BOOK III.

FAILURE OF THE PROJECTS FOR GERMAN UNITY.

 

CHAPTER I.

SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN.

 

However decidedly King Frederick William IV had expressed himself, in his letter to the Duke of Augustenburg, in favor of the maintenance of the ancient rights of Schleswig-Holstein to independence, mutual union, and the succession of the male line, yet his heart was heavy, when immediately afterwards it was found necessary to settle the matter by force of arms, and Prussia herself was drawn into the conflict. For, in this dispute between the Duchies and their Sovereign, right and wrong seemed to him to be quite as much on one side as on the other: the King in Copenhagen had been led by fanatical Democrats to a violation of the Constitution, and the people of the Duchies had been seduced by inconsiderate demagogues to a premature revolt. In his way of looking at it, it was a conflict of one revolution with another; whoever gained the victory, in no case would it be the triumph of a just cause.

He had no thought of reaping profit for Prussia from this confusion. As a member of the German Confederation he wished to act energetically in the interests of Germany; but more than all, he considered it his duty to prevent, if he could, the outbreak of a war, or, at any rate, to bring the war to a close as quickly as possible. At the very outset he announced in diplomatic negotiations his longing for peace.

The King’s sentiment was certainly humane; but his conduct was inconsistent with his purpose. Whoever is once engaged in a struggle, and yet is unwilling to make peace on dishonorable terms, must not himself betray to the world his horror of war. The desire of Frederick William for a reconciliation increased day by day the presumption of the Danish Ministers. On the very threshold of the conflict the King was made to feel this bitterly. Consistent with his idea of the divine institution of a monarchy, he believed that at critical times, when the sagacity of the ministers was not equal to the occasion, the king must take upon himself the solution of the problem by personal intervention. Although he held that the ministers should never perform any act without the direction or permission of the king, yet, without his undervaluing such a regular control exercised by the monarch in general, this personal and immediate manifestation of the royal majesty seemed to him to partake of a higher and a sublimer nature.

He intended now to act upon this principle. While his troops were on the march and his Minister was holding more and more stormy interviews with the Danish Ambassador, he wrote, himself, on the 2d of April, an autograph letter to the King of Denmark, in which he begged him to receive graciously his envoy extraordinary, Major von Wildenbruch, who was charged with a confidential commission.

Wildenbruch’s instructions, received on the 3d of April, were to the following effect: everything depended upon convincing the Danish King that it would be impossible, in face of the united power of Germany, to wrench Schleswig from Holstein, and that insisting upon it would necessarily cost him both Duchies; and further, that the provinces of Denmark Proper would, in that case, find themselves too weak to exist alone, and would join with Sweden and Norway in a Scandinavian Union, so that the King would thus lose also his Danish crown. Inasmuch as Prussia did not desire this union, she would sincerely endeavor to aid the King to retain the Duchies; which, however, he could not do without recognizing the indissoluble union of Schleswig with Holstein, as an independent State under the rule of their common Duke: a change in the Danish law of succession would then insure the union of the two Crowns for the future. To attain this end, to make a peaceful settlement possible, and to avoid a bitter war, in which the force of Radical Germany would pour in the form of wild unbridled hordes into the Duchies—this would be the object of Prussia’s efforts. For, if the German Princes should not take hold of the matter energetically, the Duches, in their last hopes for an independent existence, would turn to their Republican sympathizers in Germany, and a Republic would arise on the other side of the Elbe, which would seriously endanger as well Denmark as the neighboring German States.

The Prussian troops, continued the instructions, would halt at the frontier of Schleswig, in the hope that a peaceful solution would be reached; but if this hope should not be fulfilled, then they would act as circumstances might dictate. Should Denmark interfere with our navigation, we should then be obliged to seize Jutland as indemnification. No objection was to be made to English arbitration, if Denmark wished it. With the Provisional Government of the Duchies (which had not yet been recognized by the Confederate Diet) Wildenbruch was to remain upon strictly unofficial terms, but was to inform himself of its tendencies and to leave no room for doubt about Prussia’s loyalty to the German cause.

All this was well-meant, and founded in part, at least, upon actual conditions. But it should have been remembered that Copenhagen, too, had had its March Revolution, that since that time the Ministers had not been dependent upon the King, but the King upon the Ministers, and that these Ministers belonged to a party that was at heart Republicanly-inclined and enthusiastically in favor of a Scandinavian Union; so that, in just those facts, which the instructions of Wildenbruch mentioned in order to frighten them out of using violent measures in Schleswig-Holstein, the Danish Ministers found the strongest possible inducements for continuing the same.

Wildenbruch then, in his interview on the 8th of April with the King of Denmark and his Minister, Count Knuth, at Sonderborg, on the island of Alsen, completed the ruin of his mission. After having had a long conversation with them, he sent them in the evening a note, the separate sentences of which were taken almost literally from his instructions, but so twisted and disarranged that they placed his errand in the most unfavorable light possible. In consequence of this, the note had no effect upon the Danes, and in German eyes might have seemed almost treasonable.

Without any reference to the Scandinavian Union, he began: Prussia wished above all things to help the King-Duke to retain his Duchies. And, he continued more specifically, the only motive of Prussia’s efforts was the desire to prevent the Republican and Radical elements in Germany from taking any part in the dispute. It was Denmark’s own interests, her glory and her independence, that were the aim of Prussia’s policy. Therefore Prussia wished to wait and see whether Denmark would decide upon entering into negotiations of peace on the basis of the firm union of Schleswig and Holstein. It is not surprising, that within a few hours Wildenbruch received from the Danish Ministry the answer, that Denmark was willing to negotiate, provided no Prussian soldier set foot upon the soil of Schleswig.

On the following day, the Danish troops fell upon a small company of ducal soldiers at Flensburg and forced them, after a brave resistance and heavy loss, to retreat as far as the Eider. It was useless, after that, to think of restraining the Germans any longer. On the 10th of April, Colonel (afterwards General) von Bonin crossed the Eider at the head of the Prussian troops. On the 12th, the Confederate Diet formally recognized the Provisional Government, and called upon Prussia to induce Denmark to allow the entrance of Schleswig into the German Confederation. Prussian and Hanoverian reinforcements marched forward, and a few days later General von Wrangel, of the Prussian cavalry, took command in the name of the Confederation, with the intention of assuring the union of the two Duchies by driving the Danes wholly out of Schleswig.

The General was considered a vigorous and active leader of cavalry. He had not yet given any evidence of being a great strategist, and we may be allowed to observe that he was always inferior in this point. In personal intercourse, he assumed rough-and-ready manners, and affected eccentricities, behind which, however, generally lurked a calculating wariness. Moreover, he was easily moved by the changing impressions of the moment, and was then exceedingly obstinate in following out the impulses of his temporary mood.

After Denmark, on the 19th of April, had ordered her fleet to seize all Prussian ships and had thus opened hostilities, Wrangel, acting on a very indefinite plan, attacked, on the 23d, the enemy’s positions at the Dannevirke, the old Danish wall, and in the city of Schleswig. The impetuous valor of the Prussian and Holstein troops prevailed so overwhelmingly, that the enemy scattered and fled northward in confusion; had they been closely pursued, they would have barely escaped utter annihilation. But it did not come to that; for Wrangel allowed his troops some days of rest, and then occupied the northern part of Schleswig without encountering any opposition. He finally penetrated some miles into Jutland, where, on the 2d of May, the Fortress of Fridericia opened its gates to him without a struggle. Other military movements of the summer were limited to small sallies and skirmishes, in which both sides showed great bravery, but which were attended with no important results.

The pause in military operations was not caused by any incompetence of General von Wrangel, nor even by the secret sympathy of Frederick William for his royal brother in Copenhagen. It was occasioned rather by the growing pressure on the part of the European Powers, which were without exception unfavorable and even hostile to the German cause. Unhappily, we must confess that mistakes in the German policy had in part given rise to this sentiment in Europe.

We shall later see that already for years the question of keeping together the whole of the Danish territory, in spite of or in consequence of the disputed matter of the succession, had been a theme of discussion among the Great Powers as an important element in the European Balance of Power. It was accordingly a very imprudent step on the part of Frederick William, when, on the 24th of March, he roundly declared that the government of the two Duchies was hereditary in the male line: that was to say, that upon the death of Frederick VII. the Danish kingdom would fall asunder. All the other Great Powers desired the contrary, and consequently their attitude towards Prussia became inimical. Prussia would have done better to have confined her efforts to the subject of the Constitution, and to have passed over this question of succession in silence, or to have left it to the decision of Europe.

Even more trouble was caused by the demand of Germany, that Schleswig should be allowed to enter the German Confederation; and especially unfortunate was the admission of the Schleswig deputies to the National Assembly even before the Confederate Diet had con­firmed its membership in the Confederation. This was quite as much in contradiction to what had hitherto been regarded as legitimate as, on the other side, the threatened incorporation of Schleswig into Denmark Proper; and in the former case, the Germans had not only expressed an intention, but had actually carried it out. The Danes hastened to enter a protest at all the Courts against such a high-handed proceeding, and the result was everywhere the same.

After this, the prevailing opinion in Europe was not that the Danes had violated an ancient provincial right, but that revolutionary Germany had presumed to annex unjustifiably a Danish province. In London, in Paris, and in St. Petersburg, such a feeling gained ground the more, because of the increasing anxiety and jealousy with which Germany’s attempts to rise into a united nation were regarded. Even if Germany had confined herself strictly to her own affairs, there would have been many suspicious and jealous glances cast upon this new aspiring Power which was rising in their midst. And now that the national movement had spread beyond the limits of the country, the Powers hardly cared to conceal their decided displeasure.

France was, to be sure, sufficiently occupied just now with her own party-struggles; but what Germany had to fear from that direction was indicated by the close union between the Radicals of both countries, and also by the proposal of the French Government to allow a French army to cross to Posen for the purpose of assisting in the Polish insurrection; whereupon Baron Arnim responded by asking whether France wished to draw down upon herself a Prusso-Russian offensive alliance.

Russia, on the other hand, threatened a military occupation of Posen, if Prussia continued to allow free course to the Polish machinations, but withdrew the threat when Arnim made known the French proposal. The Czar Nicholas, however, from his conservative horror of revolutions in general, and from personal interest in his relative, the King of Denmark, took sides very decidedly against the rebellious Duchies and Germany’s support of them. He did not exactly propose to declare war, but at least to make a vigorous public protest, if Germany should not moderate her pretensions. He contented himself meanwhile with secretly inciting King Oscar of Sweden to take bold measures against Germany. King Oscar did not precisely wish a war with Germany, but was willing to make some little preparation, in order to secure from his Chambers the army appropriations that he desired, and to flatter the Danish parties with the prospect of a union with Scandinavia.

In England, sympathies were divided, yet inclined chiefly to the side of Denmark. The whole English commercial world saw in the rise of Germany an approaching extension of the Tariff-Union, and in the occupation of Schleswig the first step towards the building of a German fleet, both of which projects were most adverse to English interests. In Parliament, the Tories, to a man, declared that Germany’s conduct was a piece of brutal violence, a presumptuous and unallowable misuse of pretended power. This was also the opinion of the majority of the English Cabinet, in which, however, the most influential member, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lord Palmerston, although in general no friend of Germany, was sufficiently well acquainted with the designs of Denmark on the offensive, to be ready to act as a mediator. The Queen, also, moved by the interests of the Prince-Consort, used her influence in the same direction. Yet so strong was the tide of popular opposition, that the most that could be expected from these well-wishers of Germany was a mild recommendation of conciliatory measures at Copenhagen.

Thus the German people found themselves quite alone among the nations of Europe, and threatened on both sides by hostile neighbors.

And what was the state of things in Germany itself in regard to the Danish war?

That Government which was more than ever determined to assert its claim to continued presidency of the Confederation, namely Austria, announced that it was unable just then to send troops to Schleswig. It was certainly true that Austria had need of its army elsewhere; and yet the appearance of even one of its battalions, or the unfurling of a single Austrian banner in Schleswig, would have been invaluable for Germany in the eyes of Denmark and Europe, and would surely have been practicable for Austria under any circumstances. But it was just this, that Austria did not wish to do: at the very first engagement in a war on the part of the German Confederation, she announced that she did not wish to be considered a member. Count Ficquelmont declared further, that Austria must act as a European Great Power, that as such she stood upon precisely as friendly a footing with the Danish as with the German Courts, and that consequently she reserved every expression of judgment upon the disputed question, and should not break off diplomatic relations with Denmark.

The South German States supported the cause of Schleswig by holding popular assemblies, by instituting penny-collections for the future German fleet, by raising small companies of volunteers, and by choosing some few able officers; but the Governments themselves remained wholly inactive till the end of July. The North German States of the 10th Confederate Corps had assigned for the support of the cause ten thousand men from their thirty thousand; but when Wrangel desired an increase, they asserted that they were utterly unable to accede to his demands, since they needed the rest of their troops for the protection of their coasts and for the maintenance of internal order.

Among the Germans, Prussia’s position with respect to the Danish war was almost as isolated as that of Germany among the Nations of Europe.

So that the satisfaction will be readily understood with which the Berlin Cabinet greeted the proposal of an Anglo-Russian, and later of an English mediation. It is not necessary for us to go into the details of the negotiations; the result was, in the main, as follows. Lord Palmerston observed, that the Schleswig question was one of nationality : since tlie inhabitants of the northern third of Schleswig were mostly Danish, and of the remainder of the country German, it was advisable to incorporate this northern third into Denmark Proper, and to unite the southern portion with Holstein, thus allowing it to be admitted into the German Confederation; Holstein, so enlarged, should remain connected with Denmark by having a common ruler.

Prussia was, on the whole, satisfied with this solution of the difficulty. As for the Provisional Government of the Duchies, it had offered on the 31st of March, in a public manifesto, to relinquish to the Danish Nation the northern part of Schleswig; but after the outbreak of the war and occupation of the whole country, such a sacrifice was looked upon as uncalled-for; and the Government tried its best to prevent negotiations of peace upon this basis. This was a fresh mistake. It should have left it to the Danes to decline the English proposal,—as they did immediately afterwards. The Danes had, for the present, no desire at all to negotiate for peace, and would consent only to a truce, making, even for this, conditions that it was impossible to accept.

Meanwhile, the Prussian Government was continually importuned with the bitterest complaints from the Prussian cities along the coast of the Baltic on account of damages, already amounting to millions of marks, suffered by their commerce in consequence of the Danish blockade. On this point, also, Prussia stood alone; since the cities on the North Sea and even Schleswig-Holstein had set free, in the middle of May, the Danish ships detained in their harbors, in the secret hope that Denmark would in return leave their merchant-vessels unmolested. At the same time, General Wrangel reported that the reinforcements, which he had so urgently required, had not been sent by any of the Confederate States to whom he had applied. He said that he could probably hold his ground in Jutland against the Danes; but if they were to receive help from without, he should be obliged to retire from Jutland and to concentrate his troops further south in some protected position. Therefore he demanded that the negligent states be urged to attend to the fulfilment of their duties.

The Swedes had, in fact, collected a body of troops on the west coast of Schonen, and had even landed six thousand men upon the island of Funen. At this, the Russian Government announced that the occupation of Jutland placed insurmountable hindrances in the way of any peace-negotiations, and that most surely the consequences of a collision between the German and Swedish troops would be incalculable. Influenced by all these circumstances, the Berlin Cabinet decided at once to send orders to Wrangel to withdraw from Jutland. The General, who had anticipated quite the opposite result from his representations, was furious, but was obliged to obey.

In the Duchies, and still more in Frankfort, this order produced an outburst of rage; and on the 9th of June, upon the motion of the Schleswiger Waitz, the National Assembly passed a decree, that the cause of the Duchies was the cause of the German Nation, and that it involved the honor and interests of Germany, which must be preserved and maintained. But this resulted, for the time at least, in nothing but words; and the Prussian Government, giving these no heed, sent Count Pourtales on the 22d of June to Malmo, where King Oscar of Sweden was residing with his court. Pourtales was to impress upon the minds of the Swedes the fact, that their conduct was only increasing the obstinacy of the Danes and inducing them to complicate by unfair demands the negotiations for peace, so ardently desired by Prussia.

In fact, the claims advanced by them up to this time in London had aimed at a complete humiliation of Germany. They declared that the truce was not to be confined simply to the cessation of active hostilities; but that during its continuance the first steps must be taken towards the restoration of internal order in the Duchies. To this end, the army raised by the revolutionary Government was to be disbanded, and the soldiers to be sent to their homes. Holstein might, as a member of the German Confederation, remain under the control of those authorities sanctioned by the Confederation; but from Schleswig the troops of both parties were to be withdrawn and a Danish set of officials to be introduced, who should (as they said) reorganize in a proper manner the administration of the country. Compliance with these demands evidently involved assent to the principle of separating Schleswig from Holstein, which meant a settlement of the cardinal question in favor of Denmark. The Prussian Ambassador had naturally rejected this proposal, and Lord Palmerston agreed with him. The latter proposed, however, as a conciliatory measure, that, while the union of the Duchies should be preserved, the Provisional Government, so hateful to the Danes, should be replaced by a Commission composed of members taken from both parties. In Berlin, this plan seemed hazardous in view of the popular feeling, and yet the Prussians were not unwilling to accept it, on condition that the Holstein Confederate contingent should remain in arms, and that in Schleswig at least the cadres, or permanent framework of the regiments as represented by the corps of officers, should remain intact. As for the rest, the troops of both foreign armies should be withdrawn from Schleswig and the island of Alsen, and the Germans should retire into the southern portion of Holstein.

After the German troops had quitted Jutland, the Swedish and Russian Courts were both better disposed towards the Prussian Government, and on the basis of the considerations mentioned undertook to bring about a reconciliation. The Secretary of the Swedish Cabinet, Count Manderstrom, communicated to Count Pourtales and the Danish Cabinet an outline of a truce-compact, according to which hostilities on land and sea should cease for three months, the German ships that had been seized should be restored or their owners indemnified, and the inhabitants of Jutland remunerated for the provisions that had been required from them. Only in the south of Holstein should there be a corps of Confederate German soldiers; otherwise the Duchy should be entirely freed from foreign troops. For the first fortnight the Provisional Government should remain in power; after that, it should be replaced by a College of six persons, who should be nominated from among the prominent men of the Duchies, three by the Danish King, as Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, and three by the Confederate Diet; these should then together choose a seventh for their President. A further concession to Denmark was the proposal to give to these authorities the control of the Confederate contingent in Holstein, and in Schleswig of the cadres of the sections recruited in Schleswig itself, and to disband the remaining forces. The Schleswig and Holstein troops would, in this way, be divided, and so long as the truce lasted, neither would be under the orders of the Confederate Commander-in-Chief.

Count Pourtales, although not invested with full powers, reported to his Government that he was convinced no better conditions could be obtained. In answer, he received instructions to await the result of Manderstrom’s interviews with the Danish Minister, Count Knuth, who had arrived at Malmo. After the Danes had once lost their hope of prevailing upon the Powers to allow them the full control of Schleswig, they did not care much what shape was taken by the Commission of Administration; at the same time, Knuth tried, in what he said, to lay stress upon the doctrine of the separation of Schleswig and Holstein, and to treat the consequences of the March days as if they did not exist. Accordingly, he proposed that for the new Com­mission the Danish King, as Duke of Schleswig and of Holstein, should nominate two prominent men, popular in both countries, to represent Schleswig, and that the Confederate Diet should likewise appoint two such members to represent Holstein; that these four should then choose a fifth for a President; and that this Commission should govern the two Duchies according to the existing laws, with full authority, yet without legislative power. Manderstrom accepted these amendments to his outline; and Pourtales, who, as has been said, had not full powers, took with him on the 2d of July the document in this shape to lay before his Government at Berlin.

The Auerswald Ministry did not to be sure, consider the outline very brilliant, — they knew well enough, that the Danes secretly intended to apply the term “existing laws” only to those made formerly by the King and not to the enactments of the Provisional Gov­ernment since March; but they thought that in that case the German interpretation might be opposed to the Danish, and so peace would not necessarily be disturbed,—yet they thought that, as a whole, it was endurable, and sent Pourtales to General Wrangel with the order, that he, as supreme Commander, should, on the basis of these conditions, confer with the Danish Commander-in-Chief, General Hedemann, with a view of bringing about a truce.

But here arose new and unexpected difficulties. Wrangel was eager to seize the opportunity of crushing the Danish army already very much exhausted, and clinched his fist at any suggestion of a truce. Moreover, it was in his power to place serious obstacles in the way of an armistice.

It was just at this time that the Archduke John was chosen Regent of the Empire at Frankfort, which, as has been seen, occasioned a great burst of popular enthusiasm. It occurred now to Wrangel, that he was not simply a Prussian, but a Confederate General; and he declared to Count Pourtales that he would never sign such an agreement, they could send some one else for that purpose: he should be compelled to insist upon several changes. It was especially the military stipulations that disgusted him. He proposed, in their place, that the new Government should retain under its command three thousand German Confederate soldiers in Schleswig, three thousand Danes on the isle of Alsen, and in Holstein those Schleswig-Holstein troops, which formed a part of the Confederate army. At all events, he insisted that the ratification of the agreement by the Archduke, as Regent of the Empire, must be first secured.

Negotiations with the Danes were held in the palace of Bellevue near Kolding; and when they insisted on the immediate acceptance of the outline, as it stood, without any reference to the Archduke, who had not yet been recognized by the Powers, the conference was on the 24th of July broken off and hostilities were renewed. Great was the exultation in the Duchies, in Frankfort, and throughout Southern Germany.

The Prussian Government, in consequence of these doings, found itself in a dilemma disagreeable from every point of view. If it supported Wrangel’s action, then the only thing for it to do was to prosecute the war energetically and without delay, paying no regard to the wrath of the Powers, but with the exertion of all the strength and force of the State, of the Central Government, and in fact, of the whole German Nation. If, on the other hand, the King’s fixed determination, not on any account to break with the Great Powers, were to prevail, then the course to be followed was no less definite and clear: Wrangel should be recalled and the Malmo Compact ratified at once, without heed to the anger of the National Assembly. For to those holding ground with the King, it must have been evident that every moment of delay in accepting the Compact only meant an increase of the difficulties, by allowing the enemy to make new demands.

But the Berlin Cabinet, hampered by its fear of the Powers on the one hand and its consideration of the Confederate Government on the other, by the complaints and threats of the cities on the Baltic and by the popular sentiment in the South, could not summon courage to decide. It approved of Wrangel’s action, but ordered him to continue to abstain from active hostilities, and then sent to the Imperial Regent a request for full powers to act in the name of the Empire, and on the basis of the demands of Wrangel at Bellevue.

The Archduke was ready to comply with the request and praised Prussia’s love of peace. The Imperial Ministry prepared the necessary documents, but added three conditions most distasteful to the Danes, and immediately sent thirty thousand South German troops as a reinforcement of Wrangel’s army.

This hindrance in the way of securing peace was received with much regret at Berlin. Added to this was the annoyance, felt not only by the Court but far and wide in the country, at Peucker’s unfortunate proposal of a parade. In short, when the new ambassador, General Below, set out for Malmo, on the 11th of August, he received instructions to support to the best of his ability the demands of the Central Government, yet not to let them finally stand in the way of a settle­ment. The outcome of business begun in that fashion can easily be imagined.

The unfortunate effect (upon the Foreign Powers) of the rejection of the Malmo Compact now began to be felt. Palmerston threatened to give up his endeavors to bring about a reconciliation, and in the event of further procrastination, to send an English fleet into the Baltic. France and Russia were ready to join in this. The Danes, moreover, encouraged by the delay, now increased their demands and insisted, in the first place, that the truce should last not three months, but seven. They feared a winter campaign, in which the allied fleets could help them but little, and in which, if the weather should be very cold, the Prussians could reach Alsen and perhaps even Funen upon the ice. They demanded further, if indeed no longer the disbanding of the Schleswig-Holstein army, yet the separation of the natives of Schleswig from those of Holstein; so that the former, taken out from the battalions and formed into separate corps, should serve only in Schleswig. The continuance of the supreme command in the hands of the German Confederate Commander-in-Chief, they rejected unconditionally. The only trace that was left of it was the agreement, that the new Government should not reduce the efficient force of the Holstein troops without his consent; whereas in Schleswig it might dismiss officers and soldiers as it pleased. In place of the former clause, to the effect that the new Government should administer its functions in accord­ance with the existing laws, the proposition was now made, that all orders, decrees, and laws, passed since March 17th should be void; but that the new Government might be allowed to renew such ordinances as were absolutely necessary to the carrying on of business.

When such Danish demands were reported at Berlin, the above-mentioned principle was generally maintained: to oppose the new measure, but not to let it finally stand in the way of a settlement. The Ministry did, however, make one exception and declare that the last requirement announced was wholly inadmissible. But when Below received the telegram to that effect, he had already, on the 26th of August, signed the whole Compact with all the Danish additions.

Four prominent and respected men were chosen to compose the new Government for the two Duchies; but the President was not to be appointed by them, but by the two Monarchs. It was learned with astonishment, that the Prussian Ambassador had let himself be talked into appointing to this honor one of the most detested adherents of the Danish party, a certain Count Carl Aloltke. “I do not know the gentleman,” he said afterwards, in excusing himself. “Everybody here praises him and esteems him as a prudent and clever man.”

This last blunder of the General’s was without question the worst of all. For, in view of the unlimited power which was to be vested in this Government, nothing less than everything depended on its composition. If it should be actuated by patriotic motives, it might retain all the Schleswig troops on the effective list and keep up all the branches of the entire military organization; it might call again into life all the important laws of its predecessor, and preserve the loyal sentiment of Schleswig in its full vigor. But if it should fall under the direction of a man like Carl Moltke, the opposite of all this would be effected before the end of the seven months, and the union of Schleswig with Holstein actually severed.

In Berlin, it was believed that it would not turn out so badly after all, and without further consultation with the National Assembly, the Compact was ratified, and the order sent to the Prussian troops to retire.

But in the Duchies a storm of resentment arose, directed from the first against the principal object of their dissatisfaction. While the Provisional Government called upon the Imperial Ministry not to confirm Prussia’s doings on account of her encroachments upon the authority of the National Assembly at Frankfort, the National Parliament of Schleswig-Holstein, which had not been in session during this time, convened, and within a few days had adopted a new Constitution, every word of which proclaimed the indivisibility of the Duchies. The four men who were to form the new Government, together with their assistant Deputies, declined one and all to serve under Carl Moltke; and when the Count arrived in the country, the Provisional Government was obliged to protect him from the anger of the populace, so that he made good his escape with all possible despatch.

The Danish Democrats were somewhat angry; yet the Great Powers thought it not worth while to spoil the chances of peace for the sake of supporting this one man; and King Frederick of Denmark was not deaf to such arguments, however much the ruling party at Copenhagen urged the adoption of belligerent measures. There was hope that the unfitness of Carl Moltke would soon be recognized on all sides.

The turn of affairs that now took place at Frankfort went far to bring about this result.

Everything conspired to arouse passionate hostility against the Compact of Malmo. First, the encroachment upon the Imperial authority and the ratification of the Compact without consultation; then, the unsatisfactory contents of the Compact itself, the long continuance of the armistice, the separation of the Schleswig from the Holstein soldiers, the nullification of the laws, the dissolution of the Government recognized by the Confederation, and the formation of a new one under the direction of Carl Moltke: these things fell like a thunder-clap upon the Assembly, when Dahlmann, on the 4tli of September, excitedly recounted them with his usual eloquence, his voice trembling with emotion. The Left, in general little interested in the cold-blooded Schleswig-Holsteiners, now fairly yelled with delight, that a battle-cry had been found, which meant an annihilating attack upon that detested King of Prussia, and perhaps also upon the almost equally detested Majority of the Parliament, if it should undertake to shield him. At first, the Left seemed likely to carry everything with it, so thoroughly had the feeling of resentment permeated the Centre and the Right.

A Committee, chosen to investigate the matter, proposed on the 5th of September a decree countermanding all military and other movements and measures, which were included in the performance of the requirements of the Compact,—above all and without delay, the withdrawal of the German troops from the Duchies. Thereupon the Imperial Ministry declared that they were hindered by insurmountable obstacles from taking any steps involving the rejection of the Compact, and that upon the acceptance of the Committee’s Report they should resign.

Dahlmann, as Chairman of the Committee, carried a great part of the Centre with him: “If we yield at the first test that is brought upon us,” he said, “if at the first approach of danger we show ourselves afraid of the Foreign Powers, then, Gentlemen, you will never be able to raise again your once proud heads. Reflect upon my words, never!” The countermand was decided by two hundred and thirty-eight votes against two hundred and twenty-one, amid storms of applause from the Left and the galleries. The Ministry sent in its resignation, and Dahlmann was intrusted with the formation of a new Cabinet.

“He will hardly be able to accomplish anything,” said the Archduke to the retiring Ministers, who meanwhile continued to transact the current business. In fact, the inherent impossibilities of the situation were conspicuously apparent: a Ministry of the Left with Dahlmann at its head would be a ridiculous monstrosity. At the end of three days Dahlmann returned his commission to the Archduke unexecuted. The latter then turned to Professor Hermann of Munich, a political economist, eminent for his learning and acuteness, who in this extremity, however, accomplished as little as Dahlmann, and only exposed his own political incapacity to a melancholy degree.

Meanwhile a whole week had passed, in which other events had taken place, all of which tended to cool down the heated blood of the Majority. First came the more and more violent agitation of the Left in favor of a revolutionary dictatorship. Here, as in Copenhagen, it was the Democratic party that branded every longing for peace as a disgrace to national honor and a hindrance to national prosperity; only too palpably did they betray their ruling idea, the acquisition of revolutionary power by means of war, following the example of the French in 1793.

The Majority, on the contrary, wished that the March Revolution might finally come to an end, and repu­diated every proposition involving new commotions. Yet they could not shut their eyes to the fact, that they possessed no other than revolutionary means, in attempting to carry out any decree in opposition to Prussia. There was as yet no Imperial army nor an Imperial treasury. In both of these particulars, the Imperial Regent had to fall back upon the good-will of the Governments. But of these, Austria was the confessed friend of the Danes, the enemies of the Empire. Bavaria and Hanover were, as we know, on bad terms with the Central Government. The Parliament would have at its service, at the very most, only the forces of some of the smaller States; and if Hanover should declare itself upon the side of Prussia, as it undoubtedly would do, then it would be impossible in any case for an Imperial army to reach the Duchies. Accordingly, some members of the Majority became more inclined to yield a little, and thought that perhaps the measures taken on the 5th of September had carried the matter too far for the reputation of the Assembly.

Then the news came, that similar sentiments had begun to make themselves felt among their opponents. The fixed determination of the Schleswig-Holsteiners and the wild excitement in the Cathedral of St. Paul had not been without their effect upon the rest of Europe. The imminence of a patriotic uprising in the Duchies, which might kindle a general German revolution, and in consequence occasion a European war, had frightened the Governments in Paris and St. Petersburg.

Camphausen was able to announce to the Imperial Ministers, that there was a prospect of getting rid of Count Carl Moltke and even of securing certain modifications of the Compact. Calm reflection on the matter could not but convince one very soon that in this case the Compact, although still unsatisfactory, would not in any way compromise the future of the Duchies.

Under such circumstances the National Assembly undertook, on the 14th of September, the decision of the main question: Shall the Compact of Malmo be confirmed or rejected by the Central Government?

The Committee, by a small majority, maintained its former position: rejection of the Compact and active preparations against Denmark. Four Schleswigers, on the other hand, made a motion to scruple no longer about accepting the truce, so far as it showed itself still practicable, to strive to secure favorable modifications of the Compact, and for the Central Government to begin negotiations for a definite peace. A three days’ war of words was washed over this motion, in which both sides displayed the most brilliant talents and the most fiery passion. The galleries were filled with followers of the Left, who accompanied the speakers with appropriate applause or hisses.

The fortune of battle favored first one side and then the other, and the victory seemed to waver. The one thing certain was that the Left were determined not to let the present opportunity go by of doing their best for the cause of their Republic. Carl Vogt of Giessen called to their minds die French Convention, which, he said, summoned to its aid the strength of the People, and with it conquered die whole of Europe; but, he continued, it was the Convention that did this, and only a Convention can accomplish such great results. The aims of the party could not possibly have been indicated more plainly.

While its orators were developing their plan of action in the Cathedral of St. Paul, other champions were busy outside with preparations for its execution. They had secretly invited to Frankfort their influential associates from Hesse and Baden, from Thuringia and Saxony; their messengers now hurried in all directions to summon the people of the surrounding country to hasten to the city with their arms; many thousand political tracts were scattered abroad, filled with angry indictments against the traitors to their country, who would fain betray Schleswig-Holstein to the enemy; and a call to join the uprising was sent to all the members of the Democratic League from the Lake of Constance to Berlin and Konigsberg.

Late in the evening of the 16th of September, the debate in the Cathedral was closed, and the platform of the moderate parties was accepted by a vote of two hundred and fifty-eight against two hundred and thirty-one. Immediately afterwards, riots broke out at several points in the city, in which the Deputies of the Centre were set upon by the armed rabble, and the peace other­wise disturbed. On the 17th, an immense popular meeting, said to number upwards of twenty thousand persons, took place before the gates on the field called the Pfingstweide. After violent speeches by Republican Deputies, this meeting adopted the resolution, to declare to the National Assembly through a large deputation on the 18th, that they held the two hundred and fifty-eight members of the Majority to be traitors to the German nation, to German liberty, and to German honor.

The Frankfort Senate thereupon sent word to the Imperial Ministry that it could not, with the small force at its command, guarantee the preservation of the peace; Minister Schmerling, therefore, summoned from Mainz a few battalions of Prussian and Austrian troops, who took up their station on the morning of the 18th in front of the entrances to the Cathedral. As the session was being opened, a great noise was heard without; a surging mass of humanity pressed against the church. One door in the rear was found unguarded, and an attempt was made to force an entrance at this point; but a number of muscular Deputies resisted from the inside, until a company of Prussian soldiers scattered the assailants with the bayonet. Then the cry arose in all parts of the town, that the Prussians were murdering the citizens, and barricades were built on the main street, the Zeil, and in the narrow lanes of the old part of the city. The Left made motion after motion to remove the troops, on the ground that it was impossible in the presence of bayonets to carry on a free discussion, and sent at once a deputation to the Archduke, urging him to stretch out the hand of recon­ciliation to the incensed people. But the news came, that this incensed people had just murdered with cannibal cruelty two Deputies, Auerswald and Lichnowsky, on the outskirts of the town. This made Schmerling only the more resolute. More troops were summoned: infantry and artillery from Darmstadt, and from Giessen some Würtemberg batteries, which were just returning from Schleswig. After a fierce fight, the barricades were battered down or stormed, and at eleven o’clock in the evening peace had been wholly restored.

After the rebellion had been stifled here at its central point, the confederates elsewhere dropped their arms, or were easily overcome, wherever, as in some of the Rhine cities, disorders still continued. Struve undertook to make a fresh descent upon Baden from Switzerland with about two thousand men; but his band was dispersed by the Würtemberg General Hoffmann, after a short encounter, and Struve himself was taken prisoner.

Meanwhile the National Assembly continued with imposing tranquillity, as people thought, the discussion of the Fundamental Rights. The further course of events in Schleswig-Holstein confirmed the wisdom of the decree of the 16th of September. The new Commander-in-Chief of the army of the Duchies, the Prussian General von Bonin, was a strong and resolute man, who satisfied the requirement of the Malmo Compact by transferring to Schleswig some few battalions composed mostly of Schleswig recruits, but otherwise left the organization of the troops quite unchanged. At the head of the new Government stood Count Reventlou-Jersbeck, a man of unquestioned patriotism.

One of the first steps of the Government was the renewal of all the laws that had been abrogated by the Compact, including the Constitution, which had but just been decided upon. The Danes saw in this, and not without reason, a serious infringement of the spirit of the Compact; but according to the letter of the same, the measure was unassailable.

The conclusions to be reached from a consideration of the foregoing events can be summed up in the following observations:

In spite of the repeated tirades against frivolous wars occasioned by the whims of Cabinets, it has been proved here again that Monarchy offers to a nation a surer guarantee for the preservation of peace than democratic factions.

The mistake of the Prussian policy was this time not the endeavor to secure peace, but the hesitating attitude of its diplomacy, which hoped to obtain more favorable terms not by resolute firmness, but by weak compliance.

Herein lay a certain excuse for the unwise decree passed by the Parliament on the 5th of September, which, however, by its very display of warlike courage, immediately caused conciliatory advances on the part of the enemy.

In other respects, the National Assembly suffered an irreparable loss of prestige during the September days. Of course, every one knew already that the Parliament could not expect to subject to itself the wills of the individual Governments so far as to make them carry out every one of its decrees; and the Radical parties had long since expressed their annoyance that the Majority were not willing to accept all the consequences of their common doctrine, the sovereignty of the People.

Yet all this might have been regarded as very natural at such a time of general confusion and have been over­looked. What happened now could not be smoothed over in any such way: in an important matter of national interest the National Assembly had been forced on the 16th of September to yield to the will of the Prussian Government and to withdraw from its position. And although its orators formerly could declare that the German Governments were obedient to the Assembly because it had the support of the people, the 18th of September had shown that it enjoyed the favor of only the peace-loving citizens, while the bloodthirsty barricade-builders of the Radical parties were its desperate enemies.

The Parliament, however, still held up its head, and there was no one that did not regard its decrees with respect. But it had become very evident, that of the deciding forces, which were to determine the future of Germany, only a small portion had fallen to the lot of the National Assembly in the Cathedral of St. Paul.

 

 

CHAPTER II.

THE PARLIAMENT AND THE POWERS.

 

Exactly five months after its opening, the National Assembly, on the 19th of October, took the first steps towards the performance of its proper task, the discussion of the Imperial Constitution. Its Committee on the Constitution had arranged the bulky subject under seven Articles: the Empire, its extent and component parts; the Central Government, its prerogatives and duties; then its organic branches: the Imperial Diet; the Head of the Empire; the Supreme Court of the Empire; then the fundamental rights of the German People and the safeguards of the Constitution; and further the laws concerning elections to the Imperial Diet. The first two Articles, the Empire and the Central Government, were first discussed.

It was at once evident, that those difficulties that had been so long a stumbling-block still existed, and in the same degree as in the summer. The Committee, urged by Dahlmann and Drovsen, had decided to take the bull by the horns: to discuss and, if possible, to settle at the outset the one all-important question, the position of Austria in or by the side of the new Germany.

The motion took the following form: The Empire embraces the same territory as the German Confederation, the case of Schleswig being for the present left out of consideration; if a German and a non-German country have the same ruler, then they shall have separate constitutions, governments, and administrations; in the former, only Germans can hold office, and in it the Imperial Constitution and Imperial laws shall have the same binding force as in the other German countries. This meant for Austria the rupture of the monarchy, the two portions of which, separated by the river Leitha, would be in the future connected only through a common ruler; and in the German crown­lands the laws enacted by the Central Government of the Empire would be in every instance the law of the land.

That the Austrian Government would never subject itself to these conditions was clear enough to everybody : indeed, the purpose of the Committee in making the motion was to force the Vienna Cabinet to the definite declaration of its intentions. The alternatives were: submission to the laws of the Empire or withdrawal from the Confederation.

The contrast of the parties was thus presented in all its sharpness. On the one side stood the advocates of a firm Federal Union, to whom the loss of Austria seemed insignificant in comparison with the gain in internal harmony, which would be impossible with two Great Powers in the Union; on the other side the Idealists, opposed to the withdrawal of any German State from the Confederation, whatever might become of the Constitution; and with these latter stood the Individualists, who wished to retain Austria in the Empire just because her presence would prevent any very serious tendency towards centralization, and would allow of only some few changes in the old Confederation.

The Majority, which had hitherto held together, was now broken up. Its Austrian members, almost without exception, opposed the motion. Vineke, too, considered the measure too violent. Gagern produced, on the 26th of October, a counter-motion, which was destined to be for many years the watchword of the champions of German Unity. It was, that that portion of Germany outside of Austria should form of itself a Federal Union, which should then enter into a close alliance with Austria, the conditions of this alliance to be determined by a special Federal Act.

Dahlmann and his followers remained firm in the position they had taken, and pointed to the fact, that since the passage of the laws in the summer Austria had brought herself into just the condition described in the motion: she had resolved herself already into two states, one German and the other Hungarian, between which the sole bond of union consisted in their having a common ruler. If the present Austrian Ministry, they said, wished to make a change in this regard, it would be proper to await their announcement to this effect; but the German Parliament was certainly justified in assuming the existing state of things as the basis of discussion.

So it happened that the Left gave the deciding vote. At this time in Vienna everything was topsy-turvy. A fierce insurrection raged in the city; and in Hungary, Magyars and Croats had risen in arms against each other, while the Czechs in Prague demanded boldly the autonomy of the Kingdom of Bohemia. The Republicans in Frankfort seemed to see already before their eyes the down-fall of Austria: they were ready to hasten it, if they could, by resolutions passed in the Cathedral of St. Paul, and then to welcome the German portion of Austria as a part of free Germany. They voted without exception for the motion of the Committee, which accordingly was passed on the 27th of October by a great majority.

The glove had been thrown down: what would be Austria’s response?

Meanwhile the National Assembly proceeded without delay to discuss the nature of the future Imperial Government, its functions, rights, and duties.

In general, nothing new came to light. The sphere of action assigned to its Central Federal Government by the Constitution of the United States of America, that paragon of Federal Unions, was the ideal which the Committee of Seventeen in April, 1848, had set before themselves, and which the Frankfort Committee now again projected for the future Imperial Government: namely, the control of foreign relations, of the army and navy, the regulation of commerce, tariff, and trade, and, in the last resort, the preservation of internal peace.

So far, all parties of the Parliament were united on this point. But so soon as the details of the plan were taken up, the possible variety of opinions became apparent. That the legislation and the administration in those departments belonged to the Imperial Govern­ment was, of course, clear; but the question was how far, under the Imperial laws and regulations, was the control of their own armies, railways, posts, etc., to be left to the individual States.

In this respect the proposals of the Committee, like the Outline of the Seventeen, cut very deeply into the governmental system of the individual States. The right of declaring war, of forming alliances, and of maintaining or receiving permanent embassies, was considered exclusively the prerogative of the Imperial Government; all the troops of the States were to form together the Imperial army, organized according to an Imperial Statute; in the oath of allegiance was to be included primarily the oath of loyalty to the Supreme Head of the Empire and to the Imperial Constitution ; the Imperial Government was not only to have the supervision of the railways in the individual States, but also to grant at its discretion the privilege of laying railroads, and even to take the initiative itself in building highways, railroads, and canals, which should be maintained at the expense of the Empire. The Government was to take into its own hands the whole postal service, if deemed advisable; there were to be no duties nor imposts inside of the Empire; the Imperial Government was to expend, first of all, the revenue from the customs, then enrolment fees, and in extreme cases was to levy a national tax.

The existence of any definite line between the authority of the Imperial Government and that of the individual States was practically contradicted by the provision that the former was in all cases to assume legislative power, when in its judgment the adoption of common measures and regulations might be considered necessary for the interests of Germany as a whole. All this indicated once more that the plan could not possibly be carried out, if the Empire were to include two European Great Powers, especially if the peculiar composition of Austria was to be taken into account.

The cause of Unity prevailed in every instance. All the proposals of the Committee were passed in the course of November, in spite of the objections made by the advocates of an “entire” Germany and by the Individualists. Then the Assembly proceeded to take up the discussion about the organic branches of the Government, beginning with the Diet.

Meanwhile, the aspect of the German world had changed, and we must turn our attention from Frankfort to the state of things in Berlin and in Vienna.

Under the pressure of a wild street-demagogism with which the weak Ministry of the summer was unable successfully to cope, the Majority in the Berlin Parliament had fallen more and more into the hands of the Left, who, in their ambition to legislate, turned this to account in a startling manner. The King’s anger at the condition of things grew from week to week, and with equal pace his forebodings as to the possible results that any summary action on his part might bring to himself and to the State.

It was at this period that the King frequently met one of his bravest champions in the United Provincial Diet, Herr von Bismarck-Schonhausen, and rejoiced in the young man’s healthy vigor and rich fund of ideas. Once, as they were conversing together on the terrace of the orange-garden at Potsdam about the insupportableness of the situation and available means of relief, the King observed that very harsh measures might be dangerous. Bismarck replied, “ Only weakness can be dangerous; therefore courage! courage! and again courage! and Your Majesty will conquer.” At this moment the Queen, who was walking in the garden and had overheard part of the conversation, stepped up with the remark, “Why, Herr von Bismarck, how can you use such language in speaking with your King?” “Never mind,” said the King, laughing. “I shall get the better of him fast enough,” and continued to explain his cautious tactics.

But soon events called even more pressingly for decisive steps. After the suppression of the Frankfort disturbances, the German Democratic Association had transferred its place of meeting to Berlin, which increased the fervor of’ the Radical societies and of the proletariat who swore by them, and also occasioned the passing of corresponding decrees in the Diet.

With a different sort of rage and fury the unchained passions of an armed proletariat broke forth on the 6^th of October in Vienna, against a Government which on account of its irresolute weakness scarcely deserved longer the name. In the civil war which had broken out in Hungary between the Magyars and the Croats, the Vienna Ministry sided with the latter, while the Democrats in the capital were filled with enthusiasm for the cause of their Magyar sympathizers. The despatch of troops from Vienna to assist the Croats was the first signal for an outbreak. A portion of the garrison joined the party of the people and thus gave the rebels the victory. The hated Minister of War, Count Latour, was tortured to death with inhuman cruelty. The Imperial Family and all the ministers save one fled to Olmütz. The rest of the troops were led out of Vienna, and the city was for the moment given over to a Reign of Terror at the hands of the proletariat intoxicated with their victory. This lasted several weeks, until Prince Alfred Windischgratz appeared with a considerable force from Bohemia, and summoned the city to unconditional surrender.

The effect of these events upon the whole of Germany was tremendous. At the foolish solicitation of the National Assembly, the Imperial Ministry was weak enough to send two Commissioners to Austria to effect a reconciliation. These men were treated with contempt by Prince Windischgratz, and with cold courtesy by the Ministers at Olmütz. The Left, on their part, had sent two Deputies to Vienna to encourage the rebels; and these took part in the struggle against the troops. After the surrender of the city, Windischgratz had one of them, Robert Blum, precisely because he appealed to the inviolability of members of the National Assembly, court-martialled and shot.

The attitude of Austria towards German Unity and the Central Government was thus indelibly defined. Unfortunately, as we shall see, it was a long time before the Assembly at Frankfort could make up its mind to accept the meaning of the bloody message.

In Berlin, too, the Vienna Revolution put everybody in a state of violent excitement. In the victory of the popular cause on the Danube the Prussian Democrats saw the beginning of their own triumphs, and in the evening session of the 30th of October, Waldeck made a motion to call upon the Government to support the cause of Liberty in Austria with all the strength that Prussia had at her command. Densely-packed throngs of people surrounded the building where the sessions were held, who threatened to hang every member that voted against the motion, and not to let any Deputy pass out until after its acceptance. Only a few of the militia were on hand, and these were indolent and disaffected. It was with difficulty that the President of the Ministry, the very liberal General von Pfuel, was protected, after the close of the session, by one of the leaders of the Left, Georg Jung, against ill-treatment at the hands of the mob.

These incidents finally forced the King to a decision. It was very clear that if Windischgratz were to succeed in checking the reign of anarchy in Austria, it would be possible also in Prussia to improve the condition of affairs without mortal danger; and if he failed, the attempt must be made in Prussia even at any risk.

The King had already, in September, appointed General von Wrangel, upon his return from Holstein, to be Commander-in-Chief in the “Marks.” He commanded there three divisions, and announced in a threatening manifesto that his chief business was to preserve the peace.

On the 21st of October, General Count Brandenburg was summoned from Breslau to Potsdam. We have already mentioned with what a firm hand he had suppressed every disturbance in Silesia during the summer. It was to him that Bismarck now turned the attention of the King. Brandenburg was no reactionary fanatic; but at the same time that he was a resolute and unyielding foe of anarchy, he was a man of moderate ideas and of unprejudiced perception, not especially original in political matters, but possessed of a clear understanding; he was always to be relied upon, and of an unerring sense of honor. Herr von Bismarck announced to him at Potsdam, that the King had decided to make him President of the Ministry. When Count Brandenburg declared that he appreciated this great mark of confidence, but that he was no statesman and was inexperienced in politics, Herr von Bismarck explained to him that for the present no complicated questions were to be settled, and that his task would be simply to restore peace and order. The Count replied: “Very well, then; if I am to be the elephant to stamp out the Revolution, I am ready; but I must have a driver who understands politics, or it will not be a success.” Herr von Bismarck asked what fitting person he had in mind. The Count said: “The only one among the gentlemen with whom I am personally acquainted is the Ministerial Director, Von Manteuffel.” The King agreed to this, and Bismarck carried the commission to Herr von Manteuffel in Berlin.

Hereupon a new difficulty arose. Manteuffel thought the people would tear him into pieces, if be appeared as Minister in the Diet; but Bismarck succeeded in quieting his fears and persuaded him to accept the office. Thus far successful, the King on the 31st of October requested Herr von Pfuel, on account of the tumults of the preceding evening, to order Wrangel to enter Berlin with his troops. This had the desired effect at once: the Ministry requested permission to retire. On the 2d of November the Royal Message was sent to the Diet, announcing that Count Brandenburg had been intrusted with the formation of a new Cabinet.

No one in the Diet doubted that this meant war to the death against all the gains of Marell, and even the moderate Liberal members feared the advent of a decided reaction in favor of Absolutism. In the height of violent passion, but surely not to the advancement of their cause, it was almost unanimously voted to take the offensive themselves, and, though the proceeding was unconstitutional, to make to the King by means of a deputation a threatening protest against the appoint­ment of such a pernicious Minister, even before the latter had said one word about his intentions. The King, to whom a member of the deputation, J. Jacoby, cried out, “It is the misfortune of Kings that they will not listen to the truth,” sent the deputation away without a reply. An open rupture was thus effected.

The further course of events is well known. On the 8th of November, Wrangel appeared with his troops in Berlin. The Cabinet was completed by the addition of a number of men experienced in their Departments and of moderate tendencies; and then its President announced to the Diet its removal to Brandenburg and its adjournment until the 27th of November. The Diet replied by a resolution that the Ministry had no right to interfere with them in this way, and that they should continue to hold their sittings in Berlin. Attempts to carry this out were for the most part hindered by the military; and on the 12th, Berlin and its vicinity was declared to be in a state of siege.

Embittered beyond measure at this, the Diet, almost under the eyes of the officers sent to break it up, voted ’ that the payment of the taxes formerly approved by the Diet should cease. By doing this it signed its own death-warrant. The country, thoroughly weary of continued disorder, remained indifferent; and the unconsti­tutional resolution had no effect.

Not enough members assembled at Brandenburg to constitute a quorum, so that the King on the 5th of December announced the dissolution of the Diet and at the same time set forth of his own accord a Constitution, which was substantially the same as the plan reported to the Diet by their Committee, and was decidedly constitutional, parliamentary, and democratic. There was accordingly no more fear at present about suppression of popular liberties; on the contrary, several ordinances made on the same day confirmed important reforms in the administration of justice, which were quite in accordance with liberal principles. Elections to the Chambers were arranged at once, to be held on the basis of universal suffrage, the immediate business being the discussion of the proposed Constitution.

The Government had won a complete victory without bloodshed, and stood again firmly upon its own feet; it was able in foreign matters to support its position with the entire strength of the nation. This was especially the case with regard to the German question.

We have seen that the King had not been well pleased with the course of German affairs. The appointment of the Imperial Regent had offended him deeply, and the attitude of the Frankfort National Assembly in the Schleswig-Holstein affair had not improved his feeling toward it. Even at the beginning of September, in a letter to his nephew, King Max of Bavaria, he returned to his favorite theme of uniting all German Kings into one College, which together with the Archduke should represent the “highest Teutonic authority.” In a letter a few months later he expressed himself very forcibly, in asserting that the College of Kings would be able to oppose any usurpation by the present or a future Central Government, and to withstand both the executive Head and the legislative Parliament.

One is always astonished at every reappearance of this quite anti-Prussian idea, that of overlooking the friendly minor Princes, and of favoring hostile Kings. The German Dukes were just as legitimate as the Kings, and there was not much difference between the power of Würtemberg and that of Baden, nor between that of Hanover and that of Hesse-Cassel. But Frederick William seems to have been thoroughly filled with the already-mentioned notion, that every wearer of a kingly crown was possessed of some especial mystical gift.

However that was, his proposition was hailed in Munich with joy, although no great confidence was placed in it; and when in October the discussion over the Imperial Constitution began in the Cathedral of St. Paul, and in Gagern’s propositions as well as in Dahlmann’s Draft not only the exclusion of Austria, but also the name of Prussia, played a prominent part, then the suspicion was again entertained most seriously, that Berlin and Frankfort were secretly working together.

King William of Würtemberg, who in the preceding twenty years had lost none of his ambition, activity, and shrewdness, wished to become Commander-in-Chief of the new Federal army. He received from Bavaria sympathetic messages to that effect, and promised on his part to assist King Max in using all possible means to prevent the establishment of a German Empire in which the central authority should be concentrated in one Royal House. Both Princes agreed to ascertain by investigation at Berlin, just how far Frederick William’s proposal of a College of Kings had been made in earnest, or whether it had been only feigned, in order to quiet the Kings while he was planning something else.

Accordingly, on the 22d of November the Bavarian Ambassador laid before the Prussian Minister an outline of a treaty between the three Crowns, in which the chief features were: the stipulation that the Constitution projected by the National Assembly at Frankfort should be subjected to the ratification of the German Governments; that the future Imperial Government should be vested in the united Kings of Germany, and exercised only by them in the form of a Directory of three members, namely, the representatives of Austria, of Prussia, and of the other Kingdoms as one, or, in ease Austria would not join the league, of Prussia, of Bavaria, and of the remainder; that the presidency of the Directory should rotate in a fixed order; that the Directory should represent the Nation in Foreign Affairs and should control the Ministry; that by the side of the Directory a chamber should be formed, composed of deputies from all the Governments; that this Constitution should be established by the concurrence of all the German Kings united in one College; and finally that the three Courts should pledge to one another mutual assistance against every attack upon their royal rights.

In South Germany, the Democratic Propagandists had been working uninterruptedly among the masses, in spite of their defeat in September: they had organized societies, and developed their plan of operation. How would it be now, if Prussia should not keep secret the fact that a scheme had been proposed that would exclude the Petty States from any share in an Imperial Central Government and the German People from any representation in the Imperial legislation? The revelation would have endangered the very existence of the Kings.

But the Prussian King was far from committing such an indiscretion. On the contrary, he was flattered by the favor with which his proposal of a royal college had been received, though he could not help sharing the surprise of his Ministers at the remarkable naivete with which the Lesser States took no account whatever of Prussia's possible claim to a leading position among them. Accordingly, Prussia replied to the proposed treaty by saying that she considered a discussion about the establishment of a Directory as still premature. To the two South German Kings this reply appeared to be proof positive of Prussia’s ambitious designs, and they turned in suppliance to Austria for protection against the threatening conspiracy brewing between Berlin and Frankfort.

There never was a more groundless suspicion. Especially in the last few weeks, Frederick William had been less pleased than ever with the doings at Frankfort. As at the time of the Vienna Revolution, so also when the Ministry of Brandenburg first came into office, the German National Assembly had thought that such important events should not be allowed to occur without being accompanied by an expression of its opinion in the matter; and in this spirit it passed the conciliatory resolution, that Prussia ought to have a popular Ministry, but that the refusal of the taxes by the Berlin Parliament was not quite fitting. The only result of this resolution was that the Berlin Democrats were angered by it and that the Prussian Government laid the document indignantly on the shelf. At the same time a Commissioner was sent to Berlin, as in the other case to Olmütz, and was received with like indifference.

Meanwhile the discussion in the Frankfort Parliament over the functions of the Imperial Government had come to an end, and as the next question was that of the form of the Imperial Supreme Authority, Gagern thought it proper to go to Berlin himself to see how matters stood, and arrived there on the 24th of November, almost at the same time with the Bavarian proposal. He came without having received full powers from the Imperial Regent, nor from the Parliament; but, in spite, too, of his persistent advocacy of a Liberal Ministry, he was graciously received by the King. He represented to the latter that his election as German Emperor by the Parliament was probable, indeed almost certain, if he would now consent to promise his acceptance of the Crown and of the Constitution.

The King had already expressed the opposite intention to Dahlman and to Bunsen; he now again declared that he could not bind himself beforehand; that, as ever, he should insist upon the doctrine of the co-operation of the Governments in the work of establishing a constitution, as opposed to the revolutionary doctrine of the Parliament’s absolute power; that the Parliament had no right to offer a crown; and that in doing so without the consent of the Princes it committed an act of revolution. Gagern made the matter worse by remarking: “You say you must have the consent of the Princes. Very well! You shall have it.” The King understood by this that the Princes were to be forced by insurrections to give their assent, and therefore held more firmly than ever to his protestation that his decision would depend not only upon the way in which the Constitution turned out, but also upon the acquiescence of the other Sovereigns. The commanding presence of this man, raised into eminence by the tide of revolution, made the Monarch feel ill at ease; but yet his imposing demeanor, which attested his earnest and sincere devotion to his cause, and which indicated at the same time rare political talents, made a great impression—a mixture of admiration and of aversion—upon the King. At his departure, the King embraced him and called him his friend. “It is to be hoped,” the King remarked afterwards to Bunsen, “that I shall never need his friendship.”

Yet the visit produced, on the whole, the effect of modifying somewhat the Prussian antipathy towards the National Assembly. The Government at Berlin became convinced that the Majority in the Parliament was by no means actuated by Jacobinical intentions, and even if it seemed advisable not to accept the Imperial Crown, yet a thorough reform of the Confederation was desirable, and these men could not well be deemed enemies, who strove for German Unity, and by whom the Crown had been offered. Count Brandenburg expressed his full concurrence with what Camphausen reported: namely, that it might have been necessary in the spring to stem the tide of the assumed omnipotence of the Parliament; but now that the Parliament had passed the zenith of its power it was best to strengthen it and to repress the Individual States, whose selfishness would otherwise thwart every attempt at a German constitution and at German unity. Thus the King, importuned by two opposite parties and not without certain points of sympathy with them both, decided, before doing anything further, to come to an understanding with Austria, which had just issued a proclamation containing solemn, weighty, and yet withal puzzling statements about its relations to Germany.

Let us now take up for a moment the state of affairs in the countries belonging to Austria, and the changes that took place in them after the triumphant entry of Prince Windisehgratz into the conquered city of Vienna.

In spite of the submission of the capital, the Monarchy continued to be threatened by most serious dangers. While in Prussia almost all of the provinces were quiet, in the Austrian Empire Hungary was in the hands of the armed Revolution inspired by the mighty energies of Kossuth; Lombardy had been won back, it is true, but Venice remained unconquered; and Sardinia was quiet, but only under a truce, while the adversary was zealously preparing his forces for a new campaign. Just now the Slavonic races of Austria were parading their devoted loyalty to the Monarchy; but every one knew that their ultimate aim was the establishment of an independent Bohemia, Croatia, and Galicia, to be con­nected with Austria only by their common ruler.

The treasury of the Empire was, moreover, very low; and under the weak Ministry of the preceding summer and the incapacity of the Emperor, both burghers and peasants had become demoralized and the administrative machinery had half gone to pieces. This demoralization had penetrated the Royal Family: at the Court no secret was made of the suspicion that the Archduke Stephen was striving to set up an independent kingdom in Hungary, and that the Archduke John had accepted the dignity of Imperial Regent without consulting his nephew, Ferdinand, in the hope of becoming German Emperor and of then incorporating into the new Empire the German-Austrian countries. He had, to be sure, in response to a complaint of Latour, protested at once that he had had no hand in Peucker’s order for the parade of allegiance; but in Olmütz no one any longer placed the least confidence in him.

Thus the only thing throughout the whole Empire that remained on a strong basis of conscious moral solidity was the army, victorious in Lombardy, in Prague, and now in Vienna. Its leaders, also, Prince Windischgratz, Marshal Radetzky, and the Ban Jellaeic, had long ago become accustomed to absolute command, as far as the ’ Government was concerned. Now they demanded the establishment of a regime in accordance with their own ideas; an end of the timid management, which had no other resource against incorrigible demagogues than to pacify them by indulgence; and the institution of some energetic authority, which might hold the reins of the entire disintegrated Empire with a firm hand.

One of their party, General Prince Felix Schwarzenberg, who had formerly been Ambassador at several Courts, and had made himself famous, at least by his adventures and proud bearing, was called to the position of President of the Ministry. He required, as a condition of his acceptance, that the Emperor Ferdinand should abdicate in favor of his nephew, Francis Joseph, a youth of eighteen, who, young as he was, had already shown himself to be the cleverest and most gifted among the Archdukes; for in this way the State would have again a vigorous and energetic head.

Prince Felix was of medium height, with a long face and sharply-defined features. As a soldier he had shown bravery and skill, and had, moreover, enjoyed the pleasures of life to the utter destruction of his nervous system: his handwriting, in spite of its large letters, was scarcely legible on account of the constant trembling of his fingers. But he had still preserved his mental powers, his resolution, and his undaunted ambitious will.

In foreign matters he hoped to conceal the temporary weakness of his country by assuming a bold and defiant attitude, and by setting all the old claims of Austria, especially in her relation to Prussia and Germany, as high as possible. As far as an internal policy was concerned, about which he was only superficially instructed, he believed that everything depended upon obedience to commands, and that the least manifestation of obstinacy should be punished on the spot. This involved, as the only fitting form of government and in the place of the loosely-united crown-lands, a closely-cemented union with a firm, centralized, bureaucratic, administration, such as had never existed in Austria, except for a few years under Joseph II.

To the Diet, which had in the mean time been summoned to meet on the 27th of November in the small Moravian city of Kremsier, Schwarzenberg announced his programme of government. In this, the unity of the Empire was properly emphasized; and the loyal Aus­trians were promised meanwhile a common constitution, independent local government in the districts, and a number of other excellent reforms, since it was believed that at least a liberal phraseology could not as yet be wholly dispensed with. With regard to the German question, the programme read: “Austria’s continuance as a union is a German as well as a European necessity. Convinced of this, we look forward to the natural development of the transformation which has not yet been completed. When Austria and Germany, both rejuvenated, are fairly settled, each in its new and firm form of government, then it will be possible to determine officially their mutual relations.”

This clearly implied the repudiation of Dahlmann’s Report; but Gagern might read in the words of the Minister the indorsement of his own system of a restricted German Union in alliance with Austria. Yet a certain closing sentence in the programme was of doubtful import: “Until then—that is, until the completion of both Constitutions—Austria will continue faithfully to fulfil her Confederate duties.”

Apart from the fact that since March Austria had not fulfilled one of her Confederate duties, making the promise to continue doing so ludicrous of itself—apart from this, it was evident that her declaration of loyalty to her Confederate engagements implied the main­tenance of her rights in the Confederation, and also the assurance that she would not in the least give up her due share and voice in German legislation. But how large a share in German legislation would she claim? What demands would she be likely, in any case, to make with regard to the tenor of the new Constitution? And how far would she submit to disagreeable decrees of the Parliament?

It is easy to imagine the weight of these questions in the minds of the men at Frankfort. The first one to be affected by them was the President of the Imperial Ministry, Herr von Schmerling, who certainly meant well by Germany, but who, above all things, was a loyal Austrian. The leaders of the Majority in the Parliament, the men who supported the project of an Empire with Prussia at its head, realized that they must henceforth look upon Schmerling as their active opponent, and accordingly, with the help of the Left, they forced him out of office by a polite but significant vote of lack of confidence. Heinrich von Gagern succeeded him in office on the 18th of December; and the presidency of the Assembly in the Cathedral of St. Paul was accepted by Professor Edward Simon of Konigsberg, a man of Jewish extraction, but who had a German spirit and heart, was a warm patriot and a clear-sighted politician, and who, combining in a rare degree an aesthetic taste and a ready wit, became a master of oratory, and a model in the presidential chair.

The National Assembly was at this time busy with the discussion of the Constitution, and had come to the Article about the Imperial Diet. It was recognized that by the side of the national idea of unity individual interests must also be represented; so that by the side of the House of Deputies elected by universal suffrage an Upper House must also exist, the members of which should be appointed, one-half by the Governments and one-half by the Chambers of the Individual States, and yet be as little bound by instructions as the Deputies of the Popular House.

The Diet was vested with the usual parliamentary rights in the fullest manner, and in such a way that the Popular House took the precedence of the Upper House, and the Diet of the Imperial Authority. In finances, the Upper House was to have only a consulting voice, the Popular House alone the deciding vote. In either House the right was given to arraign a Minister before the Imperial Court of Justice on account of mismanagement in his office; a motion that this should be confined to illegal acts, and should not embrace merely injudicious measures, was lost. Legislation was placed in the hands of the Diet and the Supreme Authority in common. An Imperial Council composed of plenipotentiaries of the Princes was to pass judgment upon each bill proposed, but without any deciding voice. In the event of a difference of opinion between the Supreme Authority and the Diet, a bill, after being passed in three sessions of the Diet, should become a law, even without the approval of the Supreme Authority; or, in other words, the Supreme Authority was to have not an absolute but a suspending veto power.

Accordingly, no matter how richly the Supreme Magistrate might afterwards be decorated with titles and invested with rights, the actual representative of national sovereignty was not he, but the Diet, and in this, again, the Popular House. This accorded admirably with Gagern’s first speech as President of the National Assembly, in the warm spring atmosphere of the 18th of May, but not well with the hard facts which presented themselves in the prosaic division of power during the cold days of December.

Communications of a directly opposite nature passed at this time between Berlin and Vienna.

At the request of the Prussian Government that Austria should express her views upon the German question, Prince Schwarzenberg deemed it advisable to reply immediately and with unsparing plainness. On the 13th of December, he demanded that Austria, as a united State (with about thirty millions of Slavs, Magyars and Italians), should be admitted into the German Confederation. He considered that the Frankfort fabrication could not be accepted with a good conscience by any German Prince; and that the two Great Powers ought therefore to agree upon a proper constitution, in which they should abandon the idea of a federal government, and return to the only practical basis, of a confederation of states; that to carry this out, a stronger executive would be needed than formerly; then, instead of a representation of the people, a body formed of deputies sent by the Princes; and further, the union of material interests and a universal military system. Bavaria should first be let into the plan, and afterwards the other Kings; but everything should be done with the greatest secrecy, without the knowledge of even the Archduke John. Any attempt at insurrection should be put down by force of arms. In this work of repression, Austria would take part according to the number of troops which she might not at the time have otherwise engaged; at any rate she would, by a small representation at least, signify her theoretical support.

Nothing could be more striking than the contrast between this merely theoretical support and the unboundedness of the pretensions based upon it. In Schwarzenberg’s reply, everything that Frederick William had dreamed about a “Teuton King crowned in the Frankfort Minster,” and about “a hereditary Commander-in-Chief over the Imperial Military Dukedoms,” was ruthlessly crossed out. In spite of Prussia’s military power and European standing, she was put down upon a level with Bavaria, her independence was threatened, and her Tariff-Union endangered. The King had just relieved his mind again by writing frantic letters to Bunsen and Radetzky, in which he gave vent to his contempt for the revolutionary doings at Frankfort; and now Schwarzenberg’s behavior gave to his feelings an exactly opposite tendency.

He found himself in a strait between two: his peers, whom he loved and honored, were fiercely opposing his ardent desires for Prussia’s advancement, while the men that he almost detested were eagerly offering to him the fulfilment of those wishes—a state of things which kept him in constant suspense and indecision. He could not help realizing what the interests and position of Prussia demanded beyond the devices of Schwarzenberg, and that to further them the assistance of the Parliament was absolutely indispensable. It was necessary, then, to come to an understanding with it: only it must not be allowed to decide the matter itself, nor to dispose of the Imperial Crown by any supposed sovereign right of its own.

Accordingly, on the 19th of December, in reply to Schwarzenberg’s message, a Ministerial memorial was drawn up, in which it was stated at the outset, that immediately after the first reading of the Imperial Constitution a revision of the work was to be undertaken by the Governments and the Parliament together; that to this end a College of the German Kings was to be considered the Executive; Deputies from the Princes, the Upper House; and the Parliament, the Lower House. With regard to the question of the Constitution, it was explained that the admission of the whole of Austria into the new Germany would not allow of anything but a loosely-united Confederation of States; that especially in the tariff and in the military affairs of Germany, Austria could take part only to a limited extent; and that, moreover, nothing would prevent the rest of Germany from forming, if they thought best, a closer union among themselves, inside of the more comprehensive Confederation.

Thus Prussia took an intermediate position, by denying with Schwarzenberg the constitutive omnipotence of the Parliament, and by upholding, at least in principle, Gagern’s system of a restricted union inside of a more comprehensive one, as far as the new form of government was concerned. The question, what shape this more restricted union would assume in the restless fancy of the King of Prussia, was meanwhile undetermined.

When Count Bernstorff, the Prussian Ambassador, communicated the contents of this memorial to Prince Schwarzenberg, he received scarcely any attention. The Prince had just listened to a Bavarian Embassy, which had urgently insisted upon the continuance of Austria in the Confederation, as a protection to the Lesser States against Prussia ; upon the equalization of Bavaria with Prussia in the future Constitution, and especially in a Directory; and finally upon the dissolution of the Frankfort Parliament, and the suppression of every revolt by force of arms. The Würtemberg Ambassador talked also in the same strain.

Schwarzenberg, besought by Bavaria and Würtemberg to do what he himself most ardently wished for, and relying upon their support, turned a deaf ear to all of Bernstorffs most important propositions. “The Parliament,” he cried, “will and must go to pieces. If, however, negotiations must be entered into with it, then the clumsy Prussian proposition of an Upper House is entirely superfluous : the Plenipotentiaries of the Kings to the Imperial Regent would be sufficient for every purpose. Of the Kings,” he repeated, “and only of the Kings.” He then expressed his approval of the project of a College of Kings to the exclusion of the inferior Princes, a commendation as easily explained, coming from him, as the proposition itself was inexplicable, coming from the King of Prussia.

Schwarzenberg proceeded at once to draw further conclusions. He not only objected to any representation of the people in the Confederation, but also considered the Chambers of the individual States far too numerous for the population of Germany as a whole. He insisted that groups should be formed among the States, perhaps six of them, each under one of the German Kings. Austria, for instance, might take Liechtenstein: Prussia might take Mecklenburg, Anhalt, Hesse-Cassel, and other such States; Saxony, the small Thuringian States; Hanover might join to itself Brunswick and Oldenburg; and Würtemberg might receive Baden and Darmstadt.

In each group the leading Prince should be at the head of the Government with a common Chamber of Deputies from the Estates, should have the supreme command over all the troops, and should alone represent the group in the College of Kings.

Schwarzenberg seemed to have no doubt of the Prussian assent to this system of groups: in fact, it was only the practical realization of the system of Imperial military dukedoms, so often proposed by the King himself. However this might be, Schwarzenberg declared it to be such a vital question, that before this was settled he would proceed no further in the negotiations. Naturally! For a sharper contrast to the national desire for unity could not be found than this dismemberment of Germany into six fatherlands, whose Kings should be equally endowed with possessions and power, and should all be subordinated to polyglot Austria.

The revolutionary Frankfort Parliament had in the beginning of December rejected all motions proposing the mediatization of the Petty States, because it was not these inferior Princes, but the more powerful Sovereigns, that were an obstacle to German Unity. And now it was the ardent champion of the old conservative system, who wanted, with one stroke of his pen, to annihilate the independence of about thirty legitimate Governments.

With regard to the other matters referred to in the memorial, Prince Schwarzenberg curtly observed, that a single Head of the Empire was impossible; it would be better to have a Directory of Three under the presidency of Austria. Austria would, moreover, join not only the more comprehensive, but also the more restricted, Union—in other words, would hinder the formation of the latter. She would also be as unreservedly as possible a member of the Tariff-Union.

One would naturally suppose that, upon the announcement of such plans as these, Prussia would have declared further negotiations with Olmütz to be hopeless, and would at once have sought an understanding with the parties of the Frankfort Centre. But such a decision lay entirely out of the range of the King’s mind. To him, a break with Austria was an impossibility. lie could not think but that his ideas must have been misunderstood in the ministerial interviews with Schwarzenberg. He complained that he was only too often misunderstood. So he decided to interpose with his own royal hand, and to explain his views in a lengthy note to the Austrian Cabinet.

This note was written on the 4th of January, 1849, and carried by Count Brühl to Olmütz, there to be read to Prince Schwarzenberg. The leading points are already known to us; but the motives which the King adduced, and his manner of expressing himself, were so extraordinary, that we cannot help quoting some passages from the note, at the same time adding the short comments with which Schwarzenberg interrupted Count Brühl.

The King begins with the assertion that Bernstorff's last report gave the comforting assurance of harmonious action on the part of the German Great Powers. “Only upon this basis of authority and concord,” said he, “can the German Princes rise, and a condition of things be established that can better hold its own against the spirit of the times than the abortive German Confederation or the Utopian ideals of the Assembly in the Cathedral of St. Paul. What was the chief mistake in the German Confederation? Disregard of the difference of power which existed among the members of the Confederation. What was the fundamental error in all the projects advocated by the Assembly at Frankfort? The confusion of Above and Below, of the Supreme Authority and Dependent Subjects, or, in a word, Revolution. It is a fact established by experience, that the appreciation of the value of things is generally most just ... where the control of mighty systems and participation in important crises become as one’s daily bread ; that is to say, precisely in positions to which Divine Providence has attached that degree of power which may give the just appreciation of these values its due emphasis. In the whole of Germany there are only two Powers that offer such points of view: namely, Austria and Prussia.”

The King further explained, that only through the united action of these Powers could Germany be purified from the immeasurable disgrace she had suffered during the year 1848, and assume a form that would rest upon a clear understanding of the times and their needs.

The King was forced to confess frankly that he was not in a position to accomplish the task. “ To bring about these conditions,” he said, “we need above all things time and tranquillity. The propositions which I have already laid before the Vienna Cabinet have had the sole aim of gaining this time and tranquillity for taking good and careful counsel. Just that feature in my propositions, which I am in the habit of calling the organization of the Frankfort Provisional Government, is intended in the first place and especially to serve as a means of gaining this necessary time and tranquillity.

“In my proposed organization the chief point by far is the College of Kings. This gives to the parties of the Frankfort Centre what is most needed,—a Head. This College of Kings has no other object than to bring again into proper hands ‘The Supreme Authority’ of the Provisional Government ... and also to emphasize among the parties of the Centre the notion of Headship, without which nothing can be properly accomplished. The absence among the parties of the Centre of any definite agreement about the Headship can alone explain the fact, that although possessed of so much intelligence and noble purpose, the Assembly in the Cathedral of St. Paul has given itself over to dreams of usurpation, and since the restoration of the two Great Powers, has driven about like a ship without a rudder. This must be stopped; and the first step towards it is a College of Kings established by the absolute will of the highest Sovereigns of Germany”

The King did not insist so strongly on the Upper House to which Austria objected, and yet emphasized it to some degree. “The chief thing, however,’’ he continued, “that we, the Great Powers, need, is leisure and opportunity ‘to take good council’. I confess that I think this leisure would be endangered if the College of Kings found itself face-à-face with the Utopian ideals of the Cathedral of St. Paul. The sharp contrast between the opinions and plans of the two bodies might lead to collisions.

Schwarzenberg remarked here: Opposition and rebellion must be expected. The King of Würtemberg considers them to be probable, and asks for the equipment of a force of forty thousand men (twenty thousand Prussians, ten thousand Bavarians, and ten thousand Würtembergers). It is needed. Shall the King of Würtemberg receive the command? The troops must at any rate be held in readiness near, or at least not far from, Frankfort. The King of Würtemberg earnestly desires the command, and might in this way be won over for the rest of the scheme.

— In my desire to find a medium between fire and water, I have looked about and believed that I had found it in an Upper House... The establishment of only a College of Kings might be looked upon by both the Assembly and the Imperial Regent as a hostile measure. —

Schwarzenberg: The College must not on any account have anything to do with the Assembly, though it shall preserve the most friendly relations with the Regent of the Empire. The latter must, in spite of his personal weakness, be retained. Austria is responsible for that.

— I feel that the simultaneous demand for an Upper House avoids this first quasi-conflict. This demand affords us the occasion, which seems to me to be in the highest degree desirable, of giving the so-called National Assembly a proof of our sympathy, of our willingness to come to an understanding with them, and of our appreciation of their services.” The King goes on to say that he does not doubt but that the Parliament will agree to the establishment of the Upper House: “for otherwise the Majority must be a pack of fools of the purest water.” —

Schwarzenberg: There are plenty of such fools at Frankfort.

— “ If the Austrian Cabinet,” the King continued, “ have any well-considered plan —

             Schwarzenberg: No.

— by means of which the obscurity of my propositions may be lessened —

           Schwarzenberg: One must speak one’s mind straight out, and have forty thousand men to back it.

— and the ends better attained, then I declare before­hand that I am ready to engage in such a plan with all my heart.”

He then takes up Schwarzenberg’s system of groups, which he would rather term “ Imperial Sections,” or “Imperial Military Dukedoms.” He would not, on the whole, object to this plan, only the union of the Chambers appears a difficult matter, which he fears would provoke the Princes and seem to them to savor too much of mediatization. —

            Schwarzenberg: No more so than Gagern’s scheme. (The King here made the following note in the Report: That is just exactly what we will not do.)

— More urgent was the question of an Imperial military organization, which the King discusses in detail: “There should be four Imperial armies in Austria; four in Prussia; and two in Bavaria, the one in the country itself, and the other composed of Rhine Franks, including the Bavarian Palatinate, both Hesses, Nassau, Frankfort, and Luxemburg; the Swabian Military Dukedom, under Würtemberg’s leadership, should include Baden, Hohenzollern, and Liechtenstein; the Upper Saxon Military Dukedom, under the leadership of the King of Saxony, should include all the Saxon countries and the Middle German Petty States; and the Lower Saxon Military Dukedom, under Hanover, should include Brunswick, both Holsteins, both Mecklenburgs, and the Hanse Towns.” —

          Schwarzenberg: Austria protests against any increase in the territorial control of Bavaria, as the application of a principle, which, especially in this case, would become dangerous.

Then the King returns to the Upper House and its composition. He pictures it to himself as consisting of two hundred and twenty-five members, of whom fifty shall be from Austria and the same number from Prussia, all of whom must, of course, be men of proper principles and willing to obey orders. —

         Schwarzenberg : Austria does not possess fifty such men, nor five! If Prussia has so many that are also to be relied upon away from home, in Frankfort, she is to be congratulated.

— “Now a word,” says the King, “with regard to the real significance of the Upper House. In the first place, by their revision of the work done by the National Assembly, time will be gained for the Princes meanwhile to decide upon the chief features of the new Germany. But,” he continues, “the convention of such an Upper House offers, further, the only hope of effecting what unfortunately cannot be attempted in any other way, namely, the revision of the individual Constitutions to which the horrors of 1848 have given birth. —             

            Schwarzenberg: This can be best done by having the proper armed forces at one’s disposal.

—From those constitutions everything non-Teutonic must be eradicated, everything revolutionary, everything that threatens real danger. I need hardly say how acceptable this means of relief must be to all the Princes. The relief will come by Parliamentary and not by Governmental means.”

          Schwarzenberg: Better still by means of the military.

After having thus canvassed the proposition for a Provisional Government, the King observes : “I confess that I do not myself feel able to form yet any definite conception of the future Germany. There is no lack of pictures and designs in my fancy, but most certainly there are none that I should consider fit to be recommended for consideration by me today. I will only throw out an idea in which, after all, I am not sure but that all my dreams are centred. Here it is.”

Then follows the proposal:

1. Of a Lower House of Parliament elected by the Second Chambers of the Individual States, according to the Estates and Classes;

2. Of an Upper House, consisting of the Deputies from the Sovereigns who are not Kings, of the mediatized Princes, and of delegates from the first Chambers, so far as these represent the great landed proprietors;

3. Of a College of Kings in any event.

Thereupon the King closes as follows: “The manner of union between the two chief bodies, namely, the purely Teutonic and the Austrian, into one grand whole, which, indeed, every genuine Teuton must regard as the only condition of any good result, and further, the limitation of the authority of the first Power, Austria, in respect to that of the second Power, Prussia, to whom no rival can rationally be said to exist: these are truly the vital questions upon which depends the continuance, ay, even the possibility of the existence, of the grand whole. The solution of these questions 1 confidently expect from those conferences which I long to see begun. These conferences must be guided and inspired by a spirit of harmony between the two Great Powers. The identity of our interests demands this harmony, and our ancient, deep-rooted, and genuine friendship will make it easy to be preserved.

“This harmony is a blessing from Heaven, and therefore it is pregnant with victory and certain of success.”

It would be hard to find anywhere a sharper contrast brought out between the characters and habits of thought and action of two such important historical personages than is presented in this unique document. The substance, then, of the project planned out by the King was this : —

The German Constitution is not to be determined by the Frankfort Parliament alone, but by the concurrence of this body with an Upper House of the Princes and with a Government consisting of Kings.

This Upper House has before it, also, the task of revising on a conservative basis the Constitutions of the individual States.

Concerning the contents of the future Imperial Constitution the King has at present no definite opinion, but only dreamy fancies.

The dream, which he communicates, involves a Parliament of two Houses, and the ever-present College of Kings as the Executive. Whether Austria is to have a seat and voice in this College he does not say.

He longs rather less dreamily for conferences, to decide upon the relations between the chief bodies, Germany and Austria, and the mutual attitude of the two chief Powers, Prussia and Austria, whereby he informally and yet decidedly refuses to allow Prussia to be placed on the same level with Bavaria.

What Schwarzenberg thought of these confidential communications from the King of Prussia we have already seen from his remarks by the way. He had some time before imperiously informed the Frankfort Parliament of his determination that the whole of Austria should enter the new Empire or Federation, and declared that he would not submit to any Imperial Constitution that was not compatible with this.

Then he laid his scheme of groups before the four Kingdoms, and thus, as may easily be imagined, secured their thorough approval of the Austrian line of policy. Bavaria, in spite of her receiving no extension of territory, was highly pleased, because the scheme did away forever with the idea of a Prussian hegemony and of German Unity. Saxony and Hanover smiled at this fascinating prospect, but, in view of the proximity of the Prussian boundaries, kept themselves for the time prudently in the background. Würtemberg, however, rejoiced with great glee, and begged that the scheme might be carried out at once, promising unwavering devotion to Austria.

 

CHAPTER III.

THE QUESTION OF THE SUPREME AUTHORITY.

 

Immediately after assuming the office of President of the Ministry, Gagern laid before the National Assembly a statement of the principles which he intended to follow in his relations with Austria. The Programme of Kremsier, he said, which announced the Unity of Austria, implied the determination of the Austrian Government not to enter the German Federation, if this should be established in conformity with the votes which had hitherto been passed in the National Assembly. In order, therefore, to preserve the connection between Austria and the German Federation, an especial treaty would be necessary, and the matter must be settled by diplomatic negotiations; in no case, however, could the Constitution of the German Federation, or Empire, be one of the subjects of such negotiations.

The surprise and uproar caused by this official announcement of the separation of Austria from the new Germany was indescribable, both within the National Assembly and without. There were the Idealists, who wished to keep Germany entire, and not to lose the eight million Austrian Germans; there were the Ultramontanes and the Individualists, who saw before their eyes, after the withdrawal of Austria, the establishment of a Prussian hereditary Empire; and in the Cathedral of St. Paul itself there were the Austrian Deputies, who resented Gagern’s announcement as a mortal insult to the honor of their nation.

Even those, too, who may sympathize with Gagern’s principles, cannot help seeing that his conduct on the 18th of December was a political error, and very likely to endanger the attainment of the all-important object. Why would it not have been better to make no mention of the Kremsier Programme, but to continue to pass further measures about the Imperial Constitution in harmony with those already decreed, without either asserting or denying Austria’s participation in the new Federation, thus leaving it to the Austrian Government itself to declare the impossibility of joining a union so constituted, and to take upon its own shoulders the responsibility of the unpopularity connected with the separation? To be sure, as things stood then, even this might scarcely have sufficed to rescue the sinking fortunes of the Parliament; but yet it would most probably have saved Gagern from having to deal with an immense amount of pitiable demoralization and discord; and if the end must come, it would have rendered a dignified exit possible.

While the National Assembly busied itself during the month of December with making the already-mentioned decrees about the future Imperial Diet, Herr von Schmerling hastened to Olmütz, in order to consult with Prince Schwarzenberg. In the beginning of January he returned, and laid before the Imperial

Ministry an Austrian note, dated the 28th of December, which contained the concise assertions that, in the first place, Gagern had entirely misunderstood the Kremsier Programme; in the next place, that Austria left the question of her entrance into the new Union in every way open, and decidedly refused to enter into any diplomatic negotiations on the subject; and further, that an Imperial Constitution could have no real existence without the approval of the German Princes, among whom stood first and foremost His Majesty the Emperor of Austria. Against the second of these clauses there was for the present nothing to be said. As for the rest, Gagern remained firm in his former position, and requested on the 5th of January, 1849, that the National Assembly would empower him to negotiate at the proper time and in the proper manner with Austria concerning her relations to the new German Empire.

Immediately a storm of passionate excitement broke out. The Austrians, the Individualists, the Idealists, protested against the motion to grant the Prime Minister this power. They were in the majority; and the Committee to whom the motion had been referred, reported on the 11th of January in the negative. Now followed a three days’ discussion, at times rather boisterous. A vigorous, and yet at the same time conciliatory, speech by Gagern produced a great effect; several of the advocates of an “entire” Germany wished above all things to avoid a ministerial crisis; and the result was, in short, that the tide turned, and the desired power was granted to Gagern on the 13th by a majority of thirty-seven votes. His party followed up their advantage, and succeeded in placing immediately on the order of the day for the 14th the next Article in the Constitution,—the Supreme Authority.

This proved to be nothing more nor less than a continuance of the previous debate; for here again, the expressions used and the arguments employed were only new terms in the great struggle between Prussia and Austria. The Left played the clown and ironically applauded each champion as he dealt his rival heavy blows. Five days were consumed in this manner. The Committee reported that the dignity of the Imperial Supreme Authority should be conferred upon one of the reigning Princes ; the advocates of an “entire’’ Germany proposed a Directory of six members; and the Left, a Presidency, to which office every German over thirty years of age should be eligible. The Report of the Committee was, however, accepted by a vote of 258 against 211. A shout of joyful applause ran through the ranks of the Centre.

Only a few days afterwards, the flush of victory gave place to depressing dejection. There was truly reason enough for this, and it was not confined to the parties of the Centre. The Committee reported that the office of Emperor be hereditary. In opposition to this, the advocates of an “entire” Germany, the Democrats, and even members of the Centre itself, brought forward other propositions: that the Emperor be elected for life, or for a term of twelve, six, or even three years. This resulted in the most ignominious state of things that could disgrace a great nation: over this most vital and essential question weeks of discussion elapsed without witnessing any single vote passed by a majority. Once more appeared, in the most hideous colors and under the most glaring light, that melancholy spectacle of the old, disunited, and therefore impotent, Germany.

This internal disunion in the Parliament itself poisoned the ordinary feeling of hostility between the parties until it was converted into violent personal hatred. No one dared to suggest any means of restoring things from this abnormal condition once more to working order. One could only live from day to day and await the developments of the hour.

With regard to the great question at issue, which the Preliminary Parliament had referred to the National Assembly, and which that body had postponed from summer to winter, the last hopes were set upon the impending second reading of the Constitution. With this idea, the Assembly proceeded, meanwhile, to the determination of the powers to be granted to the future, though not yet appointed, ruler. These were the customary rights of a constitutional monarchy, here represented by the Imperial Power, which was completely vested in the Emperor, except so far as his action was limited by the Diet.

The most striking feature of this Constitution was, without doubt, the fact that only nominal privileges were accorded to the German Princes in the Imperial legislation: namely, the appointment of half of the Upper House, whose members, however, were to receive no instructions; and the sending of plenipotentiaries to an Imperial Council, which was only to pass its opinion upon the bills proposed by the Ministry. To the Princes, in fact, no part was allotted in the Imperial Government. They were represented as little in the Constitution as were the People in the old Confederate Diet. It is no wonder that the spirit of Individualism, which had for centuries so completely filled the hearts of subjects with loyalty to their own Sovereigns, should now stoutly resist such an attack upon its very existence.

On the 26th of January these discussions came to a close. Only a few paragraphs of the Constitution had not yet passed the first reading. It was clear that if the Governments wished to have any hand in the shaping of the future Empire, the last hour for signifying this had struck. On the one side, a large number of the Petty States were resigned to submitting to their fate at the hands of the National Assembly: on the other side, the Lesser States were quite as firm in their determination to throw overboard, like Austria, the whole work done in the Cathedral of St. Paul.

Prussia had been for weeks trying to find some means by which, without revolutionary measures, her interests and those of Germany might be made one. It will be worth our while to consider the matter from this point of view more clearly; for there is no doubt but that the decay at the heart of the National Assembly, and the as yet unsettled state of Austria, made Berlin now the place where the immediate fate of Germany was decided.

About the middle of January, Count Brandenburg had summoned the Prussian Plenipotentiary, Camphausen, from Frankfort to Berlin; and the King, his confidential friend Bunsen from London. Just as these gentlemen arrived, a Report of Count Bernstorff was received from Olmütz, to the effect that Prince Schwarzenberg, in spite of the remonstrances of the Prussian Ministers, persisted in adhering to his original standpoint in every particular: he was still determined to control or to break up the National Assembly, and to mediatize the Petty States; and had come to a satisfactory understanding with the South German Kings, since the latter (the Prince asserted) would otherwise have turned, in their fear of Prussia, to France, with the proposal to form with her a new Confederation of the Rhine. The Prussian Ministers agreed with Camphausen and Bunsen, that under such circumstances there was no use in considering any plan of a close union with Austria and the Kings.

Instead of this, Camphausen drew up a circular, addressed to all the German Governments, to the following purpose: that everything depended upon the concurrence of the National Assembly with the Governments; that it was to be hoped that the Parliament would have regard to the claims of the Princes, and that the latter would, to this end, all of them, give instructions to their Plenipotentiaries at Frankfort concerning their wishes, so that the Parliament could discuss them between the first and second readings of the Constitution; that it was doubtful whether Austria would join the new Federation, but that the continuance of the bond of connection with Austria under the old Confederation would be quite consistent with the establishment of a closer Union among the remaining German States; that so far as Prussia was concerned, the King would accept no position offered to him without the combined consent of the German Governments; that the establishment of the new office and title of Emperor was not necessary ; and finally, that Prussia desired to have only that share in the Federal Government which would naturally fall to her, and would neither aspire nor refuse to stand at the head.

The circular, as a whole, was very like the former ministerial memorial: in form, a protest against the absolute power of the Frankfort Assembly; but in effect, a support of Gagern’s Programme of a restricted union and a more comprehensive alliance. Nothing was said about an Upper House nor a College of Kings. The acceptance of the Imperial office was left to depend upon the decision of the members of the Union.

Count Brandenburg expressed his full assent to the contents of the circular, and took it to the King to receive his approval. But here he met most determined resistance. The King would not withdraw from the principles expressed in his note, but worked himself into a passionate outcry against the Revolution; he proclaimed his devotion to the cause of restoring the divinely-ordained right of sovereigns, and consequently of overthrowing all the anarchical mischief done by the Assembly in the Cathedral of St. Paul,—so that Camphausen was on the very point of asking for his dismissal; for he was unwilling to assist in the burial of all the hopes of Germany. Finally, when Bunsen urgently pointed out the danger of Schwarzenberg’s system of groups, the King decided that before he could make up his mind, he must wait for Schwarzenberg’s reply to his note. Meanwhile this reply, signed on the 17th of January, 1849, reached the King’s hands upon the 19th, and he could not put off his decision any longer.

In both the documents of which the Austrian communication consisted, Prince Schwarzenberg most carefully avoided any mention of the Prussian Ministry; but, on the other hand, he followed very skilfully and closely the line of thought of the King’s note, emphasizing as much as possible the points of agreement, such as their common opposition to revolution, the protest against the constitutive omnipotence of the Parliament, the summoning of a College of Kings in order to restore the dignity of sovereign authority, and finally the “very happy” idea of forming six military dukedoms or groups, in which the Petty States, so full as they were of revolutionary schemes and of rottenness, should be smothered. Just exactly upon these principles, he said, had he himself based the specific propositions he was now about to make. He alluded only briefly to the subject of a constitution. Whoever did not seek revolution, could not think of allowing any popular representation by the side of the Central Government. About the form that this Central Government should assume, he said nothing, nor about the future relations of Austria in or to the Federation. His proposals concerning the method of procedure in the immediate future were, however, not so ambiguous. The six Royal Deputies should meet forthwith in Frankfort and together present to the Imperial Regent a note, in which the Constitution as set forth by the Parliament should be unconditionally rejected, and the intention declared, on the part of the Governments, to take this matter of framing a constitution into their own hands. In order to give emphasis to this plan (already spoken of in his previous communications), he proposed that there should be stationed in the immediate vicinity of the city of Frankfort twenty thousand Prussians, ten thousand Bavarians, and ten thousand Würtembergers; Austria, since she had a great many other irons in the fire, would contribute a thousand men as a re-enforcement of the garrison of Mainz. As a basis for the further reconstruction of Germany, the two Great Powers and the four Kingdoms should demand, with categorical directness, the acceptance of the system of groups by the remaining German States.

In the passing mood of the King, when he first read Schwarzenberg’s reply, the few conservative sentences at the beginning seemed to make a greater impression upon him than the consequences which were deduced therefrom. At least, on that very day he poured a volley of invective into Bunsen’s ear against the whole course of the movement of 1848 both in Berlin and in Frankfort; and vowed that, although he should be willing to satisfy, so far as he could, the demands of the Nation, he would fight the Revolution with all his might. Yet Bunsen succeeded in quieting him down a little, so that the King gave him the Austrian documents to look over, with the order to report upon them the next day; at the same time, Count Brandenburg was also requested to express the opinion of the Ministry.

Accordingly, on the 20th, both men explained to the King how, while appearing to agree with the note of His Majesty, Schwarzenberg had omitted most important middle terms in the King’s reasoning, and had deduced quite different conclusions from the same; how, by emphasizing these, he had led up to actual results which were in direct contrast to the King’s own wishes; how he had purposely omitted to speak of the relations of Austria to the Empire, and of the form of the future Central Government; how he wished to mediatize the Petty States — a plan which the King had already definitely rejected; how, while the King wished to secure harmonious action with the Parliament, Schwarzenberg’s propositions would lead to its violent dissolution by military force,—the consequences of which would be incalculable; how the whole odium of this would not fall upon Austria, but first of all upon Prussia, especially as it was exceedingly doubtful whether Bavaria and Würtemberg, with the existing tide of popular opinion, would be able to send troops against the Parliament; and finally, they said, what would then become of German Unity, if one had to deal alone with Kings and Princes, without the motive power of the Parliament?

The King listened, made many objections, but did not become excited; evidently the heated passion of the day before had given place to a cooler mood of reflection. Now came the practical question: Shall the Constitution, as drawn up by the Parliament, be discussed by all the German Princes together, or only by a Council of Kings? Bunsen and Brandenburg recommended, very naturally, the former: they argued that the latter course would be an act of violence.

For this critical moment which was now at hand, the King had summoned to his aid an ally. He said: “Suppose we ask Canitz about this point? He is in the ante-room.” This was done. The King submitted the question to him, and emphasized the importance of not breaking with Austria. Canitz agreed with the King: “It would be better,” he said, “to begin with Austria and the Lesser States.”

Then Bunsen spoke again. Although the cause seemed almost hopeless, he referred to a certain letter from Radowitz, and advocated the plan of a restricted Union. “What is it that you want, then?” asked the King. “Nothing,” replied Bunsen, “except that Your Majesty consent to the sending of the circular to the Sovereigns.” “Have you read it?” “Of course; and I have weighed each word.” “Do you approve of it?” “Thoroughly.” “Then,” said the King, turning to Brandenburg, “let it be sent. Only do not let negotiations with Austria on that account be broken off.”

Bunsen relates: “Brandenburg fell, as it were, from the clouds, and Canitz made a queer face. The King arose and left the room. We three stared at each other. “His Majesty’s head is differently organized from that of other men”, said Count Brandenburg. “Why did he make objections so persistently and then all at once give in?”. Canitz made no reply.

The circular, thus sanctioned and sent on the 23d of January, signified a turn in Prussia's policy, which, if firmly carried out, might lead with the approval of the Parliament to important results. Bunsen and Camphausen hurried hopefully to Frankfort, the former to consult the Central Government about the negotiations for peace with Denmark, the latter to confer with the Plenipotentiaries of the individual States with regard to the Imperial Constitution. The circular from Prussia produced at first an encouraging effect among her friends in the Parliament, and made her enemies so uneasy that Schmerling sent an urgent request to Olmütz for some expression from that quarter which should be equally forcible.

Such an expression appeared on the 4th of February in a note, which declared that Austria was far from wishing to hold aloof from a closer union and a swallowing up (an ominously ambiguous expression) of the German States; only this must not be the Federation hitherto advocated, which involved all the dangers of a German union (leaving to Austria only the alternatives of splitting up its own realm, or of separating entirely from Germany), and which furthermore was not in keeping with the spirit of old European international traditions.

If, after these negative assertions, it should be asked what the Austrian Government did wish to have created, the reply was at hand: she had in mind a firm and mighty, strong and free, composite and united, Germany, in which all the German States and their non-German provinces as well, should have their place.

This was the first hint, still rather concealed, of the demands made in Berlin by Schwarzenberg, and also the first mention of the glorious grandeur of an Empire in Central Europe composed of seventy million souls, forty million Germans and thirty million non-Germans, all united in brotherly concord in the common service of Austria. It was indeed no favorable sign of national consciousness nor of political maturity, that at this time many thousands of loyal Germans let themselves be wheedled into enthusiasm by the splendor of this colossal phantom.

In the Parliament, meanwhile, the Constitution had on the 3d of February passed its first reading; and the Imperial party, stimulated by the Prussian circular, earnestly wished that the second reading, and therewith the final decision, might follow as soon as possible. Austrian interests demanded just the opposite. For, busy as Prince Schwarzenberg was with the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution, he had no other forces to bring to bear upon the National Assembly than threatening words; and although Prince Windischgratz had made decided progress against the Magyars, and at the beginning of January had occupied Buda-Pesth, thus raising hopes at Olmütz of an immediate and certain termination of the insurrection, yet Magyar armies were still in the field, and final success lay in the distant future.

Time, then, must be gained at Frankfort by the Austrians; the second reading must be put off as long as possible; and in the mean time, either the consummation of any constitution at all must be prevented, or, if this could not be accomplished, the Constitution itself in its present shape must be so thoroughly spoiled that there should be no chance of its passing the final vote. The first step, the postponement, was successful. The united Opposition, consisting of the Left and the advocates of an “entire’’ Germany, carried the motion, that before the second reading of the Constitution, a few unfinished paragraphs about the Fundamental Rights should be taken up, and also the law concerning the election of Representatives to the Popular House.

For the present, Camphausen also had no reason to regret the postponement; for, of course, a common verdict on the contents of the projected Constitution could not be obtained in a twinkling from the German Governments. To be sure, the Grand Duke of Baden had already expressed his approval of an hereditary monarchical system, and almost all of the Petty States had followed his example; but the Constitution, as we know, contained many points which required careful consideration and suitable amendment.

Accordingly, Camphausen summoned his colleagues to a conference, at which also the Plenipotentiaries of the Petty States accepted the invitation to be present. The Deputies from the Kings held aloof, and declared to the Imperial Ministry in more or less pointed terms that they would accept no constitution that placed a monarch at the head of the Government, nor any that excluded Austria. In the name of Austria herself, Herr von Schmerling said that his Government reserved to itself the right to pass judgment upon the Constitution after the second reading, but was not at all inclined to try to make it acceptable by amendments or by striking out objectionable features.

Meanwhile Camphausen had been actively and earnestly at work with the favorably-disposed Plenipotentiaries of twenty-six Governments. From the 23d of January on, conferences were held almost daily. Many amendments were amicably agreed upon, which had for their object, for the most part, better safe­guards for the independence of the individual States. Camphausen sent daily reports to Berlin about the satisfactory progress that was being made, and received, on the 3d of February, a note from the Minister acknowledging his zealous services. After that followed complete silence.

His Majesty had changed his mind. Schwarzenberg’s haughty demands had for the moment led him to approve of the circular of the 23d of January; but soon afterwards his heart turned again from the revolutionary Parliament to his old friend and ally, Austria. When Bunsen, on the 11th of February, returned to Berlin and laid before the King various propositions for the furtherance of the work at Frankfort, His Majesty replied that he would not have anything more to do with it all; that he had never regretted any step as he did that of the 23d of January; that the measures which were being taken were unjust toward Austria; that he would have no more hand in such a disgusting policy, but would leave that to the Ministry; and that if the question should turn upon himself personally, he should answer as a Hohenzollern, and live and die as an honorable man and prince.

To suppose, however, that the King had on account of these considerations given up the idea of accepting the dignity of the highest Imperial office would be a mistake. On the margin of a request from the Frankfort Central Government to have Prussia, as a part of Germany, represented at a proposed European Congress, the King wrote: “This is just what we cannot agree to, for we are in provisorio; the Central Government is not we, and we must remain independent until we are the Central Government.”

He remained also firm in his hope of gaining over Austria to the support of his wishes. Soon after this, as the Austrian Ambassador, Count Trautmannsdorff, was taking leave of him, he gave him the commission to lay before the Austrian Emperor and Prince Schwarzenberg his plan that Francis Joseph should become Emperor, and that he himself, the King, should be hereditary Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Army. Of course, Schwarzenberg shrugged his shoulders at this, and treated it as merely an impracticable dream.

Frederick William, true to what he had said to Bunsen, did allow the Ministry to take its own course in carrying out the policy of the 23d of January, and a ministerial approval of the amendments decided upon by Camphausen was sent to Frankfort on the 15th of February. Three more Governments had in the mean time consented to take part in the deliberations; and on the 24th Camphausen was able to hand to the Imperial Ministry a list of the amendments proposed by twenty-nine Governments in common, and Gagern gave it immediately to the Committee of the Parliament that was busy preparing the Constitution for its second reading. But now new disappointments awaited the Prussian Plenipotentiary. He was forced to realize again, as before in his interview with the King, upon what an insecure foundation his hopes of a reconciliation rested. Instead of the desired agreement, he saw the breach growing daily wider and more hopelessly incurable.

When the Parliament proceeded, on the 15th of February, to the discussion of the law concerning elections, it became very soon evident that the principle of universal suffrage, in accordance with which the National Assembly itself had been chosen, would assert its place also in the future Constitution. The Left advocated it eagerly and unanimously; a great many of the Deputies from Austria and of those who wished to retain her in the Federation were pleased at the prospect of making the Constitution, by this democratic system of universal suffrage, thoroughly repugnant to the Prussian King; to many members of the Imperial party, too, it seemed impossible to take away from a large number of those by whom they themselves had been elected, the right of voting in the future; and finally, the outcome was rendered certain by the fact that the opponents of this democratic measure were not in a position to agree upon any common counter­proposition.

On the 20th the Left was victorious by a considerable majority; and immediately afterwards, in spite of the determined opposition of the Centre, they carried a motion prescribing a secret ballot. Nothing could have happened more prejudicial to the relations between Frankfort and Berlin.

To all Conservatives, universal suffrage meant nothing less than political ruin. If any one had at that time prophesied that eighteen years later the Prussian Government would itself offer this to the German People, he would have been ridiculed as a madman, or very likely have been incarcerated. To be sure, the system of 1867 did not turn out to be much of a bless­ing, nor did it prove either the logical correctness or the practical utility of the Democratic electoral law ; but yet, in 1849, the dangers of such a system were immeasurably overestimated. One of the Deputies said: “You may make your Constitution as you please; only let me determine the system of elections, and I shall be the ruler.”

King Frederick William was of precisely the same opinion. An Empire with universal suffrage seemed to him an atrocious parody upon monarchical principles and upon all the laws of social order. His letters at this time overflowed with imprecations upon the whole course of operations at Frankfort, and upon that Crown of disgrace, which men thought he would accept, but which to him would be but the fetter of a slave in the service of Revolution. Thus on all sides, the most extreme views were entertained upon this vital question.

Once more, however, events occurred, which brought under the eyes of the King, in the most glaring light, the reverse side of the medal.

 

CHAPTER IV.

THE CATASTROPHE.

 

In Hungary, Prince Windischgratz made slow progress. Finally, on the 26th of February, a great battle was fought between the two main armies near Kapolna, in which the Magyars were obliged, after a hard struggle, to yield to the Austrian forces. This was believed at Olmütz to be the termination of the war; and it was there decided to settle at once and together, in the usual summary manner, the questions of an Austrian and of a German Constitution.

On the 7th of March the Diet at Kremsier was dissolved, and at the same time a Constitution, dated the 4th, was proclaimed for the new, indivisible, indissolubly-united. State of Austria. Two weeks later, instructions were sent to Schmerling and a note to the Ministry at Frankfort, in which it was imperiously declared that Austria had now received her permanent Constitution, and that Germany should at once recognize this, and admit united Austria into the new Federation; but that it would be impossible to retain the Federal Constitution as hitherto projected; therefore such amendments were to be adopted as Austria might insist upon.

These special demands of Austria were afterwards learned from Schmerling and were as follows: instead of an Empire, a Directory of seven members, at first under the presidency of Austria, later, perhaps, of Austria and Prussia alternately; instead of a Diet, a Chamber trammelled by no Popular House, composed of seventy Deputies sent from the Governments and Chambers of the individual States in the proportion of one Deputy for every million inhabitants, so that thirty­eight would fall to Austria, and thirty-two to the rest of Germany; and further, the system of groups was briefly mentioned, to the effect that Germany should be divided into six sections, in each of which one of the Kings should hold the Supreme Authority.

Thus the plan of Schwarzenberg was now officially communicated to the German Parliament, and brought to the cognizance of the German Nation. It was not, as might be supposed, a reaction against the Revolution, a return from the Cathedral of St. Paul to the old Hall of the Confederation. Not at all! It was the new invention of an ambitious diplomat, who had received his education in military service. There was not to be, as previous to 1848, a Confederation of sovereign States, guided by the mild and yet firm hand of Metternich; but in its stead a Directory, ruling with mighty authority; instead of the unity of Germany, its dismemberment into six minor sections; instead of the preservation of a national basis for the Constitution, the admission of thirty million non-Germans; instead of popular representation, a Chamber in which an Austrian majority was insured; and as the first principle of German politics, it was asserted that Austria would arrange its affairs in accordance with its own interests, and that Germany’s affairs should be arranged according to the needs or commands of Austria.

This system meant, not the mediatization of the German Petty States, but of the entire German Nation. The King of Prussia could no more agree to it than the Parliament.

The first impression of the Olmütz proclamation upon the Assembly in the Cathedral of St. Paul was overwhelming. Carl Weicker gave expression to it, on the 12th of March, in a speech from the tribune. Always hot-headed, he had hitherto been the most ardent champion of an “entire” Germany. But he now declared that all means had been employed in vain to retain Austria in the Federation; that the Constitution of Kremsier had put that out of the question; that everything now depended upon rescuing the Fatherland as speedily as possible from the grave dangers which threatened it; and that he would make a motion to accept at one vote the whole Constitution, in the form prepared by the Committee for the second reading, and to elect the King of Prussia German Emperor.

The excitement was greatly increased by the astonishment of the Assembly at such a motion coming from this quarter. Ali witnesses agree in believing that if the vote had been taken at once, Weicker’s motion would have been carried. But Weicker had made his proposal only in connection with the Committee’s Report; and in the five days that intervened before the Committee were ready, the old party lines had again become as distinct as ever.

In the Constitution, the Committee had inserted the absolute veto in place of the suspensive power, and had replaced the secret ballot by an open one. The amendments proposed by the twenty-nine Governments had not been especially respected; most of them had been rejected, and the few which were accepted were accompanied by no mention of the part which the Governments had had in the change. Nevertheless, the Committee proposed amendments enough to occasion the Left unanimously to object to Weicker’s motion of passing the Constitution as a whole en bloc. Among the advocates of an “entire” Germany, the Austrian and Bavarian members agreed to remain firm to their principles, and rather to accept no constitution at all than a Prussian Imperial one, however they may have individually felt towards Schwarzenberg’s demands.

When, then, on the 17th, the discussion began over the amendments prepared by the Committee, the enthusiastic eloquence displayed in the Cathedral of St. Paul rose to a pitch worthy of the palmiest days of the National Assembly. Even today, it is impossible to read the speeches of Gagern and of Riesser without admiring their mental vigor, their enthusiastic idealism, and their passionate patriotism. But all was in vain. The determination of the combined opposition was fixed. The motion was rejected on the 21st of March by a majority of 283 votes against 252.

The feelings of the beaten party alternated between violent bitterness and hopeless discouragement. Everything seemed to be lost, and the ruin of the whole work of the Constitution sealed. Yet Weicker’s motion had brought them an accession of about thirty votes : another such increase, and the Majority was theirs. And now, even at the last moment, such a hope seemed warranted. For there were some members of the Left to whom it seemed pitiable that the National Assembly, once borne aloft by the enthusiasm of the whole nation, should now expire in helpless inefficiency, and who were of the opinion that even to the Republicans an Emperor with a responsible Ministry would be more endurable than a Directory after the fashion of the old Confederate Diet.

Foremost among these was Heinrich Simon from Breslau, otherwise a Radical of the purest water, but who had, with all his party spirit, preserved a good deal of national feeling. He assembled about himself at first ten, but soon thirty associates, and sought to come to an understanding with the Imperial party about some common plan of action. These men insisted that the Democratic character of the Constitution should by all means be preserved; but they were then willing to vote for an Emperor, and that the office be hereditary.

Accordingly, they demanded from the Imperial party, in return, the retention of the suspensive veto and the secret ballot. The first offer of the kind, made before Weicker’s motion was lost, had been declined by the Imperialists; but now they were more disposed to accept the proffered coalition. Indeed, the enemy had employed these tactics for weeks in their unscrupulous efforts to break down the Constitution; and who could blame the Imperialists now for proceeding in the same way, for the sake of saving it? Furthermore, almost one-half of the party had already, at the first reading, voted for the suspensive veto and for the secret ballot; so that for them the conditions of the coalition involved no renunciation of their own convictions. The others were influenced by the simple consideration that without Simon’s help they could not save the hereditariness of the office of Emperor, and could not in any way prevent the adoption of the suspensive veto and the secret ballot. One hundred and fourteen members subscribed to Simon’s conditions. But this was not enough. Simon wished to secure his work for the future, and exacted a further promise that the Constitution so passed should be final, and that they would not in the future vote for any amendments to it. Gagern could not take exception to this: the constitutive omnipotence of the Parliament had always been recognized, and the finality of its decrees. Fie and eighty associates pledged themselves as Simon desired. They knew that by doing so, every chance of coming to an understanding with the larger States was excluded. They abhorred an armed revolt; but their faith in the irresistible efficacy of their lofty ideals was not to be shaken.

Before the new coalition was concluded, the method of proceeding with the second reading had been decided upon. It was to begin on the 23d of Marell, and to continue without interruption to the end; every paragraph was to be voted upon as reported by the Committee on the Constitution, and likewise the minority reports of the same; other amendments were to be considered only at the request of at least fifty members. All discussion was to be prohibited. Every one, indeed, felt that all the resources of eloquence had already been exhausted, and would now be of no effect in influencing the fixed decisions of the parties; and they hoped to win the favor of public opinion by the actual accomplishment of the Constitution, not by any flowers of oratory. This understanding was reached by the Imperialists and the Left on the 22d of March.

So, at last, things went on at a double-quick pace. Simon and his clique had pledged themselves only to the hereditary emperorship; consequently the parties of the Centre suffered more than one heavy defeat in other points, the severest being on the last day, in the form of an extension of the suspensive veto, to cover changes in the Constitution. One of the Centre cried out: “In that case a twice-repeated vote of the Diet could abolish the whole Imperial system.” “Very true,” answered the Left; and “Bravo!” “Bravo!” was shouted from the galleries.

On the other hand, the bestowal of the Supreme Authority upon one of the reigning Sovereigns was affirmatively decided on the afternoon of the 27th of March, with a majority of twenty-four votes. The project of a Directory was thus excluded. Then the especial question of the hereditariness of the dignity followed immediately in the midst of a breathless silence. The result was 267 for the motion, and 263 against it. The Imperialists applauded loudly; their opponents sneered: “A German Emperor chosen by a majority of four votes from four faithless Austrians! ” As a matter of fact, 95 Austrians had voted against the motion; so that if, as would be fair, the Austrian votes were deducted from both sides, an imposing majority of 91 votes for the hereditary emperorship was left among the voters from the rest of Germany.

At any rate, the motion had become a fixed decree. Without delay the remaining paragraphs of the Article were accepted, and the Article of the Imperial Council was brought before the Assembly: here, at the close, the combined Opposition allowed itself the malicious satisfaction of spoiling the chances for popularity of the whole Constitution. As we have seen, the Imperial Council was a rather insignificant institution, invented to appease the individual Governments. But it was the Individualists themselves in combination with the Republicans and advocates of an “entire” Germany that now threw the Article out of the Constitution. The last act of this eventful day was the passage of the electoral law, unchanged.

The Imperial party succeeded in having the next day fixed upon for the election of the Emperor. On the 28th of March the vote was taken: 290 members elected Frederick William, King of Prussia; the remainder did not vote. The pealing of bells and thundering of cannon announced to the city the result of the great election; the telegraph flashed the news abroad. The National Assembly appointed a Deputation of thirty-two members, with the President Simson as chairman, to repair to the King and announce to him his election, and also to receive from him the hoped-for reply of acceptance.

Before their departure, Simson had a peculiar duty to perform. He, with his Vice-Presidents and the Imperial Ministry, had been requested to wait upon the Archduke John. His Grace, who saw all his hopes dispelled by the election of the Emperor, could but ill conceal his vexation : he tendered to the National Assembly his resignation as Regent of the Empire.

We shall very soon see what far-reaching consequences would have followed the loss of this important office for Austria; as it was, Simson probably committed the greatest political mistake of his famous life, by earnestly dissuading the Archduke from taking the step which he had already decided upon. For the time, however, the Archduke’s chagrin was so great that he also communicated to Frederick William his intention to retire, and begged him to prepare to take into his hands, for the present, the control of the Provisional Central Government.

The King was greatly excited by the succession of despatches which poured in upon him, and was agitated by most conflicting feelings.

In the first place, he adhered to the opinion, that the National Assembly was not authorized to choose an Emperor. “One can accept or refuse,” he wrote, “only what can be offered, and you in Frankfort have nothing to offer: anything of that sort I will settle with my peers.” Upon the receipt of an anxious message from the King of Bavaria expressing the hope that Frederick William “ will not take the hand proffered to him by the Democracy,” the King replied: “That unqualified Deputation shall be received in such a way that the German Princes may at last lay aside their mistrust; but all the more is it now the imperative duty of the legitimate Governments to invest the ruler of the strongest purely German State, as Commissioner of the lawful authorities, with the provisional control of a central administrative government, so that Archduke John may no longer, as Commissioner of the Revolution, maintain his unauthorized power.”

Frederick William manifestly wished as much as ever to be in some way or other the Central Authority, although not through the offices of the Revolution; so that he readily lent an ear to the suggestion, that the National Assembly, in spite of its late assumptions, had been, after all, convened by the legitimate consent of the Sovereigns; that even if its absolute power was not so unquestioned as in the preceding summer, it still was looked upon with very great reverence by the people, especially now that it had just accomplished the feat of framing a Constitution; and accordingly, that it was much better to keep up relations with it than to break with it prematurely.

Added to these considerations was the King’s annoyance at Austria’s move on the 9tli of March, which, although the King’s wishes were known at Olmütz, was quite as antagonistic to them as to the aims of the Parliament. The later democratic decrees of the National Assembly were sufficient to put his ill-will towards Schwarzenberg into the background, but by no means fully to extinguish it; so that the conciliatory views of his advisers gained a certain amount of attention from the King.

On the 29th of March Camphausen wrote from Frankfort: “The right of the National Assembly to elect an Emperor is not to be recognized; but its declaration is to be honored and respected as that of a legitimately-constituted national body, and to be answered somewhat as follows: that His Majesty is willing to accept the position of Protector of the German Federation when and in so far as the German Governments may desire it, and then to arrange for the various component States the elections to a new Diet, which shall share in making such changes in the Constitution as may be demanded by the more limited nature of the actual Federation.”

In a further communication of the 30th of March, he explained this more in detail. His idea might be summed up as follows: that the King should accept the Imperial Authority, with the understanding that the Empire should be formed only by those States that joined it of their own free will. Radowitz was of the same opinion, and I surmise that Count Brandenburg would have made no objection.

But this was already too much for the King and for the Ministry. The King wished to avoid even that constraint upon the Princes which would have been laid upon them by an acceptance so conditioned. He desired above all things to hear what the Princes had to say, and then to decide. After the matter had been thus considered, a sketch of the Reply to the Frankfort Deputation was laid before the King, on the 2d of April, in a session of the Ministerial Council in which he presided, and at which all the Ministers were present except Herr von Ladenberg, who was ill. After making several insignificant changes, the King gave his approval, thereupon expressing in a long speech his hope that the Ministry would firmly abide by the Reply as he understood it, and consistently carry out the principles of the same. According to his will and intention, these principles consisted in the following points, which he formulated in these words : —

1. Before all things, the endeavor should be made, by consulting with the German Princes, including Austria, to establish a safe foundation for the reconstruction of Germany; to gain Austria’s assent to the German Federal Union which I intend to form, although she might not be able to join that; and to determine Austria’s relations to the more comprehensive alliance, which is to include all the territory of the old Confederation.

2. The formation of a German Federal Union in the shape proposed at Frankfort cannot succeed, if the German Kings hold aloof from it; and if only the Petty States decide to join it, such a league cannot be looked upon as the projected Federal Union, nor be organized as such.

3. In that case, Prussia would hold a sort of protectorate over the Petty States, and Camphausen’s negotiations inaugurated at Frankfort with this idea should be carried out thoroughly and to their legitimate results.

4. The acceptance of the title of Emperor I consider to be unfitting under any circumstances.

The whole course of German History for the next two years was embodied and indicated beforehand in these few words.

On the 3d of April, the King, with great show and formality, officially received the Deputation, and gave them the answer decided upon the day before: to the effect that he recognized in the decree of the National Assembly the voice of the German Nation; that their offer was a distinction bearing with it rights that he well knew how to appreciate; but that he could not without the free consent of the German Governments decide in a matter of so much importance to all the German States; that it was now the turn of the Governments to determine in common consultation, whether the Constitution would be for the best interests of the German Nation and whether it would allow of a strong Imperial Government.

This was clearly neither Yes nor No, but a postponement of a definite answer until after a verdict upon the Constitution had been rendered by the German Princes. It is not at all an uncommon thing in this world, that a person to whom a difficult and dangerous position is offered demands time to reflect upon the matter alone, and to consult with his friends; and the Deputation might so have reported to the Parliament. Indeed, some of them, Dahlmann, Riesser, and Biedermann, were inclined to proceed more or less in this way, and by a prudent report to allow time for some more favorable turn.

But to the majority of them their first duty seemed to be to adhere to their principles, and their principles affirmed that the National Assembly was sovereign, and the Constitution framed by it final and unchangeable. Although the Minister von Manteuffel once more urged Georg Beseler earnestly not to burn all the bridges to further negotiations, the Deputation nevertheless replied to the Ministry, on the 4th of April, that since the King considered the Constitution, upon which their offer of the Imperial crown was based, as no more than an outline that needed further revision, they must interpret his answer as a refusal.

Very characteristic was the conduct of the two Great Powers at this crisis.

Prince Schwarzenberg, on the 5th of April, recalled the Austrian Deputies from the Cathedral of St. Paul. In his eyes the National Assembly no longer existed. At the same time lie announced to the Ministers at Frankfort the renewed declaration of the Emperor Francis Joseph that he would never consent to be subordinate to any other Prince in the German Federation, nor would he ever allow any foreign legislation to have force in Austria. Of course the Prince did not deduce from this statement the conclusion that Austria would not join the German Union, but that Germany must arrange its Union according to the prescriptions of Austria.

On the other hand, the Prussian Government, on the same day that it received the sharp reply of the Frankfort Deputation, began a new attempt to come to an understanding about the question of the Constitution. A despatch sent on the 3d of April to Camphausen and to all the embassies in Germany announced, in the first place, that the King was ready, since the Archduke John wished to retire, to accept temporarily, at the invitation of the Princes and with the acquiescence of the National Assembly, the control of the Central Government; further, that the King was willing to take the leadership of a Federation formed of States voluntarily entering it; and that, to this end, he requested the German Governments to make known as soon as possible their desire to join, and upon what conditions, to state also their attitude towards the National Assembly (with the understanding that they were immediately to agree upon some form of the Constitution), and finally their views about the relations of the Federation to those Governments that might not wish to form a part of it. At the same time, Camphausen was summoned again to Berlin to give his opinion about the treatment of each one of these points in detail.

The Austrians replied without delay on the 8th of April, and took exceptions to every point. The National Assembly, it was said, did not exist any longer for Austria; nevertheless, the Austrian Emperor had requested the Archduke John to retain his position as Imperial Regent; there was, therefore, no occasion to transfer this office to the Prussian King. Schwarzenberg declared quite as decidedly that Austria would not join a restricted Federal Union. but would nevertheless reserve for herself all the rights connected with the old Confederate compacts. The whole reply was written in a categorical, in some places even threatening tone. It could n6t, however, produce very much effect in Berlin, since it was precisely what was to be expected after what had already passed between the two Courts.

On the other hand, Camphausen succeeded in making an important modification of the plan of procedure defined in the despatch of the 3d, by having instructions sent to the embassies to bling at first only one of the three points of the despatch before the Governments, namely, the question of the Supreme Authority, including their own share in a Union directed by Prussia; and to avoid discussion over the clause containing the undeniable assertion of the King that the Constitution depended upon the size of the Union, and consequently could not be established till after the settlement of the same.

Camphausen, who was looked upon in Frankfort as a cold and reserved diplomat caring little for the German question, really was very anxious that the establishment of a national Constitution should be effected, and at any rate, if this hope were to be frustrated, that no blame should fall upon Prussia. The King had made his answer depend upon the attitude of the Princes; and now the Sovereigns were called upon to express their opinions, the question of the Constitution being for the time held in suspense.

On the 10th of April these instructions, in accordance with Camphausen’s advice, were sent to the Ambassadors. On the 15th, Camphausen received orders to the same effect approved by the King, and hastened to Frankfort to begin negotiations with the Imperial Ministry and the Plenipotentiaries of the individual States. So far, the King had made no opposition: he might very well believe that Camphausen’s measures were, at least to start with, in the right direction, and that they agreed with his own cherished designs.

Yet Camphausen would probably have been startled if the King had communicated to him his actual aims as he had once formulated them to Bunsen: “I have now only two goals of my ambition: firstly, to be chosen by the Kings and Princes Provisional Vicegerent of the Teutonic race in place of the Archduke John, that I may bring order out of this confusion; and secondly, to become Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Teutonic armies, that I may then pre­serve the order thus established.”

No auspicious star shone upon Camphausen’s well- meant efforts. After the National Assembly had already, on the 11th of April, expressed its determination under all circumstances to hold unswervingly to its Constitution, the Plenipotentiaries of twenty-eight Petty States announced, on the 14th, their unconditional acceptance, not only of the Prussian Imperial system, but also of the whole Constitution, thus making very doubtful the prospect of any revision of the same that would suit the King. Camphausen had, nevertheless, the satisfaction of knowing that the Imperial Ministry did not regard this threatened danger as very serious. After careful consultation with the leaders of the favorable parties, the Ministers explained to the Prussian Plenipotentiary that they could formally guarantee a conservative revision of the Constitution, if the King would at once proclaim his acceptance of the Imperial dignity. They said the principle, that no State should be forced into the Union, would meet with no opposition; only the Deputies from those States that joined of their own free will would be summoned to the work of revision, and this would best be done in some other suitable city, for instance Erfurt. They also reminded him that, judging by the previous voting of the members, a successful revision was already sufficiently insured by the recent withdrawal of the Austrian Deputies from the Parliament.

Accordingly, the Imperial Ministry decided, on the 18th of April, to send one of its members, Herr von Beckerath, a man personally esteemed by the King, to Berlin with these propositions. It will be seen that these no longer differed from Camphausen’s plans in substance, but only in the order of proceeding: the Imperial Ministry demanded first the acceptance of the Supreme Authority that the revision of the Constitution might follow, while Camphausen could only assure them of the conditional willingness of the King and of his definite acceptance after the completion of the revision.

“My statement,” reports Beckerath, “made an impression upon the King. He felt that to our proposition, that only the Deputies from those States which had already joined the Union should be summoned to the work of revision, he could no longer bring up his favorite objections about revolutionary proceedings; he felt also the weight of these arguments for courageous action which I borrowed from his own frequently repeated promises with regard to German Unity. In reply to his exclamation: ‘But you yourself recognize the danger connected with it,’ I took the liberty of referring to the words of Ernst Moritz Arndt: ‘Danger has always been for Prussia the harbinger of victory’; whereupon the King arose, and after pacing the room excitedly, stopped before me and said: ‘If you could have addressed your eloquent words to Frederick the Great, he would have been the man for you ; but I am no great ruler’.”

And yet, even after this, Beckerath did not entirely give up hope. On the morning of the 21st he wrote that the Ministry, to be sure, was weak, but that the Prince and Princess of Prussia understood the situation well, and expressed themselves very sensibly, and that even the King did not seem to him wholly unlikely to yield.

Responses were received, too, from the Lesser States at this time, which, to the minds of ordinary men, would have seemed highly propitious. Camphausen’s move of refusing to announce Prussia’s intentions until the other Princes should have declared their views on the subject of the Supreme Authority, had checkmated the four Kings. For the state of things was everywhere such, that, although cherishing the bitterest hatred in their hearts, they dreaded the consequences of a refusal. They clung meanwhile to the hope, not wholly groundless, that perhaps, after all, Frederick William IV would utter at last the decisive word, and scatter the Frankfort demagogues to the four winds of Heaven.

Individualism found its best, although an uncertain support, in Bavaria, where the majority in the Chamber and in the country south of the Danube were quite as firm believers in the doctrine as King Max himself. In Franconia, on the other hand, and in the Palatinate, the people were in such violent commotion that the officers could not guarantee in any measure the loyalty of the troops.

In Stuttgart, King William replied to the entreaties of the Chamber with blustering declarations that he abhorred the idea of a German Empire; that he would, indeed, if necessary, although with a heavy heart, acknowledge an Austro-German Emperor; but that he would never subordinate himself to a Hohenzollern. Yet here the enthusiasm of the people and of the army for the Imperial Constitution was so unanimous and so impetuous that the Chamber almost considered the advisability, in case of further obstinacy, of setting up a provisional regency. It did not, however, come quite to that. A week later the King yielded, and sent to Frankfort his assent to the Constitution and the Imperial system.

The situation in Saxony was not very different. Even in February the Government had timidly sent to Berlin for military assistance in quelling an insurrection, and now the citizens and peasants were in arms under the banner of the Imperial Constitution. The troops were reliable, it is true, but by no means able to put down any general uprising.

Lastly, in Hanover, the people were more cool-headed; the Individualist elements were largely represented, and the King and officers were filled with dislike and distrust of Prussia; but the Ministry, if indeed themselves hostile to German Unity, knew very well that although the people and their representatives did not wish to become Prussian, yet they would not desire to see that Constitution interfered with which had been decided upon by the representatives of the German Nation. It was therefore extremely irritating to them that this detested Prussia had forced them to take the initiative in the question of the Supreme Authority and in the criticism of the Constitution. To the Prussian Ambassador the Minister, Count Bennigsen, said that the Royal Government was not strong enough to break with the National Assembly. In earnest tones he pictured to him that it would be impossible for any legitimate Prince, even the King of Prussia, to work harmoniously with the Parliament, and then tried, by vague hints, to discover whether Prussia would not take the first steps toward an understanding with the Royal Courts in regard to the Imperial Constitution. Nothing was clearer than that, if Beckerath’s propositions should be accepted in Berlin, the King of Hanover, in spite of his great annoyance, would not venture any resistance.

Beside all this, the great Austrian army was now returning from Hungary, after having been totally defeated by Gorgey and Klapka. Vienna itself seemed exposed to a Magyar attack. Who was there to hinder Prussia from doing what she pleased?

Yet only a few hours after Beckerath had expressed his hopes of a successful issue, the decision fell against him, against Camphausen, and against German Unity. For the King was precisely not one of those “ordinary” men, who would have seen in these circumstances an opportunity for Prussia’s aggrandizement. The idea was hateful to him, that the future greatness of Germany should not be founded upon a brotherly alliance of all the German Princes, but should be the consequence of the victories of the Magyar rebels, of the machinations of the Saxon Republicans, and of the importunity of the Swabian and Hanoverian popular representatives.

Also in the Prussian Lower House, a motion to recognize the validity of the Imperial Constitution stood at this time upon the orders of the day. In the eyes of the King, this was again a subversion of things, a confusion of the natural relations of above and below, which was directly contradictory to his most heartfelt convictions. Suddenly, on the 21st of April, he ordered Count Brandenburg to announce to the House, in the name of the Royal Government, the rejection of the Imperial Constitution. This meant the downfall of all the hopes upon which the hearts of the nation had been set for a whole year, and, unfortunately, Prussia was the direct cause of the disaster. The Kings drew a long breath. They now felt sure of the continued dismemberment of Germany, and consequently of the continuance of their own sovereignty. They could, moreover, wash their own hands in innocence in the eyes of the nation, and even join heartily in the complaint, that Prussia’s refusal had made the realization of the Constitution impossible.

Camphausen was beside himself. lie tendered his resignation on the spot. He asked the reason of this sudden change. What had happened in the last six days, since he had been sent to Frankfort on the 15th with instructions to conciliate the Parliament, that could have forced a complete rupture by the 20th? Why relieve the Kings, by the precipitation of this rupture, from the eventual declaration of their independence? Why take upon one's self, in the eyes of the world, the burden of blame for this calamity?

The answer which he received from the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Arnim, was in the highest degree characteristic: “Had we been longer silent,” it was said, u we should have been accused of infirmity of purpose and of dishonesty. We could not allow it to be understood that after the settlement of the question of the Supreme Authority, we were ready to take our place at the head of a government defined by that Constitution. So long as uncertainty upon this point prevailed, the Royal Governments would hardly have expressed themselves on the subject of the Supreme Authority, unless revolutionary influences were brought into action under those favoring impulses from Frankfort which were such a source of anxiety. It was to be feared that the Governments would be forced by the increasing uneasiness in their own countries into a false position. We could not, in the interests of Prussia, and aside from the question of injustice, allow our supremacy to rest upon such a basis.”

Camphausen, however, persisted in his determination to resign, and remarked that the desire to protect the other German Princes from any moral constraint was, to be sure, very magnanimous; but that he must express his regret at not sharing in this feeling, since he had never believed that the German Governments would voluntarily, and from pure love to the cause of German Unity, subordinate themselves to any head of a Federal Union. He left Frankfort on the 1st of May.

However much these expressions reflect credit upon Camphausen’s patriotic heart and political insight, we must confess that in his calculations he made a mistake in the most important factor, namely, in his estimate of the King. The task for the accomplishment of which he trusted Frederick William IV would have involved the humiliating of the German Kings by co-operation with the revolutionary populace, then the immediate suppression of the Republican party (most probably by a violation of the oath of allegiance to the Constitution), and finally a great war against Austria and Russia; for Austria would never have yielded meekly the foremost position in Germany, and Russia would surely have supported her.

Perhaps a Frederick the Great might have undertaken this task and have succeeded in it; but the present King, as he himself said to Bunsen, was not another Frederick. “For carrying on wars and breaking oaths,” said the Minister of War, Von Strotha, afterwards to me, “our Gracious King is too peaceable and too conscientious.” His whole view of life and of the world, every one of his virtues as well as each of his weaknesses, all these were in hopeless antagonism with the whole undertaking. And granting that, in spite of all this, he might have been victorious over all obstacles and all his foes, how much prospect would there have been that an edifice so constructed would have long retained the support of the nation ?

Yet it was not alone the King that thwarted Camphausen’s attempts to bring about a reconciliation. The National Assembly adhered quite as closely to the theory of its constitutive omnipotence, sent its commands into all German countries (without any effect whatever save an increase of the popular excitement in some districts), and widened at every step the gulf that separated it from the Prussian Monarch. We may be spared from following further the melancholy details of its death-struggle. The number of Moderate members that withdrew from its sessions daily increased, until, at last, the Left held the field alone. These made no effort to conceal their aims, but summoned the German People to a general revolution. They transferred the place of their meetings to Stuttgart, where they were finally dispersed by a military order of the Würtemberg Minister Romer.

So melancholy was the end of the work so hopefully and grandly begun! We have noted the mistakes which the National Assembly committed, and which did their part in causing such a pitiable result. And yet we must quite as certainly repeat what was emphasized at the beginning of the discussion of its work: the fact of the inherent impossibility of performing its task under the existing conditions of political intelligence among the German People, when here Radical ambitions, and there the influence of Individualism, combined to outweigh the attractions of German Unity. It was, after all, no disgrace, but an honor, for those men to have been so far ahead of their contemporaries; and although for that very reason the efforts of the National Assembly were bound to be futile for the time, it was truly the sowing of seed which was to ripen in the glorious future. This was the work of the National Assembly; and by doing it, its members have earned an honorable name in the records of history. The impulse and direction which they gave to patriotism and to love for the Fatherland have been ineradicable. Even a more propitious future could not have seen the success of the idea, had not our first Parliament, in spite of all its mistakes and confused notions about the means to be employed, pointed out to the people with such force and emphasis the true goal of the nation,—the maintenance of Freedom among its members, and of Union in its attitude to foreigners.