That Power was Prussia, trained for the task by the steadfast labours of two hundred years. The army she had formed did its work swiftly. Pouring through Saxony and over the Silesian Mountains, the King and his son, July 3rd, crushed the Austrians, on the memorable field of Sadowa, near Königgrätz. The Hanoverian troops, after winning the fight at Langensalza, had been obliged to surrender, and in South Germany the army employed to overcome the Confederates was equally victorious. On the 22nd of July, so swiftly had the main body moved, the Prussians were in front of Vienna and Presburg on the Danube. Four days afterwards, the Emperor Napoleon having struck in with an offer of mediation, which was accepted, the preliminaries of a peace were signed at Nikolsburg, on the 26th of July, and the final treaty was settled and ratified at Prague, on the 23rd of August, long after King William and his formidable Minister were once more in Berlin. By this instrument, Austria was excluded from Germany; a Northern Confederation, reaching to the Main, was founded; Hanover, the Elbe Duchies, Hesse-Cassel, and other territories, were annexed to Prussia; and a formal statement was inserted, declaring that Napoleon III., to whom Austria had ceded Venetia, had acquired it in order to hand over the city and Terra Firma, as far as the Isonzo, to Victor Emmanuel, when the peace should be re-established. Prussia thus became the acknowledged head of Germany, at least as far as the Main; and the national longing for complete unity was about to be gratified in a much shorter time than seemed probable in 1866.
Naturally, the astonishing successes won by Prussian arms against the Federal Corps, as well as the Austrians, compelled the South German States to sue for peace, and accept public treaties, which, while leaving them independent, brought them all, more or less, within the limits of a common German federation. But something more important was accomplished at Nikolsburg. Herr von der Pfordten, the Bavarian Prime Minister, repaired thither towards the end of July, and Bismarck was in possession of information, including a certain French document, which enabled him to state the German case in a manner so convincing and terrifying, that the Bavarian agreed to sign a secret treaty, bringing the army within the Prussian system, and stipulating that, in case of war, it should pass at once under the command of King William. That which Von der Pfordten conceded the Ministers of Wurtemburg and Hesse Darmstadt could not refuse, and thus provision was made, on the morrow of Sadowa, for that concentration of armed Germany which overwhelmed France in 1870–71. So that, although nothing formally constituting a United Germany had been done, Prussia, by securing the control of all her forces, and knowing that a strong and deeply-rooted public sentiment would support her, was satisfied that, providing time could be gained in which to arm, instruct and discipline upon the Prussian model the South Germans and the troops raised from the annexed provinces, she would be more than a match for France. South Germany, indeed, had long known her relative helplessness against the French. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that the real peril was more perceptible to the soldiers and statesmen than to the people, many of whom were strongly imbued with democratic ideas of the French type. Yet, although they hungered for what they understood as liberty and independence, they were still German, and did not fail to see that their cherished desires could not be gratified either under French patronage or French prefects. The soldiers and statesmen had early perceived the full secret of South German dependence. The Archduke Charles, who had great knowledge and harsh experience to guide him, pointed out that the French posts on the Rhine had placed the country south of the Main at the mercy of France. “As long as the Rhine frontier from Huningen to Lauterbourg remains in her hands,” wrote a Prussian staff-officer at a later period, “Germany is open on the Rhine frontier to an invasion directed upon the Southern States.” No stronger testimony to the sense, if not to the reality of insecurity could be adduced, than the remarkable fact that, even so far back as the Crimean War, the then King of Wurtemberg, in conversation with Herr von Bismarck, set forth, significantly, the feelings, the hopes and the dread of South Germany. “Give us Strassburg,” he said, “and we will unite to encounter any eventuality … for until that city shall become German, it will always stand in the way of Southern Germany, devoting herself unreservedly to German unity and to a German national policy.” Hence it will be seen that, beyond the Main, there were traditional, yet very real fears of French invasion; and that these apprehensions had no small share in facilitating the acceptance of the secret military treaties, and in shaping the course of subsequent events.
Thus much it seems needful to state, in order that some portion of the earlier transactions which had a great influence in bringing on the war of 1870, may be recalled to the reader’s mind. The short, sharp and decisive duel fought between Austria and Prussia for leadership in Germany, created a profound impression throughout Europe. Austria was irritated as well as humbled; Russia, although the Czar remained more than friendly, was not without apprehensions; but the French ruler and his ministers were astounded, indignant and bewildered. The telegram, which reported the Battle of Sadowa, wrenched a “cry of agony” from the Court of the Tuileries, whose policy had been based on the conjecture or belief that Prussia would be defeated, and would call for help. The calculation was, that Napoleon III. would step in as arbiter, and that while he moderated the demands of Austria, he would be able to extort territorial concessions from Prussia as the reward of his patronage. M. Drouyn de Lhuys would have had his master strike in, at once, and cross the Rhine, or occupy the Palatinate; but the Emperor was not then in the mood for heroic enterprises; he feared that his army was not “ready,” and, besides, he still thought that by arrangement he could obtain some sort of “compensation” from Prussia, at the expense of Germany. But all he did was to pose as mediator at Nikolsburg; and Herr von Bismarck, who had done his utmost to keep him in a dubious frame of mind, regarded it as “fortunate” that he did not boldly thrust himself into the quarrel. The “golden opportunity” slid by; M. Drouyn de Lhuys resigned; and Imperial France acquiesced, publicly, in the political and territorial arrangements which, for the first time, during the lapse of centuries, laid broad and deep the foundations of German Unity, and, as a consequence, rendered inevitable a France-German War.
CHAPTER I.
THE CAUSES OF THE WAR.
The Treaty of Prague, the secret military conventions signed at Nikolsburg, the ascendancy secured by Von Bismarck, now elevated to the dignity of a Count, together with the complete removal of alien Powers from Italy, wrought a radical change in the political relations of the European States. Excluded from Germany, although including powerful German elements, the dominions of Austria still extended to the verge of Venetia and the Lombard plains; but as the Prussian statesman had already hinted, her future lay Eastward, and her centre of gravity had been removed to Buda-Pesth. In the South German Courts, no doubt, there was a bias towards Vienna, and a dislike of Prussia; yet both the leaning and the repugnance were counterbalanced by a deeper dread of France rooted in the people by the vivid memories of repeated and cruel invasions. Russia, somewhat alarmed by the rapid success of King William, had been soothed by diplomatic reassurances, the tenour of which is not positively known, although a series of subsequent events more than justified the inference made at that time, that promises, bearing on the Czar’s Eastern designs, were tendered and accepted as a valuable consideration for the coveted boon of benevolent neutrality, if not something more substantial. Like Russia, France had lost nothing by the campaign of 1866; her territories were intact; her ruler had mediated between Austria and Prussia; and he had the honour of protecting the Pope, who, as a spiritual and temporal Prince, was still in possession of Rome and restricted territorial domains. But the Napoleonic Court, and many who looked upon its head as a usurper, experienced, on the morrow of Sadowa, and in a greater degree after the preface to a peace had been signed at Nikolsburg, a sensation of diminished magnitude, a consciousness of lessened prestige, and a painful impression that their political, perhaps even their military place in Europe, as the heirs of Richelieu, Louis XIV., and Napoleon, had been suddenly occupied by a Power which they had taught themselves to contemn as an inferior. Until the summer of 1866 the Emperor Napoleon fancied that he was strong enough to play with the Prussian Minister a game of diplomatic finesse; indeed, he seems to have thought that the Pomeranian gentleman would be an easy prey; but having thus put it to the proof, he did not concur in the maxim that it is as pleasant to be cheated as to cheat, especially when the result is chiefly due to complaisant self-deception. On the other hand, Herr von Bismarck had no longer any delusions concerning Louis Napoleon. If, at an early period, when the English Radicals were considering whether the new Emperor was “stupid,” a proposition they had taken for granted theretofore, he had over-estimated the capacity of the self-styled “parvenu,” later experience had reduced the estimate to just proportions, and had produced a correct judgment upon the character of one who, down to the last, was always taken for more than he was worth. If any one knew him well, it was probably his cousin, the Duc de Morny, and M. St. Marc Girardin has preserved a sentence which is an illuminative commentary upon so many curious transactions during the Second Empire. “The greatest difficulty with the Emperor,” said De Morny, “is to remove from his mind a fixed idea, and to give him a steadfast will.” His fixed ideas were not always compatible one with another. He professed great devotion to the “principle of nationalities;” yet he desired to carry the French frontiers as far as the Rhine, adding further German populations and Flemish towns whose inhabitants are not French to those acquired by Louis XIV. He wished for peace, no doubt, when he said that the Empire was synonymous with that word, but he also hungered for the fruits of war; and, knowing that his internal position and his external projects required, to uphold the one and realize the other, a strong and complete army, he had neither the wit to construct a trustworthy instrument, nor the ceaseless industry needed to make the most of an inferior product, nor that absolute independence of the party whose audacity gave him his crown, which would have enabled him to select, in all cases, the best officers for the higher and highest commands. Before, and during the war of 1866, he wavered between two lines of policy, hoping to combine the advantages of both; and when it was over he demanded compensation for his “services” as an alarmed spectator, although he had made no bargain for payment, but had stood inactive because he conjectured that it would be the more profitable course.