But, however alarming these signs might be to the more Liberal members of the Frankfort Parliament, the attitude of the majority of that Parliament towards the Poles had not been so generous as to justify them in passing severe condemnation on the Prussian Ministry. It was in another part of Europe, and in a very different struggle, that the power of the Frankfort Parliament over the King of Prussia was to be finally tested. The March rising in Denmark had, unfortunately, like the risings in Pesth and Frankfort, been accompanied with a desire to strengthen their own country at the expense of its neighbours; and an Assembly in Copenhagen had, on March 11, denounced the claims of Schleswig to a separate Constitution as eagerly as the Liberals of Pesth had demanded the suppression of the Transylvanian Diet, and the Liberals of Frankfort the absorption of Bohemia in Germany. The Schleswig-Holstein Estates, however, thought that the time had come for a more definite demand for independence: and, on March 18, they put forward five proposals which they embodied in a petition to the King. These were to the effect that the members of the Estates of both Duchies should be united in one Assembly for the purpose of discussing an Assembly for Schleswig-Holstein; that measures should be taken to enable Schleswig to enter the German Confederation; that in consideration of dangers both from within and without, measures should be taken for a general arming of the people; that liberty of the Press and freedom of public meeting should be granted; and that the Prime Minister of Denmark should be dismissed. The arrival of the bearers of this petition in Copenhagen caused great indignation among the Danes; and, on March 20, a meeting was held to pass five counter-resolutions in favour of the claims of Denmark over Schleswig; and the temper of the meeting was sufficiently shown by the fact that, while the four resolutions which asserted the power of Denmark were easily carried, a resolution proposing a Provincial Assembly for Schleswig was rejected by an enormous majority. War was declared on the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein; and, in order to prevent those Duchies from having due notice of the war, the members of the deputation were detained in Copenhagen until the expedition had actually sailed. On March 27 the Danish forces appeared before Hadersleben; and thereupon the Schleswig-Holstein Estates declared that the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein was no longer free, and formed a Provisional Government.
The meeting of the Preparatory Parliament at Frankfort had naturally increased the hopes of the people of Schleswig-Holstein; and they elected seven representatives to take part in the deliberations of that Parliament. But the Schleswig-Holstein question seemed doomed to bring into prominence all the difficulties which hindered the establishment of the freedom and unity of Germany. The old Bundestag had, even before the meeting of the Frankfort Parliament, declared its sympathy with the Estates of Schleswig-Holstein; and, though it expressed its approval of the election of the Schleswig-Holstein representatives to the Frankfort Parliament, it claimed, as against that body, the sole right of directing the Federal forces of Germany. The King of Prussia was, no doubt, glad enough to pit the older body against the representatives of the newer Germany; and it was avowedly under the authority of the Bundestag that, in the month of April, he marched his forces into Schleswig-Holstein. But it soon became clear that neither the representatives of the old League of Princes, nor the Assembly which embodied the aspirations for German freedom and unity, would be able to control the King of Prussia. Early in June he showed an inclination to come to an understanding with the King of Denmark and to evacuate North Schleswig. The leaders of the Frankfort Parliament felt that, in order to control this dangerous rival to their authority, they must create some central Power which should be able entirely to supersede the Bundestag; and it was, to a large extent, under the influence of this feeling, that the Archduke John was chosen Administrator of the Empire.
But, however much strength the Frankfort Parliament might gain in Germany by this election, it was hardly to be expected that the choice of an Austrian Prince would lead to more friendly relations between Frankfort and Berlin; and, in July, it began to be rumoured that a truce of a more permanent kind was about to be made between the King of Prussia and the King of Denmark, while the King of Hanover seemed disposed to second the former in his defiance of the Constituent Assembly at Frankfort. At last, in September, the crisis of the struggle came. It then became clearly known that a truce of seven months had been agreed to at Malmö between Prussia and Denmark. During that period both the Duchies were to be governed in the name of the King of Denmark as Duke of Schleswig-Holstein; and the man who was chosen to act in the King's name was Count Moltke, who had been previously protested against by the people of Schleswig-Holstein on account of his tyrannical acts. He was to exercise all power except that of legislation, which, indeed, was to cease altogether during the truce; and he was to be assisted by four Notables, two of them to be nominated by the King of Denmark and two by the King of Prussia.
The Frankfort Parliament felt that this truce would sacrifice the whole object of the war; and, on the motion of Dahlmann, they resolved, on September 5, by 238 votes against 221, to stop the execution of the truce. The Ministry, who had been appointed by Archduke John, thereupon resigned, and Dahlmann was empowered by the Archduke to form a new Ministry. At the same time the Estates of Schleswig-Holstein met, and denied that any one had the power to dissolve them against their will, or to pass laws or lay on taxes without their consent. A public meeting of the Schleswig-Holstein citizens declared that they would not submit to the new Government; every one of the four Notables refused to act with Moltke; and, when he applied to the Provisional Government for protection, they sent him a passport to enable him to leave the country. But the Frankfort Parliament very soon began to shudder at its own audacity; and, when Robert Blum urged upon it the desirability of speedily putting in force its decree about Schleswig-Holstein, the Parliament decided that there was no urgency for this motion; and some of the more timid members began to plead the danger of a quarrel with Prussia. Arndt, who had voted for the condemnation of the truce, now changed sides, and urged that the Parliament should accept it, in order to convince the Danes "that they are a brother People;" while even those who still condemned the action of Prussia began to propose all sorts of compromises. At last, on September 16, the Assembly rescinded its former vote, declaring, by 257 against 236, that it was unadvisable to hinder the execution of the truce.
The leaders of the German Left had felt that concession to the King of Prussia in this dispute implied the sacrifice of the whole object of the Parliament's existence; and Robert Blum had declared, shortly before the final vote, that it must now be decided whether Prussia was to be absorbed in Germany or Germany to become Prussian. But the decision of the Frankfort Parliament so roused the fierce Democratic feeling in the city that the movement of resistance to Prussia passed out of the control of Robert Blum, and fell under the leadership of far fiercer and more intolerant spirits. Several thousand Democrats belonging to the Frankfort clubs held a meeting, on September 18, at which they called upon the members of the Left to leave the Frankfort Parliament and form a separate Assembly. Zitz, a representative of Mainz, and nineteen other members, accepted this proposal; and, in the meantime, the Frankfort mob, headed by a man who bore the ominous name of Metternich, threw up barricades in the streets, and prepared for a regular insurrection. The Ministry, in great alarm, sent for troops; and Bavarian, Prussian, and Austrian generals alike responded to the appeal. Robert Blum and Simon, the member for Breslau, in vain tried to make peace; entreating the Ministry to withdraw the troops, and the insurgents to pull down the barricades. But the Ministry would not listen to any advice, and the insurgents threatened Blum and Simon with death. Auerswald and Lichnowsky, two members of the Right, were killed in the riot. Many fled from the city; and it is said that, when Archduke John wished, at last, to make a truce, no member of the Ministry could be found to countersign the order for the withdrawal of the troops. The struggle went on fiercely during the 19th; but there was no organization capable of offering permanent resistance to the soldiers; and, by ten o'clock at night, all the barricades had been swept away; and the Ministry soon after declared Frankfort in a state of siege.
These events gave a shock to the hopes for combining German freedom with German unity which they never after recovered; and the alternative which Blum had propounded, whether Prussia should be absorbed in Germany or Germany in Prussia, was, from that day, to be exchanged for the question whether Austria or Prussia should absorb Germany. There were some, however, who did not at once give up their hope for a solution more favourable to freedom than either of those alternatives. In several parts of Germany Republican feeling seemed to have been growing for some time past, and the fiercest and most daring of the Republican leaders were still to be found in Baden. The rising which had followed the dissolution of the Preparatory Parliament had, indeed, discredited Hecker and his friends with many of the more moderate Democrats; and this feeling, by alienating the party of Hecker from Robert Blum, had deprived that able and temperate statesman of the power which he might have gained as the head of a united Democratic party. That rising had also, unfortunately, brought about a collision between Baden and Bavaria, and, at least, a feeling of suspicion between Baden and Würtemberg. But, though the Democratic party, as a whole, had been weakened by the Baden rising, and though even the special South German movement, which had seemed, in March, to have gained so strong an influence, had been disunited, yet, on the other hand, a certain form of popular enthusiasm had undoubtedly been roused by Hecker, of a kind which the wiser Democrats had failed to excite; and the attempt of the members of the Right in the Frankfort Parliament to annul Hecker's election, on account of his insurrection, had marked him out as a martyr for liberty.
But when the Baden Republicans gathered for action after the Frankfort riots, it was, for some unknown reason, to Struve, rather than to Hecker, that they offered the leadership of the movement. Struve seems to have had fewer gifts for the work of a leader of insurrection than his colleague had possessed. He had been, as was proved by his programme in the Preparatory Parliament, interested rather in the redress of material grievances than in the assertion of Constitutional Liberties; and, though he now proclaimed the Republic from the Town Council House in Lörrach, he rested his appeal to the people mainly on the ground of the burdens still pressing on the cultivators of the land; and he did not allude to the Schleswig-Holstein question, nor did he allege any Constitutional reason for proclaiming the Republic. Blum had seen that Republicanism was not popular in Germany; and, though he looked forward to a Republic as the ultimate goal of his political aspirations, he felt, during the sitting of the Frankfort Parliament, as Mazzini had felt during the war in Lombardy, that any violent attempt to enforce Republican opinions would be dangerous to liberty. Indeed, it was clear that the only possibility for even a temporary success in an insurrection at that time would have lain in an appeal to the national feeling about the Schleswig-Holstein war. The movement, therefore, failed, and failed ignominiously. The Federal troops were sent against the insurgents; at the first collision the latter were easily defeated; and the insurrection was only remembered as the Struve-Putsch.
Since, then, the Frankfort Parliament no more embodied the hopes of the Liberals; since Republican risings seemed hopeless; and since it was hardly to be expected from human nature that those who had desired to establish German unity at Frankfort should consent at once to rally round that Prussian Parliament which had helped to defeat their efforts; the eyes of all who would not give up the cause for lost turned instinctively to Vienna. There, ever since July 10, a Parliament had been sitting, which seemed to enjoy securer freedom than could be found in other parts of Germany. This security was partly due to the influence of the same prince who had so much increased the dignity of the Frankfort Parliament; for the Archduke John was the one member of the Royal House who had a genuine respect for liberty. He had consented, not only to open the Viennese Assembly, but, a little later, to get Pillersdorf dismissed from office, on the ground of his having lost the confidence of the people; and, in August, Ferdinand himself was induced to return to Vienna, and thus to give a still further sense of security to the supporters of parliamentary government. Nor was this Parliament without more solid results; for it abolished in Austria that system of feudalism which had already been swept away in Hungary.
But, in spite of this apparent success, the seeds of division and bitterness were too deeply sown to allow of lasting liberty in Vienna. The workmen's movements, so often leading to riot, had been one cause of weakness; but the most lasting and fatal cause was that terrible race hatred, which, more than anything else, ruined the Austrian movement for freedom in 1848. The opposition of the Bohemians to the May rising in Vienna had intensified against them the indignation which had already been roused by their attitude towards the Frankfort Parliament; and the June insurrection in Prague had been exaggerated by German panic-mongers into an anti-German "St. Bartholomew." When Dr. Rieger, Palacky's son-in-law, pleaded for delay in the election of the President of the Assembly, on the ground that the Bohemian members had not had time to arrive, he was hooted in the streets, and only saved from actual violence by the intervention of Dr. Goldmark; and, when Rieger protested against the illegal arrest and secret trial of one of the Bohemian leaders in Prague, Bach, who had now become the most popular of the Ministers with the German party, evaded the appeal. Indeed the utterances of the German party in Vienna were marked by a combination of a somewhat arrogant assertion of popular authority, as represented by the Assembly, with contempt for the aspirations of other countries. This combination of feeling was perhaps best illustrated by the meeting of July 29, when a majority of the Assembly, in calling upon the Emperor to return to Vienna, indignantly rejected the word "bitten" (entreat) from the address, and substituted the word "fordern" (demand). On the day of this important assertion of popular rights, the news of Radetzky's victories in Italy was received with loud applause in the Chamber, and a solemn Te Deum was shortly afterwards decreed in honour of these victories.[15]