A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 46

[Prorogation of the Prussian a.s.sembly, Nov. 9.]

It had been the distinguishing feature of the Prussian revolution that the army had never for a moment wavered in its fidelity to the throne. The success of the insurrection of March 18th had been due to the paucity of troops and the errors of those in command, not to any military disaffection such as had paralysed authority in Paris and in the Mediterranean States.

Each affront offered to the army by the democratic majority in the a.s.sembly supplied the King with new weapons; each slight pa.s.sed upon the royal authority deepened the indignation of the officers. The armistice of Malmo brought back to the neighbourhood of the capital a general who was longing to crush the party of disorder, and regiments on whom he could rely; but though there was now no military reason for delay, it was not until the capture of Vienna by Windischgratz had dealt a fatal blow at democracy in Germany that Frederick William determined to have done with his own mutinous Parliament and the mobs by which it was controlled. During September and October the riots and tumults in the streets of Berlin continued. The a.s.sembly, which had rejected the draft of a Const.i.tution submitted to it by the Cabinet, debated the clauses of one drawn up by a Committee of its own members, abolished n.o.bility, orders and t.i.tles, and struck out from the style of the sovereign the words that described him as King by the Grace of G.o.d. When intelligence arrived in Berlin that the attack of Windischgratz upon Vienna had actually begun, popular pa.s.sion redoubled. The a.s.sembly was besieged by an angry crowd, and a resolution in favour of the intervention of Prussia was brought forward within the House.

This was rejected, and it was determined instead to invoke the mediation of the Central Government at Frankfort between the Emperor and his subjects.

But the decision of the a.s.sembly on this and every other point was now matter of indifference. Events outstripped its deliberations, and with the fall of Vienna its own course was run. On the 2nd of November the King dismissed his Ministers and called to office the Count of Brandenburg, a natural son of Frederick William II., a soldier in high command, and one of the most outspoken representatives of the monarchical spirit of the army.

The meaning of the appointment was at once understood. A deputation from the a.s.sembly conveyed its protest to the King at Potsdam. The King turned his back upon them without giving an answer, and on the 9th of November an order was issued proroguing the a.s.sembly, and bidding it to meet on the 27th at Brandenburg, not at Berlin.

[Last days of the Prussian a.s.sembly.]

[Dissolution of the a.s.sembly, Dec. 5.]

[Prussian Const.i.tution granted by edict.]

The order of prorogation, as soon as signed by the King was brought into the a.s.sembly by the Ministers, who demanded that it should be obeyed immediately and without discussion. The President allowing a debate to commence, the Ministers and seventy-eight Conservative deputies left the Hall. The remaining deputies, two hundred and eighty in number, then pa.s.sed a resolution declaring that they would not meet at Brandenburg; that the King had no power to remove, to prorogue, or to dissolve the a.s.sembly without its own consent; and that the Ministers were unfit to hold office.

This challenge was answered by a proclamation of the Ministers declaring the further meeting of the deputies illegal, and calling upon the Civic Guard not to recognise them as a Parliament. On the following day General Wrangel and his troops entered Berlin and surrounded the a.s.sembly Hall. In reply to the protests of the President, Wrangel answered that the Parliament had been prorogued and must disappear. The members peaceably left the Hall, but rea.s.sembled at another spot that they had selected in antic.i.p.ation of expulsion; and for some days they were pursued by the military from one place of meeting to another. On the 15th of November they pa.s.sed a resolution declaring the expenditure of state funds and the raising of taxes by the Government to be illegal so long as the a.s.sembly should not be permitted to continue its deliberations. The Ministry on its part showed that it was determined not to brook resistance. The Civic Guard was dissolved and ordered to surrender its arms. It did so without striking a blow, and vanished from the scene, a memorable ill.u.s.tration of the political nullity of the middle cla.s.s in Berlin as compared with that of Paris. The state of siege was proclaimed, the freedom of the Press and the right of public meeting were suspended. On the 27th of November a portion of the a.s.sembly appeared, according to the King's order, at Brandenburg, but the numbers present were not sufficient for the transaction of business. The presence of the majority, however, was not required, for the King had determined to give no further legal opportunities to the men who had defied him. Treating the vote of November 15th as an act of rebellion on the part of those concerned in it, the King dissolved the a.s.sembly (December 5th), and conferred upon Prussia a Const.i.tution drawn up by his own advisers, with the promise that this Const.i.tution should be subject to revision by the future representative body. Though the dissolution of the a.s.sembly occasioned tumults in Breslau and Cologne it was not actively resented by the nation at large. The violence of the fallen body during its last weeks of existence had exposed it to general discredit; its vote of the 15th of November had been formally condemned by the Parliament of Frankfort; and the liberal character of the new Const.i.tution, which agreed in the main with the draft-Const.i.tution produced by the Committee of the a.s.sembly, disposed moderate men to the belief that in the conflict between the King and the popular representatives the fault had not been on the side of the sovereign.

[The Frankfort Parliament and Austria, Oct.-Dec.]

In the meantime the Parliament of Frankfort, warned against longer delay by the disturbances of September 17th, had addressed itself in earnest to the settlement of the Federal Const.i.tution of Germany. Above a host of minor difficulties two great problems confronted it at the outset. The first was the relation of the Austrian Empire, with its partly German and partly foreign territory, to the German national State; the other was the nature of the headship to be established. As it was clear that the Austrian Government could not apply the public law of Germany to its Slavic and Hungarian provinces, it was enacted in the second article of the Frankfort Const.i.tution that where a German and a non-German territory had the same sovereign, the relation between these countries must be one of purely personal union under the sovereign, no part of Germany being incorporated into a single State with any non-German land. At the time when this article was drafted the disintegration of Austria seemed more probable than the re-establishment of its unity; no sooner, however, had Prince Schwarzenberg been brought into power by the subjugation of Vienna, than he made it plain that the government of Austria was to be centralised as it had never been before. In the first public declaration of his policy he announced that Austria would maintain its unity and permit no exterior influence to modify its internal organisation; that the settlement of the relations between Austria and Germany could only be effected after each had gained some new and abiding political form; and that in the meantime Austria would continue to fulfil its duties as a confederate. [446] The interpretation put upon this statement at Frankfort was that Austria, in the interest of its own unity, preferred not to enter the German body, but looked forward to the establishment of some intimate alliance with it at a future time. As the Court of Vienna had evidently determined not to apply to itself the second article of the Const.i.tution, and an antagonism between German and Austrian policy came within view, Schmerling, as an Austrian subject, was induced to resign his office, and was succeeded in it by Gagern, hitherto President of the a.s.sembly (Dec. 16th). [447]

[The Frankfort Parliament and Austria, Dec., Jan.]

In announcing the policy of the new Ministry, Gagern a.s.sumed the exclusion of Austria from the German Federation. Claiming for the a.s.sembly, as the representative of the German nation, sovereign power in drawing up the Const.i.tution, he denied that the Const.i.tution could be made an object of negotiation with Austria. As Austria refused to fulfil the conditions of the second article, it must remain outside the Federation; the Ministry desired, however, to frame some close and special connection between Austria and Germany, and asked for authority to negotiate with the Court of Vienna for this purpose. Gagern's declaration of the exclusion of Austria occasioned a vehement and natural outburst of feeling among the Austrian deputies, and was met by their almost unanimous protest. Some days later there arrived a note from Schwarzenberg which struck at the root of all that had been done and all that was claimed by the a.s.sembly. Repudiating the interpretation that had been placed upon his words, Schwarzenberg declared that the affairs of Germany could only be settled by an understanding between the a.s.sembly and the Courts, and by an arrangement with Austria, which was the recognised chief of the Governments and intended to remain so in the new Federation. The question of the inclusion or exclusion of Austria now threw into the shade all the earlier differences between parties in the a.s.sembly. A new dividing-line was drawn.

On the one side appeared a group composed of the Austrian representatives, of Ultramontanes who feared a Protestant ascendency if Austria should be excluded, and of deputies from some of the smaller States who had begun to dread Prussian domination. On the other side was the great body of representatives who set before all the cause of German national union, who saw that this union would never be effected in any real form if it was made to depend upon negotiations with the Austrian Court, and who held, with the Minister, that to create a true German national State without the Austrian provinces was better than to accept a phantom of complete union in which the German people should be nothing and the Cabinet of Vienna everything.

Though coalitions and intrigues of parties obscured the political prospect from day to day, the principles of Gagern were affirmed by a majority of the a.s.sembly, and authority to negotiate some new form of connection with Austria, as a power outside the Federation, was granted to the Ministry.

[The Federal Headship.]

[King Frederick William IV. elected Emperor, March 28.]

The second great difficulty of the a.s.sembly was the settlement of the Federal headship. Some were for a hereditary Emperor, some for a President or Board, some for a monarchy alternating between the Houses of Prussia and Austria, some for a sovereign elected for life or for a fixed period. The first decision arrived at was that the head should be one of the reigning princes of Germany, and that he should bear the t.i.tle of Emperor. Against the hereditary principle there was a strong and, at first, a successful opposition. Reserving for future discussion other questions relating to the imperial office, the a.s.sembly pa.s.sed the Const.i.tution through the first reading on February 3rd, 1849. It was now communicated to all the German Governments, with the request that they would offer their opinions upon it.

The four minor kingdoms--Saxony, Hanover, Bavaria, and Wurtemberg--with one consent declared against any Federation in which Austria should not be included; the Cabinet of Vienna protested against the subordination of the Emperor of Austria to a central power vested in any other German prince, and proposed that the entire Austrian Empire, with its foreign as well as its German elements, should enter the Federation. This note was enough to prove that Austria was in direct conflict with the scheme of national union which the a.s.sembly had accepted; but the full peril of the situation was not perceived till on the 9th of March Schwarzenberg published the Const.i.tution of Olmutz, which extinguished all separate rights throughout the Austrian Empire, and confounded in one ma.s.s, as subjects of the Emperor Francis Joseph, Hungarians, Germans, Slavs and Italians. The import of the Austrian demand now stood out clear and undisguised. Austria claimed to range itself with a foreign population of thirty millions within the German Federation; in other words, to reduce the German national union to a partnership with all the nationalities of Central Europe, to throw the weight of an overwhelming influence against any system of free representative government, and to expose Germany to war where no interests but those of the Pole or the Magyar might be at stake. So deep was the impression made at Frankfort by the fall of the Kremsier Parliament and the publication of Schwarzenberg's unitary edict, that one of the most eminent of the politicians who had hitherto opposed the exclusion of Austria--the Baden deputy Welcker--declared that further persistence in this course would be treason to Germany. Ranging himself with the Ministry, he proposed that the entire German Const.i.tution, completed by a hereditary chieftainship, should be pa.s.sed at a single vote on the second reading, and that the dignity of Emperor should be at once offered to the King of Prussia. Though the a.s.sembly declined to pa.s.s the Const.i.tution by a single vote, it agreed to vote upon clause by clause without discussion. The hereditary principle was affirmed by the narrow majority of four in a House of above five hundred. The second reading of the Const.i.tution was completed on the 27th of March, and on the following day the election of the sovereign took place. Two hundred and ninety votes were given for the King of Prussia. Two hundred and forty-eight members, hostile to the hereditary principle or to the prince selected, abstained from voting. [448]

[Frederick William IV.]

Frederick William had from early years cherished the hope of seeing some closer union of Germany established under Prussian influence. But he dwelt in a world where there was more of picturesque mirage than of real insight.

He was almost superst.i.tiously loyal to the House of Austria; and he failed to perceive, what was palpable to men of far inferior endowments to his own, that by setting Prussia at the head of the const.i.tutional movement of the epoch he might at any time from the commencement of his reign have rallied all Germany round it. Thus the revolution of 1848 burst upon him, and he was not the man to act or to lead in time of revolution. Even in 1848, had he given promptly and with dignity what, after blood had been shed in his streets, he had to give with humiliation, he would probably have been acclaimed Emperor on the opening of the Parliament of Frankfort, and have been accepted by the universal voice of Germany. But the odium cast upon him by the struggle of March 18th was so great that in the election of a temporary Administrator of the Empire in June no single member at Frankfort gave him a vote. Time was needed to repair his credit, and while time pa.s.sed Austria rose from its ruins. In the spring of 1849 Frederick William could not have a.s.sumed the office of Emperor of Germany without risk of a war with Austria, even had he been willing to accept this office on the nomination of the Frankfort Parliament. But to accept the Imperial Crown from a popular a.s.sembly was repugnant to his deepest convictions. Clear as the Frankfort Parliament had been, as a whole, from the taint of Republicanism or of revolutionary violence, it had nevertheless had its birth in revolution: the crown which it offered would, in the King's expression, have been picked up from blood and mire. Had the princes of Germany by any arrangement with the a.s.sembly tendered the crown to Frederick William the case would have been different; a new Divine right would have emanated from the old, and conditions fixed by negotiation between the princes and the popular a.s.sembly might have been endured. That Frederick William still aspired to German leadership in one form or another no one doubted; his disposition to seek or to reject an accommodation with the Frankfort Parliament varied with the influences which surrounded him.

The Ministry led by the Count of Brandenburg, though anti-popular in its domestic measures, was desirous of arriving at some understanding with Gagern and the friends of German union. Shortly before the first reading of the Const.i.tution at Frankfort, a note had been drafted in the Berlin Cabinet admitting under certain provisions the exclusion of Austria from the Federation, and proposing, not that the a.s.sembly should admit the right of each Government to accept or reject the Const.i.tution, but that it should meet in a fair spirit such recommendations as all the Governments together should by a joint act submit to it. This note, which would have rendered an agreement between the Prussian Court and the a.s.sembly possible, Frederick William at first refused to sign. He was induced to do so (Jan. 23rd) by his confidant Bunsen, who himself was authorised to proceed to Frankfort.

During Bunsen's absence despatches arrived at Berlin from Schwarzenberg, who, in his usual resolute way, proposed to dissolve the Frankfort a.s.sembly, and to divide Germany between Austria, Prussia, and the four secondary kingdoms. Bunsen on his return found his work undone; the King recoiled under Austrian pressure from the position which he had taken up, and sent a note to Frankfort on the 16th of February, which described Austria as a necessary part of Germany and claimed for each separate Government the right to accept or reject the Const.i.tution as it might think fit. Thus the acceptance of the headship by Frederick William under any conditions compatible with the claims of the a.s.sembly was known to be doubtful when, on the 28th of March, the majority resolved to offer him the Imperial Crown. The disposition of the Ministry at Berlin was indeed still favourable to an accommodation; and when, on the 2nd of April, the members of the a.s.sembly who were charged to lay its offer before Frederick William arrived at Berlin, they were received with such cordiality by Brandenburg that it was believed the King's consent had been won.

[Frederick William IV. refuses the Crown, April 3.]

The reply of the King to the deputation on the following day rudely dispelled these hopes. He declared that before he could accept the Crown not only must he be summoned to it by the Princes of Germany, but the consent of all the Governments must be given to the Const.i.tution. In other words, he required that the a.s.sembly should surrender its claims to legislative supremacy, and abandon all those parts of the Federal Const.i.tution of which any of the existing Governments disapproved. As it was certain that Austria and the four minor kingdoms would never agree to any Federal union worthy of the name, and that the a.s.sembly could not now, without renouncing its past, admit that the right of framing the Const.i.tution lay outside itself, the answer of the King was understood to amount to a refusal. The deputation left Berlin in the sorrowful conviction that their mission had failed; and a note which was soon afterwards received at Frankfort from the King showed that this belief was correct. [449]

[The Frankfort Const.i.tution rejected by the Governments.]

The answer of King Frederick William proved indeed much more than that he had refused the Crown of Germany; it proved that he would not accept the Const.i.tution which the a.s.sembly had enacted. The full import of this determination, and the serious nature of the crisis now impending over Germany, were at once understood. Though twenty-eight Governments successively accepted the Const.i.tution, these were without exception petty States, and their united forces would scarcely have been a match for one of its more powerful enemies. On the 5th of April the Austrian Cabinet declared the a.s.sembly to have been guilty of illegality in publishing the Const.i.tution, and called upon all Austrian deputies to quit Frankfort. The Prussian Lower Chamber, elected under the King's recent edict, having protested against the state of siege in Berlin, and having pa.s.sed a resolution in favour of the Frankfort Const.i.tution, was forthwith dissolved. Within the Frankfort Parliament the resistance of Governments excited a patriotic resentment and caused for the moment a union of parties. Resolutions were pa.s.sed declaring that the a.s.sembly would adhere to the Const.i.tution. A Committee was charged with the ascertainment of measures to be adopted for enforcing its recognition; and a note was addressed to all the hostile Governments demanding that they should abstain from proroguing or dissolving the representative bodies within their dominions with the view of suppressing the free utterance of opinions in favour of the Const.i.tution.

[End of the German National a.s.sembly, June, 1849.]

On the ground of this last demand the Prussian official Press now began to denounce the a.s.sembly of Frankfort as a revolutionary body. The situation of affairs daily became worse. It was in vain that the a.s.sembly appealed to the Governments, the legislative Chambers, the local bodies, the whole people, to bring the Const.i.tution into effect. The moral force on which it had determined to rely proved powerless, and in despair of conquering the Governments by public opinion the more violent members of the democratic party determined to appeal to insurrection. On the 4th of May a popular rising began at Dresden, where the King, under the influence of Prussia, had dismissed those of his Ministers who urged him to accept the Const.i.tution, and had dissolved his Parliament. The outbreak drove the King from his capital; but only five days had pa.s.sed when a Prussian army-corps entered the city and crushed the rebellion. In this interval, short as it was, there had been indications that the real leaders of the insurrection were fighting not for the Frankfort Const.i.tution but for a Republic, and that in the event of their victory a revolutionary Government, connected with French and Polish schemes of subversion, would come into power. In Baden this was made still clearer. There the Government of the Grand Duke had actually accepted the Frankfort Const.i.tution, and had ordered elections to be held for the Federal legislative body by which the a.s.sembly was to be succeeded. Insurrection nevertheless broke out. The Republic was openly proclaimed; the troops joined the insurgents; and a Provisional Government allied itself with a similar body that had sprung into being with the help of French and Polish refugees in the neighbouring Palatinate. Conscious that these insurrections must utterly ruin its own cause, the Frankfort a.s.sembly on the suggestion of Gagern called upon the Archduke John to suppress them by force of arms, and at the same time to protect the free expression of opinion on behalf of the Const.i.tution where threatened by Governments. John, who had long clung to his office only to further the ends of Austria, refused to do so, and Gagern in consequence resigned. With his fall ended the real political existence of the a.s.sembly. In reply to a resolution which it pa.s.sed on the 10th of May, calling upon John to employ all the forces of Germany in defence of the Const.i.tution, the Archduke placed a mock-Ministry in office. The Prussian Government, declaring the vote of the 10th of May to be a summons to civil war, ordered all Prussian deputies to withdraw from the a.s.sembly, and a few days later its example was imitated by Saxony and Hanover. On the 20th of May sixty-five of the best known of the members, including Arndt and Dahlmann, placed on record their belief that in the actual situation the relinquishment of the task of the a.s.sembly was the least of evils, and declared their work at Frankfort ended. Other groups followed them till there remained only the party of the extreme Left, which had hitherto been a weak minority, and which in no sense represented the real opinions of Germany. This Rump-Parliament, troubling itself little with John and his Ministers, determined to withdraw from Frankfort, where it dreaded the appearance of Prussian troops, into Wurtemberg, where it might expect some support from the revolutionary Governments of Baden and the Palatinate. On the 6th of June a hundred and five deputies a.s.sembled at Stuttgart. There they proceeded to appoint a governing Committee for all Germany, calling upon the King of Wurtemberg to supply them with seven thousand soldiers, and sending out emissaries to stir up the neighbouring population. But the world disregarded them. The Government at Stuttgart, after an interval of patience, bade them begone; and on the 18th of June their hall was closed against them and they were dispersed by troops, no one raising a hand on their behalf. The overthrow of the insurgents who had taken up arms in Baden and the Palatinate was not so easy a matter. A campaign of six weeks was necessary, in which the army of Prussia, led by the Prince of Prussia, sustained some reverses, before the Republican levies were crushed, and with the fall of Rastadt the insurrection was brought to a close. [450]

[The Baden insurrection suppressed, July, 1849.]

[Prussia attempts to form a separate union.]

The end of the German Parliament, on which the nation had set such high hopes and to which it had sent so much of what was n.o.blest in itself, contrasted lamentably with the splendour of its opening. Whether a better result would have been attained if, instead of claiming supreme authority in the construction of Federal union, the a.s.sembly had from the first sought the co-operation of the Governments, must remain matter of conjecture. Austria would under all circ.u.mstances have been the great hindrance in the way; and after the failure of the efforts made at Frankfort to establish the general union of Germany, Austria was able completely to frustrate the attempts which were now made at Berlin to establish partial union upon a different basis. In notifying to the a.s.sembly his refusal of the Imperial Crown, King Frederick William had stated that he was resolved to place himself at the head of a Federation to be formed by States voluntarily uniting with him under terms to be subsequently arranged; and in a circular note addressed to the German Governments he invited such as were disposed to take counsel with Prussia to unite in Conference at Berlin. The opening of the Conference was fixed for the 17th of May. Two days before this the King issued a proclamation to the Prussian people announcing that in spite of the failure of the a.s.sembly of Frankfort a German union was still to be formed. When the Conference opened at Berlin, no envoys appeared but those of Austria, Saxony, Hanover, and Bavaria. The Austrian representative withdrew at the end of the first sitting, the Bavarian rather later, leaving Prussia to lay such foundations as it could for German unity with the temporising support of Saxony and Hanover. A confederation was formed, known as the League of the Three Kingdoms. An undertaking was given that a Federal Parliament should be summoned, and that a Const.i.tution should be made jointly by this Parliament and the Governments (May 26th). On the 11th of June the draft of a Federal Const.i.tution was published. As the King of Prussia was apparently acting in good faith, and the draft-Const.i.tution in spite of some defects seemed to afford a fair basis for union, the question now arose among the leaders of the German national movement whether the twenty-eight States which had accepted the ill-fated Const.i.tution of Frankfort ought or ought not to enter the new Prussian League. A meeting of a hundred and fifty ex-members of the Frankfort Parliament was held at Gotha; and although great indignation was expressed by the more democratic faction, it was determined that the scheme now put forward by Prussia deserved a fair trial. The whole of the twenty-eight minor States consequently entered the League, which thus embraced all Germany with the exception of Austria, Bavaria and Wurtemberg. But the Courts of Saxony and Hanover had from the first been acting with duplicity. The military influence of Prussia, and the fear which they still felt of their own subjects, had prevented them from offering open resistance to the renewed work of Federation; but they had throughout been in communication with Austria, and were only waiting for the moment when the complete restoration of Austria's military strength should enable them to display their true colours. During the spring of 1849, while the Conferences at Berlin were being held, Austria was still occupied with Hungary and Venice. The final overthrow of these enemies enabled it to cast its entire weight upon Germany. The result was seen in the action of Hanover and Saxony, which now formally seceded from the Federation. Prussia thus remained at the end of 1849 with no support but that of the twenty-eight minor States. Against it, in open or in tacit antagonism to the establishment of German unity in any effective form, the four secondary Kingdoms stood ranged by the side of Austria.

[Prussia in 1849.]

[The Union Parliament at Erfurt, March 1850.]

It was not until the 20th of March, 1850, that the Federal Parliament, which had been promised ten months before on the incorporation of the new League, a.s.sembled at Erfurt. In the meantime reaction had gone far in many a German State. In Prussia, after the dissolution of the Lower Chamber on April 27th, 1849, the King had abrogated the electoral provisions of the Const.i.tution so recently granted by himself, and had subst.i.tuted for them a system based on the representation of cla.s.ses. Treating this act as a breach of faith, the Democratic party had abstained from voting at the elections, with the result that in the Berlin Parliament of 1850 Conservatives, Reactionists, and officials formed the great majority. The revision of the Prussian Const.i.tution, promised at first as a concession to Liberalism, was conducted in the opposite sense. The King demanded the strengthening of monarchical power; the Feudalists, going far beyond him, attacked the munic.i.p.al and social reforms of the last two years, and sought to lead Prussia back to the system of its mediaeval estates. It was in the midst of this victory of reaction in Prussia that the Federal Parliament at Erfurt began its sittings. Though the moderate Liberals, led by Gagern and other tried politicians of Frankfurt, held the majority in both Houses, a strong Absolutist party from Prussia confronted them, and it soon became clear that the Prussian Government was ready to play into the hands of this party. The draft of the Federal Const.i.tution, which had been made at Berlin, was presented, according to the undertaking of May 28th, 1849, to the Erfurt a.s.sembly. Aware of the gathering strength of the reaction and of the danger of delay, the Liberal majority declared itself ready to pa.s.s the draft into law without a single alteration. The reactionary minority demanded that a revision should take place; and, to the scandal of all who understood the methods or the spirit of Parliamentary rule, the Prussian Ministers united with the party which demanded alterations in the project which they themselves had brought forward. A compromise was ultimately effected; but the action of the Court of Prussia and the conduct of its Ministers throughout the Erfurt debates struck with deep despondency those who had believed that Frederick William might still effect the work in which the a.s.sembly of Frankfort had failed. The trust in the King's sincerity or consistence of purpose sank low. The sympathy of the national Liberal party throughout Germany was to a great extent alienated from Prussia; while, if any expectation existed at Berlin that the adoption of a reactionary policy would disarm the hostility of the Austrian Government to the new League, this hope was wholly vain and baseless. [451]

[Action of Austria.]

Austria had from the first protested against the attempt of the King of Prussia to establish any new form of union in Germany, and had declared that it would recognise none of the conclusions of the Federal Parliament of Erfurt. According to the theory now advanced by the Cabinet of Vienna the ancient Federal Const.i.tution of Germany was still in force. All that had happened since March, 1848, was so much wanton and futile mischief-making. The disturbance of order had at length come to an end, and with the exit of the rioters the legitimate powers re-entered into their rights. Accordingly, there could be no question of the establishment of new Leagues. The old relation of all the German States to one another under the ascendency of Austria remained in full strength; the Diet of Frankfort, which had merely suspended its functions and by no means suffered extinction, was still the legitimate central authority. That some modifications might be necessary in the ancient Const.i.tution was the most that Austria was willing to admit. This, however, was an affair not for the German people but for its rulers, and Austria accordingly invited all the Governments to a Congress at Frankfort where the changes necessary might be discussed. In reply to this summons, Prussia strenuously denied that the old Federal Const.i.tution was still in existence. The princes of the numerous petty States which were included in the new Union a.s.sembled at Berlin round Frederick William, and resolved that they would not attend the Conference at Frankfort except under reservations and conditions which Austria would not admit. Arguments and counter-arguments were exchanged; but the controversy between an old and a new Germany was one to be decided by force of will or force of arms, not by political logic. The struggle was to be one between Prussia and Austria, and the Austrian Cabinet had well gauged the temper of its opponent. A direct summons to submission would have roused all the King's pride, and have been answered by war. Before demanding from Frederick William the dissolution of the Union which he had founded, Schwarzenberg determined to fix upon a quarrel in which the King should be perplexed or alarmed at the results of his own policy. The dominant conviction in the mind of Frederick William was that of the sanct.i.ty of monarchical rule. If the League of Berlin could be committed to some enterprise hostile to monarchical power, and could be charged with an alliance with rebellion, Frederick William would probably falter in his resolutions, and a resort to arms, for which, however, Austria was well prepared, would become unnecessary. [452]

[Hesse-Ca.s.sel.]

[The Diet of Frankfort restored, Sept., 1850.]

[Prussia and Austria.]

[The Warsaw meeting, Oct. 29, 1850.]

[Manteuffel at Olmutz, Nov. 29.]

Among the States whose Governments had been forced by public opinion to join the new Federation was the Electorate of Hesse-Ca.s.sel. The Elector was, like his predecessors, a thorough despot at heart, and chafed under the restrictions which a const.i.tutional system imposed upon his rule.

Acting under Austrian instigation, he dismissed his Ministers in the spring of 1850, and placed in office one Ha.s.senpflug, a type of the worst and most violent cla.s.s of petty tyrants produced by the officialism of the minor German States. Ha.s.senpflug immediately quarrelled with the Estates at Ca.s.sel, and twice dissolved them, after which he proceeded to levy taxes by force. The law-courts declared his acts illegal; the officers of the army, when called on for a.s.sistance, began to resign. The conflict between the Minister and the Hessian population was in full progress when, at the beginning of September, Austria with its va.s.sal Governments proclaimed the re-establishment of the Diet of Frankfort. Though Prussia and most of the twenty-eight States confederate with it treated this announcement as null and void, the Diet, const.i.tuted by the envoys of Austria, the four minor Kingdoms, and a few seceders from the Prussian Union, commenced its sittings. To the Diet the Elector of Hesse forthwith appealed for help against his subjects, and the decision was given that the refusal of the Hessian Estates to grant the taxes was an offence justifying the intervention of the central power. Fortified by this judgment, Ha.s.senpflug now ordered that every person offering resistance to the Government should be tried by court-martial. He was baffled by the resignation of the entire body of officers in the Hessian army; and as this completed the discomfiture of the Elector, the armed intervention of Austria, as identified with the Diet of Frankfort, now became a certainty. But to the protection of the people of Hesse in their const.i.tutional rights Prussia, as chief of the League which Hesse had joined, stood morally pledged. It remained for the King to decide between armed resistance to Austria or the humiliation of a total abandonment of Prussia's claim to leadership in any German union. Conflicting influences swayed the King in one direction and another. The friends of Austria and of absolutism declared that the employment of the Prussian army on behalf of the Hessians would make the King an accomplice of revolution: the bolder and more patriotic spirits protested against the abdication of Prussia's just claims and the evasion of its responsibilities towards Germany. For a moment the party of action, led by the Prince of Prussia, gained the ascendant. General Radowitz, the projector of the Union, was called to the Foreign Ministry, and Prussian troops entered Hesse. Austria now ostentatiously prepared for war.

Frederick William, terrified by the danger confronting him, yet unwilling to yield all, sought the mediation of the Czar of Russia. Nicholas came to Warsaw, where the Emperor of Austria and Prince Charles, brother of the King of Prussia, attended by the Ministers of their States, met him.

The closest family ties united the Courts of St. Petersburg and Berlin but the Russian sovereign was still the patron of Austria as he had been in the Hungarian campaign. He resented the action of Prussia in Schleswig-Holstein, and was offended that King Frederick William had not presented himself at Warsaw in person. He declared in favour of all Austria's demands, and treated Count Brandenburg with such indignity that the Count, a high-spirited patriot, never recovered from its effect. He returned to Berlin only to give in his report and die. Manteuffel, Minister of the Interior, a.s.sured the King that the Prussian army was so weak in numbers and so defective in organisation that, if it took the field against Austria and its allies, it would meet with certain ruin.

Bavarian troops, representing the Diet of Frankfort, now entered Hesse at Austria's bidding, and stood face to face with the Prussians. The moment had come when the decision must be made between peace and war. At a Council held at Berlin on November and the peace-party carried the King with them. Radowitz gave up office; Manteuffel, the Minister of repression within and of submission without, was set at the head of the Government. The meaning of his appointment was well understood, and with each new proof of the weakness of the King the tone of the Court of Austria became more imperious. On the 9th of November Schwarzenberg categorically demanded the dissolution of the Prussian Union, the recognition of the Federal Diet, and the evacuation of Hesse by the Prussian troops. The first point was at once conceded, and in hollow, equivocating language Manteuffel made the fact known to the members of the Confederacy. The other conditions not being so speedily fulfilled, Schwarzenberg set Austrian regiments in motion, and demanded the withdrawal of the Prussian troops from Hesse within twenty-four hours.

Manteuffel begged the Austrian Minister for an interview, and, without waiting for an answer, set out for Olmutz. His instructions bade him to press for certain concessions; none of these did he obtain, and he made the necessary submission without them. On the 29th of November a convention was signed at Olmutz, in which Prussia recognised the German Federal Const.i.tution of 1815 as still existing, undertook to withdraw all its troops from Hesse with the exception of a single battalion, and consented to the settlement of affairs both in Hesse and in Schleswig-Holstein by the Federal Diet. One point alone in the scheme of the Austrian statesman was wanting among the fruits of his victory at Olmutz and of the negotiations at Dresden by which this was followed. Schwarzenberg had intended that the entire Austrian Empire should enter the German Federation; and if he had had to reckon with no opponents but the beaten and humbled Prussia, he would have effected his design. But the prospect of a central European Power, with a population of seventy millions, controlled as this would virtually be by the Cabinet of Vienna, alarmed other nations. England declared that such a combination would undo the balance of power in Europe and menace the independence of Germany; France protested in more threatening terms; and the project fell to the ground, to be remembered only as the boldest imagination of a statesman for whom fortune, veiling the Nemesis in store, seemed to set no limit to its favours.

[Schleswig-Holstein.]

[The German National Fleet sold by auction, June, 1852.]

The cause of Schleswig-Holstein, so intimately bound up with the efforts of the Germans towards national union, sank with the failure of these efforts; and in the final humiliation of Prussia it received what might well seem its death-blow. The armistice of Malmo, which was sanctioned by the a.s.sembly of Frankfort in the autumn of 1848, lasted until March 26th, 1849.

War was then recommenced by Prussia, and the lines of Duppel were stormed by its troops, while the volunteer forces of Schleswig-Holstein unsuccessfully laid siege to Fredericia. Hostilities had continued for three months, when a second armistice, to last for a year, and Preliminaries of Peace, were agreed upon. At the conclusion of this armistice, in July, 1850, Prussia, in the name of Germany, made peace with Denmark. The inhabitants of the Duchies in consequence continued the war for themselves, and though defeated with great loss at Idstedt on the 24th of July, they remained unconquered at the end of the year. This was the situation of affairs when Prussia, by the Treaty of Olmutz, agreed that the restored Federal Diet should take upon itself the restoration of order in Schleswig-Holstein, and that the troops of Prussia should unite with those of Austria to enforce its decrees. To the Cabinet of Vienna, the foe in equal measure of German national union and of every democratic cause, the Schleswig-Holsteiners were simply rebels in insurrection against their Sovereign. They were required by the Diet, under Austrian dictation, to lay down their arms; and commissioners from Austria and Prussia entered the Duchies to compel them to do so. Against Denmark, Austria, and Prussia together, it was impossible for Schleswig-Holstein to prolong its resistance. The army was dissolved, and the Duchies were handed over to the King of Denmark, to return to the legal status which was defined in the Treaties of Peace. This was the nominal condition of the transfer; but the Danish Government treated Schleswig as part of its national territory, and in the northern part of the Duchy the process of subst.i.tuting Danish for German nationality was actively pursued. The policy of foreign Courts, little interested in the wish of the inhabitants, had from the beginning of the struggle of the Duchies against Denmark favoured the maintenance and consolidation of the Danish Kingdom. The claims of the Duke of Augustenburg, as next heir to the Duchies in the male line, were not considered worth the risk of a new war; and by a protocol signed at London on the 2nd of August, 1850, the Powers, with the exception of Prussia, declared themselves in favour of a single rule of succession in all parts of the Danish State. By a Treaty of the 8th of May, 1852, to which Prussia gave its a.s.sent, the pretensions of all other claimants to the disputed succession were set aside, and Prince Christian, of the House of Glucksburg, was declared heir to the throne, the rights of the German Federation as established by the Treaties of 1815 being reserved. In spite of this reservation of Federal rights, and of the stipulations in favour of Schleswig and Holstein made in the earlier agreements, the Duchies appeared to be now practically united with the Danish State. Prussia, for a moment their champion, had joined with Austria in coercing their army, in dissolving their Government, in annulling the legislation by which the Parliament of Frankfort had made them partic.i.p.ators in public rights thenceforward to be the inheritance of all Germans. A page in the national history was obliterated; Prussia had turned its back on its own professions; there remained but one relic from the time when the whole German people seemed so ardent for the emanc.i.p.ation of its brethren beyond the frontier. The national fleet, created by the a.s.sembly of Frankfort for the prosecution of the struggle with Denmark, still lay at the mouth of the Elbe. But the same power which had determined that Germany was not to be a nation had also determined that it could have no national maritime interests. After all that had pa.s.sed, authority had little call to be nice about appearances; and the national fleet was sold by auction, in accordance with a decree of the restored Diet of Frankfort, in the summer of 1852. [453]

[Germany after 1849.]

It was with deep disappointment and humiliation that the Liberals of Germany, and all in whom the hatred of democratic change had not overpowered the love of country, witnessed the issue of the movement of 1848. In so far as that movement was one directed towards national union it had totally failed, and the state of things that had existed before 1848 was restored without change. As a movement of const.i.tutional and social reform, it had not been so entirely vain; nor in this respect can it be said that Germany after the year 1848 returned altogether to what it was before it. Many of the leading figures of the earlier time re-appeared indeed with more or less of l.u.s.tre upon the stage. Metternich though excluded from office by younger men, beamed upon Vienna with the serenity of a prophet who had lived to see most of his enemies shot and of a martyr who had returned to one of the most enviable Salons in Europe. No dynasty lost its throne, no cla.s.s of the population had been struck down with proscription as were the clergy and the n.o.bles of France fifty years before. Yet the traveller familiar with Germany before the revolution found that much of the old had now vanished, much of a new world come into being.

It was not sought by the re-established Governments to undo at one stroke the whole of the political, the social, the agrarian legislation of the preceding time, as in some other periods of reaction. The nearest approach that was made to this was in a decree of the Diet annulling the Declaration of Rights drawn up by the Frankfort a.s.sembly, and requiring the Governments to bring into conformity with the Federal Const.i.tution all laws and inst.i.tutions made since the beginning of 1848. Parliamentary government was thereby enfeebled, but not necessarily extinguished. Governments narrowed the franchise, curtailed the functions of representative a.s.semblies, filled these with their creatures, coerced voters at elections; but, except in Austria, there was no open abandonment of const.i.tutional forms. In some States, as in Saxony under the reactionary rule of Count Beust, the system of national representation established in 1848 was abolished and the earlier Estates were revived; in Prussia the two Houses of Parliament continued in existence, but in such dependence upon the royal authority, and under such strong pressure of an aristocratic and official reaction, that, after struggling for some years in the Lower House, the Liberal leaders at length withdrew in despair. The character which Government now a.s.sumed in Prussia was indeed far more typical of the condition of Germany at large than was the bold and uncompromising despotism of Prince Schwarzenberg in Austria. Manteuffel, in whom the Prussian epoch of reaction was symbolised, was not a cruel or a violent Minister; but his rule was stamped with a peculiar and degrading meanness, more irritating to those who suffered under it than harsher wrong. In his hands government was a thing of eavesdropping and espionage, a system of petty persecution, a school of subservience and hypocrisy. He had been the instrument at Olmutz of such a surrender of national honour and national interests as few nations have ever endured with the chances of war still untried. This surrender may, in the actual condition of the Prussian army, have been necessary, but the abas.e.m.e.nt of it seemed to cling to Manteuffel and to lower all his conceptions of government. Even where the conclusions of his policy were correct they seemed to have been reached by some unworthy process. Like Germany at large, Prussia breathed uneasily under an oppression which was everywhere felt and yet was hard to define. Its best elements were those which suffered the most: its highest intellectual and political aims were those which most excited the suspicion of the Government. Its King had lost whatever was stimulating or elevated in his illusions. From him no second alliance with Liberalism, no further effort on behalf of German unity, was to be expected: the hope for Germany and for Prussia, if hope there was, lay in a future reign.

[Austria after 1851.]