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Government in 1850 saw clearly; it ridi- dents or German gymnasts, the other from culed the Austrian sympathies of sentiment- the shrill fifes of Prussian regimental al Great Germans who called for a national bands. centralized Germany, and racked their brains The weakness of Prussia's position, thereto find out some modus vivendi for Austria fore, was her half-heartedness and want of within such a body. It ignored the exist- faith in her own mission. She was a bad ence of a German nation, and only recog- ally. She was not l'ami de ses amis. There nised that of German sovereigns. If is a spiteful French proverb dating back to these would help Austria to restore the In- the last century, "Travailler pour le roi de ternational Confederacy of 1815, she would Prusse," which in those days came forcibly help them to establish their absolute power home to men's minds. over their subjects. The strength of Austria's position consisted in its logical nega

tion.

Between the Prussian Government, on the other hand, and Prussia's natural ally, the National party, there existed no cordial alliance. Each mistrusted the other. The German Bundesstaat" meant a marriage between Prussia and Germany, that is, an indissoluble contract in which each party was called upon to make sacrifices for the good of both; but these sacrifices neither the Prussian monarch, nor, we may add, in her heart Prussia, was ready to make. Had not Prussia alone in all Germany a real history and real traditions, as distinct from a merely dynastic history or merely heraldic traditions? Had she not, alone and unaided, with a spade in one hand and a sword in the other, worked and fought her way up from an obscure colony on the extreme confines of the Empire to the rank of a firstrate European power? Was not the crown of Prussia a reality, a glorious reality? What, when compared with it, was this unhistorical Imperial diadem, which a puff of popular favour could blow into a gaudy bubble to collapse on the first gust of popular ill-will?

Now this feeling, though of course strongest in the Hohenzollern who sat upon the throne, and among the men who composed his Court and officered his army, is deepseated in the Prussian nature, even where we least expect to find it. To sink the Prussian in the German is what hardly one inhabitant, of the eastern provinces at least, is capable of doing. He is proud of his name, and never misses an opportunity of letting you know it. Take the two national songs, the German and the Prussian. The one plaintively inquires "Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?" and endeavours through a long series of stanzas, partly geographical, partly philological, to answer the question. The other starts with the proud affirmation, "Ich bin ein Preuss; " and through all the phases of the German question the echoes of these two melodies cross and recross each other as they come wafted to our ears, the one from the choral clubs of German stu

The period between the battle of Bronzell and the battle of Sadowa falls into three natural divisions, the first coinciding with the remaining portion of FrederickWilliam Iv's reign, the second with the accession of the present sovereign as PrinceRegent, and the duration of the so-called Liberal Ministry by which he at first surrounded himself, and the third with the administration of M. de Bismarck.

During the first of these periods the German question lay dormant.

During the second it began to revive with all the symptoms of renewed intensity. The attitude of the Auerswald Ministry in regard to it may be described as that of a Platonic flirtation with the national idea as embodied in the programme of the Little Germans.

The third period is preeminently that of what in Germany, in contradistinction to Great Germanism and Little Germanism, is styled Great Prussianism, and coincides with M. de Bismarck's tenure of office.

It was the Italian war which the gave signal for the resuscitation of the German question.

Now that the recriminations and heartburnings of the year 1859 have passed away into the region of history, it is not difficult to appreciate the parts played by the several actors in that eventful year. That Austria and the Austrian party in Germany-in which we include not only the well-disciplined phalanx of Cabinets who followed Austria as their leader, but the whole of the Great German party, with its endless shades of opinion-should have regarded it as the first duty of Prussia and Germany to make common cause with Austria, and to defend the Italian possessions of that House by an aggressive movement on the Rhine, was natural enough.

That in Prussia there should have been a strong party who recollected the battle of Bronzell, and who deemed Austria's necessity to be Prussia's opportunity, and that s large section of the liberal and national party should have sympathized with Italy, and considered that it was no part of Ger many's duty to thwart Italian aspirations

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that he was deserted by his natural allies, and that it was the equivocal attitude of Prussia which had forced him to throw himself on the mercy of the French Emperor. On the other hand, the latter did not seek to hide that it was the certainty of hostilities with Prussia which had led him to conclude peace before the work of Italian emancipation was completed.

Thus closed the campaign of 1859, leaving behind it a rankling wound as well in the mind of Austria as of Prussia. That she had been betrayed by the selfish policy of Prussia was the conviction of the former. That Austria had preferred coming to terms with France and the loss of Lombardy to a deliverance wrought by her former vassal, and to seeing that vassal playing an independent part as a great European Power, became the rooted belief of the latter.

The international machinery of 1815, so carefully and at such vast expense restored by Austria, had hopelessly broken down at the moment she the most required its assistance. A bloodier campaign than that of Bronzell had for ever destroyed the fruits of that ill-omened victory. By common consent the existing institutions of Germany were condemned as utterly worthless, and a cry went forth from every portion of the Fatherland demanding a radical reform of the Federal Constitution.

for unity and independence, was equally
natural. That strong influences were con-
sequently brought to bear upon the Prince-
Regent to secure the hostile neutrality of
Prussia during the impending war was the
inevitable result. Nevertheless, the Regent
from the first laid down a line of policy of
his own, equally opposed to Great German
and Great Prussian aspirations, and adhered
to it. He had no sympathy with Italy, and
shared all the orthodox prejudices against
the so-called revolutionary Cabinet of
Turin. He believed that the possession of
the Quadrilateral by Austria was not un-
important to the security of Germany, and
he was not minded therefore that Austria
should bleed to death in the defence of the
Quadrilateral. But neither, on the other
hand, would he go to war as the vassal of
Austria, or at the bidding of a majority of
the Diet. If Prussia took part in the war
she should take part in it as an independent
European Power, and make the most capital
she could out of it for Prussia. Its primary
object touched Austria's general interests in
Italy, her collective possessions there, not
especially the Quadrilateral. It was only
fair, therefore, that she should fight in the
first line, and bear the brunt of the first
attack. If she could not hold her own,
Prussia, at the head of Germany, would
make a diversion in her favour by an offen-
sive movement on the Rhine. But to carry
out this plan successfully, and to attack
France to advantage by allowing the bulk
of the French ariny to engage itself in
Italy, Prussia must keep her hand free to
the last moment. The Prince-Regent, more-
over, had a further reason for this policy.
He knew that the Middle States of Ger-
many, Bavaria and Würtemberg especially,
who cried the most loudly for war, were Before we trace the incidents of this po-
the least fit to take the field, and that, litical campaign, it is necessary we should
scanty and disorganized as the smaller Fed-notice the attitude of the several Govern-
eral contingents were, it would require sev-ments more immediately interested in the
eral months before they could even attempt solution of the German question.
to show a hostile front. In the meanwhile
the military preparations of Prussia were
carried on with the utmost activity. By
the time the battle of Magenta was fought
the whole Prussian army was on a war
footing, and fit to take the field. On the
news of the victory of Solferino, Prince
Windischgrätz, the Austrian Military Pleni-
potentiary at Berlin, was able to telegraph
to the Emperor that the Prussian army had
begun its concentric movement upon the
Rhine. But the Emperor Francis Joseph
disbelieved, or affected to disbelieve, the
information conveyed to him by his own
agent, and hastily concluded the peace of
Villafranca, giving the world to understand

With this revival of the German question, the two parties which had stood face to face in 1849, the Great Germans and the Little Germans, were once more arrayed against each other, and a political agitation began, which, little as it was at the time noticed out of Germany, it required no gift of prophecy to foresee could not but end in the disruption of the Confederation.

The Austrian Cabinet stood paralysed by the total collapse, both internal and external, of that system of logical negation on which its prestige had for the last nine years been reposing, and was helplessly groping about for some positive creed whereon to build up the broken fortunes of the Empire. To include her non-German provinces within the nexus of the Confederation, and to extend the frontiers of Germany to the Po and the Carpathians, seemed to Austria the only hope of salvation; but the means to compass that end appeared, as well they might, beyond the reach of her bewildered policy.

The Prussian Cabinet, as before observed,

was inclined to coquette with the programme of Little Germany; but a more important personage in the Prussian State than any member of a Cabinet had concentrated his ideas of Federal reform on a more practical, though, as the result proved, not on a more attainable object.

The attention of the Prince-Regent had, during the spring and summer of 1859, been wholly absorbed by the work of military preparation, both in Prussia and Germany, for what appeared to forbode a general European war. The mobilization of the Prussian army had taught him the defects which thirty years of peace had not failed to introduce into the organiation of so large a force based upon such exceptional foundations. The mobilization of the Federal contingents had revealed to him in all its enormity the hopeless malformation of the Federal army. The sight of contingents differently armed and differently equipped, wholly deficient in the military knowledge and esprit de corps which only large armies can possess, filled with the leaven of local prejudices and local jealousies, and totally unfit to be massed into efficient and disciplined bodies, convinced him that the Federal army, as constituted by the treaties of Vienna, was as rotten a concern as those armies of the Holy Roman Empire which for centuries had been the laughing-stock of Europe.

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To carry out a comprehensive scheme of reform in regard to the Prussian army, and in regard to the Federal army to endeavour to realize the original idea of the Constitution of 1815, by making the defensive apparatus of the Confederation a reality, such was the moral which the Hohenzollern of the day deduced from the year 1859. To carry out the latter idea, he at once proposed a scheme of reform for the military constitution of Germany, and endeavoured, both at the Diet and in the way of negotiation with Austria, but of course without success, to get it adopted.

The following are the main features of the scheme. For the one Federal army, to come into existence only when a Federal war was imminent, were to be substituted two Federal armies-a northern army under the command of Prussia, whose contingents should, in peace as well as during war, be incorporated with the Prussian army, a southern army under the command of Austria, whose contingents should, equally in peace and war, be incorporated with the Austrian army.

As regards the attitude of the remaining States of the Confederation, we must call attention to an abiding difference between

the policy of the Middle States, under which are included the four kingdoms, Hanover, Saxony, Bavaria, and Würtemberg, and some of the larger Grand Duchies, such as the two Hesses, and that of the smaller States. It is the former who have persistently barred the way to every serious effort for the consolidation of Germany. Too large to die, too small to live, as was once said of them by an orator in the Prussian Chambers, they have never varied in their policy of subordinating patriotic and national interests to the maintenance intact of every attribute of their newly acquired sov ereignty. The smaller States, on the other hand, aware probably that there was nothing in their size incompatible with an early death, have on many occasions, when acting corporatively, shown a praiseworthy readiness to make sacrifices for the common good. It was thus that in 1814 we saw them opposing themselves energetically to the secessional tendencies of Würtemberg and Bavaria, and again in 1850 standing by Prussia when the kingdoms either refused to join the Union, or broke away from the Union after they had joined it. Hence, in 1859, it was the Middle States whose ir terests appeared the most compromised by the overthrow of Austria, and in whose ranks that overthrow caused the widest consternation. Conscious of the active hostility they had displayed against Prussia in 1850, alarmed by the scheme now proposed by Prussia for the amalgamation of the Federal contingents, and magnifying in their terror the collapse of the power Austria, they sought in a close alliance amongst themselves, and by rallying the smaller States around them, to call into life a compact and well-disciplined body, which should hold its own even without Austrian help against the ambitious projects of Prus sia on the one hand, and the rising wave of national enthusiasm on the other. It was a revival of the Triad idea which had on various previous occasions cropped up to the surface, and which was especially hateful to the national party as being supposed to represent the French ideal of German reconstruction. The coalition which owed its origin to these causes was later known by the name of the Würzburg Coalition, from the conferences of the allied States being held in that town. Saxony and Bavaria were the soul of the movement. Such, in general outline, was the situation at the close of 1859.

of

The Little Germans were the first in the field, and opened the campaign by the crea tion of the National Verein or National League, with the Constitution of 1849 for

its banner. By its wide organization, and | emnly to renew all the obligations of the the activity it displayed in the press and at Federal Acts of 1815-20, and only to public meetings, it soon attracted general amend those paragraphs which related to notice, and riveted upon itself the attention the Constitution of the organs of the Conof the Cabinets. By the Governments of federation. The Diet was to remain as conthe Middle States it was pursued with all stituted by those Acts, only that instead of the rigour of the reactionary laws against Plenipotentiaries named by the Governthe freedom of the press and the right of ments, the Ministers themselves of the sevpublic meeting which had been passed under eral States should meet, and give to the Federal inspiration. The liberal Govern- assembly the character of a ministerial conments, on the other hand,-Baden, Coburg- ference instead of that of a diplomatic conGotha, Weimar, etc.,-openly avowed their gress. Instead of sitting permanently_at sympathy with the objects of the League, Frankfort, it was proposed that the Reand began to move diplomatically in a like formed Diet should meet twice a year, for direction. In Prussia the Government ob- four weeks, alternately at Regensburg in served an attitude of official neutrality, but the south and at Hamburg in the north. the Lower Chamber expressed its strong When meeting at Regensburg, Austria sympathy with the movement, and of some should be the presiding Power; when meetof the Ministers at least it was known that ing at Hamburg, Prussia should preside. they were friendly to it. Besides the Diet, which till then had been The next move was made by the Würz- the sole organ of the Confederation, two burg Coalition. It was nothing less than a new Federal institutions were to be called formal scheme of Federal reform, carefully into life,-a Directory, composed of Auselaborated by the Allied States, and sub-tria, Prussia, and a third State to be named mitted in their name by the Saxon Govern- by the remaining Governments, and an asment to the Austrian and Prussian Cabi-sembly of Delegates from the Chambers of the several States.

nets.

The circular transmitting the scheme, It is not necessary to enter into the deafter descanting upon the benefits which the tails of this scheme. Its objects come out German nation had for thirty years derived clearly enough when we bear in mind that from the Constitution of 1815, admits that the proposals of the Coalition were of the this Constitution had never succeeded in nature of a counter project to the promaking itself popular, and that it had now gramme of the National League. The delost all principle of vitality. The main mand for a popular element in the mechancauses of these undesirable results the cir- ism of the Confederation had become too cular sees in the unnecessary secrecy in general to be ignored by any scheme of which the proceedings of the Frankfort reform, from whatever quarter it might Diet had always been wrapped up, and in proceed; but whilst appearing to fulfil this the dilatoriness of its mode of doing busi- desideratum, the project of the Coalition ness, inseparable from the diplomatic char- for an assembly of delegates would, had it acter of the Assembly. In proposing a been adopted, have most effectually parareform, however, care must be taken to lysed the objects proposed by the National avoid a revolution. The three desiderata party. The latter desired to place the cenof the National party-the Bundesstaat, the tre of political gravity in a national repreNational Parliament elected directly from sentation. The Coalition proposed to retain the people, and the Imperial Crown-are this centre in the Diet, that is, in the body children of the revolution. That Bundes- representing the Governments, and virtually staat would therefore be a revolutionary to confine the action of the proposed ascreation, and would not be the reform but sembly of delegates to a restricted legislathe dissolution of the Confederation. The tive field. The national programme propurely international character of the Union, posed a Parliament elected directly by the and the unshackled sovereignty of the sev-nation in the ratio of the population, i. e., a eral States, must be the immovable basis body in which the territorial distinctions upon which every plan of reform must be would have been obliterated. The probuilt up. But this does not preclude the gramme of the Coalition proposed to stereointroduction of popular elements into the type these territorial distinctions in the Federal mechanism, or the creation of effic-popular branch of the Legislature, by allotient organs to replace the present inefficient

ones.

The programme of reform was as follows:

The high contracting parties were sol

ting the franchise not in the ratio of population, but in the ratio of the individual States. The assembly of delegates would have been a Parliament built up à priori, on a basis of rotten boroughs, to the ex

clusion of every other form of constitu

ency.

The Prussian answer to the circular setting forth this scheme emphatically accepts the position that the German Confederation is an international alliance, and that this is the character which has to be maintained. It argues, however, that the evils that have accumulated over Germany owe their origin to this character not having been maintained in its purity, and to the Confederation having, from the day of its birth, undertaken functions incompatible with an international union. An association, four members of which (Austria, Prussia, Denmark, and Holland) have an independent European position of their own, and therefore the centre of their political gravity outside the mechanism of the association, cannot with impunity transgress the strict limits of international intimacy, and enter into engagements trenching upon their rights of internal sovereignty. But it is exactly in this direction that the proposal of reform moves. Though repudiating the term Bundesstaat, it borrows essential elements from that form of confederation, such as the legislative body and the executive, and endeavours to make them fit into the Staatenbund. Nothing will induce Prussia to follow this lead. The only reform of the Bund in its entirety to which she will lend her hand will be one that reduces it back to its purely international character, and endeavours more effectually to carry out its primary object of a defensive association against aggression from without. But whilst assuming this negative attitude in regard to a reform that should extend over the whole Confederation, Prussia believes that a wide field of improvement is open in the way of free association between members of the Confederation. Paragraph 11 of the Federal Act especially consecrates the principle that the members of the Confederation are free to enter into alliances amongst themselves, so long as the objects of such alliances do not run counter to the fnudamental duties of the Bund. There is nothing to prevent the formation of a bona fide Bundesstaat within the Confederation in virtue of this article.

The Austrian reply confines itself almost exclusively to the proposed innovation of an alternation of the presidency of the Diet between Austria and Prussia. It claims for the Austrian right of presidency a character wholly different from that which had been given to it in 1815. According to this new interpretation, the Austrian Presidency of the Diet represented the principle of German unity; to introduce the alternation

would be to introduce the principle of dualism, and the dire results of such an innovation are illustrated by the disruption which was apparently then going on between the Northern and Southern States of the American Union. Nothing, therefore, the Aus trian despatch concludes, will induce the Austrian Cabinet to this extreme limit of concession, except the one counter concession of the entrance of all her territories into the Confederation; but even in such a case she would prefer an alternation, not between Austria and Prussia, but between Austria, Prussia, and a third State, such as that proposed by the Federal Directory. If the entrance of her non-German territories into the Confederation is not conceded, she cannot agree to the scheme as a whole, but she will be ready to discuss the proposal for the assembly of delegates and other details.

The reply of Prussia called forth amongst the States of the Coalition an outburst of real or simulated indignation. Austrian aid was invoked, and readily granted; and identical notes were shortly afterwards presented at Berlin by the Imperial Government and the States of the Coalition, protesting in angry tones against the interpretation placed by Prussia on paragraph 11 of the Federal Act. To deduce from a paragraph intended to accentuate the full sovereignty of the individual States the faculty of bringing about an organic change which should for ever limit these sovereign prerogatives, and destroy the self-same right of alliance, was was a mode of interpretation without a parallel, etc., etc.

In a word, the Coalition placed Prussia on the horns of the following dilemma: either she was in earnest in her project of bringing about the Bundesstaat-and if so, she was a revolutionary power bent upon destroying the Germanic Confederation,-or she was not in earnest, and in that case she was a reactionary power, only using a pretext to oppose all improvement and all reform.

The identical notes may be considered as a declaration of diplomatic war against Prussia, in which from thenceforth Austria and the States of the Coalition were firmly united.

Before we consider the further episodes of this war, we must notice the change of Government at Berlin, which marks the third of the three periods into which we have divided the fifteen years which elapsed between the battle of Bronzell and the battle of Sadowa, viz., the formation of the Bismarck Ministry.

When M. de Bismarck took office, the constitutional conflict between the King and

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