[5] Thaler then = about 4s. 6d.
Germany's Fleet in the Last Century
Though the sword of Napoleon completed the destruction of the Holy Roman Empire, which had done so much to hamper the development of the Teutonic race, the Vienna Congress, rearranging the map of Europe after his overthrow, left Germany still divided into thirty-nine different states. There were four kingdoms, one electorate, seven grand duchies, ten duchies, ten principalities, one landgraviate, and the four free towns—Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck, and Frankfort-on-Main. These states were loosely united in the German Confederacy.
The people of Germany, and especially those who had risen against Napoleon, had expected a more complete unity on a democratic basis, and the disappointment of their hopes was one of the chief causes of the revolution which, in 1848, broke out simultaneously in nearly every one of the federal capitals. This movement took the Governments by surprise, and so overwhelming was the popular demand for unity, that they offered but little opposition to the convening of a National Assembly, which met at Frankfort-on-Main on May 18th, 1848, and appointed the Austrian Archduke Johann provisional "Administrator of the Empire." It is generally asserted that the failure of this serious attempt to weld Germany together was an inevitable consequence of the jealousy existing between Austria and Prussia, but none can say with certainty what the sequel might not have been, had not Frederick William IV., the grand-uncle of the present German Emperor, refused the imperial crown when it was offered to him by the National Assembly. It is very well conceivable that, if that monarch had been less fully persuaded of the divine rights of kings and of the incompetence of popular representatives to bestow crowns, the work which Bismarck did in the next twenty years, with so grievous an expenditure of blood and iron, might have been accomplished by peaceable means, and that the world might to-day have been confronted with the problem of a much larger, much richer, and much more united Germany. Those who would not regard German domination in Europe as an unmixed blessing have reason to be thankful for Frederick William's archaic theories on the relationships of Princes to their peoples.
And those who care to amuse themselves by following up the grand alternatives of history must not forget that 1848 saw the birth of the modern German Fleet, which was the fruit of a purely popular movement. Indeed, the patriots of the Frankfort Parliament found in the "imperial fleet," which they actually founded, the necessary symbol of that national unity which was the goal of their aspirations.
Strong, spontaneous, and almost universal as was the German naval movement of 1848, it did not attain its actual dimensions without an effective external stimulus. In the very month in which the revolutionaries were defending their barricades in the streets of Berlin and other German capitals, Frederick VII. had declared his intention of incorporating Schleswig in Denmark; and, while an informal convention was arranging the preliminaries for the National Assembly, the Danish fleet was blockading the coasts of Prussia in retaliation for the military support afforded by that Kingdom, as the mandatory of the German Confederation, to the rebellious duchies. Nothing was better calculated than an incident of this sort to bring home to the German mind the importance of sea-power. That the ships of a little country like Denmark should be able, with impunity, to forbid the sea to a great military Power, seemed to every German who reflected upon it a grotesque inversion of the natural order of events.
Though the National Assembly, at one of its first sittings, appointed a permanent committee to grapple with the naval question, the impatient interest of the public displayed itself in schemes and suggestions which poured in from every side. In many places committees were formed to help to raise the funds necessary for the equipment of a fleet. It is significant of the widespread nature of the movement that the raftsmen of Gernsbach, in the Black Forest, offered to transport down the River Murg free of cost the timber required for the building of Germany's war ships. The seaports, which felt most keenly the insulting pressure of the Danish blockade, took the leading part in the agitation. A congress of delegates from the German coast towns came together at Hamburg and nominated a "naval commission," on which, in addition to the Governments most immediately concerned, a number of private committees were represented. This body wasted no time in talk, but set to work with feverish activity. As warships were not to be had ready-made, several merchant vessels were purchased and hastily armed with guns furnished by Hanover; and at the beginning of July, the Federal Government was notified that these extemporized men-of-war were ready to put out and attack the enemy. But at the moment the negotiations with Denmark for a truce had already begun, and for the time being the squadron remained peacefully at its moorings.