XXIII. Alliance of each could rely. Prussia had secured Italy, which de- CHAP. sired to expel the Austrians from Venetia: Austria managed to carry with her most of the greater German Prussia princes. In the memorable last sittings of the Diet of with Italy. June 11th and 14th, 1866, Austria's motion to mobilize the federal contingents, with a view to federal execution against Prussia, was supported by Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, Würtemberg, Hessen-Cassel, Hessen-Darmstadt, and several of the minor states, thus giving her a large majority; while, for Prussia's counter-proposition for a reform in the constitution of the Confederation, there voted only Luxemburg and four of the 'curiae,' consisting of northern and middle states of the third rank, seventeen in all out of the thirty-three. The partisans of both sides having thus committed themselves, there was no use in further resisting Austria in the Diet; so Prussia, Declaration having entered her protest against its proceedings, withdrew from the Confederation, declared war upon Hanover and Saxony on June 16th, upon Austria on June 18th, and pushed her armies forward with a speed which seemed almost to paralyze her opponents. The shortness of the war and the completeness of the victory surprised Europe, for though every one saw the gain to Prussia from the simultaneous attack delivered by Italy, few had known how great was the superiority of the Prussian to the Austrian armies in firearms, in organization, and in the military skill of the commanders. At Königgrätz in Bohemia the main Austrian army was over The immediate cause of the war was the convocation by Austria of the states of Holstein, in order to pronounce on the rights of Prince Frederick. This Prussia declared to be an infraction of the Convention of Gastein; and her troops accordingly crossed the Eider, in order to reoccupy Holstein in virtue of her condominant rights under the Treaty of Vienna. Austria withdrew to avoid a collision; and made her final motion in the Diet which brought on the declaration of war. of war by Prussia on Austria and some of the German states. СНАР. XXIII. Battle of Königgrätz (Sadowa). The Peace of Prague. The North Confedera tion. thrown on July 3, and forced to retire on Vienna, while shortly before her German allies suffered defeats scarcely less crushing. She fared better in Italy, but the disaffection of the Magyars, added to the shock her prestige had received, made it doubtful whether she could gain anything by prolonging the struggle. Bismarck was wisely content to spare her the humiliation of ceding any German territory,' and in retiring from Venetia she lost a province which was a source rather of weakness than of strength. The Peace of Prague" which followed marked a turningpoint in German history. By it Prussia increased and consolidated her dominions through the annexation of the rich and populous territories of Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Hessen-Cassel, and Nassau, together with the free city of Frankfort. She also secured her supremacy in Germany by creating a Federation of the North German States under her own presidency. The constitution of this Federation left some measure of independence to the minor princes, permitting them to send and receive diplo matic agents to and from other courts, levy local taxes, and summon their local legislatures as heretofore. But it effected a fusion of their military forces, which were placed under the king of Prussia; it vested in him, as president, the conduct of the foreign policy of the Confederation, and the right of making war and peace (this last with the consent of the federal parliament): and it transferred to the control of the federal parliament, over which the king See as to Bismarck's policy in dealing gently with Austria his own account in his Reflections and Reminiscences, ch. xx (esp. p. 47 of vol. ii of English translation). His judgement was approved by the result, for before many years passed he re-established friendly relations with her. u It is impossible here to sketch even in outline the part played by Louis Napoleon, then Emperor in France, in the negotiations. Reference may be made to Sybel (ut supra) and to Sir S. Walpole's lucid narrative in his History of Twenty-five Years, vol. ii. XXIII. presided through his nominee the federal chancellor, CHAP. legislation upon a variety of important topics, including the taxation for federal objects, the control of the currency and the postal and telegraphic system. These provisions secured Prussia's ascendancy in Germany; and although much that was anomalous and incomplete might be remarked in the scheme, as could hardly fail to be the case where one member had twenty-four millions of population and the remaining twenty-one only five millions among them, it formed a cohesive nucleus, all the more cohesive that it was comparatively small; and by accustoming the citizens of different principalities to act together in a common assembly, it gave them a feeling of common citizenship, which mitigated such discontent as might have been produced by the loss of local independence. Nevertheless the problem that had lain before Germany might seem only half solved. The exclusion of Austria from the Germanic body did no doubt make for national union, extinguishing that Dualism which had distracted the country ever since the rise of Prussia in the days of Frederick the Great. But with Austria went her German population of seven millions, filling the vast territories of Upper and Lower Austria, Tyrol, Styria, and parts of Bohemia and Carinthia - districts which had during many centuries formed a part of the old Empire. The new league, moreover, at whose head Prussia placed herself, included only the states north of the river Main, and thus, if it drew closer than before the bonds between those states, drew also a more marked distinction than heretofore between the two halves of the country, leaving the great principalities of Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Baden in a much more complete isolation. Germany, in fact, might appear to have purchased the completer unity of her northern half by the sacrifice of her unity as a whole. CHAP. XXIII. Treaties between Prussia and the South German States. Attitude of the French Emperor. A.D. 1867. It had been stipulated in the Treaty of Prague, at the instance of France, that the South German States should be at liberty to enter into a separate independent league of their own; and the French government doubtless hoped that now, when the scheme of a North German federation, first broached in 1806, had been at length carried out, something like Napoleon's old Confederation of the Rhine, under the protectorate of France, would reappear in the South as a counterpoise to Prussia's power. Very different was the turn which events took. Within a few months after the war of 1866, Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden, and Hessen-Darmstadt, conquered foes whom Bismarck had judiciously conciliated by sparing them loss of territory and by exciting their fears of France, and who moreover wished to join the new Zollverein which Prussia was forming, entered into secret military treaties with the North German Confederation, whereby they bound themselves to unite their armies to its army, in the event of any attack on Germany by a foreign power. Temporary as the organization of the North German Confederation evidently was, no one predicted for it a life of five years only; and few expected its developement into a grander and more comprehensive union to be the work of its bitterest enemy. The alarm of France at the disclosure of Prussia's military power by the campaigns of 1866, and at the increase of her strength through the extension of her dominions, was heightened by the publi cation of the secret treaties just referred to. Peace was with difficulty preserved when the question of the cession of Luxemburg arose; and from that time, at least, both countries felt that there existed only a truce full of suspicion between them. Louis Napoleon seems to have been hurried into speedier action by the belief that the military treaties had been extorted from the South German - so swift, so Powers, that those Powers, and especially Bavaria, would CHAP. not support Prussia should war break out he had not XXIII. realized the strength of national feeling in South Germany — and that there was disaffection among the inhabitants of the newly annexed districts, which ought to be taken advantage of as soon as possible. But men were astonished that the inept diplomacy of the French Emperor should have fired the train so suddenly, and should, in letting himself appear to be the aggressor, have done his best to make the war which was declared against Prussia with 'a July 15, light heart,' a national war, in which all Germany felt its 1870. interests and feelings involved. This it at once became. Seldom had such a national rising been seen universal, so enthusiastic, sweeping away in a moment the heartburnings of liberals and feudals in Prussia, the jealousies of North and South Germans, of Protestants and Catholics. Every citizen, every soldier, felt that this was a struggle for the greatness and freedom of his country; and the unbroken career of victory which carried the German arms over the east and centre of France, proved, in the truest sense, what strength there is in a popular For it was, even more than the admirable organization of their armies, the skill of their generals, the corruption and weakness of the Bonapartist court-it was the passionate ardour of the whole German people, who felt that at last a crisis had come when patriotism called on them to put forth their utmost efforts, that secured for cause. * The breach arose over the offer to a prince of Hohenzollern, distantly related to King William, of the crown of Spain. See as to the circumstances which caused the declaration of war, Sybel, Begründung, and Bismarck, Recollections and Reminiscences, vol. ii. ch. xxii. Nothing could have been more foolish than the diplomacy of Louis Napoleon's Foreign Minister; but Bismarck's artful manipulation of the so-called 'Ems incident,' confessed long afterwards, served at the moment to put the conduct of France in a worse light than it now appears to bear. The war with France, 1870-1871. |