When the volunteers of 1813 went to the field, their hope was, at some time, to live as citizens, with their friends, in the liberated Fatherland, enjoying the freedom, peace, and happiness, which they had won. But it is sometimes easier to die for freedom than to live for it.
A few years after victory had been achieved, and Napoleon was prisoner in his distant rocky island, Schliermacher said in the pulpit to his parishioners: "It was an error when we hoped to rest in comfort after the peace. A time is now come, when guiltless and good men are persecuted, not only for what they do, but also for the views and projects which are attributed to them. But the brave Christian should not be faint-hearted, but in spite of danger and persecution remain true to truth and virtue." And police spies copied these words, and did not forget to add to their report that such and such persons had been in the church, or that four bearded students had knelt down at the altar after the communion, and had prayed fervently.
The intrepid Arndt was watched and removed. Jahn was put into prison, and many of the leaders of the patriotic movement of 1813 were persecuted as dangerous men; police officers disturbed the peace of their homes, and their papers were seized. A special commission outrageously violated the forms of law, acting with mean hate, arbitrarily, tyrannically, and perfidiously, like a Spanish Inquisition.
It is a sorrowful page in German history. Independent characters withdrew, deeply disgusted with the narrow-minded rule which now began in most of the States of Germany; common mediocrity again took the helm. Prussia's foreign policy was dictated from Vienna and St. Petersburgh, and before long its political influence on the history of Europe was again less than it had been under the Elector Frederic William. When the people rose in war against a foreign enemy, they little thought what the result would be when the independence of Germany was secured. They themselves brought to the struggle unbounded devotion, and supposed a similar feeling in all who had to shape the future, in their princes, and even in the allied powers. To no one scarcely was it clear how the new Germany was to be arranged. Any clear-sighted person could perceive, in the first year of the war, that a remodelling of Germany, which would make a great development of the power of the nation possible, was not to be hoped for. For it was not the people, nor the patriotic army of Blücher that were to decide, but the dynasties and cabinets of Europe, according to the position of affairs,—Austria, the new States of the Rhineland, the English, Hanover, France, Sweden, and above all Russia, each endeavouring to guard their own interests. The antagonism between Prussia and Austria had already broken out in the negotiations; the Prussians had by an immense effort obtained an honourable position in Europe, but neither in the opinion of nations nor of cabinets were they considered entitled to the leadership. There was hardly a person not Prussian who ever thought of excluding Austria from a new confederation; even Prussia itself did not think of it.
We know, therefore, that the "German question" was even then hopeless, and we do not regret that the old Empire under its Emperor was not restored.
But easily as we can now understand how invincible were the difficulties, to contemporaries the feeling of disappointment was bitter, and an unprejudiced estimate of their position difficult. Among the patriots of 1813, a small minority were then full of enthusiastic sentimentality; they contrasted their poetical ideas of the old splendour of the German Empire with the bad reality; these Deutschthumler—Teuto-maniacs—as they were called after 1815, had been without influence in the great movement Jahn's great beard was seldom admired, and the worthy Karl Müller found no favour when he began to banish all foreign words from military language. Now after the peace these enthusiasts, for the most part not Prussians, collected together in small communities at the German universities. They sorrowed and hoped, expressed violent indignation, and gave zealous advice; they were agreed together that something great must happen, and they were ready to stake life and property upon it; only, what was to be done was not clear. Between varying moods and wavering projects they came to no conclusion. Politically considered this movement was not dangerous, till the odious persecution of the governments goaded them into hatred and opposition, and throwing a gloom over the minds of some, led to fanatical resolves.
It was not the fault of the Prussian government that the hopes of the nation for a new German State were disappointed. But it had incurred another debt. The King had promised to give his people a constitution. If ever a nation had acquired a right to a participation in the government, it was the Prussian; for it had raised the State from the deepest depression. If the greatest State in Germany had, by legal forms, obtained the possibility of a political development of its power, every sensible Prussian would have been contented. The press and a parliament would gradually have given the loyal nation a feeling of prosperity and safe progress, opposing parties would have contended publicly, and those who demanded more for Germany than could at present be attained, would have been restrained by Prussia. The character of the Germans was now freed from the weakness which had pervaded it through a whole generation. The State also could no longer do without the participation of the people, if it was not to fall back into the old state of feebleness, which only a few years before had brought it to the verge of ruin. Now, when life was impressed with new ideas, when in hundreds of thousands a passionate interest in the State had sprung up, the safest support for the throne itself was a constitution. For the Prussians were no longer a nation without opinions or will, whose destiny an individual could dispose of by his will.
But the King, however honest he might be, who wished to continue to govern in the old way through pliant officials, was in danger from this new condition of the world of becoming the tool of a noxious faction, or the victim of foreign influence. He required a strong counterpoise against the preponderating power of Russia, and diplomatic entanglements with Austria. This he could only find in the strength of an attached people, who in union with him would deliberate on the policy and support of his State.
King Frederic William III. never felt the incongruous position in which he had placed himself, in respect to the necessities of the time, for his image was closely bound up with the grandest reminiscences of the people; and the private virtues of his life made him, during a long reign, an object of reverence to the rising generation. But his successor was to suffer fearfully from the circumstance that he himself, his officials, and his people had grown up under a crippled system of State.
But that the Prussians of 1813 should so quietly have borne their disappointed hopes, that—whilst already in the States of the Rhenish Confederation parties were in vehement struggle—the "great State" lay so lifeless, is to be attributed to other reasons besides loyalty to the Hohenzollerns. The nation was exhausted to the uttermost by the war and what had preceded it, and wearied to death. Scarcely had it strength to cultivate its land. Years passed over before the live stock could be fully replaced. Cities and village communities, landed proprietors and peasants were all deeply in debt. The price of landed properties sank lower than they had been before 1806. It often happened that noble estates remained without masters for many years, when the last proprietor had wasted the live stock, and that auctions were often unattended by solvent bidders. Commerce and industry had been destroyed by the Continental blockade, for the old outlets for linen, cloth, and iron, the great branches of Prussian trade, were lost—foreigners had appropriated them. And capital also was wanting. Intercourse, also, with the Sclavonian eastern districts, a vital question to the old provinces, was gradually almost annihilated by the new Russian commercial system. But a still greater hindrance arose from the waste of men through the war. The whole youth of the country had been under arms, a large portion had fallen on the battle-fields, and the survivors had been torn away from their citizen life. Many remained in the army: full a third part of the Prussian officers who commanded the army in the following thirty years consisted of volunteer rifles of 1813. He who returned to his former vocation found himself reduced in circumstances, and his relatives helpless and impoverished. He was at last glad to become an unpretending official, and thus to obtain a livelihood for himself and his family in the exhausted country. The bloody work of three campaigns, and the habits of soldierly obedience had not diminished his vigour, but the genial warmth, which enables youth to look victoriously upon life, had passed away. He began now a struggle for a respectable home, probably with patience and devotion to duty, but in the narrow sphere into which he now entered, he could not but look back to the mighty past which he had gone through. Thus had the manly energy of the generation been spent. The youths also that grew up in their families had no longer the advantage of being influenced by great impressions, enthusiasm, and devotion.