...
“A few days after this I was confidentially informed that the Imperial Austrian Ambassador at St. Petersburg (Count Thun) was about to return to his post by way of Berlin, and would confer with me upon the pending question. When he arrived, I did not hesitate, despite the recently named lamentable experiences of an endeavor to meet his communications—made for the purpose of some understanding—in the most straightforward manner. I therefore declared myself ready to enter upon different projects, agreed between us, for the settlement of the Frankfurt difficulties.... On this Count Thun proposed to me that an interview between Count Rechberg and myself should be arranged, with a view of a further discussion of the matter. I declared myself ready to meet him, but in the next few days received from Count Karolyi confidential communications, according to which, Count Rechberg anticipated, before our interview, the declaration of my adhesion to the reform project in the Diet, regarding which, in my opinion, it was necessary to have longer and more minute negotiations. As the time extending up to the 22d of December was too short for these, I presumed that it was only possible to employ the proposed conference for the consideration of previous and binding treaties.... As Count Rechberg hereupon declared that Austria could not give up the further negotiation of the project in reference to the assembly of delegates without some assured equivalent, the interview until this time has not taken place.”
Clearly as it is here stated, so it happened with all negotiations. Prussia ever sought to go hand-in-hand with Austria, but Austria ever evaded the opportunity. She alleged that it was her intention to pursue her German policy alone, in her solitary path—the way of Schwarzenberg—which was to lead, over the entire insignificance of Germany, to the humiliation and oppression of Prussia. Of course Prussia then had no other alternative than to follow its own mission its own way. To this period belongs the conclusion of the Prusso-Russian treaty on the common measures to be pursued for the suppression of the Polish insurrection. This Convention, by which the friendly relations of Prussia and Russia were confirmed, has been frequently and unintentionally misinterpreted. The internal meaning of this, and its reaction, require some further explanation which it is not desirable at present to give.[45]
The diplomatic campaign, which the other Powers commenced at the instance of the Convention, it is well known, had no result, and was lost in the sands.
But the saddest figure in this business was played by the party of progress, who, in their blind zeal, had seized upon the Convention, on the plea that Prussia by this would become nothing higher than an outpost of Russia. The idea of such a baseless absurdity—had it been so—would have been laughable, if it had not been too sad to see that the opposition to Prussia abroad had again been instigated by an allied party in the actual Prussian camp. This, however, unfortunately was doomed to be frequently repeated on later occasions.
In the summer of 1863 Bismarck had accompanied his King to Carlsbad, and thence to Gastein, when Austria emerged with her new and useless projects of reorganization, in which there was a tinge and tendency of the inoperative Federal principle, as opposed to Prussian Unionistic efforts. King William received the invitation to the Congress of Princes at Gastein, and the Emperor Francis Joseph himself personally handed him a minute memorial on these projects of reform. This contained, although of course it was not acknowledged by Austria, very little more than the project of delegates long since opposed by Prussia, and which in no way could content the pretensions of Prussia or the wants of the German people.
King William, who had gone with his Premier from Gastein, by way of Munich and Stuttgart, to Baden-Baden, declined to attend the Princes’ Congress at Frankfurt, which was then put up upon the scene with skill worthy of recognition, even with taste, but had not the slightest result, although the princes present at it had accepted the fundamental principles of the Austrian project.
And how came it that this illustrious princely congress should have departed to Orcus without any lamentation, so that in only a few weeks no one ever mentioned it again? Simply because Prussia had taken no part in it.
In Vienna it had been thought that Prussia would have been carried away by it. When that proved unsuccessful, withdrawal was thought undesirable, and every one had to learn, by bitter experience, that nothing was possible in Germany without Prussia. Prussia, as usual, had been undervalued, and thus it was revenged; but, nevertheless, Prussia continued to be slightly esteemed, and the vengeance was to be still greater.