ART. VII.—PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN CONFEDERA TION. La Prusse en 1860. Par Edmond About. Jeffs. VERY shortly after his accession, the present King of Prussia summoned his generals round him. He told them that he had succeeded to the throne "at a moment pregnant with dangers, and with the perspective of struggles in which he might stand in need of their devotion. . . . . Let us not deceive ourselves. If I do not succeed in averting the struggle, it must be a struggle in which we must conquer, if we do not wish to be annihilated." There was no doubt, at the time these words were uttered, and there is no doubt now, as to whom they referred. Every one knew that they pointed to the Emperor of the French. We may wonder at their explicitness, but we cannot wonder at the distrust which they freely express. Prussia and her kings have no great reason to love the dynasty now ruling France. "The Bourbons and the Bonapartes are natural enemies," said the ex-King of the Two Sicilies the other day. The Hohenzollerns and the Bonapartes are natural enemies, might be said as truly. If in France itself, in Spain, and in Naples, the descendants of Hugh Capet were disseized of their territories and crowns, to make way for the vassals of Napoleon I., the nephew of Frederick the Great had scarcely less ignominious humiliations to resent from the same quarter. He was deceived and despoiled. Drawn away, in the hope of territorial aggrandisement and supremacy in Germany, from the alliance of kings into a partnership, galling to royal susceptibilities, with a parvenu and adventurer, Prussia found herself in a few years plundered of her territory, and reduced not merely to political nullity, but to the most abject dependence on France. Instead of becoming the sovereign of Northern Germany, she was in the course of a few years reduced from a first-rate to a thirdrate power, deprived of more than half her possessions, and of more than six millions of her subjects. Smarting under the sense of defeat, as well as under that of loss, obliged to submit to the coarse insults which spared neither misfortune nor sex, Frederick William III., after the defeat of Jena had been consummated in the treaty of Tilsit, occupied a position far more intolerable than that of a dethroned king. He was the mere puppet of a more powerful sovereign, obliged, like a feudal vassal, to afford him aids in war of men and money. The semblance of power simply irritated the sense of impotency. The Prussian people, who do not always share the sentiments of their monarchs, shared their hatred of Napoleon and the French people. The unrestrained animosity and savage Vandalism in which this feeling found expression, during the occupation of Paris by the Allied troops, is well known. Half a century of pacific relations has done little to efface their hatred. When war broke out in 1859 between Austria and France, the statesmen of Prussia had difficulty in checking the unmeasured hostility of the Prussian court and army. This dislike and distrust are not altogether due to the bitter memories of the past. A circumspect regard to future contingencies justifies them. The policy of the present Emperor of the French, however subtly pursued, has nothing original in it. It is in all essential particulars the exact reproduction of that followed by the founder of his line. A campaign in Italy laid the foundation of the dictatorship exercised by Napoleon I. over Europe, and transferred the limits of France to the other side of the Alps. The detachment of Prussia from Germany, which, in pamphlets and personal interviews, has been recommended by the present Emperor, led, more than half a century ago, to the overthrow of the German nationality, the foundation of the Confederacy of the Rhine under French protection, and the degradation of Prussia herself to a position inferior in material resources, and morally far lower, than that from which the genius of the first Frederick William and the second Frederick had raised her. The grounds of former conquest and of natural boundaries, on which Sardinia has been deprived of Savoy and Nice, would apply with equal if not greater strength to the seizure, by force or fraud, of that undying object of French desire the left bank of the Rhine. Taking these things, and some others of a similar character, into account, it is not surprising that the present King of Prussia should see in the events of the last two years the commencement of enterprises such as those which, towards the close of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth centuries, set Europe in a blaze. Napoleon I., like Napoleon III., attacked Austria by way of Italy, and by sowing, as Napoleon III. appears to have tried to sow, dissension between it and Prussia. The effect of the policy which the Emperor of the French has hitherto pursued has been to draw into closer union the two rival powers of Germany, to put a period to their jealousies and counter-intrigues, to suppress, if not to extinguish, their mutual hostilities, to defer, if not to reconcile, their internal dissensions. Its author has thus unwittingly played into the hands of English policy. Our ablest diplomatists have always seen in the existence of a strong and united Germany the only effectual barrier in the way of the two aggressive empires of Europe-France and Russia. The scheme of European conquest, and of divided empire, which the first Napoleon proposed to Alexander I., represents the permanent ambition and desires of both countries. The accident of a mild and humane sovereign in either may interrupt, but cannot permanently dispel, them. A league which should give France carte blanche in the west and Russia in the east of Europe, which should begin by allowing the former empire the Rhine, and the latter the Danubian principalities, is no inconceivable thing. The fluttering of the German dovecotes occasioned by the interview of the present Napoleon and Alexander at Stuttgart, in September 1857, shows that this fear is still a living fear. The exaggerated apprehensions which this meeting, probably one of curiosity or courtesy only, occasioned, found expression in the wildest speculations, and the most ingenious historical parallels based on the interviews half a century earlier between another Napoleon and another Alexander at Tilsit and Erfurth. The fear of such a league and understanding, which only a great power occupying the plains of central Europe could effectually defeat, has made English statesmen anxious always to cultivate the friendship and strengthen the resources of Austria. With this view, they have always striven to induce Prussia to draw closer the bonds which unite it with the House of Hapsburg. The revulsion felt by England towards the domestic policy pursued by the Court of Vienna has not been able to shake the conviction felt here of the necessity of her existence and strength to the peace of Europe and the world. Lord John Russell gave distinct utterance to this feeling in the debate of the 7th of March last. "Austria," he emphatically pronounced, "is a great, regular, and conservative power in the middle of Europe, that tends to preserve many of the political and social advantages which Europe enjoys;" adding, that it was his wish, "as it should be that of every Englishman, that Austria may so reconcile the various parts of her monarchy as to satisfy the wishes of her subjects, and maintain the place of a great power in Europe." To the same conviction we must refer the course pursued by Lord Palmerston during the Hungarian revolution; his passiveness when a word of recognition might have saved the historic rights and liberties of Hungary is only intelligible on this hypothesis. Austria was supposed to be necessary to the European balance of power; and Austria, stripped of Hungary, would not, it was imagined, be sufficient for that end. The result shows this idea to have been a mistake; the Austrian monarchy M. de Ségur truly stated the fact, and the motive of it, in the French Corps Législatif, a few days since, during the "England," he said, "wishes to surdebate on the Address. round us with great states, and to unify and Germanise. England is every where hostile to the policy of France," which is, to divide and weaken, to sow dissensions, and to profit by them. The system of constitutional government on which, since the publication of the Rescript of October, Austria has entered, with whatever of sincerity may be supposed to spring from the conviction that her only chance of life lies in that direction, diminishes the objections which many Englishmen feel towards the Austrian alliance, and makes her less reluctant than they otherwise would be to urge on the more liberal German powers a policy of cooperation and joint action. Unhappily this policy is more easily recommended by spectators than acted upon by the principals to it. Two great powers, each with an ambition of its own, with great differences of intellectual and moral culture, with traditions, aspirations, and interests not altogether coinciding, must, in the absence of a common danger, almost of necessity be rivals. Each is anxious for ascendency in Germany, and to that end is on the look-out to steal a march whenever it can upon the other, and to thwart every design formed and neutralise every advantage gained by its competitor. The history of Prussia, from the time when she ceased to be a minor German state, subject, like the other minor German states, to imperial influences, is the history of contest by war and diplomacy, by force and intrigue, with Austria. The reign of Frederick the Great commenced with the attack upon the possessions The two Silesian and the Seven-Years of Maria Theresa. Wars, and the league known as the Fürstenbund, were its leading events. The royal panic which the outbreak of the first French Revolution occasioned did indeed drive the successor of Frederick and the successor of Maria Theresa into brief union. The bait, however, of increase of territory and influence in Germany, at the expense of Austria, soon seduced the Prussian monarch into alliance with France-to his own ruin. It was not till goaded by tyrannous exactions, and insolence beyond what she could bear, that Prussia again joined with Austria and the other allied powers to throw off the yoke which, weighing heavily on Europe, weighed most heavily on her. The everrenewed misunderstanding between the two German powers came to a head in the events of the two years from 1847 to 1849. The presence of what Frederick William and Francis Joseph deemed to be a common danger-the fierce democracy which they could not sway-alone made them patch up their differences in the Olmütz Conference of 1850. Baron von Manteuffel did not conceal the nature and motives of this rapprochement when he announced to the Prussian Chambers that their King, having to choose between revolution and war with Austria, or peace and alliance with it, had elected for the latter. The Emperor of Austria's visit to Berlin, two years later, confirmed the King of Prussia in his Austrianising and reactionary policy. This was inevitable. The close alliance of a constitutional and a despotic state, except for merely external purposes, is impossible. Common principles of government only can give a basis of mutual understanding and cooperation. Austria was, therefore, wise in her generation in the policy which she has up to a recent date pursued both in Italy and in Germany. Resolved herself to concede nothing to liberal principles of government, she had acted upon a political necessity in her treaties, binding the sovereigns of Italy to introduce no reforms in their governments without her consent asked and obtained; in violating and treading under foot the immemorial liberties of Hungary; in forcing upon the Germanic Confederation the Articles of 1832, which rendered it obligatory on the German sovereigns "to reject all propositions of the states which are contrary to the fundamental principle, that all sovereign power emanates from the prince;" which pronounced the stoppage of supplies in order to attain reforms or redress of grievances to be sedition against which the Confederation might act; "and which forbade all legislation inconsistent with the object of the federation or the discharge of federal duties, and announced that such laws (as e. g. the laws of Baden, which established liberty of the press) might be abolished by the Diet." We say this course of Austria was, from her point of view, a political necessity. Liberty in any member of a confederation, or in any province of an empire, is dangerous to servitude in the other members and provinces. There must be a solidarité, or mutual insurance of despotism, if |