Meanwhile, among the German people the object lesson of the Italian war had greatly stimulated the sentiment of national unity. As to the principle, however, on which this unity was to be based, the antagonism that had been Views as to Germany unity. fatal in 1849 still existed. The German National Union (Deutscher Nationalverein), organized in the autumn of 1859, favoured the exclusion of Austria and the establishment of a federation under the hegemony of Prussia; it represented the views of the so-called “Gothaer,” the political heirs of the rump of the Frankfort parliament which had reassembled at Gotha in June 1849, and supported the Prussian Union and the Erfurt parliament. To counteract this, a conference of five hundred “Great Germans” assembled at Frankfort and, on the 22nd of October 1862, founded the German Reform Union (Deutscher Reformverein), which, consisting mainly of South German elements, supported the policy of Austria and the smaller states. The constitutional crisis in Prussia, however, brought both societies into line, and in 1863 the National Union united with the Reform Union in an attempt to defeat Prussian policy in the Schleswig-Holstein question.
This anti-Prussian feeling Austria now tried to exploit for her own advantage. On the 2nd of August the emperor Francis Joseph proposed to King William, during a meeting at Gastein, to lay before an assembly of the German The “Fürstentag” of Frankfort. princes a scheme for the reconstitution of the Bund. The king neither accepted nor refused; but, without waiting for his assent, invitations were sent out to the other princes, and on the 14th the congress (Fürstentag) opened at Frankfort. Of the German sovereign states but four were unrepresented—Anhalt-Bernburg, Holstein, Lippe and Prussia; but the absence of Prussia was felt to be fatal; the minor princes existed by reason of the balance between the two great powers, and objected as strongly to the exclusion of the one as of the other from the Confederation; an invitation to King William was therefore signed by all present and carried by the king of Saxony in person to Berlin. Bismarck, however, threatened to resign if the king accepted; and the congress had to do the best it could without Prussian co-operation. On the 1st of September it passed, with some slight modifications, the Austrian proposals for the reconstruction of the Bund under a supreme Directory, an assembly of delegates from the various parliaments, a federal court of appeal and periodical conferences of sovereigns. Everything now depended on the attitude of Prussia, and on the 22nd her decision was received. “In any reform of the Bund,” it ran, “Prussia, equally with Austria, must have the right of vetoing war; she must be admitted, in the matter of the presidency, to absolute equality with Austria; and, finally, she will yield no tittle of her rights save to a parliament representing the whole German nation.”
Prussia thus made a bid for the sympathy of the democracy at the same time as she declared war against the dynasties; and her power was revealed by the fact that her veto was sufficient to wreck a proposal seconded by the all but unanimous vote of the German sovereigns. The Austrian stroke had failed, and worse than failed, for Napoleon III., who had been filled with alarm at this attempt to create on his flank an “empire of 70,000,000,” saw in Prussia’s attitude no more than a determination to maintain for her own ends the division and weakness of Germany; and this mistaken diagnosis of the situation determined his attitude during the crisis that followed.
This crisis was due to the reopening of a fresh acute phase of the Schleswig-Holstein question by the accession of the “protocol-king” Christian IX. to the throne of Denmark (November 15, 1863), and his adhesion to the The Schleswig-Holstein question, 1863. new constitution, promulgated two days before, which embodied the principle of the inalienable union of the Elbe duchies with the Danish body politic. The news of this event caused vast excitement in Germany; and the federal diet was supported by public opinion in its decision to uphold the claims of Prince Frederick of Augustenburg to the succession of the duchies. An agitation in his favour had already begun in Holstein and, after the promulgation of the new Danish constitution, this was extended to Schleswig. On the 24th of December Saxon and Hanoverian troops occupied Holstein in the name of the German Confederation, and supported by their presence and the favour of the population the prince of Augustenburg, as Duke Frederick VIII., assumed the government.
From these proceedings Prussia and Austria held rigorously aloof. Both had signed the protocol of 1852, and both realized that, if the European powers were to be given no excuse to intervene, their attitude must be scrupulously “correct”; and this involved the recognition of King Christian’s rights in the duchies. On the other hand, the constitution of the 13th of November had been in flat contradiction to the protocol of London, which recognized the separate rights of the duchies; and if the two great German powers chose to make this violation of an agreement to which they had been parties a casus belli, Europe would have no right to interfere. Prussia had begun to mobilize in November; and Austria also soon realized that action must speedily be taken if the lesser German governments were not to be allowed to get out of hand. Russia and Great Britain had already protested against the occupation of Holstein and the support given to the Augustenburg claimant; and now Beust, the Saxon minister, was proposing that the federal diet, which had been no party to the protocol, should formally recognize his claim. Bismarck, then, had no difficult task in persuading Austria that the time for action had come. A last attempt of the two powers to carry the diet with them in recognizing the protocol having failed, they formally announced that they would act in the matter as Austro-Prussian alliance. independent European powers. On the 16th of January 1864 the agreement between them was signed, an article, drafted by Austria, intended to safeguard the settlement of 1852, being replaced at the instance of Prussia by another, which stated that the contracting powers would decide only in concert upon the relations of the duchies, and that in no case would they determine the succession save by mutual consent. A clause was also inserted provisionally recognizing the principle of the integrity of Denmark.
Whatever Austria’s ulterior views may have been, Bismarck certainly from the first had but one aim before him. He saw clearly what the possession of the duchies would mean to Germany, their vast importance for the future of German sea-power; already he had a vision of the great war-harbour of Kiel and the canal connecting the Baltic and the North seas; and he was determined that these should be, if not wholly Prussian, at least wholly under Prussian control. Annexation was the goal which from the beginning he kept steadily before his eyes (Reminiscences, ii. 10). As for treaties to the contrary, he was to avow in his Reminiscences that these have little force when no longer reinforced by the interests of the contracting parties. His main fear was that the Danes might refuse to fight and appeal instead to a European congress; and, to prevent this, he led the Copenhagen government to believe that Great Britain had threatened to intervene in the event of Prussia going to war, “though, as a matter of fact, England did nothing of the kind.” This sufficed to provoke the defiance of the Danes, Danish War of 1864. and on the 1st of February 1864 the Austrian and Prussian troops crossed the Eider. The issue of a war between powers so ill-matched was a foregone conclusion; the famous rampart of the Dannewerk (q.v.), on which the Danish defence chiefly relied, was turned, and after a short campaign, in which the Danes fought with distinguished courage, peace was concluded by the treaty of Vienna (August 1, 1864), by which Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg were ceded to Austria and Prussia jointly.
The Austro-Prussian alliance had been only an interlude in the great drama in which the two powers were playing rival parts. To the other causes of friction between them had been added, just before the war, a renewed quarrel as to Austria, Prussia and the Zollverein. Austria’s relation to the Zollverein. In 1862, in the name of the customs union, Prussia had concluded with France a commercial treaty, based mainly on free trade principles. This treaty most of the small states refused to sign, and they were supported in their objections by Austria, which loudly complained that Prussia had given to a foreign power what she had denied to a sister state of the Bund. Prussia, however, remained firm, and declared that, were the treaty rejected, she would break up the Zollverein. After the war Bismarck in fact succeeded in obtaining the signature of the smaller states to the treaty; and Austria, her protests having proved unavailing, was fain to sign a commercial treaty with the Zollverein, essentially the same as that of 1853. Treaties concluded with Great Britain and Belgium, about the same time, also tended to enhance Prussian prestige.
Austria now sought in the question of the Elbe duchies an occasion for re-establishing her influence in Germany. The ambitions of Prussia were notorious, and Austria had no wish to see her rival still further strengthened by Convention of Gastein. the annexation of the duchies. In this attitude she was sure of the support of the German princes, and of German public opinion, which was enthusiastically in favour of the Augustenburg claimant. She therefore took up the cause of Duke Frederick, and under her influence a small majority of the federal diet decided to request the two powers to invest him with the sovereignty of Holstein. Bismarck’s reply was to deny the competency of the diet to interfere; and in the Prussian parliament the minister of war moved for a special grant for the creation of a war-harbour at Kiel. Against this Austria protested, as having the same right as Prussia to Kiel; an angry correspondence followed; but neither power was quite prepared for war, and on the 20th of August 1865 the convention of Gastein, to use Bismarck’s phrase, “papered over the cracks.” Pending a settlement, Schleswig was to be occupied and administered by Prussia, Holstein by Austria; while Lauenburg was made over absolutely to Prussia in return for a money payment. This was so far a diplomatic victory for Prussia, as it ignored entirely the claims of the duke of Augustenburg.
Bismarck had consented to the convention of Gastein in order to gain time to prepare the ground for the supreme struggle with Austria for the hegemony of Germany. He had no intention of postponing the issue long; for the circumstances of the two powers were wholly favourable to Prussia. The Prussian army had attained an unprecedented excellence of organization and discipline; the Prussian people, in spite of the parliamentary deadlock, were loyal and united; while in Austria army and state were alike disorganized by nationalist discontent and the breakdown of the centralized system. But there were other factors to be considered. The attitude of Napoleon was dubious; the active alliance of Italy was necessary to the certainty of Prussian success; and the policy of Italy depended ultimately upon that of France. Lastly, the conscience of King William, though since the acquisition of Lauenburg he had “developed a taste for conquest,” shrank from provoking war with a German power. The news of the convention of Gastein, which seemed Hostile attitude of France. to re-cement the union of Germany, had been received in France with clamorous indignation; and on the 29th of August, under pressure of public opinion, the French government issued a circular note denouncing it as an outrage on national liberty and European law, the protest being backed by note of the 14th of September circulated by Lord John Russell on behalf of the British government. But Napoleon was himself little inclined to use the warlike tone of his people; and Bismarck found it easy to win him over to his views by explaining the temporary nature of the convention, and by dropping hints at the famous interview at Biarritz (September 30, 1865) of possible “compensations” to France in the event of a Prussian victory over Austria; the probability of a prolonged struggle in Germany between two powers apparently evenly matched, moreover, held out to the French emperor the prospect of his being able to intervene at the proper moment with overwhelming effect.
Napoleon having been successfully hoodwinked, Bismarck turned to Italy. His previous advances had been interrupted by the Gastein convention, which seemed to the Italian government a betrayal of the Italian cause. Italy End of the Austro-Prussian understanding. attempted to negotiate with Austria for the purchase of Venetia; but the offer was curtly refused by the emperor Francis Joseph, and the counter-proposal of a commercial rapprochement was forestalled by Prussia, which with the aid of most of the lesser states, angered by the betrayal of their interests by Austria at Gastein, arranged a commercial treaty between Italy and the Zollverein, an act which involved the recognition of the Italian kingdom. The counter-stroke of Austria was to embarrass Prussia by allowing full play in Holstein to the agitation in favour of the Augustenburg claimant. To the protests of Prussia, Austria replied that she had a full right to do what she liked in the duchy, and that she still adhered to the declaration of the princes, made on the 28th of May 1864, in favour of Duke Frederick. This “perfidy” removed the last scruples of King William; and the Austro-Prussian alliance came to an end with the declaration of Bismarck that Prussia “must win full freedom for her own entire policy” and his refusal to continue the correspondence.