Thus sang Freiligrath in February 1848, a few days after the revolution in Paris. A long shudder, of pain and at the same time of relief, passed through the whole of Germany. It was as if a window had been opened, and air had reached the lungs of Europe. Example, the one power that can do miracles, was forcing the German people to action. They were also impelled by the fear that absolutism would now venture its last move, would declare Germany to be endangered by the revolution in France, and compel the people of Prussia and Austria to take up arms against the French republic.
In Austria intolerance had gone as far as it could go. In 1846 Metternich's government had actually placed the Herzensergüsse of the Emperor Joseph II., collected and published by a banished patriot, on the list of contraband books. And now the disturbances in the Austro-Italian provinces, which were endangering the credit of the state and the industries of the country, brought dissatisfaction with Metternichs rule to a climax. The decisive defeat he had met with in Switzerland, namely, the collapse of that Jesuitical "Sonderbund" which with all his might he had supported against the Radicals, had given the last blow to men's faith in his invincibility. In one of the provinces of Prussia, Silesia, bureaucratic misgovernment had just produced terrible consequences. Typhus, the result of starvation, had raged for months among the miserably poor industrial population before those in power had made any attempt to remedy the state of matters. Hundreds of dead and dying lay by the roadsides. In the cold of January, poor, solitary wretches starved in their hovels, and naked children pined to death beside the corpses of their parents; no one came to their aid, for the ignorant local authorities had, in order to prevent the spread of infection, made it a punishable offence to enter any infected house. All this time the government officials only appeared to collect the taxes, which they did with harsh regardlessness of circumstances; and when the Governor was attacked because no remedial measures had been taken from August 1847 to the end of January 1848, he answered that no formal appeal for assistance had been made.
In such circumstances the political leaders of the middle classes found it an easy matter to rouse their own class to action, and the working classes, hoping to improve their position, and exasperated by arbitrary police regulations, everywhere followed in the footsteps of the middle classes.
It is difficult for the present generation to enter into the feelings of the men of 1848. The frame of mind which prevailed in Denmark at that time cannot be regarded as typical. There, as elsewhere, it undoubtedly was the instinct of national self-preservation and pride that asserted itself. But whereas the other countries rose in revolt against hereditary rule and coercion, in Denmark a revolt was suppressed by the power of the hereditary monarchy and of insulted national feeling. There was no thought of revolution in the minds of the Danes; it was for old rights they fought, not for new ideas.
Everywhere else in Europe the oppressed peoples revolted. It was long since anything but evil had fallen to their lot, since they had witnessed the triumph of anything but wrong, use-and-wont, and falsehood. Actual and detestable had with them come to be almost synonymous terms. But they had a faith that could remove mountains and a hope that could shake the earth. Liberty, Parliament, national unity, liberty of the press, republic, were to them magic words, at the very sound of which their hearts leaped like the heart of a youth who suddenly sees his beloved.
The aspiring spirits of the generation of to-day do not feel thus. They know that stupidity is a ferocious animal, and the hardest of all to kill—that cowardice, the agile slave that stands at the beck of power, is as strong as courage itself when there is any question of defending ancient privilege—that what is known by the name of progress is a feeble snail. The simpleton in the fable bought a raven that he might see for himself if it was true that ravens live for two hundred years. The friends of progress in our days know beforehand that all the raven-black lies and raven-trickeries of all the privilege-rookeries, great and small, will outlive them—for how many hundred years they cannot tell. At a rare time they have seen good victorious, but never have they heard it acknowledged that it is their good which has triumphed. They have always seen truth first abused, then if possible killed—if that proved impossible, maimed and recognised. Therefore they have little hope. Many of them, indeed, have killed hope in their own breasts, as we kill a nerve that gives us too much pain. They have been disappointed too often.
The men of 1848 had never relinquished their hope in the future. They had been oppressed, and they had suffered so long that they had grown accustomed to see brute force and hypocrisy triumphant, accustomed to live in a sort of spiritual twilight. But they believed in the coming day. And now, suddenly, they saw it. First a gleam, then a ray, then a flame, then the whole horizon, as far as the eye could reach, a sea of light. For the first time they heard loud, ringing voices proclaim liberty to be the right of the people, without a voice raised in opposition; and for the first time, with wondering eyes, they saw power, that hitherto immovable mass, the giant bearer of oppression and falsehood, begin to stir like some gigantic elephant, writhe and turn and shake itself, throw off its riders, and move ponderously in the direction of the high-spirited, ardent friends of liberty, the men of the new day, who stood ready to fling themselves on its back and force it to trample down all the ancient abuses.
For the younger men especially it was a moment without compare, a sight that intoxicated them, that drove them wild. They shouted, they sang, they rejoiced, and in their wild exultation they felt it a necessity to act, to risk all, to give their lives if need be—anything, everything, except be behindhand in greeting and ushering in the dawning day of liberty.
True it is that democratic illusions held high revelry; true it is that there prevailed a touchingly naïve belief in the infallibility of popular instincts; and true it is that the ability of theorists to settle practical difficulties was greatly overestimated. But the first impulse was irresistible, the original instinct was correct. Those who really possessed capacity became leaders, took the command without any fuss or parade, and were obeyed, not because of their outward authority, but because their real superiority was felt by all.
The score of students who commanded on the barricades in Berlin may be given as an instance. Many a so-called very ordinary man for a few days of his life showed himself to be a hero. During the first months some of the finest qualities of humanity displayed themselves and shone with astonishing lustre.