XXIII. exactly a month afterwards definitely refused it, perceiving CHAP. the jealousy of some of the princes, although twenty-nine of them had already expressed their approval of the scheme; disliking several parts of the new constitution, fearing to give an implied sanction to revolutionary proceedings, and feeling himself unfit to take the helm of the German state at a moment of such difficulty and confusion. His refusal was a great and, as it proved, a fatal discouragement to the liberals, for it disunited them, and it destroyed their hopes of a powerful material support. Nevertheless the Frankfort assembly sat for some months longer, till, having migrated to Stuttgart, it dwindled down at last into a sort of Rump parliament, and was ultimately suppressed by force, while Prussia, at first in conjunction with Hanover and Saxony, started other and narrower plans for national organization, schemes modelled upon those of 1785 and 1806, but of which nothing ever came. Meantime the governments The Re-achad recovered from their first alarm. Austria had recon- tion: requered North Italy, and had by Russia's help over- of the Conpowered the Magyars; France had re-established the federation. Pope at Rome; everywhere over Europe the tide of reaction was rising fast. In 1850 Austria and Prussia took from the Archduke John such shadow of power as still remained to him as Reichsverweser, and at the conferences of Olmütz Prussia resumed her attitude of submissive adherence to Austria's policy. By the middle of 1851 the Confederation was re-established on its old footing, with its old incapacity for good, its old capacities for mischief, and, it may be added, its old willingness to use those capacities for the suppression of free institutions in the more progressive states. Baden Chamber on February 2, 1848, shortly before the revolution broke out in Paris. establishment CHAP. Effects of the The effects, however, of the great uprising of 1848 were not lost in Germany any more than in Italy and Hungary. It had made things seem possible—seem even for a moment accomplished which had been till then mere visions; it had awakened a keen political interest in the people, stirred their whole life, and given them a sense of national unity such as they had not had since 1814. By shewing the governments how insecure were the foundations of their arbitrary power, it had made them less unwilling to accept change; and had taught peoples how little was to be expected from the unforced good-will of princes. From this time, therefore, after the first reaction had spent itself, one may observe a real though slow progress towards free constitutional life. In some of the smaller states, and particularly in Baden, it soon came to be the policy of the government to encourage the action of the local parliament; and the Prussian assembly became in its long and spirited struggle with the crown a political school of incomparable value to the rest of Germany as well as to its own great kingdom. One other thing more the events of 1848-1850 did most effectively for the Germans, if indeed that wanted doing. They made clear to the nation the hopelessness of expecting anything from the Confederation. During the last sixteen years of its existence, nothing, except the promulgation under its sanction of a general code of commercial law, was done by the Federal Diet for national objects. Its deliberations had for many years been carried on in It spoke with no authority to foreign princes, and behaved with sluggish irresolution in the question which was again beginning to agitate Germany, of the succession to Schleswig and Holstein, and the relation of these duchies to the Danish Crown. The restoration of the federal constitution in 1850-1851 XXIII. Parties in Germany. was at the time regarded as merely provisional, accepted CHAP. only because Austria and Prussia could not be got to agree upon any new scheme; and the successive projects. of reform which thereafter emanated, sometimes from governments, sometimes from voluntary associations, kept the question of the reorganization of Germany and the attainment of some sort of national unity, constantly before the people. Thus, although nothing was done, and the tedious discussions which went on moved the laughter of other nations, the way was secretly but surely paved for revolution. In 1859 the liberals organized themselves in what was called the National Union (National-Verein), a body containing numerous members in nearly all the German States, and among them many distinguished publicists and men of letters. It held general meetings from time to time; and, when occasion arose, its permanent committee issued pamphlets and manifestoes, explaining the views and recommending the policy of the party. That policy was vague, so far as practical measures were concerned, yet clear in its ultimate object—viz. the union of all Germany in one federal state (whether republican or monarchical) and, if necessary, the absolute exclusion of Austria therefrom. This last feature procured for it from her adherents and from the German conservatives generally the name of the Little German (Kleindeutsch) party; and they, assuming the title of Great Germans (Grossdeutschen, i.e. the advocates of a Germany which should include Austria), founded in 1862 a rival association, which called itself the Reform Union, and in like manner held meetings and issued manifestoes. It found strong support in Hanover, Bavaria, and Würtemberg, but comparatively little in the middle states, and of course still less in Prussia. Its policy was mainly defensive; while the National Union, whose tendencies would naturally have been philo-Prussian CHAP. A.D. 1861. and aggressive, found itself embarrassed by what seemed the resolutely reactionary attitude taken up by the Prussian king and ministers in the affairs of their own kingdom. A contest respecting the organization and payment of the army had broken out between the Government and the Chamber - a contest embittered first by the accession to the throne of the feudally-minded King William I (theretofore Regent), whose assertion of the principle of divine right at his coronation at Königsberg had surprised and disquieted thinking people, and afterwards by the admission to the chief place in the ministry of a statesman who was then supposed to be the champion of tyranny and feudalism, even of the Austrian alliance. During the struggle which raged in the years 1862-1864 over the right of the Chamber to control taxation, and which at some moments seemed to threaten revolution, it was hard for the reformers to hope for anything from a power which levied without the consent of the Chamber the taxes it deemed necessary for the support of the army, and treated the representatives of the people with a roughness under which no one could tell that there lay concealed a substantial community of purpose. The liberals of the South and West were therefore in 1863 disposed to abjure Prussia as given over to a reprobate mind; and Austria thought she saw her opportunity. Encouraged by the measure of success which had attended his efforts to bring together in an imperial council (Reichsrath) representatives from the different provinces of the ill compacted monarchy, Schmerling, then chief minister. at Vienna, conceived the hope of recovering the ancient The Fürsten primacy of the Hapsburgs, and thrusting the now unpopu Congress at lar Prussia into the background. Accordingly in August, Frankfort. 1863, the Emperor Francis Joseph invited the reigning princes and representatives of the free cities to meet him XXIII. at Frankfort, to discuss a scheme of federal reform which CHAP. he there propounded, and which, while it increased the power of Austria, appeared to strengthen the cohesion of the Confederation, and to introduce a certain popular element into its constitution. All save one attended; but that one was the king of Prussia. He had in the preceding year taken for his prime minister Otto Eduard Leopold, Freiherr of Bismarck-Schönhausen in the Old Mark of Brandenburg, a man who, having been Prussian representative in the Federal Diet from 1851 to 1859, had learned by experience the weakness of that body and its subservience to Austria, and was now becoming impatient to try some speedier and more forcible method than diplomatic discussion of ending the existing deadlock. Convinced that it was only by blood and iron' that Germany could be welded into a national State, he had resolved to create a powerful army and to place it completely under royal control; but, as he could not yet avow his designs, the conflict between him and the majority of the Prussian Chamber continued acute until the day came when the liberals saw what those designs had been, and how triumphantly they had been carried through. Under Bismarck's advice, King William refused to have anything to do with the Austrian scheme, which fell therewith to the ground, and the Diet was troubled by no change for the rest of its unhonoured life. Holstein Austria, however, would probably have tried to carry The through her project had not another question suddenly Schleswigarisen, which turned all thoughts in a different direction, question. threw the German powers into new relations to one another, and became at last the cause of the dissolution of the Confederation itself. In November, 1863, Frederick VII, king of Denmark, died; and the contest so long foreseen and delayed between the Danes and the Germans, respect |