There was no denying it: the Cavour of Germany was Stein. But was the work done? Had the Congress of Vienna settled anything, for was that still left to do without which the independence and well-being of forty millions of Germans was unguaranteed, and the peace of all Europe uninsured? If so, what remained to be achieved? to complete what the German Cavour, the Precursor Stein, had begun, to embody and make real the glorious dreams of which Queen Louise had been the symbol, the Joan of Arc?[8]
That, indeed, brought the Hohenzollerns on the scene, and lent to prosaic history its legend, giving to Frederick’s “big battalions” the white-robed heroine who should lead them on.
Whether, through the long years of indecision, during which disorder and revolution seemed the danger to be averted, the future “Chancellor of Iron” matured his plans after the manner of Newton, by “forever thinking of them” is still a question to be adequately answered by himself alone. This much is certain that when, in 1863-64, the subject of the Duchies cast its shadow on the path, it revealed its importance to Bismarck, as it had done fourteen years previously to Dahlmann, and stood forth distinctly as the initial syllable of the one mystical word, Unity.
Schleswig-Holstein was, as a matter of fact, and by all its several complications, the German question; it was its sign and portent, and if action of some sort were not taken thereupon, the door set ajar was closed upon the future, for a generation at least. Palmerston’s declaration, than which no unwiser one was ever made, touching the insanity of the man who should seek to understand the enigma of the Danish Duchies, was adopted in England solely from the dense and inconceivable ignorance of the British mind on all German topics, and the equally inexplicable but inborn dislike of all British politicians to grapple with any serious study of them.
It was the problem to which no German of the North could show indifference; and it was the one subject which brought Prussia to the fore, and put her reigning house in the van, forcing the Hohenzollerns into predominance. This was a crucial point, and wondrous to record! the will of Bismarck on that exceedingly curious detail brought the Hapsburgs together with the Hohenzollerns; Frederick with Marie-Therèse, Wallenstein’s camp with Rebels, in an unescapable atmosphere of rank Germanism!
But here again the first step of the forthcoming ruler was taken in obedience to an irresistible, though, perhaps, unavowed, national suggestion. The sense of all that the past had given to German history, to the power of German thought, formed a part of Bismarck’s very nature, and spite of the timidity of his experienced statecraft, he could not disobey the promptings of the German conscience.
When the quick-witted French public applied to Professor Lévy Brühl’s work the title of “The idea whence comes the fact,” they awarded it its permanent signification; it is the development of the German conscience that causes the imperial unity of Germany, and no one is more thoroughly aware of that than the famous chancellor.
We feel with whomsoever was a witness of the crowning struggle, that nothing can even paint its gigantic character more aptly than the concluding phrase of the now famous French historian:—
… “Thus was formed the virtual German nation,—the nation that willed to be, and for long years could not be because reality refused to bear out practically all its ideals. It was in truth, l’ame qui cherche un corps!”
These words can never be improved upon. The chancellor knows their truth, as the Kronprinz knew it, but the years lying between them threw a certainty of glory into one which the other could not attain to,—and Bismarck, too, was a man of old Prussia, of her ancient traditions and formalities, while the crown prince was modern amongst moderns—a soldier, yes! but pre-eminently a man, a citizen; but though each felt his conviction differently, its strength was one and the same in both.