The Revolutionary Movement of 1848-9 in Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany / With Some Examination of the Previous Thirty-three Years

by C. Edmund Maurice

And, to say the truth, men of far deeper religious feeling than Metternich might well be dissatisfied with the influence of the person who was the chief mover in this excitement.

The Baroness de Krüdener, formerly one of the gayest of Parisian ladies of fashion, and at least suspected of not having been too scrupulous in her conduct, had gone through the process which Carlyle so forcibly describes in his sketch of Ignatius Loyola. She had changed the excitements of the world for the excitements of religion, and was now preaching and prophesying a millennium of good things to come in another world, to those who would abandon some of the more commonplace amusements of the present. The disturbance which she was producing in men's minds specially alarmed Metternich; and, under what influence it may be difficult to prove, she was induced to retire to Russia, and there came in contact with the excitable Czar.

Under her influence Alexander drew up a manifesto, from which it appeared that, while all men were brothers, kings were the fathers of their peoples; Russia, Austria, and Prussia were different branches of one Christian people, who recognized no ruler save the Highest; and they were to combine to enforce Christian principles on the peoples of Europe. When the draft of this proclamation was first placed before Metternich it was so alien from his modes of thought that he could only treat it with scorn; and Frederick William of Prussia was the only ruler who regarded it with even modified approval. But with all his scorn Metternich had the wit to see that the pietism of Alexander of Russia had now been turned into a direction which might be made use of for the enforcement of Metternich's own system of government; and thus, after having induced Alexander, much against his will, to modify and alter the original draft, Metternich laid the foundation of the Holy Alliance.

But there still remained the troublesome question of the aspirations of the German nation; and these seemed likely at first to centre in a man of far higher type and far more steady resolution than Alexander. This was Baron von Stein, who, driven from office by Napoleon, had been in exile the point of attraction to all those who laboured for the liberty of Germany. He had declared, at an early period, in favour of a German Parliament. But Metternich had ingeniously succeeded in pitting against him the local feeling of the smaller German States; and instead of the real Parliament which Stein desired, there arose that curious device for hindering national development called the German Bund.

This was composed of thirty-nine members, the representatives of all the different German Governments. Its object was said to be to preserve the outward and inward safety of Germany, and the independence and inviolability of her separate States. If any change were to be made in fundamental laws, it could only be done by a unanimous vote. Some form of Constitution was to be introduced in each State of the Bund; arrangements were to be made with regard to the freedom of the press, and the Bund was also to take into consideration the question of trade and intercourse between the different States. All the members of the Bundestag were to protect Germany, and each individual State, against every attack. The vagueness and looseness of these provisions enabled Metternich so to manage the Bundestag as to defeat the objects of Stein and his friends, and gradually to use this weakly-constituted Assembly as an effective engine of despotism.

But in fact Stein was ill fitted to represent the popular feeling in any efficient manner. His position is one that is not altogether easy to explain. He believed, to some extent, in the People, especially the German People. That is to say, he believed in the power of that people to feel justly and honourably; and, as long as that feeling was expressed in the form of a cry to their rulers to guide and lead justly, he was as anxious as anyone that that cry should be heard. He liked, too, the sense of the compact embodiment of this feeling in some institution representing the unity of the nation. But, with the ideas connected with popular representation in the English sense, he had little sympathy. That the People or their representatives should reason or act, independently of their sovereigns, was a political conception which was utterly abhorrent to him.

In short, Stein's antagonism to Metternich was as intense as that of the most advanced democrat; but it was not so much the opposition of a champion of freedom to a champion of despotism, as the opposition of an honest man to a rogue. Metternich wrote in his Memoirs, when he was taking office for the first time in 1809, "From the day when peace is signed we must confine our system to tacking and turning and flattering. Thus alone may we possibly preserve our existence till the day of general deliverance." This policy had been consistently followed. The abandonment of Andrew Hofer after the Tyrolese rising of 1809, the adulterous marriage of Maria Louisa, the alliance with Napoleon, the discouragement of all popular effort to throw off the French yoke, the timely desertion of Napoleon's cause, just soon enough to give importance to the alliance of Austria with Prussia and Russia and England, just late enough to prevent any danger of defeat and misfortune; these acts marked the character of Metternich's policy and excited the loathing of Stein.

As he had been repelled from Metternich by arts like these, so Stein had been drawn to Arndt, Schleiermacher, and Steffens by a common love of honesty and by a common power of self-sacrifice; but he looked upon them none the less as, to a large extent, dreamers and theorists; and this want of sympathy with them grew, as the popular movement took a more independent form, until at last the champion of Parliamentary Government, the liberator of the Prussian peasant, the leader of the German people in the struggle against Napoleon, drifted entirely out of political life from want of sympathy with all parties.

But it was not to Stein alone that the Germans of 1813 had looked for help and encouragement in their struggle against Napoleon. The People had found other noble leaders at that period, and it remembered them. The King of Prussia remembered them too, to his shame. He was perfectly aware that he had played a very sorry part in the beginning of the struggle, and that, instead of leading his people, he had been forced by them most unwillingly into the position of a champion of liberty. It was not, therefore, merely from a fear of the political effects of the Constitutional movement, but from a more personal feeling, that Frederick William III. was eager to forget the events of 1813.

But if the King wished to put aside uncomfortable facts, his flatterers were disposed to go much further, and to deny them. A man named Schmalz, who had been accused, rightly or wrongly, of having acted in 1808 with Scharnhorst in promoting the Tugendbund,[2] and of writing in a democratic sense about popular assemblies, now wrote a pamphlet to vindicate himself against these charges.