Bad business, this promising a written Constitution—The deluge breaks.
¶ The Prussian nobility, always bound to the King by feelings of ardent loyalty, formed a military caste; the peasantry was industrious, thrifty and hard-working; the State officials were devoted to a spirit of discipline at once thorough and pedantic; the Prussian school-system was first in square-headed masters, who ruled with rods of iron. Thus, the Prussian National ideal was based on Discipline military in its severity, self-sacrifice and energy. “Throughout Prussia was a spirit of affirmation, expressive of the vigorous National egotism. As time passed, the machine men of olden Prussia were gradually replaced by free-willed, self-conscious citizens taking an enlightened interest in their country; the old-time tutelage headed by the monarchs underwent a transformation; and the trend was toward enlightened self-government; but many years were to pass before this ideal was reached.”
¶ William did indeed cherish, in a way, an idea of German Unity, and in this respect he was a democrat or a radical, whatever you wish to term him. Here, we must make one fact plain. It will make you smile at William’s simplicity, will show you how utterly he was out of touch with the tendencies of the times; how good-natured he was; how honest he was. He believed that German Unity, if ever it came, should historically be an extension of the old Holy Roman Empire, through the illustrious House of Hapsburg!
Which is equivalent to saying that your own family should advance by humbling itself before your own greatest rival; that you should bow to your political enemy and submit to being effaced, to heighten your rival’s glory.
Strauss calls William “A romanticist on the throne of the Cæsars!” This Fr: William IV wished to be an absolute monarch, after the traditional Hohenzollern style, yet he had so few soldierly instincts that the army hated him.
¶ This political attitude with William was not a form of romantic idealism bordering on lunacy; it was instead a token of his blundering stupidity; also in a sense his four-square frankness in owning that Prussia was playing second fiddle to Austria, at this interesting moment. And, in truth, all that William thought was logical; the stream was tending that way; few denied it, except politicians interested in advancing their own fortunes by setting Austria back in the great game of grab. However, William, instead of loading cannon and turning them on the Radicals, now swarming around his palace, was much pleased to send a bishop to Jerusalem.
¶ Nicholas of Russia warned William to beware of democrats, and to stand up for Divine-right of kings, but what is the use of advising a coward to be a hero, a fool to be a wise man? In the end, a man must go through life with the sort of head he has—round, square, flat, or mushy—is it not true? You are no exception, yourself; and our church-building William, in turn, was true to his own æsthetic nature, regardless of bayonets poked under his nose.
¶ Bad business this promising the people a written Constitution; ominous for the breed of kings; a situation, in short, not unlike that forced on the Grand Monarch at an earlier day, that is to say, no money without the States’ General.
¶ After 1840, Liberal opinions were directed against the King, personally, charging him with political reactionary tendencies. The course of popular liberty was taken by noted men, among them Arnold Ruge, Karl Marx, Feuerbach, Strauss, Bauer, Fallersleben, Dingelstedt, Meissner, Beck, Kinkel, and others. Also, when Ischech attempted to assassinate William IV, the dastardly act found supporters who gloried in the “patriot’s” effort to rid the country of a “tyrant,” even through cold-blooded murder.
¶ Also, the very memory of the frightful excesses of the French Revolution still shocked the conservative political element of Europe. The land-owning classes of Prussia, backed by the Prussian army, stood shoulder to shoulder for their old titles. The new call of political liberalism was, therefore, in the view of Prussian conservatives, to be put down at all hazards. The position was, of course, largely selfish, but it was very human.