Chapter X.
THE EXPANSION OF GERMANY
Beginnings of Modern World Power
William I of Prussia—Bismarck’s Early Career—The Schleswig-Holstein Question—Conquest of the Duchies—Bismarck’s Wider Views—War Forced on Austria—The War in Italy—Austria’s Signal Defeat at Sadowa—The Treaty of Prague—Germany after 1866
The effort made in 1848 to unify Germany had failed for two reasons—first, because its promoters had not sufficiently clear and precise ideas, and, secondly, because they lacked material strength. Until 1859 reaction against novelties and their advocates dominated in Germany and even Prussia as well as in Austria. The Italian war, as was readily foreseen, and as wary counselors had told Napoleon III, revived the agitation in favor of unity beyond the Rhine. After September 16, 1859, it had its center in the national circle of Frankfort and its manifesto in the proclamation which was issued on September 4, 1860, a proclamation whose terms, though in moderate form, clearly announced the design of excluding Austria from Germany. It was the object of those favoring unity, but with more decision than in 1848, to place the group of German states under Prussia’s imperial direction. The accession of a new king, William I, who was already in advance called William the Conqueror, was likely to bring this project to a successful issue. The future German emperor’s predecessor, Frederick William IV, with the same ambition as his brother, had too many prejudices and too much confusion in his mind to be capable of realizing it. Becoming insane towards the close of 1857, he had to leave the government to William, who, officially regent after October 7, 1858, became king on January 2, 1861.
WILLIAM I OF PRUSSIA
The new sovereign was almost sixty-four years old. The son of Frederick William III and Queen Louisa, while yet a child he had witnessed the disasters of his country and his home, and then as a young man had had his first experience of arms towards the close of the Napoleonic wars. Obliged to flee during the revolt of 1848, he had afterwards, by his pro-English attitude at the time of the Crimean war, won the sympathies of the Liberals, who joyfully acclaimed his accession. To lower him to the rank of a party leader was to judge him erroneously. William I was above all a Prussian prince, serious, industrious, and penetrated with a sense of his duties to the state, the first of which, according to the men of his house, has ever been to aggrandize it; and he was also imbued with the idea that the state was essentially incarnate in him.
“I am the first king,” he said at his coronation, “to assume power since the throne has been surrounded with modern institutions, BUT I do not forget that the crown comes from God.”
He had none of the higher talents that mark great men, but he possessed the two essential qualities of the head of a state—firmness and judgment. He showed this by the way in which he chose and supported those who built up his greatness, and this merit is rarer than is generally supposed. A soldier above all, he saw that Prussia’s ambitions could be realized only with a powerful army.
Advised by Von Moltke, the army’s chief of staff after 1858, and Von Roon, the great administrator, who filled the office of minister of war, he changed the organization of 1814, which had become insufficient. Instead of brigades formed in war time, half of men in active service and half of reserves, regiments were now recruited by a three (instead of a two) years’ service and reinforced in case of need by the classes of reserves. The Landwehr, divided into two classes (twenty-five to thirty-two years and thirty-two to thirty-nine), was grouped separately. This system gave seven hundred thousand trained soldiers, Prussia having then seventeen million inhabitants. This was more than either France or Austria had. The armament was also superior. Frederick William I had already said that the first result to be obtained in this direction was celerity in firing. This was assured by the invention of the needle gun.