The definitive treaty of peace between Austria and Prussia was signed at Prague on the 23rd of August. Austria was represented in the negotiation by Baron Brenner, and Prussia by Baron Werther, Bismarck having been obliged to return to Berlin to be present at the opening of the Chambers. In substance the treaty did little more than put into precise and legal form the stipulations agreed to at Nikolsburg. The article respecting Venetia declared that, "his Majesty the Emperor of Austria on his part gives his consent to the union of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom with the kingdom of Italy, without imposing any other condition than the liquidation of those debts which have been acknowledged charges on the territories now resigned in conformity with the Treaty of Zurich." The fifth article transferred to Prussia all the rights that Austria had acquired in the Elbe duchies under the Treaty of Vienna; but the influence of the French Emperor, who would not miss what seemed to him so good an opportunity for the application of his favourite principle of the popular vote, obtained the addition of a clause providing that "the people of the northern district of Schleswig, if by free vote they express a wish to be united to Denmark, should be ceded to Denmark accordingly." With regard to Saxony, the King of Prussia declared himself willing (Article VI.), "at the desire of his Majesty the Emperor of Austria," to allow the territory of that kingdom to remain within its existing limits, reserving to himself the right of settling in a separate treaty the share to be contributed by Saxony towards the expenses of the war, and the position which it should eventually hold within the North German Confederation. This separate treaty was not concluded till the 21st of October of the same year. Under it Saxony retained little more than a nominal independence. She agreed to pay a war contribution of 9,000,000 thalers, to give up all her telegraphs to Prussia, and to enter the North German Confederation; her troops were to form an integral portion of the North German army, under the supreme command of the King of Prussia; Königstein, her strongest fortress, was to be given up to Prussia, and Dresden to be held by a garrison half Prussian, half Saxon. While Prussia was stipulating for the cessation of all common interests between her and Austria, and for the exclusion of the latter from Germany, the question naturally rose: What relations are to subsist hereafter between Prussia and the other South German States—such as Bavaria and Baden—which are neither to join the North German Confederation, nor yet to be excluded altogether from Germany? This question was answered in the fourth article of the treaty, in which the Emperor of Austria, after promising to recognise the North German Confederation which Prussia was about to form, "declares his consent that the German States situated to the south of the line of the Main should unite in a league, the national connection of which with the North German Bund is reserved for a further agreement between both parties, and which will have an international independent existence." The Treaty of Prague further settled that from the war indemnity of 40,000,000 thalers which Austria had agreed to pay, a sum of 15,000,000 thalers should be deducted on account of war expenses claimed by the Emperor from the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, and a further sum of 5,000,000 thalers on account of the maintenance of the Prussian troops in the Austrian States which they occupied till the conclusion of peace. The remaining net indemnity of 20,000,000 thalers was to be paid within three weeks of the exchange of ratifications. This sum, it may be mentioned, amounts to £3,000,000 of English money. The principal articles of the treaty between Austria and Prussia having been thus briefly summarised, it now only remains to state that the ratifications of the treaty were formally exchanged at Prague on the 29th of August.
The war was over, but the task of establishing the new internal relations that were henceforth to prevail in Germany remained. Armistices were agreed to on the 2nd of August between Prussia, on the one hand, and Bavaria, Baden, Würtemberg, and Hesse-Darmstadt, on the other, to last for three weeks. At first Bavaria was very roughly dealt with. The Bavarian Ambassador, Baron von der Pfordten, was some days at Nikolsburg before he could obtain an audience of Count Bismarck. At last (July 27th) he obtained a few minutes' conversation with the Prussian Minister, who curtly stated as the terms of peace, the cession of all Bavarian territory north of the Main to Prussia, the cession of the Bavarian Palatinate to Hesse-Darmstadt, and the payment of a war indemnity. But the final treaty of peace, signed at Berlin on the 22nd of August, was less onerous for Bavaria, it imposed, indeed, a contribution of 30,000,000 gulden; abolished shipping dues on the Rhine and Main, where those rivers were under Bavarian jurisdiction; and transferred all the telegraph lines north of the Main to Prussian control; but it required no such cessions of territory as were exacted by the preliminaries. The causes of this apparent lenity, which must have puzzled those acquainted with the Prussian character, will be explained presently. The treaty with Würtemberg, signed on the 13th of August, imposed a war indemnity of 8,000,000 florins on that kingdom, and provided for its re-entry into the Zollverein. A similar treaty with Baden, signed on the 17th of August, burdened the Grand Duchy with a war indemnity of 6,000,000 gulden. Peace with Hesse-Darmstadt was only concluded on the 3rd of September. Great resentment was felt in Prussia against the Grand Duke, who had been throughout a staunch friend to Austria. On the other hand, the Court of Russia, for family reasons, intervened with urgency on behalf both of Würtemberg and of Hesse-Darmstadt; and the terms imposed on these States were consequently more lenient than had been expected. Darmstadt was required to give up Hesse-Homburg and certain other portions of its territory to Prussia; it was, however, indemnified to a considerable extent at the cost of what had been the independent States of Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, and Frankfort; the general effect being to consolidate and render more compact the territories both of Prussia and of Darmstadt, where they were conterminous. Hesse-Darmstadt, moreover, though, in respect of that portion of her territories which lay south of the Main, she was a South German State, agreed to enter the North German Confederation.
Besides the public treaties with the States of South Germany which have been just described, Prussia concluded with them at the same time certain secret articles, which were not divulged until months afterwards. According to these, Bavaria, Baden, and Würtemberg severally entered into a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, with Prussia, with guarantee of their respective territories, and the concession of the supreme command in time of war to the King of Prussia. Count Bismarck knew that he had been playing a perilous game; he had mortified and exasperated the French Emperor, immediately after the close of the war, by refusing to cede to him certain demands for the Bavarian Palatinate and the Hessian districts west of the Rhine. French vanity had been wounded by the victories, French jealousy had been aroused by the aggrandisement, of Prussia. The whole North German Confederation did but represent a population of 25,000,000; if Germany was to be safe against France, she must be able to dispose at need of the military resources of a population of at least equal magnitude. Weighing all these things with that profound forecast which characterised him, Count Bismarck would seem to have purposely imposed at first harsh conditions on Bavaria in order that he might obtain, as the price of their subsequent remission, the adhesion of that kingdom to an arrangement that would bring its excellent soldiers into line with those of Prussia. Upon all these South German States he skilfully brought to bear an argument derived from the recent demand of France for German territory which he promptly divulged—a demand which, he said, would infallibly be renewed; which it would be difficult in all circumstances to resist; and which, if it had to be conceded, could hardly be satisfied except at the expense of one or other of them. Isolated, they could not resist dismemberment; united with Prussia, and mutually guaranteeing each other's territories, they were safe.
These secret treaties between Prussia and the South German States first came to light in April of the following year. Count Beust, who was then the Austrian Premier, commenting on the disclosure in his despatches to Austrian representatives at foreign Courts, said that Austria would make no complaint and ask for no explanations; at the same time, with much dry significance, he directed their attention to the fact, that the Prussian Government had actually concluded these treaties with the South German States before it signed the Treaty of Prague, the fourth article of which was by them rendered null and meaningless. The Count justly pointed out that an offensive alliance between two States forced the weaker of the two to endorse the foreign policy and follow in the wake of the stronger, and practically destroyed the independence of the former.
For the French Emperor, in spite of the efficacy of the French intervention in favour of Austria, the events of this year must have been full of secret mortification. In Mexico, the empire that he had built up at heavy cost was crumbling to pieces; and he did not feel himself strong enough on the throne—nor was he, in fact, gifted with sufficient strength of moral and intellectual fibre—to persevere in the enterprise against the ill-will of the American Government and the carpings of the Opposition at home. He made up his mind to withdraw the French troops from Mexico, and get out of the affair with as little loss of credit as possible. In spite of checks and disappointments, Napoleon still wore a bold front, and in his public utterances continued to assume the oracular and impassable character that had so long imposed on the world. In the sitting of the Corps-Législatif on the 12th of June an important letter from the Emperor to M. Drouyn de Lhuys was read, in which it was declared that France would only require an extension of her frontiers, in the event of the map of Europe being altered to the profit of a great Power, and of the bordering provinces expressing by a formal and free vote their desire for annexation. The last clause was a judicious reservation, particularly as the doctrine of the popular sovereignty, expressed through plébiscites, was not at all consonant with Prussian ideas, so that there was no chance of Rhine Prussia, or any part of it, being allowed the opportunity, supposing it had desired it, of voting for annexation to France. However, notwithstanding the imperial declaration, the map of Europe was altered to the profit of a great Power, and France obtained no extension of territory. Soon after the close of the Austro-Prussian War, the Emperor asked from the Prussian Government the concession of a small strip of territory to the extreme south of her Rhenish provinces, including the valuable coalfield in the neighbourhood of Saarbrück and Saarlouis, besides acquiescence in the annexations from Bavaria and Hesse-Darmstadt. This was the last of a series of demands for compensation dating from 1862, by judiciously playing with which Bismarck had kept Napoleon quiet during two European wars. Count Bismarck met the request with a decided refusal, on the ground that the state of national feeling in Germany rendered the cession of a single foot of German territory to a foreign Power an impossible proceeding. The Emperor's mortification must have been extreme; he concealed it, however, and nothing was more hopeful or optimistic than the tone of the circular which he caused to be sent on the 16th of September to the French diplomatic agents abroad. Its object was to convince the nation and all the world that France had not been humiliated, nor disappointed, nor disagreeably surprised, by the late events; on the contrary, that she was perfectly satisfied with what had happened. As to annexations, France desired none in which the sympathy of the populations annexed did not go with her—in which they had not the same customs, the same national spirit with herself. From the elevated point of view occupied by the French Government, "the horizon appeared to be cleared of all menacing eventualities."
THE PALACE, DRESDEN.
