In the year 1806 a Prussian boy, named John Nicholas Dreyse, finished his apprenticeship as a locksmith. The battle of Jena[75] had just been fought, and Dreyse wandered on to the battlefield, where the Prussians lay thick on the ground, with their muskets beside them. He picked up one of these guns and examined it carefully. He was a clever and inventive lad, and he soon saw that the musket was a poor weapon, and that his countrymen had been beaten because Napoleon's army had a much better gun. Thereupon he began to dream of inventing a gun for his country that should be the best in the world. He found his way to Paris, and obtained employment in the workshop of a Swiss gunmaker who was trusted by the Emperor Napoleon.
The clever, hard-working Prussian boy soon gained the confidence of his master, who one day told him that he was going to make for the Emperor a gun that would be loaded at the breech. Dreyse had never thought of this before. All the guns that he had ever seen were muzzle-loaders—that is, they were loaded by pouring powder into the barrel and ramming home a bullet. The new idea filled his mind, and night and day he thought of ways in which such a quick-loading gun might be made. When Napoleon heard how he was occupied, he encouraged him to further effort by promising him a gift of money and the Cross of the Legion of Honour.[76] Before, however, the gun was made, Napoleon was sleeping his last sleep under the willow-tree on the island of St. Helena.
Cross of the Legion of Honour.
At length, in 1835, after thirty years of thought and trial and disappointment, Dreyse made a breech-loading gun which was fired by the prick of a needle. At once he offered his gun to the Government of his own country. It was tried against the Danes, and proved so successful that the Prussian Government set up a large factory in which to manufacture it.
By the month of June 1866, many of the Prussian soldiers were armed with this needle-gun, and had learned how to use it. Then when all was ready war began.
On the 23rd of June three Prussian armies entered Bohemia[77] by different routes, with orders to drive back the Austrians and gather in force near Sadowa.[78] These armies had to advance through the passes in the wall of mountains which forms the natural rampart of Bohemia. What the Austrians should have done was to fling themselves against the Prussians as they issued from the passes; but, as of old, the Austrian generals were slow to move, and before they did anything the Prussians were all in Bohemia. At Sadowa, or Königgrätz,[79] as the Germans call it, a terrible battle took place. The Austrians were posted in a strong position, and they had good artillery, with which they caused many losses in the Prussian ranks. After three or four hours' fighting, it seemed as if the Austrians had driven off their foes. Suddenly, however, the second army, under the Crown Prince,[80] arrived on the field of battle. Regiment after regiment of Prussians in their dark-blue uniforms advanced, all armed with the needle-gun. Then a rapid and deadly fire burst upon the Austrian army. Nothing so terrible had been known before. The Austrians held their ground for an hour, suffering fearful losses; but they were obliged to give way at last, and the battle was won. Thirty-two thousand Austrians were killed, wounded, or missing; the Prussians had lost only nine thousand men.
The defeat was so crushing that Austria could no longer resist. The Prussians marched on Vienna, and peace was made. Austria had to pay the Prussians a great deal of money; she had to give up her claim to the duchies, and agree to let the German states form a union, from which she was excluded. The whole campaign had only lasted seven weeks. At the end of it Prussia stood without a rival in Germany. She was now a large, compact state of nearly thirty millions of people, stretching over the whole of North Germany from Frankfort in the south to Kiel[81] in the north. Not only had Prussia become the greatest state of Germany, but she had cleared away the great obstacle that stood in the path of a united German Empire of which she was to be the head.
