The energies which were to transform the face of Europe had been gradually centering in France. They commenced when Voltaire and Rousseau made it the fashion to scoff at the Church. Then, as religion and morality are closely allied, virtue became also a subject of ridicule. The spirit animating this was supposed to be a reforming spirit. It was an effort to free the people from the fetters of ecclesiasticism. Naturally, this led to assaults upon other fetters, other prevailing abuses. The vices of the Court were held up to view—its extravagance and luxury; all of which people were reminded thattheyhad to pay for.
Just at this time the Colonies in North America threw off the English yoke because of this very matter of taxation unjustly imposed, and France enthusiastically helped them to establish a free republic and to humiliate her rival!
Frenchmen returned from the United States and contrasted the fresh vigor and purity of its institutions with the decrepit corruptions in France. The current began to flow very swiftly now. A Richelieu or a Louis XIV. would have been powerless to arrest the mad forces which quickly developed. What could the feeble, well-intentioned Louis XVI. do! He was like a skiff caught in the rushing rapids of the Niagara River. It was only a question of how long he could hold on to passing twigs and branches before he should go over the precipice. In 1793 Europe read with shuddering horror of his execution, and nine months later Maria Theresa's daughter—the beautiful, the adored Marie Antoinette—sat in a cart with her arms pinioned behind her, as she was driven to the scaffold.
The men who had guided this storm in its beginnings had themselves been engulfed in it, and a French republic was proclaimed which had been erected upon a tragedy unparalleled in Europe.
It was a horrible avenging of centuries of wrong and oppression. But its purpose was thoroughly accomplished. No vestige of the old tyrannies remained. If France was again enslaved, the fetters would have to be forged anew!
The powers of Europe were not only filled with horror and indignation at the means by which this was accomplished, but they saw with alarm a pestilential republic, in imitation of that one across the sea, at their very doors.
They formed a combination, called the First Coalition, for its overthrow. If the states of Europe had really acted in concert, the life of the new republic would have been very brief. But Austria was jealous of Prussia, and Prussia was jealous of the close friendship forming between Austria and England, withdrew from the alliance, and made peace with the French republic.
Catherine, Empress of Russia, for reasons of her own also declined to join the coalition. While all Europe was thus engaged she thought it a good time to settle some scores with the Turks and to look after Poland, where a revolution was in progress. So, while the German Empire was engaged in suppressing republicanism in France, Frederick William II. of Prussia offered his services to Catherine to overthrow the independence of Poland.
Kosciusko vainly defended that unhappy country. With the fall of Warsaw, 1794, it ceased to exist as one in the family of nations.
So Austria had been left practically alone to put down the new republic, which was developing wonderful strength while these languid and inefficient efforts were being made against it; for even Austria was diverted by what was going on in Poland, and fearful that she was not going to get her share of the spoils.
Marie Antoinette's brother Leopold had died the year before his sister's execution and his son Francis II. was Emperor of Germany. The government of this new republic which had caused such a stir in Europe was a very simple affair. Five men who were called Directors were at its head, and an obscure young man of twenty-six, named Napoleon Bonaparte, had been given command of the army, with Italy as its field of operations.
No doubt Francis thought it would be an easy matter to deal with France after the more important matter of the partition of Poland was disposed of. Little did he suspect that the time was approaching when he would, at the bidding of that young man, take off his Imperial crown, and that Napoleon Bonaparte would rise to ascendency in Europe upon the ruins of the German Empire.
In 1796 the young Corsican led a ragged, unpaid army into Italy. Without supplies, and almost without ammunition, he had audaciously planned to make the invaded country pay the expenses of the war waged against it.
He pointed to the Italian cities, and said to his soldiers, "There is your reward. It is rich and ample; but you must conquer it." He knew the French character and how in words brief, concise, forcible to address them like another Cæsar addressing his legions; to create incentives to glory, and to inspire enthusiasm as never man did before.
He also knew the infirmities of his adversaries, and how to play upon them as Cæsar did upon the rivalries and jealousies of the Gauls, and so to make the characteristics of Frenchmen, of German, and of Italian all serve him. He knew how to confound the enemy with new and unexpected methods, which rendered unavailing all which military science and experience had before taught.
In a brief time central Italy lay open before him, and princes, trembling at his vengeance, were suing for peace and offering money and treasure to procure it. Even then he was planning to make of Paris another Rome, and to adorn her with the jewels which had been worn by the proud Italian cities. So he demanded rare collections of paintings as the price of safety. The Duke of Parma laid at his feet priceless treasures of art; and even the Pope purchased neutrality by the payment of twenty-one million francs, one hundred costly pictures, and two hundred rare manuscripts.
When the treaty of Campo Formio was signed in 1797, Napoleon had won fourteen battles, and had subjugated Italy. The German Empire had lost all of its Italian possessions, which were now grouped together into a Cisalpine Republic, under the protectorship of France. Another Helvetic Republic was set up in Switzerland under the same protectorate. And then Napoleon scornfully tossed Venice as an apple of discord into the lap of the Emperor, in exchange for the Netherlands. And another republic under a French protectorate was created in Holland.
As the left bank of the Rhine had already been ceded to France, that country, which had been only four years before in a state of political chaos, was at the head of Europe.
What would she not do at the bidding of the man who could accomplish such things? He dramatically conceived the idea of crippling England by threatening her Asiatic possessions, and led an army into Egypt. There every bulletin, every address to his army, added to the glamour of his name. Even the Pyramids were made to serve his consummate art and ambition!
Although his fleet was destroyed by Nelson and his army left in perilous position, he was needed at home, and returned with all the arrogance of a conqueror. He was appointed Generalissimo over the army by an enraptured France, and then swept aside the five Directors and appointed himself and two others Consuls.
A second coalition was now formed against France, consisting of England, Russia, and Austria, and there followed another campaign in which Napoleon made permanent the results of the previous ones in Italy. By the treaty of peace in 1801, the three republics created by him were formally recognized, and the princes of Germany, in compensation for their losses, had apportioned among them the dominions of the priestly rulers.
Thus at one blow were abolished one hundred states governed by archbishops, bishops, and other clerical dignitaries, and one of the foundation stones of the empire, laid by Charlemagne himself, was shattered.
This extraordinary man, dreaming of universal empire, superstitiously believed that Fate intended him to hold Europe in his hand. But we can see now that he was designed by that remorseless Fate for a very different purpose, and a very brief office. He was a terrible instrument, which she intended to use for one specific purpose, and then to cast him aside.
This work was the destruction of the Romano-Germanic Empire. That lifeless mass, whose oppressive weight had crushed the life and hope out of Central Europe for centuries, needed some tremendous force from without to break up its time-encrusted rivets. And that force was now in the hands of a workman who supposed he was engaged in rearing a great edifice for himself. Instead of which he was overturning, and plowing, and harrowing Germany, and preparing the ground for new forms of political life; and nothing more effectually pulverized the old tyrannies than this secularization of the priestly dominions. When, added to this, we see the extinction of a multitude of petty states and the abolition of the special privileges of nearly a thousand "Imperial" noble families, we realize how he was relieving Germany from the incubus which had paralyzed her for centuries.
The eighteenth century closed upon a strangely altered Europe. France was the ruling power on the Continent. Prussia had hidden herself in a timid neutrality, and left Austria to fight with foreign allies for the life of the empire. That battle had been a losing one, and now Francis II. sat upon a trembling throne and bore a title which had no longer any meaning.
But Napoleon was building his own edifice. In 1803 he had himself declared First Consul for life, and in 1804 he assumed the title of Napoleon, Emperor of the French. His coronation took place at Paris, where he compelled the Pope to come and perform that ceremony.
Then, after changing the groups of Italian republics into a Kingdom of Italy, he crowned himself, after the fashion of the Emperors whose successor he meant to be, with the Iron Crown of Lombardy.
He had entered upon the most daring scheme ever attempted in Europe: to convert the whole Continent into one vast empire, with the kings and princes over the several nations all subject to him.
Then there was a third coalition from which Prussia still held aloof, and which was composed of England, Austria, Russia, and Sweden. Alexander I. was now Emperor of Russia, and the timorous and unpatriotic policy of Prussia was guided by Frederick William III., who had succeeded his father Frederick William II.
The Prussian King, influenced by antagonism to Austria and by the hope of obtaining safety and reward for Prussia, stubbornly maintained his attitude of neutrality, while the German Empire was receiving its death-blow at Austerlitz. That "battle of the three Emperors," as it is called, was a paralyzing defeat to the Allies.
Prussia ignominiously received Hanover as her reward, and seventeen German states, including Bavaria, Baden, Würtemberg, and Hesse-Darmstadt, formally separated themselves from the German Empire and declared themselves subject to the French Emperor. This was known as the Rheinbund.
The German Empire was now reduced to three separate bodies: the Rheinbund, a federation of states giving willing allegiance to Napoleon;Prussia, practically in alliance with her destroyer; andAustria, helpless in that destroyer's grasp, while he, sitting in the Imperial Palace at Vienna, dictated terms of peace.
The Empire was broken beyond repair. On the 6th of August its dissolution was formally announced. Francis II. abdicated the Imperial crown and assumed the title of the "Emperor of Austria."
It was not the people of Prussia who bartered their allegiance to the fatherland for peace and for Hanover. It was their King and princes who brought this stain upon them, and their beautiful Queen Louise, mother of the late Emperor William, had pleaded in vain with the King to pursue a loyal and patriotic course.
The punishment came swiftly. The insatiate conqueror had no thought of leaving a great state like Prussia undisturbed. And soon it developed that his plan was also to create a northern bund under his protectorate, which would be composed of the Prussian states on the northern coast.
Forced in her own defense to take up arms, Prussia suffered a terrible defeat at Jena, 1806. The conqueror for whose friendship Frederick William had sacrificed his country was in Berlin. The beautiful Prussian Queen who, he knew, had used her influence against him, was treated with the grossest insolence, while for the cowed people recently in revolt, and now prostrating themselves, he did not restrain his contempt.
The Peace of Tilsit (1807) determined the full measure of Prussia's retribution. Her Polish acquisitions were made into a "Grand Duchy of Warsaw," under a French protectorate. One half of the rest of her territory was converted into a kingdom of Westphalia, over which Napoleon's brother Jerome was king. To the remainder of Prussia was assigned the burden of an immense indemnity, and the maintenance of a French army in her territory.
But the cup of humiliation was not drained until later when, standing with the Continent under his feet, Napoleon compelled the Prussian King to join the Rheinbund with what was left of his kingdom, to furnish France with troops, and thus to become tributary to his designs upon Europe.
Napoleon in the meantime, in an hour's interview with Alexander of Russia, had by the magic of his influence secured that Emperor's friendship. All this excellent man was fighting for was the peace of Europe! And he disclosed to Alexander his plan that they two should be the eternal custodians of that peace; which was to be secured by restraining the arrogance of England; and that was to be done by destroying her commercial prosperity. All of Europe was to be forbidden to trade with that country. There was to be a Continental blockade against a "nation of shopkeepers." Alexander was completely won, and he promised not to molest his new friend in his benevolent task.
The provinces dependent upon France were now divided up into kingdoms and principalities, and to make his own control over them more assured, Napoleon placed members of his own family and personal friends upon the various thrones.
His brother Louis was created King of Holland. His brother-in-law Murat was made King of Naples; Eugene Beauharnais, his step-son, Viceroy of Italy. Jerome Bonaparte, as we have seen, was King of Westphalia, and his brother Joseph he had already made King of Spain, in the time he could spare from more important matters in Germany.
And what was the real sentiment in Germany concerning this man at such a time? We hear that ninety German authors dedicated books to him and that servile newspapers were praising him; and we know that one of the immortal compositions of Beethoven was inspired by him. But we must recollect that he was too colossal and too dazzling to be accurately measured, except from a distance. Even yet we are almost too near to him for that, and the world is as divided in its estimate of Napoleon as of the true meaning of Shakspeare's "Hamlet." It is an eternal controversy. He was a monstrous creation; colossal in his plans, colossal in his grasp of the forces about him, colossal in ambition, in selfishness, in cruelty, and in intelligence.
Napoleon realized the value of hereditary grandeur. He had been able to climb without it; but the sons who would succeed him as masters of Christendom must have the dignity of ancestry to fortify them. No blood but the Hapsburg was fit for this great office. He swept away Josephine as remorselessly as he had the Pope in Rome, and compelled Francis II. to bestow his daughter Marie Louise upon the man who had stripped him of his Crown and his Empire, and who was steadily absorbing what remained of his dignity.
The marriage took place in 1810, and with his Hapsburg Empress, Napoleon established a temporary court at Dresden.
Then there commenced the process which was intended finally to engulf all the separate German kingdoms in one universal abyss. The Kingdom of Holland was first annexed to the French Empire; then North Germany was swallowed up in the same way; the same fate evidently being intended next for the Rheinbund. The satellites had begun to fall into the sun!
To the man guiding these astounding changes it seemed a very small matter then that a handful of Tyrolese peasants were in revolt against the French King in Bavaria; nor that a small group of philosophers, poets, and men of letters, were consulting together in Prussia over the shame of their betrayal by their rulers, and considering plans for guiding a popular movement for the emancipation of Germany.
But these were the first stirrings of a force Napoleon had not before had to contend with. He had fought with kings and princes and proud aristocracies clinging to their ancient splendor and possessions, but his armies had never been face to face withpatriotism.
He had not met it, because it did not exist in the German Empire until he himself made its existence possible by breaking up the old stifling tyrannies. Now a few patriotic and courageous men all over Germany were combining, and inciting the people to revolt; an association called "The League of Virtue" was created. Then the Tyrolese peasants were subdued and their leader Hofer was shot in cold blood by Napoleon's orders. The King of Prussia was ordered to suppress the "League of Virtue," and French spies supposed they were uprooting patriotism by reporting it as treason to France.
Napoleon was at this moment at the climax of his greatness. He decreed that Rome should be annexed to his empire, and that his infant son should receive the title "King of Rome," which title should thereafter belong to the oldest son of the French Emperor. What if this did bring curses upon his name? He was now beyond the reach of blessings or curses from men; and probably was rather pleased than otherwise when Alexander I. threw off their sentimental friendship and defied him, by abandoning the plan of a Continental blockade for the ruin of England.
Now he was free to develop his gigantic plan. Does anyone suppose that the conquest of Russia was all of that plan? Far from it! There is every reason to believe that it was his intention, after Russia was subdued, to press on into Asia and to expel the English from their precious India!
Not since the days of Attila had there been seen such an army as was led into Russia—six hundred thousand men, of whom only one out of twenty was ever to return! And was it the lives of Frenchmen that he was spending so lavishly? Not at all. This great host was composed chiefly of Germans, Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Bavarians, Swiss, who should have been fighting for their own liberation at home.
Lest Prussia should revolt in his absence the wary Napoleon garrisoned that kingdom with sixty thousand French troops, and took the sons of Prussia with him for the great human sacrifice in Russia.
It was the 7th of September when the great army moved. On and on they marched for two months through a silent and deserted land, only to reach at last a mysteriously silent city. Had a whole people fled at his approach? Napoleon took up his quarters in the Kremlin. Suddenly fires broke out in a hundred places. The city became a roaring furnace. In vain did they try to stay the conflagration. In a few hours Moscow, his rich prize, was a mass of ruin and ashes.
Napoleon waited for a message from Alexander begging for peace; but none came. Then the snowflakes began to fall and fierce winds began to sweep down from the north. At length his stubborn pride had to bend. He sent his messengers to Alexander—still there was no answer. Provisions were failing, and there were leagues and leagues of deep and white snow between him and food for his famishing soldiers.
Then the Russians came. How could this starved, benumbed, frightened wreck of a great army stand before the Cossacks? The story of that "retreat" could never be written. Men, hollow-eyed and gaunt with misery, flung away their arms and fought with each other like wolves for a morsel of bread or a dead horse.
On the 5th of December Napoleon quietly slipped away, leaving the freezing, famishing victims of his ambition to make their own way back as they could; knowing that for all, save a fragment, of that mighty host the snow must be a winding sheet.
When Frederick William III. accepted that last humiliation and sent a Prussian army in the train of the conqueror to fight his battles, while Frenchmen guarded Prussians at home, the indignation was deep and wide-spread. Three of his best generals, Blücher and two others, resigned.
The Prussian contingent in the great invading army, which was under General York, had escaped many of the horrors of the retreat; and had returned with seventeen thousand out of the sixty thousand which had entered Russia.
This Prussian commander, as soon as he crossed the line with his soldiers, on his own responsibility abandoned the French and arranged a treaty of neutrality with the Russian general. Frederick disavowed the act, but it was received by the people of Prussia with wild enthusiasm. York called an assembly together at Königsberg, and boldly ordered that all men capable of bearing arms should be mustered into the Prussian army.
The force of public sentiment revealed by this was too overwhelming for the King to oppose. It swiftly swelled into a popular uprising in which all classes took part. It was the first great patriotic movement in Germany; and to Prussia belongs the glory of having initiated it. It was the Prussian people who converted their whole male population into an army and their country into an arsenal, and with one voice, and animated by one heart, refused longer to bear the degradation put upon them by their King. Hitherto the people had been led by their rulers. Now for a brief time they were going to be leaders, reluctantly followed by kings and princes.
Within five months two hundred and seventy thousand men were under arms and Frederick had been obliged to declare war against the Emperor of the French, in alliance with Russia and Sweden. Austria remained neutral, but the Rheinbund, with only two exceptions, still held to France.
Napoleon by the irresistible magic of his influence assembled an army nearly as large as the one he had just sacrificed in Russia. The campaign opened in April (1813). By June his star seemed to be waning, and Austria offered to mediate a peace. Napoleon insulted Metternich, who brought the proposals, and Francis II. joined the allies against his son-in-law. In October the end arrived.
The battle of Leipzig was to the people of Germany what Jena and Austerlitz had been to Napoleon. The news of this great victory was electrifying. From the Baltic to the Alps the air resounded with rejoicings.
There are no persuasions needed to make people leave a sinking ship. Jerome Bonaparte fled from his kingdom of Westphalia—the Rheinbund dissolved—Holland, Switzerland, Italy fell away. Wurtemberg joined the allies and the great movement for emancipation became national, not Prussian.
The allied princes offered to Napoleon that the Rhine, the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the sea should be the frontiers of France. Still believing in his invincibility, he scorned the proposition. His star had certainly deserted him, for while he was collecting his broken forces in Germany, and while hope was reviving over small victories, the allied armies, unknown to him, were advancing on Paris!
He learned it too late. History holds no picture more powerfully impressive than that of this man waiting at Fontainebleau, twelve leagues from Paris, still believing in his power to retrieve, and unconscious that he is already deposed! And the magic of his influence, the power of the spell he cast over mankind, is illustrated by the fact that even now, knowing him to have been a tyrant and a scourge as we do, rejoicing in his defeat as we must, we still cannot look at that picture without a moistened eye and almost a regret at his downfall!
Alexander, and Frederick William, and the allied armies were in Paris, which had capitulated, and at their bidding had consented to the deposition of Napoleon.
On the 6th of April, 1814, Louis XVIII., brother of the murdered Louis, was proclaimed King of France, and to the man who had been master of Europe was assigned—the island of Elba on the coast of Italy.
But in March of the following year, while sovereigns were still wrangling over the disorder he had left, and while Talleyrand was scheming for his new master as faithfully as he had for the old, the startling news came that Napoleon had landed in France. Louis XVIII. vanished into thin air before the man whom the people were receiving with wild acclamations of delight.
Europe again united, and again Napoleon was seen advancing, as of old, with a great army. Blücher was in command of one division of the allied armies and Wellington of the other.
The battle of Waterloo began on the morning of the 18th of June, 1815. To England was to belong the glory of Napoleon's final downfall. Wellington accomplished his defeat, and then Blücher came in time to make that defeat an annihilation.
The mistake of the year before was not to be repeated. From that moment until his death at St. Helena, in 1821, Napoleon was a prisoner and an exile. He had finished the work he had been appointed to do, and Fate had flung him aside!
Now came the difficult task of reconstruction and redistribution of territory. In what form should they arise out of this chaos? The dream of the people, like that of Hermann eighteen hundred years before, was of a German UNITY; not a renewal of the empire, but a great and new national life, in some firmer and truer form than it had yet known. But these were only dreams, vague and without any practical ideas as to their realization.
In the meantime men well versed in the arts and tricks of governing were deciding how all should be arranged. The plan proposed by Metternich, that master of diplomacy, who was minister to the Emperor of Austria, was the one adopted.
There was to be a confederation of thirty-nine German states. TheAct of Union, by which this was effected, had a pleasant sound to the ear of the German people. But the Union existed only in a mutual defense against foreign foes, and a mutual aid in keeping the people of Germany well in check! The one outward and visible expression of thisUnitywas in aGeneral Diet, to be held at Frankfort, under the presidency of Austria!
And this was what thepeoplewho had liberated their country were to receive as their reward! They were in no way recognized; were to possess no political power; the right of suffrage was not bestowed, and the Diet was prohibited from making any change in this form of confederation, except by aunanimous(!) vote. The German people were practically effaced and lost sight of in an autocratic confederation of states, with the Austrian Empire at its head.
That empire had received back its Italian possessions. Prussia had recovered Westphalia and her territory on the Rhine, and given up her Polish territory to Russia. Belgium and Holland had been merged into a kingdom of the Netherlands. Saxony, Wurtemberg, and Bavaria, which states had been made kingdoms by Napoleon, were permitted to remain such. Switzerland was a republic; and by the successful diplomacy of Talleyrand, Alsace and Lorraine, those insecure possessions, passed to France.
Such were some of the territorial adjustments. That the rulers of these kingdoms were reactionary in their purposes soon became apparent. One of the first acts of the King of Wurtemberg was to court-martial and cashier the general who had gone over to the German side at the battle of Leipzig! If none had gone over to the German side, where would have been the kingdom of Wurtemberg? In Mecklenburg the people were openly declared serfs. The Elector of Hesse-Cassel gave evidence that he was looking backward by putting his soldiers into the dress of the last century and powdered queues, and almost without exception the sovereigns were trying to construe the provisions of theAct of Unionin a way to give the least liberty to the German people.
The currents of German thought and feeling move slowly, but they are deep and persistent. They had never been intemperate in their desires for freedom, but had simply asked for a government which should be more in conformity with the existing views of human rights. Their disappointment had been profound and bitter. The fathers earnestly talked over their wrongs at home, while their more fiery sons at the universities made speeches, sang songs, and banded themselves together into societies, with mottoes and badges and insignia, all under the same inspiring ideas,—UNION AND FREEDOM.
This began to look like Revolution. The freedom of the press was abolished. The formation of societies among students and mechanics was prohibited, and the universities were placed under the immediate control of the government. A savage police system was established. Hundreds of young men were thrown into prison, and hundreds more fled the country.
But while this repression produced a calm surface, it did not change the conditions beneath. In the meantime a "Holy Alliance" had been formed between Russia, Austria, and Prussia, for the purpose of repressing aspirations toward liberty in other lands, where this pestilential modern spirit was also rife.
But in 1830 there was a popular uprising in France. Charles X., another brother of the murdered Louis, had been pursuing a reactionary policy precisely similar to the one employed by the sovereigns in Germany. It was too late to do that in France. The people with small ceremony flung the Bourbon aside, and set up a constitutional monarchy with Louis Philippe at its head. This stirred anew the latent feeling in Germany. The people did not rise in a body, but so threatening did it appear that the Diet quickly yielded certain reforms and concessions for fear of more extreme resistance.
Francis II. died in 1835, and was succeeded by an almost imbecile son, Ferdinand I. In 1840 Frederick William III. of Prussia also died, and Frederick William IV., his son, became King. Metternich was now guiding the affairs of Austria, and William von Humboldt was the adviser of the new Prussian King, who inspired the people with a hope of better things. But while this King fostered science and art, he gave little care to the redressing of political wrongs, and things drifted toward a crisis.
Again a revolution in France reacted upon Germany. In 1848, Louis Philippe was cast aside as unceremoniously as had been his predecessor, and a Republic was proclaimed, with Louis Napoleon, nephew of the great Napoleon, at its head.
This new Bonaparte was a son of Louis Bonaparte, whom his imperial brother had made King of Holland. He married Hortense, the daughter of Josephine. So Fate intended that a child of the discarded Josephine, and not of Napoleon, should rule over France.
The proclamation of a republic in France awoke the slumbering forces of revolution in Europe. Not in one place, nor in two, did the fires spring up, but simultaneously in every German state. Hungary, led by Kossuth, was in revolt, and fighting to the death to be freed from the Hapsburgs. In Italy Victor Emmanuel, the young King of Sardinia, was trying to drive the Austrian governor of Milan out of the kingdom, and when checked, he shook his sword at the advancing Austrians and said prophetically, "There shall yet be an Italy!" And while these things were going on in Italy and in Hungary, men were fighting in the streets of Vienna. The ozone of freedom had penetrated even to that last stronghold of despotic sentiment. The Emperor Ferdinand abdicated in this time of agitation, and his young nephew, Francis Joseph, ascended the Austrian throne.
The things the people were demanding in every state were: freedom of speech and of the press; the right of every man to bear arms; of all to assemble when and where they liked for political or other purposes; trial by jury; and the abolition of the hated Diet, with a complete reorganization of the state governments.
The princes were terrified. It seemed as if their expulsion, like that of Louis Philippe, was at hand.
And so it was, and would have ensued, had the people known their power or how to use it. But gradually the opportunity was lost. Concessions were made, new liberties were gained, but theUnitythey hungered for was to come in another and unexpected way, and for ten years the confederation was to exist practically unchanged.
Still, although the fruits of their efforts seemed meager in comparison with what had been hoped, there had been one great concession made. The Diet, under the pressure of the crisis, had consented to steps which led finally to the formation of a National Parliament.
When that parliament met at Frankfort, German patriots believed the hour of liberation had struck. Full of hope and confidence they thought the end was attained, when six hundred men of character and intelligence came together to formulate a new plan of union based uponThe Sovereignty of the People!
But such a task requires something more than patriotism and enthusiasm, and theoretic views about human rights. It needs practical political experience, and clearly defined plans for action. After vainly trying to harmonize conflicting opinions a plan of union was finally adopted, and Frederick William IV. was elected "Hereditary Emperor of Germany."
All save the smaller states refused to accede to the proposed plan, and Frederick William himself declined the proffered title, saying, "They forget that there are princes still in Germany, and that I am one of them."
So the attempt at reorganization was a miserable failure, and the national parliament gradually dissolved. In the meantime the revolutionary fires in Europe had burned out. Hungary was again submissive in the grasp of the Hapsburgs, and Austria was also once more supreme in Italy; while the French republic, which had lighted this conflagration, had become a monarchy.
The national party had developed no great leader, had shown no ability to grasp its opportunity. The people, disheartened and in sullen disappointment, saw the old Bund-Diet restored at Frankfort, in 1851, and found themselves back in a slightly improved and amended confederation, still under the headship of Austria.
Then Louis Napoleon's assumption of Imperial power, in 1851, gave renewed strength to the German rulers. It demonstrated the instability of popular governments, and the sure return to the good old methods of their fathers, as soon as the temporary madness of the people had subsided.
So all things conspired to depress aspiration and to make the hopes awakened in 1848 a tantalizing delusion. It was not night, but it was a very dark and dreary day for patriotism in Germany. The country was under a spell which no one knew how to break.
In 1857 Frederick William IV. was stricken with apoplexy, and his brother, Prince William, was appointed Prince Regent.
The new emperor of the French, with oppressive sense of the greatness of his name, was looking about for opportunities to be Napoleonic. In 1856 he had formed an alliance with England against Russia. The fact of the alliance of itself gave weight to the rather flimsy fabric of his greatness, while the results of the Crimean War added much to its solidity. In the year 1859 Italy was vainly struggling to free herself from the grasp of Austria. Mazzini, the exalted dreamer, and Garibaldi, the soldier and patriot, with Cavour, the no less patriotic statesman, though with different ends in view, were working together for the destruction of the Austrian yoke, which must be preliminary to any form of Italian nationality. The astute statesman saw in the ambition of Napoleon III. a means to that end.
When Napoleon promised an "Italy free from the Alps to the Apennines," and when the splendid victory of Magenta was quickly followed by that of Solferino, and when the young Francis Joseph, with tears in his eyes, ordered the retreat of his defeated army over the Mincio, the dream of centuries seemed about to be realized. Then came the startling news that the two emperors were in consultation at Villafranca over the terms of peace! Venice was not to be liberated. There was to be a consolidation of the Italian kingdoms "under the honorary Presidency of the Pope"—whatever that meant—and a "general amnesty" was declared. It was with sullen rage that the disappointed patriots saw Nice and Savoy handed over to France, and Rome garrisoned with French troops, while a French emperor was posing as the liberator of an Italy which was not liberated! But although the mills of the gods were moving slowly, they were going to grind exceeding fine. Victor Emmanuel and a regenerated Italy were not far off, and for Germany there was at hand a new era.
Frederick William IV. died, and in 1861 William I. was crowned King of Prussia.
King William's youth was far behind him. He had already spent a long life (sixty-four years) and had never expected to occupy a throne. He had not the brilliant qualities of his brother, he did not concern himself much about science or letters; but he was profoundly impressed with the responsibilities of his position; and it at once became apparent that Prussia had a wise and sagacious King, who would make her well-being his sole care and ambition.
His first act was a thorough reorganization of the army. Then he looked about him for a man wise enough and strong enough for him to lean upon. Baron Otto von Bismarck-Schönhausen had just returned from St. Petersburg, where he had been Prussian ambassador.
He was a conservative of the extreme type, hated and feared by the liberal and national party no less than Metternich. But no man better than he comprehended the policy of Austria, and all the complicated threads composing the web of German politics.
The choice of this man for minister to the King augured ill for the liberals. The outlook had never been darker than at this hour before the dawn.
But great political storms, like storms of another sort, are full of surprises. The ominous storm clouds we have feared roll away and vanish in calm, and the little ones, not larger than a man's hand, suddenly expand and darken our sky. A fateful storm was gathering for Germany in the duchy of Schleswig-Holstein.
Of the nature of the Schleswig-Holstein entanglement someone (Was it Beaconsfield?) wittily said that there were only two men in Europe who understood it, himself and another; and the other was dead. But that was a mistake. There was a man in Prussia who understood it, and who lived to use it for his own far-reaching designs.
The principal threads in the tangled web were as follows:
The two adjacent dukedoms of Schleswig and Holstein, which constitute a sort of natural bridge about 150 miles long and 50 miles wide, between Denmark and Prussia, are, by the way, the land of nativity for the Anglo-Saxon race, the Angles having inhabited Schleswig, and the Saxons Holstein, at the time they so kindly protected the Britons from the Picts and Scots.
So it is probable that every member of the Anglo-Saxon family has some ancestral root running back to that fertile strip of pasture land.
It had for many years been under the Danish protectorate, the King of Denmark being, by virtue of his position, also Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, just as the German Emperor is now King of Prussia by virtue of his imperial office.
But this little people was by no means merged with the Danish by this arrangement; on the contrary, they preserved very jealously their own traits and ancestral traditions. Among these was the exclusion of women from the royal succession—the Salic law, framed by their Frank ancestors centuries before on the banks of the river Saale, being part of their constitution. Hence, when King Frederick VII. of Denmark died in 1862 without male heir, and King Christian IX. became King, the people of the two dukedoms hotly refused to recognize him as their lawful ruler, but claimed their right of reversion to Duke Frederick VIII., who was in the direct male line of succession.
Had the Salic law prevailed in Denmark, this Duke Frederick (father of the present young Empress of Germany) would now be King of Denmark instead of Christian IX. But it did not exist, so Christian, father of the Dowager Empress of Russia—of the Princess of Wales—and of King George of Greece—became, in 1862, lawful King of Denmark, with rights unimpaired by female descent.
Schleswig-Holstein revolted against being held by a ruler who, according to her constitution, was not the terminal of the royal line, and insisted upon bestowing herself instead upon the German Duke Frederick VIII. Denmark naturally resisted. Salic law or no Salic law, the dukedoms were hers, and should stay. Of course Austria, as the head of the German confederation, had to be consulted, and she thought well of uniting with Prussia to compel the cession of the twin dukedoms, which would have been quickly absorbed had not the European powers intervened and forbidden this encroachment upon the rights of Denmark.
It was just at this crisis that Bismarck was appointed prime minister of Prussia, and commenced his series of brilliant moves upon the European chessboard.
King Christian of Denmark, pleased with his success in retaining the refractory states, determined to go still farther; that is, to adopt a new constitution separating these Siamese twins, which should, in fact, detach Schleswig from Holstein, incorporating it permanently with Denmark.
This was in direct violation of the treaty with the Great Powers made in London, 1852, and afforded the needed pretext for war.
The moment and the man had arrived. Bismarck, with the intuition of a good player, saw his opportunity, pushed up the pawn, Schieswig-Holstein, and said, "Check to your king."
The Prussian and Austrian troops poured into Denmark, and in a few short weeks the blooming isthmus had ceased to be Danish and had become German.
Austria generously said, "We will divide the prize. Schleswig shall be Prussian, and Holstein Austrian."
Could anything be more odious to the Prussians? The long arm of Austrian tyranny stretching way over their land, up to their northern seaboard! It might better have become Danish. But all things come to him who waits, and—Bismarck waited.
Neither Austria nor the German people had the slightest comprehension of the Minister's deep-laid plans. When he said that the German question could "only be settled by blood and steel," the people construed it as the brutal utterance of despotism. And when it looked as if they might be involved in a war with Austria over this paltry Holstein affair they were stunned, and believed that a desperate man was leading Prussia to her ruin for his own ambitious purposes. What could they with their nineteen millions of people do against Austria, with her fifty millions!
But Bismarck cared not and heeded not. He was too intent upon his game. He knew what no one else seemed to know, that there was no chance for Germany until she was emancipated from Austria.
Again he pushed up his useful little pawn and said "check," but this time to the Emperor of Austria. Ah! here was a game worth watching. Europe and America, too, were willing to let their morning coffee get cold in studying the moves. Francis Joseph did not see as far into the game as his astute adversary, whose keen eye was focused at long range upon a renewed Germany, in which there should be no Austria.
The conflict was short (only seven weeks), but the preparation had been thorough. The 3d of July will long be remembered by Germany. King William was there; the Crown Prince was there, now become "Unser Fritz," by his superb military achievements, the ideal prince and soldier of modern Europe; and Königgrätz, like Waterloo, decided the game. Francis Joseph was checkmated. A galling servitude to Austria existed no more. What wonder that the people were glad, or that Unser Fritz was their idol, and Bismarck became their demigod!
A great physician correctly diagnoses the disease before he treats it. Bismarck knew why the attempts at a German union had been futile. He knew such a union never could exist until Austria was eliminated from it.
An overwhelming revulsion in sentiment followed. The man whom the despotic element had leaned upon became the adored leader of the liberal party. He had no sentimental theories about human rights. His personal tendencies were toward despotism rather than freedom. But he had the acuteness to recognize the advantages which would be derived from a liberal policy and the ardent support of thepeople.
A new confederation of states was formed called theNorth German Union, with a parliament elected by the people. It was composed of all the states except Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Baden.
The several states were united under a general Federal Government, somewhat like that of the United States of America, of which the King of Prussia wasPresident, and Bismarck wasChancellor.
This new union was Protestant and Prussian, and forever separated from all that was Catholic and Austrian. In five short years what a change! Truly, "blood and iron" had proved a wonderful tonic for Germany!
In the year 1763 Prussia won the province of Silesia after a seven years' war with Austria. Just one century later, in 1866, a war of seven weeks with that same power placed her at the head of a firmly consolidated German nation. A result so astonishing from a conflict so brief must ever be a phenomenon in history; and had it been necessary, seven years would not have been too long to struggle for such a reward.
And what of poor little Schleswig-Holstein, that land of our race nativity? If she had indulged in any innocent expectation of benefit from such brilliant espousal of her cause she was disappointed. And she must have realized that she had been only the humble hinge upon which the door of opportunity had swung open for Germany.