The German army, which was the outgrowth of the early reforms of William I, is so extraordinary a feature of the Europe of to-day, that its organization merits attention. The war of independence against Napoleon in 1813 had led to the summoning of the nation to arms, and a law was passed in Prussia making military service a universal obligation of every healthy male citizen. The first thing that William I did was to increase the annual levy from forty to sixty thousand men, and to see that all the soldiers remained in active service three years. They then passed into the reserve, according to the existing law, where for two years more they remained ready at any time to take up arms should it be necessary. William wished to increase the term of service in the reserve to four years. In this way the state would claim seven of the years of early manhood and have an effective army of four hundred thousand, which would permit it to dispense with the service of those who were approaching middle life. The lower house of the Prussian parliament refused, however, to make the necessary appropriations for increasing the strength of the army.
Bismarck and his struggle with the Prussian parliament.
The king proceeded, nevertheless, with his plan, and in 1862 called to his side one of the most extraordinary statesmen of modern times, Bismarck. The new minister conceived a scheme for laying Austria low and exalting Prussia, which he succeeded in carrying out with startling precision. He could not, however, reveal it to the lower chamber; he would, indeed, scarcely hint its nature to the king himself. In defiance of the lower house and of the newspapers, he carried on the strengthening of the army without formal appropriations, on the theory that the constitution had not provided for a dead-lock between the upper and lower house, and that consequently the king might exercise, in such a case, his former absolute power. For a time it seemed as if Prussia was returning to a pure despotism, for there was assuredly no more fundamental provision of the constitution than the right of the people to control the granting of the taxes. Yet Bismarck was eventually fully exonerated by public opinion, and it was generally agreed that the end had amply justified the means.
The Schleswig-Holstein affair.
270. Prussia now had a military force that appeared to justify the hope of victory should she undertake a war with her old rival. In order to bring about the expulsion of Austria from the confederation, Bismarck took advantage of a knotty problem that had been troubling Germany, and which was known as the Schleswig-Holstein affair. The provinces of Schleswig and Holstein, although inhabited largely by Germans, had for centuries belonged to the king of Denmark. They were allowed, however, to retain their provincial assemblies, and were not considered a part of Denmark any more than Hanover was a part of Great Britain in the last century.
In 1847, just when the growing idea of nationality was about to express itself in the Revolution of 1848, the king of Denmark proclaimed that he was going to make these German provinces an integral part of the Danish kingdom. This aroused great indignation throughout Germany, especially as Holstein was a member of the confederation. Frederick William IV consented to go to war with Denmark, but only succeeded in delaying for a few years the proposed absorption of the provinces by Denmark. The constant encroachments of the government at Copenhagen upon the privileges claimed by Schleswig-Holstein aroused new apprehension and much discontent. In 1863 Schleswig was finally incorporated into the Danish kingdom.
Bismarck's audacious plan for the expulsion of Austria from Germany.
"From this time the history of Germany is the history of the profound and audacious statecraft and of the overmastering will of Bismarck; the nation, except through its valour on the battlefield, ceases to influence the shaping of its own fortunes. What the German people desired in 1864 was that Schleswig-Holstein should be attached, under a ruler of its own, to the German Federation as it then existed; what Bismarck intended was that Schleswig-Holstein, itself incorporated more or less directly with Prussia, should be made the means of the destruction of the existing Federal system and of the expulsion of Austria from Germany.... The German people desired one course of action; Bismarck had determined on something totally different; with matchless resolution and skill he bore down all the opposition of people and of the [European] courts, and forced a reluctant nation to the goal which he himself had chosen for it" (Fyffe).
Bismarck