a rupture at the very beginning of operations, and
replied that he should probably summon the Diet again before 1851. But this did
not do much good. He was forced to see his plans about an income-tax and a
railway-loan rejected, because no approval was considered possible, until the
rights of the members as Representatives, which dated from 1820, should receive
unconditional recognition. It was with great difficulty that the elections of
the committees took place, since most of the members considered them illegal.
Whereas the advocates of the royal propositions, Von
Manteuffel and Von Bismarck-Schonhausen, were everywhere
in the country looked upon with suspicion as the adherents of a despotic cause,
a boisterous popular applause surrounded the leaders of the opposition: the
Pomeranian Count Schwerin, the East Prussian Alfred von Auerswald, the
Westphalian Baron Georg von Vincke, the Rhinelanders Ludolf Camphausen, Beekerath, and Hansemann; even Metternich credited them
with an astonishing cleverness and skill, that had shown itself more than a
match for the Commissioners of the Crown. However that may have been, the
proceedings of the Diet were a disappointment to the King. Its transactions
stimulated a liberal sentiment in every house in the land, and won for the King
the undeserved reputation of being an incorrigible absolutist. In the rest of
Germany, the hopes built upon Prussia were demolished, and reckless abuse
poured in across all the frontiers. from the democratic press in Saxony and
Bavaria, in Baden and Darmstadt. The influential position of Prussia in Germany
and respect for royalty had both received a severe blow.
At this time in Bavaria a storm of quite another
character broke in upon the monarchical authority. King Louis I. had ruled for
nearly ten years with the assistance of the Ultramontane Ministry of Abel, in
spite of the continued complaints of the Protestants and German Catholics. In
the year 1846, the achievements of the Ultramontane party began to be regarded
by the arbitrary Prince as insufficient, and their pretensions as inconvenient.
The immediate occasion of the rupture was the passion that the Sovereign of
sixty years suddenly conceived for a pretty, clever, and immoral danseuse, Lola
Montez, a diva by no means devoted to the Church, whose elevation to the rank
of countess Abel and his colleagues therefore refused to confirm. The King
dismissed the Ministry, and formed a Libarel Cabinet.
This was followed by an excited uprising of the clerical party, which knew well
how to make the most of its temporary position as defender of morals, and which
renounced at once and entirely the ultra-royalist sentiments that it had
hitherto paraded. The aged Gorres wrote at this time just before his death: “When
the odor of decay permeates society, then the fountains of the abyss break
forth upon it, and the floods roll over it. In the language of the children of
men it is called a revolution; in the language of the supernals it is a revulsion toward the standard of eternal order.”
This language of the supernals was understood. The Countess Lola did her part in stirring up indignation by
all sorts of improprieties. Her house was threatened, the King insulted, and,
finally, after ever-increasing riots, the danseuse was driven out of the
country, while the soldiery looked on and smiled. It is a fact, that the
clerical party was not alone in its anger at the enormity of the disgrace. All
the citizens of Munich and the University were united in their irritation against
the King. Every one in Bavaria turned away in bitter resentment from such a
polluted throne.
At this time, too, the last, the supposed inviolable
support of the old system, the authority of Prince Metternich, was falling more
and more into contempt. The threatening signs of the times gave him chance
enough to be proud of the insight with which he had foretold the approach of
the social revolution. The only question was, whether his exclusive use of
police preventive measures, instead of those reforms that the situation
demanded, did not increase rather than alleviate the evil, and whether his
refusal to admit the educated and property-holding classes to any active share
in the government did not drive them directly into the arms of the revolution.
Though now an old man over seventy years old, he lived to see this take place.
In Hungary, Louis Kossuth had been calling into life
since 1842 an active democratic movement in the Lower House and in the
counties; Metternich, who generally took little part in internal politics,
strove by a whole series of reform-laws, to pacify this uneasiness: he fared
just as did the Prussian King with his United Diet. The offers which ten years
before would have been acceptable, now came too late to satisfy the constantly
increasing demands. The agitation went on its way regardless of them.
And even in his acknowledged field of universal
pre-eminence, in foreign politics, the Chancellor of State experienced one
failure after another. In his blind zeal to maintain in opposition to the
social revolution all existing institutions, whether they were intrinsically
tenable or not, he had everywhere, in Germany, in Switzerland, in Italy, and in
Turkey, allied himself to the decaying relics of the past, and had suppressed
the vigorous buds of future promise.
In Turkey, the Sultanry was
now challenged by a rapidly spreading anarchy; and the struggling Christians
looked more and more to Russia for help, instead of to Austria.
In Italy, the then liberally-minded Pope, Pius IX, had
borne, in 1846, the banner of national independence; since that time there had
been commotions in all the States of the peninsula; in Sicily, an open
rebellion broke out; the Austrian Government in Tuscany, Modena, and Lombardy
found itself faced by the unconcealed hostility of the people. King Charles
Albert of Sardinia had strengthened his army and was awaiting a favorable
moment for attack. Lord Palmerston, long since dissatisfied with Austria, was
doing everything in his power to encourage the national sentiment in the whole
peninsula.
Lastly, in Switzerland, the Radical and Jesuitical
parties had been standing since 1848 armed and ready to close with each other;
of which the former was at the same time the representative of Confederate
reform in the direction of centralization, and the latter, of a more complete
sovereign independence to be enjoyed by each individual Canton. Metternich, of
course, with the approval of Frederick William and Guizot, supported the
Jesuitical party. He proposed a conference of the five Great Powers about the
matter. Palmerston readily assented, and then did his best to delay the
proceedings, while at the same time he secretly sent to Berne the summons to
make an end of things as quickly as possible. Thereupon the Assembly,
controlled by a majority of Radicals, began operations without delay. In three
weeks the Cantons of the Jesuitical party were overpowered, and the Radical
rule established in the whole of the Confederation. Such an ignominious defeat
as this, in which he was held up as the victim even to the point of ridicule,
the old gray-haired Chancellor had not yet sustained.
To the German Radicals, on the other hand, the triumph
of their Swiss sympathizers, who had begun with insignificant skirmishes and
ended with a great national crisis, seemed a brilliant pattern for their own
intended reform. No less strongly were the champions of German Unity affected
by the evident analogy between German Individualism and the principle of
Canton-rights now crushed out in Switzerland. It seemed, indeed, a shame and a
disgrace, if the great German People were not able to accomplish what the small
nation of the Swiss had so brilliantly effected. Both sides gave frequent and
definite expression to these sentiments, even before the Swiss contest had
terminated.
On the 12th of September, 1847, several hundred
Liberals of Baden met at Offenburg, under the leadership of the hot-headed and
vain deputy Hecker, who was gifted with eloquence, if not fertile in ideas.
This assembly accepted with zealous unanimity a programme laid out by the
journalist Von Struve, a cold-blooded fanatic, which demanded the repeal of the
hated Confederate Laws of 1819 and 1832, and then further proposed: unlimited
freedom of the Press, unconditional religious freedom, the right of forming
clubs and of holding meetings, the obligation of the military to swear
allegiance to the Constitution, representation of the people in the Confederate
Diet, replacement of the standing armies by a militia consisting of the whole people,
a proportionate income-tax instead of the taxation hitherto in vogue,
protection of Labor against Capital, trial by jury, abolition of all
privileges, and in place of the system of officials the right of the people to
govern themselves. Clearly, nothing was lacking to the proclamation of a
social-democratic republic but the name.
Another assembly, of totally different character met
on the 10th of October at Heppenheim on the Bergstrasse.
It was composed of prominent men of the Constitutional party: Romer of Würtemberg,
Heinrich von Gagern of Hesse-Darmstadt, Hergenhahn of Nassau, Hansemann and Mevissen of Prussia,
Mathy, Bassermann, and Von Soiron of Baden, beside
Von Itzstein, the leader of the Baden Radicals. Here the discussion was limited
to demands for a German Parliament. Most of the members believed that it would
be possible to form this side by side with the Confederate Diet. Then Mathy rose
and showed, that in an international Confederation of sovereign States there
could be no common parliament nor a common government; and, surely, a
parliament without a government was a political anomaly. He moved, therefore, a
resolution to demand a parliament and a government under Prussia’s leadership
for those allied States that belonged to the Tariff-Union. This was seconded
and strongly supported by Gagern; whereupon it was
adopted by the meeting. Afterwards, however, it was felt that the term
“Tariff-Union Parliament” did not have a sound that would catch the common ear
and attract the masses; and so Bassermann brought forward on the 2d of
February, 1848, in the Baden Chamber the proposition, accompanied by convincing
arguments, for the summoning of a German Parliament by the side of the
Confederate Diet. The news spread quickly through all the German countries, and
this proposition was everywhere taken up with tremendous applause, as the most
effective watchword for future operations.
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