Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4

by Wolfgang Menzel

From The Fall of Napoleon to the Present Day

The Confederation of the Rhine, wounded to the death by the campaign of 1812, was killed by the fall of Napoleon. From that event to the present time the accompanying pages must be restricted to a consideration of those matters which have been of capital importance to the German people. These matters may be summarized as consisting in the formation of the German Confederation, the Danish war, the Austro-Prussian war, the Franco-Prussian war, and the refounding of the empire.

As the fall of Sennacherib was sung by the Hebrews, so was the fall of Napoleon sung by the Germans. They had been at his mercy. He had deposed their sovereigns, dismembered their states, crippled their trade, and exhausted their resources. Yet in 1814, by the Peace of Paris, they had restored to them all they had possessed in 1792, but as a reconstruction of the former empire was impracticable, those states which still maintained their sovereignty coalesced.

This was in 1815. At the time there remained of the three hundred states into which the empire had originally been divided but thirty-nine, a number afterward reduced, through the extinction of four minor dynasties, to thirty-five. A diet, recognized as the legislative and executive organ of the Confederation, was instituted at Frankfort. Instead, however, of satisfying the expectations of the nation, it degenerated into a political tool, which princes manipulated, which they made subservient to their inherent conservatism, and with which they oppressed their subjects. The French revolution of 1830 influenced to a certain extent their attitude, and a few of them were induced to accord constitutions to their people, but the effect was transient. Reforms which had been stipulated they managed to ignore. It took the insurrectionary movements of 1848 to shake them on their thrones. Forced then to admit the inefficiency of the diet, and attempting by hasty concessions to check the progress of republican principles, they consented to the convocation of a national assembly. Over this body the Archduke John of Austria was elected to preside. The choice was not happy. Measures which he failed to facilitate he succeeded in frustrating. As a consequence, matters went from bad to worse, until, after the refusal of the king of Prussia to accept the imperial crown which was offered to him in 1849 and the election of a provisional regency which ensued, the assembly lapsed into a condition of impotence which terminated in its dissolution.

Meanwhile republican demonstrations having been forcibly suppressed, there arose between Prussia and Austria a feeling of jealousy, if not of ill-will, which more than once indicated war, and which, though resulting in the restoration of the diet and temporarily diverted by a joint attack on Denmark, culminated in the battle of Sadowa.

Into the details of this attack it is unnecessary to enter. The casus belli was apparently an entirely virtuous endeavor to settle the respective claims of the king of Denmark and the duke of Augustenburg to the sovereignty of Schleswig-Holstein. The fashion in which the claims were settled consisted in wiping them out. The direction not merely of Schleswig-Holstein but of Lauenberg was assumed by Austria and Prussia, who, by virtue of a treaty signed October 30, 1864, took upon themselves their civil and military administration.

The administration which then ensued was announced as being but a temporary trusteeship, and throughout Europe was generally so regarded. But Prussia had other views. In the chambers Bismarck declared that the crown had no intention of resigning the booty, that, come what might, never would it give up Kiel. Bismarck was seldom wrong. In this instance he was right. In the month of August following the treaty the Emperor Francis of Austria and King William of Prussia met at Gastein and concluded a convention by which it was agreed that Schleswig should belong to Prussia, Holstein to Austria, with Kiel as a free port under Prussian rule.

These proceedings, as might have been expected, created the greatest indignation in England, France, and among the minor states. Earl Russell declared that all rights, old and new, had been trodden under by the Gastein Convention, and that violence and force had been the only bases on which this convention had been established, while utter disregard of all public laws had been shown throughout all these transactions. On the part of France, her minister said that the Austrian and Prussian governments were guilty in the eyes of Europe of dividing between themselves territories they were bound to give up to the claimants who seemed to have the best title, and that modern Europe was not accustomed to deeds fit only for the dark ages; such principles, he added, can only overthrow the past without building up anything new. The Frankfort Diet declared the two powers to have violated all principles of right, especially that of the duchies to direct their own affairs as they pleased, provided they did not interfere with the general interests of the German nation. Nevertheless, a Prussian governor was appointed over Schleswig, and an Austrian over Holstein, both assuming these duchies to be parts of their respective empires.

Early in 1866, it was evident that no real friendship could long continue between Prussia and Austria, and that these two great robbers would surely fall out over the division of the plunder; making it the ostensible cause for dispute, which was in reality their rivalry for the leadership in Germany. In June, the Prussians crossed the Eyder, and took possession of Holstein, appointed a supreme president over the two duchies which passed under Prussian rule, and settled, after a summary fashion, the vexed question. There were also other causes which tended to war. The weak side of Austria, weaker far than Hungary, was her Italian province of Venetia, one, indeed, that few can say she had any real or natural right to hold, beyond having acquired it by the treaty of 1813. To recover this from German rule had been the incessant desire of Italy, and grievous was her disappointment when the emperor of the French thought fit to stop immediately after the battle of Magenta and Solferino, instead of pushing on, as it was hoped he would have done, to the conquest of Venetia.

In the spring of 1866, Italy was making active preparations for war, and Austria, on the other hand, increased largely the number of her troops, Prussia choosing, in defiance of all fair dealing, to assume that all these armaments were directed against herself; and, on this supposition, sent a circular to the minor states to tell them they must decide which side to take in the impending struggle. A secret treaty was made between Prussia and Italy: that Italy should be ready to take up arms the moment Prussia gave the signal, and that Prussia should go on with the war until Venetia was ceded to Italy. Angry discussions took place in the diet between Austria and Prussia, which ended in Prussia declaring the Germanic Confederation to be broken up, and both sides preparing for war.