CHAPTER II.
THE ASSEMBLY OF THE THREE ESTATES.
[1847.]
The February Constitution.—Merseberg.—First Appearance of Bismarck in the White Saloon.—Von Saucken.—Bismarck’s First Speech.—Conservatives and Liberals.—The First of June.—Jewish Emancipation.—Illusions Destroyed.
When King Frederick William IV. issued the February manifesto, in 1847,[35] and summoned the United Diet with the Chambers, he thought in his royal great-heartedness to have accorded to his people a free gift of his affection and his confidence, and to have anticipated many wishes; but close behind the rejoicings which welcomed the patent of February, there lay the bitterest disenchantment for the noble King.
The honorable old royalists of Prussia, who had been educated and had grown up in the honest Prussian absolutism of Frederick William III., first looked with suspicion at this new royal gift; they could not at all understand why their own King of Prussia should have thought it necessary to summon a Parliament somewhat on the model of England, and they foresaw all sorts of evils in the future, as they thoughtfully shook their gray and honored heads. To these men, who at that time were still very numerous, and whose influence was considerable, succeeded those who certainly felt that the abuses of bureaucracy were no longer curable by patriarchal absolutism, but who still thought that the King, by this measure, had conceded the very utmost possible in that direction. They saw in the patent the last fortress of the monarchy which must be held against liberalism at any cost. In opposition to these royalists, the host of liberals unfolded their gay banner in different columns. They only could see in the February patent the starting-point of a further movement, which, founded on the patent, might transform the absolute state into a modern constitutional monarchy. There existed even individuals who perceived that the patent would prove an obstacle to their revolutionary tendencies, and desired to refuse its acceptance.
We will not criticise these parties, but it is certain that none of them regarded the patent in the spirit of the royal donor—unless perhaps some who had understood that the King, basing his action on the existing Provincial Assemblies, proposed in a similar manner to erect a peculiar Prussian Representative Monarchy. They beheld the February patent to be no final measure, but the beginning of States Government, which could only develop itself under specially favorable circumstances, and in course of time.
Bismarck was one of the men who, although without absolutely expressing the opinion, regarded the patent as the starting-point of a new order of things, in common with the liberals, but not in the sense of a constitutional monarchy, but comprehended it, as the King did, as a step towards a peculiar and specifically Prussian State Government.
The Saxon Provincial Diet at Merseburg had chosen the Dyke Captain and First Lieutenant von Brauchitsch of Scharteuke, in the Circle of Jerichow, as Deputy at the United Diet, and had selected Dyke Captain von Bismarck of Schönhausen as his representative. As Herr von Brauchitsch was very ill, his representative was summoned.
Bismarck appeared in the White Saloon of the Royal Palace at Cölln on the Spree, where the Three Estates’ Assembly held its Sessions, as a representative of the Knight’s Estate of Jerichow, and a vassal and chivalric servitor of the King. He was at that time, however, as liberal as most of his associates; liberalism then floated in the air and was inhaled; it was impossible to avoid it. Against many abuses it was also justifiable; hence its mighty influence.