A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 45

While the Government prepared to retire to Szegedin, far in the south-east, Gorgei took post on the Upper Danube, to meet the powerful force which the Emperor of Austria had placed under the orders of General Haynau, a soldier whose mingled energy and ferocity in Italy had marked him out as a fitting scourge for the Hungarians, and had won for him supreme civil as well as military powers. Gorgei naturally believed that the first object of the Austrian commander would be to effect a junction with the Russians, who, under Paskiewitsch, the conqueror of Kars in 1829, were now crossing the Carpathians; and he therefore directed all his efforts against the left of the Austrian line. While he was unsuccessfully attacking the enemy on the river Waag north of Comorn, Haynau with the ma.s.s of his forces advanced on the right bank of the Danube, and captured Raab (June 28th). Gorgei threw himself southwards, but his efforts to stop Haynau were in vain, and the Austrians occupied Pesth (July 11th). The Russians meanwhile were advancing southwards by an independent line of march. Their vanguard reached the Danube and the Upper Theiss, and Gorgei seemed to be enveloped by the enemy. The Hungarian Government adjured him to hasten towards Szegedin and Arad, where Kossuth was concentrating all the other divisions for a final struggle; but Gorgei held on to his position about Comorn until his retreat could only be effected by means of a vast detour northwards, and before he could reach Arad all was lost. Dembinski was again in command. Charged with the defence of the pa.s.sage of the Theiss about Szegedin, he failed to prevent the Austrians from crossing the river, and on the 5th of August was defeated at Czoreg with heavy loss. Kossuth now gave the command to Bern, who had hurried from Transylvania, where overpowering forces had at length wrested victory from his grasp. Bern fought the last battle of the campaign at Temesvar. He was overthrown and driven eastwards, but succeeded in leading a remnant of his army across the Moldavian frontier and so escaped capture. Gorgei, who was now close to Arad, had some strange fancy that it would dishonour his army to seek refuge on neutral soil. He turned northwards so as to encounter Russian and not Austrian regiments, and without striking a blow, without stipulating even for the lives of the civilians in his camp, he led his army within the Russian lines at Vilagos, and surrendered unconditionally to the generals of the Czar. His own life was spared; no mercy was shown to those who were handed over as his fellow-prisoners by the Russian to the Austrian Government, or who were seized by Haynau as his troops advanced. Tribunals more resembling those of the French Reign of Terror than the Courts of a civilised Government sent the n.o.blest patriots and soldiers of Hungary to the scaffold. To the deep disgrace of the Austrian Crown, Count Batthyany, the Minister of Ferdinand, was included among those whose lives were sacrificed. The vengeance of the conqueror seemed the more frenzied and the more insatiable because it had only been rendered possible by foreign aid. Crushed under an iron rule, exhausted by war, the prey of a Government which knew only how to employ its subject-races as gaolers over one another, Hungary pa.s.sed for some years into silence and almost into despair. Every vestige of its old const.i.tutional rights was extinguished. Its territory was curtailed by the separation of Transylvania and Croatia; its administration was handed over to Germans from Vienna. A conscription, enforced not for the ends of military service but as the surest means of breaking the national spirit, enrolled its youth in Austrian regiments, and banished them to the extremities of the empire. No darker period was known in the history of Hungary since the wars of the seventeenth century than that which followed the catastrophe of 1849. [438]

[Italian affairs, August, 1848-March, 1849.]

[Murder of Rossi, Nov. 15. Flight of Pius IX.]

[Roman Republic, Feb. 9, 1849.]

[Tuscany.]

The gloom which followed Austrian victory was now descending not on Hungary alone but on Italy also. The armistice made between Radetzky and the King of Piedmont at Vigevano in August, 1848, lasted for seven months, during which the British and French Governments endeavoured, but in vain, to arrange terms of peace between the combatants. With military tyranny in its most brutal form crushing down Lombardy, it was impossible that Charles Albert should renounce the work of deliverance to which he had pledged himself. Austria, on the other hand, had now sufficiently recovered its strength to repudiate the concessions which it had offered at an earlier time, and Schwarzenberg on a.s.suming power announced that the Emperor would maintain Lombardy at every cost. The prospects of Sardinia as regarded help from the rest of the Peninsula were far worse than when it took up arms in the spring of 1848. Projects of a general Italian federation, of a military union between the central States and Piedmont, of an Italian Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, had succeeded one another and left no result. Naples had fallen back into absolutism; Rome and Tuscany, from which aid might still have been expected, were distracted by internal contentions, and hastening as it seemed towards anarchy. After the defeat of Charles Albert at Custozza, Pius IX., who was still uneasily playing his part as a const.i.tutional sovereign, had called to office Pellegrino Rossi, an Italian patriot of an earlier time, who had since been amba.s.sador of Louis Philippe at Rome, and by his connection with the Orleanist Monarchy had incurred the hatred of the Republican party throughout Italy. Rossi, as a vigorous and independent reformer, was as much detested in clerical and reactionary circles as he was by the demagogues and their followers. This, however, profited him nothing; and on the 15th of November, as he was proceeding to the opening of the Chambers, he was a.s.sa.s.sinated by an unknown hand. Terrified by this crime, and by an attack upon his own palace by which it was followed, Pius fled to Gaeta and placed himself under the protection of the King of Naples. A Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly was summoned and a Republic proclaimed at Rome, between which and the Sardinian Government there was so little community of feeling that Charles Albert would, if the Pope had accepted his protection, have sent his troops to restore him to a position of security. In Tuscany affairs were in a similar condition. The Grand Duke had for some months been regarded as a sincere, though reserved, friend of the Italian cause, and he had even spoken of surrendering his crown if this should be for the good of the Italian nation. When, however, the Pope had fled to Gaeta, and the project was openly avowed of uniting Tuscany with the Roman States in a Republic, the Grand Duke, moved more by the fulminations of Pius against his despoilers than by care for his own crown, fled in his turn, leaving the Republicans masters of Florence. A miserable exhibition of vanity, riot, and braggadocio was given to the world by the politicians of the Tuscan State. Alike in Florence and in Rome all sense of the true needs of the moment, of the absolute uselessness of internal changes of Government if Austria was to maintain its dominion, seemed to have vanished from men's minds. Republican phantoms distracted the heart and the understanding; no soldier, no military administrator arose till too late by the side of the rhetoricians and mob-leaders who filled the stage; and when, on the 19th of March, the armistice was brought to a close in Upper Italy, Piedmont took the field alone. [439]

[The Match campaign, 1849.]

[Battle of Novara, March 23.]

The campaign which now began lasted but for five days. While Charles Albert scattered his forces from Lago Maggiore to Stradella on the south of the Po, hoping to move by the northern road upon Milan, Radetzky concentrated his troops near Pavia, where he intended to cross the Ticino. In an evil moment Charles Albert had given the command of his army to Chrzanowski, a Pole, and had entrusted its southern division, composed chiefly of Lombard volunteers, to another Pole, Ramorino, who had been engaged in Mazzini's incursion into Savoy in 1833. Ramorino had then, rightly or wrongly, incurred the charge of treachery. His relations with Chrzanowski were of the worst character, and the habit of military obedience was as much wanting to him as the sentiment of loyalty to the sovereign from whom he had now accepted a command. The wilfulness of this adventurer made the Piedmontese army an easy prey. Ramorino was posted on the south of the Po, near its junction with the Ticino, but received orders on the commencement of hostilities to move northwards and defend the pa.s.sage of the Ticino at Pavia, breaking up the bridges behind him. Instead of obeying this order he kept his division lingering about Stradella. Radetzky, approaching the Ticino at Pavia, found the pa.s.sage unguarded. He crossed the river with the ma.s.s of his army, and, cutting off Ramorino's division, threw himself upon the flank of the scattered Piedmontese. Charles Albert, whose headquarters were at Novara, hurried southwards. Before he could concentrate his troops, he was attacked at Mortara by the Austrians and driven back. The line of retreat upon Turin and Alessandria was already lost; an attempt was made to hold Novara against the advancing Austrians. The battle which was fought in front of this town on the 23rd of March ended with the utter overthrow of the Sardinian army. So complete was the demoralisation of the troops that the cavalry were compelled to attack bodies of half-maddened infantry in the streets of Novara in order to save the town from pillage. [440]

[Abdication of Charles Albert.]

Charles Albert had throughout the battle of the 23rd appeared to seek death. The reproaches levelled against him for the abandonment of Milan in the previous year, the charges of treachery which awoke to new life the miserable record of his waverings in 1821, had sunk into the very depths of his being. Weak and irresolute in his earlier political career, harsh and illiberal towards the pioneers of Italian freedom during a great part of his reign, Charles had thrown his whole heart and soul into the final struggle of his country against Austria. This struggle lost, life had nothing more for him. The personal hatred borne towards him by the rulers of Austria caused him to believe that easier terms of peace might be granted to Piedmont if another sovereign were on its throne, and his resolution, in case of defeat, was fixed and settled. When night fell after the battle of Novara he called together his generals, and in their presence abdicated his crown. Bidding an eternal farewell to his son Victor Emmanuel, who knelt weeping before him, he quitted the army accompanied by but one attendant, and pa.s.sed unrecognised through the enemy's guards. He left his queen, his capital, unvisited as he journeyed into exile. The brief residue of his life was spent in solitude near Oporto. Six months after the battle of Novara he was carried to the grave.

[Beginning of Victor Emmanuel's reign.]

It may be truly said of Charles Albert that nothing in his reign became him like the ending of it. Hopeless as the conflict of 1849 might well appear, it proved that there was one sovereign in Italy who was willing to stake his throne, his life, the whole sum of his personal interests, for the national cause; one dynasty whose sons knew no fear save that others should encounter death before them on Italy's behalf. Had the profoundest statesmanship, the keenest political genius, governed the counsels of Piedmont in 1849, it would, with full prescience of the ruin of Novara, have bidden the sovereign and the army strike in self-sacrifice their last unaided blow. From this time there was but one possible head for Italy. The faults of the Government of Turin during Charles Albert's years of peace had ceased to have any bearing on Italian affairs; the sharpest tongues no longer repeated, the most credulous ear no longer harboured the slanders of 1848; the man who, beaten and outnumbered, had for hours sat immovable in front of the Austrian cannon at Novara had, in the depth of his misfortune, given to his son not the crown of Piedmont only but the crown of Italy.

Honour, patriotism, had made the young Victor Emmanuel the hope of the Sardinian army; the same honour and patriotism carried him safely past the lures which Austria set for the inheritor of a ruined kingdom, and gave in the first hours of his reign an earnest of the policy which was to end in Italian union. It was necessary for him to visit Radetzky in his camp in order to arrange the preliminaries of peace. There, amid flatteries offered to him at his father's expense, it was notified to him that if he would annul the Const.i.tution that his father had made, he might reckon not only on an easy quittance with the conqueror, but on the friendship and support of Austria. This demand, though strenuously pressed in later negotiations, Victor Emmanuel unconditionally refused. He had to endure for a while the presence of Austrian troops in his kingdom, and to furnish an indemnity which fell heavily on so small a State; but the liberties of his people remained intact, and the pledge given by his father inviolate. Amid the ruin of all hopes and the bankruptcy of all other royal reputations throughout Italy, there proved to be one man, one government, in which the Italian people could trust. This compensation at least was given in the disasters of 1849, that the traitors to the cause of Italy and of freedom could not again deceive, nor the dream of a federation of princes again obscure the necessity of a single national government. In the fidelity of Victor Emmanuel to the Piedmontese Const.i.tution lay the pledge that when Italy's next opportunity should arrive, the chief would be there who would meet the nation's need.

[Restoration in Tuscany.]

[Rome and France.]

[French intervention determined on.]

The battle of Novara had not long been fought when the Grand Duke of Tuscany was restored to his throne under an Austrian garrison, and his late democratic Minister, Guerazzi, who had endeavoured by submission to the Court-party to avert an Austrian occupation, was sent into imprisonment. At Rome a far bolder spirit was shown. Mazzini had arrived in the first week of March, and, though his exhortation to the Roman a.s.sembly to forget the offences of Charles Albert and to unite against the Austrians in Lombardy came too late, he was able, as one of a Triumvirate with dictatorial powers, to throw much of his own ardour into the Roman populace in defence of their own city and State. The enemy against whom Rome had to be defended proved indeed to be other than that against whom preparations were being made. The victories of Austria had aroused the apprehension of the French Government; and though the fall of Piedmont and Lombardy could not now be undone, it was determined by Louis Napoleon and his Ministers to antic.i.p.ate Austria's restoration of the Papal power by the despatch of French troops to Rome. All the traditions of French national policy pointed indeed to such an intervention. Austria had already invaded the Roman States from the north, and the political conditions which in 1832 had led so pacific a minister as Casimir Perier to occupy Ancona were now present in much greater force. Louis Napoleon could not, without abandoning a recognised interest and surrendering something of the due influence of France, have permitted Austrian generals to conduct the Pope back to his capital and to a.s.sume the government of Central Italy. If the first impulses of the Revolution of 1848 had still been active in France, its intervention would probably have taken the form of a direct alliance with the Roman Republic; but public opinion had travelled far in the opposite direction since the Four Days of June; and the new President, if he had not forgotten his own youthful relations with the Carbonari, was now a suitor for the solid favours of French conservative and religious sentiment. His Ministers had not recognised the Roman Republic. They were friends, no doubt, to liberty; but when it was certain that the Austrians, the Spaniards, the Neapolitans, were determined to restore the Pope, it might be a.s.sumed that the continuance of the Roman Republic was an impossibility. France, as a Catholic and at the same time a Liberal Power, might well, under these circ.u.mstances, address itself to the task of reconciling Roman liberty with the inevitable return of the Holy Father to his temporal throne. Events were moving too fast for diplomacy; troops must be at once despatched, or the next French envoy would find Radetzky on the Tiber. The misgivings of the Republican part of the a.s.sembly at Paris were stilled by French a.s.surances of the generous intentions of the Government towards the Roman populations, and of its anxiety to shelter them from Austrian domination, President, Ministers, and generals resolutely shut their eyes to the possibility that a French occupation of Rome might be resisted by force by the Romans themselves; and on the 22nd of April an armament of about ten thousand men set sail for Civita Vecchia under the command of General Oudinot, a son of the Marshal of that name.

[The French at Civita Vecchia, April 25, 1849.]

[Oudinot attacks Rome and is repelled, April 30.]

Before landing on the Italian coast, the French general sent envoys to the authorities at Civita Vecchia, stating that his troops came as friends, and demanding that they should be admitted into the town. The Munic.i.p.al Council determined not to offer resistance, and the French thus gained a footing on Italian soil and a basis for their operations. Messages came from French diplomatists in Rome encouraging the general to advance without delay. The ma.s.s of the population, it was said, would welcome his appearance; the democratic faction, if reckless, was too small to offer any serious resistance, and would disappear as soon as the French should enter the city. On this point, however, Oudinot was speedily undeceived. In reply to a military envoy who was sent to a.s.sure the Triumvirs of the benevolent designs of the French, Mazzini bluntly answered that no reconciliation with the Pope was possible; and on the 26th of April the Roman a.s.sembly called upon the Executive to repel force by force. Oudinot now proclaimed a state of siege at Civita Vecchia, seized the citadel, and disarmed the garrison.

On the 28th he began his march on Rome. As he approached, energetic preparations were made for resistance. Garibaldi, who had fought at the head of a free corps against the Austrians in Upper Italy in 1848, had now brought some hundreds of his followers to Rome. A regiment of Lombard volunteers, under their young leader Manara, had escaped after the catastrophe of Novara, and had come to fight for liberty in its last stronghold on Italian soil. Heroes, exiles, desperadoes from all parts of the Peninsula, met in the streets of Rome, and imparted to its people a vigour and resolution of which the world had long deemed them incapable.

Even the remnant of the Pontifical Guard took part in the work of defence.

Oudinot, advancing with his little corps of seven thousand men, found himself, without heavy artillery, in front of a city still sheltered by its ancient fortifications, and in the presence of a body of combatants more resolute than his own troops and twice as numerous. He attacked on the 30th, was checked at every point, and compelled to retreat towards Civita Vecchia, leaving two hundred and fifty prisoners in the hands of the enemy.

[441]

[French policy, April-May.]

Insignificant as was this misfortune of the French arms, it occasioned no small stir in Paris and in the a.s.sembly. The Government, which had declared that the armament was intended only to protect Rome against Austria, was vehemently reproached for its duplicity, and a vote was pa.s.sed demanding that the expedition should not be permanently diverted from the end a.s.signed to it. Had the a.s.sembly not been on the verge of dissolution it would probably have forced upon the Government a real change of policy. A general election, however, was but a few days distant, and until the result of this election should be known the Ministry determined to temporise. M.

Lesseps, since famous as the creator of the Suez Ca.n.a.l, was sent to Rome with instructions to negotiate for some peaceable settlement. More honest than his employers, Lesseps sought with heart and soul to fulfil his task.

While he laboured in city and camp, the French elections for which the President and Ministers were waiting took place, resulting in the return of a Conservative and reactionary majority. The new a.s.sembly met on the 28th of May. In the course of the next few days Lesseps accepted terms proposed by the Roman Government, which would have precluded the French from entering Rome. Oudinot, who had been in open conflict with the envoy throughout his mission, refused his sanction to the treaty, and the altercations between the general and the diplomatist were still at their height when despatches arrived from Paris announcing that the powers given to Lesseps were at an end, and ordering Oudinot to recommence hostilities.

The pretence of further negotiation would have been out of place with the new Parliament. On the 4th of June the French general, now strongly reinforced, occupied the positions necessary for a regular siege of Rome.

[Attempted insurrection in France, June 13.]

[The French enter Rome, July 3.]

Against the forces now brought into action it was impossible that the Roman Republic could long defend itself. One hope remained, and that was in a revolution within France itself. The recent elections had united on the one side all Conservative interests, on the other the Socialists and all the more extreme factions of the Republican party. It was determined that a trial of strength should first be made within the a.s.sembly itself upon the Roman question, and that, if the majority there should stand firm, an appeal should be made to insurrection. Accordingly on the 11th of June, after the renewal of hostilities had been announced in Paris, Ledru Rollin demanded the impeachment of the Ministry. His motion was rejected, and the signal was given for an outbreak not only in the capital but in Lyons and other cities. But the Government were on their guard, and it was in vain that the resources of revolution were once more brought into play. General Changarnier suppressed without bloodshed a tumult in Paris on June 13th; and though fighting took place at Lyons, the insurrection proved feeble in comparison with the movements of the previous year. Louis Napoleon and his Ministry remained unshaken, and the siege of Rome was accordingly pressed to its conclusion. Oudinot, who at the beginning of the month had carried the positions held by the Roman troops outside the walls, opened fire with heavy artillery on the 14th. The defence was gallantly sustained by Garibaldi and his companions until the end of the month, when the breaches made in the walls were stormed by the enemy, and further resistance became impossible. The French made their entry into Rome on the 3rd of July, Garibaldi leading his troops northwards in order to prolong the struggle with the Austrians who were now in possession of Bologna, and, if possible, to reach Venice, which was still uncaptured. Driven to the eastern coast and surrounded by the enemy, he was forced to put to sea. He landed again, but only to be hunted over mountain and forest. His wife died by his side.

Rescued by the devotion of Italian patriots, he made his escape to Piedmont and thence to America, to reappear in all the fame of his heroic deeds and sufferings at the next great crisis in the history of his country.

[The restored Pontifical Government.]

It had been an easy task for a French army to conquer Rome; it was not so easy for the French Government to escape from the embarra.s.sments of its victory. Liberalism was still the official creed of the Republic, and the protection of the Roman population from a reaction under Austrian auspices had been one of the alleged objects of the Italian expedition. No stipulation had, however, been made with the Pope during the siege as to the future inst.i.tutions of Rome; and when, on the 14th of July, the restorations of Papal authority was formally announced by Oudinot, Pius and his Minister Antonelli still remained unfettered by any binding engagement.

Nor did the Pontiff show the least inclination to place himself in the power of his protectors. He remained at Gaeta, sending a Commission of three Cardinals to a.s.sume the government of Rome. The first acts of the Cardinals dispelled any illusion that the French might have formed as to the docility of the Holy See. In the presence of a French Republican army they restored the Inquisition, and appointed a Board to bring to trial all officials compromised in the events that had taken place since the murder of Rossi in November, 1848. So great was the impression made on public opinion by the action of the Cardinals that Louis Napoleon considered it well to enter the lists in person on behalf of Roman liberty; and in a letter to Colonel Ney, a son of the Marshal, he denounced in language of great violence the efforts that were being made by a party antagonistic to France to base the Pope's return upon proscription and tyranny. Strong in the support of Austria and the other Catholic Powers, the Papal Government at Gaeta received this menace with indifference, and even made the discourtesy of the President a ground for withholding concessions. Of the re-establishment of the Const.i.tution granted by Pius in 1848 there was now no question; all that the French Ministry could hope was to save some fragments in the general shipwreck of representative government, and to avert the vengeance that seemed likely to fall upon the defeated party. A Pontifical edict, known as the Motu Proprio, ultimately bestowed upon the munic.i.p.alities certain local powers, and gave to a Council, nominated by the Pope from among the persons chosen by the munic.i.p.alities, the right of consultation on matters of finance. More than this Pius refused to grant, and when he returned to Rome it was as an absolute sovereign. In its efforts on behalf of the large body of persons threatened with prosecution the French Government was more successful. The so-called amnesty which was published by Antonelli with the Motu Proprio seemed indeed to have for its object the cla.s.sification of victims rather than the announcement of pardon; but under pressure from the French the excepted persons were gradually diminished in number, and all were finally allowed to escape other penalties by going into exile. To those who were so driven from their homes Piedmont offered a refuge.

[Fall of Venice, Aug. 25.]

[Sicily conquered by Ferdinand, April, May.]

Thus the pall of priestly absolutism and misrule fell once more over the Roman States, and the deeper the hostility of the educated cla.s.ses to the restored power the more active became the system of repression. For liberty of person there was no security whatever, and, though the offences of 1848 were now professedly amnestied, the prisons were soon thronged with persons arrested on indefinite charges and detained for an unlimited time without trial. Nor was Rome more unfortunate in its condition than Italy generally.

The restoration of Austrian authority in the north was completed by the fall of Venice. For months after the subjugation of the mainland, Venice, where the Republic had again been proclaimed and Manin had been recalled to power, had withstood all the efforts of the Emperor's forces. Its hopes had been raised by the victories of the Hungarians, which for a moment seemed almost to undo the catastrophe of Novara. But with the extinction of all possibility of Hungarian aid the inevitable end came in view. Cholera and famine worked with the enemy; and a fortnight after Gorgei had laid down his arms at Vilagos the long and honourable resistance of Venice ended with the entry of the Austrians (August 25th). In the south, Ferdinand of Naples was again ruling as despot throughout the full extent of his dominions.

Palermo, which had struck the first blow for freedom in 1848, had soon afterwards become the seat of a Sicilian Parliament, which deposed the Bourbon dynasty and offered the throne of Sicily to the younger brother of Victor Emmanuel. To this Ferdinand replied by a fleet to Messina, which bombarded that city for five days and laid a great part of it in ashes. His violence caused the British and French fleets to interpose, and hostilities were suspended until the spring of 1849, the Western Powers ineffectually seeking to frame some compromise acceptable at once to the Sicilians and to the Bourbon dynasty. After the triumph of Radetzky at Novara and the rejection by the Sicilian Parliament of the offer of a separate const.i.tution and administration for the island, Ferdinand refused to remain any longer inactive. His fleet and army moved southwards from Messina, and a victory won at the foot of Mount Etna over the Sicilian forces, followed by the capture of Catania, brought the struggle to a close. The a.s.sembly at Palermo dispersed, and the Neapolitan troops made their entry into the capital without resistance on the 15th of May. It was in vain that Great Britain now urged Ferdinand to grant to Sicily the liberties which he had hitherto professed himself willing to bestow. Autocrat he was, and autocrat he intended to remain. On the mainland the iniquities practised by his agents seem to have been even worse than in Sicily, where at least some attempt was made to use the powers of the State for the purposes of material improvement. For those who had incurred the enmity of Ferdinand's Government there was no law and no mercy. Ten years of violence and oppression, denounced by the voice of freer lands, had still to be borne by the subjects of this obstinate tyrant ere the reckoning-day arrived, and the deeply rooted jealousy between Sicily and Naples, which had wrought so much ill to the cause of Italian freedom, was appeased by the fall of the Bourbon throne. [442]

[Germany from May, 1848.]

[The National a.s.sembly at Frankfort.]

[Archduke John chosen Administrator, June 29.]

We have thus far traced the stages of conflict between the old monarchical order and the forces of revolution in the Austrian empire and in that Mediterranean land whose destiny was so closely interwoven with that of Austria. We have now to pa.s.s back into Germany, and to resume the history of the German revolution at the point where the national movement seemed to concentrate itself in visible form, the opening of the Parliament of Frankfort on the 18th of May, 1848. That an a.s.sembly representing the entire German people, elected in unbounded enthusiasm and comprising within it nearly every man of political or intellectual eminence who sympathised with the national cause, should be able to impose its will upon the tottering Governments of the individual German States, was not an unnatural belief in the circ.u.mstances of the moment. No second Chamber represented the interests of the ruling Houses, nor had they within the a.s.sembly itself the organs for the expression of their own real or unreal claims. With all the freedom of a debating club or of a sovereign authority like the French Convention, the Parliament of Frankfort entered upon its work of moulding Germany afresh, limited only by its own discretion as to what it should make matter of consultation with any other power. There were thirty-six Governments in Germany, and to negotiate with each of these on the future Const.i.tution might well seem a harder task than to enforce a Const.i.tution on all alike. In the creation of a provisional executive authority there was something of the same difficulty. Each of the larger States might, if consulted, resist the selection of a provisional chief from one of its rivals; and though the risk of bold action was not denied, the a.s.sembly, on the instance of its President, Von Gagern, a former Minister of Hesse-Darmstadt, resolved to appoint an Administrator of the Empire by a direct vote of its own. The Archduke John of Austria, long known as an enemy of Metternich's system of repression and as a patron of the idea of German union, was chosen Administrator, and he accepted the office. Prussia and the other States acquiesced in the nomination, though the choice of a Hapsburg prince was unpopular with the Prussian nation and army, and did not improve the relations between the Frankfort a.s.sembly and the Court of Berlin. [443] Schmerling, an Austrian, was placed at the head of the Archduke's Ministry.

[The National a.s.sembly. May-Sept.]

In the preparation of a Const.i.tution for Germany the a.s.sembly could draw little help from the work of legislators in other countries. Belgium, whose inst.i.tutions were at once recent and successful, was not a Federal State; the founders of the American Union had not had to reckon with four kings and to include in their federal territory part of the dominions of an emperor. Instead of grappling at once with the formidable difficulties of political organisation, the Committee charged with the drafting of a Const.i.tution determined first to lay down the principles of civil right which were to be the basis of the German commonwealth. There was something of the scientific spirit of the Germans in thus working out the substructure of public law on which all other inst.i.tutions were to rest; moreover, the remembrance of the Decrees of Carlsbad and of the other exceptional legislation from which Germany had so heavily suffered excited a strong demand for the most solemn guarantees against arbitrary departure from settled law in the future. Thus, regardless of the absence of any material power by which its conclusions were to be enforced, the a.s.sembly, in the intervals between its stormy debates on the politics of the hour, traced with philosophic thoroughness the consequences of the principles of personal liberty and of equality before the law, and fashioned the order of a modern society in which privileges of cla.s.s, diversity of jurisdictions, and the trammels of feudalism on industrial life were alike swept away.

Four months had pa.s.sed, and the discussion of the so-called Primary Rights was still unfinished, when the a.s.sembly was warned by an outbreak of popular violence in Frankfort itself of the necessity of hastening towards a const.i.tutional settlement.

[The Armistice of Malmo, Aug. 26.]

[Outrages at Frankfort, Sept. 18.]

The progress of the insurrection in Schleswig-Holstein against Danish sovereignty had been watched with the greatest interest throughout Germany; and in the struggle of these provinces for their independence the rights and the honour of the German nation at large were held to be deeply involved. As the representative of the Federal authority, King Frederick William of Prussia had sent his troops into Holstein, and they arrived there in time to prevent the Danish army from following up its first successes and crushing the insurgent forces. Taking up the offensive, General Wrangel at the head of the Prussian troops succeeded in driving the Danes out of Schleswig, and at the beginning of May he crossed the border between Schleswig and Jutland and occupied the Danish fortress of Fredericia. His advance into purely Danish territory occasioned the diplomatic intervention of Russia and Great Britain; and, to the deep disappointment of the German nation and its Parliament, the King of Prussia ordered his general to retire into Schleswig. The Danes were in the meantime blockading the harbours and capturing the merchant-vessels of the Germans, as neither Prussia nor the Federal Government possessed a fleet of war. For some weeks hostilities were irresolutely continued in Schleswig, while negotiations were pursued in foreign capitals and various forms of compromise urged by foreign Powers. At length, on the 26th of August, an armistice of seven months was agreed upon at Malmo in Sweden by the representatives of Denmark and Prussia, the Court of Copenhagen refusing to recognise the German central Government at Frankfort or to admit its envoy to the conferences. The terms of this armistice, when announced in Germany, excited the greatest indignation, inasmuch as they declared all the acts of the Provisional Government of Schleswig-Holstein null and void, removed all German troops from the Duchies, and handed over their government during the duration of the armistice to a Commission of which half the members were to be appointed by the King of Denmark. Scornfully as Denmark had treated the a.s.sembly of Frankfort, the terms of the armistice nevertheless required its sanction. The question was referred to a committee, which, under the influence of the historian Dahlmann, himself formerly an official in Holstein, p.r.o.nounced for the rejection of the treaty. The a.s.sembly, in a scene of great excitement, resolved that the execution of the measures attendant on the armistice should be suspended. The Ministry in consequence resigned, and Dahlmann was called upon to replace it by one under his own leadership. He proved unable to do so. Schmerling resumed office, and demanded that the a.s.sembly should reverse its vote. Though in severance from Prussia the Central Government had no real means of carrying on a war with Denmark, the most pa.s.sionate opposition was made to this demand. The armistice was, however, ultimately ratified by a small majority. Defeated in the a.s.sembly, the leaders of the extreme Democratic faction allied themselves with the populace of Frankfort, which was ready for acts of violence. Tumultuous meetings were held; the deputies who had voted for the armistice were declared traitors to Germany. Barricades were erected, and although the appearance of Prussian troops prevented an a.s.sault from being made on the a.s.sembly, its members were attacked in the streets, and two of them murdered by the mob (Sept. 17th). A Republican insurrection was once more attempted in Baden, but it was quelled without difficulty. [444]

[Berlin, April-Sept., 1848.]

The intervention of foreign Courts on behalf of Denmark had given ostensible ground to the Prussian Government for not pursuing the war with greater resolution; but though the fear of Russia undoubtedly checked King Frederick William, this was not the sole, nor perhaps the most powerful influence that worked upon him. The cause of Schleswig-Hulstein was, in spite of its legal basis, in the main a popular and a revolutionary one, and between the King of Prussia and the revolution there was an intense and a constantly deepening antagonism. Since the meeting of the National a.s.sembly at Berlin on the 22nd of May the capital had been the scene of an almost unbroken course of disorder. The a.s.sembly, which was far inferior in ability and character to that of Frankfort, soon showed itself unable to resist the influence of the populace. On the 8th of June a resolution was moved that the combatants in the insurrection of March deserved well of their country. Had this motion been carried the King would have dissolved the a.s.sembly: it was outvoted, but the mob punished this concession to the feelings of the monarch by outrages upon the members of the majority. A Civic Guard was enrolled from citizens of the middle cla.s.s, but it proved unable to maintain order, and wholly failed to acquire the political importance which was gained by the National Guard of Paris after the revolution of 1830. Exasperated by their exclusion from service in the Guard, the mob on the 14th of June stormed an a.r.s.enal and destroyed the trophies of arms which they found there. Though violence reigned in the streets the a.s.sembly rejected a proposal for declaring the inviolability of its members, and placed itself under the protection of the citizens of Berlin. King Frederick William had withdrawn to Potsdam, where the leaders of reaction gathered round him. He detested his Const.i.tutional Ministers, who, between a petulant king and a suspicious Parliament, were unable to effect any useful work and soon found themselves compelled to relinquish their office. In Berlin the violence of the working cla.s.ses, the interruption of business, the example of civil war in Paris, inclined men of quiet disposition to a return to settled government at any price.

Measures brought forward by the new Ministry for the abolition of the patrimonial jurisdictions, the hunting-rights and other feudal privileges of the greater landowners, occasioned the organisation of a league for the defence of property, which soon became the focus of powerful conservative interests. Above all, the claims of the Archduke John, as Administrator of the Empire, to the homage of the army, and the hostile att.i.tude a.s.sumed towards the army by the Prussian Parliament itself, exasperated the military cla.s.s and encouraged the king to venture on open resistance. A tumult having taken place at Schweidnitz in Silesia, in which several persons were shot by the soldiery, the a.s.sembly, pending an investigation into the circ.u.mstances, demanded that the Minister of War should publish an order requiring the officers of the army to work with the citizens for the realisation of Const.i.tutional Government; and it called upon all officers not loyally inclined to a Const.i.tutional system to resign their commissions as a matter of honour. Denying the right of the Chamber to act as a military executive, the Minister of War refused to publish the order required. The vote was repeated, and in the midst of threatening demonstrations in the streets the Ministry resigned (Sept. 7th). [445]

[The Prussian army.]

[Count Brandenburg Minister, Nov. 2.]